A Traveling Circus

Denver City Park, October 24, 2012

OK - I absolutely promise that this is my last post on the presidential election.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go to a speech by President Obama in Denver's City Park.  It was a huge production - truly the political equivalent of a traveling circus - with about 16,000 people attending. Yes, one of the perks of being in a closely contested state is that the candidates are constantly here. You almost feel like they will stop by your house if you promise to vote for them.

I usually try to avoid these crowded types of events, but I made an exception and went.  I tried to take in all of the hoopla around me.  This is such a huge effort - everyone had to go through security and there were more gates to go through than at most airports that I've been to.  The guards looked through my purse in a lot more detail than they do at the airport, even opening my sunglass case to see what was inside.  They handled the crowd well, and the lines moved quickly.  Very impressive.  After the event, I watched them roll up all of the security gates into the many waiting trucks and move on to the next location.  

While putting together the logistics of a "quick stop" for the President is mind-boggling (the stage, the acoustics, the crowd control barriers, etc., etc.), what affected me much more were the people who came.  Many came with wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, canes.  From babies to the very old.  A more diverse crowd than I see in my normal day-to-day in Denver and all very excited that they had the opportunity to see the President of the United States.  I was touched by the man who told me that he drove from Wichita, Kansas to see the President.  Even more touched by the elderly African-American lady who told me that she wanted to save her ticket to add to her collection of souvenirs from the 2008 election when she had all of her election paraphernalia laminated.  I'm sure when this woman was a girl she could not have imagined that she would see an African-American President of the United States in her lifetime.  Her pride in him was palpable.  There were also many children there, taken out of school to attend this event.  It made me happy to look at their faces and to realize that they would remember this day for the rest of their lives.  

Seeing all of the excitement of this visit was fun, and I got to shake hands with the Mayor of Denver, the Governor of Colorado, and the President of the United States. Cool.  By the way, his hand is not calloused by the many handshakes;  it's actually pretty soft.

Here are some photos from my day:

What can I say? It's definitely a fashion statement.

Colorado Governor Hickenlooper and my friend Jill

. . . And I Approved This Message

Hello from Ground Zero of a very close presidential race.  As I write this, Colorado still remains one of those handful of states that is too close to call for either candidate two weeks before election day.  The most recent poll I looked at today showed a difference of .2% between Obama and Romney, obviously well below the margin of error.  So the craziness here continues.  It has given me brain damage, I'm afraid, and consequently have been unable to accomplish much at all, including posting on this blog.

Soon after I first moved here, I did a blog post about mail-in voting in Colorado.  You can find that post here.  To avoid repetition, I won't go into the details of mail-in voting again, but I recently read that 70% of voters in this state get mail-in ballots.  Also, I learned that Colorado has the fourth best percentage of eligible voters who actually vote (Minnesota is the best and Hawaii the worst), so there are some definite advantages to this system.

I've already voted and dropped off my completed ballot yesterday.  I'm hoping that this will stem the barrage of contacts since it is a "done deal" for me now.  What surprised me when I looked at the ballot was the fact that there were 16 candidates for president and vice president listed on the ballot.  I had to search among the long list of candidates for the two whose faces and names have become constant companions to everyone in this state.  I did see Roseanne Barr's name as a presidential candidate (somehow she doesn't have all of the qualities that I look for in the leader of the free world), but other than that, who are these people and what are these political parties about?  I wonder if all states have so very many presidential candidates or if it is only this state.  As you vote, please let me know, just for my own curiosity.  Here's what the presidential ballot looked like here:  

2012 Colorado Ballot

Colorado the Swing State

I've never lived in a swing state before and always envied those folks who got to watch the action up close.  So now I'm living in Colorado, a swing state where the measly 9 electoral delegates are hotly contested.  It's a weird experience to watch commercial after commercial after commercial, all spilling vitriolic lies (both sides).  Literally, there is a Romney commercial followed by an Obama commercial or vice versa all day and night long.  If all I knew about the election was what I see on commercials, I wouldn't want to vote for anybody.  I truly hate the negativity.

I will tell my idea of a better political system to anyone who will listen.  Get rid of the political commercials - just outlaw them.  Yeah, I know about the first amendment but, for the public good, we've outlawed cigarette commercials, so why not these nasty political commercials that come very close to making my ears bleed.  Once we got rid of political advertising, there would be no need for all of the money that must be raised to feed this monster.  Consequently, no favors would be owed to big contributors. Then, set up a series of public debates between the candidates, position papers and whatever other good ideas that come up for a way for a candidate to get his or her ideas across to the voting public without advertising.

It's mind boggling to imagine how much money is being spent on each and every vote here.  The whole state only has about five million people, less than metropolitan Atlanta.  If you figure the percentage of people who actually vote, I would guess that each side is spending thousands of dollars per vote.  This makes no sense.  If all of the money donated to political causes could be donated to help our schools, just think of the impact that would have.

While I'm on my soapbox, one other idea.  What about one six-year term for the President so the first four years aren't consumed with worries about  re-election?

I've been working on registering voters here in Denver.  The other day I approached a perfectly normal looking guy to ask if he needed to update his registration.  His response:  "Why would I do that?  Secret societies control the world so voting doesn't matter." Well, I guess that's one point of view.  I just hope that the "secret societies" don't start advertising too.

West Coastal

After surviving the plagues of July in Denver - fires, heat, shootings, media storm - we were delighted to have the opportunity to get out of town and head to the cool west coast.  We traveled the coast of Oregon and northern California.  Very scenic and most importantly, in the 60s.  July was officially declared the hottest month EVER in Denver, so having to wear a jacket was a welcome relief.

