The Time for Being Heartbroken is Long Past

  

It has been a difficult week, although not surprising. Not for me and those in my circle anyway. Didn’t you expect this sort of thing would happen? Haven’t you expected it ever since Election Day 2016? If anything is surprising then it’s how many people just woke up to it now, at the tail end of the destructive cycle. If anything came as a surprise it was that we went so long before this particular version of hatred and violence happened. I am also surprised that so few people died in the mayhem. I keep hearing people say that they are heartbroken, and I ask myself when my heart broke because it sure wasn’t this past week. How long ago was it? I would say that my heart first broke when I was eight years old and I saw images of children of African descent engaging in peaceful protest as part of the Civil Rights Movement being beaten against the wall with powerful water cannons in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 at the order of Bull Connor.

My heart broke decades ago when, as a child, I began to understand the kind of country I live in, the kind of world I live in, the level of hatred out there. My heart broke when I saw injustice right before my very eyes on TV. My heart broke a long, long time ago. What I feel this week is outrage. What I feel this week is fury. And, if I’m being honest, I feel some measure of smugness because I can say that I knew this is where we were going to wind up when I wept in my husband’s arms on Election Night 2016. This is where I have said we were going to wind up. And yup here we are.

The image from Wednesday that disturbed me most was the Confederate flag flying inside the capitol rotunda (carried by a rioter), and it did not break my heart. There were a great many disturbing images to choose from, but that one hit me hard; and yet I was outraged by that image, not broken-hearted. When I dug deeper, I discovered that the portrait in the background in that Confederate flag photo is a painting of Senator Justin Morrill, an abolitionist from Vermont who helped frame the Fourteenth Amendment (adopted in 1868), which granted rights to those freed from slavery. The fact that he had his watchful eye on that flag from his perch in history settles me and gives me hope. It reminds me that the best of what we are walks alongside the worst of what we are. Both at the same time. Thus, on the same day as that display of violence, hatred, and anti-democracy, Georgia, a state as deep in the South as the Alabama of Bull Connor, made a tectonic shift and voted to send a man of African descent (minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church no less) and a Jew to the Senate to represent a former slave state. I am reminded by these juxtapositions that change happens thanks to the enormous hard work and commitment of folks like Stacey Abrams.

America is a country filled with those juxtapositions. White supremacists waving Confederate flags and signs with swastikas storming the capitol are a part of this country. Native American protestors peacefully demonstrating to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline from endangering the delicately balanced ecosystem and poisoning the water are a part of this country. Racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic Americans who believe they have the right to demand control of the government by force live in the same country where the Wall of Moms stands peacefully to protect Black Lives Matter protestors, to protect the future of our children and grandchildren. I won’t delve too far into the injustice and double standard of the demonstrably tender way the police treated so many of those violent and destructive white anarchists rioting because of a threat to their beloved entitlement compared to the police brutality experienced by peaceful Black demonstrators protesting racial injustice (or even walking to the store to buy a snack). We all know that if the people at the capitol on Wednesday had been Black, they would have been face down on the concrete with a knee on their neck in an instant. The National Guard descended on Portland faster than they were called out to quell the violence in DC on Wednesday. This is in plain sight and much has been written about it (see Michelle Obama’s statement).

Certainly humans pose the greatest danger to one another, this country, and the planet. Humans are the most predatory, destructive creatures on Earth. And yet we are also creatures capable of extraordinary and boundless love for one another and for the splendid other creatures who share the planet with us. We are capable of tremendous gratitude and appreciation for the beauty and magnificence of this world of ours, of its inhabitants. This is who we are and who we always have been. We are imperfect creatures struggling to transcend the worst in ourselves to become the best in ourselves through an ongoing process of evolution. I mourn the death of the MAGA-follower Ashli Babbitt along with that of Police Officer Brian Sicknick. No one deserved to lose their life in that madness. Ashli and Brian were each someone’s child, someone’s friend, someone’s beloved.

My heart broke when I was eight and I realized what horror people are capable of but I have lived my life with that heartbreak and have worked to transcend that realization, to salvage a love for the wonder and magic of our world from the wreckage of human failing. I choose love over hate every single day. My email address is jazznkugel – that’s us, my husband and I, the marriage of a Black and a Jew. I rarely think about the larger ramifications of that because he is simply the man I love, not a cog in a social construct. Every day I live a celebration of the possibility (now the reality) of a Black and Jew going to the Senate to represent Georgia. Change happens.

