Lucinda Marshall

In the course of the last two weeks, two very influential people in my life have passed away, one of my Mother’s closest friends and one of my Dad’s.  They were both in their 80’s and vibrant, active people right up until the end of their lives.  Over the many decades of knowing both of them, they were, each in their own way, people who embraced life to the fullest.

Naomi Wagner was a single mom in an era when divorced women faced a great deal more stigma than they do today. And somehow she seemed to always have a smile on her face, despite many personal difficulties.  When I too became a single mom, she was really the only one of my elders that I could look to as a roll model when I was exhausted and not sure how on earth I would manage.  She also knit the most gorgeous blankets, with an eye for color that was truly amazing.  And most of all, for me, she was my Mother’s dear friend.

Barry Blumberg was larger than life in oh so many ways, a powerhouse in the world of medical research and then some, with a Nobel Prize to prove it.  He was possibly the most enthusiastic, in love with life person I’ve ever known, not to mention warm, caring and hilariously funny. It is strange to read the rather lengthy obits written about him, so many accomplishments, but the thing that sticks in my head are the walks he led us on at Cape Cod so many years ago, the stories of his adventurous life and the long enduring friendship he had with my Dad.

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As I write this I am in Washington, DC where there is a strong likelihood that the government is about to shut down.  When you walk down the street, it is the only topic people are talking about for the simple reason that a rather significant percentage of the population in this town is employed by the federal government.  People don’t know if they will suddenly lose their paychecks, and unlike any state or city, DC’s municipal services are also at stake.  And why?  Because the GOP party of spoiled, selfish vindictive obstructionists are bound and determined to throw a hissy fit if they don’t get every last ridiculous thing they ask for. And while they bring the government and this city to a grinding halt, they will be among the few who still collect a paycheck.  Outrage is really not an adequate word.

Nor is it an adequate word for an energy policy where nuclear energy and coal are still touted as clean and safe in the face of irrefutable evidence that they are not or for our inability to truly address climate change.  It is also not an adequate word for our oily logic when we set up ‘no fly zones’ over Libya  but ignore the humanitarian tragedies in the Ivory Coast and Sudan.

And it is most certainly not an adequate word for the union busting Scott Walker or the too many to count attempts by the Republican Party to colonize women’s uteri.

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So why the juxtaposition of sharing memories about two people that I loved and admired with a rant about the myriad of dysfunctional events that permeate our existence?  Because the contrast is instructive.  Naomi and Barry were people who made things happen because it brought them great pleasure to love life and to live it to its fullest.  They each impacted my life in profound ways and those who today seem hell-bent on destruction and obstruction, motivated by hate and greed, would be well served to be instructed and inspired by these two wonderful, enabling people.

I come from a family of writers.  Between us, we are journalists, poets, novelists and essayists.  We’ve produced a rather ridiculous amount of published work.  I know this because I was just boxing some of the family books in preparation for a move.  It took awhile.

The latest offering is from my youngest brother, Jon, and is a thought-provoking and very readable book about the journalistic legacy of Watergate.  My little bro teaches journalism at Northwestern University and authored the very successful News Gems blog.  And I will personally vouch for his life-long interest in journalism.  His first investigative reporting assignment was to find out what my high school boyfriend and I were doing on the couch and report back to my parents.  He even used his instamatic camera as part of his assignment.  I have tried to be nice to him ever since for fear of those pictures re-surfacing.

For those of us who inhaled the Watergate hearings and spent years wondering who Deep Throat was, it is a fresh look at familiar territory.  For those who are too young to remember, it is necessary understanding of a critical part of our history.  Fully understanding that my objectivity might be considered suspect, you might also want to check out this review,

“In regards to Watergate, learning how Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein overcame a plethora of powerful government officials’ criticism to break the story, all while risking the Washington Post’s reputation, was inspiring. Instead, the duo sparked other publications to follow suit.

Marshall’s book addresses what impact they had on the industry, government and history itself. He dives into the public service role of journalism and explores examples of past and future opportunities for reporters.

The forward of the book was written by veteran journalist, Woodward himself, something Marshall said surprised and delighted him.”

Watergate’s Legacy and the Press:  The Investigative Impulse by Jon Marshall is available on Amazon.

And in the interest of not playing favorites, you should also definitely read my brother Robert’s novel which came out a few years ago.

In the it’s going to be a long night and I couldn’t make this up if I tried department, thought this screenshot should be preserved from the Louisville, KY mayoral race, note percentage of precincts reporting:

A real, live Sharron Angle flyer, via the Reid campaign.  Aside from the usual objections to the truly disturbing, inaccurate hysteria reflected herein, I wish she wouldn’t even try to use big words like ‘egregious’.

