Still marked by prints in the dust in the hallways and the passing of distant trains

[sovay]

A year on and the government is shut down; as I waited for a bus in Davis Square, I saw protesters flocking to the T with familiar hats and signs, heading to the next women's march. I am not at the march because I am getting ready to head to Providence for tonight's reading, but I hope it's jam-packed and I hope the protests keep coming. I'm glad to see this anniversary. I don't like the idea that we have been battered numb or complacent, especially when every day I check the news and see something else like the fact that we now have a "Conscience and Religious Freedom Division" of HHS. Dissent is heartening; I hope it's making a difference. We're not a crater of radioactive dust or a barbed-wire partition of camps and I appreciate both of these things, but I worry more these days about the dystopia I can't see.

Dorothy Malone has died. She was ninety-three; she was landscape. As it happens, she's in the cast of a movie I have out from the library right now, but first I might just watch that scene from The Big Sleep (1946) again. If you interested her vaguely, you were doing better than the devotion of many a star.

I highly recommend this essay by Masha Gessen about choice and identity: "To Be, or Not to Be."

Comments

[muccamukk]

Thanks for the link to the Gessen essay. I'm going to find that book about their grans.

[shewhomust]

I look forward to the creation of a department that upholds the right of, say, immigration officials to act in accordance with their conscience and religious beliefs. And military personnel. And whistle blowers...

The list is endless, really.

[strange_complex]

Three cheers for all the protestors, and solidarity to all of you living through it - solidarity which is especially heart-felt from a nation where we seem equally hell-bent on our own self-destruction. :-( I hope we all find ourselves living in a world where we can hardly imagine how it all happened far sooner than we can currently envisage.

[skygiants]

I made it to the back half of the women's march anniversary rally and was pleased to see that it was still extremely well-populated, and the entire three blocks from Harvard to the rally location was full of signs and pink hats.

[teenybuffalo]

I was there with two friends, met a third, and spent the time from about 1:00 to 3:30 on the Cambridge Common. It was about the right size for the crowd, which I'd say filled it from edge to edge at the most crowded time. Tons of pussy hats and intelligent and angry signs.

The speakers were good; I found them inspiring and think remembering them will refresh my purposes and help me keep finding things to do. Some of the audience had a hard time hearing, and broke off to do chants together on the opposite corner of the common for a while out of frustration. I'm glad my companions and I stuck around, as the last two speakers in the line-up kept it short, moving, and punchy; the women who closed the talks were evidently very used to public speaking, and regained everyone's attention.

It's said that the march organizers will be posting transcripts of all the speeches online; I haven't checked this out yet, but if they do, I firmly recommend Maura Healey plus the last two speakers. And then I came home and have zonked out for the rest of the evening.

Hope the reading is currently going great.

[drwex]

Thanks for the essay link. Very interesting.