fear and loathing in Americka

It will come as no surprise to many of you that there seems to be a real push-back kind of thing going on with President Obama.

I'd like to delve deeply into the reasons for this push back stuff, and write eloquently about how it affects out country. We are divided. We are polarized. The conservatives have been taken over by the wide-eyed crazy wing of their party, and compromise is out of the question.

On the other hand, I felt a lot like that after 8 years of the shrub. But then that's because he was an idiot and his policies were hateful, stupid, short-sighted and favored the greedy bullies that were his friends.

This guy is smart. He can speak and write in complete sentences. His spelling is probably very good. He's looking at the long-term and trying to find solutions that are not fad diets.

Among the knuckle-draggers, he is very unpopular.

Check out THIS SITE for pictures of these teabaggers and their protest signs. Honestly, it's like a train wreck of language, grammar and spelling.

I think there are a lot of things going on in this phenomenon. For one thing, America is changing.

In the coming decades, white people will become the minority. And that scares the shit out of some of them.

I would argue that anyone who has not behaved as a bully has no reason to fear retribution. If you've been an asshole to those with less power than you and then they get the power you once held, well, I don't think there are a lot of people who would blame the new top dog for kicking you around a little bit. Not for ever, but just for a bit. So you know what it's like to be at the receiving end of your version of the American dream.

This is the same kind of fear I see from some straight men when they are faced with being in close quarters with gay men. When you treat all potential sexual partners as prey to be overcome, and then find yourself in a position of possibly being someone else's prey, well then, that's just scary.

Insecure people often engage in behavior identical to that of their oppressors. It is sad. But it is true.

So now the uneducated, lazy swath of white Americka is faced with the prospect that they might not be the schoolyard bullies any more and it scares the piss right out of them.

I am concerned that I might get painted with that same brush because of my skin color, which is decidedly pink and pale. I tend to have more faith in our friends of color than some white folks.

We have a black president and that freaks a lot of people out. Not only is he black, but he is very, very smart. Very smart. Harvard Law smart. And again, when you operate from a system that understands only power and the balance of it, having an adversary who is smarter than you is a scary thing. The thought of working with that very smart person instead of as an adversary does not come into consideration when your world is small and binary. I remember an old bumper sticker from the Women's Liberation movement years ago: "Men of quality are not threatened by Women's Equality."

And that's the deal. That's the whole business in a nutshell. People are afraid of losing what they've got. They don't understand that knowledge is a thing that grows as it is shared, that education is not to be feared, and that the world won't end of you re-evaluate what you believe and make changes to it. Growth is OK, folks. Or you can stagnate and become a dinosaur. Your choice.

There is so much more to write about this subject. I have not the time nor the brainpower this morning. Let's revisit it later, though.

a change in perspective

I have a sermon to preach this weekend.

I am wrestling with the finishing touches of the sermon and with my own heart.

Back in November when I preached, it was fun. A challenge. It was deliciously outrageous to think that me, me of all people, with my big butch queer self and my curious proclivities and semi-outrageous friends and all, would be asked to preach a sermon.

I was excited. I had a drum to beat and people to make march, and I liked that role a lot. I like getting people fired up and ready to go and then marching them off to change the world. It is a grand and beautiful thing.

I liked the idea of dressing up to play minister -- sort of. I know ministers do lots more each week than preach a sermon and lead worship, but I liked the part where I got to stand on the chancel and preach and people listened. I liked it a lot.

And now things have changed inside me.

This is not fun play-acting now.

I have received a call to ministry.

It is ALL different.

I have a costume party to attend in a couple weeks. Two weeks ago, I might have borrowed or crafted a cleric's collar and gone as clergy of some kind. I can't do that now. It has a very different feeling around it now.

Oh, it still boggles my mind that I have been called to ministry. Of all of the upstanding, rational, well-behaved people who might be better suited to a life of service and worship, the lightning bolt hit me. Or whatever it was. Something touched me that morning a week ago, and my insides are forever changed.

I was talking with friends last night about this call to ministry and how I felt like I didn't have much of a choice now in the process, save perhaps choosing which school to attend and how long to take about it. Oh, I can always choose to ignore the call. Sort of like I ignored the steps in my recovery for a long time. Um, no. That was a bad idea. I lived through it, but still, it was no fun. I have been ignoring gentle hints the universe has been giving me about this ministry thing for several months. Eventually I got the lightning bolt. I have no desire to see what larger artillery might be used if I continue to ignore the path which is now laid out so clearly before me.

So now I am writing a sermon. It feels very different than it did barely a week ago. There is something deeper here now that was not here before. A responsibility to do it really, really well. An obligation to lead meaningful worship. Suddenly, it is enormous.

The sun is creeping up through the trees at the edge of the back field. The cat will be here soon for his morning devotion. He has already demanded that I worship him, now it will be his turn to worship the sun. Seems fair, I suppose. He's still a little nervous about the changes in the desk and I think he's afraid he might be scolded for walking across my desk to get to his window perch. I placed him there today, which may help alleviate his anxiety some. This morning, we are worshiping together.

There are some things happening in my life that are worth noting. I have been poking relentlessly at the queer political establishment for several months, offering my help, my thoughts and my observations. I also offered myself, in some kind of professional (read: paid) capacity as an organizer and outreach something-or-other. We -- as a movement in this state -- need rural outreach. I've got some ideas on how to do that, and I would like to help.

Well, it seems that things are churning now to the point where something definite might actually come of all this. We are in the phone call and email stages, and I might have an opportunity to participate at some level as soon as next week.

For months, I have been praying to be at peace with whatever answer was presented to me. And now I am. Not because I am hearing from people and they want to talk with me, but because I have this ministry thing that I know is where I will end up. Will I combine politics and ministry? perhaps. It is a natural fit for me. I prefer to organize in churches and living rooms and kitchens and garages and back porches. Our work is justice work. It is a natural fit for churches to work for justice. It is what our leaders have told us through the ages. So. I have a couple phone calls to return today to find out about the next week stuff. When I can tell you about it, I will.

Do I think this organization would be wise to hire me? Yes. Even as I threaten to run off to divinity school? Yes. I have access where they need to be. I don't know anyone else who can do what I can do in rural areas. I would like to think that I would be an asset. I know that's a point for heated discussion in some areas. Not everyone likes me. I am not as politically polished as some. I tend to tell people when I think they've got their heads up their asses. Lucky for me, that kind of direct approach is respected in rural areas. Country folk haven't got time or patience for people to suck up and use fancy words while they do it. I need a favor. OK, what do you need. Conversation over. Sometimes words aren't even needed. Standing near your vehicle with the hood up is all you need to do to get help. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let's have some phone conversations first and see what comes of it. Like I said, I'll let you know what happens. In the meantime, I pray for peace in my heart and inspiration in my words.

The sun is full up now and warming my face. It it time to step into my day. Worship will continue, I think. Blessed be.

duh! I could have done this earlier!

Back just after the election, I was interviewed by a woman named Amy from our nearby community radio station, WERU in East Orland, Maine. She interviewed me on the afternoon of Wednesday, Nov. 4. To say I was a little burned out and sad is the understatement of the year.

Well, as it turns out, I sounded pretty good - at least enough that she could edit and get the non-crying bits to sound worth-while. She submitted her story to a nationally syndicated program called This Way Out, and they used it in their weekly radio magazine for the week of Nov. 11.

