In My Lifetime

The first thought on my mind this morning was, "This is the last day of the Bush presidency." I got goosebumps, took a pee and went about my usual morning disciplines.

I read the paper a little later on and there was a blurb about my guy Bono responding to Michelle Obama at the inaugural concert in D.C. on Saturday and I choked up and thought, "You are a rock star, Michelle. I am so proud of you, the first lady of the United States." Yes, I said all those syllables in "first lady of the United States" as if my unspoken thoughts could be misunderstood by me.

Then while prepping my show I listened to "Fresh Air" and heard stories from the 60s and the civil rights marches and protests and passage of the "Voting Rights Act" and got chills once again and tears once again. I heard the words that convinced the older generation of African Americans in the south to go out and join the effort to stand up against the machine and demand their voices be heard.

OK, my age was in single digits at the time and I don't remember any of that in my young daily life but that hateful, hurtful, heinous racist treatment happened in my lifetime.

Tomorrow a young man shall become my president and I am so excited. It is history in the making - racial history that was not imagined to happen in my lifetime. This is also the history of a clean break with the narrative of old white guys as president, while being in perfect accord with the nature of my country, governance by the people.

This time the people sound like me for the first time in my lifetime. The talk is of hope and hard work and shared stewardship of the American Dream. I want to hear about putting Americans first in the direction of our government, not putting the American corporation first. I want health care to be viable for everyone. I want peace to be our dominant paradigm. I want to be proud of us, all of us, especially the president.

I don't know how Barak Obama will fare as president but I will do all I can to assist his leadership. I was inspired by his message of hope during the campaign and actively did a little work in the campaign to help make it happen. (A first for me.) I hope to see the reflection around the globe of the shining light of optimism and opportunity and equality and freedom that I was brought up to believe about this country.

I will see that restored in my lifetime.

A Hard Rain Went and Fell

Thurday, January 8, 2009

Today Vail Road was closed south of my place where it goes over the Deschutes River and in the other direction up by the turn off into Yelm along Black Hills Road was closed too. I had over 4" of rain at my house yesterday! The winds are fierce but we're not even close to getting the worst of it. There are talking heads on the TV saying worst flooding EVER.

I had work in Seattle and was going to stay and have dinner with friends but I bolted for the south as soon as I finished the session and it was akin to fleeing Sodom. I did not look back but I heard roads were closing behind me as I monitored the radio. I had to drive the diciest section of I-5 (in the urban area) by Tacoma. They ended up evacuating 7,000 people from the area beside that spot of freeway by the time I got home. They also closed a 20 mile section of I-5 just south of the alpaca farm. They had had terrible flooding just south of there last year. For awhile there was no way to go by road or rail from Seattle to Portland. The back roads were closed or flooded too. Seattle's kind of cut off since all the passes through the Cascades are closed from snow, landslide or avalanche. I'm not sure how that rehab is going but I'll get the scoop on the 5:00 news coming up in an hour or so.

A good lesson some leaders learned from the devastation in Lewis County last year was to design an emergency plan for evacuation of critters in the rural areas. Last year they lost a dreadful amount of horses and cattle, sheep, goats and alpacas. Nearby Pierce County had a plan in place and the critters there are fine today. They evacuated about 22,000 people in that area and who knows how many cloven hoofs.

I went to the store, after being turned back on those two different roads to town, bought 30 lbs of food for Judy Dog and the fixins for a huge pot of Irish Stew for me and I'm fixing on fixing that up tonight to take me through the weekend. I will not be in a fix unless I lose power before the crock pot is finished. Then I use the burner on my BBQ grill.