The Sun Still Rises

It's been a rocky couple weeks since my emo middle of the night blog post.  Like many members of this nation I've been riding the unchartered post-election roller coaster of emotions.  My ride winds between feeling hopeless and forlorn, to guilty and privileged, to ready to hit the streets with the fellow noble dissenters ("What do you we want?" "Donald Trump OUT!" "When do we want it?" "NOW!") to ignorantly unaffected and just wanting to watch a bunch of episodes of Silicon Valley to laugh at Jared.  There's been a lot of the latter right now which I tell myself is totally warranted because we need to preserve some of the dread and anguish and channel it into supporting the causes and people the Trumpster wants to cut.  People have posted some good ideas of how to start on this task and I thought I'd share a few I like:

• This one is a little cheeky, but if you know Trump supporters, DONATE TO AN ENRIVONMENTAL/IMMIGRANTS' RIGHTS/WOMEN'S RIGHTS ORGANIZATION in their name.  Holiday shopping done! (thx John Oliver for that one)
• SET UP AN AUTOMATIC (gasp!) MONTHLY DONATION to said organization (or another you care about).  It could be $5, it could be $25.  Probably you won't notice it missing from your bank account.
• Ride a bike, take the bus, use reusable water bottles, learn how to recycle correctly and DO IT, LIVE LIFE LIKE YOU CARE ABOUT THE WORLD AND ITS FUTURE.  It doesn't matter who the elected officials are to do these things.   
• TALK TO STRANGERS.  If there's been one good thing to come from this election, it's the sense of shared despair in the community I hang out in.  That sounds sad, but it's led to some really nice moments of kindness and patience in a big city world that can be just the opposite.  I'm not saying I am the Queen of this tip, but I do make an effort, sometimes an embarrassing effort, to initiate conversation.  I've only had good experiences (or neutral experiences at worst) from doing this.  Because who really wants to stare at their phone the entirety of an uber pool ride?
• CARE. Care about the people you love and people you don't love, care about causes you're passionate about or even slightly-more-than-indifferent about.  Care about your hobbies, your sports teams and your favorite coffee shops, your sidewalks and neighborhood schools even if you don't have kids that go there.  Care about newspaper headlines (from reliable sources) and stuff in the small print too.  Care about things that are often as forgotten as the transients lining the pedestrian tunnel of the Powell St. BART station.  Care about them too.  Empathy may not save us during the next 4 years, but it sure as hell can't hurt.

Barack "We'll miss you so much" Obama said on Nov 8th that "No matter what happens in this election, the sun will still rise tomorrow".  I say, "The sun still rises and bananas still line the streets".  Here's some evidence of that mixed in with some pics I liked from The Week that Was.