LaurieWrites

November 4

It seems unbelievable that this day is here but it is.

Last night I went with two people from my program to cover the Obama rally in Manassas, Va. It took us three hours to get there and two hours to get home, where we finally landed at 3 a.m. It was brutal but it was another life-changing moment, much like sitting in Invesco Field watching him accept the nomination in August.

I cannot believe I've been there for the things I've been there for, speaking inarticulately.

I sat on the media stand on a really, actually beautiful night in Virginia, praying I wouldn't fall off the riser and break my neck, smooshed on one side by a tiny camerawoman from a Japanese news media outlet and a man to the right of me from who knows where who wasn't pleased that I found a spot on the "floor" between their two tripods. For a not-small woman I can compartmentalize into these spaces pretty well when I want to. There were almost 100,000 people in those fairgrounds - a magnificent mix of color, age, gender and fashion sense. There were many, many people in wheelchairs and using canes to pick through the uneven ground to get out there and wait for a man who lost his grandma today, which I could tell by the look on his face and the almost-imperceptible slump in his demeanor.

The admittedly kind of shady but well-meaning video that I captured is on my YouTube channel.

I wrote this while I sat there:

I really never want to forget how I felt, sitting in these chilly fairgrounds in southern Northern Virginia. This has been a long, ridiculous eight years and whether or not this man can even begin to piece some things back together, I'm not willing to bet any more of my country's future on a short-sighted party that sold it out to the atrocities of war and domestic oppression.

80,000 people in Manassas, in November, at 10 p.m. on a Monday night. My friends, this is change.

I slept for two hours so it's a good thing the adrenaline is kicking in. I'll be in a few places today. I'm going to stop into my local precinct and vote, then go to campus to pick up some last-minute footage and news for the YouthVote Blog. TerpsVote and College Dems and Republicans are holding events all day.

I'm on Twitter at @lauriewrites, which I expect will heat up when I'm with the awesome list of bloggers expected to be at NPR tonight with me as part of their election coverage. My friends Jill Miller Zimon and Shireen Mitchell (aka digitalsista) will be there, along with several others - mostly women, amazingly. As much as after two years of this I want to be on my couch with a beer and a pizza, this is such a cool opportunity and I can't wait.

I'm going to vote now. For the rest of the day, if you're interested, you can find me on what I randomly called LeftRightLeft, the small corner of this site where I allow myself to get political. I can't promise wisdom, not at all, but what I can leave you with is the reason why all of this happened in the first place, in two small parts.

In 2000, I knew very little about politics but I knew in my heart that something was wrong. I had been back in Maryland for a year and my life was sort of messy (nothing like the airtight awesomeness it is now! Haha. ;)) The Gore loss - the election day actual real-time debacle and the eventual legal loss - changed my life and my mind forever. It altered my concept of what is fair and just, and what a country can really do. I learned then that things are not always as they seem, that sometimes in fact they are quite horrible no matter what kind of a pretty dress you put on them, and nor are they as they ought to be, at least not from my spot anyway.

I got seriously fired up for the first time but clearly not the last and I dragged everyone I knew and loved with me through my growing sense of frustration and disenchantment with the political process and the rightness of leadership in this country that has not abated since. Nice, right?

In 2004, my life was a little more together and things seemed like they might be looking up. I sat up all night hoping against dying hope that even though I knew that John Kerry the windsurfer didn't have what it took to get us out of the hole we were in, that some kind of universal force (call it God, call it what you will, I'm open) that opposed an unjust war killing many thousands of people would cause a miracle to happen and let him take over for awhile.

When I am told I need to be unbiased as a journalist I respect this - on paper. But as a fully living, beyond-opinionated woman living in this crazy world, I can't be. It stresses me. It challenges my communication skills, because I have too many ideas and have drawn too many conclusions to pretend I haven't. Because, see, I want equality for people of color and for women. I want - as I said - an end to an unjust war, and a slimmer chance that we'll end up in a series of other ones, with nothing but axes to grind forevermore.  This is my central issue, I admit it, beyond the economy even, even though I know how very serious this is. This is my heartbreak, and anyone who says this means I don't support troops or my country - well, okay, I'm all about freedom of speech, but they're wrong.

