As mask requirements have eased, as we’ve been asked less often to show our vaccine passports over the past two and a half years, one new thing I’ve noticed is the increased human capacity to let everyone do their own thing.

In the morning in the hotel ballroom, I covered a speech by the radical old lady Angela Davis, still at 78 with a clenched hand. At check-in, a nice young woman from the YWCA asked if I was wearing a mask. “In my pocket,” I told her. “You’re all right,” she said, “but Ms. Davis has asked that when she comes out to speak, the audience wear masks.” “No problem,” I said. “Respect”.

When the former Black Panther took the stage to begin, she was unmasked herself – a speaker’s prerogative; she had to talk for half an hour, but when my breakfast was over I put mine on. I looked around the room. A little more than half of the hundreds present were wearing masks; many did not. The show went on. Nobody said boo.

On Sunday, when we were at a poetry reading by an old teacher of mine, we were asked to disguise ourselves if we weren’t drinking or sipping prosecco. No problem. As the poet took the podium, lowering his mask to read, I scanned the smaller crowd of 30 or so. Everyone wore masks except my friend, whose politics I know is conservative, and her mother, whose politics I don’t know. Again, policemen without masks. For some perverse reason, perhaps, or a search for solidarity, I pulled off my own mask as I hugged my friend goodbye.

Is it all just, in this obscene phrase, virtue signaling? Not quite sure. It’s kind of a new laissez-faire when it comes to covering your face. Live and let live.

And there was a particularly exciting moment two weekends ago at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. I helped put together a program to honor Ron Lynn of the Los Angeles Times as Alumnus of the Year from our co-ed student newspaper, the Daily Californian. I asked another alumna, Erin Allday of the San Francisco Chronicle, to speak with Ron to make this a highlight of the reunion. Ron has been the Times’ top Bay Area reporter from the start; Erin was the Chronicle’s health reporter for many years. They covered exactly the same rhythm. And yet they had never met before. It was a fascinating interview at the J School Library as they told us all about covering the world’s hottest story since March 2020.

Ron, who remained uninfected, wore a mask in his director’s chair. Erin, who recovered a few months ago from a bout with the coronavirus, did not wear a mask; like me also recently recovered, at least for now she feels a bit immune. The audience was also confused. To each his own.