Yesterday afternoon, I heard a story on NPR where they were exploring the presidential campaign in terms of race; specifically they wanted to know if the racial experience of the voter had anything to do with their ultimate choice of candidate. So, they got a bunch of people from York, Pennsylvania together and asked them questions about the candidates and their own histories. One woman’s comment stuck out in particular, and it’s been bothering me ever since:
“I look at Obama, and I have a question in my mind,” she says. “Years ago, was he taken into the Muslim faith? And my concern is the only way you are no longer a Muslim is if you are dead, killed. So in my mind, he’s still alive.”
Let’s just sit and let that sink in for a minute.
Really, think about that. Can this woman be for real? Can she be so ignorant of other religions that she views Islam like it’s the Borg? That she views Muslims as mindless zombies? I shook my head at the radio, and another thought came into my head. There are millions of other people in America that believe the same thing. At this point, I got scared. Because, I think, we are that stupid. We’re a bunch of rich, ignorant xenophobes with too much power and no education. If any of us stopped to look around at the country we live in (cue your Toby Keith song here) we’d realize there are Muslims all around us. Muslims shop in the same stores, drive the same cars, pay their taxes, and quietly raise their families, just like the rest of us. To say that a Muslim cannot be considered for the Presidency of the United States on account of faith is to say that the First Amendment to our constitution is worthless. (You know, the one about free speech, freedom of religion, assembly, etc.)
Jen heard the same broadcast and we talked about it a little over dinner. She brought up the controversy surrounding John F. Kennedy’s election as the only Roman Catholic president, and this evening I did a little digging to find out more. This is taken from a speech he gave on the 12th of September, 1960, to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association:
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President—should he be Catholic—how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him.
…I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.
It’s pretty amazing to think there was a national debate about the dangers of electing a Catholic to the presidency as little as fifty years ago. History shows he didn’t hand the country over to the Pope, and most people would agree he was a pretty effective, successful president following his own moral and ethical compass.
For the record, I believe Islam is a religion of peace, its rich history and meaning sullied by a handful of radical fundamentalists pushing their own agendas. It’s frightening to see the same narrow-minded fundamentalism gaining traction here in America, especially when the national debate increasingly gets framed in terms of religion. My America is a land where anyone can practice any religion they choose without fear of persecution, and any citizen has the ability to be elected to public office, like Kennedy said. After all, this crazy, beautiful, maddening country was founded by people fleeing religious persecution. It’s quite sad how often we as a country forget that. It’s sadder still to hear how polarized and ignorant people can be.
Two new doors were delivered yesterday while I was painting trim, and my excitement got the better of me. So I put one of them in last night and covered up the hole above it. This evening I’m going to try and get the last of the woodworking done (baseboards and door molding) so that we can get some paint on the walls.
So iTunes 8 came out yesterday, and the big news was that they added the Genius, which is essentially a recommendation plugin based on the music already in your library. I installed it on the music server in our basement (101.22GB and going strong) and let it churn through all 20,000 songs overnight. This morning it cheerily announced it was done, and I’ve now got a pile of recommendations to sort through—which is good, because I’m bored with most of the music I have.
Ungeek To Live: The Perfect Sunday Morning Bloody Mary. One notable (and critical) omission: Old Bay.
Yeah, I thought that sounded pretty stupid too. It’s supposed to be indicative of your overall length, which they claim should be 19 inches. You’re also supposed to be six and a third pounds in weight, which gave your mother a laugh this afternoon. I’d guess you hit that particular benchmark a few weeks ago by the sound of things.
You seem to be doing just fine, according to all the doctors and checkups; the hiccups you have constantly are normal, from what they say, and that’ll go away as you get older. Unless, of course, you share the same unfortunate and embarrassing reaction to very spicy foods like your father, which means they will fire up just as your nose starts running, and you’ll have to escape to the restrooms to be polite and keep your malfunctioning sinus and gastrointestinal systems from hiccuping snot all over your date. Welcome to the family, kid.
Mama is doing well, although you’re making it increasingly harder for her to sleep. All the books have line drawings of sleepy pregnant women perched on great architectural stacks of pillows like they have successfully completed a Tetris level. This, apparently, is propaganda underwritten by the pillow industry, because we bought a shitload of pillows for your mother to try and wedge between critical pressure points in order to find peace, but she has not had success. She spends much of the night shifting from one side to the other in a futile attempt to keep her hips and back from aching, and the pillows usually find their way to the floor by morning. The books suggest propping the belly (your space capsule) on a firm pillow; when she tried this, she found it impossible to breathe. She’s actually getting a lot of that now, come to think of it. Can you please get your feet out of her diaphragm?
One of our favorite games, when I have time to lay on the bed or the couch next to her, is to watch you moving around in there. You’re definitely head-down, and we can feel your little butt right up front, as well as your feet. It’s definitely a trip to watch you run a hand down the side of her stomach, or kick a knee out and watch her skin ripple and wave.
