Another night at the Oscars has come and gone, this time without possible criminal liability. Or memorable moments. Or even good movies. In fact, the decision to replace the red carpet with a beige one is an apt metaphor for the whole ho-hum event. As The Cut noted:
Meanwhile, many of the actual people on the carpet were rendered nearly invisible by its shade. The night’s guests, who didn’t find out about the color change until the carpet was unfurled last week, showed up in outfits that matched the floor, turning the carpet into a big, bizarre sea of camouflage.
Camouflage may have been the point this year. Academy bigwigs didn’t want to mention, let alone repeat, 2022’s Slap Heard Round the World. Host Jimmy Kimmel did not cooperate with this wish, quipping in response to the beige carpet that it showed “how confident we are that no blood will be shed.” In fact, Kimmel’s repeated references to The Slap throughout the awards ceremony provided about the only edgy (and funny) material all evening.
But star-on-star assaults are nothing compared to the wish to camouflage the overriding threat facing Hollywood: its imminent demise. The Oscars are always self-aggrandizing, but this year the hyped-up glitz felt desperate. So desperate that the Academy saw fit to run a commercial for this summer’s release of “The Little Mermaid” as part of the ceremony. Anything to get people back into theaters, I guess. But “Top Gun: Maverick” for Best Picture? Seriously? And I say this as someone who very much enjoyed the movie.
Which is more than I can say about a lot of the others. Usually I try to see all the top nominees, but after seeing plenty of them—in theaters and streaming—I didn’t see the point.
And yes, this means you, Everything Everywhere All at Once. I second the Guardian review, which referred to it as Nothing Nowhere Over a Long Period of Time. However, I concede that the exuberant cast and crew who kept traipsing up to collect their statues seemed like really nice and fun people. I also admire Michelle Yeoh for using her moment in the spotlight to run a piece in the New York Times the very next day to shine a light on the deplorable suffering of women and girls in humanitarian disasters.
It’s a far cry from suffering through another season of a so-so awards ceremony and films. Still, with Hollywood run aground on the pandemic and streaming shoals, and trying to break free through CGI, special effects, and lots of noise, I see little on offer to lure me back into theaters. Which is a shame, since I used to love going to the movies.
At least it’s a great achievement that this year possibly retired #OscarsSoWhite and #OscarsSoViolent. Now let’s hope for the retirement of #OscarsSo”Meh.”
The weather’s been wild across the country, including here in California. Rain, floods, mudslides, and now snow have caused a lot of damage. But also much joy, since we’ve been living for years with constant worry about drought and fires.
February is our spring here in the Bay Area. After a rainy January, the sun came out and delivered our usual Valentine of flowering plum trees. I’m a Valentine’s baby, and during a birthday walk, I discovered a downed branch laden with blossoms, which another woman and I split to bring the ephemeral beauty into our homes. Such an unexpected gift along with the usual one:
Already the blossoms have mostly given way to unfurling red and green leaves (the poison oak is unfurling at a pretty good clip too). But the daffodils are resplendent:
We had a dry spell for a couple of weeks, but thankfully, the rain started up again. Temperatures plummeted, and it began to snow, bringing blizzard warnings to LA and anxious ski resorts a break, at least until the snow closed major interstates. People have been skiing and sledding in Napa County, heart of the nearby wine country that’s been ravaged by fire and drought the last several years. From our living room window, we are agape at Mt. Tam, dusted with snow (some of it still there days later):
We have been growing webs between our toes, but the rain kindly stopped this afternoon so I could take a walk.
Then it began to hail. Oh, well. I am euphoric about the stuff coming down from the heavens, and here’s some euphorbia to celebrate:
My husband and I just watched She Said, the film based on New York Times reporters Megan Twohey’s and Jodi Kantor’s investigation that brought down Harvey Weinstein and turbocharged the #MeToo Movement. We happened to see it on the same day that we’d contemplated canceling our Times subscription at least three times.
