very simple

yesterday, NYC officially ended our lockdown pause and entered phase 1 of reopening. Over the almost 90 days that I’ve been home since mid-march, I’ve collected photos that I never posted on instagram or elsewhere, and thought I would just round them up here, now that we’re very slowly emerging from our shells.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to go to the NYC women’s march this year. Between the dueling group infighting last year, the focus on elections rather than just general “protest” this year, and the fact that it was going to be bitterly cold in New York today, I was wavering. But then I read about how the National Archives (the goddamn national archives) had “edited” (aka censored) official photos from the original women’s march to blur out criticism of the orange menace, and I just…well, there’s always something new to get me out the door. (yes, there’s a typo. no, twitter STILL doesn’t have an edit button)

I was debating going to this year’s match, but clearly SOMEONE needs to take photos that this piece of shit administration won’t alter to protect trump’s fragile ego. + https://t.co/7N7AKlwDCG

— sam (@verysimple) January 18, 2020

So anyway, here’s photos from this year’s march. it was bitterly cold, and it started snowing A LOT right in the middle, so that made it even more fun. but the National Archives can’t get their grubby, co-opted edit button on these.

yesterday was the third women’s march – it was a little colder and grayer, and the national organization leadership has turned into a massive conflict-riddled mess, which of course resulted in various local marches literally disassociating themselves, which IN TURN led to three competing marches here in NY – an actual march organized by the local organizers who have organized the march every year here, a competing “rally” downtown organized by the national group, because they didn’t like getting tossed over, and a third rally for disabled protesters at grand central, because neither of the two other groups took account of the fact that their events weren’t accessible. So far, so…good(?).

Anyway, because supporting women and protesting the ACTUAL shitshow that is our national government is probably more important than any of this crap, I still dragged my ass out to the local march, in part because it seemed like the less objectionable of the two marches AND it also began literally in front of my apartment, so…maybe I’m a little lazy before deciding to walk several miles. As always, the camera came along and I took some pics. It was less crowded this year, probably due in part to the mess above, but also because they’ve been hyping snowstorms all week and the folks who would normally drive in from elsewhere thought better of getting stuck in the city. But people still showed up, and it’s still important to keep our eye on the ball, which is the real horror show in washington.

New York City has been absolutely captivated by its latest celebrity visitor – and hey, we all need a little distraction from the unending stream of horrendous political and ecological disasters going on around us – so why not spend a few days reading about and chasing a…colorful…surprise guest from out of town.

Yes, we’ve been graced with the presence of a rare (for the region) Mandarin Duck, who has taken up residence in Central Park. No one quite knows how he got here, but he seems pretty happy to commute between two different park ponds and hang out with our more…native species.

I was going to go attempt to see him last weekend, but in following the bird twitter-verse, he was hiding out, so I went and saw proto-feminist art instead. Today, he was hanging out on a little island away from the crowds, and so I wandered around and took some pics of him, as well as some of the ducks that weren’t getting as much love from the horde.

(as always, wait for the page to fully load and then click on the thumbnails for the slideshow)

When someone draws a map of the Americas, they should just put a giant squid over the United States and say “Hark, here there be monsters”

Another day, another reason to protest against this malicious, mendacious, miserable administration. This protest was organized in reaction to the horrible news that the administration had, as a matter of policy, decided to use the separation of parents from children as a punishment and attempt to deter families for the “crime” of seeking refuge and safety in this country and not filling out the proper forms in the correct order (aka, not presenting themselves at the correct checkpoint – checkpoints, mind you, that the administration has deliberately CLOSED in an attempt to block people from seeking entry the proper way in the first place – Trump likes to talk about entrapment? How is that not a trap?).

Our government is causing lasting harm to children in some sort of petty power play against incredibly vulnerable people. Against CHILDREN. These are folks who have traveled hundreds, if not thousands of miles, often over land that is incredibly dangerous, from the only homes they have ever known because of a tiny glimmer of home that it might be just a tiny bit less bad here. We were never great at living up to that promise, but at least we sometimes tried. At least we gave lip service to the ideals embodied in our laws protecting refugees.

But until we can take back at least some control of the government, we as a citizenry can at least stand up and say that while our government does these things, they do them without our consent.

Pictures from the first part of today’s Families Belong Together protest – I only went to Foley Square, because it was REALLY hot, and I didn’t want to end up with heat stroke (which I’ve managed to give myself crossing bridges on super hot days before). But as usual, there appeared to be significantly more people than originally anticipated.

Today was the March for Our Lives, organized in the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting, but expanded to encompass so much more than that. For too long, the entire “debate” around gun control, or even the most basic attempts at minimal regulation that couldn’t even be described by any reasonable person as “control”, have been driven by the gun manufacturers’ lobby, otherwise known as the NRA. Having seen attempts to get anything done in the aftermath of myriad shootings get caught up in their rhetoric in the past, I honestly don’t know how this ends, but I’ve never felt this hopeful before. After Sandy Hook, I just felt despair – I remember writing posts on social media practically begging for something to change, and just…knowing that nothing would. But people don’t sit at home and write posts on social media anymore. Well, they do, but those posts are to organize and take to the streets. The biggest march today was in Washington, but as of last count, there were 817!! sister marches around the world.

