Prairie Postcard: To Your Health

Something important happened Sunday night on 60 Minutes. We saw the two Democratic Senators contending for President offer more substance on the nation's health care than the President and Congress seem to have done for the past seven years.

Obama: get your daily exercise (he does basketball).

Clinton: quit the sodas and drink lots of water. Wash your hands...or use sanitizers like Purell. Eat hot peppers.

Thanks, Senators. Lesson taken: your good health starts with you.

Remember the blueberries and cinnamon on your oatmeal this morning, folks...and have a good health day.

UPDATE: As the folks over at Crooks & Liars remind us, today is Chee-knee shot a guy in the face and got away with it day—the second anniversary of the day Vice President Dick [his first name is "Dick"—that figures...my daughter's best line ever, long before BushCo] Cheney shot 78-year-old Harry Whittington in the face while "hunting" on a "hunting" ranch in Texas with no women named Lynn. Protect your health...never "hunt" with Dick.

Mile Marker 60

There are some mileposts in life which attract special notice, and in the Sunshine family we mark one today. We’re part of the baby boomer generation, we’ve watched nearly half of the 20^th Century and all of the 21^st so far.

So we’re taking a little stock today. We’ve traded in the Corvair convertible of our youth for the sedate sedan and another set of wheels. Wheels that keep us going day by day.

We watch political pundits and Lemur Kingdom and coverage of war and wonder if any of it signals any evolution at all.

Our children are grown and growing on and a new generation has already arrived and there’s justice in that.

We travel less in planes and more on the Internet and in the recesses of the mind these days, ever thirsty for more and more knowledge and understanding.

Some reach 60 with wisdom and the wrinkles of a life honorably lived and grown into post-middle age. And some merely grow old, using up time, and wither forgotten away.

There’ll be no big party for Mr. Sunshine’s mile marker today, instead there will be the quiet reflection that a waypoint has been reached in life’s unending journey, and that, on this snowy blowy wintry day, in the words of Robert Frost, there are yet miles to go before you sleep....

Happy Birthday!--to the man who’s put the Sunshine in my life for quite a while now. And many, many more. May you always remember to reach for the stars….

How about you? Have you reached a waypoint lately? And have you paused, really paused, to reflect on how far you’ve come... and how much you have yet to discover?

Prairie Weather: Snow Job

Now that the Super Bowl and the Super Tuesday and even Groundhog Day are over, we can start looking forward to spring and the warming season. But there’s still some rough weather to get through.

Rough weather like the folks in Tennessee and Kentucky and five states altogether felt as lives were uprooted, ended, changed forever by horrific tornadoes. It pays to pay attention to the weather warnings when we have them.

Around Prairie Country, we’re bracing for Alberta Clipper, and the likelihood of a weekend blizzard and high winds and… well, we’ve learned it’s practical to carry “winter survival gear” even in town since Fargo decided to go and get sprawly.

There’s a good bit of Groundhog thinking going on these days. That all we have to do is just wait a year and check whether things will be different. That may work for the Democratic-led Congress, but some of us are a mite bit impatient at that. So on Super Tuesday, the numbers were awesome, the lines long, the voices raised.

No, we didn’t decide on a nominee that day, but we did decide that we’re all taking part.

It was nasty cold around here on Tuesday, but the grin on the face of the 80-something white guy walking out of the caucus site into the sunshine with the Obama sign tucked under his arm was a sight to behold.

Prairie Country’s pretty white around here, and it’s not just the knee-deep snow. But the times they are a-changin’, and we welcome new neighbors from the Himalayan foothills to the survivor camps of Sudan to just about any point on the map you can name.

The welcoming heart, the open door may be because around here most of us are mindful that our grandparents came in waves looking for their own opportunities. And those grandparents didn’t arrive with many fancy goods, but their children taught us well…lessons of history, and lessons of learning.

How to cut through the snow and recognize the snow job. We could use more of that these days.

Seems if you’ve got the biggest megaphone or the loftiest perch, you can catapult the propaganda. Or so it’s been. The times there, too, are a-changin’.

This morning Doris Kearns Goodwin chatted on the Imus Show about her Abe Lincoln book, Team of Rivals. Seems Barack Obama has said that book would be close at hand if he were in the Oval Office.

Lincoln, our greatest of presidents, valued the give-and-take of a leadership team that would challenge him. And lived America’s greatest values thereby. Compared to our current president who seems to value only his gut, his bike, his chainsaw, and his yes men. Or his puppeteers.

The contrast is marked.

There’s another noteworthy contrast, too, in Obama’s response to a question posed to candidates about their greatest flaw. While the other candidates spun an overzealous pushing of a self-perceived strength, Obama’s wry confession that he keeps a messy desk rings true.

So as the weather season and the campaign season move forward, read the weather signs. Think about who’s authentic and who’s giving you just another snow job. Because this time, yes, it really does matter. And one vote, your vote, does matter.

Isn’t there something reassuring that a candidate for president keeps a messy desk…and a copy of a biography of Lincoln and his team?