Below is a photo taken in November 2016 of a Native American woman protestor kneeling in prayer at the Dakota Access Pipeline while police sprayed her with water in freezing temperatures. Many protestors were sprayed with water and suffered hypothermia as a result. They can beat us but they cannot change our hearts.

 

Mní Wičóni. Water is Life.

Guest Blog from Ian Elder about an Unusual Night at the Opera

I have struggled since 2016 to find my way back to being a humorist, and to giving my blog readers a laugh, an insight, and a worthwhile read all rolled into one. I hope to get better at that in the coming year. (Is that a New Year’s Resolution? Uh-oh.) I want to end this dreadful year with something fun and different. I have never had a “guest blogger.” My friend Ian, who lives in England, sent me the following account in an email. It’s just too good not to share, so I asked him if I could put it up on the blog and he gave me permission to do it. (You will notice that there are some “Britishisms” in the language.) Without further ado, here is Ian’s description of an unfortunate performance of Tosca that he witnessed in Prague. Enjoy, my friends.

Tosca was an opera I had never seen and I was really looking forward to it, at the National Theatre in Prague. Unfortunately, the director was determined to impress the production with his own stamp of creativity. Would that he had not.

There is a scene in a church where Tosca prays and asks for divine guidance in her predicament. At this point the set included a statue of the Virgin Mary. The problem was that this was not an inanimate marble statue as such, but a very much alive young woman, wearing a white see-through piece of chiffon. This revealed her very perky bosom which, being naked under the shift, instantly distracted everyone’s attention from Tosca - including mine. Worse was to come.

At the conclusion of Tosca’s prayer, the Virgin slowly descended through a trapdoor. Unfortunately the device which provided the powered platform for her disappearance needed badly to be oiled; it therefore shuddered and jerked. As a result, the perky bosom was jiggling up and down for all to admire, the more so as the trapdoor kept getting stuck, then suddenly released. Whatever it was that poor Tosca was singing, it was to nil effect - since everybody was focused on the bouncing bosom as it left the stage, destined for the crypt (and probably a warm pullover).

Following on from this example of the director's wizardry, as the entire audience tried to switch back to Tosca’s plight, a conveyor belt started up, above the stained glass window. What now?

This was a young man of about twenty or twenty one, I would say, who reminded me of Rocky in the Rocky Horror Picture Show - well built, tanned, and good looking. He was wearing a pair of angel wings on his back and a posing pouch in front. 

Of shining golden hue. 

Nothing else. 

Just a posing pouch. 

Of golden hue. 

Glittering.

Riveting indeed.

Now, I might have admired such a view of youthful athleticism had it been in the “Escape Nightclub” of Prague - wings optional - but in Tosca??? Again, the eponymous heroine was sidelined, as all attention (well, at least mine) was now diverted to the hope that the conveyor belt would not judder and make the angel jiggle. Too much, perhaps. His journey from East to West complete, he disappeared from view, leaving me puzzled, perplexed, and bamboozled. What did all this mean? Did it mean anything? What was the angel doing after the show? 

Of course, I felt sorry for Tosca and in my sympathetic imagination, during the interval, recreated the moment she received the letter from the Czech State Opera asking her to take the starring role. At last, her years of training and acting presence would reap rewards. "DIVA! Moi?" For this? I read in the programme that the director was known for his wacky approach. Indeed, he had won an award for it. From South Moravian Television. Enough said.

Act 2 was more orthodox. Tosca was back in church (her being devout is part of the drama). The audience was on tenterhooks as to whether Mary and Gabriel would reappear. They did not. Tosca was getting the attention she deserved. Until ... the angelic conveyor belt started up.

This time, there was a fat lady making her way across the stained glass window, with all the convenience of the transport assistance. At least she was fully clothed - to everyone's relief, as she was a mature matron. But why was she there? What was the symbolism? Was it that “it is not over until the fat lady sings”? No, it could not be that: Tosca still had a ways to go before thwarting an attempted rape by stabbing her seducer to death, as is the frivolous frippery of an opera libretto. Nor did the fat lady sing, scotching that theory.

