Not sure what picture to post at this moment of relief and hope and new resolve, but our new first lady, Dr. Jill Biden, found just the one. It was her suggestion to hang "Landscape with Rainbow," painted by Robert Seldon Duncanson (1821-72), in the Capitol as part of inaugural ceremonies - ceremonies that together felt like a rededication of that recently desecrated building. Duncanson, a Cincinnati-based painter who was apparently the best known African American painter during the years surrounding the Civil War, painted it in 1859 (!). As Amanda Gorman put it at the end of her inaugural poem:
there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.
What joy to move from a presidency defined by fear and lies to one of hope, honesty and love. I pledged allegiance again today.
