Personal: October 2007 Archives

Yesterday I was working out of the home office when my three-year-old son walked in as I was looking at Friendly Fire. Immediately, his eyes were drawn to Patrick's cartoon of Al Gore, the one I had said bore a resemblance to Butt-Head. And my boy says, "Daddy, that's you!"

Thanks a bunch, kid!

Had an interesting conversation with other single, thirtysomething women at the wedding I went to this weekend (which was wonderfully "anti-wedding" -- five-minute vows, no poufy Cool Whip dress, no tiaras, no bouquet or garter toss, and fudgy cake instead of a tasteless white confection with plastic bride/groom topper). You know that stereotype that, after crossing the age 28 or so threshold, women become desperate for marriage and kids and embark on the husband hunt? Anecdotal evidence I've heard and witnessed over the past few years seems to indicate that's reversed, and instead single women intent on waiting for nothing less than love keep meeting men who are desperate to get married and have kids. And the women with whom I was speaking at the wedding related similar experiences: Men bringing up marriage on a first date. Men complaining they're just "tired of dating," as if the women they're telling this to are actually going to rejoice in this statement, rather than thinking they're the last resort of a man with a ticking biological clock of some sort. One 37-year-old woman at the wedding told me that one man she was dating asked if she would just have a baby for him, then he would take care of it.

It's like the dating "Twilight Zone." Every woman who ever pressured a man or acted desperate is to blame, because now all women are getting it back tenfold! Eeeeek!!

The University of Nebraska Press has released a book of interest (to me anyway) called Living Blue in the Red States. I find myself intrigued because it's the mirror image of a book I've been inclined to write for some time about living "red" in Blue America. It's a topic on which I think I'm well versed, being conservatively inclined but having spent my life in what are arguably America's three bluest states: Massachusetts, New York, and California. (When I was in New York, I lived in a precinct so blue that in 1996, more of my neighbors voted for Ralph Nader than for Bob Dole.)

As such, I like to think of myself as "bilingual" -- I can speak and understand the languages of both "blue" and "red" America. And while appreciating that most of us -- myself included -- are actually more shades of purple than the personification of either stereotype, those stereotypes do reflect a large measure of truth. "Red" and "blue" Americans do often have different priorities and values that extend well beyond the voting booth and into most every facet of daily life.

That said -- and perhaps here's where my "bilingualism" comes into place -- those differences need not be as divisive as they often are. I'm amazed at how many people on both sides of the political/cutlural divide simply despise those on the other, even though they know few if any such people personally. For all our differences, our similarities are far greater; if only we're willing to get past our antipathies to discover them.

Here's where I think people like myself and the contributors to this book -- people who can and do live comfortably in both worlds -- can hopefully play a peacemaking role. The press release for "Living Blue in the Red States" says the "essayists’ views testify to the power of writing to bring us together as one nation of whatever color."

We can only hope so.