It’s the day after the inauguration. The parties are over. The champagne flutes put away. The streets are clear. And twenty six executive orders, twelve memoranda, and four proclamations were issued from the White House making it clear that the regime has changed. Some are performative. Some are clearly illegal. Some are unconstitutional (unless the Supreme Court decides to continue to throw stare decisis out with yesterday’s slops). The overall pattern appears to be to try and repudiate Biden era policies, promote somewhat fanciful ideas developed mainly as counternarratives to the conventional, and punish transgender individuals and immigrants simply for existing. Will this pace continue? Will there be more and more unwelcome announcements such as the pardoning of the violent felons among the January 6th rioters? Almost certainly.
Masha Gessen, the Russian-American journalist who has documented sociological trends in Russia for years under the rising Putin autocracy, understood the turning point that the first election of Mr. Trump represented and the parallels between what had happened in Russia and what was happening in the USA. Her essay, ‘Autocracy – Rules for Survival’ was published in November 2016 shortly after the election and I go back and reread it every year or so when the news feels particularly dire. It’s a reminder of what those of us who do not agree with the autocratic turn the country is taking, must do to maintain and not be seduced into complacency. If you haven’t read it, it’s easily available on line.
One of the more performative executive orders, the one placing a moratorium of ninety days on all federal hiring, is causing a major headache in my life. The federal hiring system is byzantine beyond belief and getting timely hires onboarded is a challenge. I have needed a nurse practitioner to help with my rural VA house calls for some time. Over a year ago, we identified the right candidate have gone under, over, and around multiple bureaucratic hurdles and her formal letter of offer was due to come out next week. Of course everything is now on moratorium. I am not happy. There may be some ways around the blockade regarding emergent patient care issues but the way forward has not yet become clear. Just one more thing that’s pushing me towards the exits as soon as is practical.
There has been one major change on the domestic front. Ghost cat Edward appears to have undergone a personality transplant of some sort. This past Friday evening, about 11 PM, he emerged from hiding, stalked into my bedroom, leapt on the bed, settled himself in my lad and began to immediately demand pets and snuggles. Ever since, he has become a pest, leaping on me when I’m trying to work, attacking my laptop while I’m typing, investigating my dinner plate. I’ve decided I had simply mischaracterized him. He’s not a ghost cat, he’s a poltergeist cat. Binx seems to be as puzzled as I at the rapid change in behavior and I have no idea what has triggered it. I’m thinking perhaps Edward has been observing Binx or that they have been communicating in whatever ways cats do and Edward has finally learned how to be a cat. He seems to be getting better at it. He’s figured out he needs to keep his claws sheathed when making demands unless he wants free flying lessons. It’s sort of funny watching the two cats together. Binx is relatively large and Edward is quite small, about five pounds, all black with gold eyes and seems to have stepped out of T. S. Eliot’s Mr. Mistoffeles poem.
The New Orleans comedy play reading I was part of this past weekend went quite well with relatively little rehearsal commitment. My part wasn’t difficult and I did figure out how to get most of my laughs. I had a number of very talented castmates and I found that the project was a bit of a master class in improving comic timing. I have a symphony concert in two weeks and then that completes the music/theater career for a while. It’s OK. I have to put a bunch of time and energy into writing. I’m working on a fifth anniversary edition of The Accidental Plague Diaries with commentary from present self back to past self plus trying to complete sections of the new book on Covid change, tentatively entitled The Fourth Horseman. With luck, the back will be broken on all of that by mid April.
The weather is weird. We are in the midst of a hard freeze but have had no snow, but there have been blizzard conditions several hundred miles south of us on the gulf beaches. Go figure. I don’t have any outdoor activity planned for the next few weeks so it can do what it wants out there.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 