Christmas in November

image by jetheriot

James: Is this the earliest you've ever voted?
Me: This is the earliest I've ever done anything.

A few winters ago, I became keenly aware of my status as an adult when I complained about the snow. Up until then, I'd been more concerned with the magic and beauty a snowfall brings. Suddenly, I was a grown up bemoaning the other things that snow brings: shoveling, cleaning off cars, navigating icy streets. A small piece of my innocence and childhood was gone with that moment.

Today marks another adult milestone. I was more excited this election morning than I have been on a Christmas morning in years. Although to make the analogy more accurate, I suppose this morning was like going to sit on Santa's lap to tell him what I'd like for being a good responsible citizen all year. The equivalent of opening my present will come tonight (or possibly tomorrow) when the new president is announced. I'd just better not end up with a lump of coal in my stocking and a dud in the Whitehouse.

I was so excited to vote that I got up e-a-r-l-y and was at the polls before they opened at 7:00am. My husband had to go to work early, so we went together. If you look at the time stamp on my last blog post, you'll see that I didn't get much sleep. Well, actually, that time is misleading. I started the post around 11:00pm, but didn't publish it until after 1:00am and didn't go to bed until nearly 2:00. This is a normal night for me. Getting up before first light is not a normal morning. I felt like the little boy in that Disney commercial who says, "We're too excited to sleep!"

Now there's a very long day of w-a-i-t-i-n-g ahead of me. And as soon as this vanilla latte wears off, I may need a nap.

Even the afterlife is political these days

Ghosts for Obama, Rockport, MA

Do you know where to vote? Find out here. Early voting may be open in your state. If so, get thee to the polling place. If not, make sure you get there on Tuesday (Nov. 4).

Happy Halloween and Happy Voting!

Comfort in the Unknown

image by doeth

"I'm excited and nervous about it," I said.

"Why?" James asked.

"Because it's outside of my normal milieu. Outside of my comfort zone."

There's a pause. I know what my husband is about to say next, and I know he's right.

"Yeah, but doing things outside of your comfort zone is part of who you are."

"That doesn't mean they're not still uncomfortable."

It's true. I do push myself to do things outside of my comfort zone, not because I'm an adrenaline junkie with something to prove, but because so often what I want is beyond the boundaries of what I know. I do these things because I know I'd regret not doing them:

• Auditioning for college and community theatre
• Living in a foreign country for a year
• Going out to eat or to a movie by myself
• Signing up for a five-day art seminar retreat
• Putting my private thoughts out there for the world to read
• Planting a garden
• Going to conferences filled with other bloggers and writers
  
• Signing up for a summer watercolor class
• Learning to drive a stick shift
• Mastering the insidious worlds of mortgage lending and credit scores
• Taking a roadtrip by myself
• Calling the mayor's office to ask for an interview
• Going door-to-door to campaign for my candidate of choice
• Starting a business
• Trying scallops
• Admitting that I've struggled with depression
  
• Getting my first pet
• Volunteering to be a Big Sister
• Wearing pantyhose and high heels

I read this list and none of it seems very radical. Nothing on the list is shocking or so far outside of the norm that it would make news. But how many of our daily fears and triumphs do?

I picture my comfort and discomfort zones as slightly intersecting circles with just the tiniest bit overlapping in a shade of grey. But beyond that are more circles. Your circles. And they all intersect. What I fear, you may not think about twice. What I do with ease may send you spiraling into a panic.

What if we could let go of the fear, acknowledge the discomfort and just move on, knowing that our circles' boundaries will change; believing that others will be there to welcome us into their zones?

What if "Feel the fear and do it anyway" was more than a saying that has become trite from extended usage in certain circles? What if it's the only way to live?

I'd love to hear what your comfort zone includes and excludes. I imagine building this giant network of comfort and support, so that no matter what we have to do, we know someone who can tell us all about it and welcome us into our own unknown.

Monday Mood Lifter

Need something to lift the Monday blues? Take two of these and call me in the morning.

"We are the ones that we've been waiting for."



"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything that's false about hope."

"Nothing can stand in the way of the power of million of voices calling for change."


"Yes we can."

More racist or sexist?

Last night James** and I were discussing who would be more likely to get the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008: Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. We wondered if Americans would be more willing to put the first woman or first non-white in power (Obama's father was a black African and his mother was a white American). I think that Obama has a better shot at it, personally. I just get the sense that sexism will be a bigger hurtle than racism. Besides, I think that Obama is just more likeable than Clinton.

Today I came across a post on the Salon blog called Broadsheet. It explores a Washington Post article by Wallace-Wells that asks, "Is America too Racist for Barack? Too Sexist for Hillary?" Wallace-Wells writes:

While many Americans have a sincere sense of sentimentality and nostalgia for what Clinton may consider outdated gender roles, a much smaller number have that kind of feeling for racial segregation. There is the sense that, by electing a female president, the nation would be meeting a standard set by other liberal democracies; the election of a black man, by contrast, would be a particularly American achievement, an affirmation of American ideals and a celebration of American circumstances.

Later in the article:

Of course, the civil rights and women's rights movements of the 1960s have left vastly different legacies. No political figure would dare deny the saintliness of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; Betty Friedan's name is a political dirty word. Repression of blacks was the stuff of massive state-leveraged cruelty -- the police dogs and fire hoses -- while repression of women in this country was made of quieter stuff: bras, aprons and constitutional amendments.

