Steve and Judy's Travels!

 

We were watching coverage for the Coronavirus and they were listing U.S. hotspots.  Atlanta, Phoenix, Portland, McAllen.  What?  McAllen,Texas?  We’re sitting down here in The Valley feeling so removed from the craziness; being careful, but the plague doesn’t seem to be swirling all around us, and we’re a national hotspot!?

 

The national news is calling us a spiking hotspot.  Our cases here are going up, but it only looks alarming because the incidence is so low.  It’s all about the denominator.  When you have very few cases, it’s easy to get a large percentage or per capita increase.  If you only have one case, you only need to have one more and your caseload has doubled!  In the city of McAllen, Texas, as of today, there are 114 cumulative cases since the start of the contagion two and a half months ago.  Maybe not a raging hotspot.

 

 

 

I sent out that description about how to fold fitted sheets.  I got lots of responses and suggestions; the most practical of which might be brother David’s.  I admire his answer so much that today I employed his three-step process.

 

1.       Strip bed.

2.       Wash sheets.

3.       Put sheets back on bed.

 

Brilliant!

 

 

We watch for it every June.  It comes on a Saturday this year.  Our lucky day, Friday the 13^th, Becky’s birthday.

 

Happy Birthday, Becky!

 

 

(…and, our daughter reminds us, our fifty-first anniversary of becoming parents!)

 

 

The guy who sits in jail now, having killed George Floyd.  I know his name, but I’m not saying it here because the current conversation should be about George Floyd, not him.

 

But what does he think about what he’s done?  Is he surprised at the worldwide outrage he triggered?  Is he proud?  Ashamed?  Defiant.  Scared?  Does he rationalize and defend his actions, or is there a life-lesson in this for him?  Maybe he deflects and says this wasn’t about race, but that he was just doing his job, or protecting the community, and George Floyd just happened to be black.  Is he embarrassed?  Does he see the protests as a repudiation, or as proving his point?  Does he have a point, or was he just acting thoughtlessly with no consideration of consequences?

 

So many possibilities, but the first thing we hear from him will likely be “Not guilty”.

 

 

 

 

With a touch of Esperanza.