WHAT A DAY IT HAS BEEN

Manhattan
4:30 p.m.June 3rd 2020
Once a month I go down to Amalgamated on 14th street at 5th Avenue (many branches closed months ago including the one three blocks from home which I've been using since 1980}-I get operating cash, check my balance and then go to the post office with my complete bill payments. I've stuck with Amalgamated because they are not like other banks (see comment) - When i got there, it was boarded up and out of service, apparently a victim of the destruction of the general destruction in that area of a few nights ago. I did get back to the post office (in a downpour) and paid my bills. Then a local merchant cashed a check for me as a favor so I could have some money until I can get to another branch way uptown west if that's still in tact. Anyhow I'm okay, but sad because the looters and trashers are NOT what the protests are about. Outsiders and a few opportunists have infiltrated and are muddying the waters. Same thing happened in the peace marches of the sixties...(((sigh))) I didn't snap a photo. But I did shoot these:

Good Speech

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfqjWPvSlVc

LINK
Amalgamated
Code of Business Conduct and Ethics
https://ir.amalgamatedbank.com/static-files/66492762-a861-4d9e-b8d2-425efeb04895

FRONT YARD 2

Sunday
May 31st 2020
Another all nighter commences; helicopters circling, police on the move in protective gear, sirens, a dog barking.

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Skies shifted on their own schedule all day, oblivious of our distress, of the pandemic lock-down, mask wearing, or our weeping and our rage.
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The moon does not protest.
 

WORSHIP

 Like the lilies of the field

Saturday

I toiled not.

 However, I did virtually attend the many rallies and protests here on my laptop, while sipping homemade lemonade in the adequate cool of my third floor walk up, thanks to my new Air Conditioner, fully aware and grateful for my good fortune and privilege of the moment:

Farewell June.
 ~*~

Sunday

~*~

Hello July

Hope the electrical grid holds up through this heat wave.
Hope the powers that be have a spontaneous awakening.
Hope the dear children survive and are freed to heal.
Hope the parents prevail and find sanctuary.

~*~ 

NEW YORK NEW YORK

"It's a hell of a town.  The Bronx is up and the Battery's down."

I can be here and in Kathmandu, Nepal.

 I can be thinking about the people and animals shaken

by the worst earthquake since 1934,

 about the stranded climbers and the dead.

(5000 and counting)

 I can know, I can mourn and I can pray.

 https://youtu.be/EbG0ljkBlu8

~*~

I can show up on Monday night,

join my writing group "The Moving Pen" for a final reading.

(screen capture partial of photo by Elizabeth York)

 I can appreciate our brilliant leader Frank Haberle,

drink wine and share cookies with our friends.

 I can lose my thoughts in an audio book

till sleep comes.

 I can sit Zazen with the New York Center for Contemplative Care,

find space for peace.

 I can be surprised by a protest while waiting for the bus home,

and capture some of it on a brief video.

(First a surge of 20 or so young men all in black and many with masks ran past me at break neck speed.  Then one kid was caught and cuffed and the march continued across 23rd Street  toward the West side.  I'd been seeing helicopters circling and eventually, when I got on the bus, ambulances and police vans followed.)

https://youtu.be/cEJ7ooYOETw

I can think about Baltimore, about all the protest marches all the way back to the sixties.  I can mourn for all the people, for all suffering beings, for the planet.

I can pray.