This is how I feel this morning — blurry, but overall hopeful. It’s Diwali, and a friend dropped off some sparklers yesterday (thanks, Swati!), so I lit one up this morning. Diwali celebrates the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, and good over evil.
There are a host of results from last night that make me feel that we’ve finally, finally, started moving America onto a brighter path. I’m particularly encouraged by the huge increase in millennial turnout. It’s going to be a long road, but no one said defeating evil would be easy, right?
It would be tempting to spend the entire day reading political analysis, but instead, I’m going to turn off Facebook and focus on work for the morning. I have to straighten up — a fellow artist is stopping by soon to talk about how her project and mine can work together. After that, going into campus for the faculty union’s rep assembly, then a visit to the Chicago Public Library makerspace, to see how they do it.
There are arts projects to build and papers to grade and books to write. I’ll take a breath before coming back in January to focus on local politics for a few months — our next election’s in April, and we still need more good people running for all our local boards; petitions will be due pretty soon, so if you’re still thinking of running, best hustle!
And soon we’ll be coming out swinging for 2020, pounding the pavement and all hands on deck. There’s a brighter world to build.
Happy Diwali, everyone!