The dénoument (Christian woman murders rapist in self defence) was eventually reached. But it was all a blur. I confess - I wouldn't recognise a single note of this opera, were I to be tested. All I remember is the wackiness and the facetiousness of props and personages.

That is the story.

 

And Ian is sticking to it. Thank you for this, Ian. For more laughs, I recommend Dave Barry’s year in review roundup of 2020. Here is a link to it at the Boston Globe, but it’s around at other sources. Now there is a master at humor. Happy New Year all.

What I Learned from Living in the Pandemic

 

Recently, after living in the pandemic these many months, I paused to reflect on the ways in which the pandemic has changed my life. I was already somewhat of a recluse and I have worked from home for more than twenty years. I do like to socialize, but on a limited basis. I enjoy solitude, especially walking in wild nature and reading or writing in the privacy of my home. So my lifestyle has not changed that much, but more has changed than I might otherwise have thought. I have learned a thing or two. 

The most important thing I learned about myself from this pandemic is that l live too far away from my grandchildren. I live in NorCal and they live in Portland. Before the pandemic, I flew to Portland to see them every two or three months. Now, with air flight out of the question, my husband and I resorted to driving, and we have visited only twice this year. In the meantime, we skype with the boys, now ages three and one. I have wondered if the baby thinks we live in a computer and how he reconciles that image of us on the screen with the real people when we arrive at his door. The three-year-old can carry on a complex conversation with me on skype, and we have established a cherished habit of reading stories so when he sees me on his computer he will chat for only a few minutes before he says, “I want a book, please.” I learned from this pandemic that I want to live near those children and I want to be a large part of their everyday lives as they grow up. They are my greatest joy. The logical step is to move to Portland. Follow the gold. My husband heartily agrees. The pandemic brought home to me the realization that after four terrific decades, my time in California has come to an end. 

Even prior to the pandemic, and for many reasons, we contemplated moving to a different living situation. The rampant fires in California have had a powerful impact on us. For the past four years, we have remained evacuation-ready for half of the year because we live in one of those notorious urban-to-woodland-interface areas. Our lives are already precarious enough without the added stress of remaining on alert to evacuate at any moment in the midst of a pandemic. There are other compelling reasons to move, such as no longer wishing to maintain such a large house and yard. While we have discussed a move, we never summoned the energy or impetus to do it. The pandemic brought our priorities and vision of the life we want to live in the coming years into perspective and gave us the push we needed to get real and get busy. Does anyone want a lawn mower? 

The pandemic has very much reminded me that people matter the most and belongings are extraneous. As we check in with loved ones regularly about health and financial security, avoid seeing people in person, and watch the death toll rise, we cherish even more all those dear to us whom we may lose to this thing at any time. Because my husband has diabetes and other serious health issues, I have lived with death at my elbow for decades. I lost track long ago of how many times I have saved his life during a severe hypoglycemic episode. Diabetes is no picnic. But loving someone with it makes for an intense and deep relationship because we are keenly aware that we may be parted at any moment. His precarious health helps me let go of the small stuff, and to feel grateful to still have this man no matter what foolishness he manages to get up to. We share the belief that our marriage is sacred and we do not take it lightly. So I already had a sharp awareness of what matters even before the pandemic, but it certainly has a way of reminding me of it every day. 

I love to share the story of my friends Ken and Carol, whose house was struck by lightning and caught on fire. I met them in college where I took a class from Ken (then a graduate student) in romantic poets. They have been married nearly fifty years and have raised two children together. They were at home when the fire started and they grabbed their computers and car keys and fled. While waiting for the fire department to arrive, and watching their home go up in flames, Ken (a Wordsworth man to the core) turned to Carol and said, “You are all the home I need.” The house did not burn down, but required extensive repairs to several rooms. 

As an exercise in finding truth and meaning in the experience of living through a plague, I am working on a list of things I have learned from the pandemic. At the risk of making assumptions about my own self-importance by imagining that you might find my list of interest, I share it with you below. Here it is so far. 

- I’m insignificant in the grand scheme of things, less than a speck in the universe.

- I want to help make the world a better place, but my impact ability is limited. Small things can make an important difference. There is great value in doing small things.

