After Election Day

I have had bronchitis since election day, but I did manage to wait in line for two hours and fifteen minutes that day, I was so grateful that the weather was still nice-ish. Here's the line after about twenty minutes or so.
And here we are an hour and a half later. With so many students and other renters in our neighborhood there were many people doing same day registration.
It was fun to wait in line with some neighbors. I spent most of my time talking to a dreadlocked and pierced lip couple about my age whose son was born on caucus night, "I wanted to be there so bad! But I was having him." The baby did remarkably well for waiting in line for as long as we did, only crying in the last 15 minutes or so (to be honest I was close to crying too baby).

My other election line "friend" was a white man in his fifties who has done a lot of human rights work with East African refugees in the twin cities and abroad and is hoping to find work in East Africa in the coming year. We talked about immigration policy, environmental policy, the clean air/water/arts ammendment. He was nervous that the ammendment wouldn't pass because of all those Christians who walk in step with Jerry Falwell and are afraid of the arts. I told him that I thought that the "moral majority" and "religious right" people were starting to lose their monopoly on evangelicals and that many believers see justice, the environment and even creativity and the arts as issues the church should care deeply about. "That's not true, it hasn't been my experience." When I told him that I was a Bethel seminary student he was shocked! I told him that I was certain that many believers would be voting G.O.P. (God's own party j/k) this year but that many others were voting progressive and weren't limiting themselves to single issue voting. He was surprised and I watched his face change as his paradigm shifted, he thanked me for sharing my experience with him and told me that it changed a lot of things for him.

Last Sunday Bethany invited Xueling (aka Shirley) to dinner. She's an economics student from China, auditing a class at the U. She has been here since September, but Sunday was her first time in an American house (she's living with a Chinese family in married student housing at the U). When she said that she was looking forward to Thanksgiving, but would be eating with other Chinese students I invited her to Matson family Thanksgiving on Thursday, I'm excited to have her over and I know that my mom will have a feast ready for her and the rest of our guests.

Here's the Stevens House Women on Sunday night: (Bethany, Wanda, Xueling, Valerie and me(please excuse the grungy sweatshirt, I was sick))
The final update from the past couple weeks is that we had some visitors on Sunday night. Former neighbors who used to spend more time at our house than I did: M, B and J came by to see us. We hadn't seen M for at least a year, B since this summer and I don't know when I had a conversation with J last. M is a senior in High School now, who's getting training in culinary arts as part of a work readiness program. His mom's name is tatooed on his arm and he's got a mustache. He gave the other boys advice about getting jobs and told Wanda and I that he's got a baby on the way. B is a senior too, who says he'd like to do culinary arts too, but seemed confused about how that would work. J is in the middle of eighth grade and he tried to act tough and hard while he talked with us, but you could still see a little of the 4th grade boy that we knew who liked to come over and play Jenga and drink hot chocolate with us. It was good to see them. I know that the previous Stevens house family (Kendra, Pat, Alison, April etc.) were a big part of shaping these young men, and I love that even though M has moved a couple of times he still feels like the Stevens house is a good place to come and visit when he's around.

That's the update from 2701. We're looking forward to a house Christmas party, watching lots of Gilmore Girls, getting ready for the end of the fall term in our grad programs.