Politics and Poplar Trees

When I was growing up, we had a Carolina poplar tree in our back yard, planted by the general contractor who built our house. The little tree with the broomstick-sized trunk grew into by far the tallest thing in the neighborhood, and my Dad couldn't put his arms all the way around the trunk. The tree was a good landmark for telling people how to get to my house. It was also a target for lightning. When I was away at college, the tree took a direct hit during a thunderstorm, making a loud BOOM and showering the whole back yard with bark fragments. Afterward, the tree looked ok, but there was always the danger that it would fall and crush our house. My parents hired professionals to come take the tree down. It took all day, with five different trucks coming and going out of our yard, and all kinds of ropes and pulleys. They didn't so much cut the tree down as they dismantled it. Right down to the stump shredder at the very end. But the tree, which had occupied that spot for 15-plus years, wasn't going without a fight. Its root system spanned the neighborhood, and for months afterward, the roots sent up little shoots that would get caught in your lawnmower blades and fly up and hit you in the face.

That's how I see the aftermath of this week's election. You had two political parties that served their purpose for a while, but they had gotten so gridlocked and corrupt that they threatened to completely collapse and take the rest of us with them. The election took out many of the most damaged parts of the executive and legislative branches. But the daily op-eds are like little sprouts coming out of the entrenched roots of this old rotten tree. All these pundits can talk about is how their party used the wrong tactics, and how they can position themselves better so they can get power back into their own hands as soon as possible. You don't hear them talking about how we can all work together to rebuild our nation. Oh no. They are just looking to get back on top. Well, it's time to get out the stump shredder and the lawnmower and make sure that this old rotten tree is completely gone so that whatever we put in its place has a chance to do some good.

What Kind of American?

During the last nasty days of the 2008 campaign season, we learned that some of us are not "real" Americans. Apparently, if you live in a city, don't vote Republican, and have no idea how to field dress a moose, you are somehow less of a citizen than those good solid folks who have to drive at least ten miles to get to the nearest shopping mall. It got even more interesting when a poster to a left-leaning email group that I follow started a discussion about African Americans and European Americans. Another poster objected to the term "European American" -- the person thought it was absurd to refer to an entire continent for one's heritage when you probably knew what country your ancestors came from. African Americans, on the other hand, could claim an entire continent as their point of origin because slavery had erased all evidence of their country of origin.

This doesn't quite sit right either. Unless your family came to the US fairly recently, you probably have ancestors from a wide smattering of nations, European and otherwise, and many African Americans have a very good idea where their ancestors came from. The bigger question is -- is this really relevant anymore? I could call myself Caucasian, a term no longer restricted to people whose ancestors are from the Caucasus. I could call myself white, but I'm really kind of a pinkish beige, and parts of me get quite tan in the summer. Many of my ancestors came over here before there was a United States of America, but calling myself a Native American has misleading connotations. Why not just call myself an American and be done with it? For that matter, why not just call myself a human being? Does nationality do anything besides divide and antagonize people?

Oh what a beautiful morning

The results are in, and we have a new President-elect. The old divide-and-conquer strategy didn't work. People weren't so much scared of a guy with a funny name as they were worried about the way ahead. Survival skills gained in a Vietnamese prison camp or on the Alaskan tundra were not deemed as relevant to running our nation as community organizing skills gained on the south side of Chicago. There is not a "real" America and a "fake" America, there is only the United States of America. Please, please let us stop flinging mud at each other, roll up our sleeves, and get busy working TOGETHER to rebuild the good things that have been damaged and destroyed in recent years. Yes, we can.

So Now We Wait...

I arrived at my polling place at 7:15 this morning -- a civic sacrifice of significant proportions for this night person. I had intended to arrive at about 6:45 or so, but that was just too much to ask. Apparently, anyone who arrived at 7:00, when the polls opened, had the same one-hour wait that I did. Which is truly amazing, since the line stretched halfway down the block, down one hall inside the elementary school, down another hall, took a u-turn and snaked back down those same two halls, and only then did you get inside the school cafeteria where you could sign in and actually vote. Kudos to the poll workers who kept things running so smoothly. Montgomery County Maryland is firmly in the Obama camp, but we had four ballot questions to decide as well, plus our folks in the House of Representatives and a smattering of judges and school board members. Today was the last hurrah for touch screen-only balloting in our county. We will go to optically scanned paper ballots in 2010. After today's vote, we will know whether we can vote early (instead of merely absentee) next time as well. Just seeing all those good folks lined up to cast their votes this morning made it worth the wait. It's 5:00 PM, and the first exit poll results should be trickling out just about now. So now, we watch and wait...

Sound Bites and Still Pix

On October 18, The Washington Post published a very brief comment I made about a photograph in one of their Metro section articles. The comment appeared on their Saturday "Free For All" page, which is where they publish readers' grammatical nitpicks, complaints about coverage (or lack thereof), and comments on the appropriateness of photos. Here's what my comment looked like after the editors got through with it:

Packing Them In
Megan Greenwell's article on churches in Prince George's County ["Still Flocking to Prince George's," Religion, Oct. 11] was accompanied by a large photo of First Baptist Church of Glenarden's sanctuary filled with people. Clearly visible was a bright pink slide on one of the projection screens, with the message "Let's talk about Sex." Humorous, yes, but irrelevant to the focus of the story. Was this the best shot your photographer could come up with?
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I thought that captured it pretty well, since the article itself was about people who had moved away from Prince George's County, but still attended their old churches out of a continued sense of connection to their community. The photo made it look as though the church was using sensational topics to draw people in.

In today's Post Free For All section, Robert Braxton of Fairfax writes:
Sects in the Church

In my opinion, Post readers go overboard in second-guessing the selection of photographs to print. The latest example was the letter from Nancy McGuire ["Packing Them In," Free for All, Oct. 18]. In a culture where unplanned pregnancy among teenagers remains a problem, I fail to see humor in a screen projecting the words "Let's talk about sex." And anyone bothered by that in a church must be unfamiliar with the biblical directive "know thy wife."

Besides, have not churches always dealt in sects?
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I actually agree with Mr. Braxton's point about the need for such conversations, but that wasn't really the point I was making. Did Mr. Braxton not read carefully, was he just using my comment as a springboard for his own, or was my point really not clear?