They used a clip of what I said at the very beginning, as a teaser, then they go into a bunch of news from around the country and the world, and then they come back to the main stories, of which Maine was the lead story. My interview with Amy lasts about 2 or 3 minutes and I think it went pretty well. You be the judge, though.

As I seem unable to embed an MP3 file, here is the link to download the file so you can hear the program:

http://www.mediafire.com/?yz5qyxlmumt

Oh, and if anyone can tell me how to embed an MP3 file, you know how to reach me. Thanks.

I hate deadlines

especially when I don't have enough time between remembering one and hitting that same deadline to write something terribly witty and clever.

Which, of course, is what I prefer to do.

Witty and clever are easy for me. I like the easy stuff. Blood and guts and fear and vulnerability? Eeeeeeessssshhhhhhh, that's tough stuff.

Last year when I did this NaBloPoMo thingitz, I set the bar exceedingly high. The Seven Deadly Sins. The seven Virtues. Oh, and there was a presidential election in there, plus an assortment of things that gave me ample fodder for the copy factory that is my keyboard.

This year, I have yet to find that muse. We just came off a campaign that ate my summer and my life. I stuck my head into it in July and woke up last week wondering where all the leaves had gone. Fishing season is over, too, I understand. Damn.

The truth is, I just don't have the energy level this year that I had last year. Maybe if we won I'd have more zip, I don't know. My gut tells me that I'd be this tired even if we'd won. Although I could be boring you all with wedding plans.

Louise from Pam's House Blend came up yesterday and we had a marvelous visit. She brought home-made pickles and apple butter and fudge and we all went out to lunch at Geddy's and got the nachos on a hubcap and then to Ben & Bill's to buy goodies for the folks back home and then a short tour through the park. We stopped at Thunder Hole, which was not thundering at all (low tide) and we showed her where those people got washed off the rocks into the ocean, and we saw some deer and some nature and it was good.

We laughed and cried a little; over lunch we talked politics and Maine stories and discussed our experiences gutting deer. The young hetero couple at the next table barely blinked. I do love a small, rural town. We talked some more about politics, and came up with some ideas that have had Laura and I doing research and data entry and trying to coalate things so that I can look at them and get what I need easily. I've got some ideas for future campaigns, but I want to have them properly organized before I offer them for public consumption. Stay tuned, though. I'll share them here eventually.

Today I worked, sort of. I did a bunch of prep work and made ready for a nice little project that I think will make the customers very happy. I'll try to take pictures if I can remember, and post them here.

Gads but I wish I had more time to be witty, but I don't. I need to hit publish soon or I won't get to win the zillion-dollar grand prize for having posted every day for a month. Right. I'm planning on that money to retire to an island where there is warm sun, blue sky, blue ocean, white sand, palm trees and scantily clad women. Ahem. Right. Or maybe just pay off my student loans. That'd be nice.

OK. That's what you get today. We'll try again tomorrow for brilliance, but I make no promises.

a little distracted

Forgive me, but I am still a little distracted by this whole marriage equality thing. The bill passed the Maine State Senate by a 21-14 vote on Thursday. That's a 3-2 margin. Not a squeaker. Supporters numbered half again as many as opponents. That's pretty impressive.

The bill goes to House of Representatives on Tuesday, where it is said to have solid support.

This is amazing.

In 1988, when I came out and began to get active in queer stuff in Maine, it was still legal to fire, evict, deny credit and deny accommodations to gay men and lesbians in Maine. Hate crimes were largely unreported because to do so would mean to admit that you were gay, putting job and livelihood in peril. We were fighting then for an anti-discrimination law, and it was a nasty, uphill fight. Marriage was so far away as to not even be on the map. Not in my lifetime, perhaps in the next generation we might see such a thing, I thought. Back then, we just wanted to not get killed in the street. We just wanted someone to help our brothers who were dying by the thousands. Marriage? That was a decadent dessert to people who were starving for rice.

Ten years ago, we still did not have legal protections. Every other state in New England offered protection from discrimination for sexual minorities, but not Maine. Vermont was even working on domestic partnership. But they were a bunch of freaky hippies, we said. There's no accounting for Vermont. They do what they want there.

But now here we are in Maine in 2009. We have legal protection from discrimination, finally. We have a domestic partnership law, yes, but it is offensive to me and many others. In order to register to receive half-ration benefits, we have to file paperwork with the Department of Health. The Department of Health??? Why not Vital Statistics, where straight marriages are registered? Ooooh, that's right. We're different. Separate. Equal? My ass! We have to register with the Department of Health. People with communicable diseases have to register with the Department of Health. That is patently offensive, thank you very much.

So now we are less than 100 hours away from a historic vote of the Maine Legislature. Marriage equality might be a reality not just within my lifetime, but within this year. Wow.

If the House passes this bill on Tuesday, it goes on to the Governor for his signature. With a 3-2 margin in the Senate, and something similar (hopefully) in the House, it would make good sense for him to support a bill that comes through with solid support in both houses. The legislature is scheduled to end its session on June 17. New laws take effect 90 days after the end of the session. That means by mid-September, we could be married.

Don't think I'm gonna wear no dress. Just get that thought out of your head right now.

Wow. This is a real possibility. Something has shifted in America. We have our first African American president. Being smart is cool again. Being a stupid redneck is un-cool again. People want to feel proud about ethics again. People want to be the good guys, not the bully. We are beginning to search for and find the greater part of ourselves, that part of us that takes the high road.

History is coming. This chapter WILL be written. Dear god, let us all live long enough to see it be a reality.

Visible: A Femmethology, Volumes One and Two

This is probably as close to a book review as you're going to ever find in this space. I can write a lot of stuff, but book reviews have never been high on my list. Too stuffy and presumptuous for me. You're expected to read symbolism into shit. I don't do that. I read stuff and tell you if I like and why. Here goes.

Title: Visible: A Femmethology, Volumes One and Two
Edited by Jennifer Clare Burke
Published by Homofactus Press
ISBN: 978-0-9785973-4-4

Somehow, this great gal named Maria who works for the publishing company (I think) found me and asked if I would review a couple volumes of collected writings by and about femmes and what makes them femme.

What this butch girl can say about femmes is really pretty limited. I have dated one or two, slept with a couple, and ogled my fair share. This latter bit probably marks me as a tool of the patriarchy, but oh well. I like the way women look. And some of them happen to be femme. Is it wrong for me to ogle the cute butch with the swagger and brush cut? God, I hope not.

I also have to confess my own ignorance of femme politics. Only in recent years have I opened my eyes to the concept that a femme identity might be something more than passing for straight. Only in recent months have I begun to try to learn more about femme identity politics and what it means for me, for our culture, and for the queer liberation movement.

For a very long time - indeed my whole life - the mysterious art of make-up, hair, nails and fashion have been foreign to me. Much like I view people who have amazing technical skills with computers or the visual arts, I have tended to view femmes, high femmes in particular, with a certain degree of suspicion. Their art is beyond my comprehension. It was something to be feared, or perhaps ridiculed. Girly girls. Feh. Who could take them seriously?

My internal sexism was stronger than I had ever imagined. It took me over 40 years to recognize it. I am now working on that. Perhaps the fates saw fit to put me here to read this collection to help in that effort. Wise and witty women, those fates.

