1,013 People Have Died From Guns Since Newtown
13 years ago
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Texting: Her’s wot I want 2 say abt that
Car doors open with a smooth metal click and heavy plastic clunk; pull and close with a thunk and we’re in. Seatbelts slide on and I back out looking over my shoulder, and in my bottom vision I see the phones come out. The girls might wait politely to ask for the staticky radio station that will sync with the Itrip signal for their Ipods, but the phones are already open and the same sound my fingers are making now on these keys comes out double time with tinier clicks in the back seat. We might chat above the music and enough might even get said, but all the while the clicking goes on and the car is filled with five or six or more invisible people in staccato conversation, a chittering sidebar of chat and quick response, many hahahas and lols, yet withal a constant communication, a parallel virtual sign languaging, rapid fire and coincident with the car ride, long or short. So then, :( but <3. Click send.
Freecycle: Find Out What Your Fellow Americans Have and Now Think You Might Want
There is a world around us we don’t see, but we can get a look at by email. A virtual curbside giveaway called Freecycle has claimed my inbox, each email a peephole into the life and times of my proximate America. I’m signed up for a regional list serve that serves up roughly fifty or more emails a day offering, for free, unwanted items around members’ houses to whomever first replies to claim them. It’s a kind of guerilla free trade that is more reality show than shopping channel, but it’s also a de facto underground community that calls to and binds up folks who are doing more than cleaning out their cupboards – each email says something about the sender and the receiver. What makes Freecycle magnetic is that each email tells you what your neighbors have, what they are now willing to part with, and what they believe is worth your while to get – even if it means driving several towns over to pick it up. That cost-benefit calculus is often dumfounding, depending on what is up for grabs.
Some will offer unwanted, unopened presents for re-gifting. Others genuinely want to recycle the plastic egg holder insert from the refrigerator. Some seek the outdated electronics another discards, and some use Freecycle as a daily discipline to declutter just about anything, but also to signal something of themselves by doing so. For others it is simply to know the joy of giving what someone else might genuinely use. Reading the emails is daily diverting and often poignant. The flurry of messages creates a kind of kinship among its fervent users, and inevitably among others who just observe the bazaar from the inbox, perhaps waiting for that one remarkable discard. Others, maybe me, are loathe to stop wetting their feet in the personal flotsam and jetsam of life that washes up with such riveting regularity.
Actually getting something from Freecycle is much more challenging than an EBay auction. With no stated end time for claiming an item, warp speed is of the eerie essence. I did try, respectively, for the four buckets of stone dust (bring your own buckets), and the doghouse-shaped boxed set of Peanuts books (for my brother), within the hour each was posted, only to find they were both taken within the minute, and that I was low down an already long waiting list. Freecyclers are voracious, and attentive, birds watching from the wire. Need, greed, and speed make this cast-off meta-market bafflingly successful and fascinating to monitor.
Some of my favorite freebies by any of the above criteria have been the One Large Bar of Ivory Soap (unopened), the Half Bag of Bouillon Cubes (chicken and beef assortment), and the Partially Used Tub of Pet Wipes. I would have had to spend more in gas to go get them than perhaps they were worth, but maybe someone else was closer. But the giveaway that seems destined to top anything noted or yet to be offered is something that came through yesterday, and I am not making this up. This was in America’s closet, not far from my house.
[FreecycleAct] Offer: Two adult size cryogenic freezer bags
These are high quality bags. We recently had my mom and my in-laws cryogenically frozen and you have to buy your own freezer bags so we bought the box of six thinking that it would be cheaper because they keep so long we could save the extras for ourselves eventually but we only ended up using three and now our EPSAs (Everlasting Preservation Savings Account) are in the tank with the rest of the economy and I don't think there's any way we'll be able to afford anything but the usual dirt hole. So we don't need these bags anymore. Actually I am using one of them to keep my suits in down in the basement because they are really airtight and keep the musty smell out. They have the high quality green seal on the ziplock closure, one side is blue and the other is yellow and if you make a good seal then it turns green. Also they are clear so I can still see my suits. Maybe they are translucent, I don't know the difference. They were clear enough to still see granny's face but not so clear that you could tell if the pennies on her eyes were heads or tails.
Anyway if you are thinking about cryogenic preservation you will need these and they are the good ones.
And they must have been the good ones, because they were gone within the hour.
Some will offer unwanted, unopened presents for re-gifting. Others genuinely want to recycle the plastic egg holder insert from the refrigerator. Some seek the outdated electronics another discards, and some use Freecycle as a daily discipline to declutter just about anything, but also to signal something of themselves by doing so. For others it is simply to know the joy of giving what someone else might genuinely use. Reading the emails is daily diverting and often poignant. The flurry of messages creates a kind of kinship among its fervent users, and inevitably among others who just observe the bazaar from the inbox, perhaps waiting for that one remarkable discard. Others, maybe me, are loathe to stop wetting their feet in the personal flotsam and jetsam of life that washes up with such riveting regularity.
