"This Is What Democracy Looks Like"

Abbey and I went to the "Hands Off" rally  on Saturday - as did millions of people around the world.  Ours was in downtown Oneonta.  It was cold, rainy and windy - miserable, but probably not as miserable as the winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge, or the winter of 1944 at Bastogne.  Muller Plaza was jam-packed, and we spilled out down the sidewalks and across Main Street.  Horns honked almost constantly in support. Nearly everyone had a sign.  So did I.  My sign, which I made myself, read:

I felt strangely moved the whole time.  I could relate to the sign that said, "It's so bad even the introverts have come out," and yet I raised my sign and turned it so those in the cars driving past could see it.  It would be much more like me to stand in the back without a sign, convinced that being there was important but expressing myself was not.  

I was moved by the thought of what my Dad did, a peaceful man who answered the call of The Good War, and who came home to do his part of making the world a better place.  I was so proud of him, and so honored to be his son, that I was near tears the whole time, out in the cold and the rain.  He was conservative and straightforward, but he recognized the difference between right and wrong - and stood for the right.  Abbey wondered if he would be here if he were still alive.  I was sure that he was.