A Brief History

I didn't vote in the presidential election. Yes, I know, I should be ashamed of myself. I like to say it was because I didn't apply for my absentee ballot on time, but that was only because I was too apathetic to look up the deadline. And so I sat out on my first election since turning eighteen.

If I could have voted when I was ten, I would have been a Democrat. I soaked in the videos they showed at school, the ones that exhorted us to write our senator and tell him to save the otters or ozone or oceans. I read books where the heroine struggles against a patriarchy which wants to keep her from becoming a knight/mage/writer just because she's a girl, and I felt awful outrage on her behalf. My mission, then, was to take down the Man.

By thirteen, I had morphed into a staunch Republican. I read conservative blogs obsessively. My favorite were social-conservative posts detailing the outrageous liberal offenses of NOW or NEA or a whole host of other acronyms.

And then, when I was finally old enough to actually participate in the political process, the thought of voting for either Obama or McCain made me feel a little annoyed, a little queasy, and a lot tired. I couldn't even tell which was the lesser of two evils. I sort of wish I'd voted Libertarian, but I haven't lost sleep over it.

I think my partisanship died along with my love of being offended. I haven't felt righteous indignation in years. Nowadays my list of Things You Should Never Do When Angry includes posting anything anywhere on the Internet, ever, and voting.

Humor

To me, humor is like photography. I say as many off-kilter things as I possibly can, and people only remember the 5% they find funny.

Truth and Freedom

I found this painting in my Government textbook. It's called "Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences," and was commissioned by an abolitionist society in the late 1700's, and shows the personification of Liberty displaying books to freed slaves.

This painting struck a chain reactions of associations with me. It reminded me of "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." This, in turn, reminded me of my Chemistry teacher on the first day of class, who quoted Mormon Scientist, the biography of Henry Eyring. "We are required to believe every true thing," said my teacher. And this made me think of the Darwin Week posters plastered all over the Marb, advertising lectures titled "An Approach to Understanding the Creation" and "The Legacy of Charles Darwin: Seeking Grandeur in the View of Life." Then I remembered my rural Mississippi high school, filled with noise and the built-up resentment of four-hundred students.

Then I realized I strayed far from the topic of slavery in post-Revolution America, which was what my reading was actually about and what I had to take a quiz on. I wish I could better articulate the significance all those linked words and images have to me. Suffice it to say, I believe in fighting tooth and nail for an education. And I believe (or maybe I say it because it sounds nice, I'm not sure) that truth and liberty are inextricably connected, and that people need them both like water.