now fortified with impotent fury!

Yeah, not much snark to be had in wenchville. Can someone please send me a stasis pod so I can crawl into it until after Election Day? I promise to go vote early before I enjoy the sweet blissful silence.

I am blue. Bluer than blue, and that’s not just a political pun there. The economy has my shoulders tight with tension- we’re fine, my job is fine, his job is fine- but ouch. We would like to retire some century, I would really like the kid’s college fund to not lose 80% of its value, and oh yes, his parents and my mom are retired and yeehaw did you see pension plans lost $2 Trillion in value? TWO. TRILLION. And while I implicitly trust mom’s very good financial advisor, I would really like her to be able to continue living in the style to which she’s become accustomed, and given that she lives off of her investments and annuities and interest, yeaaaaah. Tenure has my shoulders tight with tension- whoever designed a system where you essentially have to wait until May to find out is just mean.

But what truly has me blue is not the economy- though man that’s depressing- nor tenure- though what a lovely sword of Damocles you have there- nor my job- though jesus christ 5 talks due in under 6 weeks and 3 business trips. What has me blue is the election. More specifically, the rhetoric, and tone, and just plain hate. I am saddened by, quite frankly, the naivete. The hate that gets slung tht any supporter of Obama is blind. Why yes, there is a sort of fervor among some of his supporters, but that’s not to mean they support every position of his (guess what, I don’t) nor that they’ve failed to actually read up on his politics. I’m saddened that some people are so reflexive that they cannot make the following logical chain: McCain camp and allies: Do you really know Barack Obama? Beyond the speeches?

Well let’s see. There’s this, or this, or perhaps you’d like to read this or you could just download The Blueprint for Change in your own handy dandy pdf. You could look up his voting records in both the Illinois Senate and US Senate. You could review all of his campaign material from the past 2 years of campaigning.

Oh but wait. We don’t know him.

You know, I thought I knew John McCain. I thought he was occasionally testy, but ultimately did stand at least somewhat apart from his party, and would build on the rapport and attitude from his last major go-round and not engage in the kind of gross, insulting, hateful campaigning that I’ve come to expect from the GOP. But I was wrong. His campaign has engaged in the slickest of attempts to hijack the media:
“In an effort to head off the report, McCain campaign spokesman Taylor Griffin released the campaign’s own version of events. That report, which Griffin said was written by campaign staffers, says the Legislature has taken a legitimate policy dispute between a governor and one of her commissioners, and portrayed it as something inappropriate.”

Yes, because a report written by your team absolving you of wrongdoing is completely unbiased. In delightful timing, the New York Times released a thorough article on the same issue on the same day. Meanwhile, the Alaska Leg report is due out today. Attempt to get the media spin cycle to not focus on that? It failed, but damn man, that takes balls. And also, complete and utter contempt for the American public. Do you think so little of us that you think we will fall for that? Do you think that your efforts to subtly race and drug use, repeated raising ofWilliam Ayers and use of the word ‘terrorist’ will work?

My fear is, their contempt is well founded. That we are a nation so divided and so hateful, so partisan, that we cheer when we call an elected official a terrorist, that we equate a name like Hussein with evil, and gleefully use it to deride our opponents. I sincerely doubt any of those people who think Obama is a Muslim, because of his middle name, and is therefore evil would think the same of someone named ‘Christopher’ or ‘Mary’. We joke, with our friends, about terrorist fist jabs because according to Sean Hannity at Fox ‘News’, we lived in a “radical elitist enclave” and consorted with terrorists. But to many, they are incapable of seeing the ridiculousness of it.

Hell, I served on an education board with William Ayers, I realized this morning as I went through my notes from a damn old project. But the latest salvo from the McCain camp, any hope of decency- not that I had much left after this week- is utterly gone. And you know, they are counting on absolutes: they are counting on people not looking past soundbites. They are counting on us being stupid, obedient, sheeplike, easily lead, easily riled. Their contempt for us as thinking people drips from every ad and every speech. William Ayers, they note, said he “didn’t do enough”.

What is the full context of that statement?

“The one thing I don’t regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being…. When I say, ‘We didn’t do enough,’ a lot of people rush to think, ‘That must mean, “We didn’t bomb enough shit.”‘ But that’s not the point at all. It’s not a tactical statement, it’s an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, ‘we’ means ‘everyone.’” (Source, his own blog, see reprint here)

Do I disagree with Ayers on a lot? You fucking bet I do. Do I think the timing of his interviews given on Sept 10 coming out right after Sept 11 sucks? Oh big time (and this timing is something being capitalized on by the McCain camp- his words being posed as something post 9/11). Go look up his letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune on September 23, 2001, in which he wrote “I condemn all forms of terrorism — individual, group and official…Today we are witnessing crimes against humanity on our own shores on an unthinkable scale, and I fear that we may soon see more innocent people in other parts of the world dying in response.”

