Mel Ziegler’s Flags at A More Perfect Union, Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, New York
This time it doesn’t feel like business-as-usual. This time, this election, things feel very different. Or at least that’s what I had thought to myself a few minutes ago. And then I re-read my post from election night four years ago. Seems there were many more similarities to this time around than I’d remembered. But still… even taking into consideration how much this season shares with the one four years before – I’d still say 2016 is a different ballgame. The very least bit of evidence to support that is that one of the candidates is a woman.
Looking for a bit of humor to lighten our collective emotional load, I unearthed some long-forgotten material on Pat Paulsen. This comedian had run – legitimately – for president on numerous occasions. (I’d also learned that comic Gracie Allen, among others through the years, had also run for President in 1940 as a member of the Surprise Party, whose mascot was a kangaroo, and whose slogan was “It’s all in the bag”. Ha!) Elihu and I pulled up some videos and to my surprise, a lot of the material was just as funny all these decades later. I particularly liked Paulsen’s slogan “I’ve upped my standards, up yours too!”. For real, that’s some good shit. Right?
But what was altogether mind-blowing and wrong about that era – for as insightfully as those comics may have mocked the process and the politicians – it was still a time in our culture (not all that long ago to my 53 year-old mind) in which a girl was never even considered a possible future president. In fact, when we heard a bit of video in which narrator Henry Fonda speculated that every boy in America (at the 50 second mark) had likely imagined at one time what it might be like to be president, I had to replay it. What? I mean, really. What? My mind flashed to something my mother had said once about being pregnant in the 1960s: you pretended that you weren’t – up until the very end. There was no pantyhose made for pregnant women, instead you cut up the middle seam to accommodate your belly. To put it simply: it was not a women’s world. I’m still not sure it is, and even if Hillary does win tonight, I’m still not sure it will be a woman’s world anytime too soon. But thank God we are making some progress towards that universal goal.
Ok. Nothing to do now but go to bed. I’ll need a good night’s rest, because tomorrow morning I’m driving some of Elihu’s eighth grade classmates on a field trip to Albany, our state’s capital, as part of their government study block. Such timing, huh? It’s times like this when I’m grateful to be self-employed and able to participate. I want to be there, taking in the majesty and promise of those grand buildings and massive foyers… That feeling of hope and wonder one gets when standing in the midst of two hundred marble stairs a half-block wide… Oh how I pray the day is augmented by one of our nation’s most historic victories.
We know that good things come to those who wait, right? I mean seriously, how about them Cubbies? It wasn’t something any of us Chicagoans could’ve truly believed until that glorious moment. And so, as I go to sleep tonight, I can relax in knowing that victory is possible. Girls have the same rights as boys. And a really great country can still become even more perfect.
The Hillhouse 
Yes, I’m disappointed, too. Sometimes, after taking a step or two ahead in progress, our country takes a step back. That must be human nature- a resistance to change. Still, we will be all right (I hope!). One thing that’s disturbing is that almost half of all eligible voters stayed out and didn’t vote at all. If more people voted, the more we would see the will of the people reflected in the election returns. When people willingly don’t vote, they are saying that they couldn’t care less who’s in charge of our country, and that can give us some lopsided results. Take care, and have a merry Christmas. Best wishes for a good new year.