Pumpkin Carnage (or, Reservoir Puppy)

Warning: the images you are about to see are disturbing, and not for the faint-at-heart (or pumpkin-lovers). Nevertheless, we feel that they must be shown, for all those who believe puppies are " so cute 'n' cuddly." That poor stuffed cotton pumpkin didn't stand a chance! He's in the home for hollowed-out toys now. Along with his hollowed-out stegasaurus brother, and disemboweled furry-rope monkey cousin. Sigh. C'est la vie, c'est la guerre!

Happy Halloweeeeeeeeen!

In my next life I swear I'm coming back as a pumpkin. I don't know if it's the bright orange color, the unashamed swollen fatness, or what, but pumpkins just seem to symbolize such sheer abundance and happy coziness to me. Be they giant or mini, round or oblong, ridged or smooth, carved into jack-o-lanterns or left to rot on the vine - pumpkins, oh pumpkins! are friends of mine!

And now you know just how truly - madly - deeply - in love I am with pumpkins! Kinda scary, huh?

Dialing for Obama

In spite of the encouraging poll numbers, I've been getting nervous about Tuesday's election (I know, join the club). So nervous in fact, that I finally did what I said I couldn't do, or wouldn't do - I made calls for the Obama campaign. I had a lot of resistance (fear) about doing this, but in the end it was so painless - especially since 2 out of 3 calls I got an message machine - that I kicked myself for not having done it sooner. It helped to be in a room with lots of other people doing the same thing. Also, these also weren't cold calls - I was calling MoveOn.org members to ask them to volunteer, so they were people sympathetic to the cause. Some of the responses (when I did get a live person) were interesting, even humourous. One man answered the phone and turned out to be the father of the MoveOn member - who was 11 years old. One woman, when I asked her if she could volunteer for Obama this weekend, informed me very politely that she was voting for McCain. Oops. Another man replied to my scripted question of "How are you doing tonight?" with a partly sung litany of complaints, country-music style, complete with Southern accent: "Overworked, underpaid, broken-down, downhearted..." etc. He said he couldn't volunteer because he was disabled, but he was getting a ride to vote. His humourous way of answering the phone - and rising above his own problems - made my night.

Several people, when listing the reasons they couldn't volunteer this weekend, touched on the very issues that Obama is running on. One young man whispered into the phone "I can't talk, I'm at work" (it was 8 o'clock at night) and said he is working two jobs to make ends meet, and has no time to volunteer, though he would sincerely like to. An older woman said she couldn't come out because she has to take care of her disabled mother. Health care, the economy. Up close and personal.

But I was heartened to hear the people who already were volunteering - mostly older (I was calling Florida), very passionate, very involved. They put my feeble last-minute efforts to help Obama to shame. Or rather, they reminded me how real change happens: little by little, one conversation and interaction at a time. Isn't this how history is written? Could it be possible that we are finally getting a chance, with this election, to write (or indeed, right) American history ourselves?

Not-So-Still Life with Puppy (3 weeks and counting)

Everyone warned me that having a dog would change my life - and they were right. What I didn't know was exactly how it would change my life, that is, beyond the obvious pee and poo issues, and having to hide all objects worthy of chewing (i.e., everything that is not made of iron or hot lava - on second thought, you have to hide those things too). Life has changed on so many levels, from how I get up in the morning (and when), and how I plan my day (can you say puppy-centered?), to my ability to live in a messy house, which I never thought possible and now (surprise, surprise) seems to be the norm.

Life outside is different too. I am seeing the world through puppy's eyes, which are low to the ground and scanning every inch of dirt. Just taking our morning walk, over streets that I've already walked countless times since moving here, I am noticing so many things I didn't notice before. For instance, I never noticed how much trash is lying around our neighborhood! Before this, I thought of our area as relatively clean. Now I see that I wasn't looking closely enough, or I was purposely shutting out the elements in the landscape that bothered me. There is trash everywhere - woven in amongst the leaves and grass and tree roots. And for Lottie, these candy wrappers and soda cans and "mystery" trash items (not to mention other dog feces, GROSS), are unbelievably interesting discoveries, which merit complete and total oral exploration. Which means I am constantly pulling on her leash, saying "Leave it" (which she'll do, if there's a treat involved), while the latent community activist in me is actually starting to wonder about organizing a neighborhood clean-up. Or talking to the folks at the church school nearby, whose parking lot seems to be a particular depository for trash. Can't they get a group of kids together and clean up this junk? Make it a school project, for credit? Put handmade signs on the grass to deter littering?

