Where I am right now #5

Okay, this is Day One of the next four years, a dark time and one we got ourselves into.

I’m not going to go into what happened. Our current political disaster is the kind of thing my father used to refer to as snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Future historians will dissect it endlessly.

Some people I respect say billionaire-funded election fraud stole the Presidency and we’ll never have a fair election again. Maybe that’s true. But other people I respect say it’s not, and we can still fight, and the pendulum will swing again. I choose to believe them because otherwise I’d just throw my hands up and I can’t do that because the next thing would be I’d jump off the George Washington Bridge (always my suicide plan because for a few seconds you’d feel like you were flying) and then who’d look after Petra and Mo?

So here’s how I’m planning to spend the next four years.

I’m going to sign every petition I get from Robert Reich, Indivisible, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Planned Parenthood, Fair Fight, and IfNotNow. I’m going to make the calls and write the emails to my Senators and Representatives those folks ask me to. Here in NYC I’ll do what I can to help make sure we elect a decent, largely non-corrupt Mayor in the fall. I’ll give money to NPR and PBS and a whole fleet of other non-profits and leftie politicians.

NYC is a sanctuary city in a blue state, but I’ll keep my eye out for this big immigrant round-up and see what I can do to get in the way.

I’ll get all my vaccines and take all my vitamins. We need to stay healthy.

I’m going to Zoom with, have coffee/dinner/drinks with, go to concerts and readings with, and generally shenaniganize with my friends and relations near and far because we need to keep each other above the water line.

I’ll keep going to the gym so if I have to dig cobblestones out of the streets and chuck them I’ll be able to. I’ll keep watching and playing basketball (I’m much better at the first than the second) because basketball brings me joy. I’ll keep writing books, stories, and essays because at this point I’ve been doing it so long I probably can’t stop. I’ll keep reading novels and going to museums. I’ll try to do the little acts of kindness I come across, and generally try to be one of the millions working to defeat The Big Evil with The Infinite Number of Tiny Goods.

And I offer you one Tiny Good I spotted tonight. No eyebrows would have been raised if the Empire State Building had been lit red, white, and blue tonight. But it wasn’t. It was red, black, and green, for MLK Day.

Venceremos.