Deremopublicratican

The Elusive Deremopublicratican

As the 2010 election approaches, election "season" is in full swing all across the country.  Billboards all over town are plastered with 10-foot tall faces of politicians hoping to be elected or reelected.  I can't remember the last day our house didn't receive a prerecorded political telephone message from one candidate or another or the last day when our daily mail delivery didn't contain at least one political flyer.  I'd guess that one-third of the television commercials are political in nature, as well, especially during prime time and on the news networks. Radio ads packed with platforms and mud slinging are playing on every station. All the major intersections, and many of the smaller intersections, are peppered with Red, White, and Blue political signs, from which you can usually not read anything but the last name of the candidate - not their first name, political party, or even what political office they're running for.  A few days ago, on a Tuesday, I loaded up my 19-month-old and made the short trip to my polling place which happens to be a church) to vote in the primary elections, and counted no fewer than a dozen people in lawn chairs sitting along the road in front of the polling location holding signs and waving to every car that appeared to be pulling into the lot.  Yes, indeed, it is the season for politics, and it's only going to get worse as November 2nd gets closer.

As the political talk has increased in the news, it has also become a more talked-about topic on Social Networking sites like Facebook and Twitter...and maybe MySpace too, but who uses that any more?  Many of my friends and I post comments or status updates of a political nature from time to time, more often lately in this time leading up to the election.  Since I have such a varied group of friends, many of whom have political opinions that differ greatly from my own, I find myself regularly engaged in conversations of some type or another where some political something-or-other is the topic.  Thankfully, most of my friends are able to carry on open conversations as adults, without getting nasty or mean over differing opinions.  The problem, for me, has become this: most of my politically-minded friends do not know one another, so I keep finding myself having the same conversations over and over again with different people.  I've decided to answer, in this post, the questions I am asked most often concerning my thoughts on today's "hot button" topics.

Red! Recipes

Every evening as dinner time approaches, I read status post after status post where various friends talk about not having any new ideas for things to cook their families for dinner.  I think that, from time to time, every family falls into a dining rut.  Sometimes, all it takes to get out of the rut are some fresh ideas.  So, to help all of you get out of your dining ruts (and to get some new recipes for myself), I have launched a sister blog where I plan to collect recipes for family-friendly meals.  Feel free to check it out, and send in some of your family favorites too!

Click the photo to visit the new Red! Recipes Blog!

A Big Boy Bed and a Mickey Mouse Pillowcase

Well, I've always heard that when your child grows old enough to climb out of his crib, it's time for a big kid bed.  And, so, today my baby became a big boy with a big boy bed and a Mickey Mouse pillowcase.....on his first pillow.  For someone who's supposed to symbolize the "Happiest Place on Earth," seeing Mickey Mouse in my son's be sure is making me sad today! 

Kaleb standing beside his big boy bed, 8-16-2010.

Until this past week, I think I had been in denial about how much my baby was growing up.  Now, all of a sudden, I've had to buy him bigger shoes (size 6, the biggest size before he goes from toddler shoes to little boy shoes) and convert his bed from a crib to a "big kid" toddler bed.  A glance at the growth chart on his closet door shows that he's grown almost a whole foot taller since birth.  He's walking and running and using a spoon and fork.  He can talk a lot.....though you kinda have to know him to understand most of it.

I guess eventually every parent goes through these feelings.  I just had thought I might not have to deal with this so soon.  I simply don't remember authorizing him to grow up so quickly!

All tucked in and ready for his first night in the big boy bed!

The Swift Decline of Quality Television Programming

This weekend as I've been home with Kaleb, I've really noticed how few television programs there are anymore worth watching.  On the weekends, Cox Cable should just give us two days free, since most everything showing is absolute garbage.  We have 70 channels of TV, and I can't find anything to watch!  I shouldn't have to pay for extended service and hundreds of channels just to find one or two with worthwhile programming!

The first problem I have with weekend programming is the number of channels that air movies one after another all day instead of the normal hour or half-hour shows.  I'm a single mom with a toddler; I do not have time to sit and watch an entire movie uninterrupted!  Leave the movies to the movie channels!  But, while the movies are a problem on the weekends, there's a much bigger issue.....one TV style that is flooding the airwaves and ruining the quality of television:

"Reality" TV!

