For the most part, I usually do one of two things on Thanksfornothing.

I either a) wind up cooking a meal for people who do celebrate the holiday but who are, for any number of reasons, sans a place to go and sad about it , for I cannot stand to see people I like both sad and hungry, or b) get to spend the whole day by myself, enjoying the relative quiet that happens when a great many people are very busy doing something that has nothing at all to do with sex.

I like the latter best, and was very much looking forward to having a quiet day this year.

I did a bit of work that morning, and had my living room floor spread with OB/GYN texts for some extended research I was doing so we have some better material on yeast infections.  It was a bit chilly, so I started a fire.  At a certain point, it started to die down a little, so I opened a pack of wood from the front porch.  It was pretty moldy, but I didn’t think anything of it, save that it may well not catch.

However, within just a couple of minutes it did catch. Well.  A bit too well.  As I stood in front of the wood stove, I noticed that, in fact, what had minutes before been a slacker of a fire seemed to have become quite the overachiever.  The flames were going a bit higher in the back of the stove than they ever had, and then I heard a strange sound, something which sounded a bit like some kind of something had fallen in the exhaust pipe.

Then the flames got big.  Very big.  I went from wondering if maybe this wasn’t a little weird, wasn’t a bit larger of a fire than was such a good idea to knowing, for certain, things were very much not okay.  The exhaust pipe started to glow red, and little sparks could be seen at some points.  Then the fire in the stove started licking out of the stove altogether.  Shortly thereafter, the iron grate that sits under the exhaust pipe fell into the fire, sending out another whoosh of flames.  My dog — smart little thing that she is — ran out of the room and vanished, clearly considering it was every pug for herself.

My first thought was to grab the ceramic garden gnome on the stove — Save the gnome! – which had been sitting there since Mark got it for me, as I had not yet decided where it should go in the garden. Then I pulled the top log off the pile: that didn’t seem to help.  Then I began running back and forth between the kitchen and the living room hurling pitchers of water into the stove, since (something I have voiced concern with for some time) we are sans fire extinguisher.

In the midest of all this, there was a knock on my door, and I ran to it, threw it open, and probably scared the bejeezus out of the neighbor as I stood, breathless in blue zebra pajamas, face half full of soot with a pitcher in my shaking hand. He casually — as if I were not in the midst of fighting for my life — asked if everything was okay, as their apartment next door was a bit smoky from our chimney.  As, “I am in the middle of trying to keep the house from burning down right now, lovely to see you, but could you please come back later?” did not seem the right thing to say, and as I am terrible with other people in the midst of a crisis, and my brain was a bit addled, I said something about a log just sparking (what that meant, I do not know) and it made a hotter fire than I expected but I’vequitegotithandledrightnowthanksforaskingbutIreallyHAVEtofuckinggonowBYE.

And I think I basically then slammed the door in his face.  This from the woman who complains that Seattle sucks for having any kind of relationship with one’s neighbors.

I got back to my water hurling, and finally got the damn thing to go out.  Then I resumed breathing for the first time in a good ten minutes.

Then I sat in front of the stove trembling and covered in cold sweat for something close to two hours, willing my heart rate to go down, enjoying some lovely post-adrenaline nausea, and feeling generally betrayed that fire, so often my BFF, had not only decided it didn’t want to be friends with me anymore, but had apparently also determined that my number was up and it was time for me to die.

When my knees finally stopped knocking, I spent another hour or two walking around upstairs obsessively, sniffing the floors, the closets, the walls, because it occurred to me that I did not know the exact path of the exhaust pipe from stove to chimney, and there may well be a fire still somewhere in it that would burn the house down.  It’s taken me until today, to be honest, to feel pretty certain there is not some sneaky little fire brewing somewhere in the innards of the house that’s going to burn us all to a crisp in our sleep.