So anyway, there is the two-volume TOME of writing edited by Jennifer Clare Burke and published by Homofactus Press, LLC. It contains the thoughts and musings of something like 50 writers. They are femmes and not-femmes, old and young, some schooled in the language and dogma of feminist theory, some radical and outrageous. Their brilliance and wordcraft are impressive.

As I paged through the volumes, a couple pieces jumped out at me as instantly attractive to my butch bottom sensibilities. Femme Fuck Revolution by Hadassah Hill was one that really appealed to me. Hill flings a stiletto in the face of old-school, Dworkin-style feminism and keeps marching. Damn. Gives me shivers.

The piece that moved me the most, that kept my eyes riveted to the page, that wrenched my heart and made me think harder about what it means to have an identity of any kind, butch or femme, was A Decade Later - Still Femme? by Sharon Wachsler. This piece is a revision of an original essay by Wachsler called Still, Femme, first published in the 1990s. Wachsler has a chronic and debilitating illness that has changed her life enormously from her early, carefree, younger years. She describes her life as a young "power femme," dressed to the nines in skirts and heels, makeup just so, hair perfect, striding with confidence and attitude everywhere she went. Then disease struck, something called Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS) and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) laid her low. Confined indoors, safe from the chemicals of nature (pollen, dust, mold) and the chemicals of man (pollution, smog), she had to vastly adjust her behaviors, her daily rituals.

The makeup and lipstick that had once been her war paint, that wonderful empowering battle-garb now became her undoing. A day wearing makeup meant a week of increased medicine and rest. Her body could no longer do the things she used to enjoy. Muscles lost tone. Movement of any kind is an exhausting effort. One of the paragraphs that gripped me most was this:

I realized that most of my femme identity was bound up in those narrow social contexts - getting dressed up, going out, being among other queer women - and in the "props" of those contexts. Now that I could no longer enter those surroundings or wear the clothing, makeup, and accessories that went with them, was I still femme? Where is the meaning in being femme if I am absent from the queer women's community? My hair tangled, my body limp and sore, my skin splotchy, I wondered if I would ever look good again. Was there any point in being femme if I were unattractive and inert?

What point, indeed? How much of our identity is what we show the world? If suddenly I were incapacitated in such a way and could no longer do the things that I do that make me feel butch - fixing my truck, building things, wearing jeans and work boots - the things that make me feel powerful and competent, for indeed that is how she described her "power femme" identity, what would that mean to my identity as butch?

Wachsler describes how she has transformed the power femme she once offered into something softer, gentler, something she once held in low regard. She now asks for assistance when she needs it. But not in a plaintive way - she asks with grace and dignity, much like a lady of a certain era might be expected to ask for assistance.

Far from the shrinking violet that her physical body has become, Wachsler's mind and words are as intense and concentrated as they were in the early version of the essay. Carefully, she argues not to get disability politics mixed up with butch/femme stuff. She thoughtfully discusses the recent re-emergence of butch/femme identities in queer culture and the ongoing invisibility of femmes at queer events unless they tend to be on the arm of a butch or androgynous lesbian.

She writes passionately about ableism and her struggle to maintain her femme identity even as her body fails her. She has assistants do the grooming things that once were so much a part of her presentation to the world. Her identity has had to become more internalized. Her speaking voice is difficult to use and similarly difficult to understand. She must draw very clear lines around what kind of helping she allows her lover to do and what she allows her personal care assistants to do in order to be able to maintain some kind of autonomy of her sexual presence.

Her disability has required Wachsler to turn inward, to contemplate the meaning of identity and to consider its implications and expressions. Through that looking within, she seems to have come to a comfortable realization about who and what she is and how she relates to her now restricted world.

I'm in awe of the true power and beauty of my femme spirit's ability - when the rising tide of debility and loss threaten to engulf me - to keep my psyche afloat ... physically, I might be unable to swim, but psychologicaly, my femme nature has kept my head above water. In ways I never could have expected - in ways I couldn't understand, myself, until I started writing this essay - my inner femme has been reaching toward drifting water lilies within my grasp, and I've grabbed ahold, usually without knowing why. Often I shiver. I keep looking for a boat that hasn't yet come. Sometimes I think about just letting go and slipping below the surface. But femmes are fighters. Every once in a while, when I'm truly lucky, the light glints off the water, and I feel the sun on my face.

May I have half that kind of presence and poise as time moves on.

***

The rest of the two volumes is filled with more stuff than my brain could absorb. Much of it is very dense stuff the likes of which I have not read since leaving college and giving up on the quarterlies of intense papers that every academic seemed to want to get into. There was a lot of talk about how invisible femmes are, and I get that. No, I really do. Femmes are largely invisible in and out of the queer world UNLESS they are on the arm of a more-obvious lesbian.

There was a lot of writing that involved highly academic terms and footnotes and references. Those tended to feel like I was back in school doing research. There was a lot of talk about how being femme is part personal identity stuff and part performing for the world.

Then there were pieces like This Femme's User Guide by Alex Holding. It's in Volume 2. Turned my head and set me down upon it. The line that got me?

Femme isn't always intentionally performative. When I roll out of bed and down to the coffee pot after not enough sleep to find myself leaning against the kitchen counter, eye makeup smeared all over hell and slip askew, I can guarantee that I am not performing for even myself in that moment, but still, I feel femme as fuck.

Uh- huh. That's the femme I can understand and appreciate. The Queen Latifah kind of I'm-gonna-kick-your-ass-and-you're-gonna-love-it kind of femme. But then, I am attracted to those kinds of girls.

Sinclalir Sexsmith also has a beautiful piece in Volume 2, called Love Letter. Damn, but I wish I could write like that. Damn.

***

I haven't got the first clue if this is the kind of review anyone wanted for this project. I know that there was an awful lot of writing, and it was all excellent. There were as many styles as there were authors, and I don't think I know anyone who could not benefit or enjoy reading these volumes. I found myself curiously contemplative as I read, sometimes taking one paragraph at a time, closing my eyes to absorb it, making a note in the margin, and then reading on. Good stuff. Jennifer Clare Burke did a hell of a job compiling and editing these volumes. Very nice indeed.

hope in Maine

Today, my state senator, the wonderful, straight, married, hard-working decent man Dennis Damon, introduced legislation that would make it possible for L and I to get married.

I have known Dennis to be a stand-up guy before, known him to stick to his principles even when he thinks nobody's looking, known him to have a very real sense of right and wrong. He is one of my favorite straight guys in the world.

I am beyond words about what this might mean for us. It is bigger than I can grasp right now.

Here is the official press release from our queer lobbying organization. Blogroll buddy Darlene Huntress over at the Slant is one of the big shots there. She hasn't been posting lately, and I am beginning to understand why. This announcement must have kept her very very busy in the preparation.

Keep us all in your prayers. This has promise but it could get very very ugly first.

