Unaffiliated does NOT mean uninterested, uninformed or unaware

You know what I don't understand? The need some people have to know which party you are a member of. Seriously, does it really matter?

I admit I tend to vote Republican but I have been impressed by the Democrats a time or two. The honest truth is that I vote with who I think will do the best job...not which team they play for. To hop fully into either Party partisanship, to me, is like saying "I am only going to eat peanut m&m's from now on....so long plain." Goodness knows that somewhere down the line I will get a craving for a plain m&m and be munching away happily when some idiot from my party is going to come along and say, "HEY! THAT'S NOT PEANUT!" Like its his business anyway.....and the hoops you have to jump through to change affiliation in time for a primary election? Deadlines dependent on which state you live in? As if I have nothing better to do with my time than to keep track of deadlines and paperwork if, heaven forbid, I should decide to switch my allegiance.

The bummer of being unaffiliated is that I am not allowed to vote in the primary for either party unless I cast my lot with one party within the proscribed deadline. While I understand the need for not allowing Democrats to vote for which Republican should be allowed to run (to keep a weak candidate from being selected that their party leader can easily crush) I do not see why unaffiliated party members should be excluded from the polls...so long as we only vote on one party ticket. After watching the open hostility, schoolyard bickering and name calling between Obama and Clinton I certainly would not have thrown my lot in with the Democrats for this election, but what if I had to choose between the lesser of two Democratic evils because I hadn't changed affiliation in time? Seriously....the thought freaks me out.

I want to be free to choose completely and at any time...not be thrown into a category that I have to fight to change should the need arise.

What brought this on? No, no one cornered me on the street or anything....I simply filled out a new voter registration card as I have moved since the last time I voted. I admit that I hate the idea of belonging to one club or the other but if I want the freedom to select who I will be voting into office down the line then I guess I will have to make some hard decisions in the next few years.

If I had to choose parties just based off of this years campaign I would seriously throw my lot in with the Republicans. Though, as a sidebar I would like to know what does Palin's daughter's accidental pregnancy have to do with her being a bad choice for VP? I would like to say to the gal harping online about "doesn't Alaska have birth control?" Its not as if BC is 100% foolproof and if that's the worst thing you can come up with then boy are you grasping at straws. Teen pregnancy (sadly enough) is all around us but can you really blame the mom for her 17-year-old daughter's free agency? Her stand is pro-life, which is something her daughter is apparently supporting since you don't see her trotting off for an abortion. Where is Palin supposidly going against her beliefs? I have known several families who do not support extra-marital sex whose children still end up making their own choice. I do not blame the parents for their children's own decisions...especially when the child is practically an adult themselves.

Celebrity endorsements or not (though I hear Lindsey Lohan is Republican) the Obama train is just a 3-ring circus whose smooth-talking ringmaster has no hard answers as to how he is going to fulfill all his big talk. Goodness knows I was not a Clinton supporter (for either term)...but I supported Al Gore rather than George W. I think Gore would have done a good job once Bill got out of his way. Funny how a lot of people dissed him for his "cry wolf" of global warming but that its now a major issue to both political parties....

Luckily I still have awhile before I have to make my choice...I think I will have to see who ends up running for the next election before making a final decision.

You'd think there would be an easier way of it though.

Field Trips

I am strangely excited to go to class tonight because we are going on a field trip. Of course it will be a bunch of us from both of the "Print Design and Color Theory" classes just piling into our cars and driving over to a local print shop for a production tour (rather than having us all pile into the big yellow bus of days gone by) but I am still rather silly over the idea. I haven't been on a field trip since high school.

I feel as if I should have a signed consent form from my mother.

September, Poems, Birthdays and Autumn

September has come, It is hers
Whose vitality leaps in the autumn,
Whose nature prefers
Trees without leaves and a fire in the fire-place.
So I give her this month and the next
Though the whole of my year should be hers who has rendered already
So many of its days intolerable or perplexed
But so many more so happy;
Who has left a scent on my life and left my walls
Dancing over and over with her shadow,
Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls
And all of London littered with remembered kisses.

- Louis MacNeice, "Autumn Journal"



Some of you may recognise the opening lines from my old myspace account...some may not. This is one of my favorite poems followed closely by "Inversnaid" by Gerald Manley Hopkins. September is that magical time of year when summer closes and Autumn takes the stage. It is the beginning of some of my most cherished things: the smell of woodsmoke, foggy mornings, the orange of ripe pumpkins, cool windy days, the leaves in bright colors across the hills and crunching underfoot, buying school supplies and knowing that Halloween is just around the corner....

Autumn is when I feel the most alive.

I am so happy that I was born in this most beloved of months and at this wonderful time of the year.

I didn't make a wish when I blew out my candles yesterday...I'd already received my wish.

For those of you here in Utah I am sure that Labor Day this year was a bit of a bummer for you: a 3-day weekend of rain, cool weather and a lot of clouds with just a little sun peeking out at the end, but for me this weekend was exactly what I needed, and honestly one of the best birthday presents I could have ever asked for.