It all started in 1992 when MTV started a show called "The Real World" that followed a group of young adults thrown into a posh urban/downtown apartment together.  Real?  Hardly.  Seriously, in the real world, when would you ever find 6-8 beautiful young adults (men and women) who've never met all moving into an apartment together?  It would never work, especially not when you're hooking up with a different roommate every couple of days.  If "The Real World" was the real world, the rate of homicide would increase dramatically.....or maybe just the rate of STDs.

Late-Night Poetry Reading

For months now, I have had a few words of a poem floating around in my head.  I have known they were part of some poem that I heard a few years ago, but couldn't remember any more of the details.  I remember thinking, when I first heard it, that the poem was particularly touching.  But, every time these words would come to mind lately, I wasn't near a computer or a library or a bookstore or anyplace where I could research what poem they were from.  Well, tonight the words came to me again, as I was sitting here in bed with my laptop in front of me.  I found the poem whose words have floated around fragmented in my head for so long now.  As it turns out, the poem was written by a rather prolific author and former Nobel Prize (Literature) winner.  I've read through many of his other works tonight, and find that I rather like them all!  So, as I have a favorite poet for the first time, I thought I'd share, here, the touching piece that brought me to discover his work.

I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

~Pablo Neruda [Love Sonnet XVII from 100 Love Sonnets]

It was this line that has stayed with me all this time:  "I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where."

Isn't that the nature of love, perfectly put into words?  When you truly love someone, it's a feeling that is completely unexplainable.  It's a feeling that is with you all the time.  It becomes a part of you and a part of everything you do.  It becomes a factor in the way you make decisions and live your life.  Love changes you.

Fun with PhotoScape v3.5

So, my dad found a Democratic "Street Sign" for my younger brother to hang in his room.  I thought it was funny, so I snapped a photo and decided to use it as a practice subject while I'm learning how to use the photo manipulation tools in my new software.  So, the photo I took edited together with some royalty-free stock photos I got online produced the result shown below.  I think it's not too bad, for a first attempt!  Be on the lookout for more postings as I learn the ins and outs of this super-cool program!

Broken Pedestals

In May of 2001 when I graduated high school, I had been taught by roughly 42 different teachers -- From preschool through high school.  Each and every one of them had the same responsibility to me as to all their other students: to pass along facts and information; to expose us to lots of cultures and world views; and to teach us to think for ourselves, form our own opinions, express ourselves effectively, and stand up for our beliefs.

Well, let me just say now that most of my teachers did a great job at this, however resistant I was to all the lessons they tried to teach me.  As I've grown up, I've found practical applications for more of the things I learned in school than I ever thought I would.  I have even found myself using a pretty good amount of ALGEBRA, of all things, in various life situations.  Really, who would have ever thought that Algebra would be useful?  But, indeed, it is!  Other useful things I've learned have included basic anatomy, history, geography, and English (vocabulary and grammar).

Yet, though my teachers and I spent lots and lots of time together in classes over the years, it is only now that I'm adult that I have begun to realize how little we really know about our teachers when we are kids.  Sure, we get to know about their favorite colors or foods.  We occasionally hear about their spouses or children or pets.  I even remember some smaller details, like the fact that Mr. Woodifn was retired from the military and the U.S. Postal Service, that Mr. Akers liked Creedence Clearwater Revival, that Mrs. Reynolds didn't drink alcohol, and Mrs. Bell had three Bassett Hounds.

It's JUST a birthday, you know.

It seems to me that there is a growing trend among people I know: unnecessarily-prolonged birthday celebration extravaganzas!  Let's face it, people, it's really not that big a deal that you have "managed to survive" yet another year.

Yes, when you were a kid, I'm sure your parents made a big deal of your birthday.  They'd plan a party, and invite your friends over.  You'd have a sleepover or a pool party, or they'd rent one of those inflatable castles for you to jump around in all day.  They'd come up with a theme like Princesses, or Lisa Frank, or that year's biggest Super Hero or Disney character.  Or, maybe you had a roller skating party or a bowling party, or an all-day Chuck-E-Cheese's blowout!

But, let's face it, now that you're a grown-up, it's time you knew the truth.  While you and your friends were gorging on pizza and cake, watching "PG-13" movies until midnight, and jumping and laughing until you puked, your parents were busy celebrating one thing.....YOU were one year closer to adulthood!  Sure they had all those fond memories of the day you came into their lives, but the fact remains that you were one year closer to being responsible for yourself, and that was worth celebration!

