Happy Days, Wakeful Nights
It's going to be a tough one but we'll get there.
It took more than a week but when both AP and CNN called the election for Joe Biden the wait was over. Biden won!
Unfortunately, the squatter in the White House refused to accept it. Up until today, Donald Trump has been telling anyone who will listen that he won and he won big. Today he slipped and tweeted that Biden only won because the election was rigged. (It wasn’t.) Minutes later he took it back but it told us all we needed to know: He knows he lost.
Now we’re at the “I’m not leaving” stage, but he will leave. Trump will leave on January 20, 2021 and a new era will begin, but our national nightmare won’t be over. I wrote about it last week, calling my piece ‘We Have a New President But Our Nightmare Isn’t Over’, and yesterday Crooks and Liars picked it up and published it.
I wrote ‘Today is the Day’ on the morning of Election Day. I didn’t sleep well the night before, and I barely slept at all on Election night. How was it possible that this election could even be close? It’s clear now that more than 70 million Americans were willing to give Trump another four years, after all the damage he’s done. I don’t know how to deal with that. My rage at them is threatening to get out of control and I’m working like crazy to keep that from happening. I’m not sure I’ll ever get there—this pandemic is a bigger threat now than it was when Trump told everyone he had it completely under control. He didn’t. He lied to cover his ass, to save his reputation, to make sure he’d win another four years. And with their help, he almost got away with it.
The fight goes on.
Last week I switched my publication, Indelible Ink, back to a magazine format where politics is just one topic under the Creative Nonfiction umbrella. But my political writers weren’t done yet. Every submission last week was political!
I published a piece on writing this morning, called ‘Rhythm and Flow’, as an invitation to our writers to slide back into our old routine. I had fun with that piece, incorporating clips from Barbara Kingsolver, Maya Angelou, and—ready?—Abraham Lincoln. It describes three different styles of writing and how all three have the ability to draw readers in and keep them there until the very end. I hope you like it.
For a couple of months now I’ve had a running email conversation with a Medium writer, Ruchi Das, who is just a delight. She lives in India and her stories are wonderfully descriptive of her culture, but she struggles sometimes with American idioms so I edit her pieces now and then to make sure she’s saying what she wants to say. She’s dedicated, smart, and witty, and now calls me ‘Grandma’. She has adopted me and I’m a willing adoptee.
She and a couple of friends run a publication called ‘Books Are Our Superpower’ and recently they asked me to be one of the judges for their very first contest, which focused on creative writing. I did it and it was great fun. This is what happened.
On the home-front, four family members now have COVID and two of them are very sick. We’re up here in the boonies worried sick about those in the city who are either struggling with illness or are in danger of being exposed. And, again, the rage won’t go away. Every time I see someone in public without a mask—or bragging about not wearing a mask—I wonder if they ever think about cause and effect. When they refuse to do something as simple as putting on a mask in order to save lives, I have no hope that they’ll ever consider the common good in the years ahead. We’ll have to move on without them, knowing that whatever good we accomplish will benefit them, too—and they’ll never be grateful.
But I’m grateful for my friends and I’m worried, too. I’m hoping for the best for all of us, looking forward to something close to normal in the year ahead, when we can be together, shaking hands or giving hugs, expressing our humanity in the ways we used to take for granted.
So until next time, take care, stay safe, and please cover your nose.
Ramona
Keep up the good work, Mona