misc

Will Work for Macs

MacBook Pro - glowing keyboard

For the third time in my life now, I’ve been directly involved in the purchase of a new Macintosh computer.

The first was my first, an iBook G4 that still serves as my home base computer. The other was helping Katie buy an iMac.

But this one, a 15" MacBook Pro, is strictly professional. It’s the result of our credit union’s umbrella organization, the Jackson Co-Op, taking a chance on my design skills and hiring me as a contract freelancer.

The deal goes something like this: my design skills will be available to non-profits as a Jackson Co-Op service. I’ll make whatever they need, like newsletters, web sites, and – our specialty – giant paper banners. I’ll work on my own, away from work, and the entire thing will be run from the new Mac.

Sure, the extra money will help. And I’ll get a chance to stretch my marketing muscles beyond the credit union. But the new Mac is really what sealed the deal.

And man, it’s a beauty. Fifteen inches of enclosed aluminum, a complete Adobe Create Suite 4 package, the world’s most advanced and gorgeous operating system, and something to do with all that free time I have.

Right?

I’ll be the sole employee of the Jackson Co-Op unless my workload becomes too great for me to handle. If we get super busy, they’ll hire someone to work with me.

My freelance work, in the past, has come in fits and spurts. I won’t get any jobs (which I get strictly from word of mouth and referrals) for a long time, and then a bunch of people will be looking to get projects done. Just last week I had two going at the same time – one big, and one fairly simple.

The solo freelance work I’ve done has been more to keep my skills sharp and to help out local non-profits with their marketing. All too often, I’ve come across a brochure or flyer and though, “Jeez, they need some help.” Some organizations are smart enough to realize this themselves, so they give me a ring.

And that’s not to say I’m some super local talent. There are tons of way more talented designers in Jackson. You just get what you pay for. I purposefully charge a bare-bones rate just to help the non-profits out. I asked for double from for-profit companies because, hey, they can afford it.

Now, I’ll still be doing freelance work, but under the guise of another not-for-profit organization. It’ll no longer be Dave Lawrence, for hire. It’ll be the Jackson Co-Op, and this fella Dave Lawrence, for hire.

But golly. A new MacBook Pro serving as the base of operations? In this case, it can hardly be called “work.”

I’m a bit nervous about the workload. I know I’ll have to give up a few things, (Newton Poetry may have a few fewer articles each week, for instance) but the deal works out on a bunch of different fronts. I’ll be stashing away extra money, helping out local groups, and…oh yes…the Mac thing.

Here I had planned on grabbing a new iMac after the latest operating system, OS X 10.6, comes out. I’ll probably still do that, but now I’ll have an easier time paying for it, and I’ll familiarize myself with OS X 10.5 Leopard (I’ve been running OS X 10.4 Tiger on all my Macs).

So things should get interesting. In the meantime, I’ll be working on infrastructure projects, like the co-op’s web site and mailing lists and so on, while reaching out to local organizations and offering my/our services.

All I need is a “Now Open” sign for my window.

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On ‘Into the Wild’

Americans can be placed in two diametrically-opposed camps: those whoe view Henry David Thoreau’s experiment next to Walden Pond as a great idea, worthy of copying, and everyone else.

I’ve long placed myself in the former category. The idea of spending two years alone in the woods, with a self-built shelter and a bean garden, sounds pretty darned gnarley. Thoreau allowed himself walks into town for shopping and visits with friends, and that would be fine, too. But the romantic ideal behind Walden is enough conjure visions of daily journal entries, long walks in the isolated woods, and lots and lots of book reading.

For that other group of Americans, Thoreau’s experiment sounds like a trip into madness. Living alone in the woods? Finding yourself in solitude with just your thoughts? Cue the spine shivers and dry heaving. For some, an idea like that is not in the cards – now or ever.

I’ve always done well alone. As a child, I could entertain myself for hours. And now, as an adult, I’ve taken several long excursions all by my lonesome, and no suffering ensued.

“I don’t think I could do that all by myself,” people tell me. So it is.

