I missed my day in the excitement of beach weather and a series of unexpected babysitting gigs. Oh well. Going tomorrow to New York to visit Monty -- he is housesitting a swanky TriBeCa apartment. (Selena, are you still in the city? Want to hang out?) Will be hanging around NY until Tuesday morning and am hoping to be in Amherst by Tuesday afternoon for Danielle's party (Rachel, you know what I'm talking about). Carms, Cait, Rachel, Jess, Julian, Selena, others to whom it might concern: Anyone flitting about Amherst on Tuesday afternoon, evening? Would love to see you!

Also, more importantly, maybe oddly: I have become engrossed in the health care debate that is currently raging our political system. Wasn't following it much earlier this summer, what with French internet-lessness and all, but now I am absorbed. Reading whatever I can about it. I'm not interested in the issue so much as in the process. (Don't get the wrong idea: I AM interested in the issue: the pre-existing condition policy, the $1 million cap, the pay-for-service service -- it's all messed up, obviously. We do need universal healthcare in this country, which my mom has said huffily every time she has slammed down the telephone after fighting with our insurance company.) BUT I think this debate is mostly fascinating as a demonstration of how messy and dysfunctional our democratic system is. If American health care is f-ed up, so much so is our political practice. Why is it acceptable for the Republican Party to hire bigoted, blue-collar workers in rural corners to yell at senators that they are trampling on the Constitution? Why do we allow legislators to sabotage a piece of legislation that is so obviously necessary to the American middle class? Why is filibustering even permitted when it is, in fact, unconstitutional? I am not cynical or pessimistic; I do think we will see a new healthcare bill in the upcoming months, and it might posit an improvement. But if we can barely fix a broken medical system, how are we going to fix the broken democratic system that is our government and its consecrated structure of checks and balances? I am feeling discouraged, to say the least. Perhaps my Obama-election high has worn off after all -- but I think it's a little different than that. It's one thing to struggle against an administration or regime (the one of recent years past, for example); it's another to despair of a democracy in its entirety. Hm, this is quite a downer of a rant. What do you all think?