Are you Ready for Monday?

Next Monday will be both inauguration day for the Convicted Felon, as well as the Martin Luther King Day of Service. These two dates have intersected only twice before. If you don’t know when, check the footnote¹.

The first thing to do that morning is to turn every television in your house to HGTV, Cartoon Network, Hallmark, a shopping channel or any other channel that will definitely NOT show any news during the day. Then leave those sets on all day. Think Nielsens. Think of how many people NOT watching the Orange Menace and his minions. It’s a simple action you can take. Because we all know about how Von Shitzenpants feels about crowd sizes.

Second, join a Day of Service event. Do a web search for “Martin Luther King Day of Service Events” along with your city or town, and you’ll get a list of options. Do something GOOD! Feed people, clean up neighborhoods and roadways, learn CPR (you might save a life!), teach people to read, register voters, and on and on. Doing good will make you feel better, and “doing good” is a simple answer to evil.

If you live in the Chester County area, whatever you do during the day, you can come meet me on Monday night. I’ll be at the “Help Over Hate” event being sponsored by the local Indivisible group. We are collecting food for the Chester County Food Bank (list of most needed foods and non-foods here) and we’ll be providing snacks. You can sign up here (we need a head count for the food.) If you can’t make it, and want to participate, you can donate money here (it goes directly to the Food Bank and is tax-deductible). If you’ve never met me, I hope you’ll come say hi…I have short blonde hair, and I’ll likely be the only person there in a mask.

A complete aside on hungry people. I was unemployed for 16 months during the “Great Recession” but between unemployment, pick-up work, and taking in a roommate, I was able to keep a roof over my head. I was at the local dog park on a Sunday. My dog was playing with one of her friends. The guy who owned the dog was over at the swings with his two youngest kids, and his oldest daughter (maybe 9, 10, 11) was with her dog. She told me how proud she was that she hadn’t had anything to eat since school lunch on Friday, and was looking forward to school lunch the next day.

It turned out her dad was an accountant, and was unemployed. He had a part time job delivering pizzas. Her mom had MS. On Thursday night, they voted as a family to pay for mom’s drugs instead of food. My heart shattered. I got her address and went home. I didn’t have much, or I would have gone to the supermarket and filled a basket - but I had peanut butter, and milk, bread, tuna, soup, a bunch of stuff and so I filled a couple shopping bags and went over.

The dad answered the door, and was angry that I was there. He yelled at me and said “you think I can’t take care of my family”. I could see the mom in a wheelchair, and she knew. The kids came over and took the bags while dad continued yelling as I tried to tell him about the local food pantry, and Food Stamps….he finally said “you must be a Democrat” and slammed the door.

It was the first time I’d seen hunger, and it was only about a mile from my house. Ever since, I’ve done what I can because no child should be hungry. No child should have to choose between food and mom’s medicine.

If you ate today, I hope you’ll find $5 or $10 for either the Chester County Food Bank, or a food bank in your area. Here’s that link again! The incoming fascist regime is going to do all they can to decrease funding for school lunches and breakfasts, SNAP, WIC, and every other food program they can think of. For those of us privileged enough to eat, it’s good to share for those less fortunate. Thanks in advance.

Finally, the weather report indicates that Monday will be bitterly cold in DC, which will follow a weekend of precipitation. Keep your fingers crossed that it’s incredibly cold, and a freak snowstorm drops a foot of snow on Washington, DC.

1. Clinton in 1997 and Obama in 2013.