Actually getting something from Freecycle is much more challenging than an EBay auction. With no stated end time for claiming an item, warp speed is of the eerie essence. I did try, respectively, for the four buckets of stone dust (bring your own buckets), and the doghouse-shaped boxed set of Peanuts books (for my brother), within the hour each was posted, only to find they were both taken within the minute, and that I was low down an already long waiting list. Freecyclers are voracious, and attentive, birds watching from the wire. Need, greed, and speed make this cast-off meta-market bafflingly successful and fascinating to monitor.
Some of my favorite freebies by any of the above criteria have been the One Large Bar of Ivory Soap (unopened), the Half Bag of Bouillon Cubes (chicken and beef assortment), and the Partially Used Tub of Pet Wipes. I would have had to spend more in gas to go get them than perhaps they were worth, but maybe someone else was closer. But the giveaway that seems destined to top anything noted or yet to be offered is something that came through yesterday, and I am not making this up. This was in America’s closet, not far from my house.
[FreecycleAct] Offer: Two adult size cryogenic freezer bags
These are high quality bags. We recently had my mom and my in-laws cryogenically frozen and you have to buy your own freezer bags so we bought the box of six thinking that it would be cheaper because they keep so long we could save the extras for ourselves eventually but we only ended up using three and now our EPSAs (Everlasting Preservation Savings Account) are in the tank with the rest of the economy and I don't think there's any way we'll be able to afford anything but the usual dirt hole. So we don't need these bags anymore. Actually I am using one of them to keep my suits in down in the basement because they are really airtight and keep the musty smell out. They have the high quality green seal on the ziplock closure, one side is blue and the other is yellow and if you make a good seal then it turns green. Also they are clear so I can still see my suits. Maybe they are translucent, I don't know the difference. They were clear enough to still see granny's face but not so clear that you could tell if the pennies on her eyes were heads or tails.
Anyway if you are thinking about cryogenic preservation you will need these and they are the good ones.
And they must have been the good ones, because they were gone within the hour.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Snow Shrinks
Snow doesn’t always melt. Yesterday the air was full of snow. We moved through the woods in Nordic tracks on our skis, pushing our poles down and our feet forward, the snow icing our hats and collars and shoulders. Snow was the foreground and the background, a soft filter of white atoms we breathed and billowed.
Today the sky is the clear blue of a prayer, and the green and brown pine tree tops are lined with white and it all pops against that blue. The snow on the ground that yesterday was heaps of heavy, fine, soft, cold powder compacted by its weight, weightless in the air, but weighty enough to land and pile, ice dust on ice mote, fairy crystal on frozen bonded hydrogen and oxygen atom, drifts and deeps too high to walk in without effort yesterday – today it is all intact, but somehow all of it smaller. Acres and miles and counties of snow spread out untouched by rain or plow, now simply shallower, reduced in volume and depth. Between then and now the snow simply shrank.
This is a trick of air, something as simple as evaporation, but something as marvelous and undetectable in its transfiguration as a leaf opening. We are used to friction, to our contact and agitation and intervention to make things happen and change. Here, overnight, without fanfare or noise or movement beyond the invisible transfer of atoms, the snow departed. A kind of evanescence, a quiet transference, like a face with a smile you didn’t see appear; it breathes a kind of peace. In its insubstantial yet palpable change, there is an immortal assumption of power and movement very far beyond our human need for noise and impact to make a difference.
Today the sky is the clear blue of a prayer, and the green and brown pine tree tops are lined with white and it all pops against that blue. The snow on the ground that yesterday was heaps of heavy, fine, soft, cold powder compacted by its weight, weightless in the air, but weighty enough to land and pile, ice dust on ice mote, fairy crystal on frozen bonded hydrogen and oxygen atom, drifts and deeps too high to walk in without effort yesterday – today it is all intact, but somehow all of it smaller. Acres and miles and counties of snow spread out untouched by rain or plow, now simply shallower, reduced in volume and depth. Between then and now the snow simply shrank.
This is a trick of air, something as simple as evaporation, but something as marvelous and undetectable in its transfiguration as a leaf opening. We are used to friction, to our contact and agitation and intervention to make things happen and change. Here, overnight, without fanfare or noise or movement beyond the invisible transfer of atoms, the snow departed. A kind of evanescence, a quiet transference, like a face with a smile you didn’t see appear; it breathes a kind of peace. In its insubstantial yet palpable change, there is an immortal assumption of power and movement very far beyond our human need for noise and impact to make a difference.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Today for Lent
TUESDAY, MARCH 3
DEUTERONOMY 9:(1-3) 4-12
“And at the end of forty days and forty nights, the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. Then the Lord said to me, 'Arise, go down quickly from here; for your people whom you have brought from Egypt have acted corruptly; they have turned aside quickly out of the way
which I commanded them; they have made themselves a molten image.”
Deuteronomy is where we hear of Godly order brought to bear on earthly chaos. Moses has been to the mountain and has brought down the Ten Commandments. He admonishes Israel for its shallow memory and lax attention to God’s will. Moses chides Israel for its pride and willingness to see its path paved by its own righteousness. He castigates Israel for corrupting God’s laws and worshipping a golden calf.