Kind of prescient, no? Kind of smart, no? The kind of thing one expects from a well-educated, in the world and of the world person, aware of our politics, policies, and the effect it has on others. Oh but wait, that’s elitist. Why would we want someone who has a global perspective in the white house? We train the hell out of our Navy Seals, our pilots, our doctors, but somehow…having someone who graduated 5th from the bottom in their class, or who bounced from college to college, is preferable to having someone literate, well educated, and focused on wringing the best from the opportunities they earned.

My heart hurts. I am torn. On the one hand, I want the Democratic campaign to not just lie down and take this crap. On the other hand, I want him to rise above- I want him to be able to not lower and debase himself they way McCain has, and still be able to win.

I’ll be in my stasis pod.

–
Edited to add: I didn’t get into my pod fast enough, and clicked on a link twittered by Dooce and you know what? How many of those people who are saying such vile things consider themselves well educated? Consider themselves good Christians?

How does the one man who states, in response to the protester who brings up the issue of Wasilla charging rape victims for their medical exams under Palin’s watch and how that would affect said protester’s female friends, “She should die” and then, in response to outcry, amends it to “she should pay double” look any woman he cares about in the eye?

Is this what this country has come to?

Oh good goddamn, it’s been a month since I posted. Not like I am Dooce-like in my readership, yo.

When last we left our intrepid heroine, she was dealing with a child who was informing her he was done with school now right? the first hints of fall and the amping up of the presidential campaign. Now I’m dealing with 3 business trips within the next 7 weeks having to give or prepare 5 different talks none of them on the same subject within the same timeframe my regular workload and fall being VERY here and canning and freezing and oh Pa what if the blizzards come and oh yes a giant economic freakout.

PAY OFF THE CREDIT CARDS. CANCEL CHRISTMAS. LE OMG! FRENCH TOAST PANIC!

Cough.
But I’m back, and will try try try in amidst the making of apple butter and the planning of homemade, meaningful (read: cheap) Christmas presents to bring on the noise, bring on the snark.

Oh yeah, and I’m phone-banking to recruit volunteers for election monitoring in battleground states. Because you know, since we lived so close to Louis Farrakhan for so long, the Lad and I are obviously violent Anti-American rabble rouses. TERRORIST FIST JAB FTW!

“Mom! Mommeeeeee! If I am good in the store can we go next door and buy me a book?”
“We’ll see sweetie.”
20 minutes later, in Borders, a small child runs for the children’s section. He bypasses the picture books, the early readers, and the chapter books, and launches himself at the math workbooks.
“Mom! MOMMEEEEEEEE!” (child snuggles book like a stuffed animal) “It’s a math book! I loooooooove math! Will you buy me a math book please please please please oh please mommy pleeeeeeeeeease?”

A kiddo is sitting at a computer, watching a low level toon get whaled on by 2 enemies.
Dad: “Uh, Sean? You’re higher level, you could help him, you know?”
S: “Yeah Dad, I could, but if I did that, how would he ever learn not to do that?!”

S: “Mommy?”
Mom: “Yes sweetie?”
S: “You know how the other night daddy was telling me what part of the cow our dinner came from?”
Mom: “Yeah?”
S: “There are some things….there are some things I just don’t need to know while I’m eating. But not that I’m not eating, how many steaks CAN you get off of a cow?”

A woman, 65 years old. Caucasian, fiscally conservative, living in a very wealthy suburb of a major metro area. She’s a widower, enjoys gardening and helps take care of her ailing mother and step-father.

A woman, early 60s. She too is Caucasian, and lives in a semi rural area close to the WV border. She is married, she and her husband are both retired. They take care of her father in law, who still lives independently, more or less. They are extremely active in their parish.

A woman, mid 30s. She’s a mother of one, works full time, and lives in a middle-upper class suburb in the midwest. Also, Caucasian, she enjoys knitting and cooking as her hobbies.

What do these three women have in common? They all come from extremely varied backgrounds- the child of a poor Jewish family in a major urban area, worked through school, college educated and with a master’s degree; one of several children in a Catholic family, no college degree; child of privilege, no college loans, higher degree. Two are devout; one very active in her faith. One traveled out of the country by age 13; another didn’t until she was 51 (save for Canada).

All three women have expressed their anger- their deep seated, visceral anger, that Senator John McCain evidently feels they will simply fall into line because there’s now a woman on the ticket. That these women, so ripe for the Hillary camp, will be easily swayed. That they’ll be blinded to the failings of Governor Palin- by which I mean not the foibles of a child, because you cannot control a teenager, only arm them (and I would argue she failed in the arming, but there comes a point where you let your kids fly or fall). By failings I mean her lack of experience, her willingness to make political hay of her children (eg, the military service of her eldest son, in stark contrast to the dignified quiet of the Biden family on the upcoming deployment), her ethics lapses, her use of office as a bully pulpit to enforce her moral and religious code.- simply because of her gender. That Senator McCain could be so flip, so glib, so ill thought in his decision making process, and what that implies for his habits of mind should he take the highest office in the land.

