Grab and Keel

Sometimes Things Turn Out Unexpectedly

“Fancy rules over two thirds of the universe, the past and future, while reality is confined to the present.”

Jean Paul Richter

 In the late seventies, due to economic changes and events in my family, we found ourselves in a small town in Eastern Washington, where my husband had obtained a job. It was a fragile time. I had left college again as a consequence of this necessary move, just as I had nine months prior, left work in order to go to back to school. Our daughters had left their friends and community roots. My husband, after working as an urban planner, took a job as laborer’s foreman at a nuclear power plant.

 Since he had to be out the door by 4:30 AM, I took to getting everyone up for breakfast and lunch making. Despite my personal abhorrence of all noises screeching, both daughters had moved from their previous school with the  commitment of violin study.  My younger daughter began the dark of the day with violin practice and cleaning of her room. My older daughter, in her first venture, got a paper route.  After she finished her route, and since it was still very early in the morning, both usually went back to bed for a couple hours of snooze time before the school day began.

 Gradually the rest of the family became more involved in the paper route.  My younger daughter sometimes helped fold the papers after they arrived. If recollection serves, she helped deliver a few times. It became important to get the route done so they could both get back to sleep.

 The Sunday papers, especially near the holidays, became too heavy for one trip around the neighborhood. Because the time frame between allotment delivery and expected doorstep arrival was small, two trips around the neighborhood were not feasible. This meant either my husband or I, drove my daughter around her route.

 My older daughter decried the fact that all she ever got was complaints.  We discussed it. It appeared to me that she had very few actual complaints, and they were mostly related to the few days when the allotment was late. I offered that she should consider that silence from customers was satisfaction, rather than a negative rating. 

 One day I drove by a neighborhood ditch, and noticed a quantity of newspapers.  Hmmm…Needless to say, they were hers, tossed one day in a fit of pique, over many reasons. Mostly, she was tired of it; she wanted to stop. That month, even as she announced her resignation, she received a carrier’s award.

 For me the point of this story is that it such a perfect allegory to the opacity of our actions. Reality is where we are. We plant a seed, we think the taproot has emerged, and the tree is starting, but it is still below the soil.  We can’t see, or anticipate the fruit of our actions. I worried whether she was learning the easy out. I think now that she knew her twelve-year-old self well and that it was time to move on. More likely, she couldn’t figure out how to tell us. Our family support had also been a pressure.

 What sometimes appears an end is actually a thing beginning. That the process is messy, unscripted, small, or at odds, is part of the birthing process. Our involvement, and our notions about a thing cannot produce what will be. Both my daughters, and my stepdaughter, raised by her mother, make their way successfully in life. Whatever happens with Senator Clinton, her delegates, her platform, and the petition to place her on the nominating platform, the result will be different then we anticipated. She has already told us her views, that she supports Senator Obama. She’s said she also understands the process must hold forth. Perhaps, rather then the seed, her personal metaphor is that of how the ancients viewed woman, and she is the earth for this new beginning.

 This struggle is with the DNC, it’s ethics and it’s failures. Perhaps 300 signers will be found. Perhaps she will write a letter of petition. Perhaps, a nominating vote will occur. Even while we push these things, maneuvering has occurred by the Obama campaign to replace a number of her delegates with his. So, finally, perhaps, having arrived to the vote, the numbers will still cause us to lose the count. All of these events will matter less then the struggle to raise this growing tree to light. In pushing the earth up, things become visible.

 Already we know one old tradition, to which we hold sentimental attachment, must go. Once and for all, we must get rid of the caucuses; in this day they are abusive and disenfranchising. A system that won’t allow emergency nurses, or recuperating veterans to vote, as happened in Washington, is wrong. A party that allows these is undemocratic.

 The Party Democratic vote, where it is abused and legitimate grievance found, and as happened in Texas, must have expeditious justice. It must not be left to die for lack of one state’s jurisdiction. If it happens in one Party, it must be able to happen in all.  Whether we are a Democrat, Republican, or other and we, by voting transfer our wishes to a Representative Delegate, that vote must be placed cleanly in the hands of that delegate. We hand a precious item to that delegate, our honor and our belief. We must be able to know that delegate followed our wishes or can clearly explain why not.

 We argued over the Supreme Court ruling regarding Indiana’s right to require ID. Yet as those Indiana nuns were turned away, many other travesties occurred.  A State and Party that requires no ID to vote, is no longer the emblem of civil rights and the end of Jim Crow, but the agent of those that promulgate unverifiable out of state student (?) bussing, as happened in Iowa.

It is time to reexamine whether states are doing their job, or whether more uniform rules should now apply. Is it still fair that voting ages are different? Is it fair that in some states, the vote is given to those who have served time, while in other states it is not?  Why are absentee ballots treated differently; why do some states not have them? In a national election, why is the rule of vote not nationally prescriptive? Are the caucus states the worst offenders? In trying to offer balance for underpopulated states, have we gone too far the other way? For example, in what other country would the single vote of an Alaskan have 248 times the weight of a voter of New York?

Why have we, under the guise of Pelosi’s “tradition” allowed a presumptive nominee to assume control of the Democratic Party? It has certainly raised my awareness. However, now having come to this place, I would not like it any better if Clinton were behaving this way. Why, under what DNC rules, is Howard Dean banished to a cross-country bus trip, while Obama sucks money from the DNC at the expense of other Democrats, in order to stage the upcoming grand coronation? Why does a presumptive nominee get to pick the delegates that will vote for his nomination?

It is time to get rid of money as the primary determinate of our elected officials. 

This is our THIRD election where we have had to question, nationally, the outcome.  We must do something! The reality of the present must not hold. Whatever fancy brought us here, it must not be that which sends us to our next election.