Requisite Election Day Post

[teaberryblue]

In the spirit of Election Day, I thought I would take a moment to re-assert my political values:

My coworker, Glenn, gave me that this morning, after expressing his dismay about the number of “This is a sign” signs at the rally this weekend.

Oh, yes. I went to the “Rally to Restore Sanity/March to Keep Fear Alive” this weekend, with sunnyrea and kutiechick. Sadly, I left my camera in their apartment, so pictures will have to wait. I will leave you with one photo of myself:

The rally was kind of amazing. Have you ever felt hundreds of thousands of people jump in unison? Have you ever heard the sound of their feet echo off the buildings that surround you? Explaining the impact (no pun intended) of being involved in such a demonstration is not really going to do it justice.

We went to Rocky Horror after the rally, which was also super fun. I haven’t been in years! I was disappointed, though, to hear all the sort of “new” shout-outs, lots of references to really contemporary things that sort of seemed out of place. And there were a lot of people doing really long shout-outs, which I don’t get the point of, because they all overlapped each other and were impossible to hear. The live cast was really good, though! I liked the guy who played Frank a lot.

Sunday, I came home, and watched the first episode of The Walking Dead. It was literally gorgeous. I am still not entirely sure how I feel about a serialized zombie TV show, even based on a comic, but the first episode was excellent. Did anybody else watch?

There haven’t been many comics lately because I’m working on a longer project and I really only have time to do one thing a night, so the comics have taken a back seat to the other thing I’m working on, which is about 1/5 of the way completed. If I have some time to do some, I will post them, but it might be a while til I have time to do anything new.

I have actually been writing more. I don’t have the time in my day to work on something like a, say, NaNovel, because I can commit to about 500 words a day, but I’ve been writing some prose every day, and I’ve been reading a lot more books. I’m up to about a book a week, which is awesome, when I haven’t read in so long. I’m reading a lot of books that have been sitting on my shelves for years and years, and I’ve been buying new books, too. I have been reading Shannon Hale’s Bayern books and last week, I read Chalice by Robin McKinley, which I loved. It was about bees! This week, I’m reading Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones, which I’m enjoying, but not as well as I like most of her other books.

Last weekend, I went with my mom to Columbia University Teacher’s College Reading & Writing Project’s first ever Parent-Child day. My mom wanted to go because a lot of the parents in her school were going, and asked me if I would come along as her child. Which was excellent because one of my favorite authors, Kate DiCamillo, was speaking there. I really liked what she had to say, especially for the kids. She talked about how she doesn’t like to write, how writing is hard, and it’s not something that comes easily to her. I thought that was a great thing for kids to hear from a professional and successful writer who’s written a very wide variety of types of books. I think a lot of the time, kids thing that being good at something means you like it and it’s easy, and so I thought it was great that she told them that. She also follows very few rules: she doesn’t use an outline, she doesn’t plan things out. It made me decide to go back and write something without an outline, which I haven’t done in about ten years. I’m rewriting a story I wrote when I was in my early 20s, a horrible fantasy story that was very trite and cliched, because I think I figured out how to make it into something better. So I guess in some ways it has an outline, but I’ve been veering away from the original plot quite a lot. I’ve also started working on another story I’ve had in my head for a while.

I wish I could write short things! But I’m terrible at short stories; everything has to be long, long long!

I’ve strayed from the topic of elections quite a lot, and it’s time for me to go vote, so I will go do that and possibly write more later.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

Comments

[liret.livejournal.com]

That is totally the best sign.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I found samples of Jefferson's handwriting to copy for the sign.

[sunnyrea.livejournal.com]

PIN!

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

I DEFIED THE POLLING PLACE BY WEARING MY VERY OBVIOUS PIN!

[sunnyrea.livejournal.com]

YOU ARE A REBEL!

[horosha.livejournal.com]

I love it! I'm so jealous you got to go. I live too far away.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

It was pretty kickass!

[i-smell-apples.livejournal.com]

I've only read one book by Kate DiCamillo but oh gosh I LOVED it! The Tale of Despereaux, simply gorgeous. :)

[kutiechick.livejournal.com]

Oh, I really want to watch The Walking Dead -- must get on that!

And yay for rally awesomeness -- had a great time this weekend!!!

[iridesce57.livejournal.com]

Oh ... sometimes I can be so present focused.

I went to and thoroughly enjoyed the rally and in posts like yours once again headslap myself for not checking to see how many LJers were going to attend.

Glad you enjoyed it - glad so many people were there and it went relatively smoothly.

Heard an interesting stat that the majority of attendees were in the 20-30 and over 50 year age brackets. Looking back that made some sense.

{ I thought it pretty strange though at the baby strollers that were trying to make it through the wall to wall people }

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

I have had a discussion with a lot of folks my parents' age, about how this happens. It's not just true at this rally, but at a lot of them. I think it's because the baby boomers were a very activist generation, and they raised their kids to be. But most people in the gap generation (mostly Gen-Xers) didn't ever get a lot of encouragement to be committed to activism. I'm 32, so sort of on the cusp, but my parents had me young-ish, and I tend to identify myself more with the Gen Yers than the Gen Xers as far as personal values.

I had so many friends at the rally from New York who I didn't see there! Not that I was expecting to.

[delizia.livejournal.com]

I saw Kate DiCamillo speak at the LA Times Festival of Books. I, too, really liked her talk. I thought she was refreshingly straightforward about it all, and her story is inspiring in the least trite sense of the word -- she makes what she does seem possible (she also has amazing command of a crowd). One of the things that stuck with me most was that when children would step up to the microphone to ask the "adorable" kind of questions that children tend to ask, ones without much superficial value ("why do your books have so many animals?" "who was your favorite character?"), she would consider their question in an honest way, without condescending, and give them an answer just as she would an adult -- sometimes even a snarky answer. I thought it was unusual, and cool to see.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Yes! The same was true here, too. She pretty much said to the audience, "I write two pages a day. That can take me an hour or two in the morning, and when I'm done for the day, I'm done for the day. A lot of writers write thousands of words a day, but I couldn't do that."

Also, yeah, you would have six year olds getting up and asking how to become famous writers or which character of hers she would like to be-- she said Winn-Dixie, and then when she found out she was out of time for more questions, she was like, "great, so now I'll leave you all on that note, that I secretly wish I were a dog."

[crissykitty.livejournal.com]

I watched the series premiere of The Walking Dead. It was awesome. I rarely commit to tv shows, but this will be a part of my sunday nights while the season runs.

provides access

[(Anonymous)]

Comfortabl y, the article is in reality the greatest on this noteworthy topic. I concur with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your upcoming updates. Saying thanks will not just be enough, for the extraordinary lucidity in your writing. I will immediately grab your rss feed to stay privy of any updates. Genuine work and much success in your business efforts!