i used to be just a personal blog. i used to be allll about me & occasionally about my computer, and for some reason it feels a little odd to shift focus like this, especially to a single issue, social &/or political. demonstrating this, i start this post out talking more about me, me, me. yeah, it’s all about … to change. well, not all. but this is change. i’m a lizard, i kick the habit, shed my skin.
trying to figure out why it is i’ve attached myself to the cause of marriage equality. best excuse reason i can come up with is, this is my civil rights movement. i was approximately 2.5 years of age when Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in the march on Washington. although i did (in my own, elementary school periphery) follow the civil rights movement, i did not live in an atmosphere that encouraged that. my parents would never, not in a bazillion years attended a protest, let alone taken me to one. but in my own, ADD-out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye-distracted-daydreamy type of way, i did follow. i did also spectate the summer of love, at age six & living just across the bay from San Francisco, watching the hippies on the news and … daydreaming. & as soon as i was old enough to think up reasonable reasons to do so, i would take the bus down Bancroft Avenue & end up in Berkeley in People’s Park hanging out with vagrants & students (& chemists, ok? they had some talent there in the seventies, let me tell you). i have always been a counterculture wannabe.
& that part of me that always wanted to be is both delighted & honored to find my self, at my age, with a cause that is every bit as important as the struggles of the 60’s and 70’s, & (having had a life of major fuckup-related stress distractions in the interim), excited to finally be able to join a movement about something important & have that matter, even if only in the most infinitesimal way. because, what we have here before us today is an era in which the grassroots movement has been proven, in a decisive & undeniable way, to be the absolute perfect way to get shit done. we put an African-American in the White House because he was the right (electable) person for the job, how hard does that rock? in a less imperfect world, that wouldn’t have been a big deal but in this one? yeah. “Congratulations on being a part of the decision that made this nation move well and with style.” oh you betcha. this is the new stuff, i go dancing in …
so in this new nation in which we can move with such style, well, what now? nothing rhetorical about that question, seriously, i’m asking … what next? i’ve joined some groups & signed up for some things. i’ve been to the first protest of my life, and i brought my kids (including my 11 year old’s friend who was over for the day & we all agreed we didn’t need to mention this to his mom because she over-reacts). yeah, i snuck a tweenager over to a gay marriage rally because he personally believed in it & i want to encourage that kind of rebellion. also, i’ve always been the ‘cool mom’, the one that would rather be talked to than lied to. and in my daughter’s adolescence that also made me the one that got the calls from VPD at one in the morning, & i held my counsel, & continued to be the one that wasn’t lied to, & that’s another story entirely. i digress, but i always digress, so … deal with it.
i’ll repeat the question, what’s next? i do not require answers but appreciate them where applicable. i myself will continue to do what i do best, ping things & join things & make what noise i have time to make, which might not be all that much, considering. my point, if a rambling thing like this blog post has such a thing, is that i have found my cause, my civil rights movement, my larger thing in which i might be a very small part & have that matter, no matter how much.
i have to digress one more time, i would apologize but i’m not particularly sorry. you know who would make a great Secretary of State? John McCain. you know who would make a great Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare? Hillary Clinton. feel free to yell at me about that, or about digressing in such a completely random & less-than-sensical fashion. make some noise!
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