Taco Cat Takes a Wander

Last Friday after dinner, our younger (just turned 5) asked me if I would join him in biking to our local park. It's something we do often, though not usually on Friday evenings when everyone is worn out from a long week of work and school. I agreed. He enthusiastically started packing a backpack with some of his favorite things, including a singing birthday card (Taco Cat) he'd received from his (19 months older) brother (who signed it with the birthday message: "POOP").

"Are you sure you want to take your card to the park? You can't really do anything with it there and it might get damaged."

"Yeah. I want to show it to Colin."

"Colin?"

"Yeah! From school. I told him to tell his parents to take him to the park so we can play. I made sure he knew the park's name and that it's across the street from our school."

"Umm. That sounds great and I'm sure Colin wants to do that. But you know there's a chance his parents have other plans or might choose a different time this weekend to go to the park, so he might not actually be there?"

"I know. Let's go!"

So away we went.

As soon as we arrived he started looking everywhere for Colin, riding his bike to different parts of the park and checking out every person. We spent at least half an hour darting back and forth, me tagging along behind him and his series of frequently repeated exclamations.

"I think I see Colin!"

"There's a new car pulling into the parking lot. Let's go!"

"That has to be Colin!"

"Let's check over there!"

"Let's take a break and wait here--by the parking lot."

"That has to be Colin!"

We repeated the process at a random time the next day, though with less conviction and assurance. Through it all he kept his spirits hopeful. At the end of that first evening there was a moment of slumped shoulders, head hung, quiet mourning, but not actual defeat. I did my best to find a balance between being supportive and not disillusioning him while offering bits of realism to soften the expected moment of final disappointment.

This child is our joyful optimist, always ready (unless angry) with a cheerful comment and an offer of empathy, but this might have been his most daring act of optimism ever. And it so much took me back to my own youth of fortyish years ago in a small Kansas town. Before cell phones, of course. We rarely planned play dates or even called on landlines, just wandered about hoping to bump into friendly faces or, at most, knocking on doors hoping it was a good time to hang out. Now everything is so much more scheduled and connected and intentional. Despite its disappointed ending, something about following him around the park that evening from person to person, place to place was so full of innocence and hope that I felt it too. I don't usually do nostalgia and a desire for "the good old days," but that moment felt special to me.

Some other recent anecdotes with the kids . . . 

[Younger] heard a lyric in a song this morning.

"Dad, what does 'ramshackle' mean?"

"It means old and run-down and falling apart. Kind of like the siding on our barn."

"Haha! You're ramshackle."

I . . . I can't really argue your point . . .

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Just heard [Older] in the other room tell his piano teacher during their Zoom lesson: "I am not [Older] I am just his skin."

This is the same kid who not long ago designed his toy train track to be the shape of the infinity sign surrounded by a spiral. He seems to have a metaphysical bent.

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I asked [Older] tonight if his brain was getting bored doing a nature camp for summer, with no academic learning. "Nah, that's okay. I'm pleased with the amount of snakes." Well if we'd known that was going to be your criteria for judging camps . . . 

At pickup he'd asked me to stay so he could show me around, then proceeded to point out each of the 9 places that he has seen snakes (counting the dead one) so far (in 7 days), one at a time. "I was the first to spot 4 of them." He described each sighting in explicit detail. Then asked me to search for more.

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[Older] told me at camp today he spun the merry-go-round so fast he made a girl throw up and get sent home.

We've determined he did spin her, she did vomit, and she did go home. We're not sure about his claim of causation.

Though given the other potential causes and the possibility of contagion, we're kind of hoping his story is true.

Cottonwood tree snow

(Readers from the future, see the previous posts for more context about current events, the twin pandemics of Covid-19 and racism.)

My library reopened for limited service on Monday. I shared a couple of things from my first shift at the public service desk.

An observation from the first hour of offering public service for the library's reopening: When you have trouble hearing people because their masks are muffling their voices, the solution that comes to them is not to speak louder but to remove their masks. Already happened multiple times.

From a colleague just now - Observation: Most of the patrons who aren't wearing masks also brought kids with them who aren't wearing masks.

Social distancing measures to protect staff

No seating available, just get your stuff and go

People can only remain scared for so long if the source of the fear remains remote; if they aren't experiencing it personally, they eventually shrug it off. The virus hasn't changed, but public sentiment has entirely. And we're eventually going to pay for that. I'm still halfway expecting to catch it at some point despite our family's best efforts, seeing it as inevitable due to society's growing lack of concern.

The Virus Will Win

Americans are pretending that the pandemic is over. It certainly is not.

