It's that simple.

Thank you, all who've commented or contacted me in the past couple days, as my city is rising up in love and rage. 
Never before has a simple message mattered so much to me.

I'm trying to reach out to people too, and I know I'm missing some because I can only do so much, and I'm frazzled.
This has been one of the weirdest days of my life. History and theory have squiggled off the page and out into the streets around me.

I told Big Boss I wanted to bike over to see our wounded store this morning.
"The street's not safe," he said.

I was going to go anyway. 
Then I thought, what good would I do? If I even got a flat tire biking over broken glass, it would drain my emotional energy.

How would that help anyone?

I biked to the grocery store instead and bought massive amounts of ingredients for lasagna. Cans of tomato sauce. Tomato paste. Chopped tomatoes. 
Five pounds of shredded mozzarella. Two tubs of ricotta. Eggs. Parmesan.  Organic ground beef.
Garlic.
Onions.
Parsley.
Eggplants.
Red bell peppers.
Zucchini and summer squash. 
Two boxes of lasagna noodles.

During the stay-at-home, a nearby community center has been giving away full meals in single-use aluminum pans. I've picked up several. What use will these ever be, I'd wondered as I washed and saved the foil pans.

This afternoon I baked lasagna in three of them. 
I asked bink to drive me, and together we took one pan of lasagna to BB, and one to Ass't Man. 

The two men are about the same age. They have children about the same age.
BB is black.
Ass't Man is white. 

When Ass't Man had started at the store, he'd said a hundred ignorant things nice white people say about race. (I've said them too.) To wit, "I don't see color."

Today he said, "Now I'm seeing my white privilege. That could have been BB the police had on the ground for nothing. And he's the best person I know.
But they wouldn't have done that to me."

It's that simple.  

❧ ❧ ❧

 
Now it's bedtime. Helicopters have flown overhead, but not incessantly like last night. 

I'm not going to look at the news before I turn out the light.* 
Here's how much I need to know:
enough so I am motivated to move, and in the right direction.
Too much more, and I'm paralyzed.

If the store's street is quiet tonight,  tomorrow we can go clean up.

❧ ❧ ❧

* I lied. I just checked Facebook. Despite local organizers' pleas for nonviolence, protestors occupied the Third Precinct police department, a mile away, and set it on fire an hour or so ago.  [Later, arsonists were caught and charged for this and other fires--the arsonists were mostly white, mostly not local protestors.]

The National Guard is coming in. 

And the police who killed George Floyd have still not been charged.

There's the whopwhopwhop of the helicopters again. 

I don't usually talk in these terms, but if you're inclined, now would be a good time to pray for peace.
Or write a letter. 

Or... bake some lasagna to share.

Love you all! XO Fresca