The first came when I listened to The Daily’s podcast coverage of the recent discovery of Joe Biden’s classified documents in all the wrong places. The sequel to the 2016 smash hit, “Oh, But Her Emails!,” “Documents!” is part of the breathless reporting that is one-tenth spelling out the differences between Biden’s and Trump’s behavior and nine-tenths implying nefarious intent with far, far more disturbing revelations to come. I suppose the one-tenth part counts among the Lessons Learned by responsible journalists whose hyperbolic coverage of the drip-drip-drip of Hillary’s misused server surely contributed to the mess we’re in now. Unfortunately, the greater Lesson Learned about stoking conflict to gain eyeballs, plus a misguided allegiance to “Fair and Balanced,” still triumphs. At least when Fox touted the “F&B” tagline, they knew it was ironic.
Later that day, I moved onto the Times Opinion section, only to be confronted with a column by Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s notorious campaign manager, counselor, and coiner of “alternative facts.” Why the Times would give over precious inches to a known liar and political hack was beyond me, though I shouldn’t have been surprised since that’s a fair description of what has happened to our political discourse in general over the last many years. But I would not let Kellyanne off the hook: “How’s your marriage? And your daughter?” I unkindly asked her in my mind.
As I complained to my husband about these journalistic outrages over lunch, he added a third reason to quit the Times: “They’re going after us because we both use the same log-in to read the paper. I’ve explained that we’re in the same household, but they say ‘It’s just one user per subscription.’”
That evening, which was Takeout and Movie Night, we streamed She Said. It’s a good, though not great, movie, and one well worth seeing for the importance of the story alone. And also for the décor of the New York Times: chic red walls, bright and airy workspaces, a stunning cafeteria with floor to ceiling windows.
But the aesthetics are nothing compared to the paper’s unlimited resources, including sending the intrepid reporters overnight to London. Given that no expense was spared, I couldn’t help but wonder why the Times never sprang for a couple sets of Bluetooth headphones so the reporters were not constantly on speaker phone as they walked down streets or made dinner while passersby, husbands, and kids freely listened in. (Then I realized that this was a cinematic device designed to allow the audience to hear all, not half, of the conversations with vital sources. Duh!)
Best of all was the unstinting support of everyone at the Times. While poor Ronan Farrow had to go, beggar-like, to the New Yorker, after NBC News squelched his simultaneously exploding bombshell investigation, Twohey and Kantor had a whole army of senior staff behind them. Their editor, Rebecca Corbett, not only dispensed hugs, keen advice, and chocolate almonds freely throughout; she also knew that the pursuit of a good story could cure post-partum depression. Executive Editor Dean Baquet personally and hilariously ran interference with Harvey Weinstein himself. In contrast to the workplace Weinstein turned into a house of horrors, the New York Times came off as the best employer in the world. It was hard to even recall that just last month, labor unrest roiled the Times, and those sympathetic to the workers were encouraged to eschew their Wordle addiction for the day in solidarity.
Still, the Times did good, does good, and no doubt will continue to do good, especially if they ever get over their fetish for interviewing MAGA enthusiasts in diners. We’re likely never to quit them (of course, they may boot us off first if we continue to share one subscription in our household of two). In honor of this exasperating, brilliant paper of record, I even played Wordle for the first time ever yesterday.
I love decorating for Christmas, filling the house with greens, red berries, white flowers, and candles. I love hauling out our vast collection of ornaments, decorating the tree (though not stringing the lights), setting up the wooden trains we bought when the girls were little.
I also love dismantling Christmas after the New Year. This time, though, packing away the ornaments came with a dose of poignancy. I separated out all of Emma’s, fully expecting that they will no longer grace our tree, but hers and her partner’s in Christmases to come. After all, that has been the goal of our annual ornament ritual ever since our daughters were born. Just like our children, they are not ours to keep, but to send off into the world created and inhabited by our grown-up kids. (As long as said kids are capable of setting up more than a knee-high tree for their own Christmas traditions).
We’ve done without Ally’s ornaments since 2019, when she and her now-husband began hosting their own tree-trimming parties with a six-footer. Emma and her partner moved in together earlier this year, so I offered to gather her ornaments for the Big Transfer when we saw them at Thanksgiving. I confess to an inner sigh of relief when she declined, since they were going to spend the holidays away from home. But home is where the heart is, and their new home is full of heart. Even in this year of going elsewhere, Emma’s partner set up a miniature Christmas village and tiny tree. After all, he’s father to an 11-year-old and long accustomed to the habits of adulthood. I see a six-footer in their Christmas Future together.
