One of the great mysteries that your parents will never tell you, or your grandparents for that matter, that it doesn’t matter how old you are, you will always have a piece of your 16-year-old self in your soul.

Apparently this is a damned secret that all parents take some sort of parent code where they decide you must figure this out for yourself. It must be some sort of Skulls and Bones secret society oath that each mother and father take on the day you are born. I imagine capes and witchcraft that the secret must be kept!

It really is the only explanation.

Fragments of that 16-year-old include that no one ever feels that they are the actual age they are. I constantly feel like that I shouldn’t be on the front side of 50. It shocks me, quite frankly, and I still go through the highs and lows of lack-of-confidence, finding my swagger, losing my swagger, seeking my mojo, realizing it was there and so on.

It still pains me to see people be purposefully mean-spirited, I still get a bit dusty-eyed every single time I see To Kill A Mockingbird and I’m still a “star in my car’ when I like a song on the radio. You will see me singing like I’m channeling Robert Plant and I do no apologize.

And, to quote my sister, I rarely feel like a “growed up” although I am required to do “growed up” things.

I know, random.

I believe that one of the things that bothers average citizens, and this is just my opinion, is the lack of urgency that candidates and elected officials in the off season display until it becomes election time.

I like Sen. Andy Berke is still governing and opposing legislation right now. This is his last season on the Hill but he keeps working. Same thing goes for Sen. Beverly Marrero who was defeated earlier this year but she still keeps trucking.

Berke, of course, is running for mayor of Chattanooga, but I really don’t believe that Marrero will fold up her tent despite the fact that later this year she won’t be holding elected office. I can name others who don’t stop in the off-season and I think this is highly important.

They have displayed a sense of urgency.

In our country right now there is a lot of media noise, as I’ve said before, and it’s not easy cutting through the static when talking about issues that impact real people. From women’s reproductive rights to the bitter reality of the recession, we see this every day and not just in an election year.

Just some random thoughts on this Monday morning, and I do want to add that real Tennesseans feel this 365 days a year. They want quality of life and are willing to work for it, they want their children educated, they want to not worry about shelter and most important, they want to feel valued.

These issues are why diligence and urgency are important all the time, not in spurts. I think it is important to remember that.

This is a day and age that every word is dissected. With that comes challenges to find out what words matter and what words don’t.

Every sentence is scrutinized. Every message is torn apart. How can a political message stand on it’s on in this day of new media and messaging? How can any message for that matter?

Subtleties are important, I really do believe this, but it appears that being subtle isn’t an option anymore. When news sources like the aggregator The Huffington Post has Kanye and Kim on the front page (doesn’t cost them anything) and the never ending side-boob story, we lose. We lose because policy matters. We lose because subtle doesn’t work anymore, which I wrote about last weekend. What ends up happening is this message about government and political importance is swept away.

You only have a moment.

It’s important to be consistent in thought and action when a politician is running for office. It’s also important to be graceful under pressure, something we haven’t seen much this week if you put Summerville and Hurley in the equation.

It goes both ways to both parties. And with so many voters on the fence these days it is best to say what you mean and mean what you say to quote Dr. Seuss.

Attack politics have been around since the beginning of time. That isn’t going away but there are ways to educate with facts. Holding politicians accountable is important but it is coming down to citizens doing it as much as newspapers who used to have the traditional role of watchdogs. That isn’t the case as it once was because mainstream media is a business and money is the key. Independent professional media does, to be fair, still seem to be throwing fisticuffs and that is good news.

So, I offer you some very good voices to go and visit this weekend if you have a few moments that I haven’t link to (other than Laura) before. They aren’t all political, but their voices are strong and clear.

• Laura Creekmore has a post on being a woman in 2012 and what this election cycle means. LINK
• Like The Dew might give you some food for thought not only on politics but Southern culture. LINK
• Nooga has a really good site worth many looks which has a variety of writers and guest columnists. It’s not partisan, discusses culture as well as quality of life in Chattanooga and it is consistent. LINK
• Nancy Van Reece combines a great deal of different things you might want to keep your eye on. LINK

“What is wrong with people?”

I was asked this yesterday by a friend of mine. I often say this myself but I could tell she was watching the news closely. She really isn’t a news junkie and often will ask me what I think about things. She also doesn’t get online much as she is working, building a relationship and spends time with her family. I admire that about her as I miss my family quite a bit these days.

My friend is from Florida and knows about hurricanes. I’ve never been in a hurricane. She has.