- Walking alone is a gift and I am grateful to be able to do it every day. It’s my meditation and it keeps me balanced.

- I must make an effort to communicate regularly with people dear to me using the technology available because life is fleeting and I may lose them at any time.

- Good scotch whiskey is wonderful.

- I love the sensual pleasure of reading actual physical books.

- There is a massive amount of lousy content available for streaming and trying to find something worth watching is a plunge down a rabbit hole. On the other hand, finding something worth watching is great fun and a delight. So I shouldn’t give up on TV.

- I miss my children and want to spend more time hearing about their lives.

- I can cut my own hair and it doesn’t look half bad. It looks better on screenchat than in person. Cool.

- I don’t need to leave my house for much. If I have food and books then I’m good.

- Almost anything can be bought online and delivered to my door. God help me.

- My house and my yard are too big and require too much work. I would be happy renting (not owning) my home for the rest of my life. The American Dream can go hang.

- My husband and I only need one car between the two of us.

- My luck at cards is rotten.

- Rereading books I loved the first time around is a pleasure.

- I’m relieved not to participate in airline travel and encouraged to see how much reduced air travel has positively impacted the environment.

- Eating sandwiches and snacks in the car during a road trip is excellent and I like it that we reach our destination sooner because we don’t stop.

- My hearing is so compromised that I can’t understand people unless I can see their mouths to read their lips. Masks make that impossible. Accessibility is a huge issue for me and many other people.

- The up side to zoom synagogue is that I can sing along on mute as loud as I like and have a blast without concern for the sensibilities of the other congregants.

- Millions of people would rather die than recognize scientific fact or truth if they think science or truth threatens their political allegiance or sense of self. Go figure.

- Roses continue to be the most extraordinary creatures.

- Politics can destroy families and friendships even though it shouldn’t be that way.

- An awful lot of people eat out a lot of the time and either don’t know how to cook at home or don’t like to do it. This astonishes me. I never eat out. What is the appeal of having someone else make you a sandwich?

- If I could have a superpower I would like the ability to make people laugh. Either that or the ability to know lots of languages, starting with ASL.

- Making love to my husband never gets old. That was not meant to make you laugh but if it did then maybe I’m on my way to a superpower.

- My story is not as interesting as other people’s stories. I need to shut up and listen.

- Health is multidimensional and maintaining health is a spiritual exercise.

- When you are living at ground zero for climate chaos during a pandemic, and the trees are in flames around you, an earthquake is small potatoes.

- It’s astonishing how far a vitamin pill can bounce when you drop it on a tile floor.

- I have so much for which to be grateful and gratitude is the basis for joy.

- My greatest joy at this time in my life is my grandchildren. 

Not everything on my list is something I’ve learned exactly right now in the pandemic – some of it I knew already but it seemed relevant or I feel it more acutely these days. It’s a bit difficult to reflect on living through historic times while right in the middle of living through historic times, a bit like time traveling. I wonder what children and young people will have to say about this time in history when they grow up and look back on it. What will they say they learned? What will we say about how it changed our lives and the world in which we live? What have you learned from the pandemic? 

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Love happens. Grief happens. Death happens. Life happens. Joy happens. Grandchildren happen. Yay for grandchildren.

 

A wee dram of  Scotch whiskey to warm me up and see me through troubled times.

Election 2020 Diary

Election Day One 8:00 AM

I start my day by reading the roundup of late night comedy. Last night Jimmy Kimmel said, "The best way to describe how I'm feeling right now -- it's somewhere between Christmas Eve and the night before a liver transplant." I miss my sense of humor, which went packing in November 2016. I must depend on the humor of others. I have had glimmers of humor around the edges. I have faith it will return.

8:15

Store fronts in major cities are boarded up to prevent looting. Residents have stocked up on food and are hunkering down. Here in my small town in NorCal there is nothing more wrong than has already been wrong for the past four years. But seeing pictures of the boarded-up windows in DC, I feel like I am living in someone else's country in another time.

