I'm seeing something I like around the Intertubes today: normalcy.
FB friends are posting cute cat pix. Bands are plugging their gigs. Daily Kos diarists are excoriating the president for betraying the Progressive base.
Oh, there's a good number of Gandhi and Lennon quotes, links to morning-after pieces, attaboys for first responders and, yes, even the stray "Hmm, curious" CT specials among some of my more Truth-y friends.
But a lot more garden pix and "what I'm cooking for lunch" updates.
I like that.
We know what to do.
And, something the graceless stumblemouth who last occupied the White House never understood, we know without being told. We've been here and worse before.
"What are you talking about? You kids don't know nothing. I lived through world war and a Depression!"
Yeah, well, so have we, pretty much. Pretty recently, too.
And terror attacks. And corrupt governments. And whole cities drowned by bad engineering.
After that last one, my neighbor D snuck into the city to check on her house. She was appalled and dispirited. Everywhere around the hood was a grey-brown post-apocalyptic nightmare. Nothing was right and nothing seemed like it would ever be right again.
Before leaving town, she went down to the Quarter, just to see people, see an open business, even if it was a strip club.
In front of Arnaud's restaurant, a couple dressed in formal wear had set up a card table, covered with a linen tablecloth and two place settings, on which they'd laid out a spread of MREs and bottled water.
"That's when I knew we were going to be alright."
If I had dough, I'd go shopping today. Or to Disney World. Or not. Maybe just post a cat pic.
Not because anybody told me to. It's just what we do.
Addendum: Writing this got me thinking about the Timbuk3 song, "Dis***land Was Made for You and Me," which led me to aemelnick's flat out brilliant video of same.
I first heard the song in April of 1992, in a near-empty club.
The band, touring behind the "Big Shot in the Dark" album, had picked the wrong time to hit New Orleans. During Jazz Fest, people want to hear old blues guys they've never heard of, not odd pop bands from Austin.
A friend, who had just moved to town from L.A., was with me, really freaked out. The riots were going full strength and the televisions around the walls of the club flashed images of fire and destruction in her home town. "It feels so weird to be here, dancing in the middle of all this," she said. "What else are you gonna do?" I asked.
And, as if on cue, the band struck up this number.