Motivation Monday (On Tuesday): Choose to Help

I motivated myself so much yesterday that I didn't have a chance to even think about blogging. Obviously I haven't done much blogging recently anyway. I have lots of ideas, though, and thought a Motivation Monday (On Tuesday) post would help get me back into the writing flow.

Here's what's up. School started yesterday. I joined many tired-looking parents on the running trail at about 9:05 yesterday morning, just after the school busses finished their rounds of the neighborhood. I ran more than three miles for the first time since the Blessing ten-mile road race about a month ago. My IT band injury has migrated to my hamstring and it hurts like a son-of-a-gun but I have some additional stretches and an icing and heating routine to add to my stretching and running and resting routine. So, it's taking me more time to run fewer miles but I am still confident in my ability to run the Army Ten Miler in October. At the Blessing I tied my time from last year's ATM. I'm hoping to beat that time at this year's ATM.

I'm also doing some writing things and working on book reviews to share.

I made an appointment to donate blood today. Whether it stays in my community or gets sent to Texas, it's one of the few things that costs no money but will greatly benefit someone else. If you want to help, too, look for a blood donation drive in your area or send money directly to benefit Texas: Click here. It doesn't matter who the president is or what Congress is up to. We can choose to help, even from a distance.

I also voted in our county school board election today. Local elections make the biggest impact on the community.

What have you done to serve your community today?

Turning a Blind Eye to Steve Bannon -- Now Who Lives in the Bubble?

There's been a lot of talk of the liberal elite bubble in the last week. But what about the rural, white bubble? People are genuinely concerned about the economy, I get that. But does that mean there's no room to be concerned about racism and sexism as well? Just because these things don't happen in one small town doesn't discredit them as being national problems.

Steve Bannon is going to be toxic as the strategist who is crafting the message for our next president. Calls from the left for his removal from President-elect Donald Trump's administration will not be taken seriously unless we have support from the right as well.

Mitch McConnell literally said nothing when asked about Bannon in a press conference earlier this week. He just started ahead awkwardly until the reporter gave up. This is unacceptable. Conservative leaders have to say something, otherwise they are condoning this placement of Bannon in the administration. He's not an appointee who's going to be approved by Congress so the only course of action against his being hired is to put pressure on Conservative leaders to put pressure on President-elect Trump.

Even if you believe the alt-right is a fringe group, putting its megaphone to the ear of the president like this surely must signal to you that something bigger is going on. From National Review:

The problem is not whether Bannon himself subscribes to a noxious strain of political nuttery; it’s that his de facto endorsement of it enables it to spread and to claim legitimacy, and that what is now a vicious fringe could, over time, become mainstream....

Principled conservatives, especially those in leadership positions, have a political and moral duty to condemn, and to work to eradicate, the animus that is the alt-right’s raison d’être.

You don't have to leave a comment here, or on Facebook, or anywhere else. But if this bothers you, call Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and any Republican senators and congresspersons who represent your state and your district, and tell them you are not okay with Steve Bannon being so close to the president.

If this does not bother you, then you are the one who is living in a bubble, not me.

To Anger or Not to Anger. To Unite or Not Unite.

We get one day to mope and then we have to get to work.

That's the comment I left in many places around the internet Wednesday and also in person, over the phone, in texts, anyone I was talking to.

But as the day wore on and I listened to more analysis and I read more reactions, I became angry. I'm trying not to be, and I'm going back and forth on whether or not it's okay for me to be. Which I hate, that I can't feel comfortable having this emotion, let alone expressing it. I think my anger is going in a different direction than many people assume, however.

Trump supporters voted for him because they are angry. Those of us who didn't vote for him are now expected to remain calm and work together and find unity. But we have a right to our anger as well. Trump supporters felt things weren't going their way so they got angry and they did what they thought would change things. We have the same right to be angry and work to change things as well. And we will change things, for the most part legally and peacefully, because the Constitution gives us the right to do so. There will be some fiery bursts of anger that may lead to violence from some, but unlike the Trump side of things, we will condemn violence rather than condone it.

I expect that if I'm taking one day to mope and then get to work, that Trump supporters will take their one day to revel in victory, and then work to keep their candidate in check. You voted for him but your job isn't over. Your world isn't going to magically change now.

One thing that bothers me among all these calls for unity is that I feel like we are expected to be good losers while Trump supporters are allowed to be bad winners. In order to make this country work they have to be gracious winners.

