The best kind of mid-terms

Some good things from the elections from yesterday:

Democrats taking back the House and more than likely also the Senate

First woman as Speaker of the House. You go, Nancy!

Rick Santorum no longer representing my state.

Public smoking ban approved in Ohio.

South Dakota voters voting against the abortion ban that had been implimented last year.

You go, girls (and guys)!

I haven't been this happy politically in a very long time. I know the changes will be small, but it's such a good start.


Sidenote: They interviewed that woman senator who won in Missouri and I really liked her. I wanna hear more about her.

World Travelling and Perspective

I was reading a guest post about college student political mindsets over at Mad Melancholic Feminista (my philosophy mentor's blog) and it made me think about a memory of mine from my days at Gettysburg.

I was a Women's Studies major, as most of you know. During my senior year I took a really great class called Images of Women in Literature. It was a cross-listed course, with English, obviously. It was a 200 level course, so there were all sorts of students in it, but all female. During one discussion we were talking about "world-travelling"...anyone who's taken any Women's Studies theory courses might already know what this means, but in WS "world travelling" is a term that talks about how we must change identities between different "worlds" we find ourselves a part of. We were reading a book, and forgive me, but I forget which, about a woman of color who with her family and friends acted one way and spoke one way and that was the "accepted" way to be, but she had a whole different identity in her career life. She has to be able to have perspective. She can step from one world to another, she knows what it is like in the one world and in the other, and this is both difficult, and enlightening for her. Our professor asked us if we had experienced this before, and it was clear she was expecting a majority of us to say yes. About half the class usually participated, so it wasn't like everyone was shy, or maybe they just didn't understand the concept yet, but I was the only one who raised their hand.

After reading the entry from the above mentioned blog (which was written about a previous entry from earlier in the week) I realized that my school was very sheltered, and I always knew that (I was, after all, a bit disenfrachised by my whole college experience there). It wasn't only a class thing, though the majority (probably as high as 85%) of the students were from very wealthy families, it wasn't only about money, but also issues of diversity in mindsets as well. They thought what their parents thought, they grew up around people who were like them in almost every way. People of color? What? Very few of those at the school. There was all of one girl with dyed hair while I was there, everyone had the same hair, the same clothes, listened to the same music...the people I found myself gravitating towards were the others who didn't identify themselves with the stereotype there, and we became friends simply because of that common cause. But whnever I took courses or participated in activies with other students I was shocked at how some of them thought and acted. These other students had never known poverty or suffering and so they seemed to turn their back on it, not thinking it was a problem. I felt lucky to have been one of the only ones who had been able to say "yeah, I've seen two worlds before"...that is certainly not to say I am not upper middle class as they were/are or that I didn't come from as affluent a background as they did, but I always had perspective. My dad had a respected and affluent family from New York, but my mother was, quite literally, the farmer's daughter. She was born in a farmhouse, had 12 siblings, wore dresses made from old flour sacks, and was made fun of at school because her family couldn't afford store-bought cookies. The rest of my mom's side of the family still lives near where they grew up, a rural county that still only has 2 traffic lights (yes, in the whole county) and most people haven't left the state, let alone side of the country, or the country. At home, we have a large house, but we live in a neighborhood with much smaller houses, where people use food stamps, deal drugs, can't afford health care, etc. I went to a private school all my life, and all the kids I grew up with belonged to the country club and their mom's picked them up in their Mercedes, I was used to this, but i never fit in with them. But I know that I have to act differently around those kids that I would at a family reunion with my mom's family. I know what it is like to be laughed at for not having as much money as everyone else AND to be glared at for having too much. It's perspective. And I am so glad I have the family I have where I get to see both sides of the coin and make the best of both.