Democracy in action

The Obama camp sends me emails every day. At this point, I consider them research for my work. Emily obsessively orders stickers and magnets from Teens for Obama. They're everywhere. My mom sends an email the morning of the debate saying she hopes Romney "screws up."

Ali helps hand out buttons for her friend's dad before the high school football game. He's running for State Representative. I look him up. He's a republican, fiscally and socially conservative. We talk about how everyone's entitled to their own point of view, but that she might want to refrain from talking about politics at their house. She says "I know mom, I'm not stupid."

Frank votes practically the moment the ballots arrive, then helpfully lets me know that he's left it unsealed in case I needed to check out how he voted.

I choose a quiet moment to sit on the floor of the living room and vote. All on my own. It's handy to be able to vote from home on a Sunday afternoon. Yet it doesn't feel quite as exceptional as it used to when we went to the local church, got our ballots from the senior citizen volunteers, and voted in the little booth next to our neighbors.

And there still aren't very many women's names on the ballot again this year.

Who we are

This weekend's parental assignment for Emily's Theory of Knowledge class is to write a piece "of relevant and useful length about who she is, with no help of any kind from her." All this as we embarked on our first official college visit, a surreal time that forces you to reconcile with letting your little creature set sail in the open world.

We visited the U of O where we sat in a few of my old classrooms and toured the very dorm I lived in so many years ago.  So much has changed. At the same time, nothing has changed. Although the fabulous new dining halls and the thought of endless possibility, made me want to move back in and stay.

Next up, University of Washington, followed by OSU. And then the applications. And then the decision. As you'll see from my completed homework assignment... we'll probably be the last to know.

Who is Emily Chinn? Emily is wholly connected to people, particularly those who have positive energy to offer the world.  She notices and remembers everything.  Her natural state is to be happy and sometimes even ecstatic about things that appeal to her.  She's earnest yet loves to find humor and joy in situations.  At the same time, she's intensely private, keeps her own counsel, makes decisions intuitively, and avoids conflict. She has a keen sense of style, dislikes letting people see her fail, and is fiercely determined to manage her life in her own way, even though her way is usually within the bounds of what people would expect.

Seems like she'll be ready to go.

Lessons

 I want to be Sarah Vowell.

But when it comes to nerdy celebrity worship, Ira Glass is where it's at. Yet I always approached him with a mix of thrill and trepidation that he might actually find out I didn't measure up to his prowess. His unconventional voice. His magical spinning and weaving of tales. His stories that stuck in your head. 

But then, there was the incident. Several years ago, when I worked at OPB, we booked Ira for a speaking engagement. It was right at the start of the fall theatre season in Portland. None of the traditional venues were available. So we opted for a large, local church where OPB had held a wide variety of events in the past -- Rick Steves and the like.

The morning after the tickets went on sale, the ruckus ensued. OPB was roundly blasted by a lesbian blogger for daring to host "their" beloved Ira Glass in a venue where they were "not welcome." This being the early days of the blogosphere, we did not realize the power of activist bloggers to stir the pot. And stir they did. Newspapers called. Talking and quoting ensued for days. My colleague John and I were alone on the front lines, with our communications team and bosses all conveniently out of town.

Turns out we did not know that Ira Glass belongs to the gays. And we did not know that this church had a reputation in some circles for being anti-gay. Can't we all get along? Isn't public broadcasting supposed to include everybody? No, said the bloggers, as John was outed in the Oregonian, and I became the "daughter of Satan" and he the "enemy of the gays." Even our own OPB news team filed a report on the issue and posted it online without bothering to talk to us.

We met with the bloggers.  We talked at length. We tried to understand each other. John made fine use of his empathetic son-of-a-preacher-man skills.  I received another harsh reminder that I have no poker face. The meeting went on and on until finally the CEO arrived and said something which I no longer recall. But it satisfied them, and saved us from ourselves and what we could not fix.

I think Ira had the best solution of all. "If the church really is anti-gay, wouldn't it be the best thing for them to sit their gay asses down in those pews?" But that, he did not say in public.  In the end, he became the hero. He declared a new venue should be sought and was hailed with a "Portland Bloggers Win!" headline. And the show went on amidst a flat, cold sea of chairs at the politically expedient and far more costly Oregon Convention Center.

For more than a year, the "daughter of Satan" comment was the first thing to pop up when my name was typed into google. At which point, you just have to laugh. Because you never, ever, wish for things like this to happen. And some of it, you forever wish you wouldn't have seen. As it turns out, Ira Glass is just a guy who happens to be really good at that one thing he does. And me, I got a thicker skin, which made me better at the things I do.

Luck

21 pelicans flew over my head
riding the air with practiced form
determined sentries of the shore.

A fisherman waits
at the churn of the edge
while surfers anticipate
the perfect crest.

Today the luck is mine.

All I wanted was
my toes in the sand.