I remain shaken to my core after watching yesterday’s attempted coup.

Though I had not been watching television, I was checking Twitter to see if Jon Ossoff had been officially declared the winner of the Senate race, and I saw one of the first photos of the insurrectionists breaching the Capitol. I immediately ran to get Don, we turned on the television and there we remained until we went to bed.

Some thoughts:

Why was law enforcement so unprepared for this? We knew something was coming, we knew that Trump was ginning up his followers. He repeatedly talked about January 6th and how it was going to be ‘wild.’

Even more, I saw photos of Capitol Police taking selfies with members of that mob. I saw them let them in through a gate. I saw them stand there doing nothing as they walked through the Capitol without going through a screener. How did the insurrectionists know where offices were? How were they able to breach the Capitol so quickly and easily? Don and I couldn’t believe how easy it was for them to walk around, with huge flags that could be used as weapons, going from the Hall of Statuary to the floor of the Senate. What the hell?

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but it seems obvious to me that there was someone or several someones on the inside who helped them. There had to be.

To see them desecrate the Capitol, looting offices, trashing everything while taking selfies? They need to be arrested and thrown in jail. This cannot stand.

The seditious members of Congress need to be unseated. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz need to be expelled. They are not worthy to hold any office, let alone one of such importance. There needs to be a clean sweep of Congress. And this should NEVER be tolerated again.

As for Trump, that vile, disgusting excuse for a human being – impeach him today and remove him from office. Or invoke the 25th Amendment. The fact that some of the decisions yesterday – to call in the National Guard, etc. – were made by Pence rather than Trump tells me that the administration knows he is out of his mind. If that’s the case, take him out via the 25th. He needs to be removed from office and thrown in jail.

He incited a group of people that he would never be seen with normally to commit crimes. He’s been doing this for five years, of course, and anyone who tells you they didn’t expect something of this nature was willfully ignoring the daily evidence of his sociopathy. We knew something was coming, that he wouldn’t leave office without creating as much chaos as possible. These misfits and malcontents, these believers in conspiracy theories who would rather live in a fantasy than in the real world were ripe for exploitation. And Trump knew it. As did every person in that administration and the resignations that are suddenly happening should have happened long ago. What? You’re suddenly shocked by his behavior? Give me a break. You worked for him. You enabled him. You didn’t take a stand until two weeks before he leaves office? All of them are beneath contempt.

That this could happen in this country says a great deal about where we are. Someone we heard recently on MSNBC said that we, as a nation, are no longer dealing with a shared set of facts. We have a large portion of the population that believes in a bunch of nonsense that can be debunked in approximately 30 seconds. And we have a monster in the White House.

He has been inciting violence since his early rallies, encouraging people to attack reporters. He made no secret of his propensity for violence or of his insatiable need to be a dictator. And now it’s come to this.

On a day when we should have been able to celebrate the incredible wins in Georgia, we witnessed a coup attempt. I confess that I knew it could get bad, but yesterday’s insurrection went further than I could have imagined.

Throw him in prison for the rest of his sorry life. Throw the insurrectionists in jail and put them on trial. Expel those elected representatives who tried to overthrow an election. They are vile. They are not public servants. We need to rid our governing bodies of these vermin and start fresh.

That’s how I feel this morning.

I’m not editing. I’m writing this in the moment on this day after an attempted coup.

I didn’t get to your comments yesterday. Sorry.

Stay safe.

Pray for our country.

Happy Thursday.

We had a little snow, maybe 2 inches, and it was a wet snow. But really, we couldn’t ask for anything prettier. Don said it was easy to push with a shovel, and he’s already cleared the driveway and put some salt down. In the meantime, at least for a while, we have this magical wonderland of snow covered branches everywhere. When this kind of wet snow accumulates in amounts of several inches, then it’s a danger for tree limbs and branches. But this amount is perfect.

All in all, the perfect amount of snow, the perfect magical snow kingdom.

You know, when I said not to worry about January 6th, I meant it. But I also must add for clarification that these actions, no matter how fruitless, are extremely dangerous for our country. Make no mistake about it. We are on a precipice here, and I firmly believe that all those involved in this act of sedition should be made to pay for it.

And now we have the hour-long tape of OM trying to persuade the Georgia Secretary of State to ‘find some votes.’ Stunning. But not stunning. You can be sure that he’s had this conversation with other states. He’s a mobster. That’s how he deals with everything. He lies, he spins an alternate reality, he demands fealty, and he threatens. All of which happened in that call.

I despise him. I want him gone. But I want him to pay for his crimes. I want Mark Meadows to pay for his, as well, along with the elected representatives and senators who are protesting the vote of the American people.

And now, we’ll leave that and end on a gentler note.

We watched Elizabeth is Missing  on Masterpiece last night, starring the brilliant Glenda Jackson, who, after 23 years serving in Parliament, is back and better than ever. I read the novel it is based on when it first came out and reviewed it on this blog. The protagonist is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and it’s told from her point of view. Incredibly well written. This adaptation was superb. Jackson is fearless in her work. She really goes there, no holds barred. Don and I were stunned by her bravery and honesty. At the age of 84, she’s doing better work than ever.

Fingers and toes crossed for the Georgia run-off tomorrow.

Stay safe.

Happy Monday.

Good morning and Happy New Year!

I hope you had a peaceful New Year’s Eve. We did. We didn’t make it to midnight, nor did I expect to. But we made it until 11 pm. Yesterday, we took it easy. We’ll most likely do the same today. We’re going to have a FaceTime call with Rick and Doug later this morning.

The paperwhites in the den are in full bloom, so I get a lovely whiff of their scent as I sit here and blog. The tree is still up. It will most likely stay up until the end of the week. We take it on a day by day basis, but so far, 30 days after we brought it home, there has been no needles dropping and it’s doing very well. I can’t dispose of something that is still thriving. It’s not in my DNA.

Not to mention the fact that we love seeing it every day.

Tomorrow? Snow. 1 -3 inches during the day and another 1-3 inches overnight. We had rain and sleet last night but it’s going to warm up to 40 degrees today, so all that will be gone.

Still waiting on Don’s package. The good news is that it finally showed up in Springfield MA and stayed there for a few days. Then it moved to a neighboring town. It’s still not at our local post office, but I suspect it will be there by Monday.

We watched Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom  last night (on Netflix) and I must say it is the best movie I have seen in a very long time. Incredible ensemble work by the whole cast, including my friend Michael Potts as the bass player. Viola Davis is amazing. But the actor who took my breath away was the late Chadwick Boseman. Stunning, brave, layered, complex, luminous, heartbreaking – my heavens, that man could act. He transformed; I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. It’s clear he was very ill when he was filming. He had lost a lot of weight and was gaunt. But, somehow, he drew on some extraordinary power within and pulled off one of the most emotionally complex and brilliant performances I have ever seen. All Don and I could say afterward was the obvious; he was taken from us much, much too soon. His legacy is large, but if it was only this performance, this one piece of film, that legacy would be astounding. If you haven’t seen it, please watch. August Wilson, who wrote the play, was a masterly and much awarded playwright. He is no longer with us. I hope that somehow, somewhere, he saw Chadwick Bozeman’s performance.

18 days until sanity and honor and compassion and competence come back to the White House.

Stay safe.