January’s Front Porch

Plotting and planning front porch decor is one of my happy pleasures in life and I look forward to a porch that is a welcome place.  In this cold season, I don’t spend loads of time out here but the month’s table reminds me how much I do love the time I spend here in the warm weather.  The month’s theme is hope….for new leadership, for a vaccine, for the health and safety of us all.

The green ivy, hearty despite the cold, leads the way.  The wooden trees were a gift from JT, who knows me well.  The wintery flag with wildlife and snow is a reminder to look for the common joys to be found in this sometimes bleak month when we work to keep our bird feeder full.

The wreath is homemade and a work in progress.

This January feels like so very much is on the line.  But in this house, we live in hope, the most powerful emotion in my toolbox.  I am hopeful; I always am.  It's the only solace I know when fear threatens to enter.  

Amaryllis Tuesday: January 12

January has proven itself to be full of events and in the midst of all that, I nearly lost sight of the weekly amaryllis photo.  But here is my bulb showing a bit of a green stem if you look closely.

The purpose of this flower bulb is to mark the cold, dark months of the Winter, as I look eagerly toward the light and then warmth of Spring.  When I’ve greeted the bulb each morning in the last few days I have also thought about the fact that each day’s growth places us just a tiny bit closer to the arrival of Inauguration Day and the swearing-in of a competent and capable set of leaders.  I am ready.  The nation is ready.  It’s been a long, long wait and the amaryllis reminds me to hold fast to the promise of the future.

Hope, Fear and Everything in Between

I can’t be the only person who felt that the past few days have been 96 hours of time filled with a historical and political significance greater than such a small amount of hours can rightfully contain.  As long as I’ve taught, I’ve explained to my students that political time is different than regular time, in that significant political events can happen suddenly and that the conflagration and reverberation of them can consume our attention for far longer than the moment lasted.  At the same time, a hard month or a year can feel interminable as you live through it though as historical time such days can often amount to less than a hill of beans.

Both of these things are true, though rarely at once.  And then along comes January 2021 to shake all that what we think we know.  Today I remind myself that there are some things - important things - that we do know.  

Some - perhaps many - of the January 6 Insurgents were bent on ugly violence toward a democratically elected government.  They call themselves patriots even as they fly the flag of a racist - and failed - rebellion.  That is not patriotism.

Donald Trump, a man who won the Electoral College without winning the popular vote, deluded himself into believing that meant something.  After a lifetime of self-absorption he never once considered anything, least of all an oath to uphold the Constitution, more important than his own desires.  Our democracy will pay a price for this far longer than he will govern.

Courage, in the form of some members of Congress and their staffs, some Capitol Hill police officers, and some of our leaders, can inspire.

Other so-called leaders inspire only contempt as they wickedly flee the sinking ship that is the Trump Administration.  Worse yet are those who defend it, hopeful that their own ambitions can find fruition in what remains of the Trump coalition.  Shame on them.  

Cultivating democracy is hard work but the work of us all, undertaken with hope and sustained through our effort and engagement, even as that is hard.  Especially when it is difficult.  President-elect Biden says we can do hard things and we can.  Indeed, we must.

The Deplorables

 I had so many thoughts about Wednesday’s events tumbling about in my head as I tucked into bed that night,  My mind was still whirring when when I got up on Thursday to catch up with the overnight news.  My challenge that day was too quickly make sense of it all so that I could talk it over with my three classes of 8th grade Civics & Citizenship students, using our shared knowledge of Civics and history to try and understand.  When I first proposed teaching this class, I thought that the topic was timely.  But I had no idea how timely it would be.  Throughout the 2020 election season, we’ve explored and discussed the events of the day.  When we broke for Winter Break, my plan for Thursday’s class had been to review how Electoral College certification worked and then to discuss the Georgia Senate elections.  I was ready for that.  Insurrection by Trump’s merry band of deplorables took me by surprise.  

In hindsight, that was foolish on my part.

When class started today, the language of choice for participants in the Capitol Hill takeover was protesters turned rioters.  By the afternoon, they were insurrectionists.  That word gave my afternoon class a better tool to wrap their minds around the events.  The promising news is that the 8th grade saw the events for what they were: an intemperate and foolhardy collection of people bent on while denying the legitimacy of our most recent democratic election because the outcome did not suit their desires.  My students also understood quite clearly that the rules for this mob were different than the rules that BLM marchers faced in their Summer protests. 

That ability to see truths will serve them well as our understanding of the January 6 Insurrection unfolds.  For my part, I hope that the collective memory that lingers from the event is of the way that American democracy endured and triumphed in the aftermath.  As an American, that must be by goal.  I am here for the hard work to come.  For now, that will have to suffice.