This 21st day of January 2025 is an unusual day. My wife Clara and I have both known real winters. She lived and worked in a retreat house complex and a rent house near it deep in the Catskills. She lived their real winters for years I have spent winter or large parts of winters in the snows of northern China, New Mexico’s mountains, Ohio, New York City, Canada and Europe. We have lots experience of snow. But we are having our first shared snow in the years since we have been back together after separating in middle school. However, we are having the snow in our hometown of Abbeville, Louisiana. Abbeville, Louisiana is a place that more or less never has sustained snowfall producing an enduring blanket of snow. Snow here is minimal and fleeting. But today there is something else happening. .
It is snowing today and has been snowing. This is the Tuesday after the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States. He is the only other President to serve nonconsecutive terms since Grover Cleveland served as the 22d President of the United States of America from 1885 to 1889 and as the 24th President of the United States1893 to 1897. It was during his second administration that Lafayette, the larger city just to our North got 14 inches of snow. The greatest snowfall this region has ever recorded. It is one of those coincidences that may not mean much. But it seems extraordinarily eventful and resounds with meaning as we experience this moment. This President Trump has been targeted for assassination and wounded. This President Trump has been convicted of dozens of felonies. This President Trump did not have an inaugural parade. This President Trump had his swearing in Ceremony in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.
The future he spoke about is tied to plans that he has begun to put forward in a a series of executive orders, many of which were issued within hours of his becoming President again. This Monday was also the College Football Playoffs Championship Game. We had a struggle between two teams from the cold northern part of the country played in Georgia. This was as a President who is a New Yorker living in Georgia became President and a man who is from Ohio and represents the most famous current literary expression of Hillbilly life became Vice President. This was a time of cold and wintry associations. But perhaps it will be a dawning of a new age for America after all. The leaders of the Republicans in the House of Representatives are both from my Southern state of Louisiana. Mike Johnson and Steve Scalise were on stage with Trump and Vance at several times during the ceremonial process. So it is not as though my own region was excluded from a momentous transforming event in American history.
This week also saw the death of Director David Lynch on January 15. One of my closest lifelong friends who now lives with his wife in Argentina has been a very serious fan of David Lynch for many years. He and I watched the reboot of Twin Peaks together in the living room of my grandparents old home when he was in Abbeville caring for his dying father. In recognition of this event Clara and I watched one of his films on our streaming service during the cold spell. My lovely wife also made a great gumbo and a very good taco soup and we have enjoyed some very good fires in our fire place. But the extraordinary event has been the snow. Somehow, snow in Abbeville is the extraordinary frame for what ever else is happening at this time. It is in the snow in this Southern coastal plain that is stitched together by marshes, swamps, prairies, farms and the ports and oil rigs and oil refineries dotted with small cities and large towns. It is a not a land of snow. But it is snowing now.
If it can really snow here, then maybe other extraordinary things can happen. I am still waiting to see how my SSDI journey will turn out. I am still involved in a lawsuit which alone would wear on me heavily if nothing else was on my mind. I feel an every increasing set of burdens from my health conditions. But I do worry about and hope for the country to progress. I do hope that maybe somehow there will be an oil company that will lease the little bit of land I have — which I am pretty sure has oil under it. I am more than willing to benefit from a boom in oil and gas exploration, if one ensues. I am not expecting much, but I still hope to be able to cobble together something that will allow me to live with dignity and in the life my wife and I a are building still. If that happens it will happen in the second Trump administration.
I have a whole life to look back on and be aware that mostly the story is told, the game is played and the adventure will not have more chapters. But my life might have a long closing chapter with some nice passages. The adventure is mostly over but the former adventurer has a few good years left of this life if I am lucky.
Monday was also Martin Luther King (Junior) Day. Clara and my mother and I attended an MLK gala in Abbeville, Louisiana. It was held on the Saturday nine days before the actual celebration on January 20th and was organized by REACH. We had a good time but it also brought up memories of all the complexities of my life as I saw some people I have worked with many time over the years and watched the flow of remembered scenes related to all the things that MLK and his legacy have been involved in during my life time. It is an era that will offer chances to see new depths of suffering or a time of relative ease as I bow off the stages I have trod.
For me there is no certainty about what is next but the continuity throughout my life is one of dealing with change and not controlling it.
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