On Nov. 15, I went to see, “Take it With You,” a live radio show that often is joyful, funny and irreverent. The show began in its typically silly tone, imagining being snowed in with old high school classmates over Thanksgiving, making light of the election and discovering when your friends’ political views are drastically different from yours. The performers sang Leonard Cohen songs. We applauded - and then fell silent.
Blake Thomas, the host of the show, murmured a line from a poem with quiet seriousness and a wavering voice as the lights were brought low.
Then, not to surprised and uproarious applause but in silence, former Duluth Mayor Don Ness walked up from the audience, took a seat, and did not look up. He read an essay he had written, echoing everything we were feeling about politics, including anger and shock. He said when revising and stripping down the essay, all he was left with was fear, sadness, and doubt.
I think he helped those who hadn’t realized it to understand they were in mourning - in the truest sense of the word. We were confused, depressed and didn’t know how we’d go on. We wept.
To finish, Ness led us in a cleansing funeral prayer, a reaffirmation that we still have hope, our humanity, and each other. That we can’t give up. We earnestly answered each line with, “love wins!” as our amen.
Then Thomas sang one of his songs: “Kindness is the currency of the free and the poor; there’s nothing in this whole wide world that she can’t afford; she gives me love but don’t beg for more; a little peace in a world of war.”
We’re all free. We’re all poor. But there’s no shortage of love as long as we remember to give.
Adam Hunter
Duluth