But even the idea of Chris McCandless – the 24-year-old vagabond who starved to death in the Alaskan wilderness and subject of Jon Krakauer’s magnificent Into the Wild – heading out alone and unprepared seems like madness to me.

McCandless, if you’re not familiar with the story, was a well-to-do college graduate who gave away all his money and hit the road. He preferred an uncertain life in the American wilderness to a comfortable, normal middle class existence.

I can respect that. I admire someone who takes the ideals of Thoreau and Tolstoy (or Jesus, for that matter) and other ecstetics and lives them out loud. Living close to the bone is, arguably, the only way to live. For some, giving up all their possessions and lending their life to chance makes our mortal existence more worthy. I dig it.

What I don’t dig is a life led foolishly. If you’re going to take a chance, then you’d better be able to accept the consequences. In McCandless’s case, he paid the ultimate price for his ascetic lifestyle. It didn’t have to be that way.

Krakauer paints McCandless’s tale as a mixture of preperation and cares-to-the-wind gambling, mostly stemming from the kid’s stubborn moralism. McCandless came to idolize Thoreau, Tolstoy, and the stories of Jack London so much that common sense seemed an afterthought. Like taking a canoe down the Colorado River, hoping to reach Baja California and the Pacific Ocean – even though there was no direct route. Or sleeping in his car in a salt flat, only to have a flash flood was everything he owned away.

Breathing the neon of life is a fine way to live, but man – there are always consequences. If I take a cross-country driving trip, sure, I take my chances on exact details. But you can bet I’ve got the general outline planned out, and that I’ve done my research. Life can be exciting and well-thought-out. They’re not mutually exclusive.

All I know is, heading into the Alaskan wilderness with nothing but a 10-pound bag of rice and a rifle is far from proper foresight. It’s suicide. What’s sad is that McCandless probably knew his chance of survival was nil, but the experience? Well, that was everything.

I feel the same pull that McCandless felt, if only to a lesser degree. Tramping off to climb a mountain or hike through the woods in solitude restores some reptilian center in my brain to full health. Thing is, I want to take more trips and experience more adventures sometime in the future. To do that, I need to keep living. I have neither the constitution nor the wherewithal to survive like some Neolithic hunter-gatherer, and I have the humility to recognize that.

It’s a shame that a bright, resourceful, strong-minded young man could’ve had plenty of more adventures if only he hadn’t been so foolish. Hubris is a helluva thing in the face of an uncaring, unsympathetic Nature. Odds are, you’re going to lose.

But all that is obvious. Any idiot can see how foolish McCandless was. What struck me was that McCandless was such a rigid moralist that it cost him his life. In the face of overwhelming odds, the kid had no sense of pragmatism. Even Thoreau, alone in the woods, built a woodshed for the winter. His character was not lessened by his prep work. But like most absolutists, McCandless picked and chose Thoreau’s lessons to fit his worldview. People often pick Bible passages to prop up their evil. McCandless took only those maxims that justified his rash existence.

So he died. Maybe, in his final agonizing moments, he felt justified. The suffering was the living, and starvation brought him closer to the live wires that light the world.

For me, though, I’ll take my adventure with a bit of planning. The sights I’ve seen and the places I’ve been have brought me closer to some Ultimate Experience. A glimpse over the top was all I needed.

To guys like McCandless, they’re not happy unless they’re dangling from the edge, rope frayed from rubbing against their own moral scaffolding.

Lots of luck out there.

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The Best There Ever Will Be

“You can be a good person and do everything right and it doesn’t guarantee you anything.” – Owen Hart

I can place the era that I started watching wrestling again, when I was 13, and it was mostly because of two events: the return of the Undertaker at SummerSlam 1994, and the fact that Bret Hart was the reigning WWE (then, the WWF) champion.

It’s astonishly easy to admit: Bret “Hitman” Hart is a hero of mine.