Hello-- I just left the State House, where EqualityMaine and several of our coalition partners announced a bill for marriage equality. It was an extraordinary moment, and the start of a major new journey. If this bill passes -- and if we can uphold it at the polls -- Maine will join Massachusetts and Connecticut in allowing civil marriage for same-sex couples. We have growing support in the Legislature, but the road to victory has only just begun. The fight won't be easy, and we need you to get involved with this campaign right now. Please join EqualityMaine at one of our statewide community conversations in February so we can share our strategy and get to work. Someone in Augusta asked me today if I thought we could really win marriage in Maine. My reply: we wouldn't introduce this bill if we didn't think we could win. Our community is one of our greatest strengths. Together, we've won hate crimes protections, nondiscrimination legislation, family medical leave provisions and more. Together, we will win marriage. But we can't do it without you. RSVP for a community event in Bangor, Augusta, Portland or Lewiston/Auburn. A discussion about marriage has been going on for years, in Maine and nationwide. Recently we've seen equality prevail in Massachusetts and Connecticut and be narrowly defeated in California. What will happen here? That's up to us -- and you. Please RSVP today to attend one of our February conversations. Thank you for being part of this historic moment. Sincerely, Betsy Smith Executive Director

Into the fray...

The entire progressive political world has got its panties in a large and uncomfortable bunch over Rev. Rick Warren giving the invocation prayer at Barack Obama's inauguration next month.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past year, Warren's written a couple of books about living with purpose and he's got a mega-church somewhere west of here (California) and preaches to thousands each Sunday in what looks like a converted multiplex theater. He gets all het up and paces and shouts, a lot like black preachers sometimes do, but this guy's white, so conservative white people like him instead of fear him. Here is the Wiki page on him. Research at your own leisure.

The queer activists are in a lather. I mean a LATHER. See, Warren is a bit of a dope on queer issues. He's a bit of a dope on a lot of issues. He is against a woman having control over her own reproductive process, he is against gay rights and certainly gay marriage, he has espoused some pretty conservative views on women's role in society, Jews, and all the usual hot-button issues. He is on tape comparing gays to pedophiles, and incestuous siblings and all sorts of nonsense. He says homosexuality can be cured - prayed away, if you will. Anyone with any sense knows he's full of shit on these issues.

The list-serve I belong to has been rife with talk and sputter about this guy and Obama's choice of him. How could he betray us, the glbt community, by giving this guy a podium at our party? How could Obama talk about equality for us but then invite this schmoe to give the invocation?

What is interesting is that I have heard nary a peep from the conservatives about Obama's choice for the benediction, one Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowrey. Lowrey is a black preacher and a progressive who supports equality for the glbt community. He gave the eulogy at Coretta Scott King's funeral a while back and was widely acclaimed as a voice for progressives of Christian faith in America. (If you need a wiki reference for Mrs. King, please leave this site now. Get out. You're nowhere near smart enough to be here. )

So back to Rev. Warren. You might remember that he hosted a kind of forum/interview thing with John McCain and Barack Obama this summer. He invited each to his church and interviewed them separately on issues that were of importance to a lot of people in America, but particularly to evangelical Christians. Both men performed pretty well, and while McCain gave answers that I am sure were much more in line with the views of Warren's congregation, Obama held his own, explaining his moral bases for the positions he takes, and he did not alter his philosophies in order to accommodate the tastes of that audience.

Appearing on that program was considered risky by some, brave by others, and a sell-out by others still. Warren was criticised by the left for spending too much time on gays and abortion while in the Obama interview, and by the right for having him on the program at all. For McCain it was win-win. He showed up, was a grumpy old white conservative and probably didn't lose any votes for his effort. Obama had a lot more at stake at the time.

In all of the back-and-forth that has been going on this week, I find myself in an unusual position at the less liberal end of my queer caucus. Everybody, and I mean everybody, is worked up about this thing. The embittered Hillary supporters have been shouting that she never would have done anything as bone-headed as this (bullshit). I have not seen emotions this high amongst my crowd since the caucuses. It's nasty out there. People are protesting in the town square and planning personal viewing boycotts of the inauguration.

And you know what? I don't get it. It's not worth dying for. Our community has been through so much worse, and at the hands of people who claimed to be our allies (think Clinton administration, DOMA, DODT, etc.), that this is really minor. Bill Clinton had Billy Graham give his first inaugural invocation. Irony, anyone? At least this Warren guy preaches against violence against us. He preaches against discrimination. He does not damn us to eternal flames or a watery grave as other evangelicals do. Let's back off a bit, kids.

I live in a very progressive world. I work for myself and much of my work comes by word-of-mouth referrals, so it often involves friends and like-minded people. My community has two world-renowned genetic research laboratories that attract a highly-educated, world-class, generally liberal staff of scientists and support staff. There is also a very hippy college with one major - human ecology. So yeah, I live behind the tofu curtain. I regularly participate in my list-serve, also filled with like-minded souls, many of whom cut their teeth in the women's lib movement of the 60s and 70s and all of the other assorted liberal/progressive things that happened in those years. I am steeped in my liberal world.

Only my liberal world is not universal. The rest of America looks quite different from the world I live in. In fact, just after the 2004 elections, when Bush won so handily, I remember thinking "who are these people who like this guy? Where do they come from?" Honestly, I knew maybe a half-dozen people who voted for Bush in 2004. Everybody I knew was voting for, volunteering for, getting out the vote for John Kerry. On the day after the election, it was as though I woke up in a foreign land.

So what did liberals do? The shrub had a majority in both houses and "political capitol" to spend. We were screwed. The usual circular firing squad was formed and blame was flung in all directions. But after we got done with that, when we were shut out of every part of government, we got pissed and then we got organized. We suddenly got over our petty shit and worked together and came back with a vengeance. We kicked ass this year and wrote down names. We didn't just remove the boot from our throat, we broke the leg it was attached to.

Now we must be careful. If we do not want to lose this all again in eight years, we've got to be careful not to do what Chimpy did and get all arrogant and pushy.

Yes, I live in a liberal world. But I am sure there are many hundreds of thousands of Americans who live in a very conservative world. You could take five members from each camp, set them in a room together and all parties would leave convinced they had just visited space aliens. We are nearly that foreign to one another. I have no concept of the thought processes of a person who is anti-choice, anti-gay rights, pro-death penalty, pro-war, and who thinks the bible should be used as a guide for legislation and policy decisions. I just don't get that mindset. They, on the other hand, probably cannot grasp my world - non-christian, lesbian, working in a male-dominated field, anti-nuke, pro-choice, pro-gay everything who thinks that the bible is best filed under "fiction."

But both of us exist. And probably in similar numbers. American politics is, after all, something like a bell curve, with similar amounts on the edges of each end (that's me on the left) and the majority of folks in the middle somewhere. This year, the bulk of that big bulge in the middle shifted incrementally to the left. We are still much too far to the right as a nation for my tastes, but the pendulum is beginning to swing back my way. I want to make sure it's going to keep swinging our way for many, many years. We have a lot of making up to do since Reagan got elected in 1980.

So anyway, those conservative evangelicals have got to be looking at this Obama thing and wringing their hands in grief and anxiety. The whole administration is going to be filled with those godless heathens who want to take away our guns! Oh woe!

That happened to us eight years ago. What did we do? Got pissed, got organized, remember? Right. So how do we keep them from getting pissed, getting organized, and throwing us out on our ass after eight years?

Include them.

Rick Warren is not darling of the religious right, but he's closer than anything we've got. They don't love him, but he pisses us off - a lot - and that endears him to them, certainly. He would not be their choice, but they trust him to speak their language and to carry their message to that seething liberal pit that has become their government. The conservative religious portion of America sees Warren probably as we see some of our not-as-liberal-as-we'd-like-them-to-be-progressives. No, he's not all aces, but he can go places the more strident of us cannot. He will make progress that we can agree with. If he compromises on a thing, we might complain, but he'll explain it so it doesn't stink so bad.

