Halloween

Hi! I thought I would start out this day’s post with a picture I snapped a few days ago at one of my favorite shops in Boulder: The Ritz. If you haven’t yet patronized this fine establishment, I urge you not to waste another moment. The place is the indisputable domain of silliness. On Friday, finding myself unaccountably excitable, I didn’t think twice about donning the tiger. Notice the perfection of the juxtaposed elephants on my t-shirt below…score one for composition! 

Aside from the inherent fun of head gear, there is another reason I am posting this picture: it reminds me of Halloween. According to my sources, we have only seventy days left to wait, which means that it has been at least twice that long since I began to prepare. What will I be this year? How many parties can I possibly attend? How many haunted houses can I visit? How much candy? How many scary movies? I am not ashamed to admit I am obsessed, and many will no doubt find fault with the excess of my plans. No matter that my entire year leads up to this day alone! If it has ANYTHING to do with Halloween, I’m there. The more thematic, the better. I only wish I could post pictures now of the immense collection I’ve made of ghouls, zombies, vampires, and other assorted creatures of the night. Evil really does have more fun than Good.

I hope all my readers have big plans. It’s simply too fun dressing up and haunting the town to stay at home and wait for the kids to come knocking.

Last year, I was “Night” incarnate. I dressed all in black, and sprayed down my face and hair, then added glitter to represent the stars. It worked admirably well if, by its working, I meant to avoid notice altogether. I blended in so seamlessly with the shadows that only my eyes gave me away for a person!

The year before, I was a “Snow Elf”, with my face painted white and my hair silver. Thank Heaven for the cape that was necessarily part of my costume, as it was dastardly cold!

This year, I am feeling less inclined to cover my face entirely. I’ll invest in some quality makeup to make my skin appear pale, and I’ll masquerade as a 19th-century vampire!

Since I so love Halloween, this will no doubt be the first of many posts in the coming month. I’m gearing up big time!

Wine Country

Greetings, Friends,

I write to you from Napa Valley, California, where Speaker Pelosi and her family have invited us to sojourn this weekend, on the occasion of the annual “Speaker’s Cabinet”. Major donors to the Democratic Party are invited to spend two days in the heart of wine country, and to hear from some of today’s brightest political luminaries. Last night, over dinner, we heard from James Carville, who ran Bill Clinton’s Presidential Campaign in 1992. His topic was healthcare. Tonight, we will hear from Obama’s top political advisor, David Axelrod.

It has been a breath of fresh air for one who finds himself, at times, less politically savvy than his fellows. So it is with me, though I know as much as a person in my position is given to know, yet I am by no stretch a shrewd political thinker. Many of the guests this weekend are enthusiasts, and they understand the importance of funding a party that stands for change. They are well-read and eager to understand, but they know the big picture apart from the intricacies of legislative process. Above all, they are concerned with the state of world affairs, and do what they can to improve the world that the next generation will inherit. I am happy not to feel dwarfed by their understanding of policy, which is not so back in DC, where everyone you meet is a political scientist!

As for Napa Valley: wow! The place is gorgeous, every bit so as I imagined it would be. I’ve never been this way before, so I was not sure what to expect. The place is one, gigantic vineyard, stretching as far as the eye can see. As we zoomed by in our buses, I thought to myself how peaceful it must be to work on the land, and to draw forth life from its soil. Each individual vine wanting personal care, and the hours flying by while the vintners toil away in the fields; it must be immensely satisfying to be thus in communion with nature. We city folk miss out on the beauty of creation when all we see are the hard sidewalks. We waken to unnatural noise, car horns, telephones, but never to birdsong or the lapping of waves. We feel hard, man-made textures with our fingers and beneath our feet, but never the softness of grass or the richness of earth. 

I am reminded that cities exist outside of nature. The reality of living shoulder to should with hundreds of thousands and millions of others, is not to be found anywhere else in creation. Nor are the cars and buses that cart us around, or flashy lights that desensitize us to the beauty of moonlight and starshine.

I love coming to secluded valleys like Napa where nature is alive and well, and an animal can feel like an animal, even if he calls himself a human in the roaring metropolis.

Picture with Speaker Pelosi

 Hello, Friends,

Here is a picture from Speaker Pelosi’s recent visit to Boulder, courtesy of our consummately-talented cousin, Matthew Polis!

Dinosaurs and Politics

Happy Friday, Friends!

Allow me to apologize for the inexcusable long time between my posts. It seems only yesterday, I was in DC and eagerly detailing my experiences at the Kennedy Center. Now, nearly a week and a half into our August recess, I am in Boulder and the schedule hasn’t left off a bit. It was in vain, I hoped for an entire month unscathed by politics. Whether events or meetings with famed personages, I was quite ready to forego it all if only to have one month of my old life back.