The parallels to our present world are so sharp we can cut ourselves on them. Like ancient Israel, we live in a time of flux. Like ancient Israel, we are full of ourselves, full of our versions of the truth and diversions from it. Like ancient Israel, we require the ordinances of God’s will to be held up in front of us on stone tablets. Like ancient Israel,we need to hear and revere and to obey God’s command, not ours. In our roiling time of governments, societies, and belief systems shifting in expediency, self-absorption, or from purposeless drift, we need God’s laws more than ever to correct us. Moses has thrown down the markers for our modern world.
Prayer: Dear Lord, help us order our lives in accord with your will, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
DEUTERONOMY 9:(1-3) 4-12
“And at the end of forty days and forty nights, the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. Then the Lord said to me, 'Arise, go down quickly from here; for your people whom you have brought from Egypt have acted corruptly; they have turned aside quickly out of the way
which I commanded them; they have made themselves a molten image.”
Deuteronomy is where we hear of Godly order brought to bear on earthly chaos. Moses has been to the mountain and has brought down the Ten Commandments. He admonishes Israel for its shallow memory and lax attention to God’s will. Moses chides Israel for its pride and willingness to see its path paved by its own righteousness. He castigates Israel for corrupting God’s laws and worshipping a golden calf.
The parallels to our present world are so sharp we can cut ourselves on them. Like ancient Israel, we live in a time of flux. Like ancient Israel, we are full of ourselves, full of our versions of the truth and diversions from it. Like ancient Israel, we require the ordinances of God’s will to be held up in front of us on stone tablets. Like ancient Israel,we need to hear and revere and to obey God’s command, not ours. In our roiling time of governments, societies, and belief systems shifting in expediency, self-absorption, or from purposeless drift, we need God’s laws more than ever to correct us. Moses has thrown down the markers for our modern world.
Prayer: Dear Lord, help us order our lives in accord with your will, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
The Sum of a Small Town
The grocery store, the liquor store, the fitness center, the dollar store, the photo and framing shop, the tax preparer, the hair salon, the karate dojo, the dry cleaner, the video store, the pet store, and the pizza restaurant. The post office and the satellite bank office. Across the street there was a restaurant, there was a gas station, there was an employment agency, there were some offices, there was another pizza place, there is yet another pizza place, another hair salon, another dry cleaner, another bank, a tile store, another restaurant that is closed, a dentist, a chiropractor, and some offices that might be open.
This is the swatch of commerce, plain enough workaday material of ordinary stripe. This is the strip heart of the small town. The cross heart is at the intersection with the gas station and the library. There, three churches are up and down the street from each other, more outposts than not. There are three cemeteries, none of them near a church. There is another gas station farther down the road.
There are three schools, divided for grades kindergarten through eight. There is a fire station, a police station, a town hall, and a town building. There are four federal mailboxes, two in front of the post office itself. There is a convenience store and there are six apple farms that I can think of. There are four seasonal flower and produce stands.
There is a main straight road and many right angled intersections, but there are also forks and curves and turns, and many intertwined loops. The interesting streets end at woods or turn on to unpaved roads. Those rough edges mark the town borders. The inside of the town is more opaque than smooth, and its interest is more inherent than evident. There is history and there is contemporaneity. There is longevity and there is transience. There is a middle ground that is sometimes hard to find.
This is the swatch of commerce, plain enough workaday material of ordinary stripe. This is the strip heart of the small town. The cross heart is at the intersection with the gas station and the library. There, three churches are up and down the street from each other, more outposts than not. There are three cemeteries, none of them near a church. There is another gas station farther down the road.
There are three schools, divided for grades kindergarten through eight. There is a fire station, a police station, a town hall, and a town building. There are four federal mailboxes, two in front of the post office itself. There is a convenience store and there are six apple farms that I can think of. There are four seasonal flower and produce stands.
There is a main straight road and many right angled intersections, but there are also forks and curves and turns, and many intertwined loops. The interesting streets end at woods or turn on to unpaved roads. Those rough edges mark the town borders. The inside of the town is more opaque than smooth, and its interest is more inherent than evident. There is history and there is contemporaneity. There is longevity and there is transience. There is a middle ground that is sometimes hard to find.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Air and Simple Gifts
And Yo Yo Ma’s wide smile and the seagulls high in the palest blue around the white Capitol dome, if you were watching on MSNBC. Twelve noon struck during this song, easily the most sublime moment of the inauguration, and one in which Barack Obama became president. This even before the oath so awkwardly offered by a man who surely had not voted for him, and so graciously received by this man who certainly had not voted for him to become Chief Justice. America!
But music carried the moment into time and into the space all around, an aural benediction that captured the power of the course of human events that followed. Words of power, words of pressure, words of grace. Hope and virtue; an air, and simple gifts.
