November has been a very upsetting month. The election outcome has made so many people feel down and confused, particularly here in our city which overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton. There has been an air of disbelief and shock has settled in. Teachers and parents throughout the city have had to deal with children reacting to the rancor and partisanship of this election cycle, and bitter words and sexual innuendo became a part of the discourse. All ugly stuff and certainly not the kind of example of grown-up behavior we want our children to emulate.
Blue state/red state, I’m getting sick and tired of the mass media dividing us up the way they do. Our votes seem disenfranchised when we are categorized this way. The electoral college is impossible to explain to adults, let alone to children, and why should people in three or four states be the deciding factor as to who wins such important elections? Isn’t it time for our nation to do away with this nonsense and to have a direct vote like other countries? Isn’t it also time for us to be voting on Sundays instead of on a work day that almost no one has off? Isn’t it also time for all this polling to stop — which I am absolutely certain sways the vote and actually does result in rigged elections.
Millions of new young voters participated in this election and most of them walked away disappointed and disenchanted and seeing the process as disingenuous. We can only hope they won’t be opting out moving forward, thinking that they can’t make a difference. We already have enough of our citizens opting out of voting. We need to do everything we can to encourage their participation on every level. Bernie Sanders, thank goodness, is still out there inspiring and communicating to this very important demographic. Our future depends on them.
Finally, I am blue because my daughter has had to deal with a few surgeries resulting from a recent fall. The fall was bad enough to shatter her ankle, and she will be spending a number of months healing and doing rehab. It certainly has put a crimp in her style and also in mine. Our children are still our children, even when they get taller than us and even when they move out and are on their own. We are parents forever.
I’m very grateful to all the people who help put together these magazines and who manage our website and all our other digital initiatives. I wish them and you, our readers, and all our many advertisers, a very Happy Holiday Season. Thanks for reading and Have a Happy New Year!
