too smooth for blue collars?

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That’s the possibility that I’m really worried about regarding Barack Obama’s electability. And it’s not just America’s blue collar workers who might not be comfortable with his ease and grace.
Obama is smooth. His movements are fluid; his manner polished. His communication is effortless, informed, fluent, and diplomatic. He is smart. And he is smooth.

And that’s what worries me. I’m worried that too many of us have come to expect — and even seek — much less from out leaders. I’m worried that we have become used to bumblers and bunglers, that we are suspect of anyone who does not have to struggle to be understood, who is able to explain complex issues simply and directly, who exudes a statesmanlike confidence in any situation.
Yet, that’s what we need as our leader. That’s what the world needs as leader of the United States. We need a statesman, a diplomat — an intelligent, informed, and smooth operator in the most positive sense.
We need to be done with confidence men and choose a leader who can both inspire and deserve our confidence.

We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals.
Lincoln was a professional politician.

Felix Frankfurter

home to the sea

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We drove into the sun, with a pale moon still high in the sky, and we brought our father/grandfather/father-in-law/once-husband to the place he asked to be laid to rest.

The morning wind whipped around us, and the tide was beginning to flow, as we searched along the deserted beach for a place to leave him to the sea.
gettingready.jpg

His daughter prepared the place.
prep.jpg

His son placed him in.
burial.jpg

Until that point, the small waves inching up the shoreline were a good ten feet away. Then suddenly, before he filled the hole, one wave reached and carried most of him away. Ah, we all thought — the sea is as eager for him as he was for the sea. It was odd, though, that none of the other waves had come up as far.

After they filled in the sand and were ready to place the flowers on the spot, another single wave obliterated all traces of where he had been placed. And so the flowers were left on the shore line and petals tossed into the spray.

flowers.jpg


And then we left him to the sea.

My photos of the trip are here.

Our daughter’s are here.

And our son’s are here

With b!X back in Portland, OR, who knows when we will be all together again as a family.

gone fishin’

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gone fishin.jpg

Well, I’m not really going fishing, but I am going to the ocean, along with my son, and daughter and her family. We will be carrying out my once-husband’s last wishes and having what will probably be our last chance to all be together for a while.
This will be the longest time I’ve ever been away from my mother since I started caregiving in 2000. She will be in my brother’s care for the next six days.
And when I get back, I will begin counting down to my own “move on” day.

questions to ask Governor Palin

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I found the link to what follows, at Women Against Sarah Palin.

Count me as a feminist who never believed that being PTA president meant you could be, well, President. The more time we spend on dippy ruminations–how does she do it? Queen Bee on steroids or the hockey mom next door? how hot is Todd, anyway?–the less focus there will be on the kind of queries that should come first with any vice presidential candidate, and certainly would if Palin were a man. Questions like:

Please do read the whole article by Katha Pollit, “Lipstick on a Wingnut,” in The Nation.

“No matter that patriotism
is too often the refuge of scoundrels.
Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising
remain the true duty of patriots.”

—Barbara Ehrenreich

“Now I Get It!”

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I got this in an email. I don’t know who wrote it, but it sure deserves to be widely posted:


I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight…..
If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re ‘exotic, different.’
Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.
If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
Name your kids Willow, Trig, and Track; you’re a maverick.
Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.
If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council, 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, and 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.
If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.
If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.
If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.
If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.
If your husband is nicknamed ‘First Dude’, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
OK, much clearer now.

mired in stuff

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Junk is something you’ve kept for years
and throw away three weeks before you need it.

It never fails, and I’ve been through it after every move (I’ve moved four times in the last 20 year.) Every time I get rid of clothing items, within a month I wish I had kept them. It doesn’t help that I’m addicted to buying clothes, and so downsizing becomes a periodic trauma.
I’m going to have to downsize my wardrobe considerably in order to fit in my rooms at my daughter’s house. I have already spent a month agonizing over what to get rid of. I’ve taken car loads to the Salvation Army and will be taking another trip tomorrow.
I used to say that I would have no problem taking off and leaving everything behind except my car, my computer and my cat. Obviously something has changed.
I think that the difference is that, back then, I had a life that I enjoyed and the energy to keep living it no matter where I was. Now I have neither. I just have a lot of stuff.

