Vote vote vote.

I'm a news junkie. I love to know what's going on in the world, and learn about interesting people and places.
What I don't like is being surrounded by the college campus bubble, where somehow you become isolated from the outside world, being consumed by your homework and not having the time to be aware of things outside of your student life.
This Thursday night, I couldn't take it anymore. I just needed to listen to some news. I needed to feel aware again. It's election season, and being away working at a summer camp in the woods, then coming straight back to the college bubble made me feel completely ignorant, especially of the 2012 presidential race.

So, I got out my homework, hunkered down, and watched the Democratic National Convention on C-Span.
I cannot describe to you the level of giddiness I felt. I love C-Span so much! It's news ALL THE TIME, and unbiased, because most of the time, no one's there commentating! Just the straight-up live programming. You get to watch sessions in Congress, mass protests, official ceremonies, great interviews, and even the British House of Commons when they have Q & As with the prime minister. And during election season, C-Span is just plain addicting.
My roommates walked in as I was watching, and looked at me. I couldn't contain my excitement. "It's the DNC! It's Joe Biden! It's Bill Clinton! Gaaaaah!" They just shook their heads and laughed. But I don't care! Like Jimi Hendrix said, I'll wave my freak flag high!
What surprised me though is how productive I was while listening in on the convention; perhaps I should do my homework with C-Span in my head phones more often.

After months of being deprived of decent news coverage, I was happier than a hippie in a drum circle. But I realized the actual reason for my excitement is that this is my first year that I can actually vote! It gives me a warm and fuzzy, yet powerful, feeling that my one vote can join with others to bring about change in the world. Of course, it's not as simple as that, and neither is actually solving the problems of the world and sustaining the things that work. I just hope that whatever happens this November that voices will be heard, and that those voices will do amazing things.
In closing, I don't want to sound like a PSA or anything, but it would make me oh-so-happy if you could do these two things for me:

1. Vote, please and thank you.
2. Watch C-Span. You'll feel better about life, I promise.

Sorghum

In my family, the last weekend of September means only one thing:
sorghum.

What's sorghum, you ask? Okay, you didn't ask, BUT...this is sorghum:

In my family, sorghum also means that we all pile into the car and go down to the family farm in Iowa, where we celebrate the sorghum harvest. For 20 years--rain or shine--our relatives and Iowa friends have been coming to harvest, eat a good potluck, and visit all day. It's not very glamorous, but it's fun. I've been going almost every year since I was two years old, and I love seeing all my people who I don't usually see enough of.

So when we get there in the morning, what we do first is cut down the sorghum out in the field.

Any kid or adult can help with the preparations. I remember being eight or nine years old when somebody handed me a machete (which gets the job done), and before I knew it I was cutting down sorghum that was five feet taller than I was.

Meanwhile, someone starts a fire.

A contained fire, that is.

Then we take the truckload of sorghum over to the press.

It's powered by a tractor, and there's a belt that turns the press. Then you just feed the press some yummy sorghum, and the juice comes out the side in bright green trickles into the designated plastic ice cream bucket, which is then poured into the designated metal milk pail to be strained.

I remember one year where instead of using the tractor, they had this wooden contraption where historically you hitched up the draft horses and they would walk around in circles to power the press. But nobody there had a horse, or bothered to bring one, so they enlisted all of us kids to grab hold of it and carry it in circles. It was heavy. Eventually a few grown ups took pity on us and helped, and we managed to get some juice that way.

After you have the juice, you pour it into the vat, which sits atop the aforementioned fire, and you let it boil, but not too much! And stay clear of the smoke and steam. After the juice thickens up a bit, you have yourself a fine jarful of sweet greenish sorghum goo. It's basically like molasses, and tastes very good in cookies and other things.

In between all that, we break for a potluck lunch in the dairy barn. It's all cleaned out and hasn't housed cows for a long time, but you can still see the stations where they stood.

The neighbor's dog likes to come and beg for food, and we always wave the Norwegian flag from the barn. I just loved the color of the soybeans that were all around us.



Ahhh yes, sorghum weekend was good.