And now for something completely different

If you haven't ever read "Bats Left/Throws Right" (check out my blog list), you should.  Doghouse Riley, whoever he is, writes some of the funniest, most insightful political commentary around.  Sort of like a Hoosier version of my literary hero, Hunter S. Thompson, only without the psychedelic drugs.

So today as I read Stuart Stevens op-ed piece in the Washington Post I felt myself starting to channel Mr. Doghouse.  And in a fit of sheer chutzpah I thought, "Hey, let me give this a try."

The article begins with the following biography:

Stuart Stevens was the chief strategist for the Romney presidential campaign.

Once I was at a large luncheon where a guy at my table bragged about how his company had done the sound system for the program.  As we were unable to hear speaker after speaker, he stopped bragging and slunk away.  Somehow that story came to mind here.  Who knows why.

I appreciate that Mitt Romney was never a favorite of D.C.’s green-room crowd or, frankly, of many politicians. That’s why, a year ago, so few of those people thought that he would win the Republican nomination.

Or maybe he won the nomination because he was the last man standing after all the candidates that grassroots Republicans actually liked shot each other.  Look, Stu, I'm a Democrat and I remember 2004.  I'm not criticizing here - we've all been there, but self-awareness is the first step toward self-improvement.

Stu goes on to point out how Romney raised more money for the Republican Party than the party itself did.  To which I would reply:

1.  Whatever.
2.  That's his job, dude - he's the party's Presidential candidate.
3.  It helps to do this if you've spent your career working with people who have more money than God.
4.  Congratulations.  He raised a lot of money.  And honestly, I'm sure that took a lot of hard work.  Raising money in politics is the least fun part of the job.

At this point I am reminded of pearls of wisdom that I have heard over the years (to be fair and balanced - both of these came from Old White Guys - credit where credit is due).  First, being rich means having more money than you spend - and there are two sides to that equation.  Second, just because you have a lot of money doesn't mean you should waste it.

Hanging out as I am in Omaha, which functions as western Iowa's media market, I saw an interesting piece in the Omaha World-Herald about how much Obama was outspent by Romney.  If my math is correct, which it may not be because I'm doing this in my head and I'm just a girl, it was something like 20 to 1.  This is in an area where Romney was going to win - western Iowa is pretty Republican and for heaven's sake there is nowhere on earth more Republican than Nebraska.  The Democrats in Iowa live in areas where they don't get their TV from Omaha.  I'll grant you that Omaha is a bit more mixed than Nebraska overall (its single Electoral College vote went for Obama in 2008, creating my favorite made-up political word EVER, Obamaha).  Still, spending over $3 million on advertising in this media market is, IMHO, the act of someone with more money than brains.

Stuart continues:

...more than any figure in recent history, [Romney] drew attention to the moral case for free enterprise and conservative economics.

I'm having trouble understanding this, Stu, or getting it to fit with my observations of the events of the past twelve months, even though I really do want to give you the argument.  Didn't people like Paul Ryan (yeah, you picked him for Veep so that should count for something - I get that), Ron Paul - even Herman Cain seem to focus more on conservative economics?  And since Romney's "moral case for free enterprise" got awfully tangled up with his work at Bain Capital (see also:  "live by the sword, die by the sword") I'd say that the jury's still out on this.  Perhaps because they've already made their decision but are waiting to get their free government-provided lunch (47% of the jury being made up of "takers" after all), but let's agree that this may not be the best thing you can say about the Romney campaign.

And given the wastefulness of the Romney campaign, I'm not sure that I'd go too far out on the "moral case for conservative" limb here.  But that's just me.

As a Libra and the daughter of the Nicest Person on Earth, I have an often pathological compulsion to say something positive No Matter What.  So let me interject here that the Romney campaign seems to have avoided the kind of hideous back-biting that has plagued several Presidential campaigns (Clinton 08 and McCain 08 are the two that come quickest to mind).  Good work, Mitt and Stuart. 

Okay, the Pollyanna moment is over.  Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

...Romney brought the fight [about Medicare/Social Security] to the Democrats and made the rational, persuasive case for entitlement reform that conservatives have so desperately needed. The nation listened, thought about it — and on Election Day, Romney carried seniors by a wide margin. It’s safe to say that the entitlement discussion will never be the same.

Really?  Your "rational, persuasive case" included misstating your opponent's position on the issue, ignoring your running mate's position, and making sure that you told seniors that your changes weren't actually going to impact them.  Look, lying to the American people is a long and well established political tradition, so I'm not going to act like no one else has ever done that.  However, please don't insult our intelligence by then claiming that your case was "rational."  Except if by that you meant that it was rational for Romney to lie since it would help get him votes.

...Romney carried the majority of every economic group except those with less than $50,000 a year in household income.

Something like 50% of Americans have annual household income below $50,000.  We know that your candidate knows that it's at least 47%, right?  Maybe if you and your buddies, Stu, were spending less time taking your huge paychecks to the bank and more time talking with some of your rank-and-file voters, you'd have a better sense of this.

The Obama organization ran a great campaign.

