I did it!

In the midst of our in-town errands, Liesl and I voted today. And it was just as fun as voting on Election Day!

The poll workers were very friendly.  The woman monitoring the ballot box thanked each of us for voting—and sounded like she meant it.

We were far from alone.  As we were leaving, Liesl said, “It’s really busy here today!”

I’m glad people are taking their responsibilities as citizens seriously. Every year when I vote, it washes off a little of my generational cynicism.  It feels good.

One of the reasons for my smile in this picture—in addition to the kindness of the poll-worker who volunteered to snap it—was that I had just done my first write-in vote. I voted for one of the smartest, most responsible, most competent people I know.

Liesl wrote in Oscar the Grouch.  Oscar’s her favorite, she says, and Big Bird has become too much of a cliché.

And yes, we both got “I voted” stickers.

So what about you? Have you voted yet?

 

 

 

Reach out and touch someone

Last week I asked my Facebook friends this question:  ”Do you find yourself calling people on the phone less and less?”

I walked away from the computer, and when I returned, the responses had started rolling in.

Four people simply said, “Yes.”  Others said:

• Yep, and I like it much better. I actually keep in contact more often now that there is email and FB. I have a hard time remembering to call people during normal daytime hours so this way I can still contact people.
• Absolutely. For casual comments and questions, I text. So do most of my friends. I do talk with my sons on the phone once a week, and with a dear friend in Boston every few weeks, but we see each other on FB more often than that. Mostly, I think of the phone as for businessy sorts of things or for emergencies.
• No, but I’m not sure if that is because I moved across the country. I call a lot—I think I probably spend maybe 3 hours on the phone a week? The internet adds more communication with folks than I otherwise would have, and I like that. I might also not be of the right generation to ask, because the internet came up around the time I would have had phone privileges as a kid.
• Less on the phone. I really don’t think that is a good thing. Life has become more complicated. It’s a shame, as I think our relationships have suffered because we have too much one-way communication. E-mail is efficient, but isolating.
• Yes, but when I do talk on the phone, it is usually a planned call to a family member or close friend and we talk for hours…
• Work, I use skype or google hang out quite a bit, but still phone as well. Friends and family, long distance, I use skype or google hang out. Local friends I use phone to arrange to see face to face. My 16 year old, I text.
• I pretty much avoid talking on the phone anyway, but with texting and FB it’s even easier. I prefer face to face, but find texting and FB helpful when used well.
• I find that my phone calls are more scheduled than anything else. In other days, I would just spontaneously call someone, or they’d spontaneously call me. Now, usually several texts go through asking if their busy before we call each other.
• Absolutely. Facebook is a wonderful communication tool. You can rally 10 people together to do something fun with hardly any effort. Remember trying to do that by phone?
• I very rarely get a phone call. Occasional text, emails are the way I communicate. And, I’ve been thinking, I don’t like it very much. NPR interview with Sherry Turkel, author of “Alone Together” about just this thing. A lonely existence.
• Text more than phone these days—inherited from my kids. Facebook has largely replaced e-mail for keeping in touch with friends and family. Still use e-mail and phone for business-type things, but being retired means a lot less of that too.
• Occasionally I need to give remedial phone etiquette lessons to my 13-year-old. She just doesn’t talk on the phone enough to know what to do.
• Text and Facebook are my biggest communication lines by far.
• Regrettably, honestly, yes.
• Yes. I generally avoid it.
• No, but I find myself wasting way way too much time here!!
• No, I’ve never been a phone-talker. I actually communicate more often now that technology has evolved.
• Yes, but even more, I almost never write people notes anymore. Used to put out a dozen a week.
• Some people I chat online with, some I call. It depends on the person.
• I text you since you are in a different time zone but I will say I know I light up when I see someone I know and love have called me. Text is nice because its unobtrusive. Calling lets you hear how someone really is vs what a Text or email tells you.
• What’s a “phone?”

Photo by Trace Meek.

Early voting matters

On April 3, 2012, citizens of the Municipality of Anchorage voted on a ballot measure that would have granted significant legal protections to LGBT members of the Anchorage community.

And I didn’t vote.

We had already purchased airline tickets for my interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee when I realized that we would miss the April election.

I’ve always been an “election day” voter. There’s something festive about voting with everyone else, walking around wearing an “I voted” sticker, spotting the blue stickers on other people. It’s a citizenship party!

So I had no idea how to vote early, absentee, or any other option.