I’ll tell you what else all three women have in common. Despite their demographics, all three women are Obama supporters in full now.

A mom teaches. A mom loves. A mom guides, supports, leads by example, lets children fail, helps them pick up the pieces. A mom stops what she’s doing 1000 times, a mom answers every question even if the answer is “I don’t know” or “Give me a minute and we’ll look it up”, a mom breaks her own rules every so often, a mom snaps when you whine about helping set the table. A mom tears up at stupid things, and treasures really bad drawings. A mom lets you maintain the fiction your stuffed purple rhino is alive. A mom will always have your back.

A mom does not put her child in the center of a media and political shitstorm sure to engulf them at their time of deepest personal trial. A mom will see the other path, take a detour to protect her child and family and do what’s best for all.

You. Just. Don’t. Throw. Your. Child. Under. The. Bus.

I have a child on my hands who is desperately upset that Obama’s acceptance speech is on after he goes to bed. He has made me ‘promise promise, up to one-hundred’ that he and I will watch it together on the web tomorrow morning before he goes to Kindergarten.

“Mommy, it is cool I am a kid instead of a baby in your tummy when this is happening.”
Yes kid, yes it is.

The scene: first day of kindergarten (yes, I’m well aware I should have bathed the keyboard in my salty tears and written an entry bewailing the passage of time and the fact that I don’t have a baby anymore. I’ll get right on that, just as soon as I’m done enjoying the extra hour of time in the morning and drinkin my martini after he passes out into bed at night, exhausted from his brain working so damn hard)

The players: Sean, and Miss Th, one of his two room counsellors/teachers in camp this summer.

Miss Th: “Hi Sean! How was your first day of Kindergarten?”
Sean: “It was good! I learned how to read in one day!”
Miss Th: “….well that’s awesome buddy!”
Sean: “So I’m done with school now, right?”

I was raised essentially religionless. My father was raised conservative Jewish; he would skip out on his Hebrew school classes and go amuse himself at the Museum of Science and Industry for hours. Years later, I worked where he escaped to, and lived within a stone’s throw of the Synagogue- now gone- where he had learned Hebrew, touched a Torah for the first time. But his family eased back to reform, and my father fell away from the faith almost entirely. He would identify as a Jew, naturally, but did not attend services, never engaged with me in any great religious discussions. That was left to my mother.

She was also raised Conservative, but was far more devout as a child and teen than my father. Hers is the classic thinking Jewish female story which I have heard in bits and pieces over the years, like lost pages from a book found in a trunk. How she rebelled against her Hebrew school teachers when they wouldn’t set work as hard for her as for the boys, how after years of fighting she was secretly relieved when she was allowed to quit the girls’ bible study, how her mother- desperate for her to be a good nice Jewish girl- sent her off to junior B’nai B’rith, where in fact my mother learned not how to be a nice Jewish girl but rather how to shimmy out the bathroom window and go sneak smokes with a friend. Her devotion came to a screeching halt the day she walked from from om Kippur services, the sun still out, faint with hunger, to find the rest of the family eating. They didn’t want to wait for sundown- too inconvenient, the piety they had instilled in her being revealed as a facade. To this day, my mother cannot deal with a Passover Seder at her mother’s house without clenched teeth, and she delights- and crowed with pride when I did it- when someone baits my step-grandfather and catches him out in his mishmosh of hippy psychobabble, Indian guru following, and superstition filled and foundation-poor Judaism. To say she is a screaming agnostic is putting it mildly.

But here I am, in Kansas, where faith is like the air, whether it’s the somewhat hysterical, brittle, bleached and whitened and white evangelicalism of the megachurch across from the kid’s school, to the scared for our children’s moral welfare rush to Catholic private school, to the bedrock so many of our neighbors come from- honest and earnest farmer’s children, simple and strong and pure in their faith. I was raised Jewish- culturally Jewish- and it wasn’t until college and the brain-spasm inducing leaps through tractates that I became more profoundly immersed in it. For all that I was not taught Hebrew, nor sent to Israel, I realize now how deeply the religion of my parents’- a religion they both fundamentally and purposefully turned from, though they both laid claim to it culturally- permeates my bones. It is how I think. It is how I argue. It is how I regard family, and work. It is how I regard willful blindness to suffering, to uncomfortable truths, to regimes running amok unchecked. It is how I embrace bravery no matter where someone comes from.