….If it weren’t for STRESS
I’d have no energy at all.

Harper’s Wacky Tuesday on Thursday

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I used to do one of these every week, feeling that it’s good to keep life on this planet in wacky perspective. So, here, are some news bits you might have missed (and/or that I think bear repeating).

Satellite images revealed that global-warming-induced melting had left the North Pole an island.
The jobless rate rose from 5.7 percent to a five-year high of 6.1percent, with more than 84,000 jobs lost in August.
Despite McCain’s opposition to earmarks, Palin,when mayor of the 6,700-resident town of Wasilla (known tostate troopers as Alaska’s “meth capital”), hired lobbyist Steven Silver to help win federal earmarks totaling $27 million. It also emerged that Palin, 44, received her first passport in 2006.
“Paris Match” published a glossy eight-page spread of Taliban fighters wearing the uniforms of the French soldiers they had killed.
Virginia Tech students were falsely told by the local registrar of elections that if they voted at college their parents would no longer be able to claim them as dependents on their tax returns, and that they could lose their scholarships and their health- and car-insurance coverage.
Tens of thousands of copies of a Swedish food magazine were recalled after an error in a recipe for apple cake sent four readers to hospitals with nutmeg poisoning.
A British teenager’s head swelled to the size of a soccer ball after she consumed a Baileys chili-tequila-absinthe-ouzo-vodka-cider-and-gin cocktail.
For the first time in a century, a month passed without a visible spot on the sun. An ice age, said scientists, may be forthcoming.
The Victorian Aboriginal Education Association warned Australian girls not to play the didgeridoo because it was “men’s business” and could lead to infertility.
The author of the book “100 Things to Do Before You Die,” having completed about 50 of the things on his list, fell, hit his head, and died.

To read additional bits and for links to authenticate any of the above go here.

is it the beginning or the end?

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So, will it be the beginning of a deeper understanding of how it ALL began, or the end of life as we know it?

GENVEVA, Switzerland – It has been called an Alice in Wonderland investigation into the makeup of the universe — or dangerous tampering with nature that could spell doomsday.

Whatever the case, the most powerful atom-smasher ever built comes online Wednesday, eagerly anticipated by scientists worldwide who have awaited this moment for two decades.

The multibillion-dollar Large Hadron Collider will explore the tiniest particles and come ever closer to re-enacting the big bang, the theory that a colossal explosion created the universe.

In case you’re wondering how it’s supposed to work, here’s a little piece of informative entertainment:

If we make it through Wednesday, our next major worry will be election day — which could mean the end of America as we know it (or rather would like to know it, again) if the GOP candidates win.
While much of the American press seems to be perpetuating the conservative infatuation with perky Sarah Palin, in other parts of the world, a more critical analysis is prevailing. From Australia’s Canberra Times:

…. Palin is just a representation of a new dynamic that’s tearing across the political fabric all around the world. She’s the conservatives’ answer to the new ”post-political” challenge that Obama represents. However, it’s worth noting that she still evokes old-style political responses, and that’s all the people who will turn out to vote just to make sure she fails. The big turn-on among Republican voters will be reciprocated by the angst she arouses among others who have a visceral opposition to her.

From the beginning, Obama’s candidacy has challenged this binary divide. He triumphed over Hillary Clinton by appealing to a new constituency. He positioned himself as representing a new way forward; using new formulations to overcome the seemingly intractable political impasses of the past. In the US, where voting is not compulsory, this still offers him a remarkable chance of becoming the next president. If he can retain the faith of the young and those who want change, he’ll win. The key is to be able to mobilise these people, and keep them enthusiastic long enough to cast their votes.

Palin’s supporters, on the other hand, are a known force. Although her style is a surprise and she seems new, she is just an evolution of a much older political formulation. She divides the world into republicans and democrats. Obama is attempting to move beyond these old concepts and appeal as someone who will deal with the underlying issues.

Of course, the Republicans don’t want to campaign on the issues. Don’t confuse them with the facts. They know what they believe.
Oh well, maybe after Wednesday,if matter and anti-matter cancel each other out, none of that will matter.