And that is what Barack Obama is counting on. This guy has the ear of the religious right. He is not their leader nor their emissary, but he can sway some of the masses. In order to affect lasting change, Obama must garner the support of ALL of the people, not just the ones who think like him. That's what the current occupant did. He got to the point where he just passed stuff over our protests. So what? he said. You haven't got what it takes to override it or even filibuster, so go pound sand. It is because of that attitude that progressives were able to take power. Obama is doing everything he can to avoid that kind of bully behavior. He must be a president for ALL Americans, not just the ones I happen to agree with.

Would Warren be my choice? No. Gene Robinson, maybe. Some wiccan crone, perhaps. Whoopi Goldberg, maybe, or Wanda Sykes. Donna Brazille - nah, I'd just get flustered and distracted. But then, it would be a strange day indeed if I were elected president. That's fluff in the clouds.

What is reality is Barack Obama trying to bring together a nation that is more fractured and more divided and more rancorous than it has been in any year since Nixon was impeached. He's not going to march to my drumbeat. Like he has done through his entire campaign, he is going to march to his own drum, play his own game, work his own strategy, and achieve many, if not all, of his goals and objectives. This is not new behavior for him. People who have known him for years say he's running true to his history and true to his pragmatic nature. He will get stuff done, and much of it will please us, however his methods might make us scream.

Hate

This is in today's edition of the Mount Desert Islander, my hometown weekly newspaper:

Racist effigies appear
by Mark Good

MOUNT DESERT ISLAND - Election night here was marred by the discovery Wednesday morning of effigies depicting a black man found hanging from telephone lines in Tremont and Bar Harbor.

The cardboard effigies, which some officials believe are a response to the election of Barack Obama as president, were removed Wednesday morning.

Maine State Police received a report at 12:30 a.m. Wednesday that a cutout figure of a black man was hanging from telephone lines near Seal Cove Pond in Tremont. Trooper Alden Bustard responded but was unable to remove the figure because it was too high off the ground. Fire chief Brad Reed agreed to use a fire truck to take the figure down. In Bar Harbor, a similar cutout figure was found hanging from telephone lines near the intersection of Route 102 and the south end of the County Road. A Bar Harbor fire truck was used to remove the effigy.

Hancock County District Attorney Michael Povich said the person or persons responsible could be subject to a civil action and criminal charges.

"At a minimum they could be charged with disorderly conduct," he said.

In criminal cases, the aspect of a hate crime could be considered an aggravating factor during sentencing, Mr. Povich noted.
mgood@mdislander.com

Dawn back talking now:
How nasty and petty and shallow and mean can people be? Well, I guess the depths of that reservoir have yet to be plumbed.

Less than two hours after America elected its first ever African American president, some knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, cousin-fucking asshole pulls something cute like this. Yessireebob, I bet the boys back at the bait shack are gonna have a real good hee-haw at that.

But what is particularly chilling is the fact that this brilliant piece of political commentary could not have been pulled out of a redneck's ass in the 90 minutes between when the networks called the race and when the first call to police came in about the cardboard black man in a noose. That means that Billbob, or whatever the fuck his name is, had to prepare for the event in advance, making the cutouts, painting them black, tying the nooses (they're not easy, I've done them) and figuring how much rope and weight would be necessary to get the thing in the air and sufficiently wrapped around the lines so as to be a pain in the ass to take down, all probably done very quickly and from the back of a pickup truck. I am sure it must have taxed our hero's little pea brain to calculate such things, and to make TWO of them, plus figure out where to put them.

I am sure the schoolchildren who rode past one of the effigies on the bus in the morning were proud of their neighbors for such a display. I bet the black kids especially thought it was clever and funny.

I am so pissed right now as to be nearly be beyond words. I have some kind of flu-bug thing that is making my ears and throat sore, and despite the fact that my community, my county, and my state voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, one or two wingnuts have seen fit to throw a wrench into the celebration of a historical milestone with this holdover from a much darker time. My head is throbbing, my muscles hurt, and now I'm mad. Bleah. Fuckers.

Perhaps tomorrow I can write something meaningful about forgiveness or charity or something. But not today. Not yet.

I have a neat list of topic ideas for this once-a-day-for-a-month blog thingamajig, but "hate" had to be added and then bumped to the top for this thing. All of my ideas are pretty heavy topics, so if anyone wants to offer some lighter fare for me to chew on during November, please do leave a comment to that effect. Otherwise, I'll be working my way individually through the seven virtues and the seven deadly sins (with apologies to Peter Sagal).

kitchen project

so I write a scathing indictment of people who don't vote and I can hear the crickets chirping. Pictures of the dog get oodles of comments. go figure. Here's a diversion from the usual political stuff that seems to be overwhelming us all of late.

Last fall, I spent a couple of months as a cook at a funky little restaurant in Bar Harbor. The Cafe Bluefish is known worldwide for its lobster strudel, and it is divine. While I was there, I learned how to make the lobster strudel, and the seafood strudel and the spinach strudel. I am NOT going to post those recipes here. I was entrusted with them, and that's that.

However, I have created a variation on a theme of the strudel thing. See, the original recipe calls for cooking sherry, and I don't use alcohol in my kitchen. It also uses soybean oil and soy products, and a family member has a life-threatening allergy to soy, so I don't use it here. Also, L has a life-threatening allergy to crustaceans (not mollusks, just crustaceans) so I do not use lobster or crab or shrimp.

So that doesn't leave a lot of the original stuff for me to work with. Except the method. So I took the method I learned and applied it to ingredients that won't kill me or my family, and came up with a chicken and spinach four-cheese strudel that seems to work.

Again, in order to protect anything that might be construed as proprietary information, I am only going to describe the basics of what I included. If you are really determined, I imagine you can fiddle around and find some kind of proportions that work for you, but let me tell you, making these things is an all-day project that dirties every pot, pan, bowl and cutting surface in the kitchen. I cannot imagine doing this multiple times to tweak a recipe into something perfect.

Here are the basics:

Chicken breasts, boiled, skin and bones removed, diced (10, I think)
Lots of feta
Lots of swiss
Lots of cream cheese
Lots of leftover partial bags of not terribly freezer-burned mozzarella
Five huge bags of frozen chopped spinach
five pounds of onions, cut up and caramelized

phyllo dough
unsalted butter

So I mixed the top stuff together in the biggest bowl I own and it barely held it all. I brushed the butter on the phyllo, stacked them nicely, and wrapped the dough around a scoop (about 2/3 to 3/4 cup) of the filling.

This recipe cost me about $80 in groceries and made around 40 of these things, 36 of which went straight into the freezer. The ones in this picture were a little over-sized and made in the au gratin gizmos for our supper last night, but they look like elongated versions of the typical round strudels served at the restaurant. I have some filling left over, too, that I think I might put in a pie crust for supper tonight. (I ran out of phyllo before I ran out of filling.) The total estimated cost of these things is about two bucks a piece, plus my labor. Even if I charged $100 for labor (eight hours at $12.50), that still only brings the price per entree-sized portion up to something less than $6 each. Not bad. But I'm not selling them. These will be on hand all winter to be dinner when we need them. The marvelous thing is that we can take out as many as we need for a meal, so if we suddenly have guests, no problem, we can expand the menu without having to go shopping. Just thaw a little, and pop in the oven on a cookie sheet. Fabulous.