Wow. And I thought I was just going out for a walk....! This is what happens when you settle down in a home in the sort-of-suburbs with a dog. One minute you're walking your dog in the neighborhood, the next minute you're screaming through a megaphone at a rally of "citizens against littering." Yikes! Or should I say, Woof!

Dreams from Barack

I've been thinking about the upcoming election. Thinking about it when I wake up in the morning, thinking about it when I fall asleep. Even dreaming about it (which shouldn't be surprising - when you watch upwards of 3 to 4 hours of MSNBC every day, the content is bound to end up swimming around in your unconscious). Obviously, I am not alone in caring about what will happen on November 4th, who will win. The suspense, as they say, is unbearable.

But beyond the polling stats, the back-and-forth noise on talk shows, the spin and the fury of politics and the media, there is a real decision to be made in this country. For this country, and for the world. It's easy to lose sight of why we are here, many million dollars' worth of campaign advertising later, glued to the television, gleeful to see our candidate in the lead. The whole thing starts to have a certain horse racing quality about it (quite literally, in fact, for those folks who are betting money on the election results).

But what does it all mean? What does our faith in this one man say about him, about us, and the kind of world we want? Does it say that we are just eager followers, swept up in the excitement of a charismatic personality? Or are we just dreamers, like the folks in the 60s, thinking that all we need is love (or Barack)?

Hmm. I don't know. Is it really so naive to think that one person can change the world? Doesn't history show us all sorts of examples of exactly that? Can't we all agree that George W Bush has changed the world decidedly for the worse, in the eight years he has been in office? Isn't it possible that another person, another kind of person, with another kind of thinking, could help reverse some of the negative, damaging things that have happened over the course of this presidency? Couldn't we have four years - or eight years - of positive, enlightened changes designed to benefit humanity and the planet, not just corporations and certain individuals?

I've believed in Barack Obama since the beginning, when I first heard him speak. It wasn't just what he said, but his whole demeanor and how he said things, how he responded to questions in interviews. Here is a person who listens and actually responds to what is being asked, in a thoughtful way, who doesn't seem to need to prove himself with every single statement he makes, or attack his questioners for challenging him. Here is someone who looks before he leaps, who seems both confident and humble about his personal power, a quality whose importance can't be overstressed after so many foreign policy disasters by our leaders. Think of Nixon, trying to show his "manliness" by staying in the war in Vietnam, or Bush himself, playing cowboy with American (and other) lives. I think if Sarah Palin were President (perish the thought!) she would follow exactly in those same bellicose, paranoid footsteps (she actually might be worse). It's not about gender. It's about having a chip on your shoulder and having to prove how "tough" you are, overcompensating for basic lacks in intelligence and capability by constantly attacking other people. It's about being a bully. And that is something that Barack Obama decidedly is not, thank goodness.

Maybe because I've known so many crazy, angry bullies in my life (and seen the havoc they wreak on a small scale), I am more invested than the average person in having a leader who is psychologically at peace with himself, and not out to "get somebody" because of some past trauma which has never been corrected in his mind (which I deeply sense is the case with McCain). My gut feeling about Obama is that he is really, really grounded and sane, in the best possible sense of the word. The good news is that this gut feeling seems to be shared by people very different from myself (thus bolstering my own claim for sanity). Read what David Brooks wrote recently about Obama (and note that Brooks is a conservative, not liberal, columnist in the New York Times):

"...it is easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a great president. He would be untroubled by self-destructive demons or indiscipline. With that cool manner, he would see reality unfiltered. He could gather — already has gathered — some of the smartest minds in public policy, and, untroubled by intellectual insecurity, he could give them free rein. Though he is young, it is easy to imagine him at the cabinet table, leading a subtle discussion of some long-term problem."