I can blame Andrew for my renewed interest in the Bret Hart’s career. His video collection is stock-piled with classic WWE pay-per-view events (including all the SummerSlams and Wrestlemanias). We spent a good portion of my time in L.A. – at least at night – watching classic matches from the ‘90s.

I watched wrestling religiously back then, after taking time some time off in my pre-teen years. From 1994-1998, I watched almost every pay-per-view event with my buddies Josh and PJ, and caught many of the weekly TV shows in college. My interest traces as far back as the rivalry between Hulk Hogan and Randy “Macho Man” Savage in the mid ’80s. At least that’s as far back as I can remember.

No matter who came and went, Bret Hart was always my favorite.

Mostly, I think it was his work ethic and overall “averageness” that made me a fan. His Hitman character was simple: technical, proficient wrestler who took on all comers. Bret wasn’t big, he wasn’t flashy, and he didn’t have quite the charisma guys like Hogan or, later, The Rock, had.

But man, he knew his stuff. I just finished his autobiography, and the biggest thing that sticks out is that he was a consumate professional who worked hard and gave everyone an opportunity to shine. His success came as it should have: through dedication and sticking it out. It wasn’t his size or his ego that got him to the top. It was his skill and professionalism. His co-workers respected him for that.

“There was always something different about my fans,” Hart writes in his autobiography. “They really believed in me as a person.”

And that’s true. The Bret Hart in the ring was the same guy as the Bret Hart in the locker room.

Bret Hart was one of the few wrestlers to use his own name. He didn’t appeal to the crowd during his matches. He was a loner, a history buff, and true to the friends who didn’t betray him.

That kind of thing appeals to me. I always respected how Bret Hart’s character, as World Champion, gave everyone a title-shot opportunity – even guys like Doink the Clown. He was an egalitarian.

And good lord, what an excruciating finishing move. The Sharpshooter, a modified Scorpion Death Lock, was intricate and beautiful to watch.

The Undertaker, always my second favorite, had the mood and the atmosphere and the spooky persona down. He was talented, yes, but it was his theatrics that made me a fan. Bret Hart appealed to the average guy in me. When you don’t have a lot of charisma or athletic gifts, you try to out-work everyone. I understood that.

Bret Hart’s hard work paid off in a lot of ways. He’s, by far, the most decorated wrestler of all time: two tag teams championships, two intercontinental championships, seven world titles, two King of the Ring tournaments, various other championships, and so many fan and industry awards (including induction into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2006) it’s impossible to list them all. Again, it’s something I see in myself. Overachievers get my respect.

What’s tragic, however, is what has happened to Bret Hart since November 1997 – the infamous “Montreal Screwjob” that served as his inglorious ousting from the WWE. Since then, it’s been one misshap after another: a so-so career in rival WCW, the death of his fantastically-talented brother Owen in a freak accident, the drug abuse of his fellow comrades, a concussion, a divorce, and – in 2002 – a debilitating stroke after a bicycle fall.

In other words, my childhood hero is human, just like the rest of us, and that’s helped me to respect him even more.

His autobiography lays the imperfections out there: infidelity, a bit of drug and steroid abuse, a chaotic family life. Still, when seen against the tableau of what was going on in the rest of the wrestling world, Bret Hart’s life was pretty tame. That’s why it’s such a shame to read about what’s happened to him since the glory days.

My fear, like his, is that his legacy will somehow be erased – that people younger than me won’t remember what a great performer Bret Hart was.

I suppose that’s why, after I returned from Los Angeles, I immediately hit Amazon and bought his book. For my own mind, I wanted to hear Bret Hart’s story. Maybe it’s my dread that my best days are behind me now, or some strange need for nostalgia, when I watched a purer form of wrestling entertainment than what’s on TV now.

Whatever. It’s been great to relive the days of my boyhood hero. After all, when you grow up with few male role models around, you look up to what’s available at the time. Bret Hart, a hero in his home country of Canada, was one of them.

Of course wrestling is staged and the outcomes are pre-determined. Telling that to a wrestling fan is like telling your parents Santa Claus doesn’t exist. It doesn’t take away the fun, and it doesn’t take away the real people behind all the hooplah and exhibition. They get hurt and they have problems and they deal with real life just like the rest of us do.

