Entries from March 2008 ↓

Last night’s speech changed this election season for us, and I think it did for a lot of others too.

I have been most interested in a regime change, a sea change in how business is done in the White House, and I think either democratic candidate could bring that. However, I have never been given so much credit for intelligence and understanding of subtlety by a politician in my adult life.

We threw $100 down on the table and committed ourselves to a campaign.

What I was struck by most? Words matter.

Words matter, words matter, words matter. Speeches should be pretty. I want my politicians to be brilliant orators and to bring passion and depth to ideas.  I want speeches that unite, clarify, bring momentum – there’s been such a dearth of this in the last eight years.

If you haven’t read the speech – find it and do so. I fought tears a couple of times.

Other than that I’m home w/ a sore throat finishing the last of this novel, which is headed out today!

Update: The Oregonian wrote about Coen

Among Saturday’s more poignant images was a tiny 4-year-old boy who held a sign that said, “This war’s older than me.”

Link to article: Five years of duty, dissent and war

Go Coen!

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And thus the sign we made him, This War is Older than Me! He also thought ‘Poop on the war’ would be a good one.

I shipped my family off to the protest in downtown Portland today (still editing), and was awfully proud watching them go.

It’s very depressing to think that he has never known a time where we aren’t at war. Since we listen to a fair bit of radio, he has often inquired about such-and-such market bombing, and we’ve taken care with the language and have begun to censor the radio a little. At any rate, at just over four, he’s well aware of the war going on on the other side of the world and how we feel about it – and of course he’s also quite familiar with Adel Hamad/Project Hamad and thus Guantanamo. Not that each age doesn’t have its craziness, but these are strange times to grow up in.

At any rate, just for fun we did a search on Flickr tonight to see if he turned up anywhere, as Laura said quite a few people took his photo.

What do you know, he’s here:
http://flickr.com/photos/36254855@N00/2336481760/

and here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomlechner/2336714908/

side note: I’m sort of mixed about posting photos of Coen – I probably won’t do this a lot. There are various opinions from other blogs I respect – Tim Bray’s ongoing makes a point of not naming children’s names or posting photos, and the Granades are very open about this sort of thing. I like the idea of being open about it, but I’m naturally secretive and again I think this is a strange time to be growing up. But since this seems like an exceptional case and many others took his photo, and, I admit, I’m proud to think of him carrying a protest sign, I’m going for it.