Trump is gone, and it is a new dawn.

We made it.

We survived.

No violence.

A peaceful transfer of power.

I woke up yesterday morning to the news that Donald and Melania Trump had already departed in a helicopter from the White House. No straightjacket or handcuffs were required to get him out, as I had not quite jokingly worried about for months.

Oh, did I mention that all the library staff worked remotely yesterday because downtown Lansing was deemed potentially too dangerous for us to work in the building? Thank you Trump. Thank you MAGA, Proud Boy, and QAnon buffoons.

I can happily report that there was no violence in Lansing yesterday. In fact, I think the city was a ghost town on Inauguration Day. 

So I woke up, found out that Trump had left, and wrote this on Facebook. (I really need to spend less time on Facebook, but that's another story). These words were straight from the gut and flowed right out of me. I had probably waited four or five years to write them:

"He is gone. Good riddance. Easily the worst president in my lifetime and one of the worst in American history. He damaged the country in ways we still have not fully grasped. No amount of mental gymnastics or alternate reality creation from his followers can change the objective truth of the havoc and horror he caused."

I settled in and watched the inauguration on television. While trying not to get nervous that anything would upside down, I was moved by it: the pomp and circumstance, the feelings of cautious optimism. (And I was intrigued by Kamala Harris' twenty-something stepdaughter Ella Emhoff, whose funky bohemian fashion was fascinating and most welcome. I later learned that she is a student at Parsons School of Design).

Lady Gaga sang a lovely rendition of the national anthem while wearing a large gold dove on her dress, and poet laureate Amanda Gorman read a beautiful and emotional poem.

Everything went off without a hitch, and I can't adequately describe how relieved I was by that.

Later in the day, after going for my first run of the Biden administration, I watched the Celebrating America television special. The highlight for me was Bruce Springsteen singing "Land of Hope and Dreams" alone on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. As the cliché goes, "who started chopping onions in here?!"

Everything yesterday went about as well as could be expected, and now begins the arduous task of getting the nation back on track again.