Mark was back with his ex-roomies in south Seattle that day eating dead things, but I resisted the very strong urge to call him.  For one, I don’t know what on earth he could have done from 45 minutes away.  But more than that, I had this flashback to the time a few years ago when I was here visiting, when he was making his second short film, and when I got the migraine that wound up literally freezing my body up to the point that I had to call him in the midst of movie-making to let him know I had something of a concern about…well, part of my body seeming to be paralyzed.

So, I then had this extended solitary sob session about how I couldn’t call Mark and ruin his day, or give him the impression that if he went somewhere out of reach all hell would break loose.  Silly, really, since he’s been quite out of reach many times without incident, but welcome to my dysfunction.  Suffice it to say, we had a very interesting, “Hi, honey, so how was your day?” conversation when he got home that evening, save that we mostly had to have it in the morning because I wasn’t yet ready to relive the events of the day at that point.  It says an awful lot about our relationship that I can say something like, “I think I almost burnt the house down, but can we talk about that in the morning?” and get an easy nod.

After I finally told him my tale of woe the next day, he went out and bought me Wall-e (which I consider the film Pixar surely made just for me, since no one loves an apocalypse with a gender-neutral romance as much as I).  The boy’s the bee’s knees, I tell you.

So, the wood stove is currently closed for business.  I solemnly shut the doors Thursday, and I have no idea when I will open them again. We’re going to get a chimney-sweep out here, but even after that, I’m not sure how comfy I’ll be with a fire in here without not only the much-needed fire extinguisher, but perhaps also a flame-retardant suit to wear, as well.

I’m off a bit later today to another homeless youth drop-on center, to see about adding them to my outreach roster.  The beginning of the week is going to be business as usual (save my morning fires, sigh), Thursday I go to the clinic in the morning, and then within a few hours, will high-tail it to the airport for a visit back home to Chicago, as well as to see my sister in Indiana.  I’ll be with my mother and sister for the first few days, then have a couple of days to spend in-city to see my Dad, my friend Erika, maybe a couple other folks, and a possible meeting with someone I’ve been sorting through some old stuff with and forging a relationship anew (yes, I’m being obtuse).

The fact that I expect to freeze to death, not having gone back to Midwest during the winter months since I moved here, is something I’m trying to keep from having ruin my trip. I pity the poor soul who kindly suggests making a fire to help warm me up.

(Oddly enough, the fourth fire of the year in my father’s SRO happened not the day before, on the floor right beneath his room.  He told me this the next day on the phone and I immediately thanked myself for deciding it was best not to tell him about my own little flaming adventure.  He, no doubt, would have considered it prophetic as he does nearly anything anymore.  Hell, maybe he would have been right this time.)

posted in Heather Corinna, home, my fine romance, wah | permalink | comments (5) »

Yesterday, a TIME magazine piece on cosmetic vulval surgeries nearly did our completely excellent server in. Then today, another piece from UC Santa Cruz’ student newspaper came out (which is a much more fun piece than the TIME one, and the reporter who did it was great fun to talk to and get connected with everyone).  Media avalanche, man.  Jaysis.

By the by, last night while I was in the living room indulging in a mini-film fest of tragic 80’s figures (Sid and Nancy is what was on at the time), I overheard Mark upstairs on the phone bragging a blue streak about me and my work to a friend.   It was just about one of the sweetest things ever, and I totally melted like a stick o’vegan buttery spread.

In making some calls for the CONNECT program, I set up a observation day at yet another program for homeless youth where they want some sex ed.  I am just loving that when it comes to my local work, I seem to be finding myself more and more often serving…well, the me of yesteryear.  At that training a weekish ago, a lot of it focused on basically reliving/telling our teen years, and I was telling my tales (which, by the way, is far more difficult to do in a group of people you don’t know in pewrson than it is in writing), I realized that I had a level of appreciation for my own pluck and ability to survive that I’d not ever given the proper weight to, even though it’s something I see in these kids and appreciate all the time about them.  It seems like kismet, really.

