We received our Paycheck Protection Program loan, as well as a small loan directly from the SBA, so despite our revenue having dropped off by around 50%, we should be able to keep everyone employed and insured until August. Hopefully by that point there will have been enough improvement in treatment, PPE supply chains, and general management of things that we'll be able to be in a more normal operating position.

As it is, we're down to 2 N95 masks, were only able to order more this past Monday, and those have a 2 to 4 week lead time. So even as Governor Abbott in all his wisdom has decided to drop his shelter orders even as the Texas rate of infection climbs, I'm not opening our doors until we have the equipment to keep staff and patients reasonably safe.

I am flabbergasted by the Open Now protestors, even as I understand the anxiety they must be feeling and how easy it is for anxiety to express itself through anger. Still, the combination of ignorance, conspiracy theory, white nationalism, and right wing astroturfing leaves me almost aghast.

I've mentioned before, we've been fortunate in so many ways, even more so with these loans coming through. I would be in an incredible state of panic if I were in the employment circumstances so many people have ended up in, but I can't imagine risking other peoples health and lives just to vent that panic.

Of course the cherry on top of all this is the Yam in Chief for whom black men kneeling in protest of murder are sons of bitches, but armed white men storming public buildings for the right to spread infection are good citizens.

This has always been the county I was born to, but it is not the one I was unsuccessfully indoctrinated into believing in.

But music! Because Noah Kahan put out a new EP:

Faouzia has another new single:

As does Fenne Lily:

And a wonderful new song from Gordi:

And if that's not enough, I recently ran across a song by Scars On 45 from their eponymous 2011 album:

The charm of this song lies mostly in witty clichés: "Of everything I've lost, I miss my mind the most." "And if a look could kill you'd need a license for your face."

But the chorus holds the lines which truly capture my imagination and adoration: "If I could be just a train fare richer I'd change my needs"

For me, the story is told just in that simple phrase: A woman trapped by need and circumstance to a person and place making them want to be someone else somewhere else, who believes scraping together the cost of a ticket and the will to board a train would lead to a whole better life just a ways down the track.