Holding My Breath

I'm getting very concerned. Concerned about overconfidence.

I've heard it so many times lately.... from very smart people, people I know and people I listen to on podcasts and people I read in the papers. People who are accepting all of this as a foregone conclusion.

I am not going to jinx it. I'm not 100% confident that Obama has this whole thing wrapped up.

The closer we get to election day, and the more stories we hear about registration irregularities, voting machine problems, undecided voters, wingtip warriors, margins of error, the Bradley effect, and intimidation tactics, the less confident I feel.

I was so passionate and optimistic and active in 2004, and Election Night just broke my heart. I've become a much more cynical person since then, both about the American electorate and about the problems in our voting infrastructure.

I *hope* Obama wins easily on Tuesday. I *hope* Democrats do really well on all the down-ticket races and boost our numbers in both Houses and state offices. I *hope* the results are definitive enough that we'll actually have some resolution by Wednesday or Thursday. I *hope* the public accepts the results and that the President-Elect, whichever one wins, starts right away on leading a national healing process. I *hope* moving beyond the election helps reduce the national anxiety a bit and the economy sees a bounce.

I hope all of these things. But I do not *know* that any of them will happen, and I refuse to set myself up for heartbreak yet again by assuming anything before it actually happens. And I *hope* the rest of the voting public does the same, cuz we still need every single vote to be cast.

Voting is one of the most precious things we can do as Americans. It's a right, it's a privilege, and it's a responsibility. People have fought and died to ensure that we can exercise that right, and the future of our democracy depends on it. Though we have our own share of problems with the process, problems that we need to address to restore voter confidence and boost participation for a new generation, I still believe there's nothing more important than for all of us to fulfill our civic duty by showing up at the polls.

I'll be watching until the last vote is counted. When all is said and done, I really, really hope to be celebrating the start of a new chapter in our shared American story.

Be Don Draper

Oh, the season can't be over!!!! How will I last until the TBD premiere of season 3? By watching this over and over, I suppose.

My Enemies List

After years of suffering and cursing nature's bounty... I finally went ahead and had a full-scale allergy test. I got the results today. So here it is, my list of mortal enemies:

Goldenrod. Interestingly, not ragweed. Even my ENT dad was surprised, cuz I guess ragweed is the most usual culprit for hay fever. Instead, goldenrod gets me. I should've known. It's my least favorite color of colored paper. (Photo credit)


What's this strange-looking thing? That's a mold spore -- yes, I am sparing you from some of the really gross mold photos out there. But this little puppy, I believe, is the reason why I often feel like crap on damp, humid, rainy days. (Photo credit)

Oh my God! It's a monster - run!!! That, my friends, is a dust mite. Gross, just all kinds of gross. If you want to learn more, click here and prepare to shudder as you get into bed tonight. (Photo credit)

My springtime nemesis -- the good old red maple tree. Does this mean I can't move to Canada?!?!?! (Photo credit)


Finally, my worst enemy attacks in the fall -- the birch tree! (Photo credit)

So my instructions? Keep taking allergy meds and dust and vacuum my apartment more often. I think I can do that.

Here's the best news of all. Guess what I'm NOT allergic to?

My Top Ten

At a fun little par-tay yesterday, the topic of all-time favorite songs kept coming up. So, I'm challenging myself to narrow down my own list to a very personal top ten.

Stef's Favorites - in no particular order:

1. Into the Mystic - Van Morrison

Perfection. I've heard other versions over the years, and while the duo from Once came close, nothing beats the Irish troubadour's original.

2. Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen

No other song is as soulful, or as quotable, in my book. I once sang the entire thing out loud to a coworker, word for word. No small feat!

3. Brian Wilson - Barenaked Ladies

So many BNL songs to choose from -- both their emotional ballads and their fun quirky tunes. But this one perfectly captures an emotion *and* makes me want to jump up and sing whenever I hear it.

4. Express Yourself - Madonna

Ditto with the so many to choose from -- but I think the Like a Prayer era really was Her Madgesty's best, and this song remains an anthem for me and many, many people I know.

5. Solsbury Hill - Peter Gabriel

This song was the soundtrack to my life during a fairly troubled time, and the lyrics meant a lot to me as I needed to find my own way home. Peter Gabriel's voice is inextricably linked to some of my most powerful memories.

6. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - U2

It's hard to say, but U2 *probably* is my favorite band of all time. So many of their songs are right for so many different occasions, but the gospel version of this one on Rattle and Hum just nails it every time.

7. Shambala - Three Dog Night

I wish I could say it was my childhood memories of my Mom listening to Three Dog Night that turned me on to this great tune - and maybe it was, subconsciously - but really, I became obsessed with it after it was prominently featured in several episodes of LOST. Combined with my undercurrent of interest in the Buddhist worldview, and this song's a winner!

8. Somebody - Depeche Mode

I am still looking for somebody who will listen to me when I want to speak about the world we live in and life in general.

9. Language or the Kiss - Indigo Girls

Amy and Emily may just be the most perfect lyricists ever. "Oh the fear I've known: That I might reap the praise of strangers, and end up on my own."

10. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic - The Police

I have fond memories of singing along to this one at the top of my lungs back in high school, and it still gets me going. That "I resolve to call her up, a thousand times a day" part slays me!

This was tough! There are entire genres and decades (like the 2000's!) not represented in the top 10, but I think I made a pretty good call on all of the above. If I had to extend it, you would start to see Robbie Williams, Alanis Morissette, the Dixie Chicks, the Cure, Trisha Yearwood, Dido, Queen/David Bowie, the Killers, the Scissor Sisters, Christina Aguilera, and more. I swear I'm not totally stuck in the musical past!

Okay, your turn -- try and narrow it down to 10! :-)

Very Well Said, Secretary Powell

Weekend Roundup

A 3-day weekend purposefully with no plans? Know what that means? That's right, lots of quality time with my Netflix and On Demand. Here's the scoop:

Romantic comedies have a formula, for sure, and "What Happens in Vegas" follows the familiar "meet cute - major obstacle - slowly falling in love - huge fight - it all works out in the end" path. But, Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz are both just so darn likable - and gorgeous - that this movie makes it all pretty fun. It reminded me a lot of that Michael Douglas / Kathleen Turner 80's movie "The War of the Roses," although that movie had the star-crossed lovers/haters attack each other a lot more physically while Ashton and Cameron go for more emotional manipulation. That makes the 2000's version of the story easier to watch without any bad aftertaste -- it's a light little trifle, and I give it a B+.

After spending about 1/3 of 2008 rewatching one of the all-time greatest shows, "The X-Files," I am still in the mood for some serialized spooky investigations. I've always been a big Buffy/Angel fan, so I thought it was time to try out one of those newer WB/CW offerings starring impossibly gorgeous people. "Supernatural" is actually pretty darn enjoyable, and I've made it through 8 episodes already. It's the story of 2 (impossibly hot) brothers played by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. Their dad (the also incredibly hot Jeffrey Dean Morgan, aka Denny Duquette) has been chasing down demons - literally - ever since their Mom was killed by one 20-some years before. The dad has been training older bro Dean (played by Ackles, slightly confusing for those of us used to thinking of Padalecki as Dean from "Gilmore Girls") in battling the dark arts his whole life, but younger bro Sam was the black sheep who craved a "normal" life of college and a career. Now Dad's disappeared, the mom-killing demon has returned to kill Sam's girlfriend, and the brothers reunite to try to find their father. It's very much a buddy/road show, as the brothers drive from town to town fighting off a new evil in every episode, but I've heard that future seasons will go more into a larger mythology and their role in it. I do love me some overarching mythology. For now, I'm hooked. I give it an A-.

I also took a bit of a risk by checking out the latest M. Night Shyamalan movie, "The Happening." Now, I loved "The Sixth Sense" and really enjoyed "Signs" and even "Unbreakable." But, since then, I've been increasingly disappointed to just plain angry over his more recent movies. I thought the twist in "The Village" was pretty annoying, and I HATED "The Lady in the Water." After the last, I vowed not to waste any more money on seeing M. Night movies in the theater, and that I'd wait 'til they came out on DVD. So, I already had lower expectations based both on M. Night's more recent movies and on my more casual, less expensive choice of venue for watching "The Happening." And, surprise, I didn't hate it! It wasn't the best movie ever, but I never rolled my eyes or got angry enough to yell at the screen. Mark Wahlberg does a good job playing the hero, a high school science teacher trying to use his faith in science to figure out what in the heck is - um - happening to cause people all over the Northeast zone out and start killing themselves. At several times, I may in fact have cheered at the screen "You go, Marky Mark!" Zooey Deschanel was kinda weird as his wife, and I didn't understand the emotion she was playing in several scenes. But, really this movie was about Wahlberg and M. Night's art direction. The overall premise - I won't ruin it - is interesting and has a bit of a message, and the look of the movie itself is gorgeous. It doesn't come anywhere close to being as the movies that made M. Night a star so early on, but it was way better than the last two. So, I give it a B.

