I jumped at the chance to hang out with a handful of friends for Juneteenth, which, conveniently enough, landed on a Friday.
One of the perks of working for myself is that I can take a half day. The morning started off with the usual routine: breakfast, work, yoga.
Then I hopped in my car, picked up lunch and dessert and headed over to my friend’s house. Even though I whipped off my Wakanda-decorated mask once the above picture was taken, I wanted to document how different this Juneteenth celebration was.
Since a week before the official shelter-in-place announcement, I’d ordered from a local restaurant once a week,
not just to support those businesses, but also to have a sense of a “weekend.” One restaurant, threw in four free plastic tumblers with my drink order. I saved them for the first person who’d invite me to their place for a celebration. I also brought over novelty (and cheap) blue tequila and some red velvet cupcakes. Red foods for Juneteenth signifies, among other things, the blood of the slaves.
After gobbling down my sushi tuna salad, I took advantage of the hammock.
I knew about the pool prior to my visit, but since I’d planned to view a virtual celebration,
I didn’t want to get sucked into the lazy daze of a swimming pool.
As usual, my capoeira teacher (on the right) was the last to arrive,
but at least I finally had a chance to meet his girlfriend, who, like me, was a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. In the brief time of our acquaintance, I managed to tell her about three of my Peace Corps “war stories.”
Such a beautiful day, one would never know that we were still in the throes of a pandemic.
As a matter of fact, Texas was one of the states where coronavirus rates were increasing. We all used the honor system of sheltering in place, taking precautions and no one experiencing any symptoms.
This was truly the poster child for “no more fucks to give”
—at least for the moment! By looking at this picture, no one would ever appreciate how much trouble he went through to position the doughnut float into the hippo float’s mouth, so he could be elevated enough to drink.
I taught everyone the “proper” way to eat a cupcake.
First, peel all the paper from the cupcake. Then, break off the bottom half and place it on top of the frosting. Finally, enjoy your cupcake frosting sandwich! I’m so happy no one had their camera out when I was eating one. I inhaled mine so quickly that I looked as if I hadn’t eaten lunch first.
As relaxing as this visit/celebration was, I had to say good bye to the pool partyers.
Although I didn’t grow up celebrating Juneteenth, I’ve observed it since moving to Austin and volunteering at the George Washington Carver Museum.
Several of us played historical characters who were previously enslaved in Texas. Our lines came from narratives that were collected in the 1930s of interviews of the former slaves.
Before I had the opportunity to tune into the virtual Juneteenth celebration, many businesses, who’d never shown any interest in either speaking out against systemic racism nor letting me know about the celebration, had emailed me information about it. One big business after another declared Juneteenth to be a business holiday.
Juneteenth’s Saturday takeout was from a historically black-owned business district that’s slowly disappearing due to gentrification and imminent domain.
And like many streets across the US, this one had been painted over to reflect that black lives matter.
I just hope fatigue doesn’t set in long before the paint fades.