As the calendar marches towards our summer season, the word in Boothbay, Wiscasset and Damariscotta is hope.

Our communities have a deep history intertwined with the sea, from fishing to boat building. Today, it is the waves of tourist summer dollars that sustain us. The taxes paid by tourists and summer residents fund a large percentage of our municipal services, from sanitation to schools, from public works to police.

Our tourist season is short. In just a few months, two to four, depending on who is counting, hotels, restaurants, shops, tour boats and associated services had been expecting to work overtime to serve the summer visitors.

Then came the pandemic. Our nation scrambled to deal with a virus that sickened more than two million Americans and killed 100,000-plus citizens. It forced officials from the White House to the Blaine House to institute tough restrictions on us and the way we conduct our business and businesses.

The national news floods us with images of overworked healthcare workers, rushing ambulances and grieving relatives. The pandemic, and the reaction to it, triggered a severe economic downturn that affects us all.

What will this all mean to our summer tourist season? What will it mean for us?

Other states are easing or erasing public health restrictions. In some states, the virus seems to be losing steam. In others, well, not so much. Despite urgent pleas from public health experts and government officials, not all citizens follow guidelines. Many decline to wear a mask.

After three weeks in limbo, our local hospitality honchos, from posh seaside venues to hometown B&Bs, have scrambled to follow the state's challenging and changing rules. At the same time, they tried to attract instate and finally out-of-state visitors with promotions and deals.

And there is the question of the tourists themselves. Will they come to Maine?

Maybe, as our state is relatively healthy. We have had fewer virus infections (2,757) and fewer fatalities (100), than our neighbors.

Some studies argue in our favor. They suggest the nation's stay at home regulations made tourists eager to get out of the house. Many are likely to shun a cross country flight requiring them to spend hours in close quarters with strangers. So how about a road trip? Will other East Coasters jump in the family car and head to Vacationland?

There are some hopeful signs. As state regulations ease, we observe the aisles of our local grocery stores feature unfamiliar faces pushing overflowing carts. Town parking spaces seem to be filling up with cars with out-of-state license plates.

New and old shop owners have turned to the Boothbay Register and Wiscasset Newspaper, my favorites, to announce they are open for business.

Old-time business owners used to say the coastal tourist season ran from the week before July 4 to Labor Day. We are a week away from that traditional beginning.

Red’s Eats and Bet’s Fish Fry are open. It didn’t take long for the public to line up for a taste of the coast.

What will the 2020 season bring? No one knows the answer. For Maine's scenic Midcoast, we are entering the season of hope.

And now, as Monty Python always said, for something completely different.

In the four weeks following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman, our nation has seen hundreds of marches. Our television and social media platforms show incident after incident of brutal police misconduct.

These videos have sustained hundreds of protests, turning the Minneapolis incident into a nationwide movement. It is not the first time this has happened.

In 1968, when our nation was troubled with riots over the Vietnam war, we saw similar street demonstrations morph into political assassinations, university college shootings and urban riots.

After they were finished, there was a lot of self-reflection over them, as our leaders tried to figure out what happened, why they occurred and who was to blame.

Politicians, as usual, did their best to sidestep a decision. Instead, they waltzed up to the TV cameras and appointed blue-ribbon panels and select committees to study the protests.

These panels and commissions hired academics to measure the public's ire. The academics then hired consultants to gather data, and the consultants hired a bunch of college kids to interview participants. You get the idea.

They studied the problem to death. They wrote papers and books, filled with charts and diagrams. Their efforts delayed reforms until the protests were forgotten, and the public's attention switched to another urgent topic.

While the 1968 protests drew live TV coverage, those images did not possess the immediate impact of today's Facebook posts culled from cell phones, surveillance and police body cameras. Will today's videos will help our political leaders institute long-needed reforms? We can only hope.