It Happened, Obama Won!

I went to bed on Tuesday night praying that it would not be a mistake in the morning! I don't trust projections. But Obama really and truly won! I am so glad. He even mentioned the disabled in his acceptance speech--now I hope that won't be the last time that we are mentioned, and that there will be more hope and help for us too.

I haven't been thrilled by an election since I was thirteen and John Fitgerald Kennedy was elected. I remember thinking that I could hardly wait to be old enough to cast my first ballot.

Eight years later when that day came, it was after bitter fighting in the primaries and the candidate I voted for, Hubert Humphrey, was a compromise candidate and he didn't win. I went away from my involvement in politics with a sense of loss: loss for the idealism that had led me to get involved in the first place and loss that all the hard work had been for nothing. Tuesday night I felt that loss healed for the first time in forty years.

I hope that all the young people who got involved will stay involved. We need to have a record turnout for voting in every election and at every level.

I think that president-elect Obama didn't just win the Presidency, he gave us back and gives us back our idealism and our pride in Democracy. I am so glad for him and for us.

Now we all have to do it too--unite as a nation and build a strong and just economy. Unite as a nation to let the bitterness of the past fall away and heal.

More about that in another post. For now, I am just glad and grateful.

One More Day!

Only one more day and then we will see who is elected after all the hoopla and the longest campaign in history. I hope that the next campaign does not go on as long or cost as much.

I voted several weeks ago, so there is an element of anti-climax to the real election day. Wednesday will tell who the new President is and I am looking forward to that day.

I hope that we can all work together to bring about a saner, more stable and more just economy. I believe that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, and therefore that we all have talents, love, gifts and the ability to live productive and virtuous lives. We bring all of that to the table, so to speak; our economy should reflect that. If we think of the economy as the table, then it is a big table with room for all of us at the feast of prosperity and productivity that can be brought to it. There is room for sharing and caring at this table.

Social security disability needs to be overhauled so that we who are disabled have a place at the table; so that our talents and gifts and in some cases, as for people like me, our educations are not put on hold and wasted for a lifetime because of outmoded definitions of a bureaucracy that puts people into institutionalized poverty.

Health care needs to be seriously reformed. I hope that it will be and that no one will be excluded from care, or excluded from economic productivity because of insurance company formulas about who can be included. At the same time, we need to recognize, I believe, that health care is not a right but a need. Like shelter, water, food and clothing care in illness and injury is a necessity to life. We should provide that care. We should also expect to pay something for it and a system that has a sliding scale that makes government's role supplemental and as the re-insurer for catastrophic accident and illness would make sense to me on every level.

We need to put people back to work and we need to repair and rebuild much of our infrastructure, from levees in California and roads all over the country to bridges and perhaps airports as well. A new WPA would be timely and helpful.

We need to carefully and seriously question the profit motive, corporate capitalism and the whole laissez faire idea of the totally free market. We have just seen this run rampant and we are suffering the consequences of it. Even Alan Greenspan recognized there was a flaw. Oh yes, this amateur historian (although I majored in History, I don't make my living as an Historian) can see that flaw and spotted it about thirty-five years ago. (And it doesn't really require that other degree that I hold, the M. Div., to know that the flaw is called greed.)

We need, and I believe religious leaders have a role to play here, to bring the concept of justice to our economy. I have always believed in the motto, "If you want peace, work for justice". Let's make it happen. At the same time I have always believed that an economy based on community rather than competition would be one that was more just, less stressful and made room for every body.

So I am grateful for the right to vote, that the election will take place tomorrow and that on Wednesday, praise God, it will finally be over. We have work ahead of us that cannot not be undertaken too soon. I am grateful and I hope that we will seize the opportunity to truly dig in and do it, making a better world for all of us.

Delicious Weather, Delicious Harvest

The weather is perfect for this time of year, perfect for any time of the year. I love it and wish we could keep it for a very long time. Here are basil tops drying on the bed tray. This is, if I remember correctly, from one plant.



Several times today, while I was puttering in my kitchen, I looked out the big windows over the sink to watch the hummingbird feeding at the pineapple sage, which has now blossomed all the way to the top. The tranquility and beauty of this scene helped me to be more at peace with myself over all the trials and tribulations of life. God has made these perfect creatures, the plant and the bird, which do not sell stock or make financial messes of others lives or for that matter demand anything. True if I had not provided water to the plant--through the kindness of friends who have been watering for me, because I cannot access the side and back yards of my property--the bird would not have found food. We are a food chain of three, a cooperative society.

Then I tried to listen to the last presidential debate--since I have already voted, it was pointless, really. I do wish that Obama would simply counter McCain by agreeing about the mortgages, though. I hope that he hasn't lost ground because of this debate. I honestly couldn't tell who was ahead. So now we wait for three more weeks.

In the meantime, I will enjoy the weather and my tiny harvest. Tonight dinner was buckwheat pasta and pesto. Very yummy, very gratifying and I am grateful. I like harvesting my dinner.

Disaster Awareness and Disability

Today the victims of hurricane Katrina are being remembered even as the residents of the same area so devastated by that storm get out of the way of nature's new menace, Gustav.

I have always been glad that I do not live in that area, first for the heat and humidity, and then because of the preponderance of hurricanes. Wind and water are such a devastating combination. I wish the hurricane would fizzle out, but that isn't the way that they work over the warm water south of our southern coast.

This area is so important to our economy because of the trade up and down the Mississippi and the oil rigs that sit in the hurricane's path. Oil prices may again rise to the stratosphere both in anticipation of this storm and it's actual aftermath.

I am glad to see people fleeing this time. The image from three years ago that has never left my memory or my heart is that of a blanket thrown over the corpse of someone who died in his/her wheelchair in the Super Dome. I could so easily have been that person.

What has changed since then? A better emergency plan does seem to exist, but does it include the disabled? Will the poor, disabled simply be left behind?

So far as I can see nothing has changed for the disabled per se. This is due, in large measure, in my opinion because we, the disabled, ourselves are never asked what our needs are. We are never included, except in kluge government programs that serve the originator of the programs as well as other bureaucrats and not those of us who need to be included in our nation's economy.

Last week we had several days of excessive heat warning in our area. Nothing is said about checking on the disabled, it's always the elderly and pets. (Well, I nearly qualify in the first category, but not in the second.)

While the heat was bearing down on me and making daily life difficult, I received a telemarketing call from the Social Security Administration about the "ticket to work". So far as I could tell when the program was inaugurated eight or so years ago, it was not going to do me any good. They are finally getting to me now--just before my 61st birthday and one year before I should be old enough to retire. Sigh.

I am one of those millions of people who watched and listened to Obama accept the nomination for the Presidency of the United States. Just as in Kerry's speech four years earlier all kinds of people where mentioned as people who will be helped if he is elected. I hope that he will be elected, but just as four years ago one group was left out--Americans with disabilities. Where are we? When will we be included? When will our talents be recognized? When will we be able to bring our gifts to the table and join in the feast and the celebration?

As I did four years ago, I cried while listening to the acceptance speech. What has changed? Not much. I hope that no people are being left behind in the evacuation of the Gulf region who will be found drowned in their wheelchairs after the disaster passes. I hope there will be no disabled missing because they were left waiting, as they were in the World Trade Center, until the able-bodied could be evacuated ahead of them.

This country has miles to go before we meet the needs of all of our citizens. I have a dream, as Martin Luther King did, and I hope that I will live long enough to see it met, that disabled people will no longer be forced to live in poverty simply because we are disabled. That the disabled will no longer comprise a large percentage of the homeless population in our major cities. Let us eliminate poverty and make sure that the plans include the disabled. Please.