Election Night 2012

I was reminiscing with Suzanne about Election Night 2008, when I descended to a subterranean vault, cut off from media, with a gaggle of engineers and their families, lay people.

Portland Center Stage had canceled the performance in the main theater, given an inability to compete with the Election Night circus, but the Bucky play people had a different idea:  lets woo engineers, give 'em a special invitation and free IEEE lecture by Kirby.  This demographic is likely enough to fill the theater, even on such a momentous evening.

The plan worked, plus we had plenty of access to media during intermission.  Upon emerging from the vault, the race had been called.

Last night was a little different.  I had some really spicy foods with a friend (Cibo's last time), foods a biased person might say were "unAmerican" (e.g jellyfish -- as if McDonalds set the standard), but there's nothing unAmerican about Chinese American.

I was more than tongue in cheek about suggesting some collaboration around railroads in North America.  Yes, there's lots of history there, not all of it pleasant.  We would study that.  Future work on railroads is more for academic credit than in the old days.  You might get a history degree, while keeping those triceps less flabby, or a systems science degree (so many trajectories).

Dinner conversation ranged through many topics but I found myself strangely attracted to some Quaker threads I've been exploring.  The new gigabytes include a documentary on the Bonus Army, which connects to Smedley "fighting Quaker" Butler and the Business Plot.

As I was telling Wanderers even later that same evening, I need to dig up Human Smoke (the book).  Quakers play a starring role in this history, as hoping to prevent a war it seemed just about everyone wanted.  How can people spoil for death and mayhem?  That's a "gateway question" into the Jungian world of AVP and the unity of opposites.

Quakers are respectful of the power of archetypes (like Tantrics in that way).  We speak of "outward weapons" knowing that connotes "inward weapons" in complement.  Where there are weapons, there are connotations of war, like smoke goes with fire.  A war with inward weapons is variously named PsyWar, Lambs War, Jihad... Dharma depending who's on the other end of the line.

A new mattress for Carol is on order.  Her bed is electric / adjustable, but is not a hospital bed.

Lindsey was in a reflective mood when I came back from Wanderers, listening to election results on FM radio.  That Washington State, right over the bridge, had legalized gay marriage and more adult access to ingestable hemp products proved that Canadian thinking was encroaching southward.

Oregon is "the south" of the Pacific Northwest, according to a well placed analyst.

When it comes to hemp, illegality amounts to funding for public sector jobs and higher prices to growers both.  Some of California's bigger growers are afraid of change on the same score.  Who wants to jeopardize the market value of a major cash crop?  Drug lords profit from Drug Wars (a truism) at the expense of everyone else sometimes.  Prohibition means full prisons and prison labor.

The Chinese should boycott anything tainted with US prison labor behind it, as a WTO violation.  The AFL/CIO should get on board with that one.  Prison labor anywhere is a threat to labor everywhere.

Gay marriage is an easy extension of the boilerplate and adds business for lawyers and divorce courts, more reality television.

Straying from the nuclear model (two partners) is harder in "dom rel" and I've suggested more feasible in business law (households as "companies").  The conservative evangelicals have a lot more interest in alternative "Biblical lifestyles" so the "company of companions" model is less likely to prove as culturally divisive as gay marriage is/was.

I agree with Ashton that literate adults have more leeway these days to hammer out their own agreements, not taking all their cues from boilerplate.  Kids will need more anthropological and sociological savvy to describe their households during Show & Tell (lightning talks).

Teasing junior because he has two dads and one mom won't seem so rewarding when there's no taint of scandal or closeted skeletons.   Best to look for other buttons to push then (junior's lunch box sure looks dumb).