Where did we leave off? It was nine days before the inauguration, and I was wondering if there was any chance that my marriage could be legally undone during the next four years. Well, about a week ago, the Idaho state House petitioned the Supreme Court to reconsider Obergefell v. Hodges, so that’s on the table now. This doesn’t seem to be where the administration’s immediate attention lies, however. It’s more interested in firing as many federal employees as possible, giving Elon Musk access to your personal financial information, persecuting trans people and immigrants, and starting trade wars. (Sorry, Canadian friends!). This isn’t to say it won’t get around to it eventually. After all, it’s only been two weeks.
Meanwhile, as of several days ago, you can’t get a passport with an X (non-binary) gender marker anymore. This directly affects North because they need to renew their passport. It may be complicated to get a passport at all now because their Maryland state identification and their reissued birth certificate both have an X marker, and according to what North’s heard, it might be necessary to change one or both back to F to proceed with the passport. We are all upset about this.
Despite the gravity of the political situation, I have not been as active in protesting as I was this time eight years ago. By early February 2017, I’d been to about a half dozen protests. This year I’ve been to one (more about that later). There have been fewer to attend, but I didn’t go to the ACLU’s People’s March two days before the inauguration, didn’t even think seriously about going, even though I donate to the ACLU. It’s hard not to feel discouraged and like your actions don’t matter.
Sometimes I feel guilty about this. But sometimes I think I’m just pacing myself. We protested all through the first Trump administration, but never at the rate that we did between November 2016 and February 2017. This is a marathon, not a sprint. I know that. Being more selective doesn’t have to mean we’re giving up.
Inauguration/MLK Weekend
Speaking of slogs, the weekend of the inauguration already feels like a very long time ago, but I feel the need to mention how we spent it, in case I wonder later. This nicest thing about it was that Beth and I spent time together each of the three days. Saturday, we had a mini date and got coffee, hot chocolate, and chocolate chip cookies at Koma. Sunday, we hung around the house together while Noah was at his weekly game event, talking a lot, and Monday we went to see the Dylan biopic. I’d hoped to time it so that we were in the theater during the exact moment of transfer of power, but there was no convenient showing for that. Still, it was surprising how successfully I managed to block what was happening from my thoughts. (Mind you, this was temporary. It’s never far from my mind now.)
That was also MLK weekend, as I’m sure you remember. We’d been thinking of doing a service project, but more than one local creek cleanup (our default MLK day project) was cancelled because of cold and icy conditions. (January was unusually cold this year. It took until the very end of the month for the snow that fell the first week to mostly melt.) On Monday, when it became clear we weren’t doing the creek clean-up, I looked into a multi-organization service event at the Silver Spring Civic Center where we gave blood one year but discovered it had already happened the two days previous. Next, I went to the website of a food bank where we’d volunteered many years ago, but it was closed for the holiday, and I don’t think you can’t show up without registering ahead of time anyway. So, we did not volunteer that day. I still consider the weekend well spent and a kind of self-care.
(Does baking count as self-care? In addition to our anniversary cake, in the past few weeks I’ve made almond flour-banana walnut muffins and a poppyseed loaf. Plus, Noah and I collaborated on rye muffins and he’s planning to make a chocolate sour cream Bundt cake today.)
The Day After
I had a dentist appointment the day after the inauguration. It wasn’t a routine visit; I was having pain in one of my molars. My dentist’s office is on Capitol Hill, and I hadn’t fully considered what it would be like to be down there on that particular Tuesday morning.
The first thing I noticed on exiting the Metro at Union Station was that the flags were back at half-mast for President Carter after Trump’s tantrum led them to be raised the day before. The second thing I noticed was fencing and barriers everywhere. It turned my normally straightforward route to the dentist into a frustrating series of detours and retracing of steps. The third thing I noticed was the presence of swarms of people in MAGA and commemorative inauguration gear. Of course, it made sense out-of-towners would stick around for a few days and do some sightseeing. But the first few times I saw them, I felt a visceral recoiling, like someone had kicked me in the gut. It was as if they were signaling with their stupid hats, scarves, and sweatshirts that they did not mean my family, and especially my youngest child, well. That’s not a good feeling.
Anyway, turns out I need a root canal.
Demonstration
Last Tuesday, Beth and I went to the White House to protest the freeze on federal grants. The protest was very last minute—the call went out only a few hours before five p.m. when the freeze was scheduled to take effect. We left the house around 4:15, drove to the Metro, and we were at the meeting stop, about a block from the White House, in front of the Eisenhower Building just before five. It was a small but spirited group, probably about fifty people when we got there, but it grew to about a hundred over the course of an hour or so. I am in this photo on the PBS website. I’m in the red hoodie. You can’t read it, but I was holding a sign about clean air someone from an environmental group gave me.
Other people had hand-lettered signs reading: “The Felon is Stealing Our Science Grants,” “Release Federal Funds. Keep America Safe and Healthy,” “Unfreeze the Federal Funds Now,” and a good general purpose one: “Stand Up. Fight Back.” At least a dozen people had American flags. There were two speakers who talked about the impact of the federal freeze on the environment, health and science, education, poverty, and more issues than I can remember because that’s the point. Federal grants are far-reaching. They affect nearly everything.
We moved about a half block closer the White House, as close as you can get with the barriers. The same two speakers spoke again. One told us not to be discouraged by the modest size of the crowd because it was impressive for a hasty effort and he said, “This is enough to start.”
There was a lot of chanting. Beth said that was why she wanted to go—she thought it might be cathartic. There was my old favorite, the call and response “Tell me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like.” (It has a nice rhythm.) But apparently now at these kinds of events we now also yell, “No kings!” and “Rule of law!” This is the current baseline. There were also a few rounds of “F—- Trump!” I said later I would have preferred a more policy-based chant, but Beth said she found it satisfying.
While most of the Secret Service agents who were standing by the barriers looked stoic, I noticed a couple were smiling. I could not tell if they were genuine smiles of support or smirks. I suppose it could have been either (or one of each). They are government employees, too, after all.
When it was over, we took Metro home. The Red Line was single-tracking and we had to wait so long for a train that I had time to read one of Allison’s very comprehensive Year in Review book review posts (4-star horror) on the train platform. When we got home, Noah had made the kidney bean, cheese, apple, and tomato casserole I’d been planning to make. It was good to come home to hot food.
We found out later that night that a federal judge had blocked the freeze. After a second one did the same thing, the White House rescinded the order. They may try it again later, with a less scattershot approach, but for now we will take the win.
The next day and rest of the week, we were back at work. I’ve been working on a long-term project about household toxins and I was starting to write the chapter on water pollution. I used a lot of government sources for this—the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey. It occurred to me to wonder if these sources will still be available online when I finish, at the rate information is already disappearing from government websites. Like gay marriage, environmental reports don’t seem to be a first-priority target, but it’s going to be a long four years. We need to be prepared for anything.
And Tuesday afternoon, Beth and I will be back in D.C., protesting outside the Treasury building.