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Mental Beach Day

In the aftermath of this electrifying election, I feel a combination of profound joy and crushing fear, the latter induced by the certainty that no one man can surmount the challenges that America faces. And how quickly Americans tend to forget the origins of dysfunction. In three years, if we’re in the midst of a prolonged recession, if health care isn’t fixed, and if terrorists manage another attack on American soil, I have no doubt that the fickle swing voters who gave Obama their support will be all too happy to throw it behind a Palin/Huckabee ticket. A lot or nothing can happen in 3 years.

But enough. I’ve had my fill of politics for awhile. It’s a satisfied surfeit, like dozing contently on the couch after a marvelous meal, as opposed to the aggrieved “I’ve had enough” nausea that would have resulted from a GOP victory. I’m going to take deep breaths and pretend I’m back at Crane’s Beach in Ipswitch, gazing at the oddly-layered skyline above the lapping waves and enjoying the calm of a mid-October day after the crowds have surrendered the shores to the niggling seagulls. Deep breaths…

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By Meredith – November 5, 2008

The Love Vote

The passion for voting was ingrained me when I was about 12 years old. You see, I was a huge fan of Sunfire romances, a fiction series for young adults that formulaically featured an older teenaged girl during a notable period in American history who is torn between two men. The steamy Sunfires taught me more American history than our family’s set of Encyclopedia Britannicas ever did. I learned about the Civil War, the San Francisco Earthquake, frontier life, the Gilded Age, the sinking of the Titanic, and how to make it in 1930s Hollywood. I also learned to be suspicious of the suitor who offers the most stability and comfort, and that I should instead opt for the beau who approves of my independent streak and free-thinking spirit.

One of the Sunfire romances called Laura offered me an eye-opening glimpse at the women’s suffrage movement. It seemed incredible to me that as recently as 1920, in my grandmothers’ lifetime, American women could not vote. Even more disturbing were the graphic details of the suffragette struggle, including police brutality, hunger strikes and force feedings, and the total alienation and disdain that was heaped upon suffragists from the world at large. It blew my mind. One night I closed Laura and sobbed into my pillow, my adolescent hormones aching with anger and empathy for the injustices perpetuated against my gender. I resolved to never, never to take my right to vote for granted.

Today I woke up early and skipped breakfast in order to make it to my polling place at 5 minutes before 7am. There was already a line and voting had begun early. People were quiet as we inched through the doors of the elementary school and closer to the gymnasium. After about 10 minutes of waiting, I got my paper ballot, filled in the circles, and then checked out. The lines had already swelled to twice the size as when I arrived. The poor old ladies working the polls were going to have a hell of a day.

I walked to the subway, musing upon the euphoric feeling that voting in this particular election has bestowed in my soul. I wonder which suitor Laura and the suffragettes would have chosen: The Black man who defeated the former First Lady for the Democratic nomination, or the extremely old former prisoner of war choose a hockey mom as a running mate? Could they have even fathomed of such an election?

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By Meredith – November 4, 2008

Endorsements

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. — Barack Obama

In a landslide, Obama has won… the most newspaper endorsements. According to this article , Obama-Biden has 240 daily newspaper endorsements while McCain-Palin has 114. That’s a 2-1 margin for Obama. (And lest you think it’s pure liberal media bias, note that about 20% of papers that endorsed Bush have flipped to Obama).

As a resident of Massachusetts, the vote that I will cast tomorrow for President does not matter. My opinion will simply be pooled into the collective sentiment of my infamously liberal neighbors, and our support will be handed to the Democrats, who will be too busy panting over the Virginia percentages to notice good ole reliable Massachusetts. It piques me to consider that my vote does not count as much as the vote of a resident of Ohio or Florida, but at least I’ve been saved from a bombardment of political advertisements and weekly visits from Sarah Palin.

I compensate for this feeling of latent disenfranchisement by donating money to Obama. It makes me smile to know that I’m paying money so that the ninnies in Indiana can be convinced to vote in their economic self-interest. Classic socioeconomic class irony.

I do not purport to believe that my puny endorsement will make a difference, but perhaps there’s some undecided North Carolinian who has stumbled upon this website. It is to this troubled soul that I beseech to go and vote Obama. I won’t try to win you over with stoic eloquence or confusing logic, but rather I’ll appeal to your sense of serendipity: There you were, scouring the Internet for porn and/or a recipe for brussels sprouts pie, when suddenly, there’s this Massachusetts liberal telling you to vote Obama. Some would say coincidence, others would say… miracle.

