Day Successfully Squandered

I didn’t even get to the bank! I did go review a park–Tom Joy Park, which must have been named on Opposite Day. And I took a nap in the hammock. And i waited for my sunflowers to bloom. I am still waiting.

The woman who’s helping me copyedit has come up with some great ideas to smooth things over. And she’s recommending an author’s note, to just kind of make sure that everyone who reads it knows what they’re getting into. I should have worked on that some today, but I was busy mulling it over.

The Butcher got the bookshelves in. They look nice. No books on them yet, so the orange cat is trying out different shelves like a kid at summer camp.

No sign of the tiny cat yet. It’s not the longest she’s been gone, but it’s been a while since she’s been gone this long.

I’m still not sure what to say about my trip to Georgia, if anything.

I guess what I want to say is this. I believe that we all go through periods where we’re lucky or unlucky and there’s not much you can do to avoid those times. Like storms, they just happen. But you can cultivate good luck for yourself and your people, which will hopefully make navigating the unlucky times easier.

But part of being lucky, I think, is learning to act. That’s been the hardest part for me, since that’s not how we do, but it’s how it goes. You learn to be forthright and an active force in your own life in an honorable way or you keep dealing with the consequences of not doing so.

I know this is a religious belief, but it keeps playing out in my own life so profoundly that, to me, it feels like truth.

Which, okay, fine.

But I see my family so unhappy, so profoundly unhappy because of the ways they try so hard to passively accept everything that is happening to them, for fear of bringing on abuse by standing up and it breaks me. I just feel so bad for them.

And there’s nothing I can do. Which, in a way, is a great relief. But I feel like I no longer have a common vocabulary to talk to them about this. For them, it’s all about relying on God to work things out in his own time, in his own way. For me, it’s hard for me to see how they aren’t making a demand of God–that he act so that they don’t have to–that might not be a part of the bargain.

My brother was complaining about how I never visited him and I just said to him that he doesn’t have his own place and I’m too old to crash on the couch of a woman I don’t even know.

Anyway, the Thanksgiving I spent with those folks, a dad chased his son around with a two-by-four. It was the most horrific thing I’d ever seen in person, but they all laughed like it was ordinary.

That dad died today.

My brother cried for him.

Lazy Monday

I’m supposed to be going to the bank and doing all the stuff I didn’t do this weekend, but instead, I’m just lazing about. It’s nice.

R. Neal is Right, I Just Don’t Care

R. Neal says:

Sure, he’s said some things that don’t sit well with progressives. Just like Harold Ford Jr. But our advice to Democrats is to put away the knives and get behind our guy. Unless you want a less qualified, less accomplished Bob Corker clone running the state.

And I want to say, for the sake of honesty, that this is true.

It’s not a big enough threat to change my mind about voting for McWherter. The Democratic strategy this silly season, instead of even tossing an occasional bone to the progressives, has been to make it as clear as possible that the progressives can go fuck ourselves. And not just the progressives. It’s not like immigrant communities or science teachers are well-known progressive constituencies. Our Muslim community is not a bastion of progressive beliefs.

So, it’s not just progressives Democrats have asked to suck it with McWherter.

There are a lot of people in this state who need the Democrats to stand up (and I would hope stand up proudly) for them and the Democrats, McWherter especially, has signaled that our problems are not his problem.

Fine.

Then his problems aren’t mine.

I wouldn’t hold it against anyone who did consider the alternative and vote for him. Each person has to make the choice he or she thinks is best for him or her.

But everyone has some place beyond which they can’t follow a politician, just because he has a D behind his name.

For me, we are at that place. If McWherter had spent a quarter of the time he’s spent hanging out with folks who are like him hanging out with people who are not like him–listening to gay people or immigrants or Muslims or science teachers or people from Memphis or hell, people who aren’t working–if he showed any interest in the experiences of people who are different than him, instead of constantly signaling that he’s the candidate (along with the other three) of people just like him, I might feel differently.