The nice thing about the project is that I won't have to make them again this winter. And that is a very, very, good thing. My kitchen is now wrecked. It will take a couple of days for me to recover completely.

More politics later this week. For now we are enjoying the crispy phyllo and cheesy goodness of the strudels.

Burnout

OK, so it finally happened. I'm toast.

I have had all I can stand of Sarah Palin, John McCain, that Ayers guy, Reverend Wright, the Keating Five and everything else. I am utterly disgusted and fed up. I do not believe that the press is independently investigating a damned thing. I am convinced that they are nearly a mindless herd, dashing from one shiny, sparkly thing to the next, easily distracted until there is something really good, like sex, on which to focus incessantly.

I am disgusted with the American electorate. For the most part, I think people are sheep who believe whatever they are fed so long as it does not require thinking. Thinking is viewed with suspicion and distrust. People who think are called "elite" and "uppity." Politics has been reduced to chants in high school gymnasiums. "Drill, baby drill" has usurped "yes we can" in the American psyche. It both scares and saddens me.

We are a nation founded by very smart men. Washington, Jefferson, Adams (I and II) and that whole crowd had a keen sense of history, of what kind of monumental thing they were undertaking, and they understood, or at least read and studied, the philosophers of old. The Greeks, the Romans, the ancients. They understood that the masses were led by the smart ones, and that it was their grave and solemn duty to lead responsibly. They understood that theirs was not a position from which to garner personal gain, but a position of stewardship. It was their responsibility, and that of the government they created, to provide safety and security to those whom they sought to govern.

I don't see that kind of stewardship today. I see the mob taking over. It is as though the elites have wrung every last drop of profit to be had from the system and are now boarding the last plane out of Dodge. It strikes me that they are behind the scenes on the sinking ship, packing up the last of their belongings while occasionally appearing for long enough to whip the crowd into a renewed frenzy before ducking back behind the curtain to pack some more.

I get the feeling that on November 5, many of the people pulling the strings will quietly disappear to the safety of offshore holdings and leave America, raped, burned and barren, to the rest of us. The two candidates now fighting for the top spot will be two levels of loser. The young guy will be loser number one, the guy with the empty prize - a nation with pillaged coffers, looted resources and crumbling infrastructure. The old guy will be the lower grade of loser, having been sold the dream that his wealthy friends were going to stick with him when it was over. He'll be the guy stood up by his prom date only to find his wallet stolen and not enough in his pocket for cab fare home. He'll retire to one of his estates with his anger and his frigid wife for company and slowly (or not so slowly) drink himself into oblivion. He may try to rally his forces in the Senate, but will be the one whispered about by the others, ridiculed for believing he still holds some kind of power. Having sold out all of his principles in pursuit of the brass ring, he will be an empty shell of a man. A few kindly, senior members may still invite him to lunch occasionally, but it will be for the sad ritualistic recital of how it was "in the old days."

I have voted already, and that is good. I do not know if I had to endure three more weeks of this shit if I could still find the energy at the end to mark a box on a piece of paper. I am frazzled. I have heard it all, read it all, gotten angry about it all, railed against the injustice and finally collapsed. I wonder if that is the opposition's strategy - to wear the thinking ones among us down with their relentless onslaught of crap. It could be.

For me, for today, I will enjoy the sunshine and the foliage. I will go outdoors and look around and find beauty where I am. I may take my little dog for a walk. I may watch some football. I'll go to the grocery store and I'll make some lunch. But for today, I will not engage about politics. There is nothing more for me to offer. I am spent.

A near miss

OK, so we sat up and watched the vice-presidential debate last night. And I have to say I was mildly disappointed.

Sarah Palin had the world's expectations so low that the fact that she did not vomit onto her own podium (or anyone else's) OR dissolve into tears OR go completely off the deep end and attack Biden and the liberal media and, and, and for her woes, counts as a victory.

She made a few gaffes, but nobody seems upset by that. She thinks that the general who led troops in the Civil War is currently running operations in Afghanistan, but nobody blinked. Our expectations were really, really low for her.

That speaks volumes about America and what we are willing to accept from our leaders. We are willing to accept a leader who does not know more than one Supreme Court Decision EVER, we are willing to accept a leader who cannot name a single new source that she reads. We are willing to accept a leader who cannot pronounce nuclear but would be willing to drop one on someone.

That is terrifying enough.

But you know what?

I wanted a train wreck last night. I wanted to see her crash and burn in a spectacular fashion. And in a way I did. We just don't get to hear it through that filter.

Sarah Palin showed herself to be a blithering idiot capable only of parroting the talking points she had been fed. If she had been another candidate for vice president and came out onto the stage and offered that performance, the pundits would be wringing their hands and calling it a disaster. But the fact that she is perceived as just a small step above a protozoa in intelligence, her folksy non-answers are being held up as sparkling examples of wit and debate skills.

Dear god, she's still dumber than a hake. We've just been told to expect so little that when she gives up five cents instead of four, we call it a 25 percent over-achievement. Never mind that we deserve leaders with a full dollar's worth of brains and are getting someone who can barely spell her name and who, I would hazard a guess, could not name all the states on a map of the US, never mind the nations of the globe. She spelled U.S.A. right last night and is being heralded as the rebirth of the party of Lincoln.

How utterly pathetic.

Elusive peace - I'm not ready to make nice, either.

I have been reading and hearing a lot lately about how polarized America is, how bad that is for us as a nation, and how we all need to reach out to those across the aisle so we can make some real progress.

I just can't do that right now.

My political philosophies and attitudes were forged in the late 1980s when I came out as a lesbian. In college in a rural Maine town with no visible queer world and lots of angry bigotry all around me, I learned that I had to be prepared for violence at all times. More than once I asked the campus police to walk me to my car, and more than once I was the last one out of a building at night and the cop was there locking up and provided an escort without being asked. My office was vandalized, nasty notes were left on my car, and the bulletin board for the glbt&Allied student group I founded was defaced on nearly a daily basis.

I remember watching friends get sick, then sicker, and then be gone. And Ronald Reagan did nothing. He let my friends die because after all, homosexuals didn't vote for him, so who gives a damn, right? Yeah. That kind of bitter takes a long time to fade. And I will get back to it again in a minute.

After RR came George I., who claimed to be kinder and gentler but still didn't do a damned thing to keep my friends from dying. Actually, that work was done by the queer community. Faced with a deadly pandemic, gay men and lesbians educated ourselves about what was safe and what was not. The American Red Cross kept insisting that the blood supply was safe, but people were getting infected by the hundreds from receiving blood products from donors who were HIV positive. Eventually one such boy, Ryan White, made headlines and met the president and some shit began to happen. But only for those who contracted HIV through non-sexual or non-drug-related means. George was way too uptight to do otherwise.

So the queer community got together, put aside the differences between the campy boys and the butch motorcycle dykes and did what we could to organize and save ourselves from the deadly apathy of the rest of the country. We made some progress, but funding for research is still shamefully low. Seems again we are not a priority to anyone but us.

Then came Clinton, or more accurately, The Clintons. Two for one, we were told. We worked hard for them. We volunteered countless hours at phone banks, we stuffed envelopes, gave people rides to the polls and donated money. And were quickly ushered out the back when our presence made it difficult for Bill to get bipartisan support for things. We were a liability that got jettisoned in the process of compromising.