If this hurricane comes through like meterologists are predicting, Haiti is in for some true further hurt from nature beyond their control. We discussed this at length yesterday. So many Haitians are living in tents after the earthquake still so how can they be protected from the ocean falling in on them. We talked about this for a long time. That country doesn’t have the resources that the United States does in rebuilding infrastructure if it is damaged. As she went back to work, I got online. I saw someone online talking about the GOP’s convention getting hit by the weather in somewhat of a snarky way. When she asked me what that was as she came to look at what I was doing, I told her.

Thus “What’s wrong with people” filled our conversation for awhile.

And I realized something I already knew. When did this become more important than the issue of caring for other people. You see, I can be snark girl and I own it, but I also know that everyone deserves compassion. Politics and news, my friends, has gotten to the point where I’m not seeing a lot of loving thy neighbor. I’m seeing blame and fear from every side.

We live in a world of entertainment news where substance has become less important than being direct and factual. We need style. We need sexy. We live in a world where celebrities trend and sell books when they “leak” a sex tape but that 19 folks where shot last night in Chicago and it barely blips. Of course New York’s shooting did because it was the Empire State Building and tourist traffic was everywhere.

And many people don’t listen as a whole. Are we listening to our neighbors who might need help? Are we thinking about those who might be in need? I feel that we have moved so far into being afraid of what we might lose (and we have lost a lot in the last decade) that we aren’t hearing anything because the noise is deafening. And one thing my friend said about the hurricane is that is was terrifying and you couldn’t hear anything. The wind was loud and angry filled with walls of water that don’t care if you are right or left, old or poor or rich or … and the list goes on.

I’ve heard a tornado once that filled the night and the sound probably was similar.

You couldn’t hear a thing.

And that’s is sometimes what I feel about the world of communication these days.

I think people who know me in real life know that I’m a pretty good listener. I do have some ability at building friendships and professional alliances. I have friends all across the spectrum on the left, right, different genders and generations that I could sit and listen to all day.

The key is listening and then feel like you are being heard. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, conversations can build fantastic things.

With political media on both sides of the spectrum acting akin to something like jellyfish, masses of scary stingers (ask Diana Nyad) that are out to just hurt, my hope is that we can get through where we can have conversations filled with knowledge and not throwing fear molotov cocktails at each other.

I guess that’s just what’s on my mind today.

I use to cover a lot of trials when I was a reporter. Many of those trials in the small district in northwest Tennessee were rapes, domestic violence and basically crimes against women.

One trial. the rape victim was a nine-month old child. Another time there was the rape of an older woman. Those are dramatic, I know, but let’s realize that a lot of rapes aren’t reported such as date rape. We live in a society that shames women. Women have bible verses taken out of context and thrown at them about sex, and then if we are violated then it was God’s will? I had an angry fit about 20 years ago when a young woman was asked on the stand by an attorney “What were you wearing?” followed by “Where you drinking?”

It doesn’t matter and those are the kind of questions that define rape culture.

I’ve said it before and I will keep on saying it until my teeth fall out of my mouth that rape is rape. And using rape as an abortion political talking point is sickening.

We need politicians to lead us, not ground us out burying our voices under oppression and dirt. The good thing that happens when an asshat like Todd Akin tries to use the term “legitimate rape” and wants us to swallow that line of crap is that people stand up, they stand together and they say NO! Every time that an Akin of the world says that women who are raped rarely get pregnant we can yell back that there were 32,000 pregnancies last year resulting from rape.

And, I can only hope that we can get these people out of office. I also hope that our political system will work diligently to get Akin off the Committee on Science, Space and Technology because he obviously doesn’t need to be near anything to do with basic science.

We have choices right now. One of those choices is not what it once was when I was a young activist. We fought for change, that women would be heard in courts and although it isn’t perfect, we have more than we did before than we had. Now the mission is different. We are going to have to fight not to lose our basic civil rights when it comes to our own bodies.

We need to fight with facts.

We can call Akin a hideous moron all day long but that’s not going to change the fact that he got caught. There are a lot of legislators out there who believe the same thing. We need to make sure that we have legislators out there will work on policy that moves us forward. We don’t need men like Paul Ryan and Akin redefining the definition of rape. Four members of the congressional delegation for the state of Tennessee signed on to this “redefinition” last year. Familiarize yourself with those names. Know them and also take note that one is a woman. Please also take note that one is a doctor who was once accused of domestic violence.

I wrote this post in February of 2011. I would kindly like to ask you to give it another read.

I said it then and I will say it again, rape is rape.