I’m excited after this election that just happened. I was having a slice of pizza and a beer at the little local place and there were just four of us including the pizza maker and I asked them were they watching the election returns and none of them were so I told them all about it. The pizza maker asked if any results would affect Eugene personally and I said yes because it changes the national conversation and we are in the nation.
Before this I met the governor.
There we were, a few weeks ago, in a house full of people, talking loudly inches away from each other. It was like the 80s but it wasn’t, it was now and it was democrats. In a house in a neighborhood. It was so much fun.
The governor and others’ message was, stay strong. Have hope and stay strong. Honestly, it was motivating and inspiring, you could feel it everywhere, we spilled out into the crisp cool evening air under huge fir trees as the sun set.
The morning of the last coffeehouse it rained and rained but I went anyway and took a rain jacket. We are tough enough to sit in the rain and talk about the shutdown. You can’t only do democracy when it’s 75 and sunny with a few scattered puffy white clouds.
Before today, this is what I watched to cheer myself up.
Meanwhile, not too long ago, in my backyard, Karen, the neighbor, didn’t like the new fence. It was too tall, taller than the other fences. Well, “everything is an experience,” she said after I told her I was sorry the fence was not to her liking.
The ground for the fences were different heights which affected the fence height but this did not satisfy her and she said the stress of it made her catch a cold.
I wrote her a sympathy card and a couple of days later she gave me a fresh bag of apples off her tree.
After this I sang the Ballad of John and Yoko in my head for a couple hours.
Sincerity & support
I’ve been thinking about sincerity lately and the reason is because I’ve seen it crop up around me here and there and I am thrilled by it, by sincerity in action. When I see it or feel it I melt.
Like I was answering the phone and door at the dem office for volunteers gathering signatures for a ballot measure and one person showed up new to town not knowing anyone or where she would be standing in the rain to attract signers but she brought an umbrella and strutted east on the street for 2 blocks as we pointed that way. She came back with several signatures on damp papers about an hour later.
For support, it is a theme, it will be the next coffeehouse theme and it came to me because I have seen folks find divisions or make them and fracture movement by creating distance through imperfect agreements, and the support breaks down and I think we need to move toward more support and less dividing and so I thought a good conversation would be how do we support each other and therefore get more done together because there is lots to do.
My observation is I am trying to learn to hold a number of things at the same time rather than fixating on one thing, and this may seem odd, but it makes sense to me.
This is what I sang with today in the car and it’s my current favorite song!