With that, I’m out to go do some more outreach today.  And I am hoping that unlike the very awkward Not-So-Great Tote Bag Explosion of 2008 that happened on the bus a couple months ago that resulted in every method of birth control imaginable spilling all over the floor (and every single person on said bus all but freezing in their seats, lest they have to TOUCH any of it: what the heck is with that?), I will not find that both all that stuff as well as a bunch of abortion instruments get restless and feel the need for an untoward escape.

posted in Heather Corinna, Scarleteen, activism, workworkwork, simple joys | permalink | comments (0) »

Yipes!  I didn’t mean to fall off the map.  Time just got away from me.  That keeps happening more and more often, and I can’t figure if it’s age, juggling all I do in a given day or week, living somewhere with less light, or just me becoming flakier as my life goes on.  The other day, I was setting a goal for myself for six months from now, and for a second I thought, “Oh, ugh: six months is such a long time,” until I realized that anymore, it seems like I blink and a whole year has passed me by.

Anyway.  Dad was here, and now he’s gone back to Chicago.  He did something inadvertently horrendous to one of my computers and felt horrible about it, so I had to appear much less bothered than I was so as not to cause him to feel worse, but that misadventure notwithstanding, it was a good visit.  His being here meant that he was mostly crisis-free for a couple weeks, and I got a break from trying to manage his crises.  He was in good spirits, despite getting lousy weather — which he always hits when he visits, no matter what time of year we pick.  The weekend I was away on Bainbridge at a training, he and Mark had a meat-cooking fest in my absence which they both seemed to enjoy quite a lot.  He had one very rough day here, where he was looking up old friends and found that 11 of 13 he could find had died, but it was nice to be able to be there for him, in person, to give him some support with that.  I was also able to reiterate that I need to make what efforts I can to get him into a safer, sounder living situation and while I’m not sure how much he’s going to help me with the follow-through, he was not resistant to that.

The thing that always sucks, of course, is saying goodbye to him when he goes.  Given his age and the way that he lives (if you can call it that), there’s always this ooky feeling in my guts that any given goodbye is the last one, and I freak out a bit, worried there’s something I should make sure I say or do just in case.

While the visit was good, I spent most of the weekend simply enjoying having my house back, and some space to myself.  Over the last two and some weeks, I’ve had the visit from my Dad, a group night for the election, also a visit for a few days from a supporter, the four days in a group immersion on Bainbridge, an extra night with someone (who I swear I was separated at birth from: I’m so bummed she lives in Austin) from that training here at home and two friends swung by from Minneapolis.  Seeing all of those people was absolutely the good stuff, however that is a LOT of people for me to be around without having any time at all to myself.  When I need to decompress, I decompress alone, not with other people.  I dig people, and I’m outgoing, for sure, but I’m someone who you will rarely hear complaining about being or feeling alone.

There weren’t enough kids at the residential center this week for me to go in and do education, but tomorrow I have a presentation for an Americorps thing that should be good.  The training I was in the week before last was for Teen Talking Circles, a model which we plan to bring into some work through the clinic, as well as bringing sex ed into an existing circle, and which I also want to figure out a way to use at Scarleteen.  Saturday I head back over to the island for the day to participate in and observe one of the existing circles to see how we can best work this.  Amidst all of that is a pile of the usual Scarleteen work, some clinic work, a bunch of clerical boredom, and a batch of other things I am, per usual, feeling totally behind with and really need to find some way to get at least marginally caught up with before I head to Chicago on the 4th.

Tangentially, I was on the phone with the education director for the clinic expressing that with the Obama win, I’m finding myself trying to be sure that any of us working in sexual or reproductive health and justice make the most of this.  We were both expressing that over the last eight years, so much of the work we have done as a group in this arena has had to be focused on the defensive, on managing crisis, on trying to repair what kept getting broken or robbed that it’s a bit tricky to try and move our minds out of that mode to be sure we don’t miss the opportunity to work differently while we have it.  Merle Hoffman, at RH Reality Check last week, did mention a backlash to be concerned with — and I think she’s sage in her concerns — but I also want to be sure that we find ways to start doing so many of the things we have wanted to do, but haven’t been able to, now that we’ll have decent administrative support.

