Finally.
It’s finally, finally over. The four year reign of terror and lies, of outlandish and often criminal behavior, of ridiculous actions and bullying of anyone who got in his way, is finally over.
At noon today, Joseph R. Biden Jr., of Delaware, will be sworn in as the 46th President of these United States. Kamala Harris, of California, will be sworn in as the first female vice-president of these United States.
And the long, national nightmare that began on 11/8/16 will finally, finally be over.
Let me start with this: It’s still kind of unbelievable to me that Donald Trump was ever elected President. That a man so obviously racist, bigoted, sexist and as big a liar as we’ve ever seen in American politics could beat out so many other GOP Presidential candidates, then defeat Hillary Clinton in the general, is a mystery I will struggle to understand the rest of my life.
But it happened. And for a brief few days after it did, I remember talking to my friend Jeff Pearlman, and we talked ourselves into “Well, maybe it won’t be as bad as we think. Maybe he’s so incompetent he won’t really do too much damage.”
Yeah, I’d say we were hoping for a miracle with that one. As it turned out, it was much, much worse than we expected, and that was before the Covid-19 pandemic killed 400,000 people on his watch.
But I don’t want to dwell on the last four years today. Because at noon, an honest, decent, flawed human being will be sworn into office, and I emphasize the words human being. No more will every single decision from the Oval office come out of a vindictive grudge, a desire to punish some while rewarding others. No more will temper tantrums erupt on the electric Twitter machine because the President saw something on Fox News or MSNBC.
The graft is over. The corruption is over. The meanness is over. This column by Paul Waldman of the Washington Post is an excellent kiss-off to the Trump era.
Take a deep breath outside today. The fresh air is blowing in to Washington. D.C. We’ve been stuck in a sewer for four years, but finally, finally, the air will smell better.
A clean start. A female, African-American/Asian vice-president. A Democratic majority in the Senate.
It’s a brand new day in America.
Thank freaking God this nightmare is over.
**Next up today, nothing to see here, just a beautiful parrot singing some Led Zeppelin, while climbing her metaphorical “Stairway to Heaven.”
The Internet is, as always, undefeated.
**Finally, I love this story, and so did many people, as it was widely shared and went quasi-viral last week.
Mike Wilson of the New York Times brings us a beautifully-written tale of a 74-year-old Texan named Frank Miller, who was a former athlete who wanted to find someone in his neighborhood with whom to have a catch.
So his wife, Alice, more adept at social media, posted a note on Nextdoor, the neighborhood app.
“My 74 year old husband would like to have a partner to throw the ball with. He is a former high school and college pitcher and is looking for a catcher or someone who knows how to throw a baseball.” She volunteered that her husband “is in good shape.”
From such a simple request, Miller got a ton of responses, and on a Wednesday afternoon at a suburban Dallas park, Miller met up with a dozen strangers to have a catch.
There are so many great passages in this story, I particularly loved this one:
“The game got a hold of Frank Miller in the early 1960s, when he pitched for his high school team in Greenville, N.Y., and then for Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He can describe with cinematic clarity the grand slam he hit in May of his freshman year — and show you the ball, which he keeps in a box marked “memorabilia.”
He has visited his enthusiasm upon Alice, his third wife, who knew nothing about baseball when they met 10 years ago. “Frank introduced me to the complexities of the game,” she said, managing not to sound like a hostage.
LOL. Every married woman with a sports-obsessed husband can relate to that “hostage” line. It’s a simple story of human connection in these Covid-infected times, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Wide World of Stuff 