Sisters

I went down to Zuccotti Park today with Sarah, but I didn't take any pictures. We walked all around the neighborhood, zigzag-ing through the tourists and endless barricades, police and horses. History and the passing of time are the themes that occupy my mind, especially today when we were walking through the tent city. There have been tent cities in New York before. I hazily remember Tompkins Square Park as a kid, and Central Park was filled with people struggling to make it through the depression in the early 1930s. I wonder how history will remember the people down in the park now? I can't say I really understand the message, but my thoughts are with them as the nights get longer and the frost sets in.

I will say this, it is a great country that lets such voices be heard. These freedoms have not been lightly won, and they are to be cherished. There are many places in the world today were you can and would be killed for much less. Here are two sisters, ancestors of mine on my grandmother Roys Jeffris' side of the family. "Aunt Hart" from Connecticut on the left and "Grandmother Roys" on the right. These are probably from the 1860s. Many voices were left out of the political conversations back then, and in the wide eye of history, that was 15 minutes ago.

Working Life WALL OF FAME: Michael Bloomberg

Bloomberg sent me a signed picture, which is going right up on my wall, right next to my framed notice of jury exemption until 2017. Thank you Mr. Mayor!

archives: Thailand, 2005

I am so saddened by what is going on in Thailand, and their neighbor India. I love it there, everywhere, and hope to return before too long.

archives: Washington, DC, 2004

This is from April of 2004 when I went to DC for the pro-choice rally on the mall. The weather and scenery that day seemed out of the ordinary to me. Washington seems to be on the mind these days for me and many others. Sometimes the glimmer of hope is almost too powerful and painful to really see, and in this way I have felt that politics has been something unmentioned for some eight years now, wars, terrorism, patriot acts and the like. But with the new administration, at least it isn't scary to go to DC, and to hope that maybe things will change, for the better. A speedy end this needless war and I would be content for some time.

Angela Davis at the Cooper Union

Angela Davis at the Cooper Union 10/30/08, originally uploaded by dirtystan.

I went with my mom to hear Angela Davis talk about the prison system, Obama, race, and historical context. It was interesting. She quoted from Obama's speech on race that he made in March, and wondered why any discussion on race was absent and seemingly not welcome in this election, which I hadn't really thought about. Angela is pretty cool.

When I was walking out I was thinking, shit, I can definitely NEVER get elected to anything now.....Bill Ayers was my nursery school teacher and I go to lectures by people who used to be on the FBI's 10 most wanted list.

Watch this: Damon Weaver, 5th grader in FL interviews Joe Biden

this sort of thing always makes me very happy.

Is she really this stupid???

AAAAGGGGHHHHHH!!!!

Bill Ayers was my nursery school teacher. Seriously.

Below is a letter I sent to the New York Times today:

Letter to the Editor:

What makes a radical? Is it early learning, or your parents beliefs passed along? I am a liberal, yet American to the core, the descendent of passengers on the Mayflower according to my grandmother, yet Bill Ayers was my nursery school teacher. I turned out fine and I’ve never had the inclination to bomb anyone. So when I read, “Senator John McCain joined in the attacks on Thursday on Senator Barack Obama for his ties to the 1960s radical William Ayers as he told an angry, raucous crowd that “we need to know the full extent of the relationship” I feel I must add my two cents. These people do realize that Mr. Obama is a United States Senator, do they not? Not to mention that the Weather Underground was active when Mr. Obama was a child himself.

Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn worked at a day care center called BJ’s Kids on Manhattans’ Upper West Side in the late seventies. Only years later, after Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn had been pardoned by the government did my parents realize who they had been. My mom remembers BJ’s kids as an unruly operation, where she protested the practice of the children being sent home with whatever jacket or mittens happened to be closest, as she had knitted my winter accessories herself. And the time they took all the kids to a No-Nuke demonstration somewhere just outside of the city without letting the parents know in advance about the field trip. I guess I must have been mumbling leftist rhetoric that evening at home and she knew something funny had happened at school that day. Day care centers in the city were hardly regulated back then and many such home-grown operations supported the burgeoning crop of babies from aging hippies like my parents; full disclosure: my mom volunteered for the Chicago Seven during their trial in 1969, writing press releases in Chicago.

So when John McCain and Sarah Palin and others intent on making you forget what this election is really about and bring up Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground, who no one really remembers nowadays anyway, I hope everyone remembers that Barack Obama was a child when the Weather Underground did their dirtiest work. Also that I was a child when Bill Ayers helped me learn to tie my shoes and find my winter mittens, and I am not a terrorist and neither is Barack Obama. The only people looking childish in this situation are, well, John McCain and Sarah Palin. Barack Obama is the only candidate that really has a plan to get this country back on track and I plan to be in Washington to watch him be sworn in to office in January.

- quotation taken from: McCain Questions Obama-Ayers Relationship By Elisabeth Bumiller
October 9, 2008, NYT

I like T Rex, but this is ridiculous.

This is worth a look-see, folks, especially if you are still undecided about who should be given the keys to the country.

Register to vote by October 10th!

- In person: You can register in person at your county Board of Elections. To find your local office go to www.vote.nyc.ny.us/offices.html

- On the web: Register to vote online at www.rockthevote.com

This election is different and it matters what you think

It makes me crazy and sad at the same time to listen to friends and colleagues of mine who are supporters of Obama yet say that the election is going to be won by McCain/Palin. It might be. That's not the point. Why give up now when we have such a good shot and things are going the Democrats way? It often seems to me that people bring so much of their own pain upon themselves. Call me an "elitist" crazy liberal, which I guess I am, but if you imagine yourself a loser, that is what you shall be, but if you know that you will be alright, that is what will be as well. Obama knows this, and that is one of the reasons why he has been so successful, in life, and in this campaign. The modern Republican party appears to be primarily concerned with abortion, the death penalty and the NRA, but that's a bait and switch to hard working people who are just looking for the strongest leader. They have no faith in Americans who are seeing the economic life of this country slide across the oceans and think on election day it all comes down to which candidate goes to church more often. I think America is smarter than that. Don't you?

Everyday, imagine President Obama making a speech on the veranda of the Rose Garden at the White House, and read this