Many of them are not being gracious winners. Many of them have taken the win by Trump as a free pass to be even more racist. For being publicly racist if they were privately being so before. President-elect Trump, this really is your problem now. You have to reign in your supporters and call for them to knock this shit off. You wanted to be the law and order president. You have to instill that over your own supporters now who are assaulting blacks, gays, Muslims, and Mexicans since you won this election.

Among people I know who voted for Trump I'm seeing a lot more calls for Hillary supporters to calm down and unite than I'm seeing comments condemning these violent, racist actions. Sitting quietly and waiting for it to blow over isn't an option anymore. We saw this in the aftermath to Brexit and it's what many people feared would happen here as well. I've said this a few times over the last couple weeks, that it's not the policies of a Trump president that bother me per se, because we have checks and balances. But all the policies in the world mean nothing to the people who were beat up yesterday by celebrating Trump supporters. It's happening just as many of us feared it would. And Trump himself, alongside all of his supporters who are not racists or sexist, have to speak out against this. Ellie Wiesel said, "Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

I am tired of calling for calm and unity. Calls for unity from one candidate gave us the other candidate as our president. The people calling for unity from the Trump side now certainly didn't unify under President Obama. They unified against him in order to try and block a good deal of his legislation.

Be angry if you want to be. But understand that anger and Facebook posts don't amount to real change. Find a way to support your community. Keep active in local elections. Call out racism and sexism when you see it. Send actual letters to your senators and representatives, not just tweets. Donate to the ACLU and NPR because we need watchdogs more than ever. Subscribe to newspapers to keep good journalists in business.

And scrutinize this president. For all the scrutiny the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign came under these last eight years, let it be known that a Trump presidency will be under just as intense a microscope.

Book Review: Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

After you've read something, please consider leaving a line or two on Goodreads and Amazon. The authors appreciate it!

Here's my review as it appears on Goodreads.

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the first Sarah Vowell book I ever read and while I've read all her others, I've come back to this one several times to reread. We move in and out of the Washington, D.C., area every few years and I usually read it when we're heading back there in anticipation of seeing some of my favorite monuments and hearing some of my favorite stories. I of course had to read it again this summer since I'll be starting a job as a tour guide with our next move there this fall. I wanted to refresh my memory of the funny and interesting observations Ms. Vowell shares.

Assassination Vacation gives us a look at the assassinations of three presidents -- Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. Students don't learn much about he presidencies of Garfield and McKinley these days but they are definitely worth a look. At the time she was writing, Ms. Vowell makes comparisons to the McKinley and Bush administrations. I'd make similar comparisons to a possible Trump administration this year.

Ms. Vowell makes American history accessible and points out how American history and politics have always been mired in scandal and downright silliness. I love how she goes into the lives of the assassins as well. Everyone knows John Wilkes Booth, but Guiteau and Czolgosz rarely get much mention. Ms. Vowell points out that many people were relieved to hear that Czolgosz had a foreign name because it made them assume a foreigner had shot the president. But Czolgosz was an American citizen, born in the Midwest to immigrant parents. Sound familiar to the fears one of our presidential candidates is helping to fester this year?

I do not want a presidential assassination. But I think it's worth learning about what drove others to do it in the past and take a look at the atmosphere of politics and the entire country surrounding those events. I recommend this book to anyone who has even a passing interest in American history, politics, or current events.

View all my reviews

• And, yes, I'm really going to be a tour guide in Washington! I'll be with City Running Tours. I'm so excited. I'll share more details once I'm down there getting started.

The Results Are In

In the election for local councillors on Monday, the ruling party has won by a landslide and eight  opposition parties, including the most popular one, are calling for a re-vote because they hate those results. They are threatening to boycott the rest of the elections this year, including the presidential election in June.

Opposition Demands Re-run Over Fraud Claims

Ruling Party Takes Big Lead

Mike's been gone the last couple days, observing the election and the ballot counting in one of the districts a couple hours away from the city. He returned yesterday. He said that there were some kids hassling people and it was one of the hottest afternoons he'd experienced here, but overall the voting process was smooth, if a bit messy. The ink pots that people dipped their thumbs in to prove they voted proved to be the biggest disaster of the day. The ink was thick and sticky, and people were caught outside trying to wash the ink off, but in reality they were just trying to wipe off enough inky gloop so that they didn't leave sticky, inky fingerprints on everything they touched for the rest of the day. Mike didn't even vote and he got ink all over his hands just from hanging around polling stations.

