Take A Deep Breath

January 13, 2021

Take a Deep Breath

The start of the new year had many people feeling hopeful with the prospect of getting the Covid-19 pandemic somehow under control with the new vaccines being distributed and the hope that perhaps the new administration in the White House might bring about some relief from the constant divisiveness and anger that seems to permeate our culture. Sadly only six days in, those hopes seem faraway as the country has seen a crisis unlike any in its history with the treasonous insurrection that was instigated by President Trump and carried out by his most heinous followers as they attacked and overran the US Capital.

The Congress was in session to go through the typically benign process of approving the final certification of the election results. There was some movement among a few Republican lawmakers to stop or slow the approval and more argument than usual due to the dissatisfaction with the results and the unfounded claim that there had been widespread election fraud and that the election had been stolen by Trump and his supporters, but the result was never in doubt.

Trump took advantage of what he perceived as the last chance to maintain power by calling for a large protest in Washington DC during the Congressional session. The protest drew all of the worst element of his supporters, white power supporters, proud boys, crazy militias and more and the day featured any number of misguided speakers who riled the angry mob into a frenzy before President Trump spoke and basically tacitly approved and instigated an assault on the US Capital that his twisted minions were all too happy to carry out.

The resulting mob takeover of the Capital was broadcast live and was a sickening display of the very worst of America. Five people died as the Congress and Senate cowered in fear while the Capital Police and other security were totally overwhelmed and ineffective. The tepid response by authorities at the time was heartbreaking and infuriating but I think the plans completely backfired as public opinion even among many Republicans was swift and decisive as people were aghast at what occurred. Even as I am writing this, the Congress is debating impeaching the President for an unprecedented second time.

If that was not awful enough, the Coronavirus continues to spread in record numbers almost every day. There are currently 22,557.240 confirmed cases in the United States with a tragic 381,336 deaths to date. In Monroe County the number of cases has grown to 4,737 with 2,432 of those being in Key West and 36 deaths so far. On top of those staggering figures, the roll-out of the vaccines has been an unmitigated disaster and only a tiny percentage of the population had even received the first of the two doses needed. Why and how we might have expected anything different as it has been a complete mess throughout the pandemic.

So what did Kathy and I do in response to all this bad news. Well ,much of the past two weeks has been spent by me taking down our Christmas display, which gets more massive and thus more time consuming every year. But in addition to that, we spent a wonderful afternoon driving up to Sammy’s Creek Landing on Sugarloaf Key to see the rare American Flamingo that has been there since the first of the year.

This is the second Flamingo we have seen in the Keys in the past year, a pretty rare occurrence. The other was up the Keys last summer. This one was pretty far out in the water, so I had to be content with some somewhat blurry long lens photos, but it was still exciting to see and more wonderful just to be out in a beautiful quiet and wonderful little nature park that we had never been to. It is just a perfect little pocket park and it was perfect to take our minds off the current state of affairs.

Thankfully, there is plenty of time for 2021 to turn around and head in a more positive direction. Hopefully we can get through the inauguration next week without any additional violence and turmoil and start some positive change that is so needed. In the meantime, Kathy and I are continuing to mostly hunker down only venturing out to go to work for the most part or to go and see rare birds.