Then I Remembered, & Enough!

Bruce Springsteen at Obama's final rally

If you were a columnist, would you like your photo or a twee caricature to appear with your column?  

I don't normally think about such non-issues, but it was a distraction from the local paper's misreporting of election results. 

Then I remembered.  I have a blog.  It's very lucky, or I might have had to occupy the carapace of the dying newspaper and offer my editing skills.

The campaign seemed to last forever this year.  I missed Obama's appearance with Bruce Springsteen Monday night, because I thought the character who told me about their scheduled stop was joking, but I did the more important thing Tuesday when I voted for Obama and the Democrats. I voted out of a sense of responsibility and patriotism, but also out of depression and fear of what I perceive as the Republicans' threat to democracy.  Although I considered the election important, I briefly, sadly, paradoxically considered staying home from the polls, because the months and months of vitriolic political ads had pushed me almost beyond endurance.  I wonder if others also are irked by the expensive ugly ads.

I turned off the TV, and then I went to vote. I didn't get one of those cute "I Voted" stickers. 


The election is over, many of my people won, and now I can go back to what I do.

And that means a new reading system!

Nothing to do with politics, unless I want to read a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt.  


My new reading system is called Reading What Is Already in the House.  We have so many amazing books, and I realized the other day that I need to catch up with what is on our shelves.  I have so many of "last year's books," and I can wait for the paperback, or at least till Christmas, for the  new Ian McEwan, Alice Munro, and Louise Erdrich.    

Do you feel like this after a political election?  That you need some days to live quietly like your mother or grandmother?  Wouldn't they have been over-excited to know they had missed, say, Sinatra on the road with Kennedy?  Wouldn't they have settled down for a few days with a comforting copy of Bess Streeter Aldrich's A Lantern in Her Hand?

Back to my system....The first book tomorrow is... either by a woman or a man.  I'll let you know!

Pax!