Friday, January 6, 2017

King Canute on Eleventh Avenue.

Ah, quiet.

The quiet of a Friday early. 

But the quiet of an empty office doesn't soothe me today.

Because it is a Friday early just before the end of hope. 

With ice and snow on the ground and virtually devoid of people.

A charlatan is about to assume the presidency. A know-nothing. A crude, lying, grabbing bully.

It's hard to think of the end of America, the end of what Lincoln called "the last, best hope of earth."

Yet, every morning as I eat my news and my breakfast, I hear dreams dying. I hear roughness, and bluster, and mean-ness ascendant. 

It chokes me.

I find it hard to care about some transgression at work. Some remark that makes an ad a little worse.

Of course we fight it.

Like King Canute, in everything we do, we try to hold back the tide.

And maybe that's the key.

Maybe like Canute, all we can do is try our best.

Our best to be good people.

To fight for what we believe in, at home, at work, out in the world.

To keep on howling at the moon, and the world's stupidities, though no one seems to hear.

The tide, as Canute demonstrated back in the 13th Century, will keep coming in.

We can't do anything about it.

All we can do is be ourselves.

Say no.

This will not stand.

And I will.



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