What were you doing when the mob assaulted the Capitol? Angela Omulepu was baking a pie.
I wasn’t one of those people who jumped on the pandemic’s sourdough-banana-bread-bandwagon. My baking urges started long after the COVID reality of brain-fog and Zoom-school. But recently something changed, and now I’m elbow deep in flour and butter, salt and sugar — an ancestral dance with my baker grandpa, a Black man and immigrant, whose alchemy knew no measuring cup, only dashes and pinches.
On this day, my hands worked furiously merging flour and butter, squeezing and crumbling, occasionally adding splashes of frigid water as I watched, on live TV, a horde of angry Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol at the behest of their beloved leader. I was in a state of shock working the dough, crying, incredulous as outnumbered Capitol Police were pummeled by Confederate and American flags alike.
Despite being thousands of miles away in the safety of my home, the terror was palpable as images of nooses, and other white power symbols washed across the screen.
The dough was done. “Is this rage baking?” I wondered.