Extended Phenotype

I haven't gone to bed yet, feeling a bit of insomnia tonight.  It's November 4th, and in a few hours the polls will open back east.  The impression that a starter's gun will go off and kick off voting is a bit of an illusion; many, including myself, voted days or weeks ago.  But the sensation of pent-up energy and release persists, because despite early voting and absentee ballots it really all does come down to today. 

Unless something very inexplicable is wrong with the polls (not exit polls, the national and state polls), there's every chance that in sixteen hours we'll be seeing the United States of America elect its first African-American president, and by extension its first president who wasn't a white male.  At the same time we're also possibly electing a direct successor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the sense that we're electing a Democrat in the face of a widening and deepening economic crisis and recession-threatening-depression.   

I'll have more to say when and if this happens, but suffice it to say that tonight  might witness the civil rights movement unify with New Deal economic policy in a way that has not occurred since Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society." 

This is a tall order, and none of us know whether Barack Obama can lead us towards something as significant as that.  The signs are improving.  At this point, however, all we can do is hope. 

Tomorrow, there will be much to think about, and much to participate in, and much to do.   In the coming weeks after the election I hope to elaborate on what I think it will take. Today,  I'll hold my breath with the rest of the country and await our collective democratic decision as a free society. 

But there's more than just hope here.  I feel something stronger coming on, when I talk to people.  Obama's will not be an ordinary presidency, just as it has not been an ordinary campaign. 

And later today, we make that possibility real. 

No, I'm not congratulating us on victory, it's too soon for that.  But before we head into tomorrow, I wanted to stop and reflect on how well we've done as a party this year. 

From historic candidacies to a bitter and hard-fought nomination battle, record fundraising and organizing, to effective use of the media, we've done well.  Democrats did not fall apart after the bitter and divisive nomination fight between Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama, as many predicted.  Apart from a very small minority, the party as a whole put the battle behind us and unified behind our candidate. 

But the thing I'm most proud of — whatever happens tomorrow — is how hard we've fought and how well Sen. Obama has campaigned.  We've contributed and volunteered in record numbers, and the Obama campaign has used this unprecedented war chest to force the Republican Party to use their resources to defend their "safe" ground. 

I was tickled pink to learn that the Obama campaign was putting the heat on in Arizona last week; nobody really thinks Obama is competitive there, but it's close enough that the strategy forced Sen. McCain to spend resources badly needed in true "swing" states in order not to lose his home state.  And everywhere else in the country, the Republicans are on the defensive, trying desperately to prevent tomorrow from becoming a 1932-style rout and realignment. 

So whatever happens tomorrow, and I'm not making any predictions, I'm proud of Democrats this year.  We finally got inspired, and got mad, and it shows.  We're fighting like the scrappy champions of the middle and lower classes that we should be.   Onward to Inauguration Day!

My cooking group is having an “all-chocolate” dinner tonight, which ought to be an interesting challenge. We’re deliberately keeping things small and half of the so-called chocolate dishes are really savory items, so it’ll be fun.

I’m helping with appetizers, which is really my favorite course anyhow. I’m doing two small “tapas” style apps. The first is slices of jamon iberico reserva, the Spanish serrano ham fed on acorns and then dry-cured for two years. The jamon will be curled up on a small wedge of Petit Agour cheese, accompanied by a small frisee salad with a champagne cocoa-nib vinaigrette. Very simple, mostly about the ingredients here.

The second I just finished a dry run with and it rocked. I’m taking glazed roasted figs, cross-cutting the tops and stuffing them with a roughly chopped forcemeat of duck breast proscuitto and the juice from the figs. Each fig will sit on a platform of thinly sliced duck breast proscuitto, with tiny shavings of grana padano cheese, and drops of a bittersweet chocolate & balsamic vinegar sauce on the plate.

Otherwise, not yet sure what the whole menu looks like, other than a chocolate pasta dish which ought to be fascinating. More later, with pics.

