Red, White and Teary Blue Eyed

I love this country. I love the freedoms and the community and the possibility for real change and the collective longing for simpler times. I love 24 hour news and drive through liquor stores and short skirts and church on Sundays. I love boys holding hands, and teachers teaching, and libraries open, and movies playing and people praying and others lowering their heads to Mecca all within one mile of each other. I love higher education and the right to vote and due process and the abolishment of slavery. I am grateful that my special needs child is a valued member of society, and that we are not made outcast by his birth.

This is a great place, and maybe it's just 'cause I got to sleep in the other day, but I really do have a great life.

I got teary eyed when I turned in our ballots today (we vote by absentee ballot, but generally forget to mail them so I turn them in to the local precinct.) I was watching all of these people file in. The place was packed, and there were parents there with their teenage kids. What a grand thing it would be to have this year be the first time one gets to vote. The Democrats will present with either a female or a black man, or possibly both! on one ticket. Black men couldn't vote until 1870. Women couldn't vote until 1920! You've come a long way baby...

I am not one to stick a sign in my yard, not one to necessarily even make an endorsement of anyone, so I am hesitant to post this YouTtube video, except that it moved me. Not necessarily because I believe in everything Obama believes in, but because I do believe that my generation is finally, finally, getting involved. And those people in their twenties.. they are not only involved, they are excited about politics. That's what we need in this country to rout out partisan silliness, and stop the nonsense in Iraq.

So while I am still one of those Americans who is still really trying to find out with whom I am most closely aligned.. here is that Obama video