slowpoke

Thu Nov 6
Barack Obama's new website!
Yes!!!  Let’s get started.  I am ready.  Let’s do this.  

What I wrote to a friend I made at the HQ:

This campaign brought out the best in the country.  It will result in so many positive things for our community.  Friendships that will last and interweave so many of the smaller communities that blend together to make up our larger city community.  I am glad that you like the picture.  I love it too.  Your face is so happy, and it just really captures the spirit of the headquarters that night as you came in with your celebratory pies.  I heard on the news today that Barack Obama had a piece of sweet potato pie before he went to bed on election night.  I loved that I, too had eaten his favorite pie.  So many great things to reflect on about this moment in history.  
I am glad to have been a part of it with you and with all of the people down at the headquarters, and then, later in the evening, to have been part of it with the whole world as people hugged strangers of all ages in the streets and shouted, “We did it!”, and young twenty-something kids sang The National Anthem out on Valencia Street where I found myself hours later.  I pray that we carry this energy, this momentum, and this formidable community that we have formed with us as we support Barack Obama in what is sure to be a challenging presidency.    
For now, I cannot tear myself away from the news.  Newspapers, radio, television, internet, blogs.  I cannot stop reading and reading and looking at pictures of what we did as a nation.  What Barack Obama empowered us to do together.  We changed the world.  
“ We suspect we’re not alone. Right now, organizers, full-time volunteers, campaign staff, and everyone else who gave single-minded effort toward November 4 are waking up and saying to themselves and each other, “what do I do with myself?” Their cars are messes, their rooms disaster zones, and they’ve been cut off from friends and family for God knows how long. This was by far the longest and biggest election season in US history, and there is so much left to process. The elation that Democrats feel is mixed with the hangover of carrying so much emotional electricity in the body for so long. Its discharge is necessarily going to leave an exhaustion behind. We feel it too. There will be moments in the coming days, randomly standing in line at the grocery store, driving down the street in contemplation, the sight of a door you knocked, catching a certain song, a glimpse of Chuck Todd, hearing someone tell a story… where these emotions will just come bursting through, the enormity of it all. Just think of how much effort went into this. How much sacrifice. How many things had to go right. How many people had to want it so badly, and how the masterpiece of a campaign structure that David Plouffe and cohorts engineered allowed all that effort to be channeled into the right places to maximize efficiency. Chicago, The Day After (via emptyage)
Wed Nov 5
“

“I woke up this morning, my throat dry from singing and yelling in the streets last night. I woke up with an unbridled joy, and though I’d only fallen asleep five hours earlier, I was more awake than I’ve felt in a long time. My first urge was to run back to the street, to continue dancing with strangers, hugging the person closest to me. My second urge was to try and put words to the emotions of last night, to the unbelievable presence of pride in my country and fellow citizens -– something I haven’t felt strongly in quite some time — for choosing to hope and not to fear.

In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Martin Luther King Jr. described the wordlessness I felt this morning, and still feel now: “Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.
……

It was a beautiful, heavenly, unforgettable night, as a city, and a nation, became a community – in love with life, each other, and the possibility of tomorrow. And today is that tomorrow, the “new dawn” that we will all help President Obama to create.”

 Kaitlin Barker, Sojourners.

emptyage:

ardenashley:

One More Day - Les Misbarack

A funny spoof video featuring Obama campaign staffers singing “One Day More” from the musical Les Miserables.

This is freaking EPIC!

Mon Sep 29
I think that Sarah Palin appeals to the basest nature of American people, meanness.  The American people like mean people.  Especially the less educated ones who are resentful and mistrustful of knowledge.  Hell, to many, it’s an asset that she hadn’t met a head of state until last week.  She can’t mean her way out of a financial crisis or a national security crisis, though.  She is mean, incurious, and when I hear her speak it makes me aware of how different the American people are from me.  When I hear her speak, it makes me think that I do not belong in this country in a way.  People find her charming, a Yosemite-Sam appeal, up-by-the-bootstraps and all that, I guess.  I find her maddening, enraging, and an insult to all of the women who have fought so hard to be viewed as equals.  Really an insult to all women.  I, at least, feel greatly insulted.  
Katie Couric would make a far superior vice-president, and that was obvious when she was being interviewed.  Palin went to college so that she could become a TV anchor.  That was her goal and her dream.  I cannot imagine being Hillary Clinton and watching this person rise up and get so close to something that she has fought for and studied for and committed herself to her entire life.  
Sarah Palin was obviously a poorly made strategic choice for the McCain campaign, and it shows that they absolutely do not put “country first” because, should he be elected, he is the most likely one in all of presidential history to necessitate the Vice President stepping in.  The thought of her in power is insulting to the American people, but then again they like meanness, so I guess they’re cool with that insult.  
Sun Sep 28

Last night we walked and walked in the city, breathing the clean night air, people moving all around us.  It was a very alive night to be out.  We walked down and watched some of the Alabama v. Georgia game through the window of Danny Coyles as we stood on the sidewalk.  We found ourselves standing on the sidewalk a few times last night, not having any specific destination, but just wanting to be outside.  

We didn’t eat dinner till very late because we didn’t want to go inside.  We stumbled upon WFC on Market Street, and they had their door open and there was a seafood counter and we had crab Louie salads and pinot gris and oysters.  It was such a great night.  When we got home, we still walked up and down Page street several times, up and down, just to keep strolling in the dark.  

Sat Sep 27

Saturday in the Coffee

I have been into the coffee today.  Too much of it and riding around on my bike in the beautiful San Francisco September Summer.  Saw Nina at Dolores Park and Eric and some live music and watched dogs run around . 

Going back out for more.  Just had to put on some jeans.  It’s the golden time for us here in San Francisco.  And none of it’s syrupy goodness can be wasted.  

“ The process of avoiding direct eye contact, known as averting gaze, will show the aggressive canine that you mean to avoid a fight. In wolves, a submissive wolf regularly averts gaze when a dominant wolf attempts a dominant display toward them. During drastic submissive displays, the submissive wolf will even open their eyes wide when averting gaze, thus showing the whites of their eyes. This behavior is thought to be the most dramatic of submissive eye postures.

Wolf Education Research Center

It is interesting to me that the McCain team spin is that McCain was the dominant fighter, when he took one of the most submissive physical postures an animal can take towards another.