VOTE, dammit! Just pick someone!

I am a blue girl living in a redneck state.

My neighborhood is pretty much a solid advertisement for McCain/Palin, and all it cost the party was the posters. Just recently in a white upper-middle class subdivision across town, the car of a black man was vandalized with a sharpie. You can only guess what was written.

This worries me. Makes me think that maybe my vote won't count for much here in Tennessee. This is wrong thinking, though. If everyone thought like me, elections would turn out differently.

Vote your conscience and what you truly believe will be the best choice for this country. Don't vote for McCain because Palin has great legs, or for Obama because he has such a non-threatening, non-"Dr. Evil" smile. I hate to even say that, but I know that this may come down to a popularity contest. The nursing station at work is littered not with news journals, but with tabloid magazines. Americans love celebrity. There's no sense in denying it.

I read an article that interviewed people from Detroit on how race and gender will affect their voting decisions. One man replied with something along the lines of "It's come down to a black man or a woman, so what's a [white] guy like me to do?"

This election is forcing a lot of people to confront their stereotypes and prejudices. I would not vote for Palin just because she is a woman like myself, even though I have espoused many of Gloria Steinem's ideas. I would not refrain from voting for Obama just because I grew up in the midst of white-flight in Chicago's south suburbs.

I will vote for who I believe will lead our country down the right path. I will vote for ideas.

The Bible teaches that we shouldn't cling to ephemeralities and materialism. The two are synonymous. Whether you believe in the truth of the Bible or not, in light of the economic situation of the country at this moment, this is wisdom.

My ultimate point in all of this rambling is: Vote for America, and the ideas that you still believe in, even though they may seem nonexistent in this day and age of lobbyists and bought politicians.

Or be a revolutionary. Screw both of the pre-packaged candidates and vote independent!

September at Winstead Hill

You can travel a familiar path a hundred times, but the moment you turn around and walk in the other direction it becomes a new place.

Amo

You will surely be missed

a case for the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

Trouble Child--lyrics by Joni Mitchell

Up in a sterilized room
Where they let you be lazy
Knowing your attitude's all wrong
And you got to change
And that's not easy
Dragon shining with all values known
Dazzling you-keeping you from your own
Where is the lion in you to defy him
When you're this weak
And this spacey...

So what are you going to do about it
You can't live life and you can't leave it
Advice and religion-you can't take it
You can't seem to believe it
The peacock is afraid to parade
You're under the thumb of the maid
You really can't give love in this condition
Still you know how you need it

They open and close you
Then they talk like they know you
They don't know you
They're friends and they're foes too
Trouble child
Breaking like the waves at Malibu

So why does it come as such a shock
To know you really have no one
Only a river of changing faces
Looking for an ocean
They trickle through your leaky plans
Another dream over the dam
And you're lying in some room
Feeling like your right to be human
Is going over too
Well some are going to knock you
And some will try to clock you
You know it's really hard
To talk sense to you
Trouble child
Breaking like the waves at Malibu