It’s a difficult decision to make: what events during the week have burned themselves into my consciousness?

Here are a few:
• Puritan Medical Products in Guilford making a huge dent in COVID-19 testing.

• President Trump, at that factory, not wearing a mask, proving once again he is … too vain? Too ignorant? Uninformed? Setting a poor example? Not a leader.

• Trump criticizing Gov. Janet Mills for her slow pace in opening, saying she’s “like a dictator.” Wasn’t it he who called out the military to attack the rights of peaceful protesters? Give that man a dictionary and an encyclopedia.

It’s a line of caution Mills walks, for our benefit, our health, our economy. It doesn’t matter which “side” of COVID-mandated protocol you are on, someone will politicize it.

• A newspaper photo of protesters at that Guilford visit. One with an end white supremacy sign, the other with an automatic weapon. Did the latter expect an insurrection then and there, a call to aid his fellow militia? Takes just one bullet to start a battle with no winners.

• A fellow shopper, unmasked, in Hannaford asking me, masked, about ripe avocados. Uninformed (and I don’t mean about avocados)? Ignorant? From out of state and finally breathing a sigh of relief at being in Maine, with low virus counts? The parking lot and road was full of out-of-state plates. I bit my tongue.

• And, lastly, the June 7 column by Victoria Hugo-Vidal about white privilege in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. I am always impressed by her ability to speak clearly. There is no beating you over the head, no direct references, no name calling, no ridicule. She simply calls our attention to what we white people take for granted and are too often blind to, but our fellow non-white neighbors endure daily and, sometimes, to their death.

Olivia Atherton
Solon


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