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Well I didn’t make it to the Rally for Sanity and/or Fear today but my son did and saw this wonderful sign.  I am reminded of another sign that we had in our front yard at the beginning of the Iraq war that said “Peace is Patriotic”.  It greatly incensed our neighbors, who took it down and then surrounded our front door with signs that said, “I stand with President Bush”. I guess we’ve evolved a tad:

Photo by Adam T. Cook

I posted my thoughts about the rally on the FPN site here.

There is a whole lot to dislike about the electoral process in the United States.  The low point for me is usually  the few days before the election when the pundits start telling us who will win.  Last night on Twitter, The Nation’s Greg Mitchell declared Feingold’s race in Wisconsin a loss.  Sort of like someone telling you how a movie ends before you’ve seen it, only in this case we are active players in the drama that has very real consequences, It would be nice if the pollsters and the media at least had the polites to let us vote before telling us who we voted for.

But that is probably a bit of old-fashioned genteelness on my part. There has been little discussion this election cycle on the veracity of electronic voting results even it has been proven over and over again that those results can easily be tampered with. Are we really voting when we vote on Tuesday?  Hard to say.  And courtesy of SCOTUS, with a lineup that is a result of said tamper friendly machines and the stolen election of 2000 allowing the former monkey in chief to name some very bad choices to the Court, our elections can now be easily bought and sold by corporations that spend unfathomable amounts of money that comes from who knows where on candidates that tell us our $20 contributions are important because they represent the people.

Back in 2007, I wrote a column for the Louisville Eccentric Observer called Voting Your Bliss that looked at the primary process that was in full swing in the runup to the 2008 election.  In it, I included a quote from the ever observant Wendell Berry,

This is a crisis of our democratic system—to give the people a vote but not a choice is a procedure common to modern dictatorships—but it is a crisis that has been officially unnoticed for a long time.

In this election it is very clear that we have a crisis. We are once again faced with some very bad choices, often between total nut cases and candidates who spend an enormous time trying to walk a center line tightrope and fit into the system rather than acting on their true beliefs or ours.  In Voting Your Bliss I wrote about the need for independent, thinking candidates and the need to reinsert real, meaningful dialog into our elections,

As voters we need to demand choices that meet our needs rather than accept candidates who have sold their souls to the highest bidder…The party faithful will smile indulgently and remind us not to throw away our votes on these fringe candidates.  But supporting these candidacies is not a question of throwing away our vote and it is precisely what we need to do because they give us something to vote “for” and  a chance to reclaim our democracy.

We need to insist that the pressing issues confronting this country be addressed and that our candidates not be beholden to those whose agenda is the destruction of the planet and its people.  It’s time to vote our bliss and not our angst.

During this election cycle, I have had several friends who have taken on one of the responsibilities of being citizens in this country and have run for office.  They have done so even though the likelihood of getting elected has been small.  I know these people and that they are  highly principled thinking folk  who we would do well to elect.  The result of that being that I’ve given more money to candidates this election cycle than I ever have before, and mostly to candidates who stand little chance of winning.  Why do that when I don’t expect that they can win?  For the simple reason that we need to reframe the body politic so that the right people can win, so that voices who say what needs to be said are heard, not thrown out of two-party debates or marginalized because they don’t have a corporate pac or media cronies behind them.

In a column written later in the 2008 election cycle, I added this thought,

Until we gain the political will to demand that our votes count and that all candidates are given a fair chance, our electoral process will continue to be a sham rather than the exercise of democracy by we the people that it was meant to be.

There is a substantial chance that the results of this election will wreak significant harm on our enfranchisement.  At this point, aside from making the best possible choices we can in a lousy horse race on Tuesday, it is time to quit accepting the system as the way it needs to be.  It isn’t working and with each election cycle, it is getting worse and worse. Going forward we  need to quit playing the game and drinking the koolaid and insist on an electoral process that finally represents the people.

Barack Obama told us that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.  Perhaps we’d better quit waiting.

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Postscript:  Just after posting this I came across Saturday Night Live’s parody of The Rent Is Too Damn High Party, hilariously close to the truth, watch, enjoy, think.

I should have known something was up when FedEx sent me a letter via the U.S. Postal Service, but really you gotta love this–they want me to pay this bill because my name is similar (sort of) to someone else’s.  No, don’t think so.

In case you can’t read that gem of a note, it begins, “Fed Ex was unable to bill the account for the party indicated on the shipping document or the account number was missing.  Therefore we are  invoicing you for the charges associated with this shipment.”

Just goes to support my theory that I should stick to writing about the truth because I am definitely not creative enough to make this stuff up.

For reasons beyond my control, our server will be down Friday night for planned maintenance.  Please be assured that I’m aware that the site is down (as I believe our email will be as well).  Once we are down, if warranted, I’ll post any other information on the Reclaiming Medusa Facebook page, so please be sure to check there, we expect to be back up on the site Saturday morning.