Wow! Thanks, David, I didn't know you cared. Or look at the recent New Yorker article by Nicholas Lemann about the differences between the candidates' foreign policy attitudes:

“ "There is a degree of self-reflection, self-awareness, and psychological wholeness he [Obama] arrived at after going through a period of working through his identity as the son of a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas," Richard Danzig, a Secretary of the Navy during the Clinton Administration, who was the last member of the Obama foreign-policy high command to join up, in the spring of 2007, said. “Having worked for two Presidents and with many Presidential candidates during the last thirty years, I have not seen one as psychologically well balanced, and as good about not injecting his ego into a problem.” "

Again, wow. Doesn't that sound like the kind of person we'd like to see sitting in the most powerful seat on the planet? Isn't it about time we had some sanity and reflection in the White House? Wouldn't that be refreshing?

Finally, going back to the kind of country we want, the kind of concrete changes one man could make, consider this from Sarah Vowell's op-ed piece in the New York Times this past August (yes, I've been saving these articles for the moment when I want to use them to make a point!):

"When Barack Obama talks about an America as it should be, I’m guessing the best of all possible countries he imagines would look awfully similar to the ideal America just about every registered Democrat would dream up. Picture this: a wind-powered public school classroom of 19 multiracial 8-year-olds reading above grade level and answering the questions of their engaging, inspirational teacher before going home to a cancer-free (or in remission) parent or parents who have to work only eight hours a day in a country at war solely with the people who make war on us, where maybe Exxon Mobil can settle for, oh, $8 billion in quarterly profits instead of $11 billion, and the federal government’s point man for Biblical natural disasters is someone who knows more about emergency management than how to put on a horse show. Is that really too much to ask? Can we do that?"

Both the dreamer and the realist in me cry out, Why not?

An Officer and a Gentleman?

This was from last week's debate, in "town meeting" style (was it really only a week ago? So much news spinning in my head since then!). Mostly what I remember from that debate is that Obama seemed more bemused (and amused) than angry by McCain's antics, and Tom Brokaw acted more like a peevish third wheel than a moderator. The rest is blurred in my head by the sound of McCain repeating "my friends, my friends" over and over, as if he was at some sort of motivational seminar.

I would have posted it earlier but 1) I've been using someone else's camera (I stupidly lost mine) and I didn't have the needed hook-up for the computer, and 2) the new puppy has been keeping me on a short leash, if you know what I mean. (There is a lot to learn about being a dog owner, not least the fact that you need to get pretty good at managing your time if you want to get anything else done. I am still in training...)

Anyway, I'm preparing to watch tonight's debate in my usual way: make and eat a good dinner, and then try to digest it without heaving while watching John McCain smirk and giggle his way through a veritable smorgasbord of half-truths.

I really hope he doesn't say "my friends" over and over tonight, like he did last week. I swear, if he says that one more time I might have to be taken away on a stretcher!

Puppy Trumps Politics!

Last week I tore myself away from MSNBC and daily news blogs about the election long enough to go out and find a sweet, darling, dear little puppy! Her mother had been abandoned in the woods of Tennesee and brought up to New England with her litter, who were then fostered by people in a great organization called Save a Dog. Now Lottie is "ours" - or, to put it more accurately, we are hers. I gotta say, there's nothing like a romping, playing, chew-toy chomping puppy to make you forget about the blather of politics for a while!

(Note: normally I don't include photos and personal information about friends on my blog, for privacy's sake, but I don't think Lottie and her kind pay much attention to the internet. Their version of the world wide web takes place in real time, outside, usually around the sides of trees and corners of buildings...)

The Many Faces of Sarah Palin

Most of the adjectives I used to describe McCain during the debate could be applied to Palin as well. Smug, sarcastic, and so on. But that second to last photo looks positively demonic. Maybe we can get her witch hunting preacher from Kenya to come and perform an exorcism?

Battle Fatigue

It's been almost a week since the last debate and I haven't even had the heart to write about it. At a certain point, it just feels depressing that someone like Sarah Palin can even be allowed to share a stage with someone like Joe Biden. They don't look like they're from the same planet, much less time period. He looks like he could have hung out with Ben Franklin, and she looks like an eager game show contestant. An eager vindictive game show contestant.

The good news is I think Obama is going to win, and soon Sarah Palin (and John McCain) will be in ancient history. Good riddance!