I think, for instance, about all of the things the feminist women’s health centers and organizations so badly wanted to do — more holistic self-care for women, really focusing on the empowerment of reproductive choices, nurturing bonds between women around abortion, sex education — around and after Roe Vs. Wade, but how few of them were able to come into being given the antichoice rise.  I’ve been noticing over the last year how many progressive people seem to have changed even the way they talk about things like abortion and teen sexuality, and how clearly influenced by the right some of that has been: if I hear one more person talk about how abortion is always something we want to avoid, how it’s always so sad, or listen to someone for the millionth time feel the only way they can defend it is to talk about rape, incest or genetic issues, I will likely scream.  Same goes with teen and young adult sexuality: this “waiting is always better” stuff has not only gotten really old, it’s seriously dishonest, especially coming from plenty of adults who didn’t “wait” themselves and had a fine time sexually in their teens or twenties.

So, time for a mental shift and some serious planning.  If we’ve learned anything over the last few decades, it’s that we can never count on some sort of perpetual state of grace when it comes to this stuff.  The pendulum always keeps on swinging, and you never know when it’s going to swing back.

On a lighter note, somehow, a couple years ago, I got put on the newsletter for the American Family Association.  I have no idea how, but once I started seeing these mails, I was quite delighted I did — not because they fill me in on some sort of super-secret diabolical plans, but because they show how freaking SILLY these folks so often are, and it makes it a lot easier for me to relax about them.

Suffice it to say, after the election, the emails have now moved to a daily delivery, in a constant state of panic, because, as you no doubt know, progressives want to take everyone’s rights away by adding or protecting rights for everyone.  (Don’t try and make sense of it, just roll with it.)  Headlines such as “Advice to Christians: Defend life, prepare for persecution,” “Jesus ejected from school,” “Kindergartners given homosexual ‘pledge cards’,” and “Conservative expression on campuses in peril,” are a few of the latest.

But my favorite panic-induced headline of last week? Men in Drag at the White House?!  This bulletin involved several paragraphs about how Obama is going to have men wearing heels (Don’tcha just bet that he’ll even REQUIRE it?) who work for him. Obama has made clear that both gender identity and sexual orientation are included in their hiring policy per nondiscrimination: that’s where this comes from.  It addressed how women who work for the federal government will now be utterly unsafe from rampant attacks in bathrooms from the vicious transgender women who may well be allowed to use them.  You know how how those fights over the toilet paper end when there’s an MTF involved, after all: it’s always all broken nails, blood and hairspray over but that one little square.  Oh, the terror.

posted in Heather Corinna | permalink | comments (3) »

I confess I’m short of eloquence this morning, in part because I still have only had brief increments of a few minutes in which I have been able to stop crying, for all the best reasons.  I’m still a bit frozen still by a very unexpected and long exhale of breath I have effectively been holding for eight freaking years. I’m still trying to parse actually feeling proud of the nation I live in: I personally rarely HAVE ever felt that pride. And I can’t fib: while I think that absolutely, positively, “Yes we can” is an incredibly powerful statement, and I am loving hearing it be so meaningful to so many, “Oh no you didn’t!” is feeling mighty fine on the tongue this morning, too.

Nelson Mandela is better at this stuff than most of us, and I’m finding that what he had to say is resonating with me today more than nearly any other commentary I’ve heard.

“We join people in your country and around the world in congratulating you on becoming the President-Elect of the United States. Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.

We note and applaud your commitment to supporting the cause of peace and security around the world. We trust that you will also make it the mission of your Presidency to combat the scourge of poverty and disease everywhere.