 

8:30

It’s on, voting is happening. I have fortunately survived these four years. Not everyone has. I vividly recall the horror of Election Night 2016; the rage, the grief, and the heart-stopping vision of what was to come. I sat in my husband’s lap and asked him to hold me and I wept in his arms. The night after the 2016 election, some friends came to my house for our monthly book group. One of them brought her 20-something daughter. The young woman is an environmental protection activist and deeply aware of the dangers ahead because of climate chaos. She baked an election cake the day before to celebrate our first woman president. When they came into the house for the book group, she carried the cake, uncut. I took the cake from her, handed it to her mother, and embraced her as I said, “I’m so sorry for you and all the young people.” We wept in one another’s arms. Last night I dreamt that she came to visit me riding a magnificent charcoal horse.

 

9:00

I go for my daily walk behind Lake Mendocino where I take my thoughts into the wild. My beloved NorCal is burning up in climate chaos. Will today’s election results restart the process of making the changes needed for a viable future for humans on Earth? It may already be too late for the trees and other living creatures in my beloved homeland.

 

11:30

I try to concentrate on work. It will take days to count the votes, and there will be no result by tonight.

 

12:00 Noon

The brightest, shiniest moment was when we found out Obama had won in 2008. Oh what a night. I had friends in the house and we were watching Jon Stewart. He said Obama had taken Ohio and that put him over the top for a win. We didn’t know if that was true or not because it was The Daily Show, so we flipped the channel to MSNBC and sure enough, Obama had won for real. My phone rang at that instant and it was my husband Ron who was in Chicago with his family. He was calling to celebrate that Obama had won. I burst into tears. Couldn’t speak. I heard his relatives whooping in the background, Black folks who grew up in poverty in the ghetto. Descendants of slaves who endured centuries of oppression in this cursed country. He asked me, “Are you crying, baby?” and I was speechless, could barely squeak out a yes. Each of my children called, so excited, talking a mile a minute in their new future. My friends at my house were on their cell phones with their children. The exhilaration we felt! When I think of that night now, I want to cry for all we have lost and all that has been taken from our children in the past four years. Can we please begin to climb out of this pit?

 

2:00

I finish a conference call for work. It was a welcome distraction. No one mentioned the election or the disastrous state of the nation. We focused on the project before us and left the planet to its own devices for a short time.

 

2:15

I’m thinking positive thoughts and practicing patience. It’s going to be an excruciating week. We are not a patient nation.

 

2:30

It’s a clear and sunny autumn day. The birds hop in the bottlebrush tree outside the window of my study. There is a breeze, which is not good at this time of year in this dry land at the end of summer in the place where I live. If a spark of stray fire catches, it could burn down a town. Yet everything looks so normal. It feels a bit like the placid scene in a sci-fi thriller right before the aliens arrive and start offing people. I check the online news and read that Typhoid Donny has formally started the process of pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord. He has no shame. Biden says he’ll put us straight back into the Accord on Day One if he wins. The Accord is essentially just a promise to set and reach a goal, but I want that promise. Bring the promise, Biden.

 

3:00

Polls close in FL and GA in one hour. Will this be a nail-biter or not? The ground moves beneath my feet as I feel the 2016 Election PTSD creep in.

 

3:30

Puerto Rico is voting about whether to become a state. Why would anywhere want to join this dysfunctional nation? All we did for Puerto Rico is nothing. It got devastated by a hurricane and Typhoid Donny said “not my problem.”

 

4:00

Results are starting to come in but there is not enough information to figure anything out. I keep reading things Republicans have done to try to subvert the election process. Setting up false ballot drop-off boxes, running Democratic voter convoys off the road, going to court to prevent mailed-in ballots from being counted, making threatening robocalls to voters, and urging followers (i.e., white supremacists) to harass and threaten Democratic voters (i.e., black voters) in any way they can, including by pointing guns at them. I don’t understand the mindset, the internal narrative that can justify these things for these people. They drank the Kool-Aid and can no longer distinguish right from wrong. How do they live with themselves after doing things like cheering for the separation of children from their parents at the border or the push to put ACB on the Supreme Court? (They should have called the push to confirm ACB “Project Warp Speed.” What kind of childish idiot calls any government project “Warp Speed”?) Moscow Mitch is obviously not afraid to go to hell. I figure he doesn’t believe in an afterlife. I need chocolate.

 

5:00

We don’t know anything.

