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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Know Hope

April 22nd is a long way off and my nerves are a little bit frayed right now so I’m going to step away from politics for a while here on the blog and focus on some other stuff (see below).

For a final bit of perspective on the meaning of last night’s results, I cede the floor to the inimitable Andrew Sullivan:

Obama supporters should not be dismayed.

Obama has a tougher, nastier opponent in the Clintons than he does in McCain. If he wins this by a long, grueling struggle, he will be more immune to the lazy, stupid criticism that he is some kind of flash in the pan, he has more opportunity to prove that there is a great deal of substance behind the oratory, he has more of a chance to meet and talk with the electorate he will need to win in the fall.

I think the argument for Obama is easily strong enough to withstand the egos of the Clintons. The more people see that her case is almost entirely a fear-based one and his is almost entirely a positive one, the more he will win the moral victory as well as the delegate count. In the cold light of day, the bruising news that the Clintons are not yet dead seems less onerous.

Know hope.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Monday Mash-up, 2/25/08

Stop. Drop. Roll.1) Virginia was simultaneously relaxing and a bit of a disappointment as the weather sucked the whole time we were there so we didn’t get any outside time.  I stayed home on Wednesday night intending to get to bed early but my empty-house-insomnia was in full effect and I ended up falling asleep around 2am. When I booked my 8am flight the week before, I hadn’t really thought about the travel time to JFK and ended up catching a cab at 5:45am to get there in time, passing out later that afternoon from exhaustion. The kids had a good time, though, as my mother pulled out all of the stops in the arts & crafts department, and my stepfather spent more time with them than he ever has, teaching Isaac how to play card games and hanging out with India watching TV. Also, Salomé cooked ox tails. Yum!

2) We caught Juno while we were there and absolutely loved it! I rank it up there with Say Anything and have tentatively penciled it in to my all-time Top 10 Favorites list. Ellen Page is adorable and sassy, reminding me a little bit of both Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz and Brooke Wacha, both in and out of character, and I totally related to Michael Cera’s understated Bleeker, who reminded me a lot of my not-cool, not-totally-uncool high school self. Interestingly, I picked up [Juno writer and Oscar winner!] Diablo Cody’s memoir Candy Girl : A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper in hardcover off of the bargain table at Barnes & Noble afterwards, and am looking forward to reading it. I suspect any additional copies have been taken to a back room and the paperback edition has been placed on a prominent display table in all of their stores as of this morning.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Last night at the Slam

It’s been a while since I judged a slam (publicly, at least!), especially at 13 where I know several of the regulars personally, so I was surprised when Lynne asked me to judge last night’s open slam. I was happy to do it as a critical listening exercise, though, because I think my ears have become much less sharp ever since I launched Spindle, and my focus has shifted to the page.

Way back in the day, I used to believe in never giving anyone less than 7 points for their work, respecting the effort it takes to simply get on stage and perform in front of an audience, but that floor dropped to 5 points last night for a terrible rhyming poem in the first round. Overall, it was a solid slam with no real standout performances and my scores were almost always the lowest or second lowest of the night with one surprising exception.

I wrote notes on each of my scores and here’s some of my favorites:

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Monday Mash-up, 2/18/08

1) Spindle had a great week last week with a strong February update that generated our highest single-day traffic spike yet, and the announcement of our first contest, “Play Ball” — which offers a $50 honorarium for the best baseball / stickball / cricket-related poetry, fiction and non-fiction from a New York City perspective — has been well-received. The winner will be published in April as part of the “Play Ball” issue which I’m really looking forward to. Sports + writing = more fun than work.

2) Speaking of work, issue closings at the day job usually make for a rough week or two but the May/June issue closed last Tuesday without too much ado, partly because I’ve already locked up about 85% of our advertisers for the year. That last 15% is the difference between a solid issue and a great issue, though, so it wasn’t exactly a cake walk, especially since this issue was over-budgeted based on inflated numbers from last year, partly due to the change from a monthly schedule to bi-monthly the summer before. Overall, though, it’s shaping up to be a really good year and career-wise, the decisions I made over the past 18 months have really paid off.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Spindle: February ’08

Spindle Spokesbaby: Will DiazIn the midst of all the political blogging I’ve been doing lately, I had a Spindle update looming on the calendar for today and stole time here and there over the past two weeks to sift through the surprisingly steady stream of submissions that have come in since last month.

I was worried in mid-January that the aggressive “official launch” schedule I’d set up for January, posting 15 new pieces over three weeks, would deplete my inventory and leave me scraping through some marginal work to get something up this month but it all worked out nicely in the end as we have new work from Alan King, Eric Payne, Rachel L. Olivares and Julian Taub, plus new columns from Stephanie R. Myers (Myers Music Experience) and Brooke Wacha (On the 1).

Log on now and get into a New York state of mind @ http://www.spindlezine.com

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Latino politics follow-up

There’s been some interesting comments so far in Friday’s “When politics gets personal for Latinos” post, including the one point the media often overlooks, that Latinos are not some monolothic entity that can be stereotyped in one particular way. Today, I came across a couple more interesting nuggets, one that digs a little deeper into Clinton and Obama’s support within the Latino community to-date, and another that breaks down Texas’ upcoming complicated not-really-a-primary contest on March 4th that Clinton’s effectively betting the house on.

NOTE: Check out the original post, too, as I added a couple of new references, including one that looks at the potential scenario of the Democratic nomination coming down to the final contest in Puerto Rico on June 7th!

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

A relevant look at Health Care from a new mother

Politicians love citing individual stories on the campaign trail to illustrate their ability to connect with the average voter and reinforce the superiority of their positions on any given subject. These stories are often moving, if rarely informative, but it’s always more interesting to me to hear the background on how someone came to the decision to support a particular candidate.

A friend of mine who lives in Texas — an intelligent, married white woman under 40 who recently had her first child — posted privately in her journal yesterday about how she ultimately determined her preferred candidate based on her own research (imagine that!) of their positions on health care and I asked her permission to repost it (with personal details removed) because it’s as clear, unbiased and relevant an explanation of the differences between Clinton and Obama’s health care proposals as I’ve come across so far.

I’ve made up my mind about my democratic candidate, and it’s based on health care.

And my choice is Barack Obama.  Here is why.

My #1 issue this year is universal health care.  It’s a personal issue for me.  It was a terrifying experience for me to be pregnant and slightly above the income level Medicaid.  Since I was unemployed during [my daughter’s] birth and most of my pregnancy, I had to have health insurance.  And the only thing available to me was to continue my employer’s plan through COBRA, which was difficult to apply when I moved from PA to TX, and whose premiums were incredibly expensive.  Now, with [my daughter] to cover, I’m spending $600 a month to cover both of us monthly.  And that’s before co-pays, deductibles, and lab fees.  I’ve had to pay this with no income of my own–my daughter and I wouldn’t have insurance unless my mom hadn’t graciously paid the vast majority of my COBRA premiums.  I’m usually on the phone at least once a week with my insurance carrier getting bills adjusted, and I’m convinced the the system is utterly broken.  I loathe going to the doctor because I know it means I’m going to have to spend a couple hours on the phone with the insurance company in two months to get the visit paid for.  [My husband], who is working full-time as a contractor right now, has not had health insurance for about a year and remains uninsured.

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