Kamala Harris crop art turns up in Kansas field (hat tip to CT for both images!)
It has been no secret with my friends and family (or anyone who would listen, actually) that Joe Biden was not my first choice for the Democratic presidential nominee, nor was Bernie Sanders. As much as I appreciated their experience and their policies, I kept spouting that I was tired of "old white men" running the show. I wanted Elizabeth Warren, d*mmit, and she appeared to be the front-runner for a while, but then...
However, Kamala Harris was indeed my first choice for Vice President, and I was delighted when Joe Biden picked her as his running mate. All this to say, I've been heavily immersed in the Democratic National Convention the previous four nights, and am now convinced of Biden's assets (of course I was always going to vote for him!). He has proven himself not only to be wise, and on the right (meaning correct!) side of justice, but also genuine. He has turned his personal grief into political passion, and his record cannot be ignored. He seems to truly possess a moral compass.
The convention was exactly what I needed to re-calibrate my mindset, and each night I signed off feeling even more hopeful and energized at such smart and caring representation. The myriad of faces felt like *my* America... a diversity of age, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference. I cried multiple times during each evening... my litmus test of what feels honest and equitable and kind.
I realize what I'm saying next will sound closed-minded, but I'm saying it anyway: I will not watch one minute of the Republican National Convention, and subject myself to the venomous spouting of their hatred and division. Nope, not gonna do it.
Since it is indeed Feel Good Friday below are, in my opinion, five highlights of the DNC (although there were so many more to choose from). As one of the Roll Call delegates said, "It's Joe Time!".
~ ‘It is what it is’: How Michelle Obama’s ‘epic shade’ won the DNC’s opening night: Halfway through her closing speech at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night, Michelle Obama shifted to address what she called the “cold, hard truth.”
~ Democratic National Convention’s Roll Call Showcases Voices from Across America: Over a span of about 30 minutes, viewers traveled to 57 states and territories and heard from teachers, small business owners, essential workers and elected Democrats.
~ The Democratic National Convention used John Prine's last recording for a COVID-19 memorial video: In one of the night's more somber moments, the Democrats broadcast an in memoriam video for the 170,500 people who have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. One of those Amerians who died from complications COVID-19 was the great singer-songwriter John Prine, and his final recording, "I Remember Everything," was the soundtrack to the memorial.
~ Obama issues a dire warning about American democracy in stunning rebuke of Trump: From the Philadelphia ground where the American experiment was born, one former president -- in a stunning prime-time address to the nation he once led -- warned that his successor was on the cusp of destroying democracy itself.
~ Joe Biden takes on Trump-era traumas in career-defining speech: If Joe Biden becomes the 46th American President, his speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday night will be seen as the moment when the destiny of a man and his nation converged.
Also, "Before Hillary Clinton spoke from her home in Westchester County, the convention featured a video montage of women voting, protesting and testifying before Congress over the years. It included black-and-white images from 1920 and images from 2017, after President Trump had taken office and women marched in protest wearing vivid pink knitted caps. In clips stitched into the montage, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke before members of the United States Senate; Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington reclaimed her speaking time from Attorney General William P. Barr at a hearing; Mrs. Clinton herself, eight years before she became the first woman nominated for president by a major party, spoke of failing to shatter “that highest, hardest glass ceiling” but putting “about 18 million cracks in it.” I was ridiculously impressed with the video, and wanted to include it here, but I cannot seem to find it anywhere! Anyone who has better luck than I, *please* send me the link in a Reply (which I will then include in my blog post) and I will bake and mail you vegan cookies (or hand-deliver, if you're local... 😄 )
P.S. As soon as I hit Publish, I am going to donate money to Joe Biden, and will do so again in September and October. In November, I will put my mouth/VOTE where my money was!
NR: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
SONG(S): Kamala!, a Randy Rainbow song parody (thanks to JudiS for the heads-up!)/Sweet Kamala by Friction Farm
BOOK(S): The Truths We Hold: by Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris: Rooted in Justice by Nikki Grimes, Laura Freeman (Illustrator)
POEM: Kamala Harris: U.S. Senator by Alejandro Escudé
My divorce mitigator
had an office across the street
from a Bed Bath & Beyond;
it was a huge store, and I thought of going there
the way one thinks of going
somewhere one happens to pass by
and never does because I needed to park
underneath a twenty story building
to meet my ex wife and this other woman
who we hired to file the divorce paperwork
and to suggest how we might split
amicably—and I remember, quite distinctly,
the way one remembers something
that was part curiosity and part pain,
my ex-wife pointing out the sign on the office
next door to the mitigator: Kamala Harris,
US Senator. It was such a plain
looking door, brown, as the floor was brown,
brown my feeling as my ex-wife noticed this.
I remember thinking how interesting
it was that she pointed it out, both of us
starstruck by a stupid brown door
with a name on it, the name of the woman
who had just faced down Joe Biden,
a woman who rented an office
on the seventh floor of this nondescript building
on Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles
where I was meeting with a mitigator
and the woman I was married to
for seventeen years, who I had
two kids with, and who was now divorcing me
while simultaneously pointing out
the name on a door: Kamala Harris,
and the electric blue Tarantino sky
behind it all, and the bathroom
that was across the same hallway
for which you needed to ask for the key
and how I asked once and went in
and felt a tightness in my chest,
I thought I was having a heart attack
though I wasn’t, it was more an existential thing,
as in where am I and what is happening?
I needed to take a break from negotiating
the way politicians negotiate,
the way they bicker on bright stages
that are just stages and nothing more.
[Alejandro Escudé: “Life is surreal. There are these moments of divine yet absolutely useless premonition. Harris showed up in the tapestry of my life the way the poem describes. I’m cynical, so I think it means nothing. Will she become Vice President? I don’t know. But I do know that this incident occurred, and I remembered it when Biden chose Harris as his running mate.”]
QUOTE(S): "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Give light and people will find the way." ~ Ella Baker
"History says
Don’t hope on this side of the grave
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.’” ~ Seamus Heaney
