2017 in Review, 1 of 3

Retirement leaves you with a lot of time to do nothing, as your friends from the workforce melt away.    But my world took a seminal change on January 20th while I listened in growing disbelief to the dystopian inaugural address of the new president--what was this bombastic fraud, this faux president, this Russian plant, talking about?  American Carnage?  Where?  Oh, I got it finally--he meant going forward.  Protest marches, my first in 45 years, ensued for the following three weekends, and more to come undoubtedly, as I and others did our best to protect our sacred democratic institutions from these destructive bomb-throwers and truth-levelers.  (The new line in the sand?)

Perhaps February was spent in a funk.  I watched a lot of CNN and MSNBC.  Something new and concerning or infuriating occurred every waking hour, it seemed.  I found it impossible to watch a Kellyanne Conway interview as she does not answer a single question, she only turns it into an opportunity to launch sideways into some unrelated anti-democratic screed and never relinquish the platform.  I thought Sean Spicer was almost equally unwatchable, but now in the days of the unprincipled lyin' Sarah Huxabee Sanders, I pine for him.  I do remember that the greatest football game ever was played sometime during this month, Super Bowl 51, where the Patriots came up off the mat when down 28-3 midway through the 3d quarter and prevailed in OT, 34-28.  Unbelievable.  The Patriots showed that there is hope for patriots, no matter how dark it looks.  (A patriot stands watch over Clarendon.)

In March a couple of friends and persons important to me professionally passed on, one older and one younger.  I saw one on her last night, after many years of no contact, and the other one's passing was a shock.  We celebrated their lives and said our goodbyes to these two fine people at two separate wakes amidst laughter and tears.  But as always, nature rewarded us with its annual display of resilient life in DC with the blooming of the cherry blossoms.  (A goose serenely glides along in the Tidal Basin with its back bejeweled with cherry blossom petals.)

April represented to me, as a history major, the centennial of America's entrance into WWI and pathway to global greatness, and a friend and I ran around DC to see as many of the WWI monuments as we could find, like the Pershing statue downtown and the cardboard cutout doughboy temporarily outside the Navy Memorial at the time.  There were other historical runs around the District later this month visiting sites associated with the end of the Civil War in April of 1861, like the Surratt Boarding House where the Lincoln assassination plot was hatched and the Ford Theatre where President Lincoln was shot.  And, of course, there was a resistance march, the Science Rally.  (Statue of Homeless Jesus downtown outside a church.  If you look instead of looking away, you'll see that the humble soul without possessions has pierced feet.)