Stu, that's darned white of you to say.  And there were a lot of things that got in your way which certainly I would not blame you or your candidate for - not the least of which is a party platform that makes people like Alan Simpson appear moderate and the unfortunate tendency of your primary voters to select Senatorial candidates who were, um, outside of the mainstream.  No question that this rubbed off on your candidate - as well it should, but I know that you had to have gotten queasy last May when Dick Mourdock beat Richard Lugar, for example, or whenever that Akin guy in Missouri opened his mouth.  You definitely were dealt some lousy cards.

Still, Jennifer Rubin summed it up well: 

But Stevens fails in precisely the way in which the campaign failed: a refusal to acknowledge real and material incompetence by himself and others on the campaign. The piece stubbornly refuses to express regrets or apologies for a campaign that, as evidence has come forth, makes “The Perils of Pauline” look like the Rockettes.

And those who cannot learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.  Unfortunately, they take the rest of us along for the ride.

Nebraska Football

Fooled you! This isn't about the Cornhuskers, but about the REAL football game in Nebraska over the holiday weekend: the Goldner pick-up game.

(If you haven't already consulted The Rules for Thanksgiving football games, I'd advise you to do so. And thanks is due to Ken for sending them along.)

Sadly, our perennial rivals, the Kully Clan, were not in Omaha this Thanksgiving so we had to make do with just ourselves. Fortunately, my siblings have been fruitful and multiplied so we can populate two respectable teams for touch football without the need for second cousins - although they always added a lot of competitive spirit to the game.

We trekked over to Westside High School (Home of the Warriors and alma mater of Nick Nolte, if distant memory and institutional folklore may be relied upon - which according to Wikipedia, in this instance it may). (Interesting aside: Wikipedia also reports that Virginia Lamp Thomas, hyper-conservative wife of hyper-conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is a Westside alumna. And I had forgotten that Kurt Anderson, co-founder of Spy Magazine [kids, this was published back in the 90's, when we still had to buy our humor in hard copy - yeah, times were tough], was also an alum. But enough from memory lane.)

The official football field was occupied by two games, already in progress, so Uncle Dave (who maintained that he had not had any donuts - and if you haven't read The Rules referenced above, you're not going to get why that's a joke) scooted us over to the field field. No, not a typo - given the shot-put facilities, this is where the school holds field events (as in track and field). Either that or they've started a torture yard at Westside and while I agree with the proposition that today's teenagers can't get away with the stuff their elders used to get away with, I think we'd have heard about outdoor torture. Or at least the neighbors would have heard it, and surely SOMEONE would have called Nancy Grace by now.

So we picked teams and commenced to play.
I was the first injury.

A legitimate football injury, a jammed finger. I felt somewhat like an NFL player, really - sort of like Santonio Holmes or most of the Cleveland Browns. In order to curse outside of the earshot of the children, I sat out a few plays but my team needed me, lacking as they were someone who takes the concept of incomplete passes to the next level. I can miss the ball, drop it, or have it go right through my arms - and that was uninjured. But while recovering on the sidelines, I snapped a picture of the game - something that I don't think Santonio does, if I might brag a little.

We had one other injury: Nate the Great Who is Eight hurt his ankle. He recovered nicely and after an injury time-out, was able to return to his positions of starting center and replacement quarterback - he had the Andrew Luck jersey, after all.

And a confession:  we broke one of The Rules (still haven't read them?  For crying out loud, son, just click on the link!) by switching sports to kickball once we had reached the required level of crying.  And Uncle Matt was on both winning teams, which fact he generously shared with everyone the rest of the day.

It was so much fun that we might just try it again tomorrow.

Nah, the Huskers play at 11.
 

Giving Thanks

It has become something of a tradition - to the extent that one can classify Facebook behavior as "traditional" - for many of my friends to post each day in November about something they are grateful for. Last year you could even use the alphabet as your guide, although with Thanksgiving on November 22, that would have been tougher this year. (I guess you could take out a few letters, such as X - x-rays, x-rated movies and xylophones being stipulated as Good Things without the need for their own special day.)

In my own rather jumbled up theology (Unitarian Universalism meets Al-Anon), gratitude is the most important spiritual practice. (I believe that prayers should always be either those of gratitude or asking for understanding and strength to handle difficult situations. To me, anything more specific is treating God like Santa Claus. But I digress.)

This year I wasn't mentally and emotionally organized enough to participate in the daily Facebook exercise, although I think it is a wonderful activity. But on this day of Thanksgiving, I do have many, many things (and people) to be thankful for - and recognize even more of them now then I did a few weeks ago.

First off, there are the people and things that are easily taken for granted, and shouldn't be: health, enough to eat (and drink), a warm and hospitable place to live, fabulous friends and a wonderful, wonderful family: great parents, siblings, in-laws, aunts, uncles, cousins and amazing nieces and nephews and great-nieces and great-nephews. These are the things that (thankfully!) don't change from year to year.

