I haven’t been posting too much about the election, even though (as with every campaign cycle) I’m completely overinvested and reading about 150 blogs on the topic (thanks google reader!). I have a tendency to get burnt out, and forget just how profound this election is. Which is why, when I found myself sitting in front of my computer on Monday night reading this story, I started crying. And I don’t just mean that I got choked up. Full-on, tears rolling down my face, sobbing.
Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country’s first black presidential nominee.
On the same note, meet Charles…
And, of course, Obama himself giving his closing argument speech. I particularly like how he manages to tie in, pretty seamlessly, the theme of his 2004 convention speech about red america and blue america. Talk about running a fabulous campaign that allows you to make a callback like that.
So then, of course, I had to find some stuff to make me laugh, because I’d end up crying the whole week over the stress of this election season…
The first one’s been around for a while, but it makes me crack up every time I see it. As a long-time Les Mis fan (instead of a sweet sixteen, I took my 5 best friends to the city to see the show, and I’m fairly certain I can still sing the entire soundtrack from beginning to end), this is just so spot on…
and finally, from the Obama campaign…all of this excitement is fantastic, but remember to ACTUALLY GO OUT AND VOTE NEXT TUESDAY. Seriously.
I like to think I’m not an overly sentimental person, but in actuality, I can be a total sap. So it wasn’t entirely surprising that, sitting at home by myself watching Barack Obama accept the nomination for President of the United States as the candidate for the Democratic Party, my eyes welled up a bit with tears. In the day-to-day watching of the campaign, and in the weighty analysis of everything from policy positions to lapel pins, we sometimes forget how momentous this moment, even without regard to the positions either candidate takes, is. On the 45th anniversary of the March on Washington, an African-American has been nominated as the candidate of a major political party.
For everything about this country that could be better, for everything in the last eight years that has caused me profound disappointment at how we, as a country, have squandered global opportunities in favor of narrow-minded, irrational and downright unconstitutional agendas, sometimes…
sometimes we still strive to live up to the dream…
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government…
One of the less typical blogs that I read with regularity is Arthur Frommer Online. Frommer, who has been writing about travel for 50 or so years, has some really good insights into the travel industry. While he does, of course, often post about travel deals and whatnot, much of the time his writing takes on a more…political…bent. He writes about how to travel cost effectively even in the era of the declining dollar. Whether you should or shouldn’t travel to various unstable parts of the world, and lately, he’s been on a tear about Amtrak.
I’ve never quite understood why we have such crappy rail service in the US, compared to Europe. Over there, I could bicycle across France secure in the knowledge that if I got tired, there was a nearby train to take me and my bike to the next town. And it was completely sensible and both time and cost effective to travel by high-speed rail from Brig, Switzerland to Paris, France. A distance that would have pretty much required flying in this country. As someone who regularly used amtrak to go between philly and nyc when I was in school, I’m very excited to see some real movement to encourage train use in this country. It’s too bad that it took getting completely screwed by the oil industry to get there.