We wish you strength and fortitude in the challenging days and years that lie ahead. We are sure you will ultimately achieve your dream making the United States of America a full partner in a community of nations committed to peace and prosperity for all.”

posted in Heather Corinna, Happy! | permalink | comments (10) »

I know it’s a bit late in the game for those with early voting, but I just wanted to write a letter about voting this year. I do this every election for my friends and family, though I often write it more for those in the concentric circles around the people I know than for those closest to me. I often see or represent some groups plenty of people don’t have a familiarity with or a real awareness of.Perhaps obviously, I’d also encourage you to pen a letter like this of your own, but you’re also more than welcome to circulate mine.

What I don’t usually do is publish this letter, but I am making an exception this year.

For those not in the know, I’m a longtime Green Party person. And I have loved that this year, my parties presidential ticket is two amazing women of color, two peacemakers, two big thinkers, two women who — in my book — really get it and who could be amazing leaders.

While I’d love to vote for my party (wouldn’t I always!), this is another of those years where I don’t feel able to do that, because there is simply no room for what ultimately is a symbolic vote. This country isn’t ready for a two-woman ticket yet, let alone a third party or the Green party. I don’t like the two-party system, but at the same time, I don’t feel like this week is the right time for me to fight that battle. However, I have to say that this year, I don’t feel very let down about voting outside my party. In fact, even if my party had a chance this time around, I’d probably still vote outside of it.

I want to take a few minutes of your time and tell you not about me, but about some of the women I meet at the clinic I work at, who come into my office for counsel and tell me some of the most intimate details of their lives. As you already know, I provide education to millions of young people every year (with no public funding, by the by, due to providing accurate information, a drought which will continue in another Republican administration), and counsel anywhere from ten to fifty people one-on-one daily at Scarleteen. But I don’t sit down with them in person the way I do with the women at the clinic: I don’t see their faces, they don’t ask me for a hug or to hold their hand, or cry where I can see them when I simply acknowledge the challenges they face as real and not at all unimportant.

I want to tell how you much they are like me, you, other women and people you know. I want to tell you how important they are, even though they are clearly so easy for some to ignore or dismiss, even though they are so often rendered invisible.

Many of them already have more children than they can support or care for. Many are of color and/or low-income, and often become pregnant not because they have planned pregnancies with cooperative partners, but because their access to contraception has become more and more limited thanks in part to the Bush administration over the last eight years. Many also have sexually transmitted infections as well as being unwantedly pregnant, both too frequently due to an ignorance purposefully cultivated by the Bush administration through the billions of dollars sunk into knowingly inaccurate abstinence-only education, some of those funds even moved from family planning programs which not only provide accurate information, but also provide things like contraception, sexual healthcare and maternal healthcare for women who WANT to be or remain pregnant.

Some are in my office because they have been raped, a crime which still is diminished by so many in our government (and Palin did indeed allow Wasilla to charge rape victims, sometimes as much as over $1,000, for the rape kits done on them by the justice system: we see a lot of clients at our clinic from Alaska), and where many women also find themselves denied emergency contraception to prevent pregnancies due to Bush administrative support of healthcare providers refusing to supply effective and wanted contraception to women based on their own “moral” judgments. Bush may well leave a legacy of the HHS policy to be decided on this week which now would allow doctors and healthcare workers in public healthcare, even in healthcare clinics specifically for family planning, to refuse all contraception to patients based on their own personal feelings about the “immorality” of family planning.

Many have such a hard time taking care of the children they already have because they still are not paid at the same rates as men (despite often having the greater burden of expenses, particularly single mothers). Many, like myself, live without healthcare or in grossly inadequate public health programs, if they can even qualify for those. Many have children who are having to also go without healthcare (our child mortality and health rate is one of the worst of all developed nations); many have children who most certainly have been a child left behind when it comes to education. Some of them do not even want to terminate their pregnancies: they would want to have more children, but the reality of their lives — they are often already parents, they know what parenting requires — does not allow for that choice, nor does the continued lack of support for mothers and children in this country, a hard irony when coming from those who say they want to prevent abortion so badly. Some grew up in foster care, and know too well the truth of how many adoptive families there really are out there, especially when we’re talking about children of color: they don’t want to risk birthing a child who will end up in the foster care system.