But music carried the moment into time and into the space all around, an aural benediction that captured the power of the course of human events that followed. Words of power, words of pressure, words of grace. Hope and virtue; an air, and simple gifts.
Words to Live By
These things are old. These things are true.
And we are not to break with rash and brash entitled hubris those things that anchor us. That is what virtue can teach us. And we are better for listening to and hearing words that hold meaning like full fruit, and that are served in a cadence that itself recalls us to the time and place where our better selves were named, where and when we ourselves named those things which we need to hold to be better, and to be reminded over and across time to be better. That we deemed them to be self-evident does not mean we remember that they are. All the mighty truths and all the mighty words that we the people call our pole star are as ephemeral or as enduring as our intention to remember them. We are to remember that even in this exponential digital google age of trash and discard, we are defined by our deeds propelled by our beliefs. If we wreck and dismiss our ideals in a fit of pique or a convulsion of power and greed, we exist in a moment and then we are history; shattered atoms of a wasted and wasteful nation, an antipodal paradigm even in its mass fission, a polar opposite to the hard clear concentrated light of a star.
Thank you for saying it all, President Barack Hussein Obama. Belief, solidity, our touchstone for national bearings, our call to account for our stated principles. A clear-eyed, fair-minded, powerful, and authoritative assessment of our time and place. No apologies for truth, and no pretense about what was false. This was an inaugural address to us here and now, and its call for the ages was premised on the imperative to pick ourselves up and begin. Obama and his family in the colors from a prism on a clear and cold January morning model civility, decency, humanity, and certainty. We forgot what that looked like out in front of us. Yesterday he held up our truths for us and for the world to see. Like children faced with the broken heirloom, we need to own it, to fix it by using new glue, to renew what is timeless, and to live with that contradiction that calls us to account and to be better for it. And to make each other better for it. Dare I say it? Our new president said it yesterday. Yes we shall.
And we are not to break with rash and brash entitled hubris those things that anchor us. That is what virtue can teach us. And we are better for listening to and hearing words that hold meaning like full fruit, and that are served in a cadence that itself recalls us to the time and place where our better selves were named, where and when we ourselves named those things which we need to hold to be better, and to be reminded over and across time to be better. That we deemed them to be self-evident does not mean we remember that they are. All the mighty truths and all the mighty words that we the people call our pole star are as ephemeral or as enduring as our intention to remember them. We are to remember that even in this exponential digital google age of trash and discard, we are defined by our deeds propelled by our beliefs. If we wreck and dismiss our ideals in a fit of pique or a convulsion of power and greed, we exist in a moment and then we are history; shattered atoms of a wasted and wasteful nation, an antipodal paradigm even in its mass fission, a polar opposite to the hard clear concentrated light of a star.
Thank you for saying it all, President Barack Hussein Obama. Belief, solidity, our touchstone for national bearings, our call to account for our stated principles. A clear-eyed, fair-minded, powerful, and authoritative assessment of our time and place. No apologies for truth, and no pretense about what was false. This was an inaugural address to us here and now, and its call for the ages was premised on the imperative to pick ourselves up and begin. Obama and his family in the colors from a prism on a clear and cold January morning model civility, decency, humanity, and certainty. We forgot what that looked like out in front of us. Yesterday he held up our truths for us and for the world to see. Like children faced with the broken heirloom, we need to own it, to fix it by using new glue, to renew what is timeless, and to live with that contradiction that calls us to account and to be better for it. And to make each other better for it. Dare I say it? Our new president said it yesterday. Yes we shall.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Obama Understands Greek Drama
Why Hillary for Secretary of State? Obama is steering between the Scylla and Charybdis* of Hillary and Bill. His eyes are open and fixed on the far shore of genuine governance. (Because this is real and not Greek mythology and he already has the Golden Fleece, let's note that Obama's navigation also brilliantly and effectively keeps Bill in a box. Bill can no longer be de facto Secretary of State of the Clinton Global Initiative. He also had to show his Funderwear and will now have to ask permission to buy any more . . . .)
*From Wikipedia . . . . "Scylla was a creature who dwelt in a rock, and regularly ate sailors who passed by too closely. Her appearance has varied in classical literature; she was described by Homer in The Odyssey as having six heads perched on long necks along with twelve feet, while in Ovid's Metamorphoses, she was depicted as having the upper body of a nymph, with her midriff composed of dogs' heads. Charybdis had a single gaping mouth that sucked in huge quantities of water and belched them out three times a day, creating whirlpools."
*From Wikipedia . . . . "Scylla was a creature who dwelt in a rock, and regularly ate sailors who passed by too closely. Her appearance has varied in classical literature; she was described by Homer in The Odyssey as having six heads perched on long necks along with twelve feet, while in Ovid's Metamorphoses, she was depicted as having the upper body of a nymph, with her midriff composed of dogs' heads. Charybdis had a single gaping mouth that sucked in huge quantities of water and belched them out three times a day, creating whirlpools."
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Verse 2
We sang this this morning and I had never paid attention to the less familiar words until today. Please teach your children the second verse to "O Beautiful for Spacious Skies."
