In the last weeks, we logged 100,000 COVID-19 virus deaths and saw more than 40 million citizens file for unemployment benefits.

On top of that, last weekend saw dozens of American cities rocked with riots triggered by the disturbing video of the death of a black Minnesota man at the hands of white police.

Black citizens have long complained of being maltreated by white police. I remember when white suburban police pulled over and hassled two suspected bad guys. The cops were surprised to find they were the superintendent of the state police and the local FBI SAC.

The national protests focused on the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. It followed the slaying of another black man, Ahmaud Arbery, shot by a white man as Arbery was jogging in Georgia.

The Floyd case involved four policemen, while the Arbery case featured a former policeman and his son. In both cases, the initial police report said the white men claimed they were acting lawfully.

Today, almost everyone has a cell phone. In both cases, videos made their way to the internet. When those video posts told a different story than the initial police reports, the white men were arrested. These same internet videos triggered last weekend’s protests.

On Sunday morning, as we watched the TV accounts showing masses of civilians protesting and rioting over police conduct, we said a silent prayer of thanks that we no longer reside in a city featured in the riot footage.

We agreed that we are fortunate to have police leaders like Boothbay Harbor's Bob Hasch and Sheriff Todd Brackett. Both men believe in, and practice, the best parts of what law professionals call community policing.

Most of us have been confined at home as state officials try to mediate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of our businesses and all our schools have been shuttered.

While the students were sent home, teachers, administrators, and parents didn't want this to turn into a three-month vacation, so they turned lemons into lemonade. Teachers had to invent a new way of doing business.

In the parking lot of Pinkham's market, Cindy Casey, a kindergarten teacher at Edgecomb Eddy School, told me how she did it. To keep the attention of 19 6-year-olds she crafted lesson plans and sent them to parents. Using Zoom technology, she magically appeared on the students’ computers, tablets and, in some cases, the families’ giant screen TV sets.

No, she did not have a TV studio to prepare the lessons. She improvised. “At first, I propped my camera phone on some seltzer cans. After a few sessions, that was not adequate, so I went on Amazon and ordered a tripod and was in business,” she said.

Reading to students is a tried and true way to capture the attention of 6-year-olds, and Mrs. Casey adapted it to the computer age.

The kid's’ favorite book? “The Nasty Grey Ladybug,” hands down, said Mrs. Casey. When she read to the children, she would pause, highlight words, pronounce them, and ask the students to repeat them, just like she would do in the classroom. She also made videos and sent them out.

But that type of instruction involved lots of screen time.“I wanted to figure a way to get them outdoors, so I came up with a sort of scavenger hunt,” she said. She drove over to Ocean Point and borrowed a couple of dozen smooth rocks. Then she went home, cracked open a can of bright red paint, and decorated them with hearts.

Next, she went to the Penny Lake preserve, a popular venue of Boothbay Region Land Trust, and carefully placed the heart-rocks alongside the trails. As she placed them, she noted their location on a hand-drawn map and shared it. Then, she invited the children and their parents to walk the easy Penny Lake trails and search for the elusive 18 heart-rocks.

“I asked them to send me photos of the heart rocks and lots of them did just that,” she said.

The heart-rock trail was so popular that grown-up hikers soon caught on. The land trust embraced the game, and Mrs. Casey posted the map on the land trust website where you can look it up.

The exercise proved to be a fun learning experience for the children and their parents. They got a lesson in map reading as a bonus.

The best part of the heart-rock story was the chance to chat with a committed teacher whose story took my mind away from the unsettling news of the day.

Thank you, Mrs. Casey, for your work and for sharing your story.