I woke this morning to news of Rev. Raphael Warnock’s win in Georgia, and thought Georgia! I’m grateful for Georgia! News later in the day cemented that feeling when Jon Ossoff was declared a new US Senator as well. This good news for our compassionate new president, and my intention to write more about how these remarkable wins came about in George, were quickly eclipsed by news of insurgents storming the US Capitol building. Hours later, the current president has yet to call on his minions to stand down. The desks and belongings of hundreds of our duly elected leaders have been violated by an unruly mob, while our Congress huddles in a single room during a pandemic. Disgraceful.

I’m grateful for the National Guard and the Capitol Police, for a Free Press, and for courageous American patriots everywhere who are calling out this siege of the Capitol for what it is: the direct result of an unhinged, maniacal, malignant narcissist in the White House, and his deluded, seditious coterie. Any death, injury, or financial loss that comes out of this chaos today weighs unequivocally on the current president’s karma. I’d say ‘conscience’ but he doesn’t have one. As a proud American patriot of immigrant ancestors, who have served in the US military in an unbroken line of generations since there wasn’t a United States (i.e., I am a Daughter of the American Revolution), I have a lot more to say about patriotism, what it really is and what it really isn’t, but now’s not the time.

I’m also grateful today for the two young redtail hawks who circled low overhead as I hung out laundry, for the US-made Staber washing machine that has served me for fifteen years letting me do my wash at home instead of having to go out to a laundromat, and for the Breezecatcher revolving laundry line made in Dublin that I’ve been using long enough to need to restring it with a new cable, shipped from Dublin. I’m grateful that I have the discernment to turn off the television after hearing enough, and turn my attention to the great outdoors.