 

5:20

Moscow Mitch is still in his seat. No surprise there but it makes me furious. KY votes the devil into the Senate yet again.

 

5:30

I make scrambled eggs for dinner. I can’t think to cook anything more complicated and I need something light on my stomach. I also eat some apples and honey, as if it’s Rosh Hashanah. Am I subconsciously wishing for a new beginning?

 

5:45

There’s something awful about the way most of the old-time slave states go for Typhoid Donny and the other states for Biden. The Civil War never ended.

 

6:00

Why do we still have the Electoral College? Can’t we get rid of that dinosaur already?

 

6:15

My Patronus is my grandchildren.

 

6:20

My husband turns to me in a panic and asks, “Where do we go if he wins again?” I tell him to just stop. Be positive. Biden will win. (When Reagan was elected I went to the New Zealand embassy and talked with them about emigration. Good times.)

 

6:40

I don’t understand how they can declare a winner in states with only 65% of the vote in. Or less. How can I believe these projections?

 

7:00

We don’t know anything.

 

7:15

Remind me why the country needs Kentucky again.

 

7:30

I have to reread the last Harry Potter book when he defeats Voldemort again, to remind me it’s possible.

 

8:00

Polls close in my home state. There is nothing to know tonight except that once again the power of Typhoid Donny to gain votes was underestimated. The pollsters were far off the mark yet again.

 

9:00

I’m done. I decide to go to bed, to dream of my beautiful grandsons. I hope there will be a future for them when I wake up in the morning.

 

Election Day Two 2:00 AM

My husband is not in my bed.

 

6:00

My husband comes back to bed, crashing around the room and flashing lights, like only a man can. I wonder if he was looking at election returns. We don’t speak so I don’t know. I go back to sleep.

 

7:15

I am up and I wonder if this is the ending or the beginning.

 

7:30

I think of the expression “it’s not the end of the world” and I think well actually it could be. I’m afraid to plug in and find out what’s going on out there.

 

7:45

A buck with a rack of antlers stands as if posing for a magazine photographer on my neighbor’s lawn across the street. Little yellow finches perch in my bottlebrush tree. It’s another crisp autumn day in scorched but glorious NorCal. Beauty walks in the world for a while longer.

 

8:00

I go to the online news. No outcome. I know that the ballots now being counted in the swing states are mail-ins and those will lean Democrat. We knew going into this that a protracted period of counting would occur, but it’s another thing to live through it. The fact that it's this close is horrifying and does not bode well for the future of this country, the world, and on a personal level for my children and grandchildren. Even when (being optimistic) Biden wins, we must live in this country loaded with millions of people who still think Typhoid Donny was a good choice, and would choose him again to lead us to our doom. They may be in the minority, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that there are so many of them. The pollsters once again scratch their heads and wonder how they could be so far off in their predictions. I’ll tell them why. They don’t count Typhoid Donny’s followers. They don’t poll them. They don’t ask them their opinion. No wonder these people are angry. Who do the pollsters poll and how? Disenfranchised and marginalized people come in many colors. As long as divide and conquer is the norm, we will never come together to agree on anything.

 

9:00

Typhoid Donny says he wants the Supreme Court to stop the vote count in states where he is ahead and to have the count continue in states where he is behind. And his followers have no problem with that line of thinking. He is right about one thing. He really could shoot someone dead on the street and his followers would love him anyway.

 

9:30

Mississippi voted yesterday to stop using the Confederate flag as part of the state flag. Are you kidding me? The Civil War officially ended in 1865. Same year they abolished slavery. I guess Mississippi remains nostalgic for the institution of slavery.

 

10:00

Ron is still asleep. I think perhaps he was up all night.

 

1:00

He was up all night. He couldn’t sleep so he listened to music and watched clips from old movies. I went to the grocery store and he was awake when I returned. After lunch, I went for a walk in the great outdoors as I do every morning. Things are looking up. Biden has won WI and will probably win MI. Typhoid Donny has started kicking, screaming, litigating, and generally throwing a toddler tantrum.  But it won’t do him any good. Biden may not even need PA at this rate. I am disappointed that the Dems did not flip the Senate. That will make things tough. It’s a stark reminder of just how backward this country is at its roots. Moscow Mitch has permission to continue doing what he does best. Obstruction. He has no skill at legislating or even building anything. He’s an expert at standing in the middle of the road with his hand up and at punting to the judiciary. He thinks everything will be resolved in court and Congress will become obsolete. This is not what the founders intended by the creation of the federal courts.

