I Have to Post Something Today...

...Or I'll break my streak very soon after my blog-every-weekday resolution.

I took the day off work today. I spent the morning at a pumpkin farm with Murray and a bajillion other four-year olds. I spent the afternoon seeing Obama speak with a bajallion other Cincinnatians. Both events we're exhausting and amazing in their own ways. I'm tired and keyed up.

Come back tomorrow for my Blog of the Week.

I'm Left Handed and So Is Our Next President...

Last night I watched the presidential debate between Barak Obama and John McCain on TV (I'd listened to the first one on the radio) and noticed that, like me, they are both left handed.

Naturally, I did some googling and found that there have been lots of lefties in the White House. Says the Washington Post:

No matter who wins in November, 6 of the 12 chief executives since the end of World War II will have been left-handed: Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, the elder Bush, Clinton and either Obama or McCain. That's a disproportionate number, considering that only one in 10 people in the general population is left-handed.

This phenomenon of lefty Commanders-in-Chief has been covered in a number of other places including The New York Sun (which had a great photo of southpaw Obama autographing books), ACB News (which has a headline like a sugarless gum ad), and Economist.com (which includes a nifty lefty visual).

Come forward all you creative people--who's else out there is left-handed? (Maybe we should start a Facebook group.)

Authors & Illustrators for Obama Wanted...

Below is an email I got from Bruce Balan. Bruce and April Halprin Wayland are behind the creation of Authors and Illustrators for Children and they're currently looking for published authors and illustrators to lend their names to a pro-Barak Obama ad. Read on and if this interests you and please use the email address below to participate or click on their website for more information and to see the ad.

Hi Everyone,

I just returned from nearly a year away and I’ve been whining about how awful life is in the United States:

The media invades. The pollsters attack. The news overwhelms.
April says to me “It doesn’t matter. We can do it.”
And Barack Obama says “Yes we can!”
I believe them.

It doesn’t matter what the polls say. It doesn’t matter what the pundits say. What matters is what we do, NOW.

AIC can make a difference in this election but first we need YOUR NAME. We want 500 authors in our ad. We have 74.
That means we need 426 more by the end of next week.

It’s time to act. If you want to be included in the AIC campaign to make Obama our next president, do the following:

If you are a published author and/or illustrator, send an email to CountMeIn@aiforc.org. The message body should simply be your name as you want it to appear in the ad.

Send this email to 20 authors and illustrators you know. It doesn’t matter if they might have received it from someone else. Get the word out! That’s the most important part.

In a day or two, check the website to make sure your name is on the list and spelled correctly!: www.aiforc.org/obama/thelist.html.

You can view the ad at: www.aiforc.org/obama

You can donate to our campaign (credit card, check or PayPal). We’re focusing on swing states, we’re creating printable materials that you can hand out, we’re booking online advertising, we’re producing a video. It all takes money. www.aiforc.org/donate.html

That’s it for now. Don’t let this sit in your mailbox. We need 500 authors and we need them now!

Yes we do.

Yes we can!

Bruce