To me, Bret Hart was more real than most.

Here’s to you, Hitman.

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Changing Life’s Guitar Strings

I haven’t changed my guitar strings in years. My electric guitar has been sitting in its case for at least two years, while my acoustic still hasn’t forgiven me for my neglect – even though I’ve picked it up more often these past few weeks.

Old strings, though, they break a little easier. They’re cruddy and grimy and – if you haven’t played in a while – are a bit out of tune. New strings not only look shiny and new, but they feel like it, too.

But old strings feel better. You remember the time you strung this new set into your guitar. You remember all the songs you’ve played on them, in front of people or alone, and the ghosts of those songs play in the ether somewhere. Most of the time, your strings will only get changed out of necessity. Either they break or they become unplayable – whatever. Still, you wouldn’t change them if you didn’t have to.

I think about change a lot these days. I think about how our world is changing in ways we don’t even recognize, and we won’t recognize how everything has changed until years later. Time equals a critical eye. Only later will we realize the sand is shifting beneath us.

A Time article has me thinking about how work is changing, and my visit out to see Andrew (and our conversations in LA) just solidified the whole thing. Freelancers are becoming the norm. A “stable job” is a rare, shy beast these days. I see it at work now. Pensions are a thing of the past, benefits are being cut or eliminated, and only recently have our 401(k)s begun to recover. Things are weird out there.

It’s humbling (which, I argue, is a good thing).

Like some hippo in the Niger River, I’ve adapted to be wary of these kinds of changes. But lately that’s changed. I’m more willing to go with the groove, and less likely to stay in the water where it’s cool and safe. It’s probably out of necessity. I read about things like burnout and I think, “Man, that could be me.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is my love of trophies and certificates. I know I’m a vain person, and I deal with it in ways that I hope aren’t cloying to others, but man – give me an piece of etched glass and I glow. Very Gen Y, right? But it’s always been that way. I collected awards in college like Jay Leno collects cars.

In that respect, this year has been terrific. Three national credit union awards, two state-wide credit union awards, and now my “30 and Under” designation – it’s enough to make anyone’s grandma annoy total strangers for longer and longer periods of time (take mine, please).

But even all that’s not enough to keep me happy. Nope. For once, the prospect of change is the stuff excitement is made of. For the first time in my life, I’m embracing the idea of “different.”

I’m working on changing life’s guitar strings. The current ones are brittle and ready to break. Yes, they’re comfortable, and yes, they still sound okay. But I can’t wait around until they snap.

It’s time to be proactive. I need a brighter sound.

Now For Something Completely Different

Next week, I face the first week-long vacation of my adult life where I have no plans.

I’ve never taken time off from work and done nothing.

By “nothing” I mean no cross-country trip, of course. My first dose of vacation time took to me my first solo trip, a long weekend in Chicago, and from then on it’s been 1,000 miles or more. It’s the only way I know how to operate.

But it’s not like I have “nothing” to do. I’ve got an entire list of projects, errands, and favors I can attend to. In fact, I plan to use some of my time off to plan my next giant interstate (or inter-province) trip.

Through May, I’m using the last of my remaining vacation time. There’s an entire week off next week, and then there’s a five-day weekend for Memorial Day later this month. For that, I’ve had a few ideas. I’ve wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail, so I thought about heading down to the Tennessee/North Carolina border and roughing it. Yosemite National Park is also on my to-see list. Part of my big end-of-July trip involves me actually having money, however, and each of those trips seemed costly. What’s a budget-minded person to do?

Here’s the beauty of Facebook: I planned a long weekend in Los Angeles with Andrew thanks to a few wall postings. How’s that for planning? All it will cost me is the plane ticket and money for food. And perhaps a Dodgers game.

All that’s in the future. Next week, though, I plan on tying up any loose ends in my life. That includes thinking seriously and deeply about what I want to do with the next five years. Where do I want to work? Where do I want to live? What else do I want to do?

