Happy New Year!

OIG Hotline, Happy New Year to all of you!

Thank you for your heroic efforts on behalf our democracy.

You are vital to our future of peace and civility, a truth which becomes ever more apparent.

With great appreciation,

Lane MacWilliams

A Velvet Claim, New Year's Day 2024

I'm wearing a midnight blue evening gown that is four sizes too big in honor of a woman I have never met.

I once saw a documentary narrated by a woman named Margaret, who, as a Jewish teenager during World War II, found herself living in the garden of the home in which her family had resided for generations.  Her parents and brother had all been deported.

And there, in the garden, she could find the stray vegetable and sleep undisturbed.  Sometimes, at night, she could glimpse through the window of her former bedroom the pattern of flowers on the wallpaper there -- blue against gold -- and the sight of this filled her with the memory of her family's love for one another.  And this sustained her more than any foraged food ever could.

During much of the war, she worked in a textile factory close to the Eastern front, sewing German uniforms.  The woman who supervised them was a heavyset overseer with a voice as cruel as a villain.  But it was all an act, because when the supervisor was out of the view of her Nazi bosses, she treated her charges as if they were her daughters, sneaking them extra rations and blankets, and nursing them back to health when they were ill.

Eventually, though, the factory was shut down, and Margaret and her friends were deported to a death camp.  Nearing the war's end, they were forced to undertake an endless march through the falling snow, where the frostbitten toes of the barefoot travelers broke like sticks underneath their weight, and laggers were executed without a word spoken.

Margaret survived partly because her father had told her to wear her fur-lined boots when they were first evicted from their home, even though it was July.  But she also survived because, trudging through the snow in a foreign country, persisting through a death march enforced by officers who seemed determined to destroy everything good, Margaret imagined wearing a beautiful dress when peace had been restored -- a blue dress, she thought -- worn to a party with all her friends.

So, I'm wearing a midnight blue dress in honor of Margaret, a dress four sizes too big because I've lost too much weight.  But the velvet feels like a claim on life itself -- comforting and sustaining, insistent on a kinder world.

So, I know what Margaret was talking about.

In the face of the far right's inhumanity toward the vulnerable, it is necessary to say no in every way possible.

No, we will not relinquish the truth when the truth has gone into hiding.  No, we will not sacrifice our bonds of fellowship on a long walk through the wilderness.  No, we will not forsake our obligations of compassion in encountering the suffering of strangers.  No, we will not abandon the accoutrements of a gentler time.

On this New Year's Day of 2024, I want to give thanks for the wisdom of President Joseph R. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who stand in defense of our human rights without hesitation or exception.

Our nation needs their courageous and ethical leadership, as does the world -- in ways it has yet to grasp.

May this year illuminate for all of the American electorate how fortunate we are that President Biden and Vice President Harris are guiding us forward.

It is their commitment to humanitarian principles that will claim our future as a worthy one, reflective of the highest endeavor, integrity and accomplishment of which we are capable.

Happy New Year, President Biden.

Happy New Year, Vice President Harris.

Thank you for all you are doing to uphold and sustain our civil liberties and human rights.

Your gifts to the nation are as rare as they are transformative of our shared future.

With abiding appreciation,

Lane MacWilliams