Elections Postponed, Again

Word came out late on Friday that elections would definitely be postponed again, from Sunday to Monday. The nonpartisan electoral commission was confident they would have all the id cards and ballots distributed in time for a Sunday election, but the president, along with about ninety percent of the population that goes to church on Sunday, said there's no way elections can happen on a Sunday. We must have another holiday on Monday in order to have the elections! But word came out late last night that the small percentage of Muslims who live here are crying fowl for a Monday elections, because Monday is a Muslim holiday. Traditionally, the government calls two Muslim holidays a year as national holidays, but the one coming up tomorrow isn't one of them. Also, the Muslim community is tiny compared to the rest of the population and many Muslims aren't even Burundian citizens. But it could still be perceived that the president is favoring his own religion rather than treating everyone as equals. It's a sticky situation and so far we haven't heard which way it's definitely going to go.

We had dinner last night with some Burundian friends. The general consensus is that the electoral commission made the right decision in postponing until they were sure they could get it right. But if the government keeps delaying and doesn't announce those postponements until late the night before (announcements have a tendency to come out around 10 pm, once the local tv stations have stopped broadcasting), people are going to be too fed up to bother voting. Every time the government calls a new holiday for voting, the business community gets annoyed by the business they're losing. Employers don't want to close down again, and employees are stuck between enjoying a vacation day but having another day's pay disappear. In a country of 8 million people, less than half are eligible to vote, which makes these holidays even more of a nuisance to the non-voting residents (although, a good deal of the non-voting majority is school children, who probably don't care why they're not in school).

Most people think that at this point the elections will go ahead on Monday. Some of the press I've been reading is sort of unfair, calling the id cards and ballot distribution "embarrassing" mishaps, but people here think they were just business as usual.

Vote Credibility Hangs by a Thread

Elections Postponed

It's somewhat funny that in this low-tech country, I get my local news from email and RSS reader subscriptions. But, believe it or not, we don't own a radio so can't listen to the local news, and the television stations don't show a lot of news. They don't even run any programing for several hours a day. So when I woke up this morning and saw that there's no CNN-style election coverage on tv, I turned to the internet.

The news online this morning is that today's election has been postponed until Sunday. There's been a delay in distributing the ballots to all the polling places, apparently. Big surprise. But this begs the question,  Is today still a holiday? It was only declared a holiday so that people could vote. Should I be getting ready for work right now? Mike's already left for the day (he's an observer) and I'm dying for him to call me with an update. But since he hasn't called, that means he's too busy so I shouldn't call him. Everyone I know is too busy working for the elections, and my official assignment is to stay home and not get stressed out. (I know that's better for me than running around observing elections, but it's so boring, especially for someone who loves elections as much as I do.)

AFP: Burundi postpones election, citing paper ballot delay

Nearly real-time updates, if you read French: Voice of Burundi

It's Election Eve Eve!

Yes, it's the night before the day before the elections. A few hours ago the president announced that not only would Friday be a national holiday, election day, but Thursday as well. The reason: The government didn't give people enough time to pick up their voter ID cards, so they need the time to do it on Thursday before they can vote on Friday. Rumor has it the ID cards were ready a while ago, but when people started showing up to get them, they were just in piles rather than organized alphabetically or some other logical way. So it took hours for each person to pick up his or her card, having to sort through the piles. After a short time, it was decided they would shut down the operation, organize the cards, and try distributing them again. The day before the election.

Friday is the first of five elections this summer, and the first national elections since 2005 (which were the first elections after about 10 years of civil war). It's an exciting time to be here, watching. There are so many parties (nearly 50 for some of the local campaigns), and party flags and party symbols and party handshakes. I like driving around trying to identify the flags. The eagle holding a machete. Two different chicken flags (two splinters of what used to be one party). A flag with a rooster. And is that one a French flag with the party acronym magic-markered onto it?

Friday's elections are communal, then the presidential election is in June, and parliament and other groups will have their elections through September. And each election day is a holiday. I almost wish I were sticking around longer, so I could have more holidays. That, and I love politics so I'm curious to see how this all works out.

A quick look at the headlines this election eve eve:

President hopes God, development win him votes
He has built a lot of schools and hospitals, but the doctors and teachers are constantly on strike because they don't get paid. He's going to need God's help.

Set to vote
Interesting summary.

