today

clearly a catastrophe, whether one's talking about the election or its avatar - whatever happened just down the corridor from my office.  There is a huge damp-looking patch covering the hallway carpet, a missing drinking fountain, and as you can see, the sad inscription out of service. material has been ORDER.  I think that's how we all felt today.  We had a department meeting (the fact that we meet regularly on the first Wednesday of the month is, of course, an emotional liability every four years). This was something of a contrast to eight years ago (four years ago we were on Zoom, because of the pandemic, but in any case [I had to check back] it wasn't called for President Biden until the Saturday - we spent several days in weird limbo).  Eight years ago we were all, unanimously, in black.  Today ... mostly in black, though most of us had made an unconvincing optimistic gesture into ... let's say ... a black and some-other-color scarf.  We were kidding no one with our performed optimism.  Indeed, it was a day of meetings, and that was something of a relief, in the form of displacement activity, at the very least.