wow
– well, i woke up at 6 to get a few hours’ work done before work
(writing client reports!!! but now 1-1/2 hours of that has been
devoted instead to catching up on your blog

amazing photos
…  LOVED your Abba-ness, claudinho!! ) … [who are the two women?
new neighbors?] and i don’t think i’d ever read the entire detailed
history, not in that much detail anyway, of Oreo before  … wow,
carey.  Beautifully written … and photo’d…  I too love that one of
him with Claudio – not only the best all-time photo of Oreo but of
Claudinho too!

As to Prop 8, a giant Grrrrowl of disgust
from us too.   We had our own little moment yesterday of growls of
protest.  Even though our area is too liberal to have had even a single
Yes on 8 sign up, somebody must have been walking the neighborhood
yesterday – actually our street is a favorite of dog walkers but surely
no dog lover did this (right?) … They’d gouged out the “O” with the
check-mark in it of “NO” on our No on 8 sign in front of the house …
The vandalism of it – i mean it IS on our private property to boot –
was disgusting … They’d already won the damn proposition and then
somebody walking by thought they had the right and need to also add
insult to injury …  In the scheme of things it’s hardly the biggest
insult – not compared to what the proposition itself is, by any means,
but a coda that made our jaws drop – too much hate associated with H8
indeed – as per the poster you photo’d, carey …

okay,
i DO have to get some work done here but just checking in … I also
only just now saw this Dowd piece from yesterday and, although I have
problems with Dowd more often than not, this is one of her treasures –
and Claudio having lived so long amid the places she wanders
emotionally in the piece, thought you and Ryan would like it in
particular and knowing what DC holds in Marcelo’s heart, you too,
amigo, of course…  Maybe you all saw it already.

For
me, despite the disgust over Prop 8, which I have to hope will be found
unconstitutional (again!) and/or re-voted out soon — actually one of my
colleagues at work i’m going to be seeing in 2 hours, who is gay, just
got married 2 weeks ago – at Inn of the Seventh Ray, one of my very
favorite restaurants — actually a great rendezvous spot between LA and
Oxnard (if you Oxnard boys haven’t found it yet in Topanga Canyon
…  anyway, the angst it has to feel especially for all those who have
gotten married recently under our brief liberated window …

well,
what i’m trying to get to is that I am still basking in the glow of
what it means for Obama to have been elected and doing my darnedest not
to let the two giant clouds – of fear for his life and disgust over
Prop 8 – mask this new hope … To realize that Obama got more votes
for President than any other in the history of this country – it just
makes my heart sing … what a triumph over prejudice … It gives hope
that triumphs over other prejudices are in the wings …

okay, enough of me … here’s Dowd … and sending hugs and beijos grandes por ai …
carolina

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Bring on the Puppy and the Rookie
COMMENTS (275)

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: November 5, 2008
WASHINGTON

I
walked over to the White House Tuesday night and leaned against the
fence. How can such a lovely house make so many of its inhabitants nuts?

There
was no U-Haul in the driveway. I don’t know if W. was inside talking to
the portraits on the wall. Or if the portraits can vanish from their
frames, as at Hogwarts Academy, to escape if W. is pestering them about
his legacy.

The Obama girls, with their oodles of charm, will
soon be moving in with their goldendoodle or some other fetching puppy,
and they seem like the kind of kids who could have fun there, prowling
around with their history-loving father.

I had been amazed
during the campaign — not by the covert racism about Barack Obama and
not by Hillary Clinton’s subtext when she insisted to superdelegates:
“He can’t win.”

But I had been astonished by the overt willingness
of some people who didn’t mind being quoted by name in The New York
Times saying vile stuff, that a President Obama would turn the Rose
Garden into a watermelon patch, that he’d have barbeques on the front
lawn, that he’d make the White House the Black House.

Actually,
the elegant and disciplined Obama, who is not descended from the
central African-American experience but who has nonetheless embraced it
and been embraced by it, has the chance to make the White House
pristine again.

I grew up here, and I love all the monuments
filled with the capital’s ghosts. I hate the thought that terrorists
might target them again.

But the monuments have lost their luminescence in recent years.

How
could the White House be classy when the Clintons were turning it into
Motel 1600 for fund-raising, when Bill Clinton was using it for trysts
with an intern and when he plunked a seven-seat hot tub with two
Moto-Massager jets on the lawn?

How
could the White House be inspiring when W. and Cheney were inside
making torture and domestic spying legal, fooling Americans by cooking
up warped evidence for war and scheming how to further enrich their
buddies in the oil and gas industry?

How could the Lincoln
Memorial — “With malice toward none; with charity for all” — be as
moving if the black neighborhoods of a charming American city were left
to drown while the president mountain-biked?

How can the
National Archives, home of the Constitution, be as momentous if the
president and vice president spend their days redacting the
Constitution?

How can the black marble V of the Vietnam Memorial have power when those in power repeat the mistake of Vietnam?

How
can the Capitol, where my dad proudly worked for so many years, hold
its allure when the occupants have spent their days — and years —
bickering and scoring petty political points instead of stopping White
House chicanery and taking on risky big issues?

How
can the F.D.R. Memorial along the Tidal Basin be an uplifting trip to
the past when the bronze statue of five stooped men in a bread line and
the words of F.D.R.’s second inaugural — “I see one-third of a nation
ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-nourished” — evokes the depressing present?

Obama may be in over his head. Or he may be heading for his own monument one day.

His
somber speech in the dark Chicago night was stark and simple and showed
that he sees what he’s up against. There was a heaviness in his
demeanor, as if he already had taken on the isolation and “splendid
misery,” as Jefferson called it, of the office he’d won only moments
before. Americans all over the place were jumping for joy, including
the block I had been on in front of the White House, where they were
singing: “Na, na, na, na. Hey, hey, hey. Goodbye.”

In the
midst of such a phenomenal, fizzy victory overcoming so many doubts and
crazy attacks and even his own middle name, Obama stood alone.

He
rejected the Democratic kumbaya moment of having your broad coalition
on stage with you, as he talked about how everyone would have to pull
together and “resist the temptation to fall back on the same
partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our
politics for so long.”

He professed “humility,” but we’d heard that before from W., and look what happened there.

Promising
to also be president for those who opposed him, Obama quoted Lincoln,
his political idol and the man who ended slavery: “We are not enemies,
but friends — though passion may have strained it must not break our
bonds of affection.”

There have been many awful mistakes made in this country. But now we have another
chance.

As
we start fresh with a constitutional law professor and senator from the
Land of Lincoln, the Lincoln Memorial might be getting its gleam back.

I may have to celebrate by going over there and climbing up into Abe’s lap.

It’s a $50 fine. But it’d be worth it.