As we passed the one-year mark of the pandemic lockdown, the media was flooded with assorted lookbacks, memorials for the dead and even quizzes designed to remind people of what the country and the world were like before the coronavirus descended.
One suggested that you look at the photos stored in your mobile phone and find the last picture taken before everything went to hell. For me, it was a shot of some anemone blossoms near the Georgia shore, that last trip before travel became untenable. (And the first photo after the lockdown began also was floral—the Callery pear trees that blossom every spring in my neighborhood, regardless of plague or politics.)
Looking through my 2020 photos, I noticed something else. Seventh Avenue, the street that runs below my downtown Manhattan apartment, is a frequent thoroughfare for demonstrations (and during the pandemic, platoons of motorcycles, ATV’s and the other day, a gaggle of black-outfitted ninja wannabes on electric skateboards. I am not making this up.). Continue reading.