Getting Out of Dodge

 That is to say - leaving Washington for the first time after five months of semi-isolation and coming to Billingsville, Mt.
Which is  inventing a name for a much smaller town in a much larger jurisdiction - a different place and a different pace. Urban worlds, both, though the contrast could not be greater. The trip alone - an airplane ride mostly frowned upon by the country's most often quoted Covid experts -  was a testing exercise in many ways. A way to deceive oneself into feeling somewhat normal again.
That included conversation that wasn't about the restrictions of the virus or even in short spells talk of the pandemic itself.

 Instead, luckily, I was surrounded briefly by two entrepreneurial artists living by their own lights in Montana's largest city, while maintaining connections to political currents of the day.  Below, Shane deLeon and work created following Black Lives Matter celebrants. The small  art gallery was created by another couple, both artists, at the time they were converting  a former commercial space into a two-story  loft-style home. 

 Which goes to show that there is an alternate reality in a town-city ('ville' originally meant farm, then village, in French) whose economy is basically banks and refineries. A village city without a central focus with suburbs stretching forever west.

July - Why?

Why so much Covid spread, after so many warnings. There's fallout of diametrically opposed proportion and still no sure answers on just how and why the spread occurs to whom and when. Antibody testing is being disparaged for lack of certainty about the source. Covid tests may or may not be available - depending on a person's residence - and results, at least in this writer's experience, not easily obtained.
 Three weeks ago  I took advantage of the District's   collaboration with LabCorp to get a free swab test in a tent put up outside a Firehouse not many blocks away from my home in SE Washington.  As  an 'elder' - someone 'identifying' as such, as the young clerk put it - I went to the front of the line. A smiling nurse in blue garb, battle fatigues in place, did a quick dip into my nose and sent me on to collect a piece of paper telling me how to create an account  with LabCorp and access results on 'a desktop or a mobile device.' Negative or positive, nothing in between I suspected. Wait for at least three and at the most seven days  I was told.

All well and good but still no dice. Is the backlog so great that a major US health corporation is struggling?  And what if I had to find out before traveling to a place that required proof of a 'recent' test? How long is a test good for anyway?
The result of my having to research how to get the results - now three weeks later: My private physician's office gave me the correct 'consumer' number for LabCorp (after I had tried to post my 'query' two times to the company online, as they requested - stating I had not received results). An hour or so into the call, I heard from a LabCorp employe named 'Lee' that he had determined (after another 15 minutes holding the line) the firehouse or personnel working there that day had failed to send along my email, or even perhaps, other vital information and that, somehow - he didn't know how but he did give me the phone number of the firehouse, I was lost in the shuffle. Said person Lee - that he could not tell me results ("negative or positive") over the phone, just that some glitch had occurred. I called the firehouse and left word with the answering machine - a man connected to health in DC I was told. Be careful, I said. Be aware if this happened to me maybe others are out there running around with Covid.
So I got my results: SARS-CoV-2 NAA  Not Detected. Then a long graf, of this and that. Specimen ID and Control ID numbers, account, phone, etc.  though it listed a different firehouse from the one where I had the test.  I called the number of the Firehouse in charge (given me by the LabCorp man Lee), left a message warning that such glitches might corrupt the program. No answer back yet.
Such are the games we must play to stay well.
Would anyone in the testing lab thought to send up a flag if my results had been 'Detected' I wonder?

The times may change but days can seem the same. Some loosening at the edges but  skepticism over all. Maybe real estate developers and construction  workers are the only ones who understand what it means to effect change. Weather changes but seldom varies in prospect.