Now is later.

 We have not been to a protest for three weeks due to all the comings and goings, and a reception and family time. Tim said last night that we must go today. I agree. 

A funny thing happened. Tim had a serious craving for a banana split so we stopped at an ice cream place, pulling into a parking place next to a minivan with a VOTE! sticker on the window. The driver was waiting on her order, texting as she sat sideways in the driver seat, her feet sticking out the open car door. 

My initial impression was that she was a kindred soul, so I said, 'Not just 'vote' but vote blue!' and headed to the ice cream place. 

She shot out after me so fast that I initially thought I had misjudged. She wanted me to repeat myself. I did. The look on her face, people! She could not believe her ears, that I would just come out and say it. She is afraid to. 

I told her that she needed to find a group, that she wasn't the only one seeing it...more and more people are seeing it everyday. 'You can't see it as hopeless!' I said.

She agreed that it was changing, but was discouraged at how slowly it was happening. 

"Come protest with us! Find a group! You will be encouraged."

When her number was called, she got her food and passed by us. "Keep the faith, sister!" 

And I guess that is why we need to 'find our tribe'. That little exchange. It is too easy to fall into the thinking that we are the only ones who see what is happening as wrong. That the vast majority see nothing unusual about this at all. 

This is not true: It IS wrong. Most people DO see it. What we do with that knowledge is what separates us.

I am re-reading Elie Wiesel's 'Night'. What has struck me happens at the beginning of those terrible years. The Jews themselves tried to justify it, to normalize what was happening.

When the foreign Jews were loaded into trains to be deported, the Jews not taken comforted themselves: "It is not that bad. They were sent back to where they belonged." 

When Moishe Beadle escaped and came back to tell the story that all those people were forced to dig their own graves,  lined up at the edge of their grave and shot to death, his stories were dismissed as the stories of a crazy man.

As the government was replaced by pro Nazi officials, the same people told themselves that the Red Army was defeating Germany and that this authoritarian government would not last. 

When the Germans did march into town, they lodged with local families. 'It is not that bad. They are behaving with courtesy.

When the synagogues were closed, they said 'It is okay...our Rabbi holds the services in his home'.

It went on an on. Jews could not own valuables. They buried them in their basement. 'We can survive this'. 

The yellow stars did not kill them to wear.

Even the ghettos: 'We are together. We don't have to deal with the insults and cruelty of outsiders.'

And it went on and on, that normalization, the comforting. 'It's not that bad', except that it eventually did get 'that bad'.

Like Moishe Beadle, many of us are sounding the alarm. We are surrounded by people who dismiss all of it as 'it's not that bad. These people are crazy.'

In the end, I suppose, it comes down to this: we are all seeing the events of these days. Each one of us, even MAGA, sees things that should not be happening. The question becomes simple. What are we going to do with that knowledge? 

You are free 'to do you'. As for me and my house, we will 'do us'. That includes being vocal enough that if a doubter stands on the sidelines, they know who we are. Easier to find us.

It has been a quiet week. I have been earnestly weedwhacking, trying to bring this wildness to some semblance of order. Weeding flower beds, which to be fair, are two chaotic spaces where I tossed distressed plants bought on clearance. I figured that if they grew, I could sort them out and replant them later. Now is the 'later', I guess.

Monday, we head for our Canadian vacation. 

you know, I cannot post pictures right now. I have many things to show you. Right now, though, I need to get ready to protest.