One of the "events" of the weekend is that my neighbors have decided to cut down the huge, impressive willow tree that sits on the property line between our two houses. The trunk is on their side of the line, so they have the right to cut it, but I can hardly bear that they are going to murder that gorgeous tree. It's one of the things we've loved about living here. They insist that the tree is splitting and that they are worried that it will fall on their house, and certainly, I can understand the fear. They have two small children, after all. My husband and I love the willow, even if it does provide a ton of tiny leaves to clean up during the fall. The neighbors promise to plant a birch tree in place of the willow, and I love birches, too, but we probably won't even be living here when the birch is finally big enough to provide shade or an attractive landscaping feature.
The great tree-cutting is supposed to be today. I was halfway tempted to toilet paper the willow last night as a sort of good-by to it, but being the mature adult that I am (ha ha), I didn't give in to the urge.
We didn't have a lot of trick-or-treaters, though the weather was perfect. My husband had stocked up with far too much candy, much of it the chocolates that I have a hard time avoiding. Because I knew if I touched the Snickers and Butterfingers, one of them would find its way to my mouth, I made him hand out the candy.
I've decided to drive back home on Tuesday to watch election returns at home. We'd thought about hanging out at Obama headquarters in Big Rapids, but no one seemed to know whether there'd be a crowd there or if non-volunteers would be allowed to be present to watch the returns. It occurred to me that this might be a very different night from the election of 2000 that stretched on for weeks, causing all kinds of angst. My deepest hope is that Obama will win overwhelmingly and that the Republicans will read the message: The U.S. is tired of moving backwards, of losing prestige in the world's opinion, of taking away rights, both at home and abroad. We're ready to be a beacon of light in the world again, a symbol of freedom and individual rights. If I could pull a Brave New World shenanigan and rewrite the past eight years of history, I'd erase George W. Bush from the history books. No, I wouldn't, actually. We need to look at these eight years as a huge lesson: If this country gives in to its baser instincts, then what we get is a baser president and government. I hope that the history books for the year 2050 will say that the first decade of the 21st century was remarkable for the stupidity and bad government of the Republican Bush administration. I do not want the Supreme Court to ever again be allowed to handpick the Chief Executive.
It can't happen, but wouldn't it be lovely if President Obama could fire Clarence Thomas and the other rabid right-wing conservatives appointed during the Double-Bush debacle?
I really fussed at my classes the other day for their apathy about this election. I explained to them that we had a chance to make history, regardless of our presidential selection. Apathy pisses me off. I told them, "When your generation is apathetic about the changes that my generation fought so hard to attain, then I feel like you all are just spitting on us and telling us that you don't care that we suffered to obtain more rights, rights that you have and use and take for granted, without caring that rights can be lost as well as gained." One of those rights is the right to vote at age 18. They care passionately whether they can drink alcohol at age 18, but they don't give a damn that they can vote. It doesn't occur to them that the two do have a relationship.
I also lambasted them about the topic of abortion. Because I know they don't know beans about world history, I told them that abortion wasn't new, that women across the centuries have known about certain plants that would work to abort unwanted pregnancies. I told them about the Greeks, who would set out unwanted babies to die of the elements or be torn apart by wild dogs or stolen by the gypsies. I told them about my teen years, when the only abortions that a scared young woman had access to were those horrendous back-alley coat-hanger jobs that usually had some pretty horrific results. And I asked them, "Is that what you REALLY want to do, to return us to that era?" Of course, these are the sons and daughters of the knee-jerk conservative Dutch citizens of this area, so they just think of me as one of those wild-eyed crazy leftist college professors who isn't in touch with "the real world." And I think of them as apathetic, naive, and unsophisticated legacy conservatives who wouldn't know the real world if it bit them in the butt. (Amazingly, they don't see the economic problems as being the result of the Bush years, but as something that is somehow either unrelated to the past eight years or is a residual effect of Democratic policies from the Clinton administration.)
So, here we are, just days from an historic election. I hope my next blog will be celebrating the newly elected President Barack Obama.
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