The Thing with Feathers

Hope.  That was the word I wrote on our blackboard last night after watching the ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial remembering the 400,000 who have died of Covid-19.  We watched the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris yesterday for most of the day, concluding with the wonderful “Celebrating America” prime time special.  It was all very moving, even the brass band music and all of the pomp and ceremony and decorum of this moment in our democracy.  It pointed forward to a return to normalcy after four years of willful breaking of our national norms.  

Exactly four years ago today, on January 21, 2017, Martha and I drove to New Bern to take place in a peaceful Women’s March (there were sister marches all around the country on that day) in opposition to the inauguration of our now-ex-President (whose name I will not use lest I profane this blog).  We listened to speeches by local Democratic Party officials, the NAACP, and the Christian Community Network.  And then we marched peacefully for a mile or so on quiet sidewalks under leafless winter trees.

I wrote this in my blog at the time:

"I feel that this is a profound moment in our history when good people must stand up and speak out against this President and all that he represents - the very worst representation of our nation, in my opinion - and the regressive policies he has already started to implement.  Martha, too, has become increasingly dismayed at all of the lies and distortions, the bigotry and baseness of this campaign and its eventual "winner," the treatment of women.  I know the election is over, but the fight for human rights and for the progress of the last 50 years, which many of my generation have taken for granted, will never be over.  Good people standing up and speaking out."

We knew that the next four years would be a journey in the wrong direction for our country, but we never expected how terribly low we would all be brought, culminating in the insurrection at the Capitol two weeks ago - the long downward arc of what will surely be remembered as the worst presidency in our nation’s history.  From what I saw yesterday, we are poised on the brink of a new era as, day after day, decisions are being made, cabinet officials are being appointed, and competent leadership is being brought to bear on the problems that we face.    

In the midst of the day-long ceremonies yesterday, I somehow did not realize that the “Celebrating America” event was scheduled for 7:00 p.m. last night.  But we watched it this morning and thoroughly enjoyed it, and especially the performances by what seemed to be the widest variety of musical guests possible, from Tim McGraw to Bruce Springsteen to John Legend.  Surely even the bitterest disappointed Republican voter could have had some grudging appreciation for at least one of them.  And Tom Hanks on top of everyone else, America’s favorite actor!  I especially liked the lyrics in Springsteen’s Land of Hopes and Dreams. 

Leave behind your sorrows,
Let this day be the last.
Tomorrow there'll be sunshine
And all this darkness past.
Big wheels roll through fields
Where sunlight streams.
Meet me in a land of hope and dreams

I’m not naïve enough to believe that everyone is going to get on that train.  This morning we learned that 200 self-described anarchists marched in Portland, Oregon last night and smashed windows at Democratic Party headquarters.  Some of the demonstrators carried a sign that read “We don’t want Biden, we want revenge!”  That is in stark contrast to some of the signs we saw in New Bern four years ago.

Still, I wrote Hope on the blackboard last night, and it feels a little like a holiday today, like awaking from a nightmare and finding yourself at the beginning of a brand new day.  Emily Dickinson wrote about hope:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.

So I went out onto the dune-top deck this morning on another mild but very windy day - a wind so strong that it nearly unbalanced me, but did not – and I watched with hope another miraculous sunrise.