I am walking the dog on Christmas Day and I am glad. I am glad for legs that work and for a dog with boundless curiosity.

This microphone is nice.

I am twisting my neck and I am glad. Glad for functioning vertebrae, glad to have eyes that see, glad to be walking where I am known and where I feel safe.

It is cold and I am glad. Glad to make a home in a state with seasons, in a state where I was born, in a state where I went to college and graduate school, in a state where I worked in an office and in a prison, in a state where both my boys were born.

I am walking on Christmas Day in a neighborhood where the air is cold and I feel safe and I am glad. I am glad that our petty president, whose depravity knows no bottom and whose vanity knows no upper limit, has yet to start a war.

It is not yet noon on Christmas Day and we have no plans and yes, I am glad. I am glad that all the visiting, traveling, baking, roasting, wrapping, and unwrapping is done for the season. I will sit by the fire and watch some show on BritBox or Acorn, grateful for the peace, for the fire, for the streaming services.

I will sew more little Christmas tree ornaments, grateful for my supplies — the needles and beads and cloth and satin cord and polyfill — and my still-working hands.

I am glad that as an officially classifiable dom3stic terr0rist that you, dear readers, don’t need to ask why. I’m glad too that you also are likely classifiable in this new and bogus, fascist-serving category.

I’m grateful that when all is said and done, you and I will have lived on the right side of history — we have protested, written postcards, called our elected officials, donated to critical campaigns, spoken out against genocide, and called out the anti-constitutional everything — even when we weren’t necessarily buoyed by hope. 

Home now. The heat comes on. In New England one never takes heat for granted. I’m grateful for that whooshing sound and the warmth it imparts. 

Merry Christmas everyone. Even if you’re Jewish. Even if you were raised in a Christian church but don’t believe in Christ (ssshhhh! that makes you a terr0rist!).