About Us
Mutual Friends
One Mutual Friend, Bruce 4 Obama
http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/CatsforObama
This website was instigated and designed by Brian Olson, who comes from a long line of members of the well-known special interest group: “Never-voted-and-proud-of-it-because-politicians-are-all-the-same”. Call him a Maverick and capitalize it.
In January 2008, Brian unenthusiastically submitted to register to vote, but not to voting, necessarily. We might have to do that for him. All he had to do was sign the completed forms. A few weeks later, when we started on phase 2 of “Operation Brian: The Unmaking of an Apathetic”, we learned that, ever the true Maverick, Brian had cast his damn ballot already, and for Barack Obama. He threatened never to vote for anyone else. Period. Well, there we were months later, Brian still thinking Barack wasn’t going to win, but not because he didn’t vote, contribute, convince voters, inform himself and set up websites for ranters like me. He’s an enabler THAT ONE. And so the Obama plan snagged another undervalued demographic.
In addition to genuine altruism, Brian and Barack share first and last name initials, two letters in sequence that were probably mocked by childhood peers, but are now an ‘insigne d’honneur’ as popularized by Obama supporters who would not be caught dead without their own ‘MyBO’ page. That’s ‘Mon BO’ In French, and that’s change.
I had a small part, using constant and early harrassment, in driving Brian to participate, although he has lots of friends and couldn’t possibly have stayed remote during this election. And forever more, all citizens should vote, because we would not be in this mess if more people realized HOW MUCH it mattered in 2000 and 2004. In 2008, ‘the fierce urgency of now’ is exactly correct and a lesson learned, we hope.
Unlike Brian, I’ve always voted. Beyond the Boston Red Sox connection, my family’s entire mythology results from the effects of politics. My most vivid memories include second-hand tales of my then 9-year-old sister watching JFK’s inauguration from Dad’s office window on Pennsylvania Avenue, to my own visceral, if uniformed, experience with the consuming tragic silence of my home during JFK’s murder and the aftermath that continued through the winter and beyond. During that period, the drone of our (first) television filled-in the absence of quotidien family chatter in a household filled with six normally gregarious people aged 4 to 42. My dad worked with the Warren Commission, so there was no escape. As our TV broadcast the returns of the 1964 presidential race, my father placed a suitcase in the middle of the floor, a symbol that he was ready to move to us to Canada if Goldwater prevailed. I stood near the polling places with my mom in 1968, grimly handing out pamphlets for Humphrey-Muskie knowing ‘our’ beloved candidate was dead, MLK was dead and DC had been the scene of a new civil war. Later, my brother was in Vietnam, and my sister and parents had a tearful argument during the ‘Kent State’ period, probably due to knee-jerk parental caution and, on my sister’s part, to the generational emotion Neil Young gave voice to. Events in my life are accompanied by a helpful soundtrack, thanks to a family interest in music.
And so it was in 2004, an election I was sure ‘we’ would win, when I dutifully had the DNC convention on the tube and invited a few friends over for John Kerry’s speech. Paying half-attention to the convention and half to bringing out food for guests, we readied for the event as the man delivering the keynote walked on stage to deafening applause. Who is this guy, and will he be less boring than the usual setter? I hurried back with dessert, my special lemon meringue pie adorned with fresh lemony looking nasturtiums. As my body swerved left toward the TV screen, pulled to focus on the animated young black man delivering a truth sandwich to us all, the pie, held aloft on a plate in my right hand, swerved right and hit the ground. No one cared except the cats who were disappointed to find the mess was inedible.
And as the Senator from Illinois was both diagnosing and offering a cure for the false divisions that we had willingly succumbed to as a nation, I did feel hope. As a cynic, I had no idea how to express that. All I could say to my friends was, “I want some of that, with mustard on it.” The opportunity to feel it again was deferred until February 10, 2007 when it was billed as just what it is, and it is a joy to have it back, in spite of the tone of my posts.
