It's been awhile. I guess I just haven't had the heart or the will to post here since early November. The Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ticket won the election, and Donald Trump and his minions stepped up their denial snake oil pitch and continued to make a mockery of the office of president and the Republican Party. He left for Florida and has spent the days playing golf and tweeting bile while many more thousands of Americans sickened and died from the killer virus. Trump will be gone soon - not soon enough - the Retrumplicans will stay on, and the new administration will have a daunting job ahead, to say the least.
2020. A year of infamy. Many people have or will write about the year that ends tonight, and I have nothing new to say. At the end of a year, I usually scroll through my digital calendar from January 1 to December 31 as a way of reviewing the year. For 2020, this scroll-through looks pretty typical for us; dinners out, theater evenings, museum visits, doctor appointments, gatherings with friends and family for normal activities or special events. But it all changes starting March 11. After March 11, the calendar is filled with video calls; first using Skype, then exclusively Zoom. And grocery pickups. Zoom gatherings and grocery pickups, all...year...long. We have been "sheltering in place" to avoid exposure to the virus.
>19,970,000 COVID-19 cases; >344,000 people dead as of today in America since February, 2020. A lot of this was preventable. There are vaccines now, but the distribution system is screwed up, so it will be a long time until enough people are vaccinated to clear this train wreck off the tracks. The Biden-Harris administration will hopefully fix a lot of what's broken. Fingers crossed.
Our family has been fortunate. We elders are retired and comfortable; the kids (anyone under 60) are hanging on and getting on well enough. No-one in our immediate circle has tested positive, or been ill with the virus. And no deaths. We grieve for the many families - too many - in our country who have been visited with pandemic tragedy, and we are saddened by the loss of jobs, economic and social stresses so many families are experiencing. And yes, we are mad as hell that the Repugnicans in Congress have dithered away the time with their partisan politics, their Trump-support nonsense, instead of doing the job the Constitution requires them to do: "promote the general welfare." A pox on all their houses!!!
A friend remarked yesterday that it was not really the new year until January 21. Agreed. While it is true that much of what happened during 2020 was brought by nature, it is also true that the Trumpsters made everything worse, every time. An old adage is: everything is political.
As I complete this short post today, 01/01/2021, I know that today is simply the day after yesterday, and that the "new year" is only symbolic. Nothing has changed from yesterday that is outside the trend lines from the yesterdays. And yet, we can symbolically take a deep breath, look ahead, see the end-of-tunnel light is a bit larger and brighter, and renew hope for a better year. And maybe, just maybe, if we all work together, we can make it so.
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