O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self control, Thy liberty in law.
Amen.
O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self control, Thy liberty in law.
Amen.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
Blank Canvass to Start (Part 1)
How to inculcate belief? How to turn thoughts into words into deeds? How to get out of the doldrums and this town? Canvass! I took our children to New Hampshire on Saturday.
Searching the electoral map for proximate leverage, it is clear Massachusetts needs to go north. We believe Massachusetts will vote for Obama, but we are not convinced New Hampshire will. The state’s track record is red, and McCain makes Peterborough his Bethlehem. And there are all those Hillary voters who gave Obama the primary loss . . . . We didn’t go north in 2004, and we should have. So, time to fill the tank with the most affordable gas and go.
The fringe benefits of a journey together are legion. We get the busy teenagers in one place at the same time. We get to groan collectively at all the McCain/Palin signs that line the exurban roads to the highway on-ramp. We get to change the words to a Mamma Mia song to “Give me, give me, give me Obama on Tuesday!” and sing it at the top of our lungs as we follow MapQuest to Nashua. We get to laugh as we drive intentionally but bewilderedly around urban streets that are a world away from our leafy cocoon, asking new faces how to get to the Obama headquarters. I get to smile ruefully as my worldly and knowing daughters tell me we should have GPS. I get to have a bigger smile when I find Obama headquarters on the strength of a map, friendly strangers, and my intuitive sense of direction, all attributes I commend to my girls. And we get to share an eye-popping, heart-swelling moment as we hunt for a parking place in a sea of cars festooned with Obama stickers, crowding the verges and accenting the blue tsunami of Obama signs that welcome us to the huge warehouse nerve center of the Nashua campaign. We are so happy together. Our lonely, exurban Obama bumper sticker has come home, to New Hampshire.
We have no idea how to canvass and the girls are nervous about hostile responses. Inside the warehouse, we are encouraged by a hoarse, adrenalin-charged, terse, college-age Obama volunteer who power-schools us in the process, dos and don’ts as we stand in a group of about forty other new canvassers. We are bunched between blue lines painted on the warehouse floor, and more volunteers arrive and are clustered in rows before equally efficient and buzzed campaign workers. Our exhortation concluded, we follow the arrows to the registration station and get lots of stickers we can layer ourselves with. The girls are excited at these preparations and the energy and friendliness and the sense of purpose from the volunteers. One guy really gets stars from my eldest daughter when he thinks she might be of voting age. (She is so not.) At the next rank of tables we are handed our clipboard with instructions, Google map, and lists of voters’ names and addresses and information pertinent to their undecided status. We have boxes we are supposed to check off about their present decisions, if any, about Obama, Jeanne Shaheen, and the Democratic congressional candidate. And whether or not the campaign should come back again and again till Tuesday. The clipboard and the data and the questions give us credibility and courage and out the door we go.
Without the GPS but the campaign’s excellent directions, we wend our way through Nashua’s intersections, past MacDonald’s, Quiznos, and Subways, down streets with big McCain signs and small, past a plethora of local race placards and “I’m a Gun Owner and I Vote” posters. We reach our assigned set of neighborhood streets and decide where to park the car so we can hit the most houses most efficiently. We all get out of the car, Obama hats and pins and stickers labeling us out loud. That in itself is liberating, as I have been conscious in some of my regular daily doings about when I wear my Obama shirt and when I don’t. My bumper sticker and yard signs always speak for me, but the loud, silent disapproval of too much political opining sticking out makes me wary in dress with some fellow parents and neighbors.
Our first house to approach is very small, like all the others we will knock at, if it is a house and not a row of apartment doors in subsidized housing. Our target neighborhood is mixed with working poor and unemployed, retired or otherwise - elderly, young singles and couples, middle-aged with families, older parents living with grown children - and small outposts of slightly nicer properties with day-after Halloween decorations and clear evidence of childhood streets and dreams and the deep imprint of one archetype of American life. The benefits of this journey for our girls are looking pretty interesting now.
We open the gate in the chain link fence and walk up the short concrete path between two small brown strips of grass and ring the bell. This bell, unlike many we will try to ring, works. There is a small yard, claimed and defined by the fence on three sides. Cars on the busy street behind us whiz by and we feel a little unprepared, despite our marching orders and printed instructions. We were told not read off our script, but to speak naturally and openly, so I scan the notes again quickly before the door opens. It does and a wry and sleepy face of forced patience assesses our cheery tentativeness. He knows why we are there and he says the campaign has been there many times in the last week. He is in his late twenties, as is the woman voter who lives there as well, and he says they are still deciding and probably won’t make up their minds until they get into the booth. We remember then to introduce ourselves and we make some hopeful and encouraging statements and wish him well. Then we consult the clipboard and check him and his housemate off as still undecided, dooming them to more visits from volunteers in the next two days. We feel unsatisfied, but at least proud to have done one house and we leave, forgetting to give him the packet of voter pamphlets we have for every house.
