Category Archives: Oh My Ohio

Go vote

My mom just called me to say that a woman working the desk at the OSU Medical Center told her she wouldn’t vote for Obama because “he’s told everybody that he won’t swear in on the Bible.” I can’t even find that particular rumor online – it’s obviously a conflation of multiple untruths.

Perhaps anyone too lazy to do the 30 seconds worth of research to debunk these patenty false claims is also too lazy to withstand long voting lines, but perhaps not. If you need backup against the uninformed in the next 24 hours, don’t forget to use Snopes and Factcheck.org.

And if you haven’t voted, go do it now. Or plan to take the day off work tomorrow with a book or Gameboy or knitting project or crossword puzzles or exercise plan and some snacks and a minor pain reliever (particularly if you have any joint or back problems). Try to enjoy the company of your fellow voters. Apparently standing in line can even help you burn calories.

Here are some stretches you can do to relieve tension while you wait.

Go.

Vote.

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Dancing in the streets for Obama

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2136578&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1
Obama Rally from Tracy on Vimeo.

This afternoon in Columbus, in front of the Ohio Statehouse just before Michelle and Barack Obama spoke. It’s hard to hear, but “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” and “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher” are inspiring the moves.

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The Confederate ghosts of my neighborhood

In the two weeks between closing on our house and moving in a couple of years ago, I had anxiety dreams about my neighborhood. Once home to Camp Chase, a Union military base and prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers, this cemetery is all that still stands.
I dreamed that the ghosts of these men wandered the streets here at night. And that there were so many of them, I’d have to drive through a fog of gray, opaque bodies just to get home from the grocery store.
We took a walk to the cemetery today — a perfect All Saints’ Day — just after watching pundits on HBO joke that this moment in history calls for a leader, specifically “someone like Lincoln, not someone who’s winkin‘.” It seemed appropriate to pay respects at the graves of 2,260 former countrymen, 2,260 former enemies, 2,260 men supposedly mourned by a “gray lady” at dusk who searches the tombstones for the one with her husband’s name.
The site is crunched between stark emblems of urban life. There is an ugly apartment building full of one-room flats and the “Dari Twist” – an ice cream stand with dozens of soft-serve flavors. A platform area that was likely built as a place for annual ceremonies that honor the dead is surrounded by a moderate amount of garbage and graffiti.
A group of skater punk teens filed in as we got ready to leave, settling in for a visit on the platform. They smoked cigarettes and noshed on Halloween candy. Two of them kissed each other as we took a last look at a cannonball that had been fired in a civil war battle, set in stone by the gate.

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The early voting experience

My mom called me yesterday morning to ask me whether I’d gotten a flu shot or voted yet. I’d feel better when I got those things out of the way, she assured me. So I ticked one off my list yesterday.

The line snaked back and forth like an amusement park ride, only this one was full of people shuffling their feet, text messaging on cell phones, or scratching their names and addresses onto cards while poll workers made sure to give a clipboard and pen to anyone who needed them.

“It will take about two hours,” a police officer told us as we joined the end of the line. There were groans and shrugs, but not one of us budged.

I chatted quietly with two women on either side of me, both clutching Democratic party sample ballots. We made pacts that we’d save each others’ place in line if someone had to pee. We found out that all three of us made a habit of voting no matter what, but we all saw people desert the lines in 2004, unwilling or unable to take the time.

This time, people with canes, people with squirmy, unhappy babies, college students with sociology homework and people in wheelchairs quietly waited in the line. We talked about Florida, where we heard that some people were already waiting in seven-hour lines because they wanted to be counted, just as we did. We talked about how we weren’t going to take any chances by waiting until Tuesday.

We marveled at the massive, diverse crowd – probably about half African-American voters, of every age. It seemed like more than half of the room was carrying Democratic party sample ballots, including one older woman in a white sweatshirt that said “Jesus’ All-Star Team: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter and Me.” A middle-aged woman reading Night by Elie Weisel used her ballot as a bookmark, as did a young one, her nose buried in Kabul Beauty School. by Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson.

One man argued loudly with his car insurance company on his bluetooth headset for fully half an hour, at one point claiming that he was currently driving his car. One of my line companions warned us that we were about to be run over.

We were a little sore and cranky by the time we got in, but it was not quite and hour and a half before we reached the big room, full of private cubes were we could fill out our paper ballots, seal them in an envelope, deposit them into the giant steel ballot boxes and get our ‘I voted” stickers.

There was something gratifying about marking my choices in ink on clear, easy-to-read ballots. I was relieved not to entrust my precious vote to the software of a Republican company. I was relieved to see so many people so hell-bent on voting. I was relieved, because four years ago, I didn’t feel outnumbered by people who disagreed with me, I felt distrustful of and angered by the voting process.

