היטלערן ווארפט עס אין היץ און קעלט און ער קאָן אונז קושן נאָר אין תּכת

I was woken shortly after noon by a spam call. It wanted to tell me there was a problem with the warranty of my nonexistent car. When I hung up on the spam, I saw that I had messages waiting from family and friends. They wanted to tell me Biden had won the election.

It does feel like the end of a war. Which means that what's ahead is the hard work of rebuilding—and building on, not merely settling for what we accepted once as the status quo. Too much of our government has still turned out to be three gentlemen's handshakes in a trenchcoat. Let's not do Reconstruction 2.0. Also we still have a plague.

But there is a new tree planted in the sidewalk out front of our apartment and I can think about a future that is not merely the endurance or resistance of destruction.

Just for the change, I think repairing things could be fun.

Till tyrants bow to the people's dream

When I dressed after hearing the news, I put on the T-shirt I had worn to vote four years ago. selkie asked for evidence of snazzy neckerchief:



The mail brought me refrigerator magnets from minoanmiss and a letter and bookmark from yhlee. Chorus rehearsal was singing for the first time in months if not years, not the songs of resistance in the teeth of the wolf, but songs of change. I do not apologize for any emotions you may experience on listening or singing along to Jean Rohe's "Arise! Arise!"

I regret only that we don't have the conch here, so that I couldn't boom it out like on New Year's. Maybe when the man in the White House leaves the White House. It's supposed to be good for seeing evil spirits on their way.