He stopped by for a chat and some hard cider after the inauguration. He’s sending me some mittens.

It’s been a long time since many people in my neighborhood have flown the red, white, and blue, thinking it might indicate that they supported a regime they did not.

Today as I walked Roxie around my neighborhood, this is what I saw just around my block:

 “You’re a grand old flag

You’re a high-flying flag

And forever in peace may you wave

You’re the emblem ofThe land I love

The home of the free and the brave

Ev’ry heart beats true

Under red, white and blue

Where there’s never a boast or brag

But should old acquaintance be forgot

Keep your eye on the grand old flag.”

I thought I would want to post some of my own words here on this Inauguration Day. But no.

It was all completely said. By poets, vocalists, clergy, and duly elected officials.

I really never thought about this holiday until a few years ago when I began to coach refugees and immigrants applying for citizenship. There were 100 questions they had to be able to answer. One was to name three federal holidays I refused just to drill them on the answers and always insisted on their knowing reasons and contexts.

No surprise that these “foreigners” were much more interest in learning about MLK than about Memorial Day. Like Dr. King, they were in a minority group too.

Not only had I never thought much about what we honor on the third Monday in January, I realized that I had glossed over it’s importance.

I am astounded to think back to 1963 when Dr. King made his “I have a Dream” speech. I was a sophomore in college, taking a fascinating US Government class, and there was no mention of it in class. I was totally unaware.

Do I blame this on the place, way out in the Texas Panhandle, at a very large state university?Do I blame it on the professor, a brilliant young lecturer? Do I blame myself? Do I blame the racist, fundamentalist milieu that was Lubbock, Texas, at that time? A college campus should have been a community apart. I remember hearing nothing about it.

Then, many years later when I was teaching at an Indian boarding high school, I had a student, Lillian Kobuk, from a remote Alaskan village. Lillian was one of the most interesting people I have ever known. MLK day at a boarding school was not a holiday. In class, never mind that it was an English class, the students were very interested in talking about MLK. They were from a persecuted minority like Dr. King so they felt closely related to him and his plight.

In our discussion Lillian asked, ” So you were alive when Matin Luther King was alive? Wow!”

She had no concept of periods of time. And I had no concept of being alive concurrent with King and what that should mean. A serious epiphany.

One of the most memorable activities I participated in in this regard was showing the film Selma to my Citizenship class. At that time, my class was made up of only Latinos, a very unusual occurrence. ( I often had Russians, Vietnamese, and Arabic speakers.) I asked whether they wanted to watch it in English with Spanish subtitles of visa versa. They chose English with Spanish and asked to re-wind so many times to discuss something that it took four class periods to view the whole thing. Another epiphany

Nowadays, this holiday is supposed to be commemorated by doing volunteer service. In the past, I have participated doing such things as collecting litter from my kayak on the river and gardening at the historic cemetery down the street. My only volunteer work at present is wearing a mask and staying home as much as possible.

Actually, I think I’ll watch Selma.

If you didn’t memorize that in school, learn it now. Think about what a perfect union would look like. How do we elect leaders who work to promote the general welfare and promote domestic tranquility?

Way out here in my little state, my little state capitol has become a fortress. All lower windows are boarded up. Concrete barriers are blocking access.

Until the pandemic, You could just walk all around it, snapping pictures. you could walk right in and watch both houses in session and take pictures in the governor’s office. Since the insurrection in DC, you can’t get close, fearful of thugs who have no clue what peaceful assembly means or what their First Amendment rights actually are. You can see, I stole this picture from the newspaper. We are warned not to go over there this week.

I wish everyone before getting a driver’s license had to be able to recite the Preamble to the Constitution, and then I, an old Citizenship tutor, personally, would like to quiz them about what it means.

No domestic tranquility anywhere right now.

Hope seems to be on the horizon. On the personal level, I got my first Covid vaccination this week. On the national level, actually, on the global level, a corrupt administration — dare I say regime? — will end and a new one will take its place. We can be hopeful but not yet fearless. That will take more than a swearing-in of new leaders and a shot in the arm.