My mom’s death left me introspective. It’s not that I didn’t see it coming, but I realized that I’ve been stuck in a rut. Mom dying woke me out of it. So from here on out, I’m not going to be so nervous about trying on new things, tasting new experiences, and quit living life day to day as I have been.

We get comfortable. You’ve probably felt it yourself.

Then we wake up 20 years down the road and have a lot of unchecked items off our big To-Do List. I don’t want that to happen.

So that’s what I’ll do next week: work on the next big project. I’ll have plenty of free time to think, do, and plan.

On Resting, And Living, In Peace

Mom and me

My mother passed away last Wednesday. She left us peacefully, in her sleep.

Her death stands in stark contrast to the freewheeling life she led. Us kids, my oldest sister and me, were merely along for the ride.

Many that know me know that I cut off any relationship with my mom in high school. It wasn’t due to any lack of love, but I had my own self-preservation to think about. A decent life could not co-exist with my mom.

I’ve reacted to the news the way anyone would react to the death of a long-lost aunt or distant cousin. There’s that tickle in the brain when you lose someone you love but have no real relationship with: it hurts a little, but only a little.

I just finished reading The Grapes of Wrath, and in the book the character of Ma Joad becomes the head of the family after instability rocks the ground underneath the Joad men. Through her steady hand and strong will, Ma Joad becomes the solid foundation of the Joad “fambly” – despite the move cross-country to a state full of unknowns.

My own life has lacked one continuous “Ma Joad” figure. When I was young, my Grandma Bonnie (my mother’s mother) was there for me. As I grew up, my Grandma Maxine (my dad’s mother) and my Grandpa Bill (my mother’s grandfather) helped me along until I moved in with my dad right before high school. I needed the help because my own mother was the anti-Ma Joad: a constant source of chaos, instability, and high drama.

But all that is gone, now.

My sister gave me an old photo album Monday night, when her, my grandma, and me paid respects to my mom in our own, traditional way. Inside were pictures from when my parents were still together and I was a newborn. These pictures, combined with many others I have from my childhood, reveal the chimera that was my mother. Sweet, fun-loving, easy to laugh – this is what I remember and saw in those pictures. In fact, it’s obvious that she cared about me as a baby. Then there was the ugly side.

Which is why looking through the pictures points out my mom’s tragedy. A person so vibrant and so happy eventually ruined her own life with drugs and alcohol. Things could have been so much different.

As it was, I never had that sense of “fambly” or stability that I read about in Grapes. I attended 10 different elementary schools, three in the 5th grade, and four different junior highs. We lived in more houses and apartments that I can remember. We were homeless for a while. Life was a whirlwind, and that kind of living has a tremendous effect on kids.

So there are other things, besides pictures, that my mother left us. For myself, I’ve learned over the years that I have a neurotic attachment to stability. I have my schedule, and my routine, and I hate it when things don’t go “according to plan.” I show up early, and I fucking hate moving. The direct result of my mother’s chaotic life was an aversion to chaos; I swung toward order and ritual, and I swung hard.

My sister – my poor, poor sister – is another story entirely. She bore the full brunt of my mother’s behavior, and she deals with the consequences ever day. And because she never left my mother behind, my sister is having the most trouble dealing with my mom’s death.

But even she said, at dinner the other night, “I kind of feel relieved.”

This is the legacy of my mom. Being with her was like living in Florida, knowing there’s a high possibility that a strong hurricane would come and blow your shit out to sea.

I chose to up and move to my dad’s when I was 14, in search of a stable household and a parent who didn’t abuse themself or those around them, but I’m sure in some ways my mom never left me. She was always outside the boarded-up windows I built for myself, howling away and wrecking havok.

It’s sad that we all feel relieved now that she’s dead, because we should be feeling something else. Not sadness, not peace, but that we lost something important to our lives.

That’s not how it happened, and so I haven’t felt much at all in the week since she’s been gone. I did such a good job of keeping her out of my life for the past few years that I didn’t really lose anything when she passed. She was gone to begin with, in my eyes.