Sean turned to me the other day, after we’d had a religion discussion on the weekend, and said wonderingly, “You’re more Jewish than Daddy.” I opted not to get into the fact that Dad grew up on Long Island so really, culturally, he’s in the know. Yes, I assured him. And because I’m Jewish, he’s Jewish too- like me. And because he was baptized, he’s Catholic, like Dad. Sean continues to talk about going to church with his grandparents, and the fact that I don’t go (and, truth be told, that he thinks Dad didn’t want to go, clever boy). Friends here ask wonderingly how I can be Jewish and not go to services, not have a home synagogue. One of my dearest friends in the world just came back from a retreat, of sorts, and impressed on me that its style of Judaism might be just the thing for me (and he’s right, it might be, and we’ll see).

Nothing has made me more Jewish than the last 6 (oh jesus god in whom I do not believe, six) years in Kansas. Nothing has tied me more closely to my forebears who prayed alone or in small groups, unable for whatever reason to congregate openly. Studying Talmud or Kabbalah are not solitary acts- you are exhorted not to, lest you lead yourself astray, and in fact Kabbalah is said to be off limits until you’re older and wiser- and I don’t whip out some Steinsaltz and get crackin of a Thursday evening. There are synagogues here- a shockingly huge number, in fact- and I’m hardly the lone Jew on the prairie. But this inward turn of my religious devotion, the mindfulness that can be permitted by swales of grass and gaping blue sky, it simply couldn’t happen in Chicago. And nothing has convinced me of the presence of a greater power moreso than Sean.

I find myself grasping, these days. Not for formality, but for words, for ways to communicate the meaning of God, of faith, of the good that both Judaism and Catholicism can bring to Sean. My parents in no way shape manner or form intended to raise a child who believed, unwaveringly so, in God, and yet they did. Unlike so many other things they did- academic excellence, humor, love of books- that I can point to concrete moments when they imparted lessons, when they showed by example, when I know they were actively parenting and teaching me, I can’t do it for this. My kid’s picture bible was from my stepgrandfather. The JCC preschool was an accident. They let me put up a Christmas stocking because at age 3, when told I couldn’t hang one but yes I’d been a good girl but Santa doesn’t visit Jewish kids, I shrieked “You mean Santa’s a BIGOT?”, and they just didn’t want me to grow up thinking that. I don’t go to temple. And frankly, I won’t go to temple. So how then do I impart to my child the grace and serenity that my faith gives me, the knowledge that I can be lifted up so high that I cannot fall? I have no road map, I have no guides. I can call my mother and ask how she dealt with my voracious appetite for knowledge, my refusal to take a nap, but this one, well, vaya con dios, she says.

Indeed.

When Sean had his naming ceremony, written for him and officiated by the Velveteen Rabbi, she of course referred to the lessons his father and I would impart to him, and the personality traits she hoped he would have- “May you be blessed with your parents’ wit and intelligence; their sense of humor and their sense of perspective; their ability to cherish the unusual and the commonplace, football games and nights at the opera, hamburgers and haute cuisine.”

I remember talking with his pediatrician when he was two, and we were working hard to expand his culinary horizons. I was desparing- he would eat the avocado rolls and the veggie tempura from the sushi place, but god help us if we put a piece of meat on his plate that was not a cut up hot dog, burger, or meatball. He had backed away from eating BBQ and suddenly meat sauce was verboten. His pediatrician laughed outright at me- sort of high and hysterical truth be told- and assured me as I lamented over what he wouldn’t eat that the list of what he would was beyond jaw-dropping and into amazing territory.

This weekend, we brought him with us to the lovely French bistro, which has now instituted another, more traditional bistro menu. He packed away the better part of an adult sized order of steak frite with sauce bordelaise, along with the lion’s share of the olive oil crostini and salmis (two kinds- genoa and cracked peppercorn red wine salmi)- tried the chicken liver mousse pate, demolished his blueberry sorbet, and cheerfully helped me finished my chocolate creme brulee with tiny palmier. He then flopped over on the banquette and announced he was tired, drifting off into a food coma.

Monday I went to pick him up from school, and had a concerned teacher to deal with. Sean had only eaten most of his lunch, rather than all, which for him is a sign of dire illness on the level of the bubonic plague. When asked by his teacher why he had refused his ravioli, he declared he didn’t like the sauce. So she asked what kind of sauce he does like, expecting to hear ‘white’ or ‘no meat’ or somesuch. At pickup, she siddled up and asked me, in great confusion, precisely what ’sauce borderlace’ is and why he’d be eating it on something called ’steakinfreet’.

Be stuck in traffic in your 13 year old volvo sedan, with the Black Eyed Peas “Let’s Get It Started” cranked to earsplitting volume, rocking out with your 5 year old.

And have the head of their school pull up next to you.