Tag: advocacy

Until yesterday, the subject of distracted drivers and their role in pedestrian accidents was merely an abstract annoyance.  When I moved to DC, I quite willingly gave up my car and resorted largely to my own two legs to get me where I needed to be.  Periodically one hears a horror story here about how about a jogger, walker, cyclist, or all around fellow human gets mowed down by an inattentive driver.  Recently, there have been a handful of similar incidents where people were seriously hurt.  I suppose I may have been remiss to not use that information and apply it to my life, but I always justified my inaction by feeling certain that such a thing would never happened to me.  Well, never happened yesterday.

Have a friend that contacted me and in that e-mail she told me about a brainstorming meeting taking place just before this weekend and into, April 1-3 of the Millennial Veterans. One of the couples sons, an Afghanistan and Iraq war Veteran, he served in both theaters, is attending this gathering. This group of Millennials sounds an awful lot like what happened as to us boomer’s especially those of us after our service in the military and especially Vietnam. Matter of fact the whole movement, the Millennials, of this generational group are getting much more involved in many issues that seemed to have skipped over the couple of generations just previous to them at least for most in those generations. I’ve been watching them for a few years now. They’ve not only taken up the issues we oldsters worried about and lobbied to change, in government and in society, they’ve been expanding on them not only to fit these times but like the technology they’ve expanded the issues forward, and now some of them have not only served in War but have done so in Two occupations of choice and in more then one tour of duty.

‘Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism’

The flag is not powerful in spite of its ambiguity; it is powerful because of its ambiguity. It has stood, at different times, for radical democracy, opposition to immigration, the abolition of slavery, unregulated capitalism, segregation, integration, and a hawkish war policy, among many other things.

Obligatory YouTube — Coltrane doing “My Favorite Things” (coutesy of Astrotype):

I didn’t watch the entire Democratic Convention, but I watched enough to be very affected by many of the speeches, especially Michelle and Barack Obama’s words and presentation.  I was very impressed by both of them.

But then the production, the media production itself, disturbed me, from the music to the pageantry.  Seemed cheesy like the Academy Awards, which is so strange, because those awards are for some of the most talented directors and cinematographers and set designers and yet it always looks so cheesy on the teevee.