Perle Champion

Did you Vote?  Our right, our freedom to vote, comes with the responsibility to vote. 

I hope today you exercised:

Your Responsibility

Your Right

Your Freedom

To participate in the process of choosing the people that govern us, make and enforce our laws.  These things were hard fought and long in the making of what they are today.

“The history of voting in the United States has not been characterized by a smooth and inexorable progress toward universal political participation. It has instead been much messier, littered with periods of both expansion and retraction of the franchise with respect to many groups of potential voters.” Grant M. Hayden, Hofstra University law professor in the Oxford Companion to American Law.

There were fewer opportunities to exercise the right to vote in colonial America. The English king appointed most governors, though there were exceptions.

Typically, white, male property owners twenty-one or older could vote. Some colonists not only accepted these restrictions but also opposed broadening the franchise. Duke University professor Alexander Keyssar wrote in The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States:  Some colonies required a voter to own a certain amount of land or land of a specified value. Others required personal property of a certain value, or payment of a certain amount of taxes.

John Adams wrote in 1776 that no good could come from enfranchising more Americans:

“Depend upon it, Sir, it is dangerous to open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation as would be opened by attempting to alter the qualifications of voters; there will be no end to it. New claims will arise; women will demand the vote; lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to; and every man who has not a farthing, will demand an equal voice with any other, in all acts of state. It tends to confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks to one common level.”

Benjamin Franklin lampooned them when he wrote: “Today a man owns a jackass worth 50 dollars and he is entitled to vote; but before the next election the jackass dies. The man in the mean time has become more experienced, his knowledge of the principles of government, and his acquaintance with mankind, are more extensive, and he is therefore better qualified to make a proper selection of rulers—but the jackass is dead and the man cannot vote. Now gentlemen, pray inform me, in whom is the right of suffrage? In the man or in the jackass? “

Property restrictions gradually disappeared and the 15^th Amendment in 1870 enfranchised black men, followed in 1920 by the 19^th Amendment which enfranchised women.

These amendments were hard fought and won and we should appreciate the freedom they give us to make choices for ourselves and our country.

Sometimes relationships, like things, break beyond repair.  I asked for a sign, and a favored cup that I cherish and drink from daily slipped from my grasp and as if in slow motion, it fell, shattered and strew itself across the floor.

My answer was simple.  Yes, it is broken beyond repair.  Sweep up the shards and toss them out with all the other refuse of  living.  Move on, find a new one.  This life’s too brief to mourn what was, and miss what is yet to be.  I’m moving on, looking forward not back.

It was a sad realization, but a necessary step in my evolution.  A shattered relationship, like the shattered cup needs be discarded.  Like Humpty Dumpty, not all the kings men…, nor I, with any amount of glue or care, can put it back together again.

 Sundays I’m just going to post something out of my gratitude journal, and a picture.  This morning as I drove to Western for my Sunday paper, I had to pull over and sit on the hood of the car just at the crest of 14th Avenue at 21st to gaze at the breaking day.

I am grateful to have witnessed the gorgeous sunrise this Sunday morning. 

Now to curl up with the last drop of wine and a a book – Tonight it’s Rhonda Byrne’s ‘The Magic’.

When did Diet become a verb? I always considered it a noun.  My diet is what I eat day in and day out.  It was never a dirty 4-letter word; a verb for the torture du jour of odd food combinations, deprivations, and blatant lies of the perfect body you will have if only you follow their plan, whoever they are.

I’ve seen friends diet on and off their whole lives.  I know the many diets they tried didn’t work, or it worked for a while.  But for most of them, the moment they started eating their ‘normal diet’ they got bigger than they ever were. 

I blithely, and I admit it, went my own way wondering what the big deal was.  I’ve never dieted a day in my life; I never had to.  I was always on the go, ran or walked every morning, did weights at the Y, practiced yoga 2-3 times a week – yes, even when I had a job, a husband, and an exceptional child at home. 

But as I said in yesterday’s blog, I let go and I’m not happy with the result.  I still refuse to embrace diet as a verb, I just need to remember myself and reinstate all those good things I used to do just for me.  I know I’m still in there somewhere.

This writing a Blog a day is tough (NY resolution).  I’m not used to posting my stream of consciousness blurts.

I often just write by hand stream of consciousness suppressing my internal editor. Then I input it into Word and find myself editing as I go. Then I print it out triple spaced and take a red pen to it.

I’ve written 1200 words for a book review that had to be whittled down to 300-400 words. (Thank you Strunk & White).

Finally, I read it aloud to myself in the mirror – Amazing that those words I thought were gems can fall so flat when read aloud.  Before I submit work to my editor, it has to have a purposeful cadence, it must be prose.

But I promised myself to keep this blog a day resolution.  I’m determined to keep it up even if, as my Ken Roberts says, they are only ‘Mildly Creative’.  I just know some gems will emerge eventually.

Laughing burns calories.  A double helping of Cosby is good for you!

When you laugh, your heart beats faster, blood pressure rises temporarily; you breathe deeper and oxygenate more blood; your body releases endorphins – natural painkillers and you produce more immune cells.  You burn 78 times as many calories as in a resting state.  Your diaphragm, facial muscles and internal organs all get an internal massage.

After laughing, muscles and arteries relax, which eases pain; lowers blood pressure, and drops your pulse to below normal.

Sign up for the joke of the day, read the funnies instead of the news, tune in to a comedy instead of a crime show, or search YouTube for funny pet videos.

So, along with feeding your body better food, and getting your daily walk, laugh a little.

I love my i-phone, I really do.  Since the fire last year, it is my only phone and modem to tether my laptop to the internet, as I did not replace my land line, nor my dsl.  But as with most technology, we only love it when it works for us.

This is not such a day. Suddenly and without warning, it is no longer my friend at least with phone calls.  Since about noon today, callers and callees either don’t hear me or hear me badly.  Didn’t drop it didn’t do anything to it, just suddenly going round a corner it sounded a bip, bip, bip (or sounds to that effect) and that as they say was that.

I spend a good 45 minutes on chat with AT&T, to no avail.  Bertha even called me and confirmed that, yes, it sounded awful as if I’m cutting out.  She hung up, the chat times out and she left me a voicemail, saying to call Apple and good luck. Ah, Customer service?

Of course, I’m a few weeks past the one year extended warranty.  I’m convinced that too much of what we buy today is built to fail at precisely that time – some kind of programmed obsolescence.

I’m turning it off to rest over night, and I’ll deal with it tomorrow.

“After all, tomorrow is another day!” quoth Scarlet.  Yes, Scarlet,  it is. I’m going out on the balcony to enjoy a glass of wine and a glorious sunset and I’ll figure this out tomorrow.

Salut.

She heard the footfall of war on the horizon. 

The ancient call to battle long a hidden heartbeat of human

intolerance rising to crescendo now

become a discordant roar shaking the very earth that holds us.

Soon, too soon, the time was upon her

She could only hope their preparations were enough

to save them from total destruction by the Storm.

How often had humankind been sent back to the cave?

Through how many millennia had they picked themselves up and begun again.

She and her ken saw the signs but few heeded the warnings

now through the inertia that drives such events, the time was upon them

but she had no intention of going back to the cave.  This time

thanks to tireless, relentless planning, they might come out the other side

with enough left to prevent them losing themselves in a generation or two.

Only the sturdy, the able, the well-prepared would survive, and few enough of them,

It would have to be enough – it would have to be,

and we,

we the Wyse will be there.