So Emma’s ornaments are now in their own shoe box. As I went through our lists of how each of our ornaments came into the household, I was glad to see that some of the more hideous ones were from Emma’s era of gaudy poor taste (i.e., not mine)—gold-painted reindeer, a plastic peace sign, a plastic speed boat. I will miss, naturally, those selected by my superior taste, before she was too young to have a vote, especially this one, which we got for her first Christmas:
I will miss that little one in a cradle, just as I miss my little girls in their cribs and their belief in Santa and infallible parents. But I am thrilled to see them blossom into their own selves, and to pass on the bounty of Christmases past. I have the comfort of my memories, and knowing that these ornaments will forever be where they belong.
Plus, still with us is the ornament I will never relinquish—this inch-long striped stocking for the in-utero and mysterious Tadpole, more than a gleam in our eyes, but not yet known as the wonderful person to come who brought us into the magical world of parenthood:
It’s the last day of 2022, and time is pretty much running out if I hope to meet my goal of writing at least one blog post a month. I’ve never liked New Year’s Eve, although I enjoyed the Top 40 countdowns when I was young enough to stay at home without FOMO. Come to think of it, maybe the fear of missing out never weighed that heavily on me. During my 20s, I volunteered to take a shift on the crisis line every New Year’s Eve, and felt relieved to have purpose and a place to be without false cheer and a lot of drinking. One of the big reliefs of aging is how pleasant it is to fall into bed before 10:30, maybe having a nice dinner with friends, maybe not.
This year, I decided to finish my very last episode of “This is Us” on the very last day of the year. Fans of the show probably watched the final episode of the sixth season in May this year, when the family-centered, heartstring-pulling drama came to an end. Fans of the show with husbands who don’t like “This is Us,” however, kept forgetting to watch it during the day all by their lonesomes.
I’d pretty much forgotten about “This is Us” until this May, when I was laid up with Covid. I was three seasons behind and not particularly flattened with fatigue, so spent my quarantine catching up. I can see why my husband doesn’t like the show–it’s a bit heavy-handed and sappy, with such idealized family members who are always making great speeches that it can lead to lots of eye-rolling. But I loved it–all the characters (especially Uncle Nicky, the most acerbic and least sappy character), the tough issues tackled, the sense of depth and authenticity and struggle along with the idealization. Besides, Mandy Moore, who plays the main matriarch Rebecca very convincingly through several decades, really reminds me of a charismatic, positive-without-being-cloying, absolutely lovable mom I used to know. And since Ken Olin of “thirtysomething” was a mainstay of our 30s, how could I resist a series where he directed so many of the episodes?
As I made my way through the last season, I didn’t want it to end, so I’d go for weeks without watching. The last season deals with Rebecca’s rapidly advancing Alzheimer’s and death, and the fact that her end was approaching seemed fitting for this year’s end. The journey from life into death was depicted as a lovely Orient Express style train ride (without the murder mystery), in which significant loved ones are there in real life and in memory. Plus, Rebecca on the train looks like she’s dressed for New Year’s Eve!
Lots of heartfelt messages about family bonds and the beauty of life along with the sorrows abound throughout the show, particularly the last couple of episodes. Very corny, very moving. 2022 has been it’s own wild ride–so much sorrow in the world, so much love and laughter personally, especially this past Christmas, with both daughters here along with our new son-in-law and his whole family as well.
Tonight my best friend from graduate school and her husband will arrive, since we’ve all tested negative for Covid. We’ll eat good food and hopefully be in bed before 10:30. It will be the end of a long, trying, and rich year. As “This is Us” unsubtly reminds us, life goes on. 2023, here we come.
“The red wave is the ketchup dripping down the walls of Mar-a-Lago.” – From a Facebook Friend, 11/9/22
This is my favorite take on the 2022 midterms.
I also like the results, except for this bummer: More than a week after the election, the Republicans finally secured their 218th seat to win the House majority. Good luck with that, Kevin! Watch out for the ketchup stains on your trouser cuffs. Or maybe it’s blood from your backstabbing caucus.