So now we play the waiting game. I’m starting, this week, to keep the Jeep gassed up and pointed toward the road for a clean getaway. Your mother is packing the hospital bag. The doula is on standby. Today I’m writing my maternity email to current clients so that they’re in the loop on your arrival and my disappearance. There’s no rush, kid—one helpful thing to know about your mother and father is that even though we have the best of intentions, we’re almost always late.
You asked how’s the porch coming? It’s looking better each day. The baseboards are almost in, the woodwork around the door is up, and everything has at least one coat of primer. I had to do some clever woodworking to make the baseboard along the front of the house completely level, because they kept the original porch floor when they enclosed the room, which was sloped slightly downhill. You shouldn’t notice that once I put in some toe molding, though. Aside from a new door and finish paint, we’re almost home free!
The other day, I was hanging the light fixture in the nursery, a room which affords a beautiful view of the street in front of our house. Up on a ladder, I was attempting to untangle a bunch of ancient fabric-covered wires without stripping too much of the insulation and torching our house, when a strange sound caught my attention, and I happened to glance down at the hedge that fronts our lawn. A water bottle had just landed at the base of the hedge, and the remainder of the water was illuminated by the afternoon sunlight as it sprayed from the top and fell back to earth. The fellow who had thrown the bottle continued walking up the street past the house, oblivious.
A few things flashed through my mind at that moment, the first few of which involved violence. I imagined picking up the bottle and throwing it directly at the back of his head. I had a clear image of the bottle in my fist as it connected with his solar plexus. I could see how snugly one of our garbage cans fit his body as I brought it down over his shoulders, our household refuse mingling with his hair and staining his work shirt.
Instead, my feet landed on the floor of the room and in the low bark I learned from my father, I yelled at him to pick the bottle back up at a volume that stopped him in his tracks. He motioned the inability to hear me, and I repeated myself clearly: PICK THAT BOTTLE UP OFF MY LAWN. He peered up at the house, waved weakly at it, then said, “I’m sorry, Mister,” and retrieved his bottle from the grass. I don’t suppose he could see me clearly, but the voice yelling at him from the house clearly spooked the shit out of him. If he’d seen his conscience in the flesh, he may not have been so conciliatory—I’d guess he outweighed me by a hundred or so pounds—but he was the soul of contrition to the Voice Of God.
In retrospect, I don’t know what made me angrier, the fact that he was littering, or the fact that it was my lawn. I personally can’t stand litter, and the idea of simply throwing something out the window or on the ground as I’m walking does not compute. I suppose it’s fitting, then, that I own a house on a minor thoroughfare where litter tends to be swept up by the wind and into our bushes so that I can clean it up. I’m not the tidiest of homeowners. I don’t have thousands to spend on weekly landscaping, and my bushes aren’t perfectly manicured. But that doesn’t mean it’s OK to finish half a bottle of water and toss it into my yard. What is it with people?
Attacks, praise stretch truth at GOP convention – From the AP newswire, an good point-by-point rebuttal to the speechifying last night. (via)
I could use a little luck this week. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
So here I am at Panera again using their wi-fi because Verizon DSL is down in my area. For the fifth time in a month. The guy on the phone decided my trouble was worth $10 and credited our next bill, but I think what they’re doing is deliberately plugging and unplugging the router every couple of weeks to get DSL customers like us to upgrade to fiber. (Strangely enough, fiber was the first thing Mr. $10 wanted to talk to me about). So I’m about a millimeter away from calling the *gulp* cable company.
Labor Day Weekend was filled with lots of labor. There are four coats of water-based polyurethane down on the porch floor, and I started installing baseboard yesterday. I don’t know how well the water-base will hold up, but working with it is about a million times easier than oil-base.
The nursery is one step closer to being finished: the futon is out and a new dresser/changing table is in. IKEA, in their infinite Swedish wisdom, decided it would be a great idea to make an entire family of furniture and then offer each model in a different color scheme. So the big honking chest of drawers is offered in a pleasing dark brown stain, and the normal, changing-table sized dresser we like is offered in white melamine and red or yellow stain. We opted for the low price tag and red stain, figuring it wouldn’t clash with the wall color. I like it better than I thought I would.
Back in 2003 we were browsing through an antique store and stumbled upon an old glass shade which looked perfect for a nursery. This weekend I bought a new light so that I could ditch the glass and use the fixture to finally hang it. it turned out the glass in the box was busted into about thirty pieces, so everyone made out alright.
I also cleaned up the Jeep and put the seat base in. I’d like to extend a hearty middle finger to the Graco corporation, who see fit to add a WARNING label and a DANGER sticker to every flat surface of the seat, base, and stroller, but can’t be bothered to spend five minutes to design an installation guide properly. No wonder so many people get this shit wrong. I have to assume that the lap belt goes through the two big loops in the plastic base, but that whole thing seems sketchy and loose to me. So I’m going to get it checked out by the fire department and then bungee the shit out of it so that it won’t move an inch.
That cabinet I’ve been working on since last freaking year is slowly nearing completion; the main section is finished but I had to resand and stain one of the doors because it went way too dark on the final coat. The shelves and back are finished, and hopefully with a couple of coats of poly on the doors it’ll be ready for assembly.