There have been only two times in my life that I have watched the television all day long. This shouldn’t be a tough guess: 9/11/2001 and 01/06/21. So, with the impeachment of the titular head of the Trump Insurrection continuing today in the U.S. Senate; the result has been pre-determined by minds pre-set or programed to set aside the duties assigned any and all elected representatives of us, of we the people.

Again, not a tough guess; you know the numbers necessary to convict.

So far, after blocks and votes and dodges and procedural delays, the actual event has been a trial with evidence aplenty and courage a scarcity. It is obvious courage is a scarce commodity. While donor/sponsor/tribe loyalties are commodities, bought and saved, sold or traded to a higher bidder; and while ethics and integrity are regularly exchanged for power; courage is rare; but, we know it when we see it.

We recognize courage. We value courage. We, we the people, are witnesses. Put me on that sad fucking list.

ALL RIGHT, I apologize for, again, posting something that is not about surfing.

I woke up one morning, October of 1962. I was eleven. My mother had, evidently, not gone to bed. Or she got up really early. TV stations, in those days, generally shut down in the middle of the night. “We might be on the brink of nuclear war, Junior,” she said, or something similar… same message. It was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Trish remembers it because her father, a materiel officer with the US Marine Corps, was whisked away in the middle of the night, and was gone for the thirteen days before Russia and Cuba backed down.

I was ten years old on February 20, 1962, when an AV (audio/visual for those who have never seen one) cart was wheeled into the classroom so we fifth graders could all watch John Glen orbit the earth three times in a space capsule. First American! Momentous! Yea, Us!

I cannot honestly say I saw Kennedy assassinated or Oswald killed, though they were both televised. My neighbor, Gary Schuyler, a kid about my age (12 in 1963) did watch the funeral train, came outside, crying, with an update. I was pulling weeds in the rose garden, required to earn a chance to go to the beach. I questioned why Gary was so concerned. “Because… it’s important.”

Television has made us all witnesses to history.

On 9/11, Dan Nieman, a local contractor in Quilcene, called me up… not all that unusual for him, at somewhere around 5:30, something about a job. He passed on the message, and I just recently found this out, an ex-military client of his, calm by Dan’s description, had already called him, frantically blurting out, “Do you see what’s happening?” I turned on the TV in time to see the plane hit the second tower. And everything that followed.

On 01/06, I returned home early from a job, though I had been listening on the radio to the events surrounding the certification of the election. Trish had just turned on the TV, asked what was going on with the people just starting to push at the barricades in front of the capitol. “Oh,” I said, “The coup is on.”

Something I noticed is that many of the folks marching down the street from the demonstration in which the (still, at that point) President promised to “be there with you” (but, of course, wasn’t), citizens who looked like your neighbors, regular folks; once they saw the thing was getting out of hand, most of those people turned away, did not participate in the murder and mayhem, were not part of that mob.

Good for them.

We have had, thanks to the strategic delays, time; not enough to put it behind us and move on as defenders and deniers would like; but enough time to get little bios on the perpetrators, more information on the tactics and the damage; enough time for evidence enough to convince anyone still unbiased of the proximity to a tipping point that our country was at on that day.

So. Courage. At first look, the Capitol cop who was chased up the stairs by the mob did not appear to be a hero. Now we know he was. I will still give points to Mike Pence for getting the Constitutionally mandated task completed. Points have to be given for Representatives and Senators who crossed lines to certify votes, or to cast votes to get beyond all the procedural blocks and dodges.

Oh; it’s 9:26, the Trump Insurrection trial is back on, live; should you chose to watch. I have to go, but I do have a radio.

Peace and… make your own list.