unvoting.

I've recently been mulling over a theory that was placed in my brain during a conversation over lunch on election day: The Invalid Government Theory.

And this makes some sense, so all of you "vote or die-ers" out there bear with me.

What I will miss most about my current job is the people. Namely, Sandt, theManager of Quality Assurance. I have never met, and will most likely never meet again, a person that is as conspiracy driven as she. That is to say: she is hella paranoid.

For Sandy, election day is a controversial holiday. Her distrust of the current governement is a badge worn proudly in most everything she does. As an educated citizen, parent, and humanitraian, she feels the most effective and resonating use of her voting right is in her absence at the polls.

What she calls the "Vote and Die" one-woman movement results from the fact that a dramatic decrease in voter turn out would result in an illegitimate goverment-- and this is something that may bring about a change in it's structure, or at the very least a change in the mutts that are currently making a career out of something our forefathers had only intended as public service.

Although the non-vote may result in ghastly governemental instability, our constitution is constructed to provide for a rebuild should the government be overthrown by the people. This is explitavely WHY the second ammendment even exists.

And I must admit, although passive aggressive, the idealistic American Dream promises of the non-vote are very attractive. Especially at a point when Americans have little faith that their vote is fairly represented by the politicians that rise almost exlusively from the wealthy class -- or what our president refers to as "the haves".

So I didn't vote. Unamerican? Perhaps. But not any more unamerican than validating the political corruption of either a multimillionaire actor or a nepatistic golden boy.

Silence at the polls is mia chiarezza oggi.

The way of Huck.

Mrs. VanDuesen was my eleventh grade English teacher. And it was in her class that I learned the skill of critical reading -- that is to say she taught me to read critically.

Her tool of choice was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and in retrospect, she may have chosen the controversial novel in part because of it's obvious teaching-points, but it is more likely she chose the novel on account of her childhood in the Baptist south. I can vividly recall her colorful stories: choirs singing, large black women hailing the heavens with arms open, and fire-and-brimstone sermons. Huck Finn is a story that felt like home to Mrs. VanDuesen; and isn't it always a treat to learn from someone feeding on familiarity and comfort?

A pillar of VanDuesen's teachings was character transformation. It was, she taught, Huck's journey away from his familiar village which catalyzed an evident metamorphose into the liberal, negro befriended Huck we find in the final pages of the story. The key to Huck's transformation was a change of setting. This simple teaching has since resonated with me -- I carry Mrs. VanDuesen with me everywhere I go. Each time I make a decision, every time I move, when I lick each stamp to mail a resume` her life lesson is echoing in my cerebrum.

Last Thursday, I walked into the boss's office with a resignation letter in my jacket pocket. I later walked out of that office without the letter a a sense that I was at the beginning of something new.

It had been months since I felt any personal growth in my current position. And while lying sleepless in bed at night, I could not logically find a way for me to spread my wings and head upward. Work had become stagnant. Work made my life stagnant. And I had stopped writing altogether.

As I embark on a new engergy, I come back here to find many of my blogging buddies have themselves gone the way of Huckleberry Finn. I can only hope they are on the edge of something as refreshing as I am.

We join our regularly scheduled [newly improved] life, already in progress..........