I just listened to Barack Obama's rebuttal speech on Moveon.org. I am 100% on his bandwagon now. This man NEEDS to be our next president. I really feel that he is genuine in his desire to change this in our country for the better. Please, check out his speech if you have time.
"We have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle--as we did in the OJ trial--or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina--or as fodder for the nightly news.
"We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.
"We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
"We can do that.
"But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
"That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
"This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
"This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
"This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
"I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation--the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
"There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today--a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
"There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
"And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
"She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
"She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
"Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
"Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, 'I am here because of Ashley.'
"'I'm here because of Ashley.' By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
"But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins."
My greatest pet peeve at work right now is, of course, grammatically related. The managers and other hostesses always say, "That table's been sat," or "I sat that table." WHAT????? I know that people have trouble conjugating and differentiating between "sit" and "set" and "lie" and "lay" but "SEAT" and "SIT"?????? I'm chagrin to admit that I didn't catch it at first and just thought that it didn't sound right. But once I figured it out, I was appalled. I am appalled! "Sat" is the past tense of the intransitive verb, "sit". The correct word my co-workers refuse to use is "seated" for the past tense for "to seat". "I seated that party at table 123," not "I sat that table at table 123." I think that it sounds really uneducated. But, I guess the whole sheep mentality thing is part the perpetuation of this error. I pointed it out to a few people and they think I'm crazy and get this - WRONG! (Well, maybe I am a little crazy, who gets upset about things like this but me and the Grammar Girl audience?) And these are people in the process of obtaining college degrees! A few people admitted that I sound more correct, but they said that they like to say it the wrong way better. I'm not going to let it go, but I won't point it out to people at work anymore. I guess all I can do is use the correct word and hope that it catches on.
though i feel really slothful and lazy, to be completely honest, i'm enjoying this faux life of leisure i've been living on the east coast. it's so nice to have so much time on your hands. nothing is urgent and there's always tomorrow to get something done. and there is so much time to bake, clean, watch movies, blog, facebook, chat, etc.
but i really miss hanging out with friends. we have no friends here. and it's been okay for the most part because my husband and i are both introverts and we are really best friends, so we are okay just the two of us. but then i see people posting pictures of going out to eat and at different events or just hanging out and sadly, that type of experience seems like an event from the past.