Well, you've got to give and take, we were told. Make small steps toward progress and the greater end goal, we were told. Only that's not what happened. Those "small steps toward progress" we were sold? More people have been rooted out and discharged from the military under Don't Ask, Don't Tell than ever before. The Defense of Marriage Act effectively negated the Full Faith and Contract (help me here, that might not be the exact wording I want) clause of the United States Constitution which says that any contract entered into in Alabama must be honored in New Hampshire. Or Texas. Or Montana. Or California. DOMA was nothing more than a way for states to have federal permission to not recognize gay families from another state if they so chose. Dozens of states now have constitutional prohibitions on any kind on gay marriage.

Please tell me what part of this compromise I am supposed to embrace. I thought compromise meant that neither party got all of what it wanted, but that each side went away with more than what they started with. We got bent over in the most awful way by the Clinton years. We got a royal screwing without so much as lube, a kiss on the cheek, or a $20 left on the dresser. The bitterness rises in my throat even now to think of the betrayal and abuse queer people suffered at the hands of our "allies." And this in the name of compromise? Still not warm and fuzzy about it. Not at all.

Then came the shrub. He stole the election from the smartest guy in the country by using the doped-up Supreme Court Chief Justice who was appointed by, and remains friends with, his dad. So much for free and fair elections. The UN offered to step in and investigate, but we told 'em no thanks. Jimmy Carter, who has made it his business to oversee elections in turbulent areas, cited all kinds of irregularities, but was silenced by a media who was more excited about the cowboy about to take office.

So, dubya took office with majorities in both houses of congress and commenced to fuck the American economy, the labor market, the housing market and the average Joe right into bankruptcy. Never has a president started with so much (surplus in the bank, lots of new jobs, lots of economic prosperity, the admiration of the world community) and pissed it all away so quickly.

He took the money out of the hands of trained social workers and care providers and gave it instead to untrained, unlicensed faith-based groups to provide health services to needy people. Mega-churches thrived. He lifted the taxes on the wealthiest of Americans and left minimum wage to languish at a level that could not feed and house anyone. He filled his administration with leftovers from Reagan (told you I'd get back to him) and his father, even going so far as to seek the consult of advisers from as far back as the Nixon administration (a time in US government known for being above board, transparent, and scandal-free, of course - gag).

With his evangelical friends, he created an "us or them" view of the world: the US as Christian and good, and all others (particularly non Judeo-Christian) as evil and bad. This, remarkably, is the same world view held by the jihadists, only in reverse.

For seven years this guy has bullied America, quashing the voices of artists (Dixie Chicks, anyone?) and anyone else who dared to question what he does. Helen Thomas, the grand diva of the presidential press corps, was relegated to the back row. And the press, the spineless bunch of them, laid down and did not protest. Shame on them all.

So anyway, W shoved all kinds of crap at us for seven years. We were powerless and mostly voiceless. On the rare occasion when our side would get something passed, the president would issue a signing statement declaring that he had no intention of adhering to or enforcing the new law. He just took the stuffing right out of it. And the Supremes backed him up.

So now, some 20+ years after my coming of age as a political soul, I have really had enough. I know that the opposition does not want me, does not like me, does not value me, and really takes joy in seeing me and mine denied the most basic of human rights. I also know that my allies cannot fully be trusted to support me. Remember a few years ago when US soldiers were training Iraqi policemen and they went into a situation where it turned into a gun battle between good guys and bad? Remember how the Iraqi guys threw down their weapons and ran away? That's what it felt like for us during the Clinton administration. We were hung out to dry, left outmatched by our enemies and abandoned by our allies.

My feeling now is that I intend to hold my allies to their promises. I am not interested in compromise or bipartisanship, at least not now. I am still too angry. And I defy anyone to tell me I should not be angry. We have been treated horribly for the 20 years that I have been paying attention, and from listening to those who came before me, I know that it is not a new phenomenon. We are the easy target. We are the least pricey thing to throw overboard.

But I think some things have been changing. At least I hope so. Fewer Americans are willing to watch as we are quietly ushered out the back. I'd like to think that there are more who will stand and fight with us. At least I hope so.

So to paraphrase the Dixie Chicks, yeah, I'm not ready to make nice yet either. I'm pissed. Trust has been broken, and it takes a very long time to build back. The others can compromise if they like, but I am not interested in sitting down at a table with the people who have beaten, abused and stomped all over me and mine ever since I became aware that the pain in my back was from a boot heel. I have no interest in negotiating with my oppressors. Let cooler heads do that if they like, and I will probably acquiesce when it is done, but I do not have the stomach to participate in that conversation.

If this means I am part of the problem of a polarized country and electorate, so be it. I am too angry to care. There is only so much bullshit I will take before I really begin to fight back, and that line has been crossed.

It just takes ones's breath away

this from Daily Kos:

Here is Palin's response to a candidate questionnaire for the Alaska 2006 gubernatorial race:

11. Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?

SP: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance

Now for those who want to know why this is so offensive, consider this information (mostly) from Wikipedia:

1. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy. Fully more than a century after the end of the American War of Independence, one would expect that any founding fathers would be long since dead. Founding Grandkids, perhaps, but certainly no Founding Fathers in that crowd

2. Bellamy's original Pledge read, "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." The original version doesn't even mention America or God, so stuff that in your hat, Ms. veep-wannabe.

3. In 1923 the National Flag Conference called for the words my Flag to be changed to the Flag of the United States. The reason given was to ensure that immigrants knew to which flag reference was being made. The words "of America" were added a year later. Um, still no god stuff, two decades on.

4. The U.S. Congress officially recognized the Pledge as the official national pledge on June 22, 1942. Without the god stuff, again!

5. The words "under God" were added by legislation signed by Dwight D. Eisenhower on June 14, (Flag Day) 1954 after a sermon by a Presbyterian minister convinced him of the need to add a mention of a deity. Oh, here it is. During the McCarthy era. Right. 1954 is precisely 62 years after the thing was written, and nearly 200 years after any founding fathers were alive and writing things like declarations, constitutions and such. But no pledges... isn't that interesting??

6. Sarah Palin is a certifiable idiot.

I can hardly wait for November.

Did I say gimmick?

Yeah, I did.

Yesterday I called Geraldine Ferraro's 1984 candidacy a gimmick. Approximately six hours before John McCain announced that his vice presidential pick was a woman named Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska.

Freakin' uncanny.

Let's hope she does for McSame what Ferarro did for Fritz.

A dream I never dared

I never imagined that I would live to see last night, an event when a black man was nominated as candidate for President of the United States of America. I never imagined that a woman would have come so close to winning that nomination either. I figured those things were far off, perhaps something even to be done by our opponents over in the R camp. They had Margaret Chase Smith, after all, and they've got Olympia and Susan in the Senate from Maine while we have sent nothing but white men there for a while. We do have a woman running for Tom Allen's old Congressional seat (Chellie Pingree) and I think she's got a real shot of getting there.

Last night I sat on my couch and got goosebumps when Barack Obama accepted the nomination of his party. It simply took my breath away. Not only have we, the Democrats who have so long talked the talk of inclusion, nominated a black man to be president, but truly he was the best candidate out there AND he is likely to win. This is not a Geraldine Ferraro situation, where she was placed on the ticket as a gimmick to show how progressive we all were. No, Obama is the leading man in this drama, and because he was the best contestant.

