The year, 2021. The week, exactly one year after the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as President of the United States of America.
The week before he was inaugurated comprises, by the published record, the largest mass death event (from a single cause) in United States history thus far, with approximately 4,170 – 4,406 Americans dying within a 24 hour period from Covid-19. The single deadliest day before that for Americans happened near a creek in Maryland a century and a half ago.
There, a battle during a Civil War took the lives of 2,108 Union soldiers and 1,567 Confederates outright (and wounded ~17,000 more). Four days later, Emancipation was Proclaimed.
For some. Equality for all off aways. Remember, the cornerstones of the capital of the nation were founded a mere four score years earlier.
Since then, the country has grown into something vast and beautiful and different. Changed and changing, its image contorts with time, forms from habit.
What we see becomes what we tell others becomes what we tell ourselves becomes what we are.
Sights change as much as those seeing them. Our stories become different, then eventually become history. New tales for old stars.
New stories to replace the old ones forgotten.
Idols rise and fall, live and breathe, pass away. Memory resurrecting for a moment.
What remains the same is that “soul of the nation” we hope to redeem, make clean, and stand up again and again.
Some, usually for profit, ascertain they can cut the soul in ’twain.
Yet, as the poet sang, “Don’t fall asleep at the wake of a nation”.
Millions, still, believe in the nation.