Instead of a blank desk…and My Pet Goat….

Show Me the Numbers

It's Super-licious Tuesday, and ’most likely there’s a vote or a caucus going on today in your neighborhood. So show your power, show your voice, show me the money numbers! Get out and vote today.

You'll feel great. You can do it, yes you can.

UPDATE: It's noontime in Prairie Country and I've already gotten four emails and two GOTV phone calls from the O-folk and friends, and our caucusing doesn't even start for two hours. Numbers lookin' good for participatory democracy.

UPDATE #2: I've cauc-ed, have you? Have you voted in your primary or caucus? Exciting to learn that 500 or so people were lined up waiting for the doors to open this afternoon at 2 for the North Dakota caucus site in Fargo. May all our states be enriched by the enthusiastic voters, old and new, young and old, taking part in Super Tuesday....and beyond.

Prairie’s Kibble: Tidbits to Chew Over

With a tip o’the Sunshine family hat to our resident cocker spaniels, Marley and Nova-diva, we introduce Prairie’s Kibble today, a sometime collection of little tidbits to chew over.

In Prairie Country, there’s much buzz about the likelihood that Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty will get the nod when the Republican dog-and-pony show, er, convention, comes to the Twin Cities next summer if John McCain is the nominee. Well, I’m torn about this because “sources say” that Cindy McCain has a “grudge list.” That would be interesting....

Yeah, Twin Cities, the same place where the I-35W bridge went crashing down into the Mississippi River last spring. Which brings us to Pawlenty’s personal pick, Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau, who would succeed him. She is also the current head—yes, she will soon be the former head—of the Minnesota Dept. of Transportation. Pawlenty wouldn’t fire her as MNDoT head, so others will, but the lege say they can’t get rid of her as Lt. Gov...evidently there’s no incompetency test there, either.

So I’m wondering, being a weekend Minnesotan, is it too early to start talkin’ recall? Is that do-able? Just say Mol-No!!!!!

Over on the North Dakota side of the Red River of the North, voters are gearing up for our caucuses tomorrow. Senator Kent Conrad’s never endorsed before, but this year he signed on early to Obama-nation. Conrad gets our props for voting against the Iraq War back in the day. And just this past week in true teeny-tiny-state, everybody-knows-everybody-or-was-married-to-their-sister fashion, Kent gave up his seat for the SOTU to Nancy Shafer, the wife of the newly confirmed agriculture secretary, Ed Shafer, Kent’s former brother-in-law. Ed, he says call him Ed, heir to the Mr. Bubble fortune and a former governor of North Dakota, was seated as ag secretary in a speedy confirmation process so he’d be able to sit in the chamber for SOTU. Kent, we’re told, stayed home and watched it on teevee. Okay, we’re buyin’ that.

And yesterday, the Giant/killers toppled the mighty Patriots in a surprising upset. A meta-for these days? Rumors of spying on opponents aka cheating throughout the season have dogged the Patriots right up thru game time. Giants—two of ’em—still standing in the Democratic race. And one has her cronies, like former North Dakota first lady Jane Sinner, going around saying U- make that O-know-who would be weak against the Republicans, weak in the White House. Hmmmm, they were sayin’ weak right up ’til game time about a kid named Eli.

And the endorsements have been flyin’ fast and furious the last few days. Bet those Kennedy family phone lines have been really fascinating of late. Yep, it’s already been said: only Chee-knee knows….

“Chow” for now. I’m off for some nice chianti. May need it to get thru tomorrow….

PEBC: On Change...Not So Big and Bird by Bird

And so we begin Prairie’s Eclectic Book Club.

Change is much in the wind these days. The weather is changing…storms batter places they’ve never visited before. The WGA strike has changed teevee programming. Tired of winter we look forward to the change in seasons, reading our garden catalogues. The economy is changing—interest rates going down, down, down instead of up. Even though Just go shopping as a solution to everything from 9/11 to the 2007 Christmas doldrums just isn’t making it any more.

We are a country hungry for change. You can see it in the crowds drawn to Obama appearances. You can read it in the blogs educating us about the issues the MSM leaves out or gives scant shrift or spin to…and building vibrant online communities in the process.

The political landscape is going through a titanic shift these days, and about time doing it. We are looking for new leaders, we are looking for rebuilding, we are looking for restoration of the sturdy foundations of the nation.

But how can we expect such great change unless we are willing to change within ourselves? If we remain unchanged, will anything around us truly change?

We must be the change we wish to see in the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

The architect Sarah Susanka named a way of thinking about homes in her seminal book, The Not So Big House, and in the process of describing that concept, she gave voice to a restless rebellion against the McMansioning of our lives. The overbuilt, overblown, grandiose grotesqueries all the more silly for being plunked down on teeny-tiny plots of ground.