Now she’s finally at peace. And so am I.

Hit the Road, Jack

My life is renewed when tires meet the road.

It’s always been that way, for as far back as I can remember. When I feel pressed down, or stressed, or worried, I hit the road and I’m made whole. Maybe it’s the self-induced isolation, or maybe it’s giving myself time to think and unwind and enjoy the scenery. I don’t know enough to explain it, but I know that it works.

So it was this weekend, when I left town to see my good college friends Andrea and Keith. On the way to see Andrea in Harrisburg, PA, I took a small section of the old Lincoln Highway – what is now US-30. I’ve been to Pennsylvania twice, and driven through it twice, and have never seen much of the state because it was always dark when I drove through. It’s a beautiful Commonwealth, full of hills and trees and old American farms, and traveling down an old highway reminded me of the Route 66 trip, if only briefly.

My visit to Keith’s was an exploration in the truly unknown. Nobody thinks of Columbus, OH when they think of big American cities, but I do now. It’s a fine town, complete with a fully-operational Apple Store and a (ahem) major American university. Keith made an excellent host and tour guide, and gave me a whole-day’s respite from the road. I like driving, but I also like not moving for a while.

Monday, my birthday, had me hitting the road once again, knowing that when I got back home things would go back to normal. Sure, it’s nice to return home from a long trip, but I dread the part of me that feels like I never left in the first place. The road’s romance is short-lived, it seems, and I only get the benefit in the doing. And maybe the remembering, days and weeks and years later.

I drive to escape, mostly. To get out of town, to Go Somewhere, and leave the everyday behind. I surely can’t drink and eat like I do when I’m on vacation. And I can’t suspend life’s rules like I do when I’m on the road. All I can do is take a little piece of the road home with me. See this big, beautiful country we live in. Perhaps take some pictures, too.

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Standing At The Waterline

“Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.” – Hunter S. Thompson, 1986

As General Motors and Chrysler crumble and teeter like a top-heavy Jenga game, I can’t help but feel apathetic. These are the people who inspire the need for a new car. In fact, their whole business (or lack of) depends on Americans buying vehicles that lose their value the minute they leave the dealership lot.

How strange, I think. But maybe not. Our whole economic system, after all, depends on the new, the shiny, the weird. Maybe it plays to the Grand Ego of our country – the one that says we’re the best, so we need the best.

I’ll probably never buy a new car, so my economic decisions won’t ever help to save an ailing auto company. GM will survive or die without me. There’s comfort in that thought; I have no individual responsibility for saving a company that was once the symbol and thermometer of American progress. I’ve checked out of the system. No fault of mine.

Used vehicles are the lifeblood of my place of employment, and there’s dignity in that thought. When all the banks are dying or being bought up like on-sale antiques, credit unions stand apart thanks to their not-for-profit status, their democratic decision-making, and their responsbility to serve the underserved. I didn’t know a lot of this when I got the job, but as the years have gone on, I take pride in my industry’s philosophy – probably because it matches my own.

Used cars. Used Macs. Used CDs on eBay. Even used clothing, when it smells decent. Perhaps I should have been born in the Depression. Lord knows I’m still lucky enough to have a job in the current one.

Our generation may have a wake-up call coming. America’s ego has been made flesh in every generation since the Baby Boomers, and while our generation is politically active and commercially cynical, it still thinks a lot of itself.

Republicans, and a lot of Democrats, see nothing wrong with this. They’ve been selling the idea of America as a Place That Does No Wrong for a long, long time. It’s only lately that our giant national id has been laid low. Being humble is not an American trait that comes naturally, but lately we’ve had no choice.

I know this personally. 2008 was a stupid, stressful, bumble-headed year for me. It taught me a lot about my limits and faults, and I’ve thought a lot about them this winter. It’s been good for me.

Which is why I can only wish the same for all of us, as a country and a people. The world is too nasty and too chaotic to keep our national credit card on an over-the-limit status. We’re now at the waterline, as Dr. Thompson mentioned, and the sharks are circling nearby.

