northwest passage

A few years ago I listened as a woman told me that her mother and her mother's friend had gotten so carried away watching the 2004 presidential campaign coverage & commentary, that they had declared if George W. Bush won re-election, they were moving away to another country.  (Usually in these types of statements people specify Canada, preferring it, for some reason, to Mexico -- if we're limited to a contiguous nation....but I don't recall that she named which country these ladies were going to -- maybe it was to have been any country, just so long as "W" was not president of it.)

News drifted in, in 2008, that a long-time acquaintance was moving to Canada for certain if Barack Obama were to win that election.  (They didn't move to Canada -- all their stuff is here....   : )

Surely people who say these things do not really plan to move out of America, even as they're making the statement -- it's probably just a momentary expression of frustration.

And that's why politics makes people mad sometimes -- like life, and like golf, it can be frustrating.
The empowering thing for a person to do is to recognize two things --
1) The world is not going to end if the other candidate wins, get a grip, &
2) It's an election not a junta -- it won't be a huge difference in our lifestyles or our human rights, or anything, regardless of which candidate wins.

If the presidential candidate that we vote for wins, fine!
If the presidential candidate that we did not vote for wins, --well -- that's the way the cookie crumbles, and we go on with our lives, just the same the next day.  Unlike in some countrires, if our favorite candidate loses, we don't have to pack all the belongings we can carry on our heads and run for our lives.

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When I was in 8th grade I worked on South Dakota Senator George McGovern's presidential campaign -- stuffing envelopes, mostly, in a second-floor room of a downtown building in Kent, Ohio, along with my friend Robin, and some college kids.  A few days before the election my father, watching news on TV in living room, said with a disappointed sigh, "I don't think McGovern has a Chinaman's chance."  (don't ask me what kind of chance that is -- that is the first and last time I ever heard the expression, "a Chinaman's chance."...)

On Election Night I still thought maybe McGovern could win -- because I had no understanding of, nor interest in, polls and predictions, and I was naturally optimistic and excited -- and I had stuffed all those envelopes!   And as the black-and-white murmurings on our TV screen sort of started to become clear and I could see and hear that Pres. Nixon had indeed already won re-election, pretty early on, I thought of the "Chinaman's chance" and burst out, in that same frustration that makes people say they're moving to Canada -- "I hate Nixon!"

And my dad said immediately, kind of shocked at my outburst, "Oh now, we never hate the president.  Don't say that.  He's our president."  And he added with a sort of subtext of irony, "He's the only one we've got."

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Nora Ephron wrote about that phenomenon of "Life goes on," or -- "There may be great events, great issues, and great struggles in the world but we still have to live, in our individual daily way"...
[excerpt, Introduction, 1970, to Wallflower at the Orgy, collection of Ephron articles]:
I should say that almost everything in this book was written in 1968 and 1969, and almost everything in it is about what I like to think of as frivolous things.  Fashion, trashy books, show business, food....

One night not too long ago I was on a radio show talking about an article I had written for Esquire on Helen Gurley Brown and I was interrupted by another guest, a folk singer, who had just finished a twenty-five-minute lecture on the need for peace. 

"I can't believe we're talking about Helen Gurley Brown," he said, "when there's a war going on in Vietnam."  Well, I care that there's a war in Indochina, and I demonstrate against it; and I care that there's a women's liberation movement, and I demonstrate for it.  But I also go to the movies incessantly, and have my hair done once a week, and cook dinner every night, and spend hours in front of the mirror trying to make my eyes look symmetrical, and I care about those things, too.  Much of my life goes irrelevantly on, in spite of larger events.  I suppose that has something to do with my hopelessly midcult nature, and something to do with my Hollywood childhood.  But all that, as the man said, is a story for another time.
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