Chagrined by our first less-than-successful encounter, we turn the corner and begin the next street in new earnest.
To be continued with tales of myriad moments of closed doors, open doors, and four hours of door-knocking democracy in action with elemental encounters with fellow Americans - and how we learned later that there were 2000 volunteers so far by the time we turned in our clipboard -
Searching the electoral map for proximate leverage, it is clear Massachusetts needs to go north. We believe Massachusetts will vote for Obama, but we are not convinced New Hampshire will. The state’s track record is red, and McCain makes Peterborough his Bethlehem. And there are all those Hillary voters who gave Obama the primary loss . . . . We didn’t go north in 2004, and we should have. So, time to fill the tank with the most affordable gas and go.
The fringe benefits of a journey together are legion. We get the busy teenagers in one place at the same time. We get to groan collectively at all the McCain/Palin signs that line the exurban roads to the highway on-ramp. We get to change the words to a Mamma Mia song to “Give me, give me, give me Obama on Tuesday!” and sing it at the top of our lungs as we follow MapQuest to Nashua. We get to laugh as we drive intentionally but bewilderedly around urban streets that are a world away from our leafy cocoon, asking new faces how to get to the Obama headquarters. I get to smile ruefully as my worldly and knowing daughters tell me we should have GPS. I get to have a bigger smile when I find Obama headquarters on the strength of a map, friendly strangers, and my intuitive sense of direction, all attributes I commend to my girls. And we get to share an eye-popping, heart-swelling moment as we hunt for a parking place in a sea of cars festooned with Obama stickers, crowding the verges and accenting the blue tsunami of Obama signs that welcome us to the huge warehouse nerve center of the Nashua campaign. We are so happy together. Our lonely, exurban Obama bumper sticker has come home, to New Hampshire.
We have no idea how to canvass and the girls are nervous about hostile responses. Inside the warehouse, we are encouraged by a hoarse, adrenalin-charged, terse, college-age Obama volunteer who power-schools us in the process, dos and don’ts as we stand in a group of about forty other new canvassers. We are bunched between blue lines painted on the warehouse floor, and more volunteers arrive and are clustered in rows before equally efficient and buzzed campaign workers. Our exhortation concluded, we follow the arrows to the registration station and get lots of stickers we can layer ourselves with. The girls are excited at these preparations and the energy and friendliness and the sense of purpose from the volunteers. One guy really gets stars from my eldest daughter when he thinks she might be of voting age. (She is so not.) At the next rank of tables we are handed our clipboard with instructions, Google map, and lists of voters’ names and addresses and information pertinent to their undecided status. We have boxes we are supposed to check off about their present decisions, if any, about Obama, Jeanne Shaheen, and the Democratic congressional candidate. And whether or not the campaign should come back again and again till Tuesday. The clipboard and the data and the questions give us credibility and courage and out the door we go.
Without the GPS but the campaign’s excellent directions, we wend our way through Nashua’s intersections, past MacDonald’s, Quiznos, and Subways, down streets with big McCain signs and small, past a plethora of local race placards and “I’m a Gun Owner and I Vote” posters. We reach our assigned set of neighborhood streets and decide where to park the car so we can hit the most houses most efficiently. We all get out of the car, Obama hats and pins and stickers labeling us out loud. That in itself is liberating, as I have been conscious in some of my regular daily doings about when I wear my Obama shirt and when I don’t. My bumper sticker and yard signs always speak for me, but the loud, silent disapproval of too much political opining sticking out makes me wary in dress with some fellow parents and neighbors.
Our first house to approach is very small, like all the others we will knock at, if it is a house and not a row of apartment doors in subsidized housing. Our target neighborhood is mixed with working poor and unemployed, retired or otherwise - elderly, young singles and couples, middle-aged with families, older parents living with grown children - and small outposts of slightly nicer properties with day-after Halloween decorations and clear evidence of childhood streets and dreams and the deep imprint of one archetype of American life. The benefits of this journey for our girls are looking pretty interesting now.
We open the gate in the chain link fence and walk up the short concrete path between two small brown strips of grass and ring the bell. This bell, unlike many we will try to ring, works. There is a small yard, claimed and defined by the fence on three sides. Cars on the busy street behind us whiz by and we feel a little unprepared, despite our marching orders and printed instructions. We were told not read off our script, but to speak naturally and openly, so I scan the notes again quickly before the door opens. It does and a wry and sleepy face of forced patience assesses our cheery tentativeness. He knows why we are there and he says the campaign has been there many times in the last week. He is in his late twenties, as is the woman voter who lives there as well, and he says they are still deciding and probably won’t make up their minds until they get into the booth. We remember then to introduce ourselves and we make some hopeful and encouraging statements and wish him well. Then we consult the clipboard and check him and his housemate off as still undecided, dooming them to more visits from volunteers in the next two days. We feel unsatisfied, but at least proud to have done one house and we leave, forgetting to give him the packet of voter pamphlets we have for every house.
Chagrined by our first less-than-successful encounter, we turn the corner and begin the next street in new earnest.