The disease is slowly starting to recede from the public’s attention. After months of dominating media coverage, COVID-19 has largely disappeared from the front pages of most national newspapers. In recent polls, the number of people who favor “reopening the economy as soon as possible” over “staying home as long as necessary” has increased. And so it is perhaps no surprise that even states where the number of new infections stands at an all-time high are pressing ahead with plans to lift many restrictions on businesses and mass gatherings. . . . 

It is now difficult to imagine that anybody could muster the political will to impose a full-scale lockdown for a second time. As one poll in Pennsylvania found, nearly nine out of 10 Republicans trusted “the information you hear about coronavirus from medical experts” back in April. Now just about one in three does. With public opinion more polarized than it was a few months ago, and the presidential election looming, any attempt to deal with a resurgence of the virus is likely to be even more haphazard, contentious, and ineffective than it was the first time around.

Deepfakes Are Going To Wreak Havoc On Society. We Are Not Prepared.

Deepfake technology enables anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to create realistic-looking photos and videos of people saying and doing things that they did not actually say or do. . . . 

The amount of deepfake content online is growing at a rapid rate. At the beginning of 2019 there were 7,964 deepfake videos online, according to a report from startup Deeptrace; just nine months later, that figure had jumped to 14,678. It has no doubt continued to balloon since then. . . . 

Today we stand at an inflection point. In the months and years ahead, deepfakes threaten to grow from an Internet oddity to a widely destructive political and social force. Society needs to act now to prepare itself. . . . 

It does not require much imagination to grasp the harm that could be done if entire populations can be shown fabricated videos that they believe are real. Imagine deepfake footage of a politician engaging in bribery or sexual assault right before an election; or of U.S. soldiers committing atrocities against civilians overseas; or of President Trump declaring the launch of nuclear weapons against North Korea. In a world where even some uncertainty exists as to whether such clips are authentic, the consequences could be catastrophic.

Because of the technology’s widespread accessibility, such footage could be created by anyone: state-sponsored actors, political groups, lone individuals. . . . 

“If we can't believe the videos, the audios, the image, the information that is gleaned from around the world, that is a serious national security risk.” . . . 

In a world in which seeing is no longer believing, the ability for a large community to agree on what is true—much less to engage in constructive dialogue about it—suddenly seems precarious.

This article is from four years ago, but entirely relevant and timely. The president has repeatedly tweeted "Law and Order" in recent weeks and said it multiple times in his remarks just yesterday, including, Americans want law and order. They demand law and order. They may not say it, they may not be talking about it, but that’s what they want. Some of them don’t even know that’s what they want, but that’s what they want.

Is Trump's Call For 'Law And Order' A Coded Racial Message?

"I am the law-and-order candidate."

With that proclamation in his acceptance speech, Donald Trump made it official that he'd be recycling the themes and language of Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign. . . . 

"Law and order" is an archaic expression, from the Latin "lex et ordo." Over the course of American history, it's the cry that the people in charge have raised to confront the threat of violence bubbling up from below — whether as popular insurrections, public disorders, radical agitators or gangs. It was a phrase invoked to condemn the striking auto workers in Flint in 1936 and the demonstrations organized by Martin Luther King in Birmingham in 1963.

But for most Americans of the Nixon era, "law and order" was saturated with the mythology of the Old West. . . . 

Ronald Reagan starred in the 1953 film of that name. Thirteen years later, he revived the role of the new sheriff in town to win the California governorship, running as a citizen-politician who could restore law and order in the wake of the Watts riots and the disorders at Berkeley.

By the time Nixon and George Wallace adopted the law-and-order slogan in 1968, the phrase was everywhere in the air. . . . 

Nixon publicly denied that the phrase was a code for racism . . . But the message was clear enough in Nixon's references to a "city jungle" that threatened to swallow the affluent suburbs. . . . 

Crude appeals to bias had to be replaced by phrases that obliquely brought racial images to mind. People often describe these phrases as racial dog whistles, which send a signal that's only audible to one part of the audience. But their racial connections are usually pretty obvious to everyone. . . . 

The racial overtones of the phrase are even harder to deny now than they were in the Nixon years . . . 

Amid Protests, Majorities Across Racial and Ethnic Groups Express Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement

As demonstrations continue across the country to protest the death of George Floyd, a black man killed while in Minneapolis police custody, Americans see the protests  both as a reaction to Floyd’s death and an expression of frustration over longstanding issues. Most adults say tensions between black people and police and concerns about the treatment of black people in the U.S. – in addition to anger over Floyd’s death – have contributed a great deal to the protests, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. . . . 

I wonder what Colin thinks about all of this? I'll have to ask him if we ever find him . . .