The day after the day after

Am still enjoying the rosy glow from Tuesday, not to mention we found out today that Jeff Merkley will be Oregon's newest senator, and that means we'll have two Democrats representing us. What a change from 20 years ago when I arrived here. Then we had two Republicans, Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood. Hatfield I could live with, although I disagreed with his positions on abortion and his cozy relationship with the timber industry. He was generally a man of honestly-held principles and I could respect that, even if I didn't share them. Also, a rarity for an anti-choicer, he believed in sex education and access to contraception as the best means to prevent unwanted pregnancies. As for Bob Packwood, I don't need to say anything, do I? (If you aren't sure what that means, leave me a comment and I'll explain more fully).

I still wish Steve Novick had been the Democratic choice for senator, rather than Merkley, but I'm confident he'll be back on the political scene soon. He's too much of a firebrand to languish in obscurity (read: private life) for long.

Of course the passage of Prop. 8 in California and the other same-sex marriage bans is disappointing, but I'm not surprised; I am taking the long view. The fact that gay marriage is even being discussed and debated and voted on makes it an inescapable topic of public discourse, and it will never be shunted off to the margins again. That is important to remember. It will take the less-progressive majority of the American people time to get used to even thinking about the idea of same-sex marriage, but at least they are now required to think about it. Gay marriage is on the national radar now and it is only a matter of time before our courts recognize the legal impossibility of denying basic civil rights to a specific group of citizens. How much time it will take I couldn't say, and I only hope that no gay marriage cases appear before the Supreme Court before President-elect Obama has a chance to appoint some more humane and progressive judges, but I am confident that I will see the legalization of same-sex marriage in my lifetime. We just elected our first bi-racial president; anything is possible.

I am feeling such a mixture of things: relief that it's all over, relief at the results, but I am concerned that all the energy and inspiration Obama summoned from people around the country will simply dissipate. On NPR this morning they aired a vox populi segment, interviewing people about the election, and several people said things like, "We'll be okay now that Obama is President." One person even said, "I'm hoping he'll do some magic." Oy. This kind of stuff gives me a pain in an unmentionable place.

Wake up, people! Obama is not the Alpha and Omega and his election will not magically solve all the serious problems we face. I have little hope of seeing any material change in my life circumstances any time soon as a result of this election. Obama won't be able to immediately make good on all the promises he made because there's no money to pay for them. We are facing a long period of belt-tightening. Time to buck up, stop investing Obama with supernatural powers and continue doing what we can as individuals to effect positive change. That's what "Si, se puede" is really all about.

The Day After

Like most (if not all) of you, I am walking around today in a euphoric daze. Every time I hear the words "President-elect Obama" on the news I can't help breaking out into a big shit-eating grin. It's really true. It happened. America and Americans have turned a page in our ugly history of race relations. Not to mention we elected the right person for the job, someone with intelligence, insight, a deliberate (and-yes, I'll dare to say it-nuanced) approach to problem-solving, intellectual curiosity and enough sense of self to not be threatened by differences, whether among people or ideas.

Today on NPR's Talk of the Nation, Neil Conan interviewed Bernice Johnson Reagon, best known as a founding member of the a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock; she's also a cultural historian and an amazing woman of many other talents. (I like to paraphrase something she said once about coalition-building: "If you are comfortable with the positions and ideas of everyone in your coalition, your coalition isn't big enough.")

Today she talked about her pride and joy in bearing witness to this moment in history. The phrase struck me; it's the title of an anthology of selections taken from different Afro-American biographies by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our nation's foremost scholars of Afro-American and African history. To me, bearing witness suggests not only seeing or experiencing something first-hand, but proclaiming it publicly. It is both passive and active. 

As a nation, we have just borne witness to something many believed would never happen in their lifetime. It is, by any measure, astonishing. But we didn't just see this happen; we helped make it happen. This could arguably be called the first DIY presidential election in American history.

Okay, okay, so I'm guzzling the Kool-Aid a bit; sorry about that. Despite my high-flown rhetoric, I still have reservations about Obama. He's not as progressive as I'd like, particularly on energy issues and gay marriage. I have no real hope he'll be able to implement his health care program, not because he isn't sincere about prioritizing it, but because I have no idea how he'll finance it. All that notwithstanding, his election is amazing. The way he mobilized and inspired and fired up voters of all ages and backgrounds and the way he navigated through the shark-infested waters of a two-year campaign fills me with wonder.

And I got to see it happen, and even participate in it (I phone banked last weekend) in my own small way. I have no illusions about the uphill climb we as a nation face right now. Obama is not the Messiah. His election doesn't put an end to our problems, but I'd like to think his election is the first step towards resolving them.

Si se puede.

Portland Rocks!

On Saturday Sweetie and I did two unrelated things that together epitomize some of what's so amazing about Portland.

In the afternoon we attended a Slow Food event at a farm in Gaston, OR (southwest of Portland about an hour) to learn about bees and pollination (just as an added "why Portland rocks" aside, when Slow Food got started in the US, its first chapter-they call them convivia, actually-was begun in-you guessed it-Portland). We met a commercial beekeeper and he introduced us to his 250 hives of honeybees, including one that had escaped and had swarmed on a nearby tree. Wish I'd brought the camera because you don't see a sight like 20,000 bees swarming every day (check out the picture I found online). While we were watching them and eating fresh pollen, the swarm suddenly left the tree and flew away. What was surprising to me was that the bees were incredibly docile around us, including the swarming ones. They basically ignored us in favor of all the tasty nectar in the farmer's fields. I've never been so comfortable being surrounded by so many bees. When we got out of the car the air was literally humming.

We also learned about Oregon's many native bees, which are also important pollinators for commercial crops. One thing we learned is that numbers of pollinators on a farm is directly related to how much area is given over to weeds (weeds are common on organic farms that don't use herbicides, but you see few on conventional farms). I had no idea there were so many native bees in Oregon (can't seem to find any good pics online to show you, sorry), but there are a number, and they are quite different from honeybees. For one thing, they are solitary creatures (no hives, no honeycomb). The bee people provided us with a list of plants native bees like to pollinate, and I'm happy to see we have a number of them growing in our garden already, or will whenever our wildflowers decide to come up.

After the Slow Food event, we raced back to Portland for the annual Starlight Parade, the one Rose Festival event I enjoy attending. For those of you non-Portlanders reading this, you can check out the link, but suffice it to say I'm not usually much of a civic booster, in the traditional rah-rah sense. Plus I have problems being in crowds, so parade watching is problematic for me, but the Starlight Parade is special. It's funky, for one thing, and features lots of local area high school bands (Sweetie taught drumlines and band for many years and is still an unapologetically proud band geek) and wacky human-powered vehicles and related fun stuff. It's much more fun and less stuffy than the big Rose Festival event, the Grand Floral Parade, which decided a few years back to market itself to bands and organizations outside Portland in order to attract corporate and tourist dollars. Result? The Grand Floral Parade features few area high school bands, instead importing groups from Taiwan and Japan (nothing against these groups specifically, but this is supposed to be an event that celebrates Portland, after all), and it's so heavily corporatized that you can't avoid being bombarded by corporate logos on floats, horseback riders, and even float riders like the Rose Festival Court. Oy.

See why Portland rocks?