That adrenaline rush we feel in our gut is evolution at its most basic: fight or flight. Which way do we go? Do we strive for a more meaningful and fulfilling life? Or do we seek meaning in a life looking for a bailout?

We’ve been at the top of the food chain for a long time now. But the sharks have been around a lot longer, and they have no ego to keep in check.

It’s Morning Again In America

It was about 4 p.m. yesterday that I stopped caring about being a participant in the election and wanted to be merely a spectator. With the highest voter turnout ever and hundreds of volunteers spread across Jackson county, helping to turn the “birthplace of the Republican Party” blue for the first time since LBJ, my modest phone-banking efforts Tuesday afternoon were strained. My ear was rubbed raw, my voice was scratchy, and I had been up since 5:30 a.m.

Besides, I had a hot pot of Election Night chili waiting for me at home. And friends, you can’t argue with that.

But what an incredible ride. I think the New York Times put it best:

The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country.

It was a catharsis of sorts for me, as well, after the incredibly upsetting weekend I had. That Mark Schauer commercial I was in? The Jackson Citizen Patriot’s Chris Gautz suspected something from the beginning. How did all those unemployed people get into that factory, he wondered.

Then, on Friday, The Adrian Telegram broke the news. Little ol’ me and my one-hit-per-day personal blog injects some extra controversy into the campaign. Suddenly I’m an “actor,” and the entire premise of Schauer’s ad is thrown into question. This weekend, the Battle Creek Enquirer picked up the story, and Chris Gautz from the CitPat writes an “I told you so” column.

And it was all kicked off by a press release from the Walberg campaign. Someone had found my blog post, and they were telling all.

First, a confession: the whole deal was totally my fault. I should have kept my big mouth shut. Despite Walberg pulling his own shenanigans and generally being a big creep, it was naive of me to think that no one would stumble on my personal blog.

This all went down Thursday, so the rest of the weekend I kept my head down, made phone calls for the Schauer campaign, and tried to make up for whatever damage I had caused. Tuesday night I even skipped the big Democratic party at the Michigan Theatre; I just wanted it all to be over.

Luckily, Schauer won the election after the returns from the local cities – Jackson, Battle Creek, and Adrian – came in reliably for the Dems. My original thoughts behind volunteering for Schauer (Obama will win Michigan, but the 7th Congressional race would be much tighter) turned out to be spot-on, because we didn’t know Schauer won until Wednesday morning. So my little controversy amounted to little more than a blip on the local political radar, though it was enough for folks to pick on me at the Democratic office.

I spent yesterday morning at the St. John’s polling location, not far from downtown, then I came back to the Dem office to eat lunch and make calls for the rest of the afternoon. It was amazing to see such a hub of activity: Obama voters by the dozens streaming in and out (and an incredible amount of African Americans helping), phone lines buzzing, and the mood of the place steadily rising as we all felt the Change coming. A lady came up from Oklahoma to help out with the election, and one of the guys she called was so excited about the day’s events he asked her out on the spot, right there over the phone.

With the local elections now out of my hands, I went to grandma’s for a bit, and then came home to concentrate on watching CNN’s iPhone-like touchscreen numbers and listening to MSNBC’s commentary for the rest of the night, watching state after incredible state fall for Obama. I heard Tom Delay, that know-nothing fool, predict that it would be Nancy Pelosi, not Barack Obama, that takes control of the country. After Ohio went blue, my grandma called crying.

The Michigan ballot proposals, one for legalizing marijuana for medical use and one supporting stem cell research, passed in a state that, only four years ago, voted to add a one-man, one-woman marriage clause to our constitution. Incredible.

On several levels, this will be my first active, participatory election. It’s the first I’ve given my heart to a politician that had a slim chance of winning. It’s the first my name saw shame in the local newspapers. It’s also the first that I can say, with all honesty, has made me question whether this whole political thing is right for me.