Except for losing the House by a hair thanks to gerrymandering and New York’s apparent new status as a swing state, it was a good night for Democrats and their pro-choice, pro-democracy, anti-lunatic allies. Yes, of course, we had an assist from the Supreme Court and Donald Trump. Yes, of course, we still face enormous peril. But it’s time to break our doom and gloom habits even while remaining clear-eyed. This is a moment to celebrate. I’m reminded of the famous headline following the 1968 Harvard-Yale football game, in which Harvard, trailing by 16 points, evened up the score in the last 42 seconds:
“Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29”
Given the momentum and the fact that who controls the Senate is no longer an issue, the chances of breaking the 50-50 tie there by re-electing Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia’s December 6 run-off are good. Go Warnock! If you’re looking for a way to support grassroots groups on the ground ready to turn out every last vote for him, check out Airlift’s portal to the Georgia Alliance for Progress.
Of course, the House isn’t quite tied, and my wish that it could all have been favorably decided by Lauren Boebert going down is not to be. Still, I don’t think endless investigations of Hunter Biden will prove a winning case for Republican governance.
A lot of my political activism these days has been with the aforementioned Airlift, an all-volunteer group founded in my home county of Marin in Northern California after the 2016 election. Airlift raises money for progressive grassroots groups who excel in turning non-voters into voters through year-round organizing in key battleground regions. We do the research to make sure donors who are bombarded by a million asks can be sure that they’re getting the best bang for their buck.
I’m pretty busy putting out Airlift’s monthly newsletter and liaising with our two partner groups in North Carolina, so I haven’t done as much phone banking this cycle. Still, during the last couple of weeks, I put in some time calling voters in North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada.
Mostly phone banking consists of lots of “Not Homes,” hang-ups, and wondering when I myself last answered the phone from an unknown caller. Still, there are some good conversations along the way that make it all worthwhile. I spoke to a woman in North Carolina who wasn’t planning to vote because she’s too busy for politics and didn’t even know the election was a week away. After ascertaining that she didn’t like the overturn of Roe or what the Republicans were doing, I convinced her to vote, and we made a plan for her to go to an early voting center before work the next day. .
Another woman in North Carolina said, “We’ve got to stop the hate.” Someone else told me, “I don’t believe the polls. The women are with her [Cheri Beasley].” Sadly, they weren’t quite sufficiently with Cheri in North Carolina. But they did prevent the return of a GOP supermajority in the state legislature, thus preserving Governor Cooper’s veto power over further abortion restrictions and other right-wing legislation. Pro-choice swing-state women–and men–were most everywhere else.
In Arizona, a woman said she used to be a Republican, but is no longer because “now they’re just peddling lies.” She confided that she’s lost friendships over it, and it breaks her heart.
Responding to my asking if we could count on his support for Mark Kelly, an Arizona man replied, “I would rather vote for a week-old tuna sandwich than for any Republican.”
Sometimes phone banking is cause for full-on belly laughs.
Speaking of which, here’s a hilarious note to close out my 2022 Midterm Report:
It’s true that my stay-at-home mother was known for her disinterest in cooking and housekeeping. It’s also true that in 1973, I, her youngest child, was a senior in high school who required little hands-on care. Still, I don’t know how my mother managed, well before streaming or even VCRs, to stay glued to the television for all 51 days–sometimes up to 6 hours per session for a total of 237 hours–of the Senate Watergate Hearings.
My mother’s on my mind because today would have been her 99th birthday, but also because last week I watched the last hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack of the U.S. Capitol. There have been 9 live hearings, most lasting 2-3 hours each. You can stream them for free at any time on many different platforms. I am no match for my mother: Even though I am recently retired with a lot of time on my hands and few obligations, I managed to catch only about four hours in real time. (I eventually watched most of them after the fact.)
Apart from streaming, times are different. Up to 80 million people—three out of four households–watched at least some of the Senate Watergate hearings. As the New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik wrote on the eve of Trump’s first impeachment trial, the Watergate hearings were appointment TV, a collective experience that no longer exists.
In contrast, twenty million watched the first of the January 6 hearings, 18 million the last. Lots of people, especially Republicans, tuned them out altogether, and the hearings are not expected to make much difference in next month’s midterm elections. Almost all congressional Republicans have consistently denigrated them.
