Our cell phones screeched into life as we were having dinner, to tell us that as from eight p.m. - a quarter of an hour ago - we are under curfew. We were outside, with yesterday's bunch of wild flowers - these ones, gathered this morning, are in the living room. The mowers didn't come today; they'll arrive at 8 in the morning. Outside, police sirens are going off, and, in territory-defining unison, the coyotes are howling. On TV, looting on Melrose, at the same time as so many among the protestors are urging calm; being quietly arrested (for curfew breaking, by now): all my sympathy is with the organizers, and what they represent by way of peaceful, principled protest. And more: how glad I am to live in a city where the mayor commends the justness and appropriateness of just such protest, with the support of many community leaders, and indeed the Sheriff, saying exactly the same thing.
There's a strange piece of sartorial synchrony: little did I think, when pulling a scarf over my face to avoid being badly teargassed in the streets of Paris in 1973 (manifestations contre la loi Debré ...) that face masks would be de rigeur for being outside ...
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