So that's why I'm here. I may never work in a traditional newsroom because of this (and let's face it, at my age I'm cool with that - they can't afford my starting salary.) I'm a teacher and a writer at heart so I'm okay if I just do those things. I'm not going to be silent today, except when it makes sense because I don't want to get punched. Today I'm going to say on my little corner of the Internet what I believe in my heart, my most impassioned heart that was very battered along with millions of others eight and four years ago. Today I'm going to say like I have not before in this cycle that if things go the way I hope they do for a man who has managed to stir millions of people the world over with an undeniable sense of promise, the right thing will have happened. I'm saying this because I've finally decided that I should, and because even when I didn't I caught hell anyway. I'm saying this because yes, I can.

Seriously, drop by the other page later if you feel like it. We're going to tear it up at NPR, I promise. There may even be a webcam involved at some point.

Gustav

Update: I volunteered to edit the Animal Rescue page on Andy Carvin's Gustav wiki. Please e-mail me at laurie@lauriewrites.com or find me on Twitter at @lauriewrites with any news you see about the pets and animals left behind in Louisiana and Mississippi. Thanks.

Hurricane Gustav is shaping up to be a Category 5 storm.

First of all, please God may it spare New Orleans.

Second of all, lots of people are blogging about it, with preparation and preemptive relief efforts. Please visit them and find a way to help, if you can. Even if you don't think you can because you're far away or don't have the means, even writing about it is very, very important. If anything was learned from Katrina (and my ignorance at the time was great, but not so much in the years since) it's that silence is a fatal action in this case.

Katrina recovery was a major theme of the early part of the week at the DNC and I find the timing of the RNC quite apt. If the world pays more attention to this than that event in St. Paul, it'll be a good thing whether the storm hits or not. And if it does hit, the question must be asked of the administration that this candidate is trying valiantly to distance himself from: WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU GOING TO DO DIFFERENTLY THIS TIME? And of the candidate, I might ask: What in the hell would YOU do?

Here are some links:
Gustav Resource Center (via @waynesutton on Twitter.)

Excellent headlines and updates from @jazzychad on Twitter.

Official government weather updates on Twitter: @GustavAlerts

The long way

I made this my movie weekend, thrilled as I was to not have to go to work at all, or to be somewhere else trying to have fun, thinking about how I should be at work. That's a major drag, by the way, and I don't recommend it. Work sucks in general (I much prefer play, to be honest) but when it's hanging over my head, the suckage goes forth and multiplies.

After "Stranger Than Fiction," which is detailed in sickening detail below, I let someone else pick the movie. My friend Jeremy came down yesterday and he chose "Copying Beethoven," which really didn't do it for either one of us, I don't think. The music was great, but Ed Harris annoyed me, and the story was weak. Plus the cinematography created an atmosphere that made early-1800s Vienna resemble my memories of Three Mile Island from the endless newsreel of my childhood. Bleak. Grey. Ick. And maybe that's what Vienna looked like then, but in that case I hope they had some early substitute for antidepressants, cause cry me a river...it was unbearable.

Today I saw "Shut Up and Sing," which I was really excited about, and it was fabulous. I loved it. It made me cry it was so good, although I'm a Dixie Chicks fan, so I'm not exactly unbiased. Or not at all unbiased, depending on how you look at it. I'm not a country music fan in general these days, and certainly not part of the base that burned and steamrolled cds (overreact much?) or held their kids up to say "Screw you" outside of their concerts after the remark about George Bush essentially led country radio to wipe them off the map. I just think they're really talented women. "Taking the Long Way" is arguably the best album released in 2006, and although I was a fan before, now that they're writing their songs and expanding their reach, I like them even more. (I really like them. I'm sorry. I know, it's gross.)

I wrote a paper for a Language and Politics class this past summer about the controversy, and got really into researching the (literally) thousands of words that were written in every possible media outlet about these women. When Natalie Maines said at a London concert that, "We're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas," the day before we sent troops to Iraq, she got scourged in red state America overnight. Toby Keith put a picture of her on the screen at his concerts with Saddam Hussein, and her head on the body of a toad, and it's cool. His free speech is okay. Hers is not. In the film, she's shown playing one of the first shows after the controversy started, and she heard people booing. "Go ahead, you let it out," she said, "because I support free speech." And that's really what goes on the chopping block when people aren't allowed to voice an opposing view.

In any event, it's a really well done film. Stephen Hunter's review in the Post was harsher on Natalie than it needed to be. Again, I'm biased, but I hardly think his characterization of her as a "blowhard" is anything that the women shy away from, or that needed to be pointed out by the filmmaker in the way he suggests. Natalie's opinions and freedom in expressing them started the whole business in the first place, and she references her big mouth several times in the movie. It's no secret. I wonder if the same depiction would be given if she were a man expressing himself in the same way.