To be continued with tales of myriad moments of closed doors, open doors, and four hours of door-knocking democracy in action with elemental encounters with fellow Americans - and how we learned later that there were 2000 volunteers so far by the time we turned in our clipboard -
Friday, October 31, 2008
Signage in the Exurbs
One Big Pickup blows by our mailbox, leaves scuttled in the flurry, our Obama sign buffeted by the back draft. I watch the sign wobble, a tiny residual shudder, then resume its short mute vigil by our driveway. I feel a quick relief that the sign is fine and that I don’t have to get mad at the truck and its disappearing threat. I don’t have to take a picture of the downed sign and send it to our local newspaper in impotent, printed outrage.
Instead, I’m watching the quiet morality play in our town, the lines of yard signs that flank some roads, the empty stretches on others, the partisan punctuation on that street, the bipartisan parable on another - the permission that signs give exurbanites to signal their views when they won’t speak their minds. The oddest thing about living in the outer rings of the US in the millennium is that people in these towns are afraid to say what they think to each other.
We moved here in 2004, certain that this country would elect John Kerry, and we were excited and positively noisy about it. We were stunned not to be able to chatter excitedly with new acquaintances and neighbors about the imminent end to the patently destructive Bush era. This is Massachusetts and Kerry was going to win this state. But weirdly, decidedly, confusingly, no one wanted to talk about it.
I agree that Kerry was not an ideal standard-bearer. But Bush is unbearable. What’s not to talk about? But when Kerry lost we stopped trying to talk, and I draped our front porch with black cloth for three days. I don’t think anyone noticed, or got it, until I tried to explain it. (To less people, with less vigor.) And there were so few yard signs up anyway for that election, that little changed on the roadsides afterwards. The fall leaves and the stones walls remained uninvolved. I wondered what people were talking about inside their houses.
In 2008, however, yard signs abound, staking their claims on some of these roads. It seems people do need to declare themselves after all, but do so by posted witness and not spoken word. Any political conversations are still tentative unless you know you are in like-minded company. The better part of valor out here is still expected and track meet chat and bus stop civilities remain bare of political opinions, rather than full-dress encounters spent baring beliefs. Having convictions in this setting doesn’t connote convincing a partisan opposite. Now convictions more mean quietly claiming your ground as firmly as those metal yard sign poles get staked out in front of your house. What is odd is that the audible silence seems all the more fervent, and the polarity more distinct. The middle ground of discourse is impossible without conversation. Instead, the yards signs speak for us, but, like all inanimate objects, can’t speak with each other.
And when the signs come down and this election is over, I think that more of us will either speak less to some of us, or we will speak to each other, but mean even less. We won’t be able to use sign language.
Instead, I’m watching the quiet morality play in our town, the lines of yard signs that flank some roads, the empty stretches on others, the partisan punctuation on that street, the bipartisan parable on another - the permission that signs give exurbanites to signal their views when they won’t speak their minds. The oddest thing about living in the outer rings of the US in the millennium is that people in these towns are afraid to say what they think to each other.
We moved here in 2004, certain that this country would elect John Kerry, and we were excited and positively noisy about it. We were stunned not to be able to chatter excitedly with new acquaintances and neighbors about the imminent end to the patently destructive Bush era. This is Massachusetts and Kerry was going to win this state. But weirdly, decidedly, confusingly, no one wanted to talk about it.
I agree that Kerry was not an ideal standard-bearer. But Bush is unbearable. What’s not to talk about? But when Kerry lost we stopped trying to talk, and I draped our front porch with black cloth for three days. I don’t think anyone noticed, or got it, until I tried to explain it. (To less people, with less vigor.) And there were so few yard signs up anyway for that election, that little changed on the roadsides afterwards. The fall leaves and the stones walls remained uninvolved. I wondered what people were talking about inside their houses.
In 2008, however, yard signs abound, staking their claims on some of these roads. It seems people do need to declare themselves after all, but do so by posted witness and not spoken word. Any political conversations are still tentative unless you know you are in like-minded company. The better part of valor out here is still expected and track meet chat and bus stop civilities remain bare of political opinions, rather than full-dress encounters spent baring beliefs. Having convictions in this setting doesn’t connote convincing a partisan opposite. Now convictions more mean quietly claiming your ground as firmly as those metal yard sign poles get staked out in front of your house. What is odd is that the audible silence seems all the more fervent, and the polarity more distinct. The middle ground of discourse is impossible without conversation. Instead, the yards signs speak for us, but, like all inanimate objects, can’t speak with each other.
