Easing back in by Ruth Neuwald Falcon

It’ll be a week tomorrow that I got my second vaccination. I can’t use it as an excuse any longer for keeping my head down and eyes averted from the details of what’s going on in our world.

These states are dropping COVID-19 mask mandates but still urge people to wear them – which message will the public follow?—Yahoo! News

Boarded up and lined with barbed wire, Minneapolis braces for murder trial in George Floyd’s death—WaPo

Accountant faces pressure to turn on Trump in criminal probe—Reuters

March 7, 2021

Easing back in
by Ruth Neuwald Falcon, Seattle, Washington

I literally feel like I’ve been gone for a week. Not gone out of my condo, any more than I have been for the last (yikes) year, but gone from the larger world, the world that comes to me via, mostly, CNN. I watch on my iPad in the kitchen, while preparing or eating or cleaning up, even stretching and lifting some weights. When I was being really good about exercising, I’d follow a class with the sound off, my silent laptop parked side by side on the counter with the iPad.

For some reason I have not been able to get to the bottom of, I can’t get MSNBC on the iPad. It keeps telling me to sign into my internet provider. Occasionally, for no discernable reason, CNN tells me to do the same thing but then it courteously walks me through the steps. No such access via MSNBC. I don’t want to go into the living room and turn on the TV to watch it there, forced to sit like a lump and absorb all that is emanating from it.

I have been checking my news feed, that big red N on my iPhone, enough to glean headlines for blog posts, but that doesn’t require a deep dive and I have kept my word to myself to give body and mind a break for these seven days. Today being Sunday, I can ease back in gently.

But there is little “gently” in today’s world. Snopes tells me that it is true that Georgia is “considering a bill that would make giving food or water to voters standing in line at polling sites a misdemeanor crime, no matter the circumstances.” Google greets me with the Washington Post headline, A Mexican restaurant in Texas kept its mask rule. People threatened to call ICE on the staff. This morning, during our daily phone call, my oldest friend said, “I don’t have the sound on, but I’m watching children in Idaho burning masks.”

Then there’s Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. I’ve gotten two phone calls, three emails and one text reminding me that she’s on with Oprah tonight. It is clear I am not the only one hungering for escape from voter suppression, uncaring governors, and general stupidity. On the other hand, there are the shadows of Diana and racism hanging over Meghan and Harry. But still.  

I wonder if I can get CBS on my iPad.