Blogging for Change September 28, 2010
Posted by caradox in Uncategorized.Tags: LIfe, Progressive Politics
1 comment so far
Into the whirlwind I go.
Last week I said yes to a simple request and it is turning into a BFD (see Biden, Joseph Healthcare Reform 2010).
I’ll tell the full story down the road, after the Midterms, about a smart & passionate Progressive Democratic Congressman and his request for help in getting the word out about more of the House and Senate Candidates… but let’s just say, I jumped into the deep end.
A small group of bloggers and tweeps joined together to write and share news about District and State races where we knew – if we could just let people know more about the candidates, they’d have a chance to close the gap. And to respond to a huge conservative machine blanketing the online media with attacks, backed by big money, on true blue local progressives with smaller budgets.
I started as a helper bee, but I’ve now done a couple of diaries of the Daily Kos. With each one I write, I’m learning more and more about what I love about blogging politics.
So I’m just going to keep on going.
Which means that I’m going to have to think about how to fit this into my life, and about how to do it as well as I can.
I’m exercising my journalistic muscles in a way that I haven’t done in many years. And doing it on stories that make a difference in people’s lives. That alone is worth the hours of lost sleep I’ve had the past several days.
What that means for this blog is that I’ll primarily be doing more of the personal here (with a bit of cross-posting of what I write elsewhere) and I’ll be doing more focused blogging in other places. This is a learning process, so this site will follow my journey. There’s a right place for everything and everyone, isn’t there?
9 Years September 11, 2010
Posted by caradox in Life.add a comment
As the clock turns past midnight, it is September 11, 2010 here in New York.
I’ve had enough of politics and media circuses this month. It will only get weirder, and uglier, and more frustrating as we get closer each day to the November 2010 midterm elections. A lot of the things we have worked for and hoped for seem to be in the balance.
For today, I’m putting that aside. I want to remember what is most important ~ those who lost their lives in the terror attacks, those who gave their lives and their health in the minutes and years since, working to save, recover, and protect Americans. The families of all those lost and wounded. And all of us who on that day learned what it was like to be hated for who we are and what we are – for simply being Americans.
My niece is coming to visit tomorrow. She is 18 months old and knows nothing of September 11th. Someday, she will. She is a Jersey girl, just like her aunt, and September 11th will become as much a part of her own life story as Dr King’s March on Washington or the Vietnam War are part of mine. She will grow up in a town where classmates and neighbors still miss their own. We’ll do our best to tell her the story well. With kindness and love, rather than fear and anger. Where we were. The phone calls we made to find each other. The visit to Saint Patrick’s while New York’s Bravest were still being honored at mass. Best of all, the day just over three weeks later when her mom and dad married in a place where flags filled every overpass and doorway.
Once the stories are done, she will have to live with the history of what kind of nation we became in the years after September 11, 2001. I hope we can tell her America found itself better, more kind to each other, more able and willing to help neighbors in need, brave enough to trust each other. And I hope she sees that we found good leaders who chose to connect us rather than divide us.
In the meantime, I will remember with a song and a poem. So that my mind stays ready to do its part and give her the gift of the most important stories, and my heart stays focused on the country we really are, deep down where the work of living is done.
“Land of the Living” by Lucy Kaplansky
“Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100” by Martin Espada
She is young yet, we still have time.
This Life One Leaf 