I got up off my lazy weekend butt today and took a walk. It was hot and for awhile I thought that perhaps we might get some rain as the sky to the south was looking bruised while great puffy clouds like the ones in that picture were scuttling across the sky to the west. I did not run into anyone I needed to talk to, didn't see a soul at No Man Lord's. I just walked and came home.
I took a shower and went to town for groceries because I'm not sure how this week is going to go. Tomorrow the stove repair guy is supposed to come and I have no idea when. And on Wednesday we're getting our second boosters, or, as I like to call them, the booster-boosters. I know that some people have fairly severe reactions to those so I don't want to have to go to town if I don't feel like it.
When I got to Publix, there were about four police cars parked right in front and officers of the law were escorting a man out of the store with his wrists in cuffs. Yesterday I had watched a video on FB of a guy getting tased by police in the parking lot of another Publix and I don't know what that was about but he DID have a large axe in his hand which he refused to put down so I suspect some sort of drugs.
I saw Lily as soon as I walked into the store and said, "So, is this get-arrested-at-Publix-week?"
She said, "I guess so."
There had been some situation where a guy cut off another guy in traffic and supposedly the man in the state-issued bracelets had pulled a gun and followed the other guy into the Publix parking lot and THEN into the store and there was a great deal of yelling and Lily said she was quite understandably frightened. And wouldn't you know that the guy who reportedly had the gun was a white guy and the guy whom he had brandished it at while driving was a Black guy and as Lily said, at least this time the police got it right. And no gun was found but dear god, after what happened in Buffalo an incident like that cannot help but feel extremely dangerous. I cannot believe that we are now in the space and time where a lunatic can get a gun and, acting on his own racist beliefs and the filth he finds online supporting and encouraging those beliefs, travel to a place where there are likely to be people of color shopping and shoot and kill them and we just...shrug? Get enraged again? Become even more despondent, depressed, and anxious?
I don't know. I do not know shit.
All I know is that we seem to have lost all sanity and decency as a society and I swear to you- I don't think there is any way to fix this.
For two years we were deathly afraid of being exposed to Covid in grocery stores and now we need to consider whether or not there is a psycho killer with a gun sitting in the parking lot who could very possibly make the decision to get out of his car with that gun, enter the store, and kill everyone in his sights to register his hatred of anyone who does not fit his definition of an acceptable fellow American.
What the hell, people? What the fucking fuck?