Hope and a fist

I boarded the subway in my usual crazy rush-hour manner: breastpump jet pack on the back, lunch bag and work files in a shoulder bag, and a big ol' baby girl in my front carrier. I hobbled over to the last remaining empty seat and plucked down in it. Only you can't really pluck with this get-up; it's more like you teeter on the edge of the seat and hold on tight to said baby.

Across the row, there was a large man listening to headphones. Well, I don't know if he was actually large--he was one of those men that take up all the room they want regardless of how crowded the train is. The kind of fellow T passenger I despise. With a vengeance. This particular one was lazily taking up three seats in a standing-room only train.

When the train finally started moving, it stops suddenly again and announced there was traffic ahead. I groaned silently. It was Election Day and the polls closed in less than two hours. I'm quite sure many of these civic-minded individuals were hoping to make it to the polls after work, and I was worried they wouldn't now. Thankfully, I cast my vote prior to work--and walked uphill one mile to get there.

As always, the crowd maintained their code of silent so that when anyone does actually take it upon him/herself to speak, everyone listens. Or at least I do. And breaking the silence after several minutes was the lazy seat-taker-upper. He reached out across the two seats he was taking up and handed the young white guy with a nice watch a stick of gum. "Obama," he said, nodding to the guy's pin, and they both grinned. I couldn't help but grin as well--the pride in this black man's voice was too much, even if he did take up a trillion seats and cause other passengers to sway against each other in locomotion. They did a little fist-to-fist handshake and returned inward, while the train finally started moving again. Good thing, too: Bean was getting restless.

At the next stop, a middle-aged white woman with unruly curls popping out of an Obama baseball cap stepped onto the train and took a seat next to the seat-taker-upper. He grinned again, got another stick of gum out from his bag, and repeated, "Obama." She nodded eagerly and clumsily at once, and accepted her token gift. He reached over with his fist, ready to repeat his gesture, and she fumbled around it, acting as if he meant to drop another gum in her hand. She held hers palm-up underneath his fist for an awkward second before he realized she had no idea what he was doing. He reached out and made her hand into a fist, which she interpreted as possibly dangerous in her awkward, submissive sort of way. They clumsily clunked fists and seconds later, he stood up and got off the train. "Obama," he said quietly, full of pride.

Is this the improved race relations I've heard so much about? The world commends us on this symbolic election, and having the first African-American U.S. president is certainly nothing to take lightly. How many more generations will endure awkward cultural exchanges before it becomes commonplace? Before a fist is a recognized gesture of friendship?

Good for this woman; she was scared to try but try she did. And she learned.

Tomorrow

VotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevoteVotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevotevote ... and for those of you living in Massachusetts, vote NO on Question 1!

Love is blind

Since love has gotten political, perhaps we should take the time to see it from the other side.

Word

"Human manners are wildly inconsistent; plenty of people before me have said so. But this one takes the cake: the manner in which we're allowed to steal from future generations, while commanding them not to do that to us, and rolling our eyes at anyone who is tediously PC enough to point this out. The conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners." -Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

The wheels on the bus

Bean is quite comfortable making long streams of noises. She just keeps going, like the literary version of an Energizer Bunny. We should all be so un-self-conscious. On the bus ride home yesterday, she let out a constant babble. I think it lasted the whole bus ride--about 20 minutes long. You wouldn't believe the number of pissed-off looks I got. My baby's talking, what do you want? I felt like saying to one guy. To another: I hope you have a quiet evening! Despite my defensiveness, I did feel guilty that she was interrupting the unwritten code of bus silence. More than that, I felt guilty for feeling guilty. Why should I care if people are annoyed? This is a beautiful thing--she's learning how to talk! Why do I care? Why? But I do.

Work can be entertaining: I got this site from a co-worker yesterday. Absolutely hysterical!

Interesting

An article on youth and creativity: are the two really as entwined as we assume?

Holiday swap

I'm starting to think my life exists in bullet points.

"In watermelon sugar, the deeds were done and done again, as my life is done in watermelon sugar." -Richard Brautigan

I finished reading Wake Up and Smell the Planet, Grist's guide to being green. I read it on the bus on the way to work each time I didn't have Bean with me. (My husband and I usually switch off caring for her and he often works or has class at night, which means Bean comes to pick me up at work with her daddy.) I found most of the advice to be at an eco-intro level, though I did pick up a few facts I didn't know before. Notably, avoid bath products with "PEG," "polyethylene," "polyethylene glycol," "polyoxyethylene," "-eth-," or "-oxynol-" because they come with a carcinogenic byproduct called 1,4-Dioxane. Overall, the book was a fun, quick read and the kind of stocking stuffer gift for folks who are interested but don't know where to start on being more eco-friendly.

Speaking of the holidays, my family and I are at a standstill. My sister and I usually organize a sort of adult Secret Santa, with the maximum gift amount being $30. All the kids (under age 5 currently) get gifts from everyone. This year, though, several complaints have been made and the holidays need an overhaul. First, one sister wants a more predictable system, so she can shop for her person all year long. Another wants to do it by families--we keep multiplying, and the expense and time it takes to expend it are taxing.

I would like to see more holiday themes that involve less material items. As my dad says, "I have enough toys." This is true for most (though not all) of my family members. I just feel ridiculous paying $30 for some hair salon gift certificate to my sister-in-law when she rides around in a Mercedes without a monetary care in the world, while I'm earning WIC food stamps and hoping my baby doesn't poop much today so we can save 40 cents on a diaper liner. I don't like contributing to her evil consumption nor can I keep affording to pay for it. I thought we could do a charity holiday (everyone picks their favorite charity and we donate time or money to that person's charity). This would be especially timely this year with the economic downturn (read: recession) hitting nonprofits hard. Or we could do a homemade holiday: baked goods, art, music, wherever your talents lay. Or a Yankee swap: you don't want this, give it to them. Anybody have other ideas?

The problem is, my family has too many toys--but they want more toys. They don't realize they have too many toys. They see other people with even more toys and they want that, too. But they don't need toys anymore. How do I say all this with a gift?