Alas, it wasn’t in the cards. And a great deal that is exciting, has come to pass in just the last week alone. I’m happy to share it all, so here goes!

We arrived back in Colorado on July 31st. It was good luck for me–not so for the efforts of Speaker Pelosi and Democratic leadership–that the passage of a healthcare bill would be postponed until September. I suppose it is a good thing not to rush a bill of such gravity, but I have it on my partner’s word, that the House truly did want to lock in yet another piece of groundbreaking legislation before breaking for August recess. Ah, well…

The evening of August 1st was an exciting one. It was a date night for my partner and I! I had purchased tickets to a show at the Pepsi Center in Denver, and we were going to make a night of it: live entertainment followed by dinner at our favorite vegetarian restaurant, Watercourse, and perhaps a drop-in at one of Denver’s nightspots. The show, based upon a BBC documentary of the same name, was called “Walking with Dinosaurs”. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but true things bear repeating: I am a dinosaur fanatic! Jurassic Park is probably my favorite movie. When it came out in 1992, I collected all the trading cards and magazines, and I made it my industry each day to draw pictures of the creatures that captured my imagination. I probably should have become a paleontologist for all I loved about the notion of a prehistoric world. Maybe one day, I’ll go back to school!

In any event, preparation for the live show involved the design and execution of fifteen life-size animatronic dinosaurs! And when I say life-size, I mean LIFE-SIZE! Imagine a 50-foot Brachiosaurus, or a 25-foot Tyrannosaurus Rex! The Pepsi Center was set in the round with props to make it look like a prehistoric world. There were mountains and trees, and all along the outskirts of the stage, primordial flora to represent the ages of ferns and flowering plants.

For an hour and a half, the dinosaurs stalked the arena, often no more than ten feet in front of us. A baby was born. A mother defended it from attackers. One predator found death in the jaws of another. It was all very dramatic and totally enthralling. Meanwhile, a narrator attired as a paleontologist, walked side-by-side with the dinosaurs and provided a sort of voice-over narration to their actions. At the appropriate times, he ran for cover, and when he was among herbivores, he walked freely in the open.

One of my favorite portions of the show came after the intermission, when the entire arena floor was covered in fog, and a giant LED screen portrayed an ancient ocean. A flying dinosaur swooped in over the crowd, and appeared to fly great distances over land and sea. Then there was the asteroid crashing upon the earth and creating the Gulf of Mexico. All of the flowers wilted, and the stage was cast in reds and browns.

We were lucky to be able to see this show. It’s currently on tour around the world, and will revisit Denver next year. I am almost tempted to see it again when it visits DC in September. But for anyone who loves amazing experiences, and happens to be in the right place at the right time, I strongly urge you to see this extraordinary show. You won’t regret it!

Yesterday, as many of you probably already know, my partner hosted Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Boulder for a high-dollar fundraiser and an intimate dinner afterwards. I’m very proud of my partner. He has risen to be a leader in his freshman class, not only by the boldness of his bills, but by the support he has shown his fellow Democrats. He is an inspiring fundraiser, and the Speaker came to Boulder on the condition that he would raise her $100,000 for what the party calls “Frontline Candidates”. These are the Democrats who were elected in otherwise conservative districts, who stand to lose their elections in 2010 if the party is unable to get out the vote. Much is made of the Democratic majority, and the landmark bills that have passed these last six months were made possible only by the teamwork and common vision of that party. To lose 30 members is common in off-election years, but the Democrats can’t sustain such attrition if they want to continue passing great, progressive bills. 

So the fundraising has begun already. Colorado’s own Betsy Markey from CD-4 is a Frontline Candidate, and will need all the help she can get in winning her seat again in 2010.

As always, Speaker Pelosi acquitted herself with poise and a total grasp of the issues. She gave a wonderful speech at a house party hosted by my friends, and afterwards, masterfully conducted a table of ten, very politically-savvy citizens, of which I was fortunate to be one. The topic was healthcare, and specifically, the importance of the public insurance option. I think the Speaker’s tact is an excellent one: she believes that prevention is the key to funding insurance for all citizens. Right now, our country spends untold millions on the uninsured who end up in emergency rooms and can’t pay their bills. The savings brought about by prevention will go a considerable way toward affording healthcare for all people. I was tempted, though reasoned otherwise, to bring up the issue of how America eats as a key contributor to health epidemics. I want people to acknowledge that our country’s obsession with meat and dairy has negative implications for both health and the environment. Sooner than later, I’ll write a letter to the Speaker with just those thoughts, but for now, I’m still working out the best way to express the argument.

I promise not to wait so long before writing again! I have more to tell, but this post has already outgrown its inspiration, and I’d best save something for tomorrow. Until then, my friends…