You got a dictionary kicking around?

Our internet is no longer ass because it is now supplied by RCN instead of Verizon, almost exactly two months after I reluctantly signed up for Verizon because RCN had misinformed me that they did not cover our address. This whole chain of events has been something of a comedy of monopoly, but since it means I no longer have to leave the house to get my work done, I can live with it. Which is a good thing, because due to a holiday-related deadline I spent almost this entire weekend glued to my computer working and today was no exception.

I did take some time in the afternoon to call the office of Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and leave a message encouraging him to make—and live up to—the same offer of refuge as Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York and the California Legislature. I got the idea from a friend on Facebook, who had gotten it from a friend of hers. She was hoping for the telephone equivalent of a flash mob. It was a surprisingly nerve-wracking experience for three minutes of conversation with a tired-sounding aide. I paced around my living room talking about the examples set by the aforementioned states as well as the mayors of Chelsea, Cambridge, and Somerville who have all pledged to stand by their immigrant communities and their status as sanctuary cities and stressing that since Massachusetts' traditional reputation as a liberal hotbed (when it wasn't having blue laws and inspiring banned-in-Boston jokes) has demonstrably not inoculated it against the opportunistic expressions of racism etc. that we are seeing all over the country, it is all the more important that its governor be seen to take an official position and a progressive one; in short, I ran off at the mouth, but I did take care to mention that I am a taxpayer and registered voter and I have no interest in re-electing a governor of Massachusetts who supports, even through silence and inaction, the ideals and programs of Donald Trump. The aide said she would tell him. I hope she does. I hope she had to tell him about a lot of calls and some letters and e-mails and that they make a difference to him, if only when he contemplates the disappointing returns of his midterm election. In the meantime, I was pleased to learn that although Boston is not formally a sanctuary city [edit: see correction in comments], Mayor Walsh has spoken firmly in favor of its immigrant population: "If they come out and say we're building a wall around America, we are not doing that in Boston, Massachusetts." Right on. Someone has to make up for the Alien and Sedition Acts, John.

So that was one thing. Not a big thing. There will need to be others. First, sleep, and getting up in six hours to catch a train to New York City.

And at rallies in the night with all the torches burning bright

We are passing through Rhode Island, just leaving Kingston. The sky is overcast in a way that looks faintly sulfurous through the tinted windows of the quiet car; the trees flickering past the tracks are the autumn colors of construction paper. There are ghost-dusted birches and a field of cattails as dry gold as an old photograph. derspatchel is coding a piece of interactive fiction in the window seat and I am reading a very helpful script by kore for calling my congresspeople about Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon, because I am not in favor of a white nationalist strategizing for the government of the country I live in. The last thing we need is more people in power endorsed by the KKK. (The fact that we are facing any tells you how far the Overton window of reality has shifted since last week.) As of the last time I checked, Senator Ed Markey had already issued a press release and Senator Elizabeth Warren had posted a statement on Facebook and a related series of tweets. I can't see that Representative Michael E. Capuano has said anything either way, so as a resident of Somerville I'll be asking him to. The music I have stuck in my head is a setting of one of the songs from Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta (1989), the nightclub number about the sexiness of fascism. So if some blond and blue-eyed boy would care to teach me strength through joy—it's difficult to sing along to. But it's been in my head all morning. And when they say heil . . .

[edit] Since I made this post, Capuano has issued a statement about Bannon on Facebook. Going by his example and Warren's: I take it that public statements on social media now carry the same formal, official weight as a press release?