The municipality’s elections office assured me that our absentee ballots would be mailed out in plenty of time. That they would arrive before Liesl and I left town.

I watched our mailbox anxiously as our departure date grew closer.

And they didn’t come.

We got back to Anchorage on April 4. As we walked through the airport, a headline in the Daily News caught my eye: “Voters reject sexual orientation initiative.”

Our two votes wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but it would have felt better to know we’d done what we could.

Liesl and I have no plans to travel out-of-state on Election Day, but we’re both thinking about voting early. We’ll be in Anchorage next Monday and Wednesday, and there’s a good chance we’ll stop by one of the early voting locations then.

Why not? It’s not like we’re going to change our minds between now & Election Day.

What about you? Are you waiting until November 6? Or, like us, have you begun to imagine some of the things that could disenfranchise you?

I hear there’s a perfect storm headed for the East Coast. It’s anyone’s guess what chaos might break out in your neck of the woods. Here in Alaska, it’s likely to be a blizzard—or worse, an ice storm.

If you know how you want to vote, why not get out there and do it?

Elections matter, and so does your vote.

As soon as you’re ready, go, and make your voice heard.

I hear you still get a sticker, no matter when you vote. I’ll let you know.

 

Photo by Gretchen Fitzenrider.

 

Meeting Marya

 

Last Tuesday morning, one of the first things I read on Facebook was a friend’s link to a story from KTUU, our local NBC affiliate. Neighbors had discovered a woman’s body that morning in the parking lot of the Anchorage UU Fellowship.

The article said that police were investigating her death as a homicide.

My mind scrambled, thinking of people I knew from the fellowship who might match the article’s description of the unnamed woman. A quick check of Twitter and Facebook ruled out the two auburn-haired Unitarian Universalists who came to mind.

About thirty-six hours later, on Wednesday evening, police released the woman’s name: Marya Abramczyk, known to AUUF as Mya.

The next day, the Anchorage Daily News reported that Marya had taken her own life.

Yesterday afternoon, I attended her memorial service. I had never met Marya. My only contact with her was a series of emails this past May. She was serving as a pastoral care assistant for the congregation, and wanted information about online UU resources for one of the people she was visiting.

I attended Marya’s service to support her family and the congregation, both rocked by this tragedy.

And I was hoping to find some way to understand what had happened. I wanted to meet Marya for the first time, in the stories of those who knew and loved her.

The service included an extended time for storytelling. One by one—beginning with Marya’s mother—family members, friends, co-workers and neighbors stepped to the microphone and introduced me to Marya.

She was a gifted quilter, an artist who loved color, a person brave enough with a paintbrush to paint the walls of her home vibrant reds and yellows. She was a generous volunteer, a friend to newcomers, a maker of gifts for people she barely knew. She worked hard, and noticed the little things, like the grubby towels in the fellowship kitchen that she replaced with cheerful new ones. She chased down happiness with everything she had—even if it meant walking in the rain.

Everyone spoke of her generosity of spirit, her kindness, her beauty, her light. Their words formed a picture of such a loving, lovely person.

I found myself thinking about Jenny Lawson, the journalist and quirky blogger known as “The Bloggess.” Lawson, who suffers from depression, passed along a simple, two-word mantra that I’ve found tremendously helpful: depression lies.

I don’t know what lies depression told Marya. But somehow depression deceived this lovely, loving soul into not seeing, not feeling, not knowing the healing love flowing her way in return for all she gave, and all she was.

And that’s a tragedy. A too-common tragedy.

One of the last people to speak yesterday was a woman named Rhonda Horn, who lives a half-block from the fellowship.

Rhonda said that she saw the police tape as she drove by on her way to work on Tuesday morning. When she learned that a woman had been killed, and that it was being investigated as a murder, her first thought was, “It could have been me.”

Then as things unfolded through the week, and it became clear how Marya died, Rhonda said again to herself, “It could have been me. I live alone, and I’m a very private person. It could have been me.”

Rates of suicide and depression in Alaska are very high. Those of us gathered yesterday knew exactly what she meant. We know the crazy whispers in the darkness of the mind.

It could have been any one of us. It could have been our spouse, parent, sibling, friend, co-worker or neighbor. It could have been any one of us.

This week it was Marya, a beautiful soul I know only through the stories of those who loved her.

Photo by TK Kleiner. Used with permission.

 

War and peace: it matters when you know someone

He’s home! Everybody exhale. Thank you all for your love and support through this deployment. It really did make all the difference to me.

