Encouragement and discouragement

I was feeling quite discouraged with my photography recently. Compared to my previous activity of scribbling my thoughts in spiral notebooks, it is quite expensive. It requires thought and effort to be in the right place at the right time and hours of taking photos which don't pan out to get one good one. I was thinking that I should give it up and concentrate on something else. Then, by chance, I saw a notice at a local arts center giving information about submitting work to be accepted as an exhibiting member of the art center. I've always liked the place and have enjoyed dropping by to see what work is being displayed there. I decided to give it a shot. I went back through many of my photographs to choose three to submit. I agonized about the choices and, after I had narrowed it down to six, enlisted the opinions of friends and family to help me pick three. I dropped them off yesterday. Today I found out I had been accepted. That means I can exhibit my photos in all the relevant art center shows during the year and submit it to the couple of juried ones they have as well. It may be a small thing but it was a nice boost of encouragement just when I needed it. Following are the three photos:

Obama's Win

I was so nervous after voting on Tuesday that I took my dog to the dog park for three hours just to stay away from the Internet and TV. At least one of us could be happy. In the evening, I sat down to watch CNN with great trepidation. My husband went to bed, thinking that it would be a long drawn out event, the conclusion of which wouldn't be known until the next morning, if then.

They called Pennsylvania for Obama, then Ohio, then Virginia. I walked upstairs and, when my husband spoke sleepily to me, I told him that I thought he should get up and come downstairs to watch. He said that they wouldn't know anything until morning and was amazed when I told him that McCain had conceded and Obama was about to make a speech.

To say I was tremendously relieved and happy would be an understatement. Obama was the first candidate in my life about whom I have gotten excited. He was the first candidate to whom I have given money and for whom I have worked. Early on I was impressed with him. The way he handled himself during the campaign only caused my admiration for him to grow. Rather than rising to the bait and being drawn into partisan squabbling, he kept his eye on the goal and patiently explained what he planned to do if he were elected President. What made me crazy were the people who didn't listen to him and then represented his positions as totally different from what he had stated.

My greatest fear was that the Republicans' scare tactics were going to work again. I was also afraid that people's short sightedness was going to work against their own self-interest: that people in the $250,000 up earnings group would not understand that it wouldn't help if their taxes didn't go up (even if only to the level of Clinton taxes) if they didn't have a job and if the country was being driven off a cliff. The good news was that there were people who were able to realize that their self-interest was directly tied to the good of the country, even if they would pay more in taxes. As a friend's husband said, "This is going to cost us but it's the right thing to do."

There are big challenges ahead, not only for Obama but for all of us. Like Detroit, we have been operating on the wrong model for too long and now it's caught up with us. We need to retool and start building our lives on a sustainable basis, as Detroit needs to start building more energy efficient cars. It's not easy but Americans have shown the ability to rise to the occasion when called. Think of the recycling which went on during World War II and the Victory Gardens in almost every backyard. A time of crisis provides the opportunity for change if we are willing to seize the moment and if we have a leader to inspire us to be our best selves. I am heartened by the prospect of a President who believes that government has a positive role to play in citizen's lives but also understands the importance of individual responsibility and is willing to hold people to it. It's been a long time coming.

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The day after the election, I was looking through the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (If you haven't read his I Have A Dream speech recently, it is well worth rereading: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/35_kennedy/psources/ps_ dream.html

In one of his speeches is a story about an elderly black woman who was walking in a civil rights march. When asked if she was tired, she said, "My feets is tired but my soul is rested."

The Economy

"Getting and spending, we lay waste our resources:"- Wordsworth

Indications of the health of the economy are expressed in terms of number of new housing starts and consumer spending. Why?

After 9/11, George Bush urged us to go out and be patriotic by shopping. Is it any surprise that we are in the mess we are in when the President of our country thinks that the highest use of the country's people in a time of national crisis is to shop?

What if we had different priorities? What if our priorities were to become energy independent, make our education system the best in the world, ensure decent health care for all our citizens, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and restore our housing stock rather than constantly tearing down and building new? None of these relates to shopping but they are all productive and would put our energy and resources into something which would show real and long term results. As opposed to houses, apartments, storage lockers and garbage dumps bursting with the clutter of stuff, made by low wage workers in other countries and shipped to us.

It is assumed to be a problem that consumer spending is down. And in the short run, because of the way our economy is structured, it undoubtedly is. But what about the long term? A good rule is not to sacrifice long term goals for short term results. If people are cutting back on spending, it means they are either borrowing less money that they don't have or they are saving. If people save, we will have the means to support the improvements we need in our society. Having people spend for the sake of spending is no less than a giant Ponzi scheme, the consequences of which become clear when credit dries up, as it has recently, because people cannot pay back what they borrowed.

Let's try something different. Let's try investing our resources in the long term and providing jobs for people in those areas which are going to reap long term results. Let's invest in education, energy independence, health care and infrastructure improvement. Then we can have an economy built on a firm basis rather than one which, like an addict, needs more and more of what is unhealthy just to reach the same place.