 

3:00

Typhoid Donny says he will “take this to the Supreme Court.” Take what? Legitimate votes are being counted. What is there to litigate? Biden is almost at 270. Obviously, even when Biden gets the votes and the Electoral College certifies his win, Typhoid Donny will not concede. I hope Biden is declared the winner soon. Please put us out of our misery.

 

4:00

I’m thinking chocolate brownies for dinner.

 

7:00

We watch a John Cleese film for some laughs and to take our minds off this madness. John Cleese for president.

 

9:15 PM

I floss my teeth and lose myself in a good book. I hope Ron can sleep tonight.

 

Election Day Three 7:30 AM

I plug in and read the late night comedy roundup while sipping my morning matcha. Jimmy Kimmel says “I thought if you have an election that lasts more than 48 hours you’re supposed to seek medical attention.” Trevor Noah, speaking about the legalization of hard drugs in OR, says “At least Oregon has a backup plan if Biden loses.”

 

1:00

Apparently Typhoid Donny has proclaimed himself the winner numerous times while simultaneously claiming the election is fraudulent and demanding that they stop counting legitimate ballots. He has either won an illegitimate election or lost one that will go on forever.

 

3:00

We are packing to go to Portland to visit the grandchildren. Since they legalized psilocybin mushrooms in OR, if Biden loses, we may be there for a while. (Not to worry, though, since Biden will win. I have faith.)

 

6:00

There are no definitive election results. They are still counting ballots. Typhoid Donny is still thrashing and fuming. Biden is still urging patience.

 

9:00

Even with no conclusion, all signs point toward a Biden and Harris win. We go to sleep hoping this misery will end soon.

 

Election Day Four 12 Noon (written in the car on Highway 5)

Online news says PA is nearing completion of the tally and Biden will win. I’m glad to be unplugged and offline today while traveling to Portland. I can do without hearing how Typhoid Donny is thrashing around in the throes of his loss. They will probably have to shoot him with an elephant tranquilizer dart, drag him out of the White House, and put him on a helicopter to FL in January. FL can have him. They deserve him. They earned him with the malfeasance that gave us W over Gore in 2000. The past four years have been so bad that W has begun to look like a kindly, misinformed, bumbling, slightly senile grandpa. It’s shocking how good W looks in retrospect compared to this. And we had a countdown clock on our wall for eight years! I guess the lesson there is “it could always be worse.” It was.

 

Election Day Five 9:30 AM

We are getting ready to sit down to breakfast with our two sons, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons when the news breaks. My daughter-in-law calls me over and shows me the news on her phone. I whoop. I dance around the living room with my grandson singing, “I love my new president.” My children connect with their friends, sharing jubilant texts and looking at responses from around the country and the world. We break out a bottle of champagne with breakfast and toast to the future. I hold my grandson in my lap and fight back tears. I remember 2016, weeping in my husband’s arms. I try not to weep with joy since I don’t wish to alarm my grandson. It is a sweet moment that I will always remember to counteract my memory of 2016. That was then. Now I have this.

 

11:00

I watch Van Jones break down on TV as he says, “It’s easier to be a parent today…. This is vindication for a lot of people who have suffered.” People are gathering in BLM Plaza in DC and in front of the White House with signs that say, “You’re fired.” Revenge is sweet. Victory is sweet.

 

1:00

I spend my day crawling around the floor with the one-year-old and reading stories to the three-year-old and generally engaging in small child shenanigans. My son, grandson, and I go for a walk in the rain. The air is clear and smells of flowers. I bake bread and my sons bake chocolate chip cookies.

 

3:00

We play happy music and dance around wildly, filled with the joy of being alive on this historic day and experiencing it here together. Even the baby is bopping to the beat. We celebrate a chance at a decent future. I no longer despair for what lies ahead for my grandsons. I’m grateful that the verdict took this long and arrived when it did so I can celebrate here with my children and grandchildren.