In 1973, the vote in the Senate was 77-0 to establish the Senate Committee. For our latest constitutional scandal, following Trump’s second impeachment acquittal, an independent commission in the mold of the 9/11 investigation was recommended. The House approved such a measure 252-175, with 35 Republicans joining all Democrats. Senate Republicans blocked the commission’s formation by filibuster. This left only the House to pursue an investigation through the formation of the January 6 Select Committee. Only two Republicans—Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger–joined all Democrats in voting to proceed, and have thus been driven out of today’s GOP. As I said, times are different.
What’s not different is how much I miss my mother in times of political turmoil and great national consequence. Even though I am glad for her sake that being dead for a long time means she’s missed a lot of truly horrendous stuff that probably would have killed her, how I wish we could have watched the January 6 hearings together, or at least texted back and forth across the country!
I imagine starting January 6, 2021, by sharing our joy that both Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff had won their run-off races in Georgia, flipping the U.S. Senate blue. My mother would have loved that. But at least she was spared witnessing Trump’s “wild” rally as it descended into violence.
I, too, was spared live coverage of the unfolding insurrection. My work day of eight back-to-back sessions with psychotherapy clients began just as Mitt Romney shouted, “This is what you’ve gotten!” to his Republican colleagues as the Capitol was breached. I was professionally obligated to be glued to my Zoom screen for the day, not CNN’s live coverage. My information came in snatches from one client after another giving me shocked updates and scrolling through headlines in between sessions.
I followed the news (including Trump’s second impeachment trial for fomenting the insurrection) for days, weeks, months. But the January 6 Committee’s presentation—with lots of live video footage, some of it never before seen–brought it to horrifying life in a way I had missed.
I would have loved to compare notes with my mother. I suspect she would have shared my deep admiration for the January 6 Select Committee members–even and especially Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger (plus, of course, heartthrob Jamie Raskin). To a person they have been dignified, somber, collaborative, and without an iota of grandstanding. They’ve made a compelling, ironclad case for the American people, the Department of Justice, and for history. The Committee’s done so by presenting damning testimony almost entirely from Trump’s own allies–from the hapless January 6 rioter Stephen Ayres to Bill Barr, whose obvious relish in trashing Trump would be funny if it weren’t so maddening. To borrow from Barr’s own twisted interpretation of the Mueller report to protect Trump, the former Attorney General’s turn before the committee “does not exonerate him” from the harm he previously caused.
And hat’s off to the women, especially election workers Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman. Cassidy Hutchinson and Liz Cheney proved that decency still resides within some Republicans. In fact, feeling sustained admiration for Liz Cheney has been one of the most surprise silver linings of the last year. Who knew?
Here’s what I really would have loved to discuss with my mother: In the closing statements of the final hearing, the low-level foot soldiers of the insurrection were depicted charitably (to put it mildly). Cheney spoke of how Trump had manipulated his followers’ patriotism and love of country. Mike Pence was treated as heroic for refusing to be Trump’s devoted lapdog this one time. Many of Trump’s enablers were similarly and generously let off the hook when January 6 proved a bridge too far for them. This is probably smart strategy. Still, I can’t help but envision my mother and I gagging together over it.
Chairman Bennie Thompson said of Trump, “He is the one person at the center of the storm.” True in one sense, but is he really? Per usual, he is both cause and symptom of the dark forces that have been gathering for some time. As the traitors keep reminding us, “The storm is coming.
I miss my mother, but I’m glad she will miss the storm.
My heart sank when I first heard about Lindsey Graham’s proposal for a nationwide abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy. That’s because I thought he might just succeed in tricking people into thinking it was a reasonable idea. After all, before the Dobbs decision eliminated constitutional protection altogether, abortion rights had been slowly eroded for decades by just such “compromises.” Chief Justice Roberts was hoping to preserve a fig leaf of SCOTUS legitimacy by allowing just such a ban to stand in Mississippi without overturning Roe. Plus, a 15-week limit polls well.
I also had to read the fine print to understand that Graham’s proposal did not ensure abortion rights nationwide for the first 15 weeks. Quite the contrary: States would remain perfectly free to restrict abortion at any earlier point, while states with more liberal access would be forced to ban the procedure after 15 weeks. As the saying goes, “Heads we win, tails you lose.”
