November 4, 2020
Twas the Night after Voting Day
We slept fitfully last night, with visions of sugar plums, a Blue Wave, a Green New Deal, the new great states of Puerto Rico and Washington D.C, and an expanded Supreme Court no longer dancing in our heads. In their place were nightmarish images of Four More Years and the dismal realization that about half of our country voted for the psychopath. Every hour or so I wake up, reach for the iPad, and doom-scroll through incomplete election results hoping for evidence of a miracle in the making.
Things look a bit more hopeful this morning, but it’s clear that a resolution is still many hours, perhaps days away. Each in our own way, Rocky and I leave the apartment seeking distraction for a few hours while waiting for the legion of counters to Count Every Vote.
Autumn Leaves
Rachael, as ever the more sensible half of Team Anderson, rolls her Bike Friday out the door for a ride down to Oregon City (she’s riding the BF because the Straggler is in the shop for a badly needed tune-up). Anticipating a kaleidoscope of autumn colors, she mounts her GoPro before leaving. She returns 40 miles later with a memory card filled with good footage, a clearer head, and a flat tire for me to repair.
Video sound track: Witchi-Tai-To, by Oregon
A Tale of One City
It was the worst of times, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Darkness, it was the winter of despair, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct the other way.
What the Dickens? Where’s the better half of that quote?
I should have gone biking with Rachael. Instead, I went out for coffee, dropped my Bike Friday off at our bike locker, and then walked back through downtown gloomily cataloguing images of our once beautiful city - nearly empty streets, with the faces of the few people that are about half-hidden behind their Covid masks; block after block of concealed office and store fronts, their windows and doors shielded by plywood; and nooks and alleys blighted by the unsightly camps of the city’s unfortunate army of the homeless. I’m sorry, but on this most most depressing of days it’s hard to see where it’s the best of times anywhere right now. At least not in one city, our city, Portland. Here’s how it looks to me today, in the winter of our discontent while we wait to see the outcome of the election and whatever terrible aftermath may ensue.
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We both feel for you and more than anything hope that once this ugly election is behind you there will be healing
Tricia and Ken
4 years ago
4 years ago
Most likely, Grampies will never actually enter the US again. But I must say, the last time on the way to Seattle and walking in a Walmart it felt much more like a Rainbow Coalition than a right wing dictatorship. Maybe we can all just cling to the very narrow blue rim down the coast. So I just pulled "Bicycling the Pacific Coast" by Spring and Kirkendall off the shelf and blew away the dust.
4 years ago
4 years ago
4 years ago
4 years ago
Hopefully we will all* be able to get back to the basics of being decent human beings: be kind, be helpful, be grateful.
*OK. Maybe "all" is overly optimistic. But I like to believe that most people are inherently good.
4 years ago
4 years ago
We had enough confidence to open a bottle of champagne
4 years ago
3 years ago