From the exquisite craggy Pacific coastline to the stately redwood forests, the trip made me want to burst out in song a la Woody Guthrie:  This land is my land, this land is your land, .... (you know the rest).   This really is a beautiful country.

Here are some photos of our very pleasant trip.

Shame on You, Wolf Blitzer

I've always known that the media is not completely accurate in their reporting, but I had no idea how bad it really is until this week in the aftermath of the Aurora shootings.

This is the first time in my life - and hopefully the last - that I am in a situation where I have personal knowledge of the actual facts in a huge media story.  I'm sad to realize that journalism - a profession I used to respect and admire - is at a very low point. Some in the media do not care at all if what they say is true - it's all about sensationalism.  What happened to the days of checking sources?  What happened to the days of checking facts before putting information out to the public that doesn't even make sense if anyone stopped to think about it?

The public's right to know is important, but it's not the only thing that counts in a tragedy of the magnitude of the Aurora shootings.  And certainly the public has a right to know only accurate facts, not any old thing that any anonymous source wants to put out there.  

PhD students in science work long hours in the lab and, in most institutions, are supplied a modest living stipend so they do not have to find other employment that would detract from their dissertation studies.  When my husband was a graduate student in the Paleolithic Era, he received $300 per month on the same type of NIH training grant that supports many graduate students today.  This was enough to pay our rent and buy food back then. Currently, the science graduate students here receive a living stipend of $26,000 per year, which probably covers normal living expenses such as rent, food, utilities, gas and car insurance, but leaves little left over.  I'm guessing that today's graduate students are able to live like we did on our $300 per month - very frugally.

Consequently, I was shocked to see Wolf Blitzer do a story titled "Paying for the Weapons."  Scrolled across the screen was "Thousands in Taxpayer-Funded Money." The story went on to say that the shooter got "thousands of dollars" from taxpayers like you and me, the implication being that he bought his instruments of destruction with taxpayer money.  It is true that the shooter was on an NIH training grant that pays a little more than $2,000 per month.  But it seems irresponsible to me to link this very worthwhile science training program with one obviously disturbed individual who spent between $10,000 and $15,000 on guns, ammunition, etc.  He obviously had credit cards because he ordered a lot of his materials online.  How can CNN (and all of the other news organizations who followed their lead) know where this money came from or if in fact the shooter just ran up big credit card debt?  Why would they even try to make this connection between federal dollars and his destructive spending spree?

I've always felt like Fox News doesn't really care if they make stuff up, but I expected better from others.  I have now sworn off CNN too.  If the result of this horrible event is that NIH training grants are banned as dangerous and gun sales continue to rise, I'm just going to give up.

Shame on you, Wolf Blitzer, and all the others just like you.

Too Close to Home

The horrific movie massacre is too close to home for all of us.  We've all been in packed movie theaters and can only imagine what it would be like to experience the terror and chaos of this week's event.  We start to think - what would I do?  Would I duck?  Would I run?  What's the best reaction depends on the circumstances and nobody's mind really wants to go there.  We all just hope that we're never faced with a scenario like the one that occurred in Aurora.

This particular event was even closer to home for us.  Not only are we geographically close to Aurora, but the shooter was a PhD student in a neuroscience program in the graduate school that my husband oversees.  He just finished his first year but was in the process of withdrawing from the program.  Barry didn't know him, but people who did describe him just as you've seen in the media - as a loner.  Over the years, we've known many scientists and that description would apply to a good number of them. Certainly nothing that would set off alarms.  Scientists often work long hours at the bench by themselves, and many are just like that.

The shooter's booby-trapped apartment is directly across the street from the medical campus at an intersection that we pass every time we go to that campus.  So this whole experience is a bit more personal to us than it would be if we lived somewhere else. Barry's office was barraged with media calls from all over the world.  There is great interest in figuring out what would cause this young man to do such a thing.  

I personally keep coming back to the fact that he spent months getting ready and buying firearms and ammunition totally legally.  What is wrong with our society that someone can collect an arsenal like this without any alarms going off?  I would hope that this might make our elected officials say that no one outside of the military and law enforcement needs automatic weapons that can fire 100 rounds, but I am extremely doubtful that any gun restrictions will occur as a result.  I always want to believe that out of something bad, something good comes.  In this case, the "good" would be gun control.  But Colorado is a cowboy state and has a cowboy mentality, so I expect that others like the shooter will be able to buy whatever weapons of death and destruction they want.

It's all so sad. 

High

Yes, that is a photo of me way high up - at the top of Mount Evans, elevation 14,264 feet.  Is the Colorado lifestyle finally getting to me?  Did I hike or bike up all that way up?

Nope.  There's a paved road that goes to the summit parking area (elevation: 14,130 feet), and then we walked about a quarter mile to get up the last 130 feet.

It's really pretty way up above the tree line and about 50 degrees cooler than downtown Denver.  Yes, it was in the 40's atop Mt. Evans.

Not exactly solitude up here

Besides plenty of people, many of whom did use their own muscle power to get up there, we saw lots of mountain goats.  Real Coloradans keep track of how many Fourteeners (there are 53 mountains in Colorado that are more than 14,000 feet) they have climbed.  Mountain bikers are proud of doing the "triple bypass" where they bike up and down three mountains in a day.

But, for me, I loved getting up there in my lazy, no strain way - moderate pressure on the gas and brake pedals.  Delightful.

Back below the tree line