Still, it’s not unusual for people to react with outrage to egregious proposals before acquiescing to something more in the middle. Graham is trying to quell the intense backlash to overturning Roe by offering something that sounds more reasonable than the draconian restrictions GOP state legislatures are passing right and left.
I myself—staunchly pro-choice my entire life—almost fell for something similar when “partial-birth abortion” entered the anti-choice lexicon in the mid-90s. The descriptions of the procedure were pretty grisly: puncturing the skulls and removing the brains of partially delivered fetuses. It sounded as bad as abandoning newborn infants on Chinese mountaintops simply because they were girls. A steady diet of such horror stories made me wonder who could possibly oppose banning such a practice.
Or so I reacted for a nano-second, until I thought and learned some more. The scary coinage came from the National Right to Life Committee in 1995. The correct term for the medical procedure is “intact dilation and extraction,” a safer method than the prior standard for ending pregnancies after the first trimester. About 95% of abortions occur before 15 weeks, but it’s not exactly like care-free women are casually clamoring to end their pregnancies later on. Some may not have known they were pregnant. Others have been forced to jump through so many hoops already that a safer, simpler abortion option is no longer possible. Most likely, something has gone wrong with a wanted pregnancy, as Pete Buttigieg explained in 2020 at a Fox News Town Hall. Here’s his exchange as reported by Upworthy with moderator Chris Wallace about whether there should be any limits on abortion rights:
“I think the dialogue has gotten so caught up on where you draw the line that we’ve gotten away from the fundamental question of who gets to draw the line,” Buttigieg replied, “and I trust women to draw the line when it’s their own health.”
Wallace wanted to clarify that Buttigieg would be okay with late-term abortion and pointed out that there are more than 6000 women who get third trimester abortions each year.
“That’s right,” responded Buttiegieg, “representing one percent of cases. So let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a woman in that situation. If it’s that late in your pregnancy, than almost by definition, you’ve been expecting to carry it to term. We’re talking about women who have perhaps chosen a name. Women who have purchased a crib, families that then get the most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about the health or the life of the mother or viability of the pregnancy that forces them to make an impossible, unthinkable choice. And the bottom line is as horrible as that choice is, that woman, that family may seek spiritual guidance, they may seek medical guidance, but that decision is not going to be made any better, medically or morally, because the government is dictating how that decision should be made.”
Reporter Annie Renau then observes:
And that’s really the gist of the pro-choice stance. Why would we want the government to be involved in our most difficult medical and moral dilemmas and decisions?
Exactly. Especially the likes of Lindsey Graham and all the other Forced Birth proponents in government. No matter what the reason or stage of pregnancy.
Luckily, Graham’s proposal has backfired. His intentions are clear, and his own party is mad at him for saying the quiet parts out loud as they busily scrub their websites of draconian anti-choice pronouncements.
Don’t be fooled. Come November 8, Roe, Roe, Roe your vote.
It was great to take a break from our weary world to celebrate our youngest daughter’s wedding in Santa Barbara. We are still floating on air from several perfect days preparing and celebrating. Well, almost perfect–the groom’s parents got notice of a planned lengthy power outage that would affect their kick-off dinner and family lodging. As usual, though, they scrambled to rearrange things before nightfall, and carried on with good humor and grace:
You’d also have to overlook the slight imperfection of the newlyweds getting slammed with Covid three days after the wedding. The groom’s father’s toast included an homage to wise decisions, like choosing the right person to marry. Going to an indoor bar for an after party after a week of little sleep? Less wise. But bride and groom are recovering nicely, and will have better hybrid immunity for their planned September honeymoon.
All the rest? Pure bliss.
