Sooooo, FO means “finished object” or something along those lines. I finished the puff hat this morning, hooray!
And onto Obama! Unless you’re living under a rock, or some isolated corner of the world, you pretty much know the President Elect of the United States is Barack Obama. And you’ve probably read the news, something along the lines of “U.S. elects first African-American President…” blah blah blah. Which, even if you’re not American, seems like a huge thing. But you can never really comprehend what that means for us. When you’re born and raised in the US you take history class and pretty much learn that we are a country built upon the backs of an oppressed people. Most wanna shrug that off saying “the past is in the past”, but its not, its ingrained into the very fabric of our society. Most of us grow up knowing racism, by experiencing it, by witnessing it, even by acting upon it. It’s a history that’s as much a part of America as Blueberry Pie (XD because apple pie isn’t %100 American :p).
Honestly I wasn’t sure I’d be this young when a person of color is made President of the Unites States. I thought I’d be a spry old lady snapping at my grandkids saying “Finally! Finally!! And dammit, and get that cat away from my steak >:”. But when all of us dreamt of that moment, we dreamt of an election when that persons color didn’t really matter anymore. Which was one of the greatest things about this election, it, for the most part, didn’t matter. Most people (and definitely not all) voted for him because of other reasons (which I’m not going to get into 
).
As for me, I didn’t vote. A really long and convoluted story short, I was watching CNN before I left to go and they said “voting on the west will end around 10″ or something like that. On Ortega Highway someone announced that the booths in California would close at 8 and I knew me and my dad weren’t going to make it. We did drive the rest of the way in the hope that there’d be a line (since booths stay open if people are waiting) but I wasn’t sure since my voting area was in a “Retirement Community”, which pretty much meant cranky old people wanting to sleep early @_@. I got there 34 min late :/ Lesson: be super obsessive when it comes to moving and making sure you have the right address -_- also go EARLY!!! First time I didn’t vote since I turned 18, now I feel like I somehow cheated, entirely shamed and embarrassed, and mostly like I didn’t earn my right to feel something after the elections (which sounds odd but yeah).
Anyway, on the way back they aired McCain’s concession speech and that’s really when you realize he’s won, I mean really, truly, won. You spend the day watching and listening to the news coverage and stay hopefully cautious, waiting for those electorates to go up, even at such a lead you remain cautious, but then realize he’s really won. And that’s when history hits you. That poster you spent your childhood staring at since kindergarten, that poster at the front of your classroom, the one with the old white dudes that ran this country, well they’re going to make a new poster, and its no longer going to be a poster full of old white dudes, its going to be a picture of old white dudes and a light skinned black dude with the name of Barack Hussein Obama. And you remember all those old history classes, reading and writing on what shaped this country, the good bits and the bad, and all those debates in class on how fair people of color get treated in comparison to a white person, and you realize that all those problems are FAR from over, but Good God the United States of freakin America just elected a half black man named Barack Hussein Obama as the President!
If you haven’t grown up in the U.S., if you’re not American, you can never totally understand what he represents for us. It transcends the politics of present day and goes straight into the annals of U.S. Government from the very nanosecond they announced it. And as far as politics goes, when George W. ran for second term he used fear to capture the country, we’ve lived in that fear and uneasiness for far too long that it’s beyond a relief to have someone wanting for hope and change. I can’t imagine how much pressure Obama is now under, I pray he doesn’t crack under it, and I pray he remains true to the heart of his campaign.
and btw Congrats America
