A New World

Late on Tuesday night, my husband and I were trying to find something to which we could compare Barack Obama's victory. We couldn't. As I was finally falling asleep, MSNBC still on the TV in the bedroom, I finally figured it out: it was the anti-9/11.

On 9/11, I felt like I'd fallen off the map. I'll spare you the story of where I was when the Towers fell, other than to say it was when I was still teaching high school. I made it through to the end of the school day by staying away from television images of the attacks, and glued myself to the media when I got home. The days--weeks, really--that followed were like trying to walk after you've been out in a boat during some rough weather; the floor felt bumpy. Nothing was firm underfoot.

Tuesday night was the same, except that every ounce of dread and grief I once felt had been replaced by joy and hope. Ken and I found a couple of old firecrackers in the basement and blew them up down by the creek. And then we just ran around the yard and hollered. We're off the map again, but this time, it's not scary. America feels like part of the world once more.

What a night! We tasted a cocktail published by The New York Times called The Obama-rama, a Cosmo-ish concoction with white grape juice replacing the cranberry juice, and a dash of blue curacao turning it the appropriate Democratic color. It was Not Good. A far better choice would have been Rachel Maddow's election night suggestion: a Joe Rickey, which is a good shot of bourbon over some ice in a highball glass, seltzer, and the juice of half a lime. Rachel is my bartending role model.

But cocktails were beside the point. They still seem beside the point.

We took our goddaughter Alyssum to see The Decemberists in NYC the next night. She's RandoRadio's Blue's big sis, by the way. Alyssum is a big Decemberist fan. It was also her first concert in a major club, and she had a blast. So did we, by the way. I love The Decemberists--and I had a lot of fun listening to their opening act, Loch Lomand, another Portland indie band, kinda freak-folkish in sound. But anyway, getting back to Obama, there he was at the show--as a cardboard cutout, that is. The Decemberists played that big rally in Portland for him last summer, remember? And not too surprisingly, the Obama cardboard cutout went crowd surfing. Folks handled it most respectfully--lovingly, even. And they called for the encore by chanting "Yes we can!"

Gee. 

I mean, really, gee.

I can still cry pretty easily, thinking of all this.

Cocktails with Chris this week will be on more or less at 4 Friday; it's already in the can, having been recorded yesterday in a sneak peek live show. We're going to make a new Roots 'n' Ruckus in a few minutes, and I can't be in two places at once.

So you've got some cool post-election listening lined up.

And I've got to go wrangle Ed and Greg.

Yes we can. Yes we can. Yes we did.

By the way: after the show, Alyssum told us she touched the Obama cutout in his surfing. She was really happy.