I Feel Oddly Unsteady on My Feet

Storming seas coming

Welcome to Reflections on Power, Culture, and Society for January 6, 2025

I feel oddly unsteady on my feet.

I lived in Florida from 1980—the year of the Winter Olympics’ Miracle on Ice—to 1994. For part of that time I was part owner, through marriage, of a commercial fishing boat. She was aptly named the “Omni” because we put everything but rent and food money into her.

I went out occasionally for the 2-week trips about 90 nautical miles (about 100+ statute miles) into the Gulf of Mexico. There are lots of stories to tell of course. I caught a 30-pound grouper by myself. Ok, I did need the captain and a crew member to help me get that ugly old male up and over the gunwale.

What happens when you go out to sea is a weird thing with balance. Being at sea is all about the pitch and roll. It takes a bit of time for a “landlubber” to get their sea-legs. Once you get them, your brain and inner ear resolve to the almost constant movement of the deck. Except for really bad seas, you can count on your legs to hold you up and not land you face down on the deck or overboard. Mostly.

What happens when you get back to land is also weird with balance. There is no pitch and roll. Walking on land becomes something similar to a fun house. You take a step and your brain makes compensation for the pitch and roll of the boat on the sea. Except now it is solid, steady ground and you look like a drunken sailor!

On this January 6, 2025 that is what I feel like at bit. I know I will be writing a lot of essays and newsletters in 2025. I’ve chosen my lanes even though I see the high seas coming in the clouds of incompetence and raw lust for power and luxury. Today I’m in my drunken sailor phase. Stone cold sober, but I am going for more, strong coffee.

Do you remember January 6, 2021? I had just gotten off a zoom meeting. I turned on the news. Brianna Keilar and I watched it all unfold. She has a place in my heart forever for that company.

It wasn’t long before I started yelling at the screen, “where is the National Guard!”. Soon after that I was screaming for the Cabinet to get together to call for an Article 25 move as it was clear the President could not or would not carry out his duty. I was angry, infuriated, irate, fit-to-be-tied as my grandmother used to say.

I watched the news for hours as many of us did. Then I turned to YouTube videos. There was a riveting, hours-long, video from the walk up to the Capitol and then all through the halls by a young man who called himself “JadenX”. I saw Ashley Babbit get shot as she ignored pleas to stop - from the police and those around her. Nevertheless, she broke through the panel window to get to the House Chamber. It stopped my heart as it would eventually stop hers.

It was all too much. I watched until 3 AM. I wanted to take in what had happened in and to my country. I knew the cable news channels would run nonstop videos of the same agonizing scenes over and over, upsetting us all, raising our collective blood pressure, and cortisol levels. Repeats either enraging or encouraging us depending on which side of the Constitution we stood. And they have—even today. JadenX’s video was taken down by the next dawn, January 7. I read one sentence somewhere that it was used as evidence in the criminal investigation of him.

That is all I have for today. I am hoping that a cup of coffee or two can calm my sea legs and get me back in balance. Take care of yourselves. We need you whether you have sea legs or land legs, we stand together.