The Impossible Dream

I was seated in my recliner by the window this morning, reading the new memoir of Barack Obama, when a vision appeared.

It became clear to me that any day now Donald Trump will stand up and offer the most gracious concession speech in the history of American politics.

Further, it is a certainty that very soon, perhaps even today, Trump and Biden will stand together, six feet apart, on the White House lawn, and declare that we are all in together, in every way, in tamping out the raging fires of the pandemic.

Beyond that, these two very different leaders will bump elbows in agreement that a stimulus bill fair enough and more than enough will immediately occur, and that it will include the most ambitious infrastructure/jobs program in the history of America, with the possible exception of something Lincoln might have either done or was about to do when he was killed.

Yes, admittedly, occasionally such visions as these, seen clearly from this recliner by the window of this well built but rickety old cabin, have proven more aspirational than true. But this time I’m more certain than ever that this is the pulse of the moment.

What remains on my schedule today is to now prepare for another of a seemingly endless chain of long days of work through the pandemic.

Scott Landfield

Eugene