I stood in front of a small TV screen in my kitchen. It was early on a Friday evening in October 2016, and I was doing small chores – tidying dishes, folding some stray laundry – before weekend activities commenced. The reporting had caught my ear. “When you’re famous they just let you.” Cackling laughter, egging on the lewd confessions. One month from the presidential election, this was how one candidate regarded women: as objects at his disposal. My throat tightened, my insides burned. I felt sick with annoyance.

I knew after my first two posts on this era in American politics that there was more to say.  

Right after the 2024 presidential election, I joined others in acknowledging the message sent by the electorate: people are frustrated and need a path to the life they want – the long-promised American Dream. The status quo has become a millstone, and voters are willing to blow it all up to get some kind of change. I witnessed this to my shock in the voting behaviors of people I helped at the polls.

We take our seats at a white-clothed table in an empty Chinese restaurant. It’s Christmas Eve. Sunny, mid-seventies, and here we are reading down the menu – indecipherable characters in an empty restaurant. Not the Christmas spirit of imagination. But, not that many places were open, and it was ok. The quiet. A simple cup of tea I could take refuge in. And refuge was really what I wanted.

“I want.”

The beginning of a petition. People ask things of water. A penny for luck. Good fortune, blessing. That’s not what I wanted, though.

A dialogue had started.

I come here for another time, another place. What draws me here pushed me forward. My presence was the question, in a way.

Great changes sometimes happen – a death, a broken relationship, any sudden loss – that shock us, create an opening into profounder perspective than we can access in ordinary life. That’s what I felt on November 9, 2016, the day after the general election two cycles back: total betrayal.

I was up early, had to be in the car by 7:15 to head out for an appointment. Not anticipating how profoundly reality could change in 24 hours, I had scheduled a doctor’s exam first thing the day after the 2024 General Election. Exams always engender a feeling of vulnerability, and I was already half out of my senses from the fatigue of the day before – 16 hours pollworking – one of thousands needed in my city alone to carry out this democratic rite.

Full moon tonight. 8:02PM moonrise. We can be that specific. 65 degrees, clear with 3% skycover.

Drawn as I am to these spectacles, I imagine completed daily obligations, taking my station out front to watch the crowning over rooflines, waiting to get a full glimpse as she imperceptibly, nonetheless steadily moves above tree branches.

On my porch, St. Arnold and I toast each other in a fall ceremonial.

I’m not the only one. He’s clinking steins with all the others who plunked him into their shopping baskets this week. But we share a moment so I’m not really here drinking alone. Although I might prefer it, these weekend evenings on the stoop, light growing soft, and I could sit here till moonlight, the palette-shift from warm to cools.