The New York City march started (as they all do these days) at my front door. So I headed out this morning in my most comfortable shoes and my puffy vest that leaves my arms free to take pictures, and I took a bunch. I wasn’t close enough to the speaker stand to see anything, but I was really impressed that most of the speakers were young people. The two recognizably “adult” people were the librarian from Sandy Hook elementary school who survived the shooting there, and the mother of a shooting victim from NYC. There was also a significant emphasis on black lives matter and the fact that, despite the obvious attention the shootings and schools like sandy hook and parkland receive, black kids are ten times as likely to be victims of gun violence than white kids. That should not be forgotten. It’s also not just about school safety. It’s about life safety.

On another note, from the moment I entered the march, and throughout, there were teams of people trying to register folks to vote, checking to make sure people were registered to vote, reminding people to vote, etc. That is the most important thing right now. Nothing happens if we don’t vote in November.

Anyway, here are the pictures.

It’s been a year. An entire year since the inauguration. And a year since we created the largest protest in the history of our country. There have been more protests since then, and activism, and donating money, and time, and explaining to my dentist that I’m grinding my teeth like never before, and living every day like there’s another shoe (or worse) about to drop.

But it’s been a year. So we marched again.

Last year it was enormous, but organizationally complicated. This year it was simple. They started this year in my neighborhood. The entrance (until it got so crowded that the police had to keep moving it northward) was literally my street. So after I finished up my morning routine (including, yes, the aforementioned dentist), I fortified myself with some lunch, got my camera, and just walked out my front door right into the middle of things.

Because I got my new camera during this period, I was taking more “real” pictures, so pure instagram posts were a little sparser. but Sadie the cat is ever present, as are some travel-related pics and some minor clues as to my political leanings.

On the fifth anniversary of September 11, I wrote about what I saw and experienced that day, living in New York and seeing the buildings on fire. Not on TV, but actually from the street. And then on TV, because that’s how we share experiences as Americans. I was by no means nearest or most affected by the events, but like every New Yorker who was here on that day, it will always be a part of me. I sometimes find myself stopped in my tracks by a random thing. Yesterday I got weepy several times for “no reason”.

As we move further and further away from the day, some of the continued reminiscences begin to feel maudlin. like rubbernecking. I don’t want to begrudge people who don’t live here, who never lived here, their own feelings, but there are times when I start to get offended by the meme-ification of the events scattered through various feeds, most often seemingly posted by people from far-off locations, and then I try to stop myself, because it was such an overwhelming event and people have their own ways of dealing with things. The New Yorkers post tangible, sometimes terrible, actual memories, because we have those, not that we want them.

Things that made me cry yesterday, in order…

– Completely randomly, based on my OCD podcasting queue habits, when I got on the subway yesterday morning, Episode 4 of Mystery Show started playing. The description in the link is intentionally vague (I had no idea what it would be about when it started), and if you don’t want to be spoiled, skip to the next bullet. The episode involves Starlee trying to solve her own mystery – of a license plate that she saw that read “I Luv 911”. Did it refer to EMS? a radio station? or well, 9/11? A lot of people have theories, and the fact that the conclusion made me cry on yesterday of all days should probably clue you in to the answer.

– Towards the end of the day, Sars posted her fourteenth anniversary essay on the events. And the fact that she never found Don. And that she even considered, yes, contacting Mystery Show to look into it. I commented on the post itself, but the essay, plus the callback to my own morning, left me a little weepy.

– And then, of course, on the heels of renewing my commitment to photography, I dragged my camera to work yesterday with the intention of finding some spot to actually take some good pictures of the tribute in lights. I think I’ve gotten one halfway-decent iPhone photo of the lights up until now. After doing a little online research, I decided to head over to Roosevelt Island. I figured downtown and Brooklyn Bridge Park would be too crowded, and there was just no chance I was going to New Jersey. There was a lot of opportunity to simply stand around and wait, in relative quite and solitude, and it was the right choice. (Side note – the last time I went to Roosevelt Island, the half surrounding the old smallpox hospital was all overgrown brush. It’s now been converted into a quite lovely park and they are still developing a whole “Four Freedoms” center on the island. The only downside is that I couldn’t get a good shot of the Pepsi sign because access to the path to get a good shot was behind a locked gate at this hour).

I’ve been a bit down lately about my status as a second class citizen since the recent Supreme Court decisions, and have been thinking about tangible things I can do to at least make myself feel like I’m doing something, even if it amounts to spitting in the wind.

In the meantime though, my family is celebrating a very rain-sodden July 4th in the Berkshires and our barbecue got waylaid by the incessant rain. So…flag, and and barbecue trimmings being cooked in the kitchen.