Yes, I Voted....

and you should too.

I think it is entirely apropos that I was #6 in line this morning.



On the bus this morning, I was amazed that there were 5 young women (average age 21?) there discussing politics. Politics. They were reading from the informational brochures about each ballot resolution, and discussing it all with such... giddiness, glee? ... that I was touched. While I wouldn't take any of them for Rhodes scholars, they grasped the crux of each of the issues and were able to distill that further into their own lingo (Oh-em-jee, other countries are going to look at us silly if that Sarah Palin gets into office! Being a beauty queen shouldn't get you to the White House ) and their own experience (I live in a house with three generations in it - me, my Moms, and my Granny. I was raised up by two women, and I don't see anything wrong if two women or two men want to settle down and raise a kid. It's the same sort of thing)

They wonderfully made politics their own. I haven't seen that in a long time.

They looked beyond race (they were 1 Asian, 1 African-American, and 3 Latinas), beyond income and education (two were working, the rest in community college), and focused on the issues and their choices and their responsibilities.

(One thing was clear - they wanted more choices. The consensus seemed to be it wasn't working as is, but that there wasn't a clear cut solution at play either. They were shrewd in the way that your grade-school educated, older relative is shrewd -- they could sniff out the fertilizer)

But any way you look at it they felt... involved. It was etched on their faces. With pride no less.

I thanked them for an interesting, entertaining ride on the bus. They asked me who I was voting for. I waived goodbye as I got off the bus, feeling good about the future.