I had thoughts about what to write tonight. I had plans to mine comments extensively. Oops.
I twisted my ankle. I have not really twisted my ankle in the 2 ½ years since I had surgery to tighten the ligament. Twisted your ankle with a functioning ligament is a very different experience than twisting your ankle when it just buckles and yeah, you fall down but it doesn't really hurt. With the ligament, it hurts. And it keeps hurting, and frankly it's scary because you have to wonder "did I just reverse the surgery that kept me on crutches for 10 weeks, six of them non-weight-bearing?" (Incidentally, this is when I really developed my dkos habit - when I was mostly stuck in bed.)
I was canvassing, and that was going to be a good story, about a beautiful fall day in New Hampshire, going door to door along quiet pretty streets as the sun went down, knowing I was doing something to help elect Paul Hodes, a candidate I believe deeply in.
I guess it's a couple weeks ago now I was out at dinner with some of the Hodes campaign staff, and Justin, who's like the class clown, said something funny but shocking and possibly offensive, and followed it by saying something like "every now and then I get beat up for saying things, but I'd rather take the ass-kicking and speak my mind." I asked how many people at the table (there were 5 of us) had been beat up for speaking our minds, and every one of us raised our hands. I wonder if that's something common to people with strong beliefs, if it's about being liberals, if it's about that campaign (since the campaign manager was one of the people with a raised hand, there could be a selection effect I suppose).
Yesterday, I spent the day doing office work for the campaign. I wished I could do more, because the staff there are working so hard you wouldn't believe, and not getting a whole lot of credit from outside the campaign for that. Nobody's whining, they're all working hard and fighting hard for this election. But we all have days we get discouraged, and I guess this week has had a few of those.
And Justin, the class clown, the guy who always has something funny to say, said something serious last night. He'd been on the phone with an elderly man who's maybe a little crazy, doesn't have much money, generally has a hard time in the world. And the guy was kind of ranting at him - a pro-Hodes rant but taking up Justin's time and energy. But afterward, he said it was ok, because he knew that the man was ranting because he knew that the people in power didn't care about people like him, so electing people like Paul is how he's going to have a chance in the world.
So, you know, we have days things don't work out super well. We get the crap kicked out of us by life or by work or by people who don't appreciate what we have to say. And we come back. We take people's crap because we know it comes from desperation and because we're desperate, too, to see the world change.
And all that is one reason it's nice to take some time to appreciate each other now.
I keep trying to mine comments, but while I've been able to sit and write this, I don't seem to be able to focus on reading much, picking out comments. So my only contribution here is one I picked out late last night, unless you count my title, which is from a comment by DHinMI last week. Sorry for that, but happily the community has been very generous with submissions to topcomments [at] gmail [dot] com.
Spit kicks off an excellent discussion of gender and literature in the second installment of the new weekly series "Feminisms: (individualized subtitle here)."
Top comments team member noweasels, generous as always with the mining
etatauri on why Hastert was late to his own press conference
Yellow Canary's response to the pre-Hastert press conference question of the day (coincidentally all posted by Yellow Canary!)
And fellow TCer va dare
By zot23 I lit, I enhaled on the diary "Can Being A Stoner Save Your Brain?"
AND
From last night's Top Comment diary, I deeply appreciated the comment by PatsBard: Still having moments of adjustment - dealing with loss.
Sardonyx comes in with
I suspect this will be recommended by others, but I wanted to be sure
it got on the list:
cskendrick writes an excellent diary Regarding hope
that expands on a
comment he wrote in last night's TCs, and in a comment adds his list
of wishes
From nonnie9999
In Jeffrey Feldman's diary (which you simply must see!!!) on Dennis "Dumb" Hastert and chimpy "Dumberer" Bush, Chamonixsums up the Rethugs very well, and Yellow Canary has a short and sweet call to action on how to deal with the despicable disgusting detestable duo.
Clonecone says
This by ChicagoSwan (which was also submitted by cskendrick) Was so good that I stole it for my sig line
cskendrick is very generous to us today
maggiemae
reminds us how dedicated George Bush sounded on the topic of ending world
torture, while expanding American use of torture worldwide.
Remember: It's not evil if Republicans do it.
Yellow Canary,
upon being asked "What are you wearing?"
BarbinMD
just can't wait for the chum to be tossed into the shark tank
Sidof79 submits this best subject line by Dallasdoc.
Bic momma submits this by lapin, on crisis response