The amount of energy it takes to run something like a Congressional race is staggering. It’s like having sex for for a full year with someone you can’t stand the site of, and – at the climax – you have a 50/50 chance of either getting off or having a stroke mid-coitus.

But like sex, most of the fun comes in the participation. In college, I liked campaigning far more than I ever liked governing. The thought that a few of my efforts helped stem the tide of idiocy is comforting; even my slip-up couldn’t stop Schauer from winning.

As Andrea said, I wonder what’s next. My God, can we really look forward to at least two years of campaign-free news cycles? Will the economic turmoil cast us over the cliff? Will reason and decency and hope be enough to undo the damage done to our wonderful country?

I like to think so. This morning my thoughts reached out to Ronald Reagan, my childhood president, when he said, “It’s morning again in America.” Barack Obama is our generation’s president just like John F. Kennedy was my grandma’s president, and just like FDR was my great grandpa’s president. It remains to be seen what kind of impact he’ll actually have in the White House, but who can doubt things will be different from here on out.

Hope springs eternal.

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Americans Are Masochistic In Maine

You start throwing around phrases like “economic downturn” and “…not since the Depression,” and it makes one question the sanity of cutting out of town on another cross-country trip – where even the Hamptons are facing declining real estate values.

Gas. Wheat and milk. The price of everything, except houses, is going up, and here I sit on the edge of discovery, ready to journey into the heart of Old America and look into our revolutionary past. What shaped us as a country? Where did the Founding Fathers come from? Is fresh-off-the-boat crab meat really that tasty?

The answers to these questions, and more, I hope to find when I set out on May 16 to the original colonies. I’ll land on my own version of Plymouth Rock, I’ll walk down the streets of Philadelphia, bread in hand, and I’ll swim in the same pond that taught Thoreau to abandon his fellow citizens and embrace the wilderness as the last respite of a sanity-seeking intelligence. If he could spend time in prison to protest his country’s war-mongering, then surely I can sit on the banks of the Delaware and find out if Washington’s late-night crossing was worth the trouble.

Jefferson taught that a government should keep its powers within the confines of the Constitution, except while he was president, and so I don’t feel so bad taking my government money and putting it into my gas tank to run wild all over New England. If Route 66 was a quest to discover the world and my place in it, this trip is a journey to the roots of our country. What makes us tick? Where do we come from? Why can you talk about the weather with anyone, anywhere, anytime and not sound like a raving lunatic?

I’ve decided that I renting a car for this trip would be a waste. The states are so small, and the driving so non-perilous, that my little Suzuki should do just fine. It would have croaked on the side of some Colorado mountainside, but I believe the rolling hills of Vermont will not be such a chore.

I’ve also decided that, since the states are so close together, the back roads and state highways will be more than adequate to see everything I want to see in a reasonable amount of time.

The trip begins where our Declaration of Independance did: in Philadelphia, a logical starting point to a trek so historical. I’ll lay eyes on the Liberty Bell, and Mr. Franklin’s printing shop, and the building where demigods, as Jefferson called them, met and decided to try out a nation-sized experiment. From there it’s down to Maryland, up to Delaware and New Jersey, and straight through for a night (or two) in Boston and on to Maine, where I’ll stream through Route 1 and 3 on back to New Hampshire. Vermont is a resting stop before tackling Saratoga and upstate New York, with a finish through wherever I think the Adams Family (presidential, not kooky) would want to see last.

These trips are the travel equivalent to a Greatest Hits album: not a full picture, but a quick browse-through of the catalog. I may not get to a Red Socks game, but I’ll be sure to grab a picture of Fenway if I’m in the neighborhood.

The vacation time is set, the money is in the bank – what I need now are a few B&B ideas and a map of rest stops for those nights I feel like braving the New England spring nights in my spacious backseat. Nothing beats an economic downturn like a trip out of town and a few adventures along the way. Clinton and Obama can fight for the few remaining states until they’re blue-er in the face; I’ll be finding out about the prize they so greedily seek.

All that’s left is the getting there.

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