waiting for the sun!

we spend 2 nites in the motel, waiting for the roads to get passable - we're told there's no snow removal equipment in georgia - such freezing rain & snow are anomalies & the city doesn't have $$$ for such rare occurrences - so we stay put until the temperature rises, which it does sunday. i only have one good discussion before leaving the hotel - in the work out room, an older white womon asks me where i'm from & how come i'm in georgia. i tell her i'm on my way back from the counter=inauguration. she looks a little startled. i ask her if she was aware of all the protests that occurred this past week. she said she heard there were a few demonstrators but she didn't think one would be staying in this hotel. i told her there were thousands of demonstrators, representing the 56 million u.s. americans that want this war to be over.
she told me she tolerated protests but she thought the saying 'somewhere in texas a village is missing it's idiot' was not productive - that offended her. i asked her if she was aware of the level of displeasure, to put it mildly, with this president that exists in this country. she thought she was.
she asked me if i didn't think we should support our president once he made a decision. i asked her if she thought the german people should have supported hitler once he made a decision; or the iraqi people for that matter should have supported hussein once he made a decision. she got my point.
then she told me they all lie - there's no one to believe. i told her my standard line: we are not stupid, no matter what they say to us. we can tell a lie from the truth - it might take some thinking, some analyzing, some research - but we can ferret out the truth. she asked me where i get my truth from, if i listened to npr & believed them. i told her i listen to many sources & read many sources, including corporate-run media. i spoke about how the media has become owned by a few corporations, how michael powell made that possible by first ignoring the law & then trying to change the law. i told her i thought the public funded alternative media sources at the very least attempted to present both sides of the issues. in the very least, the left media sources do not tend to misquote & lie about what people say. i gave her an example i recently heard on air america where rush limbaugh claimed kofy anin said one thing - al franken played both quotes, from limbaugh & annan.
she dismissed the left and the right media, saying they both lie & we just chose who to believe. i said, yes but we can chose who to believe on a tiny bit of information, or on a great deal of information. we all make choices who & what to believe - but those choices can be based on a well-informed mind or a closed, uninformed mind - it's up to us.
she asked me what i would have us do. i told her i'd have us wimmin take over. i told her it was time we led the country. she gaped at me - at least she didn't laugh, grab her privates, and run. she conceded, well maybe it would make a difference if wimmin were in power. i said, you're damn right it would.
i told her this war has to end - we have to end it, no matter what. her cell phone rang & that was the end of that.
sunday morning the ice had melted from the roads so we took off to the garage where we left the
truck. a friend of tessie's drove the 60 miles from atlanta to pick us up & bring us back to tessie's - what a great guy! now we wait for ray to let me know what's wrong & what it'll cost to fix. peace, sam