Election, Poet Lauerete and Stew

Hallo. Hoe gaat het met je vandaag?
Yes, I'm learning Dutch. And by "learning" I mean I type it into a Bing free translator and it generates a phrase. So who knows if it's actually correct.

I did learn one new word - hond - which is dog. It's like hound sans the "u." I learned this from a children's video (complete with talking Dutch dinosaurs). Besides this ambitious linguistic venture, I've been chilling. Chilling but doing some pretty cool things. Before I get into that, however, let me vent a bit about the election.

First of all, let me share a RIDICULOUS story with you. It happened on Tuesday - Election Day. I got up and out of the house, voting at 7 a.m. That was fine, it only took 20 minutes. But that afternoon, shit got weird. I stopped by the local Walgreens. I got my flu shot, which took forever, then was going to grab a bottle of red for election night coverage, which I assumed would be intense. No election could be as intense as the Walgreens confrontation. Serious.

And here's were the unsolicited history lesson will come in ... apparently in the pre-Prohibition Era, bars served as polling stations. Naturally, this didn't go well. Folks got wasted face and voted for the wrong people. So Prohibition came and went. Once it was repealled, the idea of keeping bars and voters apart was still pretty popular - more so was keeping booze out of the hands of voters on Election Day. It was a law in Georgia ... no alcohol would be sold from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. - while the polls were open. THEN IT WAS REPEALED IN 1988.

OK so this brings me to Walgreens. I had my wine, I was in line, then crazy clerk lady yanked it out of my hands saying that it was unlegal to buy booze on election day which I knew WAS NOT TRUE ... I know because I work at the newspaper.

My reaction?

But she kept on ... trying to get explain it. Then I kept telling her that I knew it was repealed.
It was like this

She wasn't getting it.

There may or may not have been any licking involved.
Once that didn't work ... it went here. No ... no punches were thrown. But this is what I wanted to do.

OK so this brings me to the actual election and the results. I've held my tongue - which I've discovered becomes more and more difficult as more people are given a bigger platform to voice their opinions. There have been a few folks on Facebook that I'd like to give a virtual punch in the face. Or a real one. But instead ... I hid them and said nothing.

So now it's my turn.

I've always liked President Obama. I voted for him three times. One huge part of my voting for him is that I LIKE him. I think he's brilliant. I really do. Even so, that wouldn't be the sole reason I voted for a person.

Here are my reasons for voting for Obama:
- Four years isn't time enough to turn anything around. Hell, people go to college for four years and still don't know how to punctuate a sentence ... so I do not beleive it's possible to dig the country out of such a deep hole in only four years. He deserves more time.
- The economy is improving. It is getting better. Real estate is doing better and unemployment is going down. It's going to take time, people, regardless of who you elect.
- We're withdrawing from the Middle East as we were promised. That was a huge sticking point for me. I want them to close Gitmo too. Nevermind, that Bin Laden was killed on his watch, which I realize wasn't all Obama, but he deserves some of the credit.
- I don't believe that giving rich folks' tax breaks is going to help us "little folks" out.
- I believe that people should be able to marry whomever they choose. Male. Female. Who cares? I also find it ironic that a lot of conservatives want smaller governmental regulation on one hand yet want the government to be able to dictate who a person can be with in the bedroom.
- I believe there should STILL be a separation of church and state.
- I am and have always been pro-choice. What happens between a woman and her doctor should be between them. If she chooses to have an abortion, she has to live with it. And that's between her and God. It's no one else's business.
- And last but not least ... I resent the fact that Romney pays less (less percentage-wise) in taxes than I do. That's wack.

Now, I understand that people don't agree with me. That's fine. In fact, that's what has made America great. But the way that you choose to express your opinion really says a lot about your character. Lately, people have been showing their true colors, which I suppose is much easier to do when you're hiding behind a computer screen.

I've seen some of the most hateful, racist sentiments on Facebook. Ironically (or not) they are coming from the folks who make an effort to illustrate just how "Christian" they are on daily basis.
They post Bible versus and status updates about the "powerful message" in church on Sunday ... that is, until they don't get their way. I was shocked and saddened by the hypocrisy, although I don't know why. I should have expected it.

Of course, not every one was like this but there were a great many. It's made it clear that America still has a great divide based on race. Not like I didn't know that. And yes, racism runs both ways, but from what I observed ... the hate speech on Tuesday and Wednesday was all coming from one direction (looking at you Ole Miss). It's not cool to refer to our president (or anyone else for that matter) as a ... -N- word. Not cool. Show a little respect. Serious.

Anyway ... that's enough of my soapbox. But it did bring me to my next point - meeting the Poet Laureate of the United States, Natasha Tretheway.

She was at the Georgia Literary Festival on Jekyll Island Saturday. I covered it but had plenty of time to geek out whilst talking to her. She read some of her poems from her new book, "Thrall." And once she was done ... I understood why I make no money as a writer. Feeling a little inadequate. So after that I changed in a gas station bathroom and headed over to the Stewbilee. It's an annual festival in Brunswick where several teams cook up their best version of the city's staple dish. The Brunswick News had a booth so I helped serve. We didn't win but ... it was fun.

Some of the stew crew



From there, I met Josh and Greg at Zachary's for a couple of beers, then home to prep for the AU-UGA. game. It did not go well for us. But that was expected. We're bad. Sigh.

So it was an early bedtime and then woke up to clean the house, do laundry, get groceries and that kind of thing. Josh and I just chilled and got ready for the work week. It's always so sneaky! Hope yours is great.