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By Meredith – November 3, 2008

Mount Tecumseh 4003′ November 2, 2008

4003′ Mount Tecumseh barely squeaks onto the list of White Mountain 4000-Footers, ranking stone-cold last at 48 out of 48. So I blame a minute plate tectonic quirk that we did not hike the 3980′ Sandwich Mountain (which the AMC guide raves is “extremely scenic”), but instead choose to bag Tecumseh despite its ill repute as the easiest, blandest, most chorelike 4000-Footer. Tecumseh is also the location of the posh Waterville Valley downhill ski slopes, so it carries the damning stench and sights of human.

We had always regarded Tecumseh as low-hanging fruit that could be picked off during a hiking trip with loftier goals, as extra credit. But Tecumseh fit perfectly with what we wanted today: A half-day hike on a nearby mountain that wouldn’t expose us to too much snow and cold. To make Tecumseh a bit more interesting, we started hiking on Tripoli Road and headed south to the summit (instead of starting in the ski area and heading north). Our route was an hour longer (6.4 miles roundtrip), but less traveled and hidden from the ski lifts.

The White Mountains received its first snow last week, so it was fresh, crunchy, and perfect for walking on. As we ascended Tecumseh, the small patches of snow gradually thickened and deepened to about 2 inches, although the trail was never completely blanketed. We saw moose hoofprints on the trail near the top, but no actual moose.

It was chilly at the summit, so we scarved ourselves and then scarfed our sandwiches. The view was not great but we could peak through the trees at the Tripyramids presiding over the leafless Waterville Valley. (A bit more snow, and we would have stayed in the valley and XC skied).

On the way down, we decided to unnecessarily cross a river via a log. Mr. Pinault quaked and checked his balance with his hiking pole. I crossed on the log with peerless poise and grace, but I couldn’t stick the dismount due to an over-rotation directly into a bush (4-tenths deduction).




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By Meredith – November 2, 2008

Giving Candy to Babies

It’s 7:30pm and we’ve had about 10 groups of trick-or-treaters so far. The first group consisted of about a dozen small children around the ages of 4-8. They were so cute. I mean, at that age they’re naturally cute, but smear their faces with make-up and put them in smocks, capes, and tutus, and I’m helpless. I held out my basket of Airheads, Menthos, lollipops, mini Hersheys, and chocolate-covered raisins, and said indulgently “You can take a couple of candies.”

I have since realized that young children know not the meaning of “a couple,” or “a few,” or “several,” especially if there’s a basket full of candy in front of them. Who knew little hands were capable of holding so much? One little fairy strategically clenched 4 packets of Airheads while using her thumb to nab a Hersheys and her remaining fingers to ensnare 5 or 6 lollipops. What am I going to do, demand she put some back? It’s Halloween. Indulge, children, indulge.

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By Meredith – October 31, 2008

The Huckleberry

Today the NYTimes called quarterback Brett Favre the NFL’s “freethinking huckleberry”. I read the article, eager to discover what constitutes a “freethinking huckleberry” in the vast industrial complex that is the NFL. I mean, what does that even mean? What on earth is a ‘huckleberry’, and how is it an applicable term to Brett Favre? For me, it suggests “huckster,” which implies that a huckleberry is one who is used by a huckster, which would seem an apt analogy for a legendary quarterback who comes out of a 3-month retirement in order to join a team as inadequate and, frankly, despicable as Mangini’s NY Jets. But let’s see what the NY Times says.

After the article’s colorful introduction via the Jets’ locker room (“This is Sparta. The rookies and the mack daddies, the hard cases and the head cases, the low talkers and the loudmouths with their tattoos as inscrutable as runes…”), the reporter again invokes the term “huckleberry” in reference to Favre: “He was an absolute natural, one of the best who ever lived, revered even by his opponents as the gunslinging Huckleberry, the last of his line.”

“Gunslinging Huckleberry”!? Huh. From that, I inferred that a huckleberry is a quarterback who can reliably toss, heave, but mostly fire the ball forward towards completion. It’s got a Midwestern twang to it that’s befitting of the greatest Green Bay Packer ever, yet it’s esoteric enough to be the found in an elite East Coast periodical’s ode to their football team’s new “old man.” It’s football romanticism, and I’m a sucker (suckleberry?) for it. Best line in the article: “for all the butch rigor and happy fascism of football, for all the martial metaphor and the ringing bromides about team spirit, the best players in this game are artists.”

