How are you fairing four days out from the inauguration? Nothing that has happened is a surprise, yet it is en toto enough to take your breath away.
After boycotting inauguration coverage, I returned to MSNBC Monday evening during Rachel Maddow’s hour. Then stayed through Laurence and Ruhl. This marked the first time I’ve watched since the election. I had believed that immediately following the swearing in, all true reporting would cease, given the threats against the media. I imagined the network shuttering its airspace. I was delighted to find out I was wrong.
It felt good to welcome MSNBC back into my home, Like many of us, I was hooked on the station during the election.Throughout the day on the 20th, no one in my real time social network was even willing to voice their trepidations and grief. In fact, the only communications I had about what was going on in DC were a text from my daughter early in the day about Biden’s pardon of Fauci and mine to her about the US withdrawing from WHO.
President Donald Trump’s return to the White House is already having a big impact at the $47.4 billion U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), with the new administration imposing a wide range of restrictions, including the abrupt cancellation of meetings including grant review panels. Officials have also ordered a communications pause, a freeze on hiring, and an indefinite ban on travel.
One of Rachel’s guests Monday evening talked about how we needed to stay involved and not allow ourselves to be bludgeoned into hopelessness. How when we act we will feel empowered and can tap into a community of likeminded people which will give us strength and motivation. I’m just having a hard time figuring out where to find that. On one of my climate listservs, a few people have started email chains detailing how they are coping with 47’s administration. It does really help, I find, to read these soul bearing communications. People feel a need to connect, to search for meaning and hope.
After walking my friend to the bus stop at around 5 Tuesday, I recalled that Maddow is back at MSNBC five days a week for the first 100 days. Kicked back and watched her and then Laurence. Whereas on Monday I had felt a sense of almost relief that we were now out of the dreadful anticipation of January 20, it was much different on Wednesday. Anxiety, depression, racing thoughts, fear, feeling trapped. Had to turn to tv off again and as I don’t have a good book to get lost in before sleep, I basically hung out on Bluesky for awhile. That too was rife with upsetting posts.
Desperately seeking some suggestions on a great tv series to binge watch or some tips on light escapist reading. I’m going to keep up with going to the gym in the early morning, that is until next week when I have surgery to have my gall bladder removed.
Now, on to the weather. Even as unprecedented blizzards hit the Southern US, there’s always something magical about the wonder of snow!
At hair salon this morning and the stylist had spoken with her grandmother in Mississippi earlier and reported on the snow in the South.
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that many who post in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table and hope to make some new friends as well.
