Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Black Lives Matter Too


It has been over six weeks since my last post and the world has changed. At the end of May, George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. Somebody had the presence of mind to document the whole thing with their phone and it sparked protests and riots across the globe. 


It's still going on, and protestors have called for police reform. 

This was not the first time by a long shot, but something about George Floyd's murder is different. It's like the American people have taken notice in a way that they never have before and people are fighting mad. As a country we are divided, although we were divided before this, it is even worse now.

The Minneapolis City Council voted to disband its police department and shift funding to social programs in communities of color. People are protesting to defund the police in other places too. Although this is a terrifying time in America, I'm hopeful that this will bring about real change for people of color.

It is encouraging to see my white friends and neighbors posting on social media about what they are learning about white privilege and the many things they take for granted that people of color don't have access to. While the awareness makes me hopeful, I still see so much hate and denial and I don't know what I can do about it. I feel helpless and ashamed.

I support the Black Lives Matter movement and I hope you do too. 

Many of the Corona Virus restrictions have eased and countries are opening back up. As a result, infections are up. We're supposed to be practicing social distancing to slow the spread of the virus, but people are gathering in huge numbers to protest. It's difficult to criticize the people protesting for not social distancing when they're the ones out there putting themselves at risk for affecting change.

Idaho now has 3,540 confirmed cases of Covid-19.

We don't know yet if we'll be returning to school in person or online in the fall. Peanut Head is still working from home.

The bright side is that we are accomplishing a lot by staying at home as much as possible.


We finished planting the garden yesterday.


We spent Memorial Day weekend digging a utility ditch, and the rest of the following week and weekend filling it back in after burying some new utilities. It was a ton of work and I'm so glad it's done.


We also finished the Lilac Dry Creek bed which I started working on the summer of 2017.


I'm so happy with the finished product. I still have some exposed weed cloth because our next big project is to tear the patio out and relay it so it slopes away from the house instead of towards the house.


Here's a video of the creek bed with water in it. It's my babbling brook.


And last but not least, we put our pool up. We haven't had this set up since we moved here and we have missed it so much. The only problem is that we haven't been able to find the pool filters in any stores in town. In fact, no one is even selling pools right now. The supply chain is seriously disrupted. We were able to buy some on Amazon, but they don't expect them to ship until the end of the month.

In other news, I've accepted a teaching position to teach 7th grade math in the fall. I'm ready to get back into the classroom (crossing fingers that it will be physically in the classroom and not online), and I'm looking forward to spending my days with students again. I've spent a little time in my classroom clearing things out which were left behind and organizing. However, I'm determined not to spend my summer obsessing about making my classroom perfect. It's my disease.

As is typical of teacher summers, I've been scheduling all our yearly appointments and trying to get my ducks in a row. Dentist appointments are not going to happen though, due to the obvious danger for the dental professionals. Hopefully our teeth don't rot out of our heads before we can get back in.

That's my update. I hope we have world peace figured out before my next post.

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