It was cruel what the Dems did to Ferraro, throwing her into the fire like that just to make a point. She was right when she said that if her name had been Gerald Ferraro, she'd have been nowhere near that ticket. It's true. She was a gimmick and the boys used her as such. She was no more prepared to compete on a national stage than I am. And despite all the fun we had at George I's expense, he was the guy who ran the CIA for Nixon. He may have been socially inept, but he was smart and he played dirty. There aren't a lot of people who could go up against him and come out on top.

This primary battle was different, though. Hillary was her own woman, not put up to anything by the more powerful men in her life. Truly, I don't think there are more powerful men in her life. I think she is the alpha in her world - at work, at home and wherever she goes. Aside from that, she ran a good race, fought hard, and did not win. She pulled out all the stops and tried everything she knew to get the delegate count she needed, but it simply did not happen. Were my candidate faced with those challenges, I would want him to fight the same way and try every trick he knew. Good for her. But I am still glad Obama won. He's my guy.

I feel like I should be holding my breath. This is a moment I never thought I would see, and I fear that if I exhale to take another breath it will slip away, dissolving like fog in a dream, leaving me heartbroken as the sun streams through the early morning window. It is almost too good to be true. He is right on everything, he holds a high ethical standard and demands the same from the people around him. He has a beautiful, powerful wife who can hold her own in any forum and beautiful children.

Comparisons have been made with Jack Kennedy and with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And that scares me. Both of those men were killed violently in the prime of their lives. Please, God, keep this one safe. Please. Our country needs him and his message and his hope so badly.

Health care

So I got to bend Tom Allen's ear for a few minutes last night at a fancy-schmancy fundraiser thing here on MDI. Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell was there, as were at least one other sitting US Senator and a retired ambassador. (For my far-away readers, Tom Allen is a Democratic Congressman running to defeat incumbent US Senator Susan Collins. He's running an uphill battle against an incumbent with a zillion-dollar war chest. Donate to his campaign here.)

The thing I told Tom about? Health care. Or the lack of it.

See, I don't have health insurance. None. Nothing. I get hurt, the hospital will send me the bill for the whole thing, not just the deductible.

So I do what I can to stay safe, considering what I do for work. When I climb, I tie off. I wear gloves and safety glasses and ear plugs and steel-toed shoes. I do what I can.

But I've got a family history of heart disease. My paternal grandmother had several heart attacks before she died, and my father has had bypass surgery.

I have high cholesterol. The doctor prescribed Lipitor years ago, and it worked pretty well. Then I got a new insurance company that wouldn't pay for the top-shelf Lipitor, so I got put on a generic version. Only it nearly killed me. It felt as though my muscles were being dissolved from the inside out. I bruised dark purple at the slightest touch. It felt like I had the flu, but worse. When we read the fine print on the literature, it cautioned that severe muscle pain was a rare side effect and that the medicine should be stopped immediately. So that's what I did.

The doctors tried to put me on another generic thing, but that made me feel about as bad, and I stopped it. At the time, I was employed by a company that provided health insurance, so we decided to wait until the new insurance kicked in and I'd go back on the Lipitor.

Only I lost that job (seems I am not a boat builder!) and now I have no insurance. At all.

So I don't take the Lipitor. And I worry. I don't eat the stuff I should, I know, but from what I have read, diet really has very little to do with cholesterol levels - as little as 10 percent of the overall level is affected by diet. Frankly, that's not enough to convince me to eat sprouts and wheat germ and give up real food like butter and beef.

So I told Tom about this. About how I have no insurance. How I am self-employed and cannot afford what is out there. And how I can't afford the Lipitor I need and how I can't take the generic stuff. I asked him to do something NOW, please, to make it so I could have health care again. I told him that it was IMMORAL for anyone to make a profit providing life-saving care. Health care should be a right, not just something the wealthy can afford. I deserve to be able to take the medicine that may well save my life.

I don't want more money, I want health care when I need it. I want to know that the medicine my doctor prescribes will not be overridden by some bean counter in an insurance company high-rise hundreds of miles away. That's offensive to me, and it ought to be illegal for anyone to override a physician's directives.

In the meantime, we are tightening our belts, which may result in us eating better. More rice and beans and less meat will be on our plates this winter. I just spent nearly the equivalent of a month's rent to HALF fill the oil tank. The thermostat is going to be turned way back this winter. Any money we've got is probably not going to pay for Lipitor. It's just too expensive.

So we hope. We go forward and we hope that an Obama administration will do something that will allow me to have health insurance. We hope that the US Senate has enough Democrats to force the Republicans to play nice.

We hope I don't have a stroke before that happens.

As I told Tom Allen last night, I'll vote absentee just in case.

The tide has turned

It seems more and more inevitable now that Barack Obama will get the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States. I never thought I would see in my lifetime a black candidate with a real chance at becoming president. I am at once thrilled and terrified.

I am thrilled that America has come so far. I remember growing up with a father who adored Archie Bunker. He missed the genius of the satire completely. Rob Reiner's brilliance was utterly beyond his grasp. He really believed that Archie Bunker was right. For all I know he still may.

And that is what terrifies me. We are pretty well insulated in our liberal little corner of the Northeast. A guy I know refers to Bar Harbor as being "behind the tofu curtain" for its dearth of hippes-turned-entrepreneurs. Free range organic flax seeds are available at the grocery store here. Yeah, it's kinda liberal compared to the rest of Hancock County, and quite liberal when compared to any number of rural counties in the midwest and the deep south. Now before all you southerners and midwesterners get your panties in a knot, please understand that I know that not all southerners are rednecks and not all midwesterners are nazi-sypathizing offspring of German immigrants. Let's just say that I know that not everybody in America is as cool and hip and progressive as we are here in the liberal northeast.

I worry what will happen to Obama. On the campaign trail, who will guard him? The same secret service guys who put a noose in the work area of a black colleague? What happens if he wins? Will he have to travel around in a bullet-proof bubble like the pope? How tragic for us if he does.

On the other hand, what happens if he does get elected? What kind of progress can be made with a new approach, a new mandate, a new way of doing things? There is so much to hope for, it is sometimes difficult for this lifelong Red Sox fan to deal with. I have become reluctant to hope. There is a part of me that looks at the last few years of Red Sox and New England Patriots' championships as a fluke. It's too good - it can't be real. It will be taken from us. We know what that is about.

Honestly, I am more comfortable sometimes working from an underdog position. It is familiar. The work is hard, but it is comfortable. I know it and I am good at it. Operating from a position of power or authority is foreign to me, I don't trust it.

So I worry about getting a big majority in both houses of Congress and capturing the White House at the same time. Good God. It might be too much. We'll screw it up. Just like the Rs did after '96. They came on strong, like the bullies they were, and kicked ass and took names. I fear that we might do the same after being back-benched for so long. That or we might just fart around and get all tangled up in our own importance and get nothing done. Like the Red Sox do (or did) and the Patriots (ditto there).

Tom Allen threw his support to Obama today. That was nice. I am getting more and more impressed with Tom Allen every day. For a straight white male lawyer from Portland, he is remarkably good on a variety of issues. Unspeakably dull to listen to, but dead-on when it comes to the issues. I must remember to donate to his campaign this week.

I must learn to feed my hopes and sooth my fears. In politics as in life. I must learn to put one foot on front of the other, to do the next right thing and to move forward, trusting that what I need will be there.