Paradise Postponed
Jun. 7th, 2020 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogThe revolution will not be televised.- Gil Scott-Heron
Nor will there be my usual Sunday assortment of photos from our usual Sunday morning visit, first time since early March that our usual Bark Park was again open to the public. I took some; happy dogs running round, Pepper on the edge of the water (aka the Bog of Eternal Stench- grrl needs a bath:P), and the one that almost started an altercation.
The reopening rules were clear, posted and sensible: wear a mask if you're within 6 feet of anyone. It's a fairly large area, but there's a standard-width path that gets most of the human traffic and it is Not. POSSIBLE to be 6 feet from passersby at all times.
Ann, Ellen and I were three of only six people we saw the entire hour wearing them, out of well over a hundred. Two others were a couple of women who sympathized with our concerns. As for the sixth: she, and two others to one side, were passing us. I tried to take her picture, just as a sign that SOMEBODY else was following the rules. Immediately, one of her companions lit into me for "videotaping me without my permission." I replied I was aiming at her friend, and to congratulate rather than anything else. She didn't care. I better not post anything of her. And I got an asshole bomb from her on the way past.
(Btw, she? Not the one in the mask. The a-bomber. Was wearing scrubs.)
One thing I've loved about the place is that whatever our politics, social classes or current event opinions are, we leave it all at the gate. (Except the poop. We clean that up.) There's at least one obvious Blue Lives Matterer in there who I've left alone. We hear snippets of political discussions, pro and con to our own feelings. I've let it go, because we're there for the dogs first and foremost.
From the Buffalove and similar t-shirts on the humans on the path, to the bumper stickers in the parking lot, you'd think a lot of this crowd is pretty woke. Apparently, privilege trumps wokeness. They pick the rules that apply to them and go home with "Feel The Bern" on the back of their Subaru. Nobody's shoving them to the ground, or sticking their knee on their neck, for disobeying a park rule.
My guess is the place is gonna get shut back down, either because of reports of these conditions or when a spike forces an overall rollback of the "nice things" we've gotten the past few weeks. I can't go back either way, though, until we're done with this. Which may be never.
One oddity of it all is how people seem completely okay with following the rules in one place and not another. In retail establishments, which are subject to the exact same requirements, I see close to 100 percent compliance on the part of customers- and at least in Wegmans, there are no Mask Police checking on you as you enter, so there's nothing other than peer pressure to enforce the rule. Which gets us back to that Choose Your Own Adventure Rule thing that's part of privilege: I will wear one in the store because I've decided I'm okay with that, but damned if I'm going to wear one [insert place you don't wanna]. I'm no epidemiologist, but frankly I don't think the virus gives a shit where you are when it flies up your nostril. (See ETA below.)
Not that people in there are particularly respectful of ALL the rules, or of common sense. No, people, "social distancing" does NOT mean "plant your cart in the middle of the aisle so nobody can get around you on either side." It especially does not mean “leave your cart in the middle of the line leading to the express registers filled with 10 overgrown shrubberies while you paw through the impulse items on the table next to register 23.” I don’t care if you were forced to buy them by the Knights Who Say Ni! 
Yes, ma'am, I KNOW it's "10 items or fewer." Just MOVE, already!
(I got a picture of her, too. I edited her out of it. Last thing I need is being stalked by a giant hogweed.)
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We downloaded a similar amount of shrubbery after I got home from the baddish trip. It's cooled off considerably, so I got over to the side of the yard where the wisteria is constantly doing its re-enactment of Little Shop of Horrors and trying to strangle our cable line and solar panels. Between my clear-cutting a ton of that and Eleanor clearing out shit in the front yard, we had about twice as much as the contents of that cart in four different Big Brute-sized outdoor trash cans by the time we finally packed it in. The neighbors on that side- they with the boat, they with the !*#$% boat, were mostly out for the duration, and even their dog didn't seem terribly bothered by me up on a ladder leaning over the fence. The couple on the other side, with whom words were had the previous weekend, were around, and Eleanor and their missus actually had a civil conversation. It's been peaceful all week between there and here, so maybe that was just an aberration of a night. One can hope.
In between the yards, we have the usual assortment of bunnies running about, I think I came across another toad yesterday, and then Eleanor noticed this:
Mama Robin made this teeny nest and hatched four bebbies in there sometime last month.
Now she’s back with more.
I’ve named her: Mrs. Robinson.
When I announced that, somebody asked if I thought she was trying to seduce me. I replied, not me, but apparently every male bird on the block....
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Ending with your humor for the weekend about these Challenging Times:
Only after sundown! You KNOW I don't fucking Antifa on Shabbos!
And what things in Buffalo have now come to:
Buffalo Police Request Reinforcements Until Elderly-Man Rampages Fully Contained
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ETA. I've had it pointed out that, at least in preliminary research, the virus does seem to be more impeded in outdoor locations. I hope that's the case; I'm just not ready to become an unwilling test subject that ultimately proves it wrong.
Also, cross-posting to LJ seems to have gone back down since yesterday's post crossed the stream. Mere clicking of my LJ feed brings up the DANGER DANGER WILL ROBINSON THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED warning. I longago changed my LJ password, both on that site and in the cross-posting department here. You of course should, too.
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Date: 2020-06-07 08:21 pm (UTC)