And when the signs come down and this election is over, I think that more of us will either speak less to some of us, or we will speak to each other, but mean even less. We won’t be able to use sign language.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Notes from the Exurbs - An Introduction
Some of you have read this before, some of of you might even live it, but for those of you new to this -
Notes from the Exurbs
Life inside
Do: Unless you live in a cul de sac or 70s-style serpentine swirl of streets that seem to connect only to each other, you likely live in the splendid isolation of a single-family house built on a long undulating line of road, proximity to your neighbor buffered by the requisite minimum 1 ½ acres zoned into the town master plan. Evidence of life predominates in the garbage cans and recycling boxes that appear weekly in front of each house, seemingly without human hand. Monday night they’re not there – Tuesday morning they are – remarkable and sometimes revealing
Re: The limited evidence of these neighbors by their refuse is sometimes coupled by their armored emergence from garages, clad in their commute car or more capacious family transport. There are typically two garages per house, though three is becoming de rigueur. (New construction (not “green” – exurbia is not there yet) has not reckoned with the statement of excessive consumption that three-plus garages makes. Multiple garage doors are big curb appeal markers.) The cars coming out of those garages are not yet hybrid – that would be more likely in, say,
Mi: When the cars back out and turn, drivers geared up with sunglasses and insulated beverage cups peel out and disappear into the exurban day. School runs start, early band practice calls. Here is the close race to the nearest commuter rail station to stake early claim to limited parking, and there is the daily drag down exurban arteries. The cars head out to chrome-packed highways or on to local roads once solely residential and now redefined by the surfeit of single-passenger commuter cars pushing the 35 mph speed limit to 45. The inexorable flow begins, only to slow at some still extant train crossings or the periodic inconvenient traffic lights, just as they were getting their morning drive-time groove on around that last wooded bend. If we could hear the sounds in those cars? Ah –there the low reasonable tones of NPR’s Morning Edition; there – the rapid glib bile of Kiss 108’s shock jock “Mattie in the Morning;” there – the latest John Grisham audio book read in a gummy drawl; there – booming orchestral assertions blotting out the latest numbing tragedy; and there – blissful silence and an unguarded face with thoughts heading anywhere but to a high rise in Boston (or maybe that office park in Waltham, if they’re lucky).
Fa: But those left behind after the morning exurban exodus? Small children not yet fated to ride the yellow bus; parents – mostly mothers – who reign in absentia; and our elders who, often untended, tend to the business left to them, caring for each other and remembering. One vestigial institutional good of
So: Even in this age of two-income couples, and so far in this economic cyclone in the drain, lthere is sometimes an adult at home in the exurbs, whether full-time parenting or part-time income earning, and she is usually a woman. During the day, the stores and restaurants and libraries and doctors’ offices are filled up with women, with or without children in tow. In fact, it is odd to actually see a man in one of these daily places. Some days this single gender adult world is startling, a kind of science fiction scenario where all the men have somehow been eaten. If you do see a man shopping or chauffeuring children, you might wonder what biotech firm or engineering division has been laying off that week. You watch with interest what unemployment trends might be nudging the sociology of the town. Will there be fathers yet in the playgroups? In practical fact, it generally means that there are more cyclists and runners out on the nice days, but with no appreciable change in gender of those buying the groceries. (Men apparently like to be on the roads, even without their cars.)
La: Aside from the roads, what infrastructure serves the exurbs? Typically, the towns have at least one gas station and a convenience store. There is likely a library, a police and fire station, and more than one church. The ratio of churches to congregants is rather skewed these days: big buildings, small congregations. It is notable to see how that central religious institution around which town life and government once coalesced has been marginalized. Cars in church parking lots now usually signal a really great rummage sale or antique market, with or without local pies, or a musical event. The Congregational source of
Ti: Salvaging us from total anomie, however, there is a community value still fostered by a quaint and grand exurban vestige: the Community Chest. I once knew it only as a card pile in Monopoly, but out here there are yard signs adjuring yearly local support that get planted like bulbs each fall. Town worthies with real care for the town’s needs unfilled by local, state, or federal tax policies, hold up this civic onus. The understated, old-fashioned signs remind us around each corner that there is real need along these treed roads (hidden foreclosures, silent bankruptcies, healthcare costs that trump food and utility bills), and the quiet giving that results is a kind of human mortar which still holds together the bricks and boards of a reconfigured and new-build exurban construct.
Do: We somehow coexist out here with historical outlines and generations that are yearly redrawn and newly repopulated. The old stone wall boundaries get pillaged for patio borders and subdivided property lines. What many come for in the exurbs is innocence – what parents hunger to guard in their kids and whose architectural sentiment is built into the stylized farmer’s porches attached to those three-car garages. The good that comes with small town oversight, however, is getting redefined by the growing serial enclaves of exurban insulation. The big yards and big houses that are meant to buffer the occupants from the dangers of the age, end up privatizing their lives and fracturing the community they came to benefit from. The trill of the exurbs is often plaintive. Oh, there are notes of genuine birdsong around the ponds that remain on the migratory path in the many conservation preserves, and there are choruses of community when the town comes together on a spring morning to decide a common good at the polls, and there are intergenerational harmonies when the good folks of the village do meet and do greet one another. But the minor chords and the audible cognitive dissonance of this part of metro westWelcome
A public greeting for this public outing - Although blogging can be utterly self-referential and dangerously inane for its mono-voice, I hope to think and say things out loud here that will be of interest. If they are, please let me know.
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