The core of the film for me came almost at the end, with a bit in which Martie Maguire says she just wants Natalie to be safe and happy with the way things turn out. I actually found Martie to be the most compelling person in the film. She's obviously dedicated to the music and to the life she and her sister have created from the time they were pre-teens, and watching her it was easy to see what was threatened by an incident that grew beyond what any of them intended or planned. Her statements at the end were also the only time any of them are shown crying. Her defense of Natalie was honest and heartfelt, and I really felt throughout that these women were a team, no bullshit, which is refreshing in an industry and unfortunately a world where that often doesn't seem to be the case. I wish them luck, because I think they took the harder - and longer way - round with all of this, and would that more of us spoke up in whatever venue we find ourselves in, large or small.

Local Books and Music

Sometimes I dislike my neighborhood, it's true. Although I chirp on about the "bloom where you're planted" philosophy, and indeed I believe that, sometimes...only sometimes...I wish I was planted in Brooklyn, or Maui, or maybe even Charlotte? Wide swath, yes. My problem isn't with Maryland. I'm very fond of my small but mighty state, and think it's a great place to call your home, and I'm not foolin'. I travel around it with relative ease, and the reality is that I'm not stopped from going anywhere I want to go at this point. If anything, I'm in a good spot to tool around wherever I want, since we're close to most major sources of transportation and two large metro areas that provide me with more entertainment than I can even consume. My problem is mostly with my very immediate vicinity, and what I perceive as a lack of character, both in its architecture and its commerce. You know...there's the Coldstone Creamery, and the Hallmark Store, and the Blockbuster. Woohoo! We have small stores, but they're mostly boutiques and carry nothing that really interests me. I'm just not ready for Brighton yet, and have a suspicion that I will never be.

One thing we do have here is food. There are two completely awesome restaurants - one is Italian complete with a great house Chianti, and the other is South American/Mexican. This makes me extremely happy, because I really believe that restaurants can be the soul of a community, and by that I don't mean Applebees (which I heard described by a person from Scotland once as a "dodgy steak place," and that never fails to make me smile.)

The other night I went to Sol Azteca - the Mexican place - to get a carne asada dinner on my way home. As you imagine my entrance into the parking lot, please try for a moment to channel a moment of absolute joy, combined with total shock, if you can. You can, can't you? Are you there? Don't lie to me. For God's SAKE, you MUST have had a moment of joy at some point, no? Even without the shock? Can't conjure one up? GOSH! Put down the damned mouse and go out and find one. What are you wasting your time at this ridiculous keyboard for? Live it up! Time's a 'wastin'.

Hmmm. Anyway...was it good for you? (Haha! Sorry.) Anyway, yes, joy and shock, even a little bit of awe, when I pulled into the parking lot to get my AWESOME STEAK AND GUACAMOLE AND CHIPS AND HOMEMADE SALSA and saw this:

It was dark, but you get the drift. Just imagine a bookstore at night, awash in the aura of the streetlamps. And if you channeled that joy and shock properly while ago, you'll perhaps come close to knowing how happy I was to see a bookstore in my little, tiny, overcrowded town that wasn't a liquidation sale. You'll know a little better when I tell you that I've forgiven the proprietors (of a BOOKSTORE NO LESS!) for having a typo on their banner. Couldn't do it myself, but that's me - annoying, punctilious, spelling demon me.

Once inside and past the typo, I was jazzed to find that it was not just books! It's a used cd store too! And an independent cafe of sorts! In my little corner of the world! (that's pretty much how those thoughts were sputtering in my brain at the time, too.) It's called Second Edition Books, also something I might have chosen to put a little more prominently on the storefront, but hey...not my shingle.

I can't tell you how cool this was - so I told the guy working there instead, and he confirmed that everyone had been "so supportive." But what do you expect, when something useful and interesting opens up around here? I really hope they make it.

