Dawn over Oakland, CA, January 2017.

It’s a new day, and way too many of us still feel super disoriented.  After “What the heck?!” or other synonyms for “heck,” we many of us are turning to “What to do?” Or just plain doing, in multiple directions, every day, with a nagging sense of disorientation. Herewith I offer the best answer I can muster under the circumstances, in two parts: What to do? Part 1: Macro, today; and What to do? Part 2: Micro, tomorrow.

[Spoiler alert: 1. Digest the fact, and then find a way to cultivate protracted intolerance that we are indeed in circumstances which are not normal, and which require  of us the exceptional. 2. Act, as close to daily as you can, in ways you know you act best, and trust that we are many, and that self-care must always come before burn out, because we need all of us to stay in this for the long haul.]

Now to the macro: it feels nearly impossible to digest this wombat (picture it whole, in our bellies, and we’re shocked snakes with a big lump in our middles, “Don’t tread on me” tattooed somewheres on our skins). I, like so many of you, initially wondered, after the Trump/Pence installation: “It couldn’t be as bad as our worst nightmares, could it?”

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Thanks to the fortuitous location of the annual National LGBTQ Task Force Creating Change conference, I find myself in Philadelphia, birthplace of American democracy, on the day this struggling, noble experiment will take arguably its greatest body blow.

(Last night in a call to my kids I said that today democracy would be developing the biggest zit in its 240-year US history*, and my Know It All Brother-In-Law later quipped that such a statement was an insult to zits world-wide.)

I could go on about how appalling it is that we’ll be inaugurating someone so flagrantly derisive or ignorant of so many fundamental elements of our system of government. But by now that would be akin to my pointing out how wet it is in the midst of a monsoon.  That’s established; we need no more new evidence; there’s nothing further much to add by enumerating Trump’s appallingness, again.

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I “collect” specialized CA licence plates, and this one remains my favorite.

My sister-in-law, with whom I co-house, is a fundraiser for Democratic, pro-choice, women candidates. So naturally, elections in general are big deals in her house. And an election featuring the first-ever Democratic, pro-choice, woman presidential candidate? Well. She plastered an “I’m ready for Hillary!” sticker on the bumper of her electric vehicle days after Barak Obama was elected to a second term. If there were an “I was frickin’ born ready for Hillary!” sticker, that would have been on the bumper instead.

Out of love for her, the Bernie Sanders advocates in her house did not cover over it with a “Feel the Bern” sticker. And though dinner table conversation was lively during the run-up to the primaries, once Hillary was the party nominee, the whole family was all-in. My brother-in-law made it a point to connect with local campaign offices whenever his work took him out of state. And when he and their son went on a Northeastern college tour, they spent nearly as much time walking precincts as they did touring campuses.

For each of the presidential elections that have taken place during the near-dozen years we’ve co-housed together, her household has hosted a huge election-night watch party. In addition to tasty food and drink, the parties feature multiple screens in multiple rooms, each carrying a different news organizations’ live coverage. My brother-in-law (whom I have lovingly dubbed in these pages my Know-It-All-Brother-In-Law, and yes, the shoe fits) rigs up a custom spreadsheet á la David Wasserman’s epic 2016 National Popular Vote Tracker.  This past November’s spreadsheet included results for the 2008 and 2012 elections, against which he plotted each state’s results as they came in.

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