I kind of feel a responsibility to be productive.  It's kind of in some ways that it’s a subset of what I've seen people talking about with quarantine like they feel like with all this free time, whether they're working or not, just being home or whatever, they feel like with the free time, they should be making productive use of that time. You know, I feel that a little bit, you know, all this free time should be working out, should be cleaning, should be catching up with friends, should be writing, should be practicing guitar. You know, whatever -- whatever it is for the particular person.

So I'm currently recording from Grand Mere beach. It's the beach I frequent all the time since growing up. But unfortunately in the last two years erosion has pretty much destroyed the beachfront. It used to be a very large beach, with walking trails to get to it. So it was very secluded, but unfortunately because the shoreline is destroyed boats are just kind of encroaching closer and closer, making it difficult and pretty dangerous to swim here. So hopefully they will restore it back to the way it was, but just in the last, again, two years, it's been -- it's pretty much, it's not a touristy beach and it's difficult to swim and also access. We have a little shoreline to kind of lay a towel down on but it's still a lovely day and so you can see even though the quarantine's still kind of in effect, I'm still choosing to go out. The gyms are still currently closed, so I don't have a means to swim. I'm used to swimming about twice a week and I don't have a pool to do that in at the gym. So I figured the beach would be a good alternative. Normally because there's so many tourists that come from, Illinois, Indiana to South West Michigan, I would never think to go to the beach on a weekend, but because of COVID, there has been limited tourism this year; and so therefore I actually can get a spot at the beach.

So it's beautiful day. I had — decided to walk downtown in our little Zeeland, and buy myself a new puzzle because I spend a lot of time doing puzzles. And I want to give our local toy store the business as opposed to ordering one online. So anyway, I walked downtown, and when I got to the toy store, I looked in the window and I saw kids inside kind of running around the toy store looking at the toys with no masks. They were maybe ten, eleven years old and it made me a little uncomfortable. But dug my mask out of my purse put it on and I went, open the door. And there's no sign on the door saying “wear a mask, social distance”. This is a tight store. So I was uncomfortable and I thought: “okay I'm going to give him another chance I'll open the door and if there if the employees are wearing masks I know exactly what puzzle I want I want to give them the business I'll do it.” So open the door, the employee’s behind the counter. He looked happy to see a customer. "Hello!" No mask. I turned right around and walked out.  So I got home, I told my husband about it and he said, “Call them. Let him know why you were uncomfortable to shop in his store.” So I did, I just called him and this is not something I do. But I voted with my feet and I let him know why he wasn't going to get my business. And I believe in giving business to the local people but I'm going to go by my puzzle online now where it's safe.

Is there anything you are particularly grateful for this week? Yes, I'm actually grateful for being able to get working on some of the papers that I have been working on for years, and I'm trying to get it published somewhere, with one of my professors. And I am also grateful for getting a ticket, so I finally I can fly back home after graduation. You know after the COVID crisis started, things are not normal and I just got a ticket from the Saudi government for flying back to Saudi Arabia. So yeah, I guess there are so many things that have been so difficult to live with during this COVID crisis, from working from home, trying to just create your environment where you are surrounded by your kids and stuff like that where you need a very peaceful, calm, quiet, place to just work on writing let's say. It is hard for also just working on trying to teach our kids at home. That's also hard. Has been so difficult for me, I haven't dealt with that before but now I'm experiencing that same difficulty that teachers go through.

I feel like some of this [taking down statues] again was inevitable, with the Black Lives Matter. And we need to figure out a solution. Again I don't know what that is. I've always wanted to, and I need to find out who to communicate this to, but we need to erect memorials — and we're in a time of destroying the symbols of white supremacist thinking and our ugly past. I enjoyed in Germany how in Berlin they had evolved there. Some — I mean a lot of their you know, it's very symbolic, you know, when a regime is changing, you know to pull down Stalin and Lenin and all those kind of things and to tear those down or take the heads off or whatever. But if the point is to learn and remember things from our history even that they're ugly, you know, I think I think it's an interesting concept to change, keep the monument there and add some art to it to indicate that we've evolved from this other old way of thinking and that's what I would like to see some creative art person erect some kind of statue or monument to recognize our ugly past and recognize those who have died as a result of slavery as a result of the genocide against the Native Americans against and other cultures that we've so badly treated yet tried to take from their culture.

As somebody who identifies as nonbinary and asexual — and my fiancé does as well — We both normally celebrate Pride, whether that means like going to some of the events that are usually like usually happening because of it. Going to a friend's drag show or something like that, or even attending whatever pride festival that we're able to. We haven't been able to do that this year, but something that has been really really heartwarming to see is the queer community online being supportive of each other not being able to do things and also talking about how important it is to follow social distance guidelines and things like that. One thing that I can think of less related to Pride, but still about the queer community, is with all of the racial Injustice in the protests going on lately with the most vocal and at least internet active groups that I've seen out there, is the queer community talking about Marsha P. Johnson, the plight of trans people of color, the plight of trans people in general in 2020 and just  bringing up all these valid points of intersectionality and the ways that the culture of people of color and queer culture intersect and have always intersected since like 90's gay drag ball culture to Marsha P. Johnson's activism back in the seventies with the Stonewall riots. So that's just been really nice to see.