HRW researcher expelled
Whoops. Maybe not the best way for the ruling party to prove they are in favor of free and open elections. She's the only Human Rights Watch representative in the country.

Since I won't be at work over the next few days, due to the holidays and the weekend, I'll have plenty of time to blog and check in with election results. Everyone's as excited as I am, aren't they?

Yay Democracy!

Even though I was a little homesick, it was thrilling to be here for the presidential election. I had the opportunity to watch the results early on Wednesday morning with some Burundian university students. They were so inspired. I think they think that if they can get to the United States somehow, then their children could be the president someday, too. They also think this democracy thing is pretty cool. One student told me he thinks it’s great that we can vote for someone based on ideas, not from coercion or who will give you a job or which party you belong to. And they like how we get to know a candidate through the media, all the information about both policy ideas and personal lives. Optimists yearn for Burundi elections to be the same way some day. (Unfortunately it doesn’t look like they’ll adopt the American style before the 2010 election here.)

Oh, and here’s a photo of us from Halloween:

Vote Early, Vote Often

That's what my dad always tells me.

It's strange being outside of the United States on election day. Instead of staying up late on Tuesday night to watch results roll in state by state, I'll be waking up early Wednesday morning. At 8 pm on the East Coast, it's 3 am here. I'll be groggily wondering if my absentee ballot made it into the right hands at the right time to be counted.

It's no secret that most of the continent is thrilled at the possibility of Obama being president. A few weeks ago my cab driver in Nairobi nearly drove off the road, he was so excited talking about him. (Well, he nearly drove off the road several times for various reasons.) I heard of a theater group in Nairobi producing "Obama! The Musical." We see Obama t-shirts here in Bujumbura. I think Wednesday is going to be an exciting day around here.

Some co-workers and I have been planning an election results viewing party for Burundian co-workers and aquaintances. How do you explain the American election process in French? (Oui, nous parlons francais ici! Or we try to, anyway.) With the handy website America.gov en francais, that's how. It's hard enough explaining the electoral college and the popular vote and conventions and primaries in English.

Happy Election Day Eve! Be sure to get out there and vote tomorrow while I'm here practicing how to say "I voted by absentee ballot" in French.

Vote Vote Vote Vote

I voted this morning. One night last week I set aside some time to find and go over my sample ballot, and it made me feel better about voting. Then I watched that HBO documentary and it made me scared again. But I decided to go out and do it. My polling place was at someone's house, which was weird. I'd never heard of that. But I brought my trusty sample ballot with me, very carefully filled in the circles, and scanned my ballot away. Hope it works!

Now I can succomb to the head cold I woke up with this morning and over-indulge on MSNBC election coverage. (I *heart* one of their newer political analysts, Mike Barnacle. What a great name.) Keep an eye on the Rhode Island senate race bewteen Chaffee and Whitehouse. To me that's the most exciting one, knowing Rhode Islanders and their finnicky ways.

If you missed Hacking Democracy last night, or if you want to revisit it, The Daily Show's Resident Expert John Hodgman does a fantastic analysis of voting machine technology. The episode reruns today (Friday) at 2 pm and 8 pm.

I don't think I'll have to do an arms workout today. I did a huge grocery shopping this morning and carrying everything in from the car, including 2 good-sized pumpkins for carving jack-o'-lanterns, was a lot of work for my long skinny arms. I bought food for making some of Mike's favorite meals over the next few nights. I also stocked up on some stuff so I won't have to go shopping right away when we get back from Los Angeles on Sunday. I always get a little lazy for the first couple days that Mike's gone.

I am an addict. Of politics news. I have MSNBC's special all-day-long politics coverage on today. Tim Russert just came on! It's exciting to see Rhode Island in the national politics spot-light. Whitehouse has pulled ahead in the polls, and I'm surprised. Rhode Island is loyal and Chaffee has been good to it. But Rhode Island is also fiercely independent.

Mike got taken off the Asia trip, so no need to watch CNN or MSNBC for a glimpse of him in the background in Tokyo or Beijing. He was bummed when he found out where they'd be going without him. But in 2 weeks he's leaving for 6 weeks, so it's not the end of the world that he had to stay home.

I'm seriously considering not voting this year. I don't want either candidate to be governor. I'm too confused by the propositions to make an informed decision. (Ugh--California and its propositions. What a headache!) I'm troubled by the thought of not voting. I've always voted. But what's the point if I'm not happy with my choices?