Sitting tonight and watching Obama accept the democratic party's nomination for president was quite emotional for me. It wasn't just the speech or the setting or any of that, but it was the fact that I was watching it with G. You see, many of you may not know this, but Barack Obama is directly responsible for G.
Yep, that's right.
You see, when Amos and I got married it was June of 2001 and dubya was already in office, then 9/11, then the war, etc. By the time we'd have wanted to have a kid my outlook for the future of this country and the larger world was dim. Why would I want to subject a kid to a world like we've had the past eight years, is what I thought.
My parents were always amazingly generous to me. Not just with stuff, but with time and love. I've often asked how I would ever repay them for all of the good they've done for me, their reply was always, "just do the same for your child." You have no idea what a huge burden that is for me...I mean they've been such good parents and given me such a great life, and I wondered how I could ever do the same in this world as it is.
That's where Barack comes in. You see, I had no HOPE for this country's future. People ridicule Obama for using that word so much, but they are foolish. Hope is a powerful thing. Barack restored my hope. He restored it and paved the way for me to see the possibility of a world in which I'd want a child to grow up. MIchelle Obama spoke of how she had heard Barack talk about "the world as his should be" and striving for it. It's not that I think that Barack himself will make the world as it should be, but that he has given me the hope that we, TOGETHER, want to remake the world as it should be--the hope that we CAN and the BELIEF that we will.
So, without Obama, there might not be a G. And without G there wouldn't be the urgency I feel. Tonight we inched one step closer to the world as it should be. We are the ones we've been waiting for!
Si se puede. (if you liked what I wrote,
go donate a few bucks to the campaign. I just did--again. Oh, and that's Sheppard Fairey's Hope poster.)
Oh, and then there was the superintendent of public schools. I had mixed emotions on this one. I heard the two candidates have a discussion on NPR here, and I just wasn't impressed with the challenger, but the incumbent has really pushed this state testing thing (not necessarily all her fault) so she is unpopular. The challenger talked about math as "calculation" and that bugged me. I think that's a pretty narrow view of what math is all about. But, I always check the state education associations endorsements, because it's always good to go with the teachers. They endorsed the challenger. I was torn about which to support. On the one hand I felt like this guy sounded like he was running on an anti-incumbent platform. He didn't really talk too much about his own ideas, he spent more time attacking hers. It reminded me of an Obama McCain debate. I had to check a paper's endorsement to see what they thought as a tie-breaker. 
That's where Barack comes in. You see, I had no HOPE for this country's future. People ridicule Obama for using that word so much, but they are foolish. Hope is a powerful thing. Barack restored my hope. He restored it and paved the way for me to see the possibility of a world in which I'd want a child to grow up. MIchelle Obama spoke of how she had heard Barack talk about "the world as his should be" and striving for it. It's not that I think that Barack himself will make the world as it should be, but that he has given me the hope that we, TOGETHER, want to remake the world as it should be--the hope that we CAN and the BELIEF that we will. 
