Civil Unrest Getting Serious

In the meantime, as if the coronavirus stuff wasn't enough, now there is another event that has thrust itself into national attention. Yet another black man, George Floyd, died while a police officer- who was white of course - held him down with a knee to the throat. For almost 9 minutes. There are restrictive holds and there are restrictive holds. And there is excessive force. The man was allegedly paying with a counterfeit bill at a store. But should he lose his life for that? I think not. The thing about it is, this is now just one of many stories over the past year of black people being killed... yep killed seemingly because they were black. I think the viral images of the police officer with his knee to the throat really got to people. I know it got to me. I don't care what he did prior to. I don't care if he had shot someone. You apprehend the guy and let him have his day in court. That is how it is supposed to work. Anyway it sure lit a fire under a whole lot of people. That was predictable. There had been protests since Friday and lots more planned for today. But apparently some had turned violent in downtown LA and now there is an atmosphere of unrest. All that to say that I got an email yesterday that Roosevelt Golf Course would be closed today due to all that unrest. And so there would be no golf Sunday this morning. And with good reason too. By mid-morning stories started coming in about violence, but not just between protesters and police although there were some of those. Now there were news of looters taking advantage and today the area the media seemed to focus on was Santa Monica.  Yep, the third Street Promenade a mere 2 1/2 miles away.
Rediscovering Aerobics One thing I did rediscover today was a walk-at-home exercise video on YouTube. And when I actually did the video, it was simply an aerobics video. Brought me all the way back to the 80s. First I made Resur his aerobics music mixes, then I started attending aerobics classes at Bally's. Met Sonia Parra who became sort of my aerobics partner and later on my friend at Cedars-Sinai.  I started teaching myself while at General Dynamics with my own mix tapes. So many memories around aerobics. And here I am doing a couple of miles. Getting more than a couple of miles in, around 5000 times with my heartrate up seemed pretty easy doing the tape actually. Felt much easier than walking around the neighborhood. Even doing the aerobics was different, which is probably why it felt easier. In any case, I got back to 77,700 steps for the week which was a very good thing. 

Boy did those images of people looting bring back memories of 1992 and the Rodney King trial and all the unrest that happened back then. LA became like a war zone. The sad thing is that these looters had nothing to do with the protestors at all. I doubt if they even knew George Floyd's name. They came to take advantage of the confusion and the fact that police weren't paying attention. They came to steal merchandise. And it happened all over Southern California. That is sad. It brought back memories of those business owners in Koreatown in 1992 perched atop their stores with guns. Only now it's in Santa Monica, it's at the Beverly Center, it's at Westwood. High-end places. That's because that's where the protests were and I think that was on purpose. You didn't hear about anything going on in South Central. But South Central sure came out anyway.  by 5 PM, a pubic safety alert came on that there is now a curfew in LA County starting at 6 PM. W-h-a-t? Uh-oh. There goes dinner at Lisa's. I called to check on them and apparently they had gotten  caught up in some of the unrest yesterday that they spent the night at Lisa's parents house in Sierra Madre. And now they are driving back just so they can make it home before curfew. Wow this shit is getting serious and hitting home. I actually drove out to go to the store since I didn't do so all day today. And what I found was that all the stores had closed early because of the curfew. All stores. Fast food stores even. I couldn't get any food! I don't know that this is worse than the coronavirus lockdown! Fortunately I did have some food in the house and I made myself some beef fried rice for dinner. First coronavirus, now this. The messages from the Universe is sure getting louder.