My eyes welled up as I left. I grabbed an “I voted early for Barack Obama” sicker from one of the volunteers in the parking lot and went home.

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Aw shucks, Opie

http://www2.funnyordie.com/public/flash/fodplayer.swf

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

A few days ago, Jill Miller Zimon from Writes Like She Talks put out a call for some Chicken Soup for the Swing State Soul to help us slog through these last few pre-election days. I’m trying to come up with some, and you should too.

In the meantime, this video by Ron Howard, with special guest appearances by Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler, is just freaking adorable pre-election/Halloween candy for the ’60s or ’70s child soul.

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Falling in Yellow Springs

Before gas prices inflated, we used to take regular sojourns over to Yellow Springs, home of Antioch, Dave Chappelle and, as one resident once told me, a population dominated by psychologists and artists. We took the ride over for our first visit in a long while yesterday, ostensibly for an artists’ studio tour. Mostly we just enjoyed the town’s usual spots, made a little more festive by the artistic theme of the weekend.
At sunset, we headed over to Clifton Gorge, and walked along the rim, which Declan inexplicably described as looking “like the North side of Chicago.” A twisted tree trunk on the path.
Obligatory fall leaf shot.

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Blog Action Day 2008 – Poverty

Today is Blog Action Day, when over 10,000 sites turn the conversation toward a single issue. Last October 15, the focus was on the environment (I wrote about the risk of lead paint in homes). This year, the subject is poverty.

I can’t claim to know a lot about poverty, only that I know more than I did five years ago, before I spent a fair amount of time in two high schools with the highest number of low-income students in my city. I reflected upon that experience here.

It seems almost a prophetic choice of topics at this moment, when the world has careened into financial chaos. But I have to wonder if our resistance to honest global stewardship and our unwillingness to shoulder financial burdens together have helped bring us to this point. As we seek to recover, I don’t see how we can expect to have a solid economic foundation unless we reevaluate the way we look at and treat poverty.

Here is a list of web resources on poverty compiled by the organizers of Blog Action Day.

The World Bank has an extensive overview of poverty, including how they measure it.

Here is the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent data on poverty.

Here is the Barack Obama/Joe Biden plan to combat poverty.

John McCain’s web site doesn’t appear to list poverty policies anywhere that I can find, although he did make a statement on poverty earlier this year.

The best blog I read that regularly addresses poverty is one plus two, where Jen often writes movingly about her daily work with homeless people. She also hosts one-third of a monthly roundtable that compiles all manner of “Just Posts” from the blogosphere, alongside partners at Under the Mad Hat and creative.mother.thinking.

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Freelance scare campaign for McCain

My mother found this sheet, tucked into a white envelope on her front door a couple of days ago. She lives in one of Columbus’ more affluent suburbs (Bexley) and has an Obama sign in her front yard.

There’s nothing particularly new about the ugliness the flier contains, although it is kind of stunning to see so many paranoid lies that have been long since debunked collected on one white sheet of paper. Whoever left it clearly had no intention of speaking to her, only to send a bullying message which suggests, in the opinion of some anonymous coward, that her open support for the Democratic candidate impugns her patriotism.

There is no doubt that things can get really ugly in Ohio during presidential campaigns – especially in counties like this one, which is generally a slightly blue shade of purple. Small incidents like this just tell me that after eight years of divisive leadership from a president for whom no amount of legal bullying, menacing and damning of people with another point of view ever made him say “enough,” and even with a Republican candidate who finally just started to, we still have a long, long way to go.

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Bruce Springsteen reminded me that I’m patriotic

I haven’t done a lot of jumping up and down and screaming at concerts in my adult life. Dancing? Yes. Yelling and applauding appreciatively? Absolutely. Taking notes to review the show for the paper? Check. But jumping up and down like a 14-year-old, waving my arms, mentally projecting look at me, in the striped shirt, I’m from Jersey! That’s something I reserve for a Bruce Springsteen show.

Thankfully, the free show he did to campaign for Obama and registration/early voting in Ohio yesterday was acoustic, and most of us spent our time in the mellow, perfect sunlight yelling for the candidate (who was elsewhere) as much as for the Boss. Before he closed his set, he spoke a few words about his vision of America, of Obama’s and what he hears from nations outside of ours today.

I am a sap for the Constitution. I am a sap for Woody Guthrie and American literature and the Asbury Park boardwalk and muy macho guys like Springsteen who are tough with a gentle spirit and a soft underbelly, so the words he said made me cry. They reminded me of my patriotism — of what I believe patriotism is in America. So I thought I’d share it. It sure beats the nasty turn in the rhetoric this week.

None of the videos that I found of Ohio’s show had the complete speech, so I’m lifting this from his appearance in Philly, where he gave virtually the same remarks. He starts speaking just before the one-minute mark:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFnCc20E87g]

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