Here's to You Fannie Lou

I'm stuck at home with a cold. I'm glad I voted early. Otherwise, I'd have to drag my wretched behind down to the polls and vote. I guess everyone is blogging about voting today. I'm sure I can't say anything especially brilliant about it all. I was in the grocery store last night to get vegetables to make chicken soup. I asked the toothless, bearded black man in the butcher's apron if he had voted. Blank stare. I asked again. His head reared back and set hard on his shoulders. "Naw, I ain't voted." And as if to assure me, he wasn't alone in his cavern of ungrateful darkness, he said, "My wife ain't voted, (nodding to a co-worker) and he ain't voted either. Ain't redis-tered." "Hmmmmmmm," says I, "Don't you feel bad? I mean people marched and died so you could vote - so you could have this job." He had THAT look. I've seen it before when talking to the simple minded who find ignorance a warm fuzzy blanket. I walked away feeling downright ashamed that I had not knocked on doors or made phone calls to try and convince people like him, that voting really is important.

All night long, and this morning, I've been thinking about Fannie Lou Hamer.

She is at the top of my list of heroes; people who inspire me and make me ashamed that I am not braver or smarter. I thought about the hundreds of nameless souls who risked everything down in Mississippi to establish Freedom Schools and register African Americans to vote. I keep thinking, it now comes down to this. We the people will either rise up and take back what's ours or wallow in the misery heaped upon us by callous leaders who don't give a damn.

This morning, I am proud - proud of whatever fueled Senator Barack Obama and he doesn't seem to be tired yet. I am proud of all the old people standing in line to cast their votes and the young people voting for the first time. I am proud that millions of us found a kernal of hope in these dark times and chose to believe and NOT give up. I am also proud of Hillary Clinton. She found the courage to say and do what had to be done. Regardless of the outcome of this historic election, I hope we can keep the momentum going and bring the changes we need to make this "...one nation under God INDIVISIBLE."

Ponderous

If you opened my head this morning, (who am I kidding....any morning) it would probably look like spaghetti, all multi-hued and gnarly. None of what I am about to write is important, intellectually insightful or brilliant in any way. If you have soup on the stove, forget about reading this and go to the kitchen to stir the pot. If a warm bubbly bath is flowing, go soak, but if you're just hanging around your domain with nothing better to do than scratch or contemplate straggley nose hairs, keep readin' chil'ren........Here goes.
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the newest word in my vocabulary is friends i've never had more than three at one time and i was beginning to think that like many things i've lost i'd never really be able to say i have any i'd leave this world quietly snuffed out like a small flame in a dark corner oh yeah and when i talk out loud like that people give me THAT stare like oh you're making me so uncomfortable or oh you're feeling sorry for yourself and i think when you tell the truth you're not feeling sorry for yourself just recognizing the what is and what is is not so nice most of the time people in the south particularly dont want to hear or read or know the great what is that mommy dresses like a barbie doll even though she's 45 and daddy can only get hard when he's watching men whose testosterone levels rise higher than his butt heads and slap asses on a football field so he's not turned on by mommy at all he just wants to relive the what never was and ignore the what is and speaking of what is somebody please tell me what's up with andrew young making an arse of hisself on cnn this morning not closing or not being able to close his legs and all i could fixate on was the fact that he seems to have a mighty big penis but you could tell it was all soft the way penises hang on men of a certain age but i was not too distracted that i didn't notice his limp/lame answers when he was asked about his early comments about obama 'cause he was supportin' hillary during the primary and said some not so nice things and the commentator wanted to know why the back peddle well everyone wants to get behind a winner why the hell didn't he just say so and not try to make it sound like he had some great epiphany of the soul cleasning kind but i was talking about friends and if i could send a hug through the universe i'd want iot to ricochet back to k and to s and m real friends id like to believe were really answers to one of my most pitiful prayers when i was feeling all alone and like that very small flame and then boom there they were the kind of people that the creator made and then broke the mold being so pleased with his grand and great self that he had made these sprites in his own image so full of unconditional love and caring that sometimes i feel ashamed of my rude and not so nice self but not being able to avoid my frequent tendency to create funk aka being a pain in the ass they recognize the good in me and just turn their heads lawd lawd at the other stuff and i wanna say to the creator that because these wimmen are deserving would you please just lighten the load in their lives the way they lighten mine time after time what i mean to say is heap on them thunderous blessings s and i in a precelebratory mood as we await super tuesday picked up libations at our local likker emporium after work last night i was in the mood for amaretto and lemoncello s bought a case of coors im all set for some marathon teevee watching as the polls one by one say yes to obama last night k and i were catching up on each others lives and she told me a story that i thought was pretty outrageous she recently suffered property damage and the insurance company sent the settlement check in her name and the mortgage company's according to those crooks at the bank they will get the money after she endorses the check to them and they will give incremental checks to her after she sends them invoices say what my gurrrl is checking with a lawyersay it again lawd lawd what's this country coming to when you can't get over on the insurance company who invented the great get over on the rest of us i've got bread pudding in the oven spiked with brandy and amaretto making the house smell all goolicious....i hope i have enough time before going to work to make a pot of chicken soup its ok with the barbie at least for now i will savor this respite from the storm and aint it about dam time.