2025 Life Logs, Day 91: Cory Booker
Date: Tuesday April 1, 2025
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 53, Low 31 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
This afternoon while I was watching Ollie kayaking in Jones Pond, I was scrolling through today’s unread email. A Substack post written by Falmouth friend Jerry Lanson caught my eye. “Courage in the Congress—Senator Cory Booker Has Been on His Feet for 18 Hours Now and Is Still Making Sense.”
When I got home, I read Jerry’s post and it convinced me to get on YouTube to watch live streaming of Cory Booker, who by this time was 23 hours into his marathon speech on the Senate floor. I am paraphrasing here, but what I heard him saying is that what is happening right now in our country is not a matter of left versus right. It is right versus wrong. And he feels it is the greatest moral issue of our time. “This is our moral moment.” Booker was making sense, and I watched, spellbound, until he ended after more than 25 hours, the longest speech ever given on the Senate floor in our country’s history. I literally couldn’t stop watching because I felt I was watching ‘good’ history being made. Hopefully by now, you have seen some of his speech. And if you haven’t, I encourage you to get online and watch some of it. He was truly inspiring.
So, why did he do this? He says his constituents were pushing him to do ‘something’. He said their letters and emails were telling desperate stories of how the cuts DOGE and the Trump regime are making are affecting them. He did this as his ‘something’ and he said he hopes it will encourage others to do their ‘something’. No one has a magic answer, but as Rachel Maddow says, “If you do nothing, nothing will change.” It is up to each of us to pick our ‘something’ and do it. I am so thankful we have deeply thoughtful politicians like Cory Booker representing us. As he said over and over in his 25-hour speech, he was doing this because he wants people to understand that we are experiencing unordinary actions from our President that require extraordinary actions to fight back. Booker said to remember, “The power of the people is more powerful than the people in power.”
By the way, Happy April 1st. The daffodils in my yard bloomed today which I took as a message of hope. And the other message of hope was that Jonah got a positive report from his doctor at Boston Children’s. The X-rays today showed good progress. So thankful.
