Special Entry – Post-break

Saturday, June 13th, 2020

As I rode down Fifth Avenue, the sound of a gas-powered push lawn mower made me wonder if I was still in New York. I do not remember hearing that sound in Manhattan. A moment later, I saw the mower mowing a corner yard along 12th Street at The First Presbyterian Church.

Five blocks south, I reached Washington Square Park, the terminus of Fifth Avenue—at least since the 1960s. The park has remained one of the liveliest places I am aware of in the last two months. Before becoming a park, it was a parade ground, and before that, a potter’s field, and before that, a marsh. Energy continues to bubble up here.

At noon, a few guys were already playing jazz. Black Lives Matters protesters rallied around the massive stone arch. The original, made of plaster with a wooden statue of George Washington on top and paper maché columns, was designed by Stanford White to commemorate the centenary of George Washington’s 1889 inauguration about two miles south of here. The temporary arch was so popular that White was commissioned to make one in marble.

Since the hyperactivity following the killing of George Floyd, the police established a new plan—they’ve moved out of the park. They’re now sitting quietly in their cars, motors running, lights flashing, parked a few blocks north near the church. It would take barely a noisy minute for them to arrive in the park, likely from many directions.

Having the police further away from people in the park is a positive change from my point of view. How long will they be parked there? Perhaps something was learned, albeit very slowly, after 9/11. Back then, police were posted at what must have been considered strategic locations, like the entry to the Indian Point nuclear reactor and hundreds of other places. A small police boat was anchored in the East River, just north of the western tower of the Brooklyn Bridge. I believe it was there for at least ten years, probably more.

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This Special Entry is to announce that spring break is over and offer a glimpse of the present.

Since Special Entry 2-Midpoint was sent on May 28th, things in America have changed again. The most recent change has been as significant as when the pandemic first arrived in this city. The second two weeks of March brought more change more quickly than I have seen in my entire life—by a broad margin. It seemed impossible that this amount of change could happen again, like experiencing two “one-hundred year storms” in the same season.

With only a little distance from those March days, I wonder about the connection between then and late May/early June. I don’t think the second round of change would have been possible without what the pandemic did to much of the population. In Japanese archery it is said that the release of the first arrow clears the space, reducing obstacles for the second arrow.

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Today, Saturday, June 13th, a week after the curfew was lifted, most of the plywood-covered storefronts—both decorated and plain—are still in place. New York’s “progressive” mayor lifted the curfew by tweet.

During the first two weeks of June, I continued documenting the boarding-up of downtown storefronts. The speed of the second boarding-up, after George Floyd was killed, was dramatic. An enormous amount of plywood appeared in this city and in many other cities around the country. A lot of trees perished to make that happen.

The landscape changes daily; a few sheets of plywood come down while others are painted or repainted. Fliers announcing “free plywood removal” appeared; within two days most of them had been partially peeled off. The PG version of Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People ” on Spring Street was painted over, just as Lady Liberty, with her bare breast, had been painted over. Nearly constant flux now defines this recently silenced town.

Covid-19’s reach is expanding across the country. Nearly half of the states are showing an increased number of cases—some of which are dramatic. About 800 people are dying each day across the US. That’s the same number of people that were dying each day in this city in April.

During the spring break, the NASDAQ hit an all-time high—hard to explain.

In the last few days, news reports say the pandemic will likely gain strength as the weather cools this fall. Soon, we will see if the recent gatherings brought on by protests and warmer weather will lead to a surge in cases. There is a lot of pent-up energy in the population.