Friday, September 19, 2008

Chapter 59: Elections!

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight...

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
* Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.
* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.
* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.
* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's
Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.
*If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.
* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America' s.
* If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

God bless America...


**I didn't write this; something I found that seemed worth reading.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Chapter 58: New beginnings...

i love the first day of school. even as a kid when every other kid dreaded that first day, that first bus ride, that first bell, i loved it. i loved it mostly for the school supplies. nothing gets me off quite like a fresh new stack of sharpened pencils, unopened pens (red, black and blue), pristine red erasers, highlighters in every fluorescent color. don't even get me started on color coordinated folders and notebooks for each subject.

there's something to the newness of these supplies that attracted me. notebooks that were untouched and unwritten in, without those little scraps left behind in the wiring when you rip out a page. the pencils had perfect erasers and the pens were full of ink. my stacks of post-its were all even, all the same since not a single one had been hastily scribbled on and smashed onto my wall. they were perfectly undefiled and new, just waiting for the school year to take its toll on them.

beginning anything is exciting. a new adventure that could go anywhere and lead you to anything, good or bad. it could be a new year at college or a new relationship, the excitement is amazingly scintillating. especially when you are so excited for it. it's like a new chapter, a new chance, an amazing start.

as for me, i've learned to go to the stationary lane at cvs whenever i'm down and take in those pristine supplies. ah the feeling of new. nothing beats it.