8 | OCTOBER 29 • 2020 

for openers
What’s Bugging You?
W

hen you see a bug scuttling 
along the floor of your kitchen 
or a spider rappelling down an 
invisible rope right in front of your eyes, 
what do you do? Scream the house down 
and call for reinforcements? 
Squish the little bugger and 
throw it in the toilet with-
out a second thought? Or 
trap it and release it in your 
compost heap while saying 
a special prayer and doing a 
meditative pose?
I’
m the capture type. 
Quick as a wink, I’
ll slap a 
cup over the bug. And it’
s got to be a clear 
cup otherwise two minutes later I’
ll be say-
ing, “Did I get it? Wait, did I?” and then I 
have to lift the cup to check, and it’
s going 
to run at me with all 1,500 of its hairy 
vengeful feet.
(Yuck — just thinking about it is sending 
shivers up and down my spine!)
Then I leave the little hairy or footsy 
creature under that cup for someone else 
to take care of. But by the time one of my 
heroes arrive on the scene, the cup is inev-
itably overturned, the bug has escaped and 
I spend the rest of the day jumping out of 

my skin every time a stray thread grazes 
my leg.
My husband isn’
t as jumpy around 
multi-footed or winged creatures as I am. 
He’
s brave and daring (and lots of other 
things, too). Once, while everyone was 
shrieking as a disoriented bee zigzagged 
its way around our kitchen, he watched it, 
eagle-eyed, and then unthinkingly banged 
his cupped hand on the table and yelled 
proudly “Got it!” Then his eyes bugged out 
of his head and he started hopping up and 
down as he yelled “OWWWW!” He might 
have gotten the bee, but boy did the bee get 
him right back.
A few weeks ago, we had a pineapple in 
our kitchen; turned out there was a tiny 

hitchhiking fruit fly that came with it. The 
pineapple is long gone but the fruit fly and 
its hundreds of descendants live on. I’
m not 
exactly sure how it works scientifically, but 
I think the minute you kill one fruit fly, 50 
more are hatched. Something like that. 
We had to do something … So 
we became the proud owners of the 
Executioner. If you haven’
t come across 
one yet, it’
s a battery powered high-voltage 
electrical bug killing tennis racket that liter-
ally grills anything that comes into contact 
with it. When you swat a bug, there’
s a flash 
of light, a little pop and a rather gruesome 
sizzle. The other day, my brave and daring 
husband said, “I wonder what it feels like” 
and then spent a very unhappy few hours 
whimpering over his burnt finger. 
Since I’
m already on the subject, I’
ve 
got to mention the most celebrated fly in 
recent history — the one that landed on 
Mike Pence’
s head during the vice presi-
dential debate. His presence literally went 
viral. That fly is probably out there still 
doing interviews and signing autographs, 
unless it came in contact with someone’
s 
Executioner or a philosophical frog. 
Because you know what a frog’
s philosophy 
is: Time’
s fun when you’
re having flies. 

Rochel 
Burstyn
Contributing 
Writer

VIEWS

essay
Inauguration Day 2021
F

or roughly 60 million 
Americans, Inauguration 
Day 2021 will be a dark 
and crushing day. The people 
who backed the 
losing candidate 
will witness the 
swearing-in of 
the person they 
opposed (and 
possibly despise), 
and they are 
likely to feel 
despair, hopelessness and anger.
Inauguration Day will 
signify a new reality for this 
country, just as it always does. 
But this year, after months of a 

historically divisive campaign, 
it will present a particularly 
crucial moment for us. People 
from both the winning and 
losing sides will have to decide 
how they wish to react to this 
new reality. How they do so 
will reveal much about the next 
chapter of this nation.
Will the supporters of the 
losing candidate retreat into 
cynicism, bitterness and 
apathy? Will they feel cheated 
and resort to lawless civil 
disobedience? Will many 
people forever lose their sense 
of patriotism, or maybe just a 
piece of it? 

And for the supporters of the 
winner, will they be gracious 
and respectful? Will they 
extend a hand of reconciliation, 
or will they taunt and ridicule 
their fellow Americans, thereby 
deepening the divisions of this 
country? I have a vivid memory 
of a Trump supporter shortly 
after the 2016 election smirking 
at me and saying, “I’
m gloating. 
I’
m double gloating.
”
That was a cruel moment I’
ll 
never forget, but it showed me 
precisely how not to act toward 
someone whose candidate had 
lost. I still recall how hurtful 
those words were as well as the 

permanent damage they did 
to my relationship with that 
person. 
In 1865, in a far more 
divisive time, President 
Abraham Lincoln visited the 
former Confederate capital 
of Richmond just days after 
it had fallen. There was no 
playbook for how victorious 
Americans were to treat 
defeated Americans. A Union 
commander asked Lincoln for 
directions on how he should 
deal with the people of the 
South. “Let ’
em up easy,
” replied 
Lincoln, in an extraordinary 
display of compassion and 

Mark Jacobs
Contributing 
Writer

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