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By Meredith – October 30, 2008

She’s Nobody

Emily Dickinson was ruined for me way back in high school, when my favorite English teacher pointed out that the bulk of her poems could be sung to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Despite me being a Yankee, this tune was actually imbued in my ears thanks to my Casio keyboard, which had a dozen pre-programmed Americana melodies to which the user could pair with an array of looping rhythms, like “Camptown Races” with a bossanova flair, or a disco beat for “Amazing Grace.” So whenever I lay eyes on an Emily Dickinson poem (“Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me /The carriage held but just ourselves / And Immortality”), my mind unfailingly sings it to that catchy Southern anthem, and I give up in amused annoyance.

Even the Dickinson poems that do not readily conform to the meter of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” give me difficulties, as I read them intent on making them suitable lyrics for the cursed tune. (“Going to heaven! / I don’t know when, / Pray do not ask me how – / Indeed, I’m too astonished / To think of answering you!”) Draw out some syllables, curtail others… and you can kinda make out “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”

My inability to get into Emily Dickinson may not seem like a big deal except I went to college in Amherst, majored in English, and probably squandered opportunities to meet and learn from the scholars who flock to the Dickinson homestead in Amherst, where Emily was born and lived out the majority of her reclusive life. The first time I visited the Dickinson museum with a friend, I told him about my issues with “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and Emily Dickinson. “Oh, yeah. You know, it also works with Sylvia Plath and ‘Dixie,'” he dead-panned. (Luckily I was well over my Sylvia Plath phase, otherwise she too would be ruined.)

Lately, I’ve persisted in reading Dickinson anyway. I dig on her utterly original mix of whimsy and mystery, and I’ve even grown fond of that familiar Southern cadence that echoes in my brain whenever I read her. Here is a poem that is a bit morbid, but when sang to the tune of “Yellow Rose,” is much more chipper and light-heartedly.

I wish I knew that woman’s name,
So, when she comes this way,
To hold my life, and hold my ears,
For fear I hear her say

She’s “sorry I am dead”, again,
Just when the grave and I
Have sobbed ourselves almost to sleep,-
Our only lullaby.

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By Meredith – October 29, 2008

I Want Candy

Ever since the calendar hit October, my neighborhood has been primping itself for Halloween. The porches and lawns in front of the minimally-spaced two-family homes have spurted pumpkins, skeletons, gravestones, and other props with which to scare the children and glorify the occult. One house down the street wins the prize for its porch display that features an assembly of a dozen stuffed human figures, all dressed in sweatshirts, jeans, and werewolf masks, a sinister sight which is arguably more jarring at noon than at midnight.

So for the first time in many years, I am living in a neighborhood where I can actually expect Trick or Treaters to come begging at my door, forcing me to make a trip to CVS in order to purchase Halloween candy. It’s the first time I’ve ever bought a bag of candy with the intent of distributing it, and it took me about 20 minutes of acute deliberation to make my selection.

Firstly, the CVS appeared to be running out of candy. There were no Snickers, Milky Way, Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, 3 Musketeers, Twix, Mounds, or Almond Joy. There were Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, but they were bagged with Reese’s Pieces and (ugh) Reese’s Sticks. In fact, the trend in the candy aisle was to bundle the most awesome candy with lesser but similarly-constructed confectionary and sell it for $10/bag. So if I wanted to buy Peanut M&Ms, it came along with plain M&Ms and the despised mini M&Ms.

I eyed the remaining candy with a nutritive perspective. Why can’t they have tiny boxes of trail mix? I wondered as I wrinkled my nose over the Whopper/Milk Dud combo pack. It’s not that I care if I contribute to childhood obesity, because it’s practically a nonexistent condition in the Boston metro area anyway. In fact, I worry that local children don’t get enough sugar in their diets. Last week I heard a toddler on the subway throwing a tantrum for yogurt. Disturbing! No, I’m worried about my own slowing metabolism, because what adult can resist the temptation to snag a few (or more) of the individually-wrapped goodies during the lull between doorbell rings?

