JAN’ 21

9

I am sitting in my blissfully, empty home. A bundt cake is baking in the oven. It's the biggest cake that I've made since the pandemic began. But, hey, I figure, after the events of the past week, we deserve it. I have a hot drink at my elbow and, by God, I will drink it before it turns cold. Davis has taken Willa out to the library playground with the dad and kids of a family who live on our block.

One of our areas of focus for the year is to make a concerted effort to support each other in getting our mental/emotional/spiritual needs met so that we can be more emotionally available to one another. So, for instance, I have identified a deep craving for solitude. Davis wants to (among other things) cultivate a deeper friendship with our neighbor, Noah. And, the children get on. So, we're killing a few birds with one stone this morning.

SIGH* What can I say about this past week? I have been all over the place emotionally. The Georgia run-off filled me with excitement and hope. The domestic terrorist attack on the capital and the fall out...awe, incomprehension, horror. That I felt any surprise at all is only an indication of how much unlearning I still need to do. This was also the week that my book club gathered over Zoom to discuss Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's book, The Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. The book made it abundantly, heart-wrendingly clear that the historical/cultural precedent for the racist populism and violence that we see today was established in the calculated, relentless, and brutal dispossession and genocide of Indigenous Americans.

The cognitive dissonance of being American, as evidenced by genuine protestations of recent days that "this is not us," is directly tied to our failure as a nation to recognize that our country was only made possible by the deployment of total war strategies and tactics that targeted noncombatant Indigenous populations. This didn't just involve the indiscriminate killing of Indigenous women, children, and elders but also the intentional destabilization of local economies e.g. the razing of Indigenous farms, homes, and managed hunting grounds, the hunting-to-the-point-of-extinction of Plains bison etc. Further, the romanticized drive westward ("Manifest Destiny") was primarily fueled by poor, white farmers who were being outcompeted by America's aristocrats, who could afford to import African slave-labor. Untenable economics, then as it does now, nurtures racism and gives rise to incredible violence.

Like a cancer left untreated, our past has metastasized into our current social and political hellscape. If there is any one book that you read this year, let it be this book. We cannot afford to continue to be buffeted and baffled by events as we were last year. I feel so strongly that this is the year where we must inform ourselves, gather what resources we have, and devote it to social justice, racial equity, and a more humane economic order. Everyone has a role to play. The Georgia run-off shows us what is possible when progressive leaders organize and informed citizens take action.

One day, our children will ask us what we did during this historic period of American history. I hope that I will be able to give Willa an answer that I can be proud of.

Well, that's enough fire and brimstone for the morning! I'll be busy this coming week with birthday preparations.