BaRock the Vote!

One of the things I treasure most about my relationship with Jeff is his willingness to join me for any number of adventures that are important to me or my friends. This past week alone, he came with me to a wake, an Obama button making party, and on the date I planned for us on Thursday night: Running home from work (3.3 miles) and ordering Thai from our favorite restaurant. Jeff's first response to my hair-brained ideas is YES. I have to be careful not to propose anything that I don't really want to do, because Jeff is liable to be game for any activity I throw his way. In return for him agreeing to join me on a date where we ran towards the sunset home from the office, I invited him on a date next Friday night: to Home Depot (the male version of Ann Taylor Loft) for paint and then a hotdog on the way out.

We had a great time traveling to Milwaukee to join our friends Kelly and Reuben who were hosting the Obama button making party. Our Wisconsin friends have embraced certain causes more ardently than we have: Kelly has a composting bin, is training to be a La Leche League leader, and also hosted a political party in her backyard yesterday, complete with Vancouver smoked salmon and delicious fresh fruit. I marvel at my friends who have the energy to devote themselves to such worthwhile causes. Sometimes I feel burdened just putting my La Croix can in the recycle bin at home, which, incidentally is right next to the regular trash. I am happy to have friends who challenge me and show me new ways to spend my energy and time and money. I mused to myself that maybe if I spent a little less time thinking about myself, I might have more energy to recycle or learn about local politics. I can't even name my alderperson!

On the up side, we did our part and in our sunny little corner of Wisconsin we made over 500 buttons to send to the Obama campaign in both Oregon and South Carolina.


I get a little overwhelmed when I get drawn into political conversations. I tend to hang around a lot of Democrats, who are unambivalently capital D democrats, but it's also really important to me to be tolerant and open-minded. (It's not my natural state, but it's how I want to be.) I know it's hard when we hear that a certain veep candidate has some ideas about manifest destiny and how the Baby Jesus wants pipelines drilled through polar bears' asses, but it's important to me not to cross a line and slam anyone simply because she is religious. I am not religious and I have a strong reaction to religion being used to justify atrocities committed against humanity and nature, but I also want be a person who supports other people having religion and allowing it to guide them. I don't have to agree with it. I probably won't, but she's free to believe anything she wants. Doesn't mean I want her leading my country, my soldiers, my army, my children, but there are a lot of things that I believe that are controversial (like my belief that food should be eaten before the expiration date, which has proved quite controversial in my household, but that's another story), and I really just want to be left alone to believe them. (I will note here that I am not running for very high political office.)

There is nothing new or original to say here about the 2008 election, except that it's fun to make buttons, it's fun to get involved and channel my time and energy into participating in my country's election process, and it's fun yell to Barock the Vote at the top of my lungs!

Not as easy as it looks to make a button, people! It takes heart and elbow grease and grimaces.

Newlyweds-to-be that attend political events together, stay together. That's our theory, at least. Jeff and I took a giant step away from the world of wedding planning to take part in the historic campaign. I would like to see Barack Obama become President. I don't let myself think too much about what would happen if McCain gets elected. I don't think about it because life is scary enough without projecting out 5 weeks and having an entire Presidential campaign in my head. I would feel most sad if I missed this moment in history. If I just hit snooze on my social consciousness and dove into wedding planning or work or the monotony of my everyday life and let this all pass me by, I would feel so sad. I would have missed a chance to have conversations with friends and strangers about topics I have never imagined I would discuss, including the frontier mentality, Alaskan local politics, how to modernize a hairstyle that includes a bun, the relative merits of having a religious prohibition against premarital sex, how to make a donation to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin's name, how to get comfortable with a potential candidate who undoubtedly suffers from PTSD, why every freaking candidate has an alcoholic dad, and where oh where does AA and recovery-speak to fit into the public discourse when alcoholism itself casts such a dark shadow?