So if I can’t have something healthy, then I’ll get something that won’t tempt me too much. Out: M&Ms, Kit Kats, Hersheys. Acceptable: Gummy things, lollipops, and anything that is 100% sugar without any redeeming chocolate or nougat. After combing the candy aisle several times, I finally settled on an Air Head/lollipop/Menthos combo bag. As I walked home in the chilly nighttime wind, I ripped open one of the mini-Menthos rolls and promptly chewed the 6 candies, one at a time. I then tried out a mini-Airhead, which is like chemical-tasting taffy, and found myself intoxicated with a pure jolt of candy. I power-walked past the Werewolf house, effusing sugar happiness and chortling with Halloween spirit.

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By Meredith – October 29, 2008

Red-handed

I suffered a bit of a moral quandary when considering if I should post this FBI surveillance photo of soon-to-be-former Massachusetts State Senator Dianne Wilkerson stuffing a $1,000 cash bribe into her bra at a swanky Beacon Hill eatery (here). (Ironic, since it does not appear that Wilkerson is undergoing similar confliction.) On one hand, this is a sensational photo that the local media will plaster tabloid-style all over itself. On the other hand, this is a sensational photo! I’ve never seen anything like it: A much-aligned controversial local politician caught cramming a relatively petty amount of cash into her bra.

Wilkerson has always claimed that people are out to get her. Indeed, for the past decade of her political career, she has been a magnet for allegations about everything from unpaid parking tickets to failing to pay $50,000 in Federal taxes. And because she is a black woman in a state that does not exactly welcome blacks nor women in the stalwart Irish/Italian White Guy power structure, I have always given Wilkerson the benefit of the doubt.

But tonight, I gaze upon this picture of Wilkerson with utter fascination. She is a dirty politician who is fully aware of the impropriety of taking this bribe money… otherwise, why would she by stuffing it into her bra? It represents a rare moment of cut-and-dry judgment on a politician, because even the most skilled politico cannot begin to refute what is happening in this photo.

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By Meredith – October 28, 2008

Movie Review: Religulous

I’ve been a fan of Bill Maher for over a decade. He is a rare comedian who will forgo his role as a passive clown in order to argue down irrationality and ignorance with his uniquely scrappy wit and wisdom. He believes in things, like the decriminalization of prostitution and drugs, saving the environment, ending corporate tax breaks, downsizing the government, and that “9/11 wasn’t a triumph of the human spirit. It was a fuck-up by a guy on vacation.” And in the documentary Religulous, Maher explores various brands of religious extremism while riffing upon another belief: That religion is a neurological disorder that may eventually bring about the end of the world.

The movie starts modestly, with Maher visiting a cramped “Truckers Chapel” at a highway rest stop and quizzing truck drivers about why they believe in Adam, Eve, and a talking snake. This alarmed me, because what I didn’t want to see was 2 hours of Maher ridiculing average people for their personal religious beliefs. Luckily, Maher quickly ups the crazy bar and interviews a range of zealots, from a ‘Jew for Jesus,’ to US Senator and creationist Mark Pryor, to self-proclaimed Jesus descendant Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda, to an Isreali man who invents devices that allow Jews to sidestep Shabbat prohibitions, to the founder of an organization that believes in a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis (they have a “museum” with exhibits that show children playing with dinosaurs). All of this is very funny, and progressively disturbing.

The highlight of the movie is a trip to the Holy Land Experience in Orlando, a theme park that “brings the Bible alive” with exhibitions and reenactments. After Maher banters with the Jesus actor, who was actually one of the few interviewees to hold his own, we see Jesus getting crucified to the applause and tears of a camera-wielding audience. America, you scare me.

Religulous is directed by Larry Charles, who most recently directed Borat as well as Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. The ambush-style interviews work well in that they are very funny, but not very fair. Sure, religion isn’t logical and there’s no evidence of Jesus or God. Sure, the religious shepherds are living large off of the fleece(ing) of their flock. Sure, America’s founding fathers would be disgusted b the intrusion of religion into politics. Sure, Mormons and Scientologists are especially batshit loony. But everyone has a right to believe in what they want to believe. Do these people deserve to have their personal faith pilloried by this snide, swarmy little bastard?

Perhaps this is why Maher ends the movie with his grandiose justification: After a tour of the Dome of the Rock and a short exploration of Islamic beliefs, Maher predicts… that the end of the world will come as a result of religious extremism. It was a strangely somber ending after the rollicking laughs and mirth. Overall, more entertainment than enlightenment.

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By Meredith – October 26, 2008