Let’s start with what’s important: Baked goods. Fans of Shrinkrapped may remember that I have been coping with depressing world events by throwing myself down the cupcake rabbit hole, living in a parallel universe of cheerful YouTube videographers with their frosting and cake topper techniques. Upon arriving in Santa Barbara, we set up Baking Central, with good results:
Baking CentralScrumptious Chocolate Layer Bars for Welcome PartyWedding CakeThe way to his heart . . .Wedding guest, expressing approval of cupcakes
Oh, wait–this is about my daughter’s wedding, not about my fantasy bakery! That rabbit hole is pretty alluring. Onto the Welcome Party, with hilarious toasts by friends, a great taco truck, and picnic tables overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Here’s my daughter, true to character:
It would be hard to top the Welcome Party fun, but Wedding Day itself was up to the task, starting with the happy couple saying goodbye so they could get ready in separate quarters:
Me and my daughtersBride to BeGroom to Be
Now for the real deal:
And the best part–dancing!
First danceFather-Daughter Mother-son Newlywed limbo
The morning after:
Why tea-length wedding dresses are bestThank God it’s over!
I spent part of the Fourth of July catching up on the January 6 hearings. I can think of no greater display of patriotism than the solemn undertaking of the bipartisan commission to uncover and brilliantly explain the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The treachery of Donald Trump, his fellow coup architects, and his vast cadre of GOP enablers is clear. As conservative retired judge Michael Luttig testified, they pose a clear and present danger.
The number of witnesses from the GOP and Trump World implicating the former president and his allies has been riveting and effective. Cassidy Hutchinson especially has torpedoed the whole cabal, including her former boss, Mark Meadows.
Then there are the House commission members themselves. They are to a person solemn, dignified, articulate, and clear, forsaking political grandstanding to build a devastating account of the truth. It is especially heartening to see Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, two honorable Republican patriots who have sacrificed their careers to defend and protect democracy. In her opening remarks during the first session, Cheney said:
Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.
Cheney has been a guiding light throughout the hearings. So has Republican Adam Kinzinger, who said in Session 5:
A big reason I decided to run for Congress was my motivation to ensure freedom and democracy were defended overseas.
I remember making a commitment . . . that if we are going to ask Americans to be willing to die in service to our country, we as leaders must at least be willing to sacrifice our political careers when integrity and our oath requires it. After all, losing a job is nothing compared to losing your life.
Within the halls of power, in the face of a president, that commitment can easily be forgotten. Presidential pressure can be really hard to resist. Today we’ll focus on a few officials who stood firm against President Trump’s political pressure campaign. When the president tried to misuse the [Department of Justice] and install a loyalist at its helm, these brave officials refused and threatened to resign.
They were willing to sacrifice their careers for the good of our country.
By contrast, Kinzinger noted that Trump “was willing to sacrifice our republic to prolong his presidency.” He continued:
I can imagine no more dishonorable act by a president. We owe a great debt of gratitude to these men you’ve heard from here today, real leaders who stood for justice when it was in grave peril, who put their country first. When the leader of the free world demanded otherwise, they threatened to resign rather than corrupt our democracy. And thanks largely to each of them, President Trump’s coup failed.
Salutes as well to the many others who did their duty and are too numerous to name. But a special shout-out to Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, two Georgia election workers whose lives have been threatened and upended by the vicious smear campaign against them simply because they did their jobs.
Even Bill Barr and Mike Pence, two of Trump’s biggest enablers, did the right thing when the chips were down. For his troubles, the Vice President was threatened by an angry mob wanting to string him up on the gallows they’d erected outside the Capitol.
Which brings us to the traitors, especially those at the top: Trump, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, and many others too numerous to name. Let’s throw in the non-insurrectionist but extremely dangerous and Supreme-Court-seat-stealing Mitch McConnell for good measure.
I abhor mob rule and the death penalty. Besides, hanging’s too good for them. Instead, there’s the rule of law, hopefully Merrick Garland, and what Adam Kinzinger urged in his closing remarks:
As it’s said, the only thing necessary for evil to succeed is good men to do nothing. Thankfully, there were good people in the Department of Justice. You heard from other good people too on Tuesday. They too defended us. But I’m still worried that not enough has changed to prevent this from happening again.
The oath that we take has to mean something. It has to cut to the core of who we are and be the driving force of our service to this nation. We on this committee, we may be able to shine light on the darkness, but that is not enough.
It’s now up to every American, now and in the future, to stand for truth, to reject the lies wherever we confront them. And our towns, and our capitals, and our friendships, and our families, and at the ballot box, and within our own minds and hearts.
It is up to all of us to be good people who do something. Let’s get to work.
