Voting....

I was prepared for l-o-n-g lines but it didn't take me but 20 minutes or so. I'll remember this the next time I'm tempted to take advantage of early voting. I tried to early vote last week and after waiting over an hour and a half (with at least another hour to go) I had to leave for an appointment. ....Truth be told, it was a hair appointment (is that horrible of me?). While in that early voting line I made a couple of friends -- a nice Vietnamese man and a nice "Joe the Plumber" type man.

The Vietnames man helped the time go faster by relating his story. He's been in America for 35 years but vividly remembers growing up in Vietnam. One of the most poignant things for me was when he talked about how on a visit back to Vietnam he and his mom had walked by their old house. Apparently the house had been taken away from his famiy and given to another famiy. He told how odd it was seeing another family living in the house he remembered so well. I mentioned how a Canadian friend of mine had an international lawyer working on resolving her family's property in former East Germany. He said it would mean a lot to his mom to have it back but that he wouldn't feel right about kicking out people who had been living there for so many years. The situations we can find ourselves in.

At one point he asked why we had the electorial college. The explainations I and Joe-the-plumber-type man gave him didn't enlighten him. "Then the people don't really elect the president," he said. "Well, yes and no," we both said. The situations we can find ourselves in.

As I'm typing this, Senator Obama has been declared the next president of the United States. I saw the Afro-American reporter at the Ebenezer Baptist church (I think that's where he is) reporting and his hand holding the microphone was trembling. I cannot begin to imagine what this must mean to him. I have tears in my own eyes and hope in my heart that this wonderful nation will indeed find its way once again.