January 21, 2021

It might sound silly, but the one thing that broke me the most yesterday:

When I heard news that the plane that had been designated Air Force One and had flown Trump to Florida was en route and returning back to DC.

For some reason, it reaffirmed what the Presidency--and this country--stood for.

The thing was, Donald Trump always thought he was bigger than the Presidency itself. To him, it served one purpose only: to give him a claim to ultimate and never-ending power, glory and attention. However, the nitty gritties of the job that his predecessors and now successor have had to grapple with--the checks and the balances, the constitutional constraints, the unflattering burdens of the office--that was always beneath him.

He could have as well called himself Emperor, and no doubt would have if he could. And have at his disposal all those powerful glories at his hand for an indefinite amount of time, without regard to the popular will of the people or whatever concerned them.

Powerful glories that included a 747 jumbo jet at his beck and call, with the name of our country emblazoned on its side, and its fuel and maintenance paid for at our taxpayer expense.

I had actually seen Air Force One once before a year or two back, parked on the tarmac at the West Palm Beach airport. My kids were in the car with me, and under normal circumstances I would have happily pointed it out them as an exciting moment. But the thought of the man who used it and called himself the President disgusted me so much that I simply drove on by without comment.

He would have loved to have had that plane for life. And the bloody events at the Capitol two weeks prior were intended to make that come to pass.

But thank God, it failed.

And thank God, we live in a nation of law, with a President and not an Emperor.

So when I heard news that the plane that had carried Trump to his residence was returning back to the Nation's Capital, it really hit me deep.

Because no matter what Donald Trump thinks, no man or woman will ever be greater than the Presidency. The Presidency--and its office, and both its perks and solemn responsibilities--will always be greater than one person. And so that plane was leaving Donald Trump behind, alone and without further power, and returning to serve President Biden during his time in office.

On the morning of November 9, 2016, I truly and honestly thought we were going to lose our democracy and our country. I truly expected the man ascending to the office to seize the reigns of power for himself and end our republic as we knew it.

And in the four years that followed, we very nearly did lose it.

But somehow, by luck or Divine Providence, we did not. And knowing Donald Trump had been left behind as our country carried forward absolutely hit me on a heavy emotional level.

(The irony is that I live a mere half hour away from where he now sits and stews in oblivion, behind the gilded walls of Mar a Lago. And yet all the same, I haven't felt further away from him as I do now that he no longer has his grasp around our collective necks.)

The idea that we as a country have suffered a mass traumatic experience from the past four years might sound laughable. But it's absolutely true. And like individual victims of traumatic experiences, only now that the danger has passed are we going to start to emotionally absorb what we had just gone through, and process all the horrors.

And let us not mince words; they were truly horrors indeed.

And the idea that we survived, that the danger--at least the immediate danger--has passed, is both a relief but also an emotional bombshell that leaves us shaking. Think of Tom Hanks' portrayal of the title character in Captain Phillips; in the end, after his rescue he collapses into a quivering wreck even as a nurse assures him, "You're safe now."

But we survived.

And our plane, leaving the most disgraced person to ever hold the Office in its wake, has come back home to us.

January 19, 2021

"There is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in."--Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1351424718142906368

That was the one lyric that stuck in my mind and gave me the slightest bit of hope the dark morning of November 9, 2016 when the worst case scenario came to be.

(Ironically I—along with nearly everyone else—was unaware that Cohen had passed away just two days before.)

And that lyric again came to my mind when I saw this picture of the Washington DC sky.

I won’t deny it brought a tear to my eye just thinking about it.

January 4, 2021

Something that happened today that might be useful if Trump still refuses to leave after January 20

This morning I discovered we had a raccoon take up residence in an eave space in our roof. While I have nothing against raccoons in general and did not wish to see any harm come to the creature, I wasn't really a big fan of it becoming a permanent tenant there or-- even worse--making its way into our attic and wrecking havoc in there.

After attempting to shoo it away with a garden hose (which did absolutely nothing; honestly, I think it actually enjoyed it), I was forced to call in a professional to humanely extricate it from our roof.

When the guy from removal service arrived, I assumed he was simply going to set up a trap cage to which it could be lured in. However, instead what he did was get a long stick--about eight feet in length--and placed a rag on the end of it. In turn, the rag had been doused in a mysterious liquid. The removal service guy simply placed the stick in the general direction of the raccoon, and within about 10 seconds the raccoon had climbed out of the eaves space, made its way down the roof, jumped down and high tailed it in the direction of the neighbors (maybe to scout out their eaves space for a more comfortable habitat).

The removal guy then explained what was on the stick; it was the excretion fluid from a male raccoon, and our raccoon being a female (although thankfully with no kits in tow, which would have made the situation far more complicated), females apparently despise this male raccoon excretion fluid and want nothing to do with it.

Thus, if it comes noon on January 20th and Donald Trump has stubbornly refused to vacate the White House premises, I wholeheartedly endorse the tactic of shoving a stick in his face covered in raccoon excretion fluid in the hopes it might cause him to flee.

After all, it does seem to be a foolproof method of getting rid of unwanted squatting pests.