However, many of my adult friends seem to have gone birthday-crazy!  Now, some of you celebrate your "birthday weekend" or your "birthday week."  I've even seen some people who, when their birthday fell in the middle of a week, have begun their celebrations the weekend before their birthdays and continued them all the way through the end of the weekend following their birthdays!  Does anyone really need 10 whole days of birthday celebration?  That's 2.7% of the entire year you've spent celebrating!

The Slightly-Belated, Long-Awaited Proposition 8 Blog Post!

“Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same sex couples.” [U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker]

That's right, the judge (rightly, I believe) has ruled that people cannot enact laws, even with a majority vote, that have no rational or practical basis and are based entirely on the prejudice of the majority against a minority group with a different belief set.

In fact, not only was there no rational basis for such a law to have been passed in the first place, I can think of numerous rational bases for this law not to have passed. Not only that, I can think of rational arguments against most of the reasons people cited for supporting Proposition 8.

What is marriage? Webster's New World Dictionary defines marriage as “an intimate or close union.” While that certainly is an accurate definition, anyone who has ever been married could tell you that marriage is so much more. An intimate and close union, yes. But marriage is also safety, comfort, compromise, sacrifice, fulfillment. Among the multitude of dictionaries available, there can be found many different definitions for “marriage,” and only on rare occasion do these definitions contain any reference to the gender of the persons entering into a married state.

65 Years Ago Today.....

65 years ago today, the world became a much scarier place, and the face of modern warfare changed forever as the first atomic bomb to be used in war was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, Japan.

A Uranium bomb (which weighed in at over 4 & 1/2 tons) nicknamed "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima August 6th, 1945. The Aioi Bridge, one of 81 bridges connecting the seven-branched delta of the Ota River, was the aiming point of the bomb. Ground Zero was set at 1,980 feet. At 0815 hours, the bomb was dropped from the Enola Gay. It missed by only 800 feet. At 0816 hours, in the flash of an instant, 66,000 people were killed and 69,000 people were injured by a 10 kiloton atomic explosion.
The point of total vaporization from the blast measured one half of a mile in diameter. Total destruction ranged at one mile in diameter. Severe blast damage carried as far as two miles in diameter. At two and a half miles, everything flammable in the area burned. The remaining area of the blast zone was riddled with serious blazes that stretched out to the final edge at a little over three miles in diameter.

Teddy Bear Bath Time!!!

If your kids are like mine, you may feel, sometimes, that the stuffed animal zoo has taken over your entire home.  If you feel this way, well, it's probably true.

But stuffed animals (and baby dolls) can be great, healthy toys for children.....girls AND boys.  I was told by a co-worker at a previous job that little boys who had stuffed animals would grow up to be gay.  To that guy: you are an idiot.  If a little boy is going to grow up to be a gay man, I guarantee it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not he had stuffed animals as a child.  In the 70's there was "Free to Be You & Me" starring people such as Marlo Thomas ("That Girl") and Alan Alda ("M*A*S*H") and others.  One of the songs I like best from the show is William's Doll (watch newer version here) about a little boy who wants a doll.  His friends tease him saying "A doll, a doll, William wants a doll!"  His father is against the idea and tried to persuade his to like "boy" things like baseball.  In the end, William's grandmother is the wise one who knows that having a doll can set him on the road to learning how to be a good daddy when he grows up.  It's a good story, and a good lesson for parents of boys.

All Growed Up!

Over the past couple of years since I joined Facebook, I've reconnected with people I hadn't seen since middle school (which ended 9 years ago) or middle school (ended 13 years ago) or even elementary school (ended 16 years ago)!  Like me, all of these former classmates of mine are also now adults.  But, especially in the case of people I haven't kept in contact with over the years, this all still seems strange to me.

We're all old enough to buy alcohol now, and at least half of us have children.  Men I haven't seen since they were boys in elementary or middle school now have facial hair!  Some are married, and others (like me) are already divorced.  Some are homeowners, some are teachers, some are medical professionals, some are serving proudly in the military.  Seven of my former schoolmates are now church youth ministers around town and around the country.

Some of these people who were children with me haven't changed much over the years.  Some potheads are still potheads, some of the snobby bitches are still snobby bitches, and some people don't even look much different!  Some are no more mature now than they were when I last saw them in the 4th or 5th grade.