 

5:00

I take a break from preparing dinner to watch Harris live as she and Biden come out to speak to the nation. I unexpectedly break down in tears when she takes the stage. Hilary paved the way for this. Four years later, at last, a woman VP. It means that much. Many women suffered and died to get to today. I lived to see it. From Harris’s speech:  “And to the children of our country, regardless of your gender, our country has sent you a clear message:  Dream with ambition, lead with conviction, and see yourself in a way that others might not see you, simply because they’ve never seen it before. And we will applaud you every step of the way.” What a relief to hear true, articulate, intelligent, inspiring words coming from our nation’s leaders again. Vocabulary is back in vogue.

 

6:00

Euphoria. I have spent most of my day outside time, living in the moment with small children. Whatever troubles happen in the world, they remain far away and don’t touch us here in this place. Love floats us above the fray, sweet and enduring. The little arms of the three-year-old that wrap around my neck and the babble-talk of the baby are all that matter. They are everything. I have faith that there will be a viable future.

 

6:15

I turn to Ron and say, “Let’s live here.”

Drash on Noah and the Flood

A drash is an interpretation of text or a teaching based on a passage of the Old Testament (Torah). The portion of the Torah that Jews the world over read this past week was the story of Noah and the flood. In zoom-synagogue, my rabbi shared some thoughts about that story. She reflected on the fact that the Noah family became the first climate chaos refugees, fleeing an uninhabitable environment in their homeland. How many of us will become climate chaos refugees in the future? I will become one soon myself, starting over in a different place from the one I have called home for more than forty years because the California that I love is drying out and burning up before my very eyes. 

My rabbi said that she has difficulty wrapping her head around the fact that God chose to destroy all the other people of Noah’s time because they were all “bad.” She wonders how all of them could actually be so bad that they deserved to perish in the flood. How could God be so heartless as to kill off so many souls, all the humans in creation, except for the Noah family? Without actually believing in a Judaic God as such (wrathful, judgmental, deadly, a monotheistic entity), I still find myself contemplating my rabbi’s question. I agree that it seems extreme for God to destroy all humans except Noah's family. How could all of them be that evil, that deserving of annihilation? 

The purpose of a drash, of course, is to make some sense of a biblical story so that it informs our lives. Here is my sense of the Noah story. The culture and society of humans of Noah’s time had evolved to the point that humans placed themselves above all other species and viewed the planet as a resource for them to exploit. They thought that all the other species, in fact the planet itself, existed to serve the purposes deemed applicable to human desires and endeavors. Earth existed for human profit, human comfort, human amusement. Anything on Earth was there for the taking by humans, with no regard for other life forms. Sadly, many humans live within this mindset today, caring nothing for the preservation of the beauty of Earth or the future generations of humans or any other species that will attempt to live here. They do not recognize “sentience” in other living beings, both animals and plants. How do people not see that trees are sentient beings? This baffles me. How do people so devalue other creatures? I feel spirit flowing throughout everything, as part of a oneness. But I live in a time and a place where humans devalue other humans, let alone recognizing the value of a tree or a bird. I imagine that the people who perished in the flood of Noah’s time were not much different from the many exploitive, self-centered, profiteering people in my time who contribute to climate chaos, and that is why God destroyed all of the people in Noah’s time. Even the best of humans in that society lacked the ability or motivation to alter their perceptions or actions. They believed that they mattered more than all the other creatures on Earth. God doesn’t even need to raise a finger to destroy humans nowadays because we’re doing a good job of it all on our own.

My rabbi explained that Noah is portrayed in the Torah as a humble and unassuming man. He didn’t think he was anything special. He never understood why God chose to save him. He never felt worthy of that, although he tried to live up to the honor. So I would say that God chose one humble man with the potential to learn, and set him and his family afloat for a year on the ark, tasking them with caring for the animals, those other lovely and radiant creatures with whom they shared Earth. God left them on the ark until Noah and his family fully understood that humans must care for other earthly creatures, learn from other earthly creatures, and appreciate other earthly creatures. We must care for the planet and all who live here with us. Exploitation for profit is sinful. We need to be good stewards, and to go even beyond good stewardship to the level of living entirely as a contributing part of the overall Earthly family, interwoven with other species, valuing other creatures, as we share Earth, our mutual home. That is the only way all of us will survive and, if we are lucky, thrive.