January 6, 2021

Clarity of a journal entry from three years ago. An unexpected post, actually.

January 6, 2021 stands out, actually surprising me with the clarity and memory of a journal entry. I figured it’d be worth sharing. I’m actually surprised I feel compelled to share it.

Five days before that day, I had just quit regular working life, though I had plans that, for all intents and purposes, sure looked more like a job switch rather than a retreat into a quiet retirement. It was cool, and North Carolina weather forecasts called for chance of “wintry mix,” which could be anything from cold rain, freezing rain, annoying slush to heavy wet snow.

I had begun the restoration of an old chair that Bond Girl Bride had rescued from a junk shop near Sewannee, Tennessee, where my youngest child had studied “atop the mountain in the Domain” of the University of the South. The chair had rested and gathered dust for seven years or so. It was time to get it back into service.

I had also started what I’d called “disciplined imagery and narrative during the first month of new and old life” — a daily journal and (I’d hoped) 36 photographs taken every day. The project recalled poet Bernadette Mayer’s Memory, which she had begun fifty years before.

It turned out that I couldn’t muster 36 pictures a day as regularly as Bernadette, and my accounts of life in January 2021 are, well, usually, overwhelmingly boring. But it was a good effort for the time. (You can see it here.)

Bond Girl Bride was at the barn. I was in the garage repairing a dismantled old chair.

It was a quiet January day, in the midst of a pandemic and before vaccines became available.

Then the day took a turn. From my journal entry:

In mid-afternoon, I checked my email from the garage, and got a rather cryptic message from Duke about tweeting and social media use during the afternoon, given what was happening in Washington. What’s that all about, I wondered, and I checked in on the web only to see the beginnings of the insurrection. That kinda put a stop to everything on the chair, and I texted a couple of snapshots from the TV so that Arlene was aware. She was at the barn tending things.

Arlene hustled with her chores and joined me in the garage, where we watched the tragedy unfold. It was clear, so very clear, that this was no lawful affair. No expression of patriotism or democratic spirit, despite what some Presidential candidates might say. The lie that underlay it was clear and false and malevolent, even though people who should know better have adorned falsehood with such colorful embroidery in hopes that its core evil might be hidden.

It was also clear to me and BGB that the day would become a turning point.

I drew my conclusion on January 6, 2021, and it’s a sound one today:

This is a day that will scar US history. We can hope — and work energetically — to ensure that the scar does not debilitate our republic. One of the first things to do will be to call the outrage what it was: an insurrection, a riot, a coup attempt, a Trumpish Putsch. And then, we need to make sure that the outrage has consequences for the people who executed it and who led it.

That’s a beginning to repair the damage as we piece together a better nation.

Not just repair damage. Rather renew and create a better nation.