Posts filed under 'Lea & Liz'
a tisket, a tasket, so much love and goodwill in a basket.
here i am handing over the muffins to two lovely gals at the UBER busy democratic headquarters. that place was PACKED with people, maps, signs, and now muffins….
these gals were so lovely and gracious and took time out to step outside to take a photo in front of one of their 354 signs outside.
they are the nicest fascists that i ever met (ha ha ha).
Liz’s note: Don’t miss Lea’s blog on yesterday’s muffin civility runs.
November 4th, 2008
Me, an Obama-voting Democrat, giving muffins to Vivian, a McCain-voting Republican, at McCain/Palin Tallahassee HQ. As we tried to hogtie a poor McCain staffer for the picture, someone casually suggested Vivian, because “everything about her just screamed Republican.”
So, I lived to tell about my visit to the campaign and learned that apparently even on election eve, at least one Republican has a sense of humor.
Here’s to Vivian, a good sport. And here’s to Lea, who really walks the walk in her life, and who I deeply admire (even if I sometimes have to wonder about the way she votes).
And here’s to all the other people working hard today and tomorrow to hold up their end of democracy, no matter which end it is.
November 3rd, 2008
Lea (the conservative) usually takes muffins to the young staffers at the Republican campaign office in election years. That’s pre-Village-Square.
Post-Village-Square… Lea called me (Liz, the liberal) and suggested that the better thing to do would be to take muffins to both the McCain and the Obama campaign offices. So, this morning we loaded up 2 baskets with an assortment of homemade muffins and Village Square bumper stickers and buttons, then made two of the more unusual visits the campaigns have likely received.
On the beautiful card Lea made:
The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.
— John F. Kennedy
November 3rd, 2008
Join us this season, in association with our season “Faith, Politics & Neighbors” for an exercise in “loving they neighbor”: This Tallahassee Believes. Find guidance in writing an essay here.
This, you could say, is the “neighbors” part of “Faith, Politics & Neighbors.”
Please read Lea’s essay (of “Lea & Liz” fame), who I’m delighted to have as my “neighbor.”
this i believe… by lea marshall
my son is has a slight hearing impairment and so i learned sign language.
one of my favorite signs is the sign for the word “believe”.
it actually is made like this...
it combines two signs. the sign “think” and the sign “to marry”.
and the sign is very philosophically accurate… “to believe” is “to marry our thoughts”.
it is one thing just to hang out with our thoughts, to date our thoughts, to be friends with our thoughts. but it is something entirely different to marry our thoughts. to make a living commitment to those thoughts 24/7.
the thoughts that we marry become “i believe”…
i also like to think of it as our thoughts going into our hands.
because what we believe becomes what we do everyday. or the corollary… what we do everyday shows what we believe.
so when liz asked me to do a little “what i believe” speech for this first village square night, i thought of all the nice things i wanted to say about what i believe which for me included everything in both the old and new testaments of the Bible. it became quite a lengthy speech, it was beautiful, inspired, it was also epic in length and scope. but at it’s heart, it was wrong…
for when i thought about the sign language word for “believe” i had to start over. because what i do everyday is the only real proof as to the thoughts i had brought home and married.
and that was hard to face because some of the things that i do echo a belief system that doesn’t always fit with what my mouth says “i believe”.
so i am starting over on my essay of “this i believe” for liz, for the village square blog, but mostly for myself. i am writing first what i do everyday and then seeing how that embodies each particular belief that i have faithfully married.
and our hope is that you will find some time to write a “this i believe” essay some time in this village square season of faith, politics, and our neighbors… it is important to your faith, to the political system, and to us, your neighbors.
we want to know… what beliefs find their way into the work of your hands?
what beliefs have you brought home and married?
write your essay and send it to the village square and you may have a chance to stand up here and read it for us.
it will be kind of like a wedding, a marriage of your thoughts and your actions. only no rice will be thrown and nobody gets to register at target…
but we do all get to celebrate the richness and fullness and the more perfect union that is to be formed when “we the people” believe…
September 23rd, 2008
The nicest young man rang my doorbell in hopes of obtaining a
signature from me on a petition to make congress look at alternate
forms of energy (wind, solar, tidal) to reduce of dependance on fossil
fuels. He got so much more than he bargained for once I opened the door.
I stood in the doorway and gave him my best synopsis of all our energy
dinners (who knew i was listening so well?). I went over the facts I
had gleaned about nuclear energy being very clean energy. We discussed
the storage and transfer of energy and how solar, wind, and tidal
energy is strictly good for local use and doesn’t store or move over
long distances well. I also pointed out the LARGE land needed for wind
energy and how renewables don’t produce nearly enough power. And i
touched a bit on the fact that the his point was that we used too many
fossil fuels and foreign oil and that would not be helped by tidal,
wind, or solar power (unless a solar car is invented).
Really, I was a font of energy knowledge. I even amazed myself. Seems
that you can teach an old dog new tricks.
The young man was very polite and listened very well. I don’t think I
changed his mind and i didn’t sign his petition. But it was one small
step for civility… all politics is local, all politics involves
beginning at our front doorstep and having a lively and civil
conversation.
He even wrote down the web address for tothevillagesquare.org. Perhaps
he is reading this blog entry today…
June 16th, 2008
Lea, in a nervy act that did – in fact – confirm for me that she is a Republican, was a special guest last weekend of President George W. Bush for his Furman graduation speech.