Part of the shock and joy was the addition of a bookstore to a suburban Maryland strip mall that already included a music store three storefronts down: Rocketeria, baby! Yes, not only does my little town have an independent bookstore now, but it also has an independent music store, where an extremely affable guy named Dave runs the show. My guitar teacher had encouraged me not to take my guitar to a big corporate store, because it's a good idea to support independent music retailers, and he was right. The night I stopped in, the nice woman working there told me to bring it back the next day for Dave to take a look at, which I did. He looked like Jack Black's older brother, with no apparent flair for slapstick comedy, but I bet he does has a screaming guitar solo in his repertoire. He won me over because not only did he not ask me if the guitar work was for my son or my little brother, which is how most of the guys at Guitar Center approach me (in a benign fashion - not hostile or anything, but still.), but he also fixed the neck partially for me right there on the spot, and told me that he needed more time to check it out and might have to send it out, because he didn't want to break it. And he also explained the problems with the neck to me like he expected me to understand, which is really nice. Now, my guitar was not expensive as guitars go. It hasn't been played a whole lot and I'm just getting back into it now, so it was cool of him to treat it like a thousand dollar instrument.

I love that these independent businesses are in my town, more than I can clearly say. It makes me feel good to support them, the exact opposite of how I feel when I throw my money into the gaping maw of corporate monsters like CVS. Plus, the people in both of these stores talked to me - really. Like, in full sentences, which also included questions about how they could meet my needs. This is unusual in the suburban marketplace - in fact, so unusual, that this is all it takes to get a loyal customer for life out of me.

Iraq

The headline story on the Washington Post's early Sunday edition looks even worse in big red font on the home page. I can't stand it, and I don't really know what to do about it, except to say that over and over again. I'm lucky to live in peace and comfort, but is that acceptable when other people are dying in ditches? It's been bothering me more and more lately, and the fact that it's become background noise bothers me more than I can say. It's not even really discussed in terms of the upcoming elections. People would rather obsess about some loser's dirty IMs or sexual orientation, because it suits their reality tv-driven ethos. It's ridiculous.

I started reading The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien again, because my friend reminded me of it, and I decided that I wanted to remember what truth about war sounded like, at least through one man's fictional recount. It's also a great book, and if you haven't read it, I recommend that you do. It goes fast, actually, and I think it's nice common reading for most of us who have been conscious during the last part of the 20th century and the pathetic beginning of this one. 

Here are some of the people who have died, according to the Post. And I know countless more have been wounded short of death, but still in life-altering ways, both physical and psychological. I go to the movies or out to dinner down in Silver Spring now and it seems I see so many guys from Walter Reed (I'm assuming) in various states of disarray - limbs blown off, bandages on their heads, wheelchair-bound. Their families take them out I guess, when they visit, and I know they're returned military. And some of them are really messed up. It's so sad. I see the pride and there's every attempt on my part not to stare at them because really, I'm assuming so much about them, because that's what the human inclination is - assumption. Maybe they were in an accident? Maybe they just happen to look like Army? I don't know...It's hard, and it's touchy, and every time I see one of them I think that I should just be glad he made it home alive, but then I see what bad shape he's usually in physically and it makes me sick. Because here was a strong, healthy person and now he has to go through life in a wheelchair. But I really don't question anyone's right to stand up for whatever it is they want to stand up for. There's a chance that that guy might have a real problem with me and my lefty politics, and consider himself better off than me on some level. It's hard to tell.

I have to admit that when I heard the politicians offering condolences to the families of the kids who died in the recent school shootings, I had a moment where I thought, "You mindfully send young people off to die every day. Where is your compunction for that? No, a crazy person should NEVER go into a school and harm innocent people, but neither should we be bankrolling death and fueling murderous rage towards our own citizens or anyone else." And I retracted it in my head at the time because it sounded harsh, and because I didn't want to confuse the very sad and important issue about these kids who died here, but it keeps echoing for some reason. Idealist and pacifist that I am, I don't want any kids to die. I don't want community college kids to get sucked in by recruiters who are always on campus, when maybe they're on the track to be the first kid in their family to work straight through and graduate without a debt to pay to the U.S. military that is NOT currently compulsory. That's not for me to decide, though, and it's not something that I think will change anytime soon. It's just sad, and seems more than a little pointless at this juncture, and I'm not sure what anyone is interested in doing to stop it or change it at a level where that might still be able to occur.

I do believe that there is still a lot of great and wonderful good in the world, but I just wish that these foreboding red headlines weren't necessary, and that we lived in a world where we could talk openly about just what a shame that not only has this turned out to be, but always was.

But can you steal their flair?

This post is standing between me and brunch, but I care enough to bring you, via Tracey, Disaffected!