Her masterstroke was the away space. Be it a room, a nook, a corner, a closet, the away space is respite from the hectic, cluttered, frazzly parts of a house where most of the time the living takes place. A porch where you can sit and contemplate the birds at the feeders, a shelf where treasured tokens carry you to faraway places, a room totally bare but for a mat where you can sit and meditate… the away space is yours to define and find.

At this time when ’most everyone says they want change, how will we get there? It starts within, and Susanka has taken the building/remodeling concepts of her world of architecture and put them in a new frame that we all can use: The Not So Big Life.

Just as the series of Not So Big House books bring us to a new way of looking at and living in our homes, The Not So Big Life is a handbook for remodeling—changing—our lives.

And as with any remodeling, there is the blueprint, what will be the right structure…for me? How do I—and you—look at self and decide what needs changing, what’s worth keeping, what’s just clutter needing casting away?

There are a bazillion self-help books on the market, a bazillion guides to self-improvement. Susanka brings a freshness to the subject by putting us in the context of the place where we live and guiding us through looking around and taking stock…of our home and our heart.

Bird by Bird

And if you’re not new wave, and change seems too daunting, no matter how much you feel it resonate. If you feel a bit of “buyer’s remorse”—if you worry that maybe change is just “hoo-hah” as Medusa Matalin would like you to believe, then meet another wise woman: Anne LaMott. Her iconic book Bird by Bird transcends its Instructions on Writing…to become a nurturing guide to life. And right now, in the pivotal time of change when change comes with its own hobgoblins gibbering to push us back to status quo, we need just such a reminder that change, improvement, remodeling, rebuilding comes step by step, day by day, bird by bird.

Will it be the right change, we wonder, as we go thru the primary process and leaf through the seed catalogs. Hosta or hydrangea? Democrat or Republican? Two-story or rambler? Red state or blue?

Oooh, the hand-wringing potential, the obstacle building we can set up for ourselves if we let go of hope and promise and let somebody tell us change is “hoo-hah.”

But you know what, you are just you, and I am just me, and if we get it wrong, we can still work toward getting it right again. If we are willing to change.

PRAIRIE NOTE: We’re workin’ on change around here, too. Soon we’ll have links to where you can buy these books—for you and your library, just sayin’—but in the meantime, please support your local indie bookstore whenever possible.

Playing for Pride

This being Super Bowl weekend, there’s much talk of the Patriots’ undefeated season. Why even bother to show up, Giants? Oh, yeah, it’s the Super Bowl, you suit up and get out there and kick A. Or try.

By the end of the football season here in Prairie Country, there’ve been a lot of teams, high school and college, about whom it gets said: they’re playin’ for pride.

Except, pride’s taken a lot of hits of late.

Because of pride—hubris, stubbornness, “gut instinct,” I’m gonna do it my way and nobody’s gonna tell me otherwise and I’ve made up the intelligence to prove it and besides Cheney says its all right.

Because of pride—we’re right so we’re going to ram thru our Republican-controlled Congress for years whatever we damn well please, and then we’re going to appeal to the pride of one of yours, and even if you Dems are in control we’re going to show you who’s really runnin’ the show.

Because of pride—hey, look at us, we’re preachin’ the gospel of prosperity on Wall Street and in the megachurches and we’re flyin’ high in our corporate jets on the fumes of glory.

Mr. Sunshine linked me to an essay at MarketWatch that had something interesting to say about pride. Now, I’m presuming since this is a columnist writing on ethics I’ll have no trouble finding similar strong-worded commentary about the role of the bankers [due diligence anyone?] and the money lenders and the money bundlers and the lack-of-oversight by government regulators and…what’s this? Just brush that aside with a broad brush?

But still, there is this:

It would be better if people looked at their homes as a nice place to live and a good place for their kids to grow up and not just as an investment. They'd stay put longer and maybe gain some pride.

Right now pride is at a low point in this country. We need to stand firm and tall—not walk away. And it seems to me that our homes are a good place to start restoring that pride.

Pride is really out of whack lately, battered by the twin forces of wretched excess—hubris on the one side and shame on the other. We’ve been led down the path that was promised to be strewn with roses and too many of us still don’t want to look at the truth. And too many in power have a vested interest in not telling us the truth.

Or telling that part of the truth that serves their interests.

Do they take pride in their work? How’s that taking a cold hard look in the mirror thing workin’ out, Tim and Chris and Brian and Charlie and Katie and…I almost tucked in a Fox name or two, but they have no pride over there that isn’t so tainted I don’t even want to include ’em. And huzzah, the era of the right-wing radio screeders seems to’ve peaked. Wrap their pride in a cigar wrapper and set ’em out in the sun ’til they’re done.

We’re winding down the season on Team Bush. But it’s not over yet. And we’ve been lied to and cheated on and the refs have had sand thrown in their eyes and some have taken a little something in the back pocket and it’s a pretty dirty game out there these days.

For seven years we’ve been led by a cheerleader catapulting the propaganda and trying to draw our eyes from the real games that are going on.

And so we must suit up. And get on the playing field with honor and enthusiasm and, yes, pride.

Pride for team, and home…and country.