The rim of the world

My daughter, my niece and I went to Temple Court on Friday evening, and had a rather fancy dining experience under the auspices of New York Restaurant week. We chose the date because it was my mother's birthday, grandmother to these two beauties, and when the server asked were we celebrating anything special, we told him yes, my mother, their grandmother's birthday. And so he placed a lit candle on each of our dessert plates and we took a moment to be grateful that Lady Gloria had been ours in this life. and to imagine her playing bridge and laughing and being generally joyful with my dad and other loved ones in the next place.

As we all now know, the executive orders are coming fast and furious from the new regime, every morning a new rolling back of freedoms and privileges we took for granted. Inspector generals fired. Native Americans rounded up and declared non-citizens. All funding for medical research cancelled. All federal DEI programs abolished. All foreign aid frozen. I can't possibly catalogue it all here. But since I also can't seem to stop myself from bearing witness, I think it wise to make this space more private. I know the protection of that is leaky at best, but maybe it's something. Please email me (see previous post) if you want to come inside, out of the elements, when I close the door. 

I took an Uber to our dinner date last Friday. I asked the driver if he thought New York City's recently implemented congestion pricing was having the desired effect of thinning traffic in mid- and downtown. He said for sure it was, and I could see he was right, because in that part of the city you could sit for half an hour on a single block, watching the lights change ten or more times, unable to move an inch because of traffic blocking the box. On Friday, however, we sailed right through every light, sallied easily down the narrowest side streets, and then my Uber driver said, apropos of nothing, "The new president is going to fix everything," to which I replied drily, "Not holding my breath, not a fan." Later, recalling the exchange, I felt suddenly chilled. That driver has my name and address and all my details. We are in an era of people being invited to snitch on other people, and what if he was a plant for just such an operaton? You see where my mind has gone? This is certainly not okay.

Toni Morrison wrote a letter to girls and women in the May 1985 issue of Essence magazine, and I am reposting a portion of it here, for my daughter, for my nieces, for all the women in this world I love, and all the women in this world who deserve to be loved well, who should not need a DEI program to ensure their ability to participate in the rights and privileges of their homeland, their world.