Washington Park Life

I'm having a pessimistic day. Yesterday RI released information about testing at different sites throughout the state. Wealthier towns are only reporting 3-4% positive rates. The site closest to my house is reporting a 35% positive rate. So while RI looks good overall, high rate of testing with an average of >10% that's masking the devastatingly high rates of positives in poor majority Latino neighborhoods. It's frustrating that even with a really strong public health team that takes health disparities and racism seriously, here we are.

The good stuff is that I had the foresight to move a few blocks from a lovely 427 acre park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (the Central Park guy). After being closed for about a month, the park is back open and I've seen a little turtle, a huge turtle, a heron, an oriole, a guy walking a hedgehog, a family in star wars costumes doing a photoshoot.

How to Cook a Wolf

[I'm sharing on this blog things I wouldn't post on social media because it might be insensitive . Many people are struggling right now and they don't want to see pics of my extensive shopping trips. I get that. I also love seeing pictures of what people are buying in making. If you don't, I won't make you look!] Americans of means are in crisis. What the f do you mean there is no flour? Flour! This morning was the first time I've been at big supermarket in a couple months. I did a peapod order on Feb 29th and was worried then that I wouldn't get a spot. I had a 10lb bag of King Arthur flour in my cart and then put it back because it seemed like crazy talk. What is there going to be a nationwide flour shortage?!

So now I'm carefully rationing my last 5lb bag and stretching it with a bag of gluten-free baking mix and a bag of cornmeal.  So far I've baked multiple batches of corn muffins and popovers and one batch each of morning glory muffins and brownies. I also made red velvet cupcakes for my birthday.

In addition to my peapod order (lots of canned beans, tomatoes, and shelf-stable milk, which is all getting used at quick clip and pesto and capers and such), I went to the butcher and bought 10lbs of ground beef, 5lbs of sirloin flap, 5lbs of chicken breast, a whole chicken, a dominican salami, a pack of bacon, and 2lbs of shrimp). I did a big shop at my local asian supermarket (like h-mart) and got curry pastes, rice noodles, frozen dumplings, fish sauce, lots of garlic and ginger and a napa cabbage), mochi-all the essentials.

Since then I've gotten a couple local food deliveries, which is great for dairy, apples, and greens. I've gone to a locally owned food coop that has a good mix of nice fruits and vegetables and staples (that's where I got the gluten-free mix). My goal for today's trip was to get some basics and some items specifically requested by LB (corndogs! rufffled potato chips! ice cream cones! pepperoni!). The fresh vegetables were looking pretty sparse (no fresh spinach, cilantro, or parsley, limited lettuce) but I got all the things on my list. And, maybe I should add that I still don't have a car, and I'm avoiding public transit, so this was a walking trip. It's about 1.5 miles to the big grocery store. This trip was definitely hitting the limit of what I can carry!

In terms of thinking about others with fewer resources, I've been donating to a few community-based mutual aid orgs. Food banks are good too, but I think lots of people are giving to them. With mutual aid, I feel like the money gets to people quicker, many times through cash apps, and often as cash so people can get what they want and need. I also went through my cupboards and donated a couple boxes of things we were very unlikely to use to our neighborhood free table (snacks now out of favor, canned fruit with artificial sweetner, pie fillings, some of those boxes of Life cereal that I bought on sale when LB was really into it and now she isn't).

The first stash-only things still out on the table are the coffee and dehydrated potato shreds

 Kimchi!

 First biscuit, they were not rich and flaky like I wanted and I forgot cream of tartar again!

 Dumplings, now eaten!

 Local potatoes shredded, yum!

 Fresh salsa

 Dried apples

2019 in Review

The word people seem to be using for 2019 is chaotic. And that seems true enough. I finally got a new phone with a battery that doesn't constantly die. My life is so much better, but I need to retrieve a bunch of pictures, so I'll see what I've got to work with. Two or three big things happened this year:

LB and I joined a class action lawsuit. Here's an article with a picture of us and brief quote.

