Anniversary

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of this here little blog. I was going to blog on the day to commemorate, but I got home from rehearsal after midnight and the time stamp would have been all wrong.

Four years ago, on the first Tuesday of November, I sat in the student center at Bennington College and watched the election returns come in. I'd started my evening having dinner with Rebekah at the town house, where we all sat around a scared and worn wooden table, listening to the radio, contemplating escape plans in case of a McCain/Palin win. Rebekkah and I then filled our water bottles with vodka and trundled on down to the student center. I'd been antsy all day because, as a California native, I was used to getting real information as early as 4pm. In Vermont I had to wait... and wait... and wait.
I (and the majority of my school) sat in the student center for four hours. We ate french fries and buffalo chicken and drank our not-so-subtle-or-secret drinks. Two Bennington students had worked on Obama campaigns in different states and they both had mini war rooms set up: tables covered in papers and laptops and cell phone chargers to ensure they knew everything as soon as it could be known.

At 11pm, the polls closed in California. The big projection screen was still for a moment and then the room exploded as CNN announced President Barack Obama as the winner of the 2008 election. People screamed, cried, kissed, jumped up, fell down, wept. Someone had, while all of our backs were turned towards the TV, rolled a gigantic wooden wheel directly outside the student center and were now crouching behind it, shooting off fireworks. We poured out of the building and ran to our homes, clinging to one another and flying: "Yes We Can!" and louder still, "Yes We DID!"

Hours later, when the entire campus was drunk but still quietly riotious, someone brought a trumpet to Commons Lawn. I was outside Kilpat and in the dark, I heard them begin to play "God Bless America." Then, like some kind of magic, I heard the voices. All over campus, people began to sing along to the trumpet. From 1st street and 3rd steet and Commons Hall, voices rose up everywhere, singing. That was when I cried that night.

All of this is to say: today marks anniversaries, personal and public, big and small. Today is for choice and voice and, hopefully, a little more magic.