Given we have a big base here in Washington, some are in the military (where abortion has been banned and contraceptive access grossly limited in recent times, a ban McCain and Palin support, and this in spite of the fact that the rate of sexual assault for women in the military is exponentially higher than it is for civilian women), some have partners in the military. Many of the women with partners in the military take care of two many children without help or assistance, and suffer from neglect or domestic violence due to partners who come home suffering from PTSD, gross fatigue, injuries and other issues and ailments our VA has been doing little about. (This is a particular issue for women in the military, who are having a doubly-tough time getting veterans care and assistance.) Many of these military families have had losses over the years due to the war in Iraq, and many of them still in service there want to just come home.

John McCain and Sarah Palin not only both seek to axe Roe vs. Wade, they both have records and statements of nonsupport for the many things we know prevent abortion in the first place: sound family planning programs, accurate sex education, domestic violence prevention, and an awareness of the many women whose lives do not even remotely resemble their own. John McCain and Sarah Palin have every intention of continuing harmful abstinence-education policies as well as continuing to underfund or reduce sound family planning.

McCain was also one of the rare senators who has voted against anti-domestic terrorism measures (the FACE act) for clients and workers at family planning and abortion clinics: the law and protections which help keep our clients — including those coming in for pregnancy tests who intend to remain pregnant, or those not pregnant wanting birth control or a pap smear, thank you very much — my co-workers and myself from being bombed or shot in the head on any given day.

The McCain healthcare plan is lunacy, seeming reasonable only to those with the wealth to actually HAVE $5,000 a year to spend on healthcare. McCain also has opposed many things which would improve the status of mothers, children and families in the states, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act. McCain voted to take $75 million from the Maternal and Child Health Block to fund abstinence-only programs, and voted to terminate Title X, our national family planning program which serves those most in need of birth control and reproductive health services.

John McCain and Sarah Palin are against the Lily Ledbetter act, a bill which would allow women more time to discover their pay isn’t fair and to seek restitution. They paint it as a “lawyer’s dream,” cavalierly — perhaps because neither of them are in personal need of it — but it’s a woman’s dream: it certainly was Lily Ledbetter’s dream when she discovered after a good deal of time — as is often the case — how unfairly she was being treated. Nearly all of the veterans organizations are in support of Obama and Biden. Despite being a veteran himself, John McCain has not had a record of being particularly helpful for or supportive of other veterans.

Neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin are feminist: neither ever have, nor intend to, provide real support or help for all women nor to strive for gender equality. from what I can tell, John McCain was not looking to empower women with his choice of Palin: he was looking to empower himself with eye-candy and someone the religious right would like better than they like him. McCain has voted continually to cut or underfund the Violence Against Women Act which Biden has been the champion of and the Victim Economic Security and Safety Act which Obama passed.

John McCain and Sarah Palin are no friends of general public education (or the arts), which empowers those most marginalized in this nation, both intellectually and emotionally: the women and children most at-risk of some of the worst circumstances are more often the most uneducated or undereducated. Suffice it to say, John McCain and Sarah Palin are also no friend of anyone who is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden not only fit all of these bills, they fit most fantastically.

These are issues they not only have a realistic awareness of, but a deep desire to remedy. These are issues they actually talk about, and make actual plans for, rather than barely give lip service to in order to court favor or votes, when even that is given at all. These are issues they view through the lens of fairness and equity, not through the lens of what they want for themselves or via their personal religious doctrines.