Finally, and speaking of Marky Mark, I made my way through Season 4 of HBO's "male version of SATC" - "Entourage." I agree with many of the critics that the series is starting to run a little long. (And that's not a good sign, since season 5 is airing now and 6 is in the works.) The show used to have a good mix of stories that were about Vinnie Chase and the gang making their way in Hollywood with rising careers and unpredictable social lives, with a good shot in the arm of Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) in each episode.

Well, the Piv is such a superstar that he's become more and more central to the story - I'm not complaining about that - but along the way the plots have become a lot more formulaic and less interesting. Everything always works out for Vince, Ari somehow makes it work and reminds Eric that he still has a lot to learn about the business of making movies. Drama and Turtle have become one-note comic relief, and I wish we had more interesting stories about their own lives rather than just how they revolve around Vince. Eric and Ari are still my favorite characters, and the best stories are those when they're at odds with each other. But they still need to mix it up and have the gang fail every once in a while so we keep watching. Vince is a pretty but ambivalent "lead" for the show, and he's actually the least interesting guy of them all. Bring back Sloane, or give Eric or Vince a real relationship that makes them grow up and apart a bit. And please, get rid of the insufferable Billy Walsh! I'll keep watching the future seasons, but the show doesn't come close to the awesomeness of its first two years. I give it a B-.

History vs. Myth

It's starting to look a lot like fall these days, as the leaves are slowly turning, the nights are getting cooler, I'm sleeping with the windows open... that means it's the perfect time to curl up with a blanket and spend lots of time reading. Well, really, anytime is a good time for reading, but fall is especially perfect.

I just finished a great book - Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World. I've now read almost all of Horwitz's books, and my favorites - like this one - are a combination of history book and travelogue. Horwitz, a journalist with a real love of history, tells his stories by alternating between well-researched and compellingly-written history and his own modern day perspective as a researcher visiting the sites where the history took place. It worked really well for Captain Cook in his Blue Latitudes, for the Civil War in his Confederates in the Attic, and now for America's discovery in A Voyage Long and Strange.

Horwitz sets the stage for this book with a trip to Plymouth Rock, where he realizes that - even for a relatively knowledgeable history buff like himself - most Americans have about 130 years of our own history missing. There's a giant void between 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue and 1620 when the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. So he set about studying the history of the "discovery" of this new world, and learned a whole lot more than what is ever in our history books. Starting with the Vikings in 1000, and covering six centuries of European exploration before the English ever set foot on Terra Nueva, Horwitz provides fascinating details on the exploration and settlement of our sometimes-not-so-fair continent.

Okay, I admit, the subject sounds a little ho-hum at first, right? But trust me, this is great stuff. The usual suspects - Erik the Red, Leif Erikson, Ponce de Leon, Coronado, de Soto, John Smith, Pocahontas, Squanto - they're all there, but Horwitz goes far beyond the Trivial Pursuit level of factoids and tells the real stories of people struggling to establish settlements in a harsh land, of tragic culture clashes between native peoples and the European newcomers, of conquistadors and traders both claiming all that they see. And beyond the history, he explores the reasons why modern day Americans celebrate Columbus and the Pilgrims and, to some degree Jamestown, but the lost colony of Roanoke and the original European settlement St. Augustine are mostly forgotten or neglected. (Hint: PR is not a new thing.)

I really enjoyed this book, and my mind is so tickled with learning more of the real stories of history that I've now moved on to another historical subject entirely -- a biography of one of the most fascinating women in US history, "Princess" Alice Roosevelt Longworth. More good stories for these chilly weekend mornings!

So, readers, what books are keeping you company these days?

Don't Vote

This is pretty good...

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