M. Giant's
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Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks


Thursday, November 06, 2008  

Forward

I just want to give a shout-out to Trash, who spent quite a bit of time during the last couple of weeks calling people to remind them to vote, and offering to help arrange rides to the polls for them if they needed it. She did great, important work, and the fact that all the people she talked to were excited and happy to talk to her doesn't take away from that one bit. I thought about pitching in, but thought I would only be counterproductive on account of the fact that I am terse and charmless on the phone. I guess I could have called on behalf of the other candidate to drag him down, but that probably would have been disingenuous of me. And, as it would turn out, rather unnecessary.

* * *

Trash and I were in New Orleans in January 2001. Rather than hanging around in our frankly undeservedly luxurious hotel suite to watch the inauguration, we went out to get some more food. Or to get hungry. The thing about visiting New Orleans is that we were always either eating, about to eat, recently done eating, or walking around while trying to get hungry again so we could eat some more.

It was a different country back then, for a lot of reasons. George W. Bush wasn't the same guy to me that he is now, by a longshot. Back then, I just saw him as some lightweight with a famous name, an amiable caretaker who I could only hope wouldn't be capable of doing too much damage in his one term. That has changed. The country has changed. The world has changed. And so, obviously, has New Orleans.

I could go on. Both candidates promised to bring change. I say we've had plenty of change in the past eight years. Too much, in fact.

Part of the rap against conservatives is that many of them are seen as wanting to go back to the way things were. Does that make me a conservative? Because for quite a while, I've kind of been wanting some things to go back to the way they were in January 2001 and before. Up to and including a possible return trip to the Big Antediluvian Easy, especially if we can get that suite so cheap again.

But then I think about my son, who wasn't here in January 2001, and how I'd never want to go back to a world without him in it. I remember when he was less than a month old, four days home from the NICU, and after his third or fourth late-night bottle of the night, I checked the election returns again and worried about the world he was going to grow up in, wondering if it was too late to somehow raise him in the nineties. What can I tell you, I was sleep-deprived.

But there's no way back. Even if some people still resist that idea, there's no way back. The only way is forward.

More than I have in some time, I'm looking forward to forward.

posted by M. Giant 8:56 PM 1 comments

1 Comments:

Oh, M. Giant, that is a lovely entry. (And I feel you on the New Orleans gastronomic experience, too.)

By Anonymous Anonymous, at November 8, 2008 at 2:04 PM  

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