Both Broadhseet and the Feministing (another blog credited with tipping off Broadsheet to the story) take great offense at this description. Feministing puts it this way:

While the characterizations of the civil rights and women's movement are both generalized to the umpth degree...bras and aprons?! Bras and aprons?! Seriously?

It's nice to know that a movement that helped women obtain the right to control their own bodies, created a national discourse on domestic violence and rape, and challenged sexual harassment and workplace inequity (just to name a few accomplishments) can be reduced to two words--pieces of clothing, at that!--bras and aprons. Lovely.

While I understand the annoyance with such broad generalizations, I think that Wallace-Wells is expressing a commonly held idea of our national consciousness. Even some people who would agree that preventing domestic violence, rape, and workplace inequity are good moves may not be all that comfortable with the term feminism. The movement has a bad rep of being full of man-hating hardasses. Personally, I think feminism is simply believing that women and men are equals.

But I think that collectively, we're still uncomfortable with women in positions of power. We just don't know what to do with ourselves. We talk about what women politicians are wearing, as if that makes a different to their political plans. When a woman is strong and straightforward, we call her a bitch.

I'm not trying to make the argument that women have it worse than African Americans. It would take a good research study to determine which group encounters more obstacles. (Anybody know of such a study?) I just have a gut feeling that a man -- regardless of his color -- will win out over a woman.

**James thinks that Hillary will get the nomination and take Barack as her running mate, and that they will then become an unstoppable minority team. Interesting theory.

What do you think?

Would the "Christian Left" please stand up?

Allyson's comment on the last post got me thinking about something that I often rant about: Republicans and their arrogant claim to the "moral" issues. You know, like gay marriage and abortion. If you didn't know any better, those are apparently the big threats to our nation.

They don't often bother with pesky things like the environment or helping the poor. After all, God loves capitalism. And preserving the world we live in or helping those who aren't rich really go against the basic tenet of capitalism, namely, Getting More. More money. More land. More power. More. More. More. After all, that's our right as Americans, isn't it?

But if you believe that God created the heavens and the earth and all that are in them, isn't it your responsibility -- your duty, even -- to protect them? To be a steward? If your father built you a house, would you trash it?

And what about those poor people? We don't see a lot of lepers, destitute widows, or abandoned orphans in our society, but we see plenty of homeless people, the working poor, and families without health insurance.

Some conservatives argue that taking care of the environment and the less fortunate are important, but are not the duties of the government. But if we can legislate some morality, why not all of it? If you believe that abortion is murder and gay marriage is an affront to God -- and should thus be outlawed -- why can't we have effective government restrictions on pollution and government programs that work toward social justice?

Issues such as environmentalism, responsible government spending, and public assistant programs are considered platforms of the Democrats. So I ask: Where is the Religious Left? Where are the Christian Democrats?

I know that I'm not alone in my religious beliefs and political leanings. But where are you people?! I'm maintaining my stance as a political Independent, but it's time for the Democrats to reclaim some moral authority.

Earlier I asked, "...if we can legislate some morality, why not all of it?" There's a problem with that question. Should government legislate morality, or only ethics? Some may say that I'm splitting hairs, but I see a significant difference between morals and ethics (despite the Merriam Webster definitions).

Morals are determined by religious faith. Ethics are an inherent understanding of right and wrong. More on that, and how it impacts things like abortion and same sex civil unions, in the next post.

If every vote counts, why do I feel cheated?

Did you do your civic duty today? I guess I should have reminded you yesterday to vote today. Because unless you live on the west coast, the polls are closed. (Any chance that I have a secret west coast lurker reading this? I doubt it. I think the bulk of my audience is limited to a small smattering of folks in PA, OH, and NY. If you put all those together, they spell Paohny -- a pony made of baloney. Or bologna. Your choice.)

And speaking of meats made of fillers, is anyone else as disillusioned with politics as I am? I almost didn't vote because I have no confidence in anyone.

So I have a dirty little secret to expose: I voted along party lines. Egads! Yes, I voted for people simply because of the party to which they belong. Ironic, don't you think, given that I'm registered as an Independent?

I'm just so distraught over the current state of affairs in our nation that I hoped I could help to tip the power in the other direction enough to stop some of the madness. So there you go, yes, I voted Democrat. That means I voted for Bob Casey instead of Rick Santorum, even though Ricky was my college commencement speaker and I saw him one time at Lu Lu's Noodles in Oakland. Ever since his infamous and idiotic "man on dog" interview, he's annoyed and concerned me. I'm not sure that Bobby is really up to the challenge of being a U.S. Senator, but I'm hoping he can't do much damage. But then, that was my rationale for voting for Bush the first time around. I wasn't paying attention to politics then, and hadn't taken the time to learn about him or Gore. When it came time to vote in 2000, I mistakenly thought, "Well, Bush looks like the lesser of two evils." By the time the second presidential election rolled around, I was in "ABB" mode -- Anybody But Bush. Hell, I was ready to vote for Al Sharpton if he'd won the Democratic nomination.

But back to Rick and Bob. I saw a televised debate between Santorum and Casey and just kept thinking, "This is the best the Democrats could do?" It was sad, really. Listening to Santorum almost made me believe in him. I'm not sure if it's Casey's speech impediment or lack of focus that makes him look stupid, but he did not fare well.

But like I said, I'm hoping that having a few more Democrats in government will force the politicians to look for bi-partisan solutions and provide some sort of checks and balances on our apparently fearless -- and feckless -- leader. Or maybe it will just bring government to a grinding halt for two years. We'll see...