News reports don’t seem to be specifically mentioning Lea, although I’m still researching. Surely they didn’t miss that story.
Lea warned me that she may not associate with us mere mortals after the whole shebang, although I’m putting my money on the theory that she hasn’t reported back because she finally saw the error of her ways???
Waiting for her Village Square correspondent first person report and any pithy post-partisan perceptions (and I would like to know if she can say that 10 times fast) …
June 3rd, 2008
A great quote from Doug Floyd via The Village Square’s very own purveyor of great quotes, Lea.
That’s all.
February 11th, 2008
Last presidential election, I volunteered some time for the Kerry campaign – on election day, I was tasked with standing outside a precinct with election hotline information in case there were problems like there were in 2000. There wasn’t a single problem so I pretty much just stood there for 2 or 3 hours.
Regardless of your party affiliation, anyone who has ever spent any time at a polling place has had the wonderful experience of standing at the pulse of democracy for a time.
One great sight that day was a mom who came in to vote with her 5 kids, all different ages. I smiled at her and made a comment about what a wonderful opportunity she was giving her kids to participate. She gave me something like a “you need to die, now” look, which I took to mean she was voting for Bush? After she voted, I thought a friendly “have a nice day” might be safe, but her answer to that was a brusk “I support George W. Bush.”
Last week on the day of the Florida primary, my friend Lea honored us by sharing the deep family roots voting has for her. Lea voted in the Republican primary that day, I voted in the Democratic primary. It’s pretty unlikely we’ll be voting for the same candidate come November, but we will both show up as a part of the American family, exercising what is both our duty and our privilege. By doing so, we become a part of the conversation the Founding Fathers knew we’d have to keep having.
The mom with 5 kids, I think, had fallen victim to the hate-peddlers who are making it impossible to have that conversation (even, apparently, to make small talk with “the enemy”).
If you’re in a state that votes today, I say it matters far less which candidate wins than it does that the hate-peddlers lose. I want you to pause for a moment and look around at the others voting nearby. They are Lea who left her sick mother’s bedside to vote, as she knew her mother would want her to. They are citizens who have accepted the Founders high bar to show up for the conversation.
We’d be nothing without them, even if they didn’t vote our way.
-Liz
February 5th, 2008
i am going to vote after i finish typing this. i am going to vote with
a heavy heart.
my mother is in ICU after a stroke on thursday. she most likely will
not live to see the results of today’s election in florida. yet, i am
making time to leave her side and vote. because it matters. to me and
to her. she would want all of her family to be at her bedside with
those little stickers “i voted”. i remember going with her to vote
when i was still a child and being so excited to be a part of the
process with her.
as of yesterday, i really didn’t know who i was voting for, i had
looked at each angle, evaluated each person the best way that i could,
but there wasn’t one that stuck out to me as “THIS IS IT” until today
(despite the THOUSANDS of phone calls in the past three days, really
people STOP CALLING ME, i am not listening to your recorded phone
spiel).
i am voting for the man most like my father. the man who i think would
stand by his wife’s side and hold her hand while she lay in that
hospital bed. a man who wouldn’t want to cry in front of his children,
but does sometimes. a man who has worked every day of his life to make
this world better for his children and others around him. a business
man who never put making a living ahead of making a life. i hope the
man i vote for is half the man that my father is. this country would
be better off if he was and if he wins the election.
my mother is an excellent american, she is a strong southern gal with
half my size and twice my spirit. she leaves this country of great
freedom for a place that is better. she leaves us for the One Who
truly made her Free. voting to me today is a matter of life and
death… today i tend to the dying and i care for the living. and i
vote because that is part of caring for the living.
-Lea
January 29th, 2008
OK, so Liz has been ALL over us starting to blog about the election and I have been quite the procrastinator since it has seemed SO far away. Then last night I had my parents over for the MOST delicious meal (this pot roast and these mashed potatoes). Now you may take all my political rambling with a grain of salt (albeit seasoned salt) but you will have to admit that the me sharing recipe to that pot roast makes you like me much better because listen up if I made THAT pot roast and served it at every poll, well then the spoils would be going to the victor and you would be in such a food coma that you would vote for ME for president (and we would all be in grave trouble or should that be GRAVY trouble?)
Anyway, pot roast and potatoes on the side, during the meal my dad was talking about how my uncle had already sent his vote in for the Florida primary. I had totally forgotten that we had moved up the primary (“we” being the Florida Legislature and really that isn’t me at all) and it is now breathing down my neck, not to mention salivating over the leftover pot roast in the fridge. So I guess it is time to start thinking and blogging about the election.
I have to be really politically honest here (since I have been gastronomically honest already and established such a nice pattern)… I have NO idea who I will be voting for in the Republican primary. Moreover, the reasons I have to discredit certain people are not valid at all (example, I don’t like Fred Thompson because his wife seems too young. Is that really a valid reason to not support “Fred ’08″? Oh, and that whole “Fred ’08″ thing seems like a bad political slogan and looks dumb on bumper stickers, but again, not a good reason to not vote for someone.)
I need to pay attention and do some REAL research. Which is not as much fun as just watching the candidates on Jay Leno and deciding based on who is the funniest. I have to figure out how to get to the truth behind the hype. Hopefully having to write about it will help me to be more diligent. Of course the fact that I am well fortified with pot roast and potatoes is a really good start.
January 8th, 2008
Previous Posts
