I just commented the other day that the days are a smidge longer...
Today we in the midwest of the USA have a whole NINE HOURS of daylight. Whoop-whoop! (That was not sarcastic.)
I've been sleeping a lot (a lot!), and when I figure how nine hours of light means FIFTEEN hours of darkness––and nowhere to go in the evenings during a pandemic––I think, well, no wonder.
Lighten up on yourself!
I was surprised to see even Betsy DeVos leaving the sinking ship.
I thought that was cheering, but...
Hm. Elizabeth Warren says BD quit so she didn't have to help invoke the 25th amendment to remove Trump.
Still, Pence, the most lappiest lapdog, did not go with Trump's delusions of victory.
So, I'm calling this "slightly a tiny bit lighter"?
Today would have been my father's 90th birthday. He always said that democracy was elastic & tough enough to withstand a beating.
Ha, like what Betty White says about vaginas:
“Why do people say 'grow some balls'? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”But I wonder how worried my father would have been during this presidency... You can puncture even the bounciest material.
I think he'd have said that Trump was going to puncture his own inner tube.
That he would bring about his own downfall.
(But how much damage would Trump do before that happened?)
I've posted this before--my favorite photo of my father---speaking at an anti–Vietnam War rally on the campus of Whitewater, WI, where he taught political science (he commuted from where we lived in Madison):
My father believed in democracy, but at home, he was a mix of autocratic and negligent.
He had grown up in a poor family of ten children of Sicilian immigrants, under a violent father and a powerless mother. He escaped through books and education, and I respect that to the ends of the earth.
But, while I know he tried, he never learned how to be a good father. Not to me, anyway. He said as much to me once--the closest he ever came to an apology--not easy for him.
I'm glad to have inherited his strengths––he admired curiosity, pluck, and thinking about things, and he practiced radical respect for the dignity of individuals.
He also liked toys! He had a lovable childlike side.
Not so thrilled to have inherited his Sicilian capacity for self-defeating resentment.
Mixed, is his (my, our) sort of . . . relaxed attitude/laziness.
It is both charming (let's go for a stroll and a chat, then have a glass of wine and a little snack) and sometimes self-defeating. I love bringing forth ideas but not the work to bring them to fruition--always the seed, never the fruit.
Upside: I'm a good dinner guest!
My father was a Capricorn and loved goats. (He'd have wanted to go WOOFing on the goat farm with Marz.)
Happy Birthday, Old Goat!
Cross my heart — before seeing this post, I wrote one today about using a Verilux light for seasonal affective disorder. I'm startled to see from your post how little daylight we're really getting. Like Goethe, we need more light.
ReplyDeleteMy father would be 96 next month if he had lived. I remember him as work hard when you are at work, relax when at home. To this end he always put things away as soon as he was done with them, dishes were washed up right after dinner and laundry folded and put away right after taking it off the line. With things always tidy, he had more time to relax. It's pretty much the same as what I do now, having been raised by him.
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