For me this year, however, there are a couple of these that need to be - as they say - drilled down. I am thankful for a brother and sister-in-law with a nice home and welcoming spirit, who are letting me stay with them for a couple of months. I am thankful for the health and resources to be able to go on this little adventure. And I am thankful for friends and family who are so incredibly supportive.

In the last few days, I have become thankful for something else. I'd been thinking of this trip as necessary to figure out who I am, having felt that I had lost my identity. Thanks to some really wonderful friends, I've realized that I do know who I am. Perhaps a bit like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I had to leave home to find that out. (Fortunately, I've avoided the flying monkeys so far.) So I am thankful for that, and for my friends (you know who you are) who have patiently guided me to that realization.

This journey is an adventure, a break from the mundane, and figuring out what I want to DO - but it's reassuring beyond words to realize that the trip is not about learning who I am.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. May your day be filled with whatever combination of family, friends, food and football you wish, and may your team win. If you are working, thank you for allowing the rest of society to function while some of us sloth around. I hope we can return the favor some day.

Home is where the heart is

Last night I washed my face for the first time in several days.

That isn’t as unhygienic as it sounds – I have been taking showers and all – but last night was the first time in most of a week that I did my previously normal “take off the eye make-up, put on the face cream” ritual. It is the sort of thing that I almost always did at home, and almost never did when travelling. Certainly delaying face cream for a week while on vacay will have no long-lasting effects on one’s beauty. But for those of us of, uh-hum, a certain age, we might not want to end washing and face cream altogether. And last night was the night I made myself return to the “at home” ritual even though I am not at home since I don’t have a home.

There are a lot of things that one does at home but not when away. It’s weird how conscious I’ve become of these things, focusing on the most unimportant. For instance, my bathroom cup and toothbrush caddy ended up in my car rather than in Jessica’s basement. These are not family heirlooms – I’ve owned neither for more than six months – but I needed them with me. Such items are what you use in a home, and I guess no matter how much my lifestyle rejects the concept of home, there is something in my psyche that craves creating one.

It is not normal to be homeless.

Before anyone thinks I am complaining, I am not using the word “homeless” in the traditional sense of the word where a person lives on the street with no resources and with generally no protection from the hostile elements. People in such situations deserve sympathy and help. I don’t. My voluntary homelessness is, as they say, a First World Problem and I would add that it really isn’t a problem at all. But it’s not a normal condition and as a result there are some odd questions that it begs.

To start with, the world wants you to have an address. You must have a place to forward your mail. And I must have an address for my bank and my insurance, even though I really don’t live there. The mail problem is much less of an issue than it would have been a decade ago, thanks to that marvelous invention, online bill-pay. I’m not sure whether Al Gore saw that one coming when he invented the Internet but my hats off to him and anyone else involved with its development.

It’s a little disconcerting to have only one key on one’s keychain.

Then there is the matter of separating your stuff into what you keep with you (in your Saturn Vue, which is a vehicle pretty well designed for this purpose) and what you put in your friend Jessica’s basement. I have trouble imagining a 49-year-old middle-class American woman with less stuff than I have, and it’s still a lot. Over the past three days I have already started to discover a few miscalculations. But hey, it’s the first time I’ve ever done this so I’m going to give myself a break. That is a new concept I am grappling with: giving myself a break. I'll let you know how that works out.

And in the meantime, it’s the best kind of fall day in Omaha: mid-50’s and beautiful sunshine. Life is good, even away from home.

Baseline

This morning was D-Day. After a beautiful weekend which was spent saying goodbye to friends, separating stuff into Take, Keep, Give Away, and Throw Away, packing and moving the Keep stuff to Jessica's, and having too much to eat at Casa's, this morning I loaded up the Vue in between raindrops and snowdrops (they weren't really flakes) and got ready to hit the road.

 

But the journey of a thousand miles begins at the Firefly, so Mitch and I first had some sustenance. I had the last Sugar-Free Vanilla Chai, Skinny, which I am likely to have for a while. Mitch and I talked about everything but my impending departure (see also, "Denial"). The precipitation subsided. A quick hug because otherwise we'd both have become blubbering fools, and I was off.

Donna, with whom I was on the Omaha Westside Debate Team before Al Gore invented the Internet (kids, we had index cards and used pens to hand write facts on them that we had found in books...crazy!) posted this on Facebook for me. It sums up the experience completely.

 

The drive away from Fort Wayne was in a way very normal - I've driven Highway 30 dozens of times, maybe more - and in a way very weird. I will admit that I shrieked a little between Sweetwater and Columbia City, and a little bit more west of Warsaw (Orthopedic Capital of the World). I don't know that I really am fully processing what's happening. I'll keep you posted about how that works out.

First stop, Chicago, to see Beth. We got caught up, had an early dinner, and I fell asleep during Monday Night Football. In my own defense, so did the Chiefs, and I woke up in time to watch the Steelers win. Still, it was not exactly a late evening because perhaps this is all starting to catch up with me.

More later, of course, but I felt obligated to issue a report on Day One.  Yes, I said obligated - this is a Character Flaw the cure of which is one of the things I hope to accomplish on this little journey.  I'll keep you posted about how that works out, too.