—Bridget Rainey, Twinisms

Earlier this week, Dallas Rainey came home from Afghanistan. I had been holding my breath. Headlines that announced the deaths of active military members sent waves of anxiety over me. Every few months, I would ask Bridget, “Tell me again—when is he coming home?”

I don’t know Dallas and Bridget all that well. The distance between Girdwood and Anchorage is part of that, and, too often, I suck at IRL friendships.

Nevertheless, my (mostly online) friendship with the Raineys has been a real gift to me. Bridget’s blog often gives Liesl and me a much needed laugh, and knowing them has given me an eye-opening glimpse into military life.

It shocks Bridget that hers is the only military family I’ve ever known. She told me back in May, “You need to blog about that.” And this is that blog post.

Why has it taken me this long to write this post?  Procrastination, sure.  Writer’s block, definitely.

But the deeper reason was a kind of superstitious fear. You see, I knew that I wanted to write about how it feels to know someone deployed in Afghanistan. I knew I wanted to talk about the insidious fear, the underlying anxiety that comes with even hearing the word “Afghanistan.”  And I was afraid that, somehow, that if I wrote about it, something bad might happen.

You see, Dallas occupies a tender spot in my heart.

One Sunday a while back, I was sitting in the back row in church. I was having a bad day. Dallas squeezed into the pew next to me, and we agreed to share a hymnal—after he made me promise not to laugh at his singing.  ”Bridget always laughs at my singing,” he said.

When we stood to sing, Dallas launched in with gusto.  I couldn’t keep my promise. I couldn’t stop giggling.

And Dallas laughed with me. It changed a bad day into a good one.

Even now, thinking about it makes me smile. To this day, I call him “my favorite singer.”

There’s something that changes when your favorite singer is stationed in Afghanistan. When it’s not just some massive number of nameless, faceless troops.  How do you care about 14,000 strangers?

Suddenly it matters. It matters when they’re expected home. The timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan matters. Peace becomes, not a vague, theoretical value, but the very practical matter of keeping someone you care about out of harm’s way.

This summer, Bridget said, “We are the 1%.  Military families make up less than one percent of the population.”

With those numbers, the odds are good that few of us know military families personally.

War drags on when peace is a vague hope, a cause to which too few are committed. War ends when enough people say, “Bring my loved ones home.”

Welcome home, Dallas. Thank you for everything you and Bridget are teaching me about military life. Thanks for helping me learn to value the gifts, skills and talents of military families. Thanks for making me smile, every time I think about you singing.

I’m so glad you’re home safe.

Jill Stein and Gary Johnson

After GOTV, this election hinges on how many people on either side throw away their votes on third-party candidates.

Call me an idealist, but I believe the real work of change comes from an involved, energized citizenry. Call me a cynic, but I think we need to vote for candidates who have a snowball’s chance of being elected, and who present the fewest obstacles to our hopes for the future.

If you’re thinking about voting for a candidate who matches your ideals more closely, take a moment to savor that feeling of righteous indignation.

Then set it aside, and think clearly about the consequences. Imagine that the candidate who wins the election is the one who is farthest from your values. Imagine the real-world impact on real people.

Then vote. Vote your conscience. Your thoughtful, considered, pragmatic conscience. Not your outraged gut.

Trees in the wind

It’s been windy around here lately.

Actually, that’s an understatement. We’ve had three storms this month with wind gusts up to and beyond 100 miles per hour.

Yesterday on our local public radio station, Hometown Alaska aired a segment called “Why Trees Go Down in the Wind and How to Protect Them.” An arborist and someone from the Alaska Division of Forestry were the show’s guests.

Toward the end of the segment, a caller asked about one of his trees. When he noticed, a few years ago, that it had developed a significant lean, he drove a stake into the ground and tied a strap between the tree and the stake, pulling the tree into a more upright position. He thought that the recent windstorms had increased the lean, and he wanted to know when to cut the tree down to protect his house.

You’re damaging the tree by staking it, the arborist told him.  Trees need to sway in the wind to develop and support a strong trunk.

And that snagged my attention.

How much time do we spend trying to stake ourselves into an upright position? Trying to conform to some idealized image of success, of perfection, of maturity?

What if, instead, we curled our toes into the soil, stretched our arms to the sky, and danced with the wind?

What if, instead of fighting the urge to sway, we abandoned ourselves to the rhythms that make us strong?

What if we embraced each changing moment? What if we let the wind dip us and turn us and swing us?

What if we chose to be born of the wind?