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.
sad, sad news. The law firm where I got my start is officially dissolving. Sure, a group of us left a few years ago for greener pastures, but Thelen (or, really, to those of us who were around long enough in NY, Reid & Priest) was a really nice place to work. Heck, the people I work with now are the same ones I work with then – we essentially just switched offices (my boss would say that the era actually ended when Reid & Priest merged with Thelen Marrin, but the New York office remained largely intact at that point and day-to-day life was just about the same). Here’s hoping that the utility and energy folks that are still there land on their feet at another firm, and that someone steals the (really heavy) bronze bust of A.J. Priest before the doors get locked.
it’s that time of year again. the time when I get to annoy everyone at work by taking off two days in the middle of the week leaving everyone else to take care of things.
This Rosh Hashona, instead of sitting in temple all day, I’ll be taking my bicycle in to get fixed. Because after visiting a friend yesterday afternoon who lives up in Washington Heights, I managed to get a massively flat tire. And yes, I know how to fix a flat tire, but it was damn near impossible to separate the tire from the tubing, so it became easier after about 20 minutes of trying just to carry my bike onto the subway. it wouldn’t be that big a deal if I wasn’t scheduled to do 60+ miles in the MS bike ride this weekend. Seems kind of important to have my good bike for that sort of thing.
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…
I know it’s cliche, and unoriginal, and that I’m just one of many, but man-oh-man, i could watch Michael Phelps swim every day and just never get tired of it. I think that the last time I sat through this many hours of olympic coverage was the winter olympics in 1980. And that was a combination of it being the only thing on the TV in my non-cable owning house, that whole USA-USSR hockey thing, and the fact that my parents and I actually spent the week prior to those games in Lake Placid because my dad was tasked with setting up some sort of on-site art show his company was sponsoring for the games. Oh, and I was 6.
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.
Every year, I completely forget that it’s Fleet Week until I see giant roving packs of uniformed servicemen wandering around the neighborhood. And then I wonder why they all look like they’re about 12 years old (Shut up. I’m not the one getting older!). They’re also very polite and rules-oriented. This morning on my way home from the gym, I had to make a giant detour around about 15-20 of them as they all stood patiently at the corner of empty street and empty avenue waiting for the “walk” signal. After I dared to walk through the (still empty!) intersection, I saw one (one!) of them inch his way off the curb.
I kept reading the news this week and thinking “hmm, that might be something to blog about” and then proceeded to get distracted by other things, like work. and TV. and rearranging my closet. Yeah. This was a week of serious procrastination. So much so, that I have to go in to work at some point this weekend to catch up on something that I totally could have gotten done during the week except that I kept putting it off and then got hit with a bunch of stuff that needed to get done by Friday. So that was smart.
So, in an effort to put off going into the office just a bit more, here’s a list of the things that I thought about blogging about this week but never got around to…
Edwards endorses Obama (finally). Just in time for it to make a really big difference in the last three remaining primaries. Good job waiting until it’s both a foregone conclusion and utterly useless in having any effect.
California Supreme Court overturns gay marriage ban. I have to say I was genuinely happy about this, particularly given how much more influential California is than Massachusetts on an electoral level, but I also wondered why these things always seem to happen in a way that will drive the fundies out in droves during a Presidential election year. All in all though, good news.
Oscar Pistorius can compete in the Olympics (if he qualifies). A little less obvious, and I normally don’t talk about work, but I had to throw this one in here since my firm actually represented Pistorius pro bono. Very cool.
President Bush, apparently forgetting that his own grandfather did significant business with the Nazis, compared Democrats to Nazi appeasers. By quoting a conservative Republican in 1939 who wanted to negotiate with Hitler. Someone needs to explain history to Bush, because “talking” is not quite the same thing as “allowing Germany to annex half of the sudetenland without any substantial opposition”.
And on that note, maybe someone should put this guy in the same history class.
I’m not normally a big fan of misogynist-in-chief Matthews, but I nearly snorted my coffee through my nose from laughing so hard when I saw this the other morning.
I voted bright and early this morning. There wasn’t really a wait, but people were pretty steadily streaming in and out of my polling place (one of the workers told me that they haven’t had downtime all morning). So that was cool. Looking at the little pile of green (democratic) and pink (republican) cards that indicate who voted next to the machine, there appeared to be about 50 green cards to each pink card. Of course, I live on the upper west side, which is the liberalist liberality around.
And ultimately, I did vote for Obama (Edwards was still on the ballot, and I thought about pulling that lever for a few seconds, but then I snapped back to reality).
By the way, even though apparently millions of dollars have been poured into improving voting technologies, we’re still voting on the antiquated lever machines. While I personally love them in a nostalgic sort of way (I learned how to vote on them, when my junior high school would "borrow" the county machines for school elections), I can’t help wondering where all of the money has gone.