If you've worked in a retail establishment anytime in the past ten years, in particular, you may want to check this out. The time I've done in a couple big-box bookstores (that start with "B", coincidentally...) has given me a certain level of compassion for the slack-jawed service I've grown accustomed to in recent years...because I've read the training manual, as it were, and it is not compelling. (Let's not even discuss the videos. I'd rather be stuck in front of the acid trip that is Boobah for 48 hours with Yanni in the background than watch one more single Borders training video. Fuckers.) I've also been subject to the bag checks upon leaving the store, and the soul-deadening "team meetings", wherein you are threatened with demerits if you don't ask people for their email addresses, and none of this, by the way, impacts your seven bucks an hour at all.

But all that's behind me now, thank God. Now I can drink my coffee anywhere in the store I damned well please, and also read for free in the cafe when I feel like it, and don't think I don't. They owe me a lifetime Oprah subscription, at least. But I still straighten books compulsively, while repressing my need to alphabetize, and correct crooked sales stickers. It's been a long road, that's for sure - but it's a much better view from this side of the counter, I have to admit.

(And just go to her links, people - they're always awesome, and just like what I'd try to share with you if I wasn't so damned lazy lately!)

Dewey Donations

So you can likely surmise that I think books are cool. Pamie is also cool. I don't read her as often as I should (I really need to update the old blogroll, and the design. I know, I know. Are you going to offer to support me so I can quit my job and blog fulltime? Didn't think so. But do think about it, will you? ; )) However, I was directed to her site from another link today. All the talk about community assistance blogging at the conference got me excited about the concept of blogs as a way of getting good news and volunteer opportunities out there, and she has a great opportunity to do so.

The Dewey Donation System is the coolest thing I've heard about in a while. In previous years, the project has supported tsunami relief and losses to wildfire in San Diego. This year, the post-Katrina library situation is bad, and this project is helping to restock Mississippi libraries (in the hard-hit Gulf Coast, i.e., Biloxi/Harrison County) with books. Several of them lost entire children's collections, and you know how important that is.

Check it out, and maybe tack a dvd or a book onto an amazon.com order and send it their way.

Mosh

I'd never seen the video for Eminem's "Mosh". I'm analyzing it for my language and politics class. If you haven't checked it out, it's worth a look.

Oh Condi

I appreciate this, so much, for a few reasons. One is that I enjoy it when Catholicism is associated with pacifism, which is something that isn't talked about very much in light of all the other stuff there is to pick on. If we'd focus more on charity and giving, instead of what women aren't allowed to do and who can and can't be a priest, maybe more people would stick around (not that I did, which should be duly noted. However, I'm not a bitter lapsed person...just non-participatory. Can't help it.) Secondly, I think it's a good thing when hypocrisy is illuminated in places where it's usually left dark. Third of all, I think this woman, and the people she shills for, are so scary.

Perhaps Steve Earle will provide musical accompaniment.

Couldn't they get Bono? At least he's Irish, which I'm sure puts him in the running at BC.

Sometimes it's like these things can't be real.

From the moveon.org site:

"A House panel has voted to eliminate all public funding for NPR and PBS, starting with "Sesame Street," "Reading Rainbow," and other commercial-free children's shows. If approved, this would be the most severe cut in the history of public broadcasting, threatening to pull the plug on Big Bird, Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch."

No Child Left Behind, my ass. How about we leave them all behind? Rich, poor, every race, location, shoe size - let's put 'em all in a barge the size of TEXAS and just leave 'em behind, all at once. It will save lots of time and press releases, and then we can just get on with baseball, and avoiding the war. At least, let's be honest about it.

Please consider signing this petition. Even if you don't think your individual actions make any difference in this "through the looking glass" society we live in, which I'm guilty of myself, I know that's no excuse, really. It's so important to be aware of and engaged with these issues. The past ten years have been full of this madness - the Clear Channelization and reality television-ifying of America. I feel a little dumber, a little tackier by association sometimes. Don't you?

It's frightening, because you know, even though I love my share of trashy tv (not radio - I long since gave up on commercial radio) I can't imagine the public stations getting by on much LESS than they already do. It's hard enough for people who want to go into this line of work to survive on the salaries, especially in major metro areas - not to mention the costs of keeping the stations open period.

Here's more from pbs.org, and if you have any question about the value of NPR, check out their home page. Therein resides the most beautifully random assortment of ideas, events, people and places, all collected in one place. I really hope it's still there for another generation, along with the Cookie Monster (even IF cookies are - you know - a "sometimes food" these days. And don't even GET me started on that.)