Way To Say It
Wednesday. The last day in the month of June, the last day in the first half of the calendar year (counting by months, anyway). I'm not sure what that means other than to repeat the dog eared cry: “the days, they do go by!” (Me, oh, my.) Up at nine-thirty this morning, having gone to bed at the usual time just before ten. I obviously needed the sleep after getting a great deal less the night before (without apparent damage). So, retired, the days now pretty much my own, perhaps the body is adjusting to its own needs and sleeping not a lot one night is followed by a make up on the next. Who knows? Who (in their right mind) would bother to write about it here? (Dear, oh, dear.)
Still, as I said, up at nine-thirty, to breakfast by ten, home as the clock was approaching noon. The day is bright, the day is ahead and I'm thinking of getting outside, but where? Not to do “what”, we know our “what”, it's the where's that still give us pause. Maybe a drive down to Beverages & More, buy something (sake comes to mind) and then walk around a bit, see what Jack London Square is about on the last day in June. I drank what sake I had on hand last night, all of my usual two glasses of wine equivalent (why I buy it in the small bottles, keeps the quantity within bounds), but picking up something more for the coming weekend of the Fourth surely couldn't hurt.
Later. A walk, good, picking up a bus pass for next month and a couple of senior BART tickets. You won't find me complaining about the price of senior bus passes and BART tickets. Two faced, you might say? A bit.
A walk, but not much of a walk. I'd missed the first bus when I set out by a minute, so I went down by the lake and took a picture or two, using a camera with a somewhat longer lens than I have recently. Causes you to see differently. Well, it puts you in a different box. Either way they're OK, it's OK, this being in a different box.
A sign with people passing out fliers at Broadway and 14th, the jury in the Mehserle case due to hear final arguments in Los Angeles starting tomorrow. Everyone's on edge, not so much if they let him go scott-free, that would be a disaster here, but by how much they hold him accountable for this killing. Police get most of the benefit of the doubt when it comes to these situations and it's possible the jury has heard mitigating testimony that we haven't, but giving police the edge in these situations is not to give them a license to kill.
So many decades, perhaps centuries of racism, economic discrimination, histories of police misconduct and harassment come into play here with this Mehserle trial that the facts of the case itself get lost in the battle. I don't know that anyone will ever know all the facts of the case, including maybe the participants, but all that went by the wayside when a video appeared of the killing, a young black man on the ground with his hands handcuffed behind his back shot in the back by a policeman holding him down. But we've all (here in the Bay Area) heard this before, we've all taken away what we've taken away and now fate is in charge.
The flier they were passing out said they'd be gathering at that spot at 14th and Broadway on the day of the verdict. Do I want to be there with a camera? I don't know, but I think I don't. Too old for this kind of turmoil, too old to duck might be a more accurate way to say it. Here, on the last day in June, on a sunny day in Oakland.
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