Suzqueue

I’ve spoken to several people over the last couple of days who are equally disgusted with Facebook, and also equally flummoxed as to how to respond to the tragedy of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police — and the resulting protests. Should we all be in the streets, despite the president’s threats that he will order shoot to kill? Oh right — no — he didn’t really mean *that*.

It’s not a time for offering understanding or the option for a ‘misunderstanding’. Too many lives are on the line.

Only history will offer answers as to who set this all in motion. Was it deliberate? Is rioting and looting being aided and abetted for political gain? Is this somehow designed to keep 45 in office? How will that happen? Is he going to apply ‘law and order’ and make the world feel like he has leadership skills after all?

Again, I am overwhelmed and disgusted by the news. I want so much to strengthen the bubble around me so that none of this gets through. At all. My own little untouched universe. I wish I knew how.

This morning Miss Violet attacked the Siberian Iris, tearing off a bloom and making off with it like the scoundrel and thief she so frequently is. She looked like a Flamenco dancer for a minute there, running around with a gorgeous bloom in her mouth. I was amused by this until she started eating it, and I began to wonder if there was any possibility it was toxic. After she got a couple of good chomps in, I retrieved the flower and put it in the yard waste. Sure enough, within 10 minutes she puked up the contents of her stomach, and for the next hour had — um — gastrointestinal distress.

A neighbor came by this afternoon offering freshly grown lettuce and some plum jam. All of a sudden we all seem to be coming together in these few blocks of isolation and riverside paradise. I don’t know if it’s having been here a year (on Thursday) and people starting to feel comfortable with me, or the pandemic making people more aware of their closest neighbors, or something else entirely, but I’m finding kindness and friendship and courtesy and compassion in my neighbors, and I really like it. I hope I can respond in kind.

The news is exasperating, frightening, and relentless. Like a malignant shadow. In trying to escape it, I put my home delivery of the NYT on hold for the month of May. The never-ending death counts and reports of presidential malfeasance were keeping my blood pressure up and refusing to let me sleep. Not that I didn’t see it all online, anyway.

I am quitting Facebook. I have been concerned (wow, what a mamby-pamby word), angry, and resentful of the reports of what happens to my data, the ad tracking, the kow-towing of FB leadship to this administration, and the refusal to demonstrate and practice oversight and ethics surrounding hate groups, foreign and domestic government interference, and non-human contributions. And every time I log in, I am faced with the horrifying news again.

The difficulty in this decision is that I have come to know a lot of people online — all over the world — whom I respect, enjoy, seek out, and worry about. I don’t know how to continue those relationships. I don’t want to lose them.