If these issues seem less important than taxes, the war in Iraq or international diplomacy, I’d posit you reconsider. All in all, no matter who wins, someone is likely to have to pay higher taxes. All in all, no matter who wins, given the systems of support per the very structure of our government, we’re probably going to do just fine when it comes to diplomacy (though I’d say Obama will likely do a better job there, given how many foreign nations have voiced a far deeper respect for him than McCain). All in all, no matter who wins, working our way out of the mess Bush has made in Iraq is going to be difficult at best.

But the kinds of issues I’m talking about aren’t minor or secondary. Civil rights, human rights, issues are foundational for our nation and for the quality of life of everyone here. They are the very reason this nation was founded, and why the men and women who entered into the wild experiment that was democracy here took the grave risks they did to do so. They knew — as so many of us know — that life is only so valuable without a certain quality of life. They didn’t find these kinds of issues to be trivial, neither do I…and neither should any of us.

These kinds of issues are where we can really see the biggest differences between the candidates, and they are profound differences which deeply impact the quality of life of so many citizens. These are the kinds of issues where we can get a good look at who a candidate really cares about, and if they truly have in mind the interests of all of us, or merely some. These are the issues where we can see if a candidate intends to unite all of us or create or enable deeper divisions. These are, in my mind, the kinds of issues where we can see who is ready to lead (and where to) and who is not.

I won’t lie, I want things to be better for me, personally.

I want healthcare for the first time in over 20 years: I need it badly. I want the young people I counsel to come to me able to spell, and the young women I see at Scarleteen to not doubt their equality as they still so often do. I want those of us who aren’t heterosexual to have the same rights as those who are. I want to be able to continue to obtain contraception since I continue to know I cannot afford a child — financially or per our joint health — nor do I want to become pregnant. I do not want to have to counsel women choosing abortion solely or primarily because they have not been afforded the same rights and benefits as other women when it comes to contraception, maternal healthcare, pay, protection from abuse or assault and other equities anymore. I want to be able to get the same funding for the accurate, needed health information I supply to millions a year that organizations who don’t even serve a fraction of that number of, and who supply purposefully and knowingly inaccurate information to (and part of my job is often correcting, or managing crises which have arisen from that misinformation), do. I want the arts supported. I want equal pay for equal work.

I want this country to stop calling one-sided xenophobic assaults “wars” or “liberation.” I want for America to stop being the country every other country validly despises and is ashamed of. I want for the 20 years I have spent in activism about education, women’s rights, young people’s rights and sexual and reproductive health to really mean something, and for a chance to do the work I do without constantly feeling I am fighting a battle I cannot make strides in, let alone win.

But — and perhaps even more so — I want these things and more for the women I meet at the clinic.

The beauty is that taking care of their needs doesn’t stand in the way of taking care of my needs, your needs or anyone else’s needs.

That’s the beauty of real fairness, real equity, real investment in the aims laid down in the Constitution and the heart of this nation. That’s the beauty of being civic-minded, and doing your best to think, when you vote, not just of yourself but for all of us as a nation.

I don’t expect Barack Obama or anyone else to be able to fix all of this in a mere four years. But what I do expect, and am absolutely certain I will see, is for Barack Obama to try. I do expect both some actual remedies and also real groundwork laid in order to make the fixes which are more long-term possible, as well as a foundation and a spirit which may well just influence how people think so that people like the invisible women I see become more visible. I have not been even remotely hopeful that that is something I would finally start seeing for years: it is an amazing thing to feel it possible in the near future today.

That’s a whole lot of why I’m not only voting outside my party and for Barack Obama, but why I feel exceptionally good about it. And it’s why I’d ask you to consider doing the same.

If you’re still on the fence, do some research today. Be sure to look through the nonpartisan voting guide at Scarleteen.

But whatever you do, by all means, please vote. And when you do, do your very best to do so with the real aims of this nation — and with your hopes, not your fears — at heart.

posted in Heather Corinna, activism, soapbox, vote! | permalink | comments (2) »