Freedom Walk!

You cannot make up shit as crazy as reality. You are NOT free to show up for the Freedom Walk unless you registered your ass with the guvmint. And during the Freedom Walk, you will not be free to leave, because it will be fenced off. And guarded by police. With helicopters circling overhead.

This is just SO wrong - this is our National Mall, people, the place that has held every sort of formal and informal concert, fair, festival, protest, sit-in, love-in, knit-in and Frisbee Dog event for, well, as long as it has been there. It is a place for kids and old people and young couples to walk, joggers to jog, a place to sit and eat an ice cream cone. A place to wait in line to ride the elevator up the Washington Monument. A place where kids can run around and burn off energy. It is where I was taken to walk as a child, to visit the museums and eat ice cream in the gorgeous ice cream parlor (I think it's now a gelato bar, but I'm OLD, people) and where I took my own kids whenever we were in the area. My first real date with my late husband ended at 2 a.m. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. We walked there from the Capitol steps. We sat with Abe Lincoln and talked for a couple of hours, with a genial Park Policeman smiling and nodding at us when he passed. I love the Mall, even now I can close my eyes and see the museums and the schoolchildren. I love everything about it. The idea of surrounding it with snow fences and threats of arrest - on OUR National Mall - Abe should get up from his chair and kick some serious ass. Of all the injuries, this is truly the unforgivable insult. Rummypalooza - a Confederacy of Dunces. Or just a bunch of miserable assholes.

I'm tired. It was a short but hard week at work, and my house needs cleaning. I think I'll go knit and try not to think about how weird it all is, at least for tonight. Like Scarlet, I'll think about it tomorrow.