Mem Day Weekend Sunset 2
Originally uploaded by mmadsen

Out of the nearly 100 exposures I took of last night’s sunsets, three turned out really, really well. This one is very late in the progress of sunset, and looked considerably darker to the naked eye. This was a long exposure, with my swanky (and stable!) tripod, of 10 seconds at f8. I managed to capture the onrushing midnight blue of the sky while catching the last of the orange glow and water reflections.

I’m still not great at “getting the shot” but finally understanding something about the theory behind exposure helps. As does the willingness to sit and adjust all the parameters while taking a hundred pictures, since it’s great to see which direction the picture changes when I vary the parameters…

Follow the link to Flickr by clicking on the photo, and see the other two “good” shots, from earlier points during the sunset. Last night was truly spectacular, and I’m glad I caught it, since Friday and tonight were both fairly “normal” — some glow but not an explosion of color.

OK, so the “showdown” between Congress and the White House isn’t exactly gunfight at the OK Corral. It’s going to play out in excruciatingly slow motion. And not even flying-through-the-air-two-guns-blazing John Woo slow motion. Real slow motion. The kind where we might forget it’s happening unless we pay attention.

Today, as expected, the White House “refused” to allow former political director Sara Taylor and former White House counsel Harriet Miers to testify under oath. As predicted, Fred Fielding and the White House obfuscated the issue, describing their efforts at “good faith” negotiation and talking up how they’d offered “private, off the record” interviews, much as they did in the earlier wrangle about testimony by Justice Department officials. And, in case we’d all forgotten, the same way they argued that Condoleeza Rice ought not to testify before the 9/11 Commission. This is a long-standing strategy to avoid testimony under oath, which everyone knows is the only way to compel the truth in cases where folks don’t necessarily want to tell the truth.

Interestingly, in this case, it seems like Sara Taylor doesn’t really mind testifying. She’s told the Senate committee that absent direction from the White House, she would testify without hesitation. So in the days ahead, it’ll be interesting to see how strongly she and her counsel weight the White House’s directive. They can’t prevent her, or Harriet Miers, from testifying, and naturally the Senate can bring to bear offers of immunity, not to mention contempt citations, to attempt to either entice or compel that testimony. Neither Conyers nor Leahy want to cite Taylor with contempt of Congress, but that may be the only way to resolve the situation, since it would immediately cause Taylor to file for declaratory relief and the issue of executive privilege would reach a Federal court fairly quickly.

Congress is far from being out of weapons in this particular controversy, and the White House has only two: the ability to “spin” this as baseless partisanship, and an apparently inexhaustible capacity to stonewall. The days ahead will see how those two assets stack up against the rule of law, Congressional authority, and the judicial system.

I’m on the MV Chelan, headed back to San Juan from Saltspring Island, up in British Columbia. I went up for the weekend for a graduation and an art show. Kris’s son Julian graduated from Gulf Islands Secondary School this week, before heading off to Emily Carr in Vancouver next fall. I’ve known Julian all his life, virtually, so it was terrific to see him graduate and move onward. In a school which seems to cultivate individuality, Julian still stood out at graduation: tall, dressed in green sport coat and combat boots, and with a foot-high green mohawk, plastered into a rigid fin. He won four scholarships or bursaries — a strong performance even for a community which gave away dozens of awards totalling $80,000. At any rate, his parents and friends are very proud of him and can’t wait to see how he does at Emily Carr next year.

Yesterday, my friend Kim participated in the annual group photography opening at Artspring in Ganges. Four of her works, including a series of terrific close-scale landscape shots from Saltspring, were featured along with other island artists. Several folks had intriguing work as well, but the most interesting from my perspective was Janet Dwyer’s “scanography”: a technique where solid objects are arranged, sculpture-like, directly on the bed of a flatbed scanner, covered with black cloth to block extraneous light, and scanned at very high resolution. The resulting images are utterly stunning in detail and richness of color. Dwyer’s website isn’t up to date with many of these remarkable images, but if you’re curious her website includes contact information.

(I wrote this a couple of days ago and forgot to post it — when the WSF wi-fi installation finally includes us poor northerners sometime in 2008, it’ll actually be true that I’ll be posting from the ferry. But until then…)