The Political Life

Another day, another name tag. My dashboard is festooned with them. I spent today wading through mailing lists and trying to figure out which people belonged on the volunteer list and which were just petition signers. A whole day!

Wednesday night it was the Santa Rosa Democratic Club, a big one, but attrition is taking its toll. Man, do we need new blood! Between the walkers and the hearing aids and the hostess who forgot who I was, it was a tribute to the city with the 5th fastest growing senior population in the nation.

The video quickly divided the group into those who could only hear it at peak volume and those who needed earplugs to endure it. We got 67 people to write postcards but forgot to tell them to put their return addresses on the cards. Some of them even forgot to sign the cards.

Where are the kids?

It seems so weird for the elderly to be carrying the torch for justice. When I was a kid, it seemed the role of the young to protest against the old and save the world from their lifetime of moral compromises. We didn't trust anyone over 30. Then we WERE over 30, but we were a new, more enlightened 30 than ever before, and we expected to lend a hand to the new younger generation.

But they weren't there. If we rebelled against the smugness and materialism of our elders, the young are now happily embracing that very materialism as a way to distance themselves from US.

And now here we are, doddering and dithering and trying to remember each other's names, hoping to hold our ideals together for the time when the young--perhaps our grandchildren?--will once again rise up to save the world.

We'll be there to support them--if they hurry.