We spent a bunch of time at the RI Statehouse fighting for equal parentage rights-and I became publicly gay here and here.

I bought us a house! It's a little ranch on the wrong side of town with yellow siding and brown trim and I love it.

We got a kitten named Cookie, he is now 10lbs and a wild man.

*Clearly, I started this post months ago. I no longer remember what was chaotic about 2019. Those were the good old days. It was looking like the legislation I was working on would work in this session, but now the legislature isn't meeting. Good news in a federal court ruling on a Detroit right to education case. More on all of that later, now just to get through quarantine.

What we are talking about/and not

RI is talking about how many pushups the Governor can do in a skirt (12?, 15?) and whether Nibbles Woodaway (aka the Big Blue Bug) is really wearing a surgical mask (sadly, no, just photoshop), and how mad we are at the Mayor for closing the parks (more just sad, for me).

What we haven't been talking about as much as one might think: 180,000 workers out of a pre-Pandemic total of maybe 530,000 workers have filed for unemployment. Nobody can even muster up a "We're #1!" like we did in the old days when our 1st in the nation unemployment was around 11%. It's like we are in this collective fugue state.

I have a job. I'm thankful to have a job. My whole team is still employed. When I walk down the streets of downtown Providence past every closed restaurant and coffee shop, and even some Dunkins, I remember every time my dad got laid off.

The only person who is talking about RI being trapped between two COVID hotspots, NYC and Boston, is some lady at a White House briefing. Here we don't really talk about that. The state cracked down fast on wealthy people going to their summer homes in Newport and other places coastal, staties went house to house telling people with out of state plates to quarantine. But, the hardest-hit place in the state is Providence. Most people here have family and friends in NYC. In my neighborhood, which is majority Dominican, it's got to be at least 80%. I'm not saying it would be good to have cops going door to door here, but no one was warning people in the neighborhoods not to take the bus to New York, or to make their family members who decided to come here to ride it out quarantine for two weeks. Now, like other places, COVID is hitting hard among Latinos. There seems to be a demographic split where cases among whites are mostly elders in nursing homes, while cases among younger people are among people of color.

COVID Diaries day 14

I'm so thankful for the crew working at Family Dollar on Broad St today AND seeing all the workers in maroon crocheted face masks while listening to multiple shoppers say "look, they have milk today!" was way more The Handmaid's Tale than I was prepared for. #safeathomesafeathomesafeathomesafeathome

Today was the first day I've run errands in two weeks. I have been walking to work once a week to check the mail, but don't plan to go this week because I don't think going that often really qualifies as "essential."

Spring Tree

Winter LIfe

I am tired. LB's bus comes ridiculously early. We need to be at the stop at 7:10, then she takes a scenic tour of Pawtucket and Central Falls before getting to school. I can't really complain because it would be a dick move if they picked up the kids in the wealthy part of town last, and sometimes it's good because I can get into work early. But up at 5:45 is bleary and prying LB out of bed for a 40 minute sprint to our leaving time is never fun.

This week several building unions have been out protesting a new building that is going up by my work and is not using union labor for the job. Work is already loud with young people laughing and chatting and the phone ringing, and lately, we also have pile driving and chant leading on a bullhorn. Things are hip and expensive here. So many $3 small cups of coffee and $8 or $10 sandwiches. It is hard to live without a decent wage.

I've been listening to a country music app with tons of stations. Weirdly, many of them seem to have French or German DJs which led to me listening to the top of the hour news update on R Kelly's newest inditement in German on a country station. Not that I speak German, but I guess R Kelly and inditement are universal words.

Last week we had an hour weather school delay that I didn't know about till we got to school. Not fun, but at least there's a diner nearby. Tomorrow we have a two-hour delay and I'm hoping we can make the most of it with the pretty great sledding hill by our house. This is the first year we've gone out on it because LB can be very fussy about cold and clothes, and it's been so fun.

Proof