As I watched the Biden-Harris inaugural ceremonies this week, I found myself overcome by unanticipated thoughts and feelings.
Although I've been aware of presidential inaugurations since 1960, when I was nine, this is the first one I've ever taken the time to watch in its entirety.
Of course, as a reliable Democrat, there were the expected feelings of relief as the political pendulum swung in favor of my preferred affiliation.
As I write these words, the invasion of our US Capitol in DC is only a week behind us.
At least in terms of what I've been reading (and writing) over the intervening period, many of us are wracked anew by the question of how it could have come to this, and what these actions might mean for our future.
The invasion of our Capitol building on January 6th, 2021, and the accompanying disruption of the work of our duly elected members of Congress, was certainly an unprecedented and frightening addition to our American history books.
And yet, when added to the list of coup attempts that have taken place around the world throughout human history, this action seems a bit out of place.
I came across a story in The Washington Post recently about a nurse in South Dakota haunted by memories of patients who were dying from Covid-19.
The history of Leonard Cohen's song “Hallelujah” is a fascinating one. Cohen's songs had never really been embraced by the masses, and his first recording of “Hallelujah” in the early eighties was part of an album so lacking in obvious commercial appeal that the president of CBS Records responded to it by saying: “What is this? This isn't pop music. We're not releasing it. This is a disaster.”
There is a flaw in the reasoning behind our infernal, never-ending, society-splitting debate concerning socialism vs. capitalism, and I want to point it out.
To start with, imagine the lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
(Notice I say “our” with confidence because, even though I don’t know who you are or where you were raised or what you look like, I do know that you, like all of us humans, are descended from one or more tribes of hunter-gatherers.)
