The trip to California was very quick. Landed Friday, and took the red-eye back on Saturday after the game. But it was good; I saw many of my Cal friends who I now don't see so often, and on top of that, Cal won! One disappointment is that the Stanford fans seem a bit dispassionate about our rivalry. Spoilsports! It's no fun having a rivalry if one side doesn't care. It IS possible, though, that because Cal has been such a doormat for many of the last several years that Stanford was getting bored with us. But things might be turning around: we've got a new(ish) coach, and in his first year last year he won us back the Axe (the trophy the winning team gets to keep) for the first time in years. And he won us the right to keep it for this year, so maybe Stanford will start to sit up and take notice if we keep getting in the way of their post-season goals by beating them.
It was good that the trip was quick, though, because I have other things to be worried about than Cal sports. The semester is winding down and finals are now visible on the horizon. Stress stress stress. Earlier last week I did several study sessions and went to class, but then the holiday break came up. My sister and I carpooled down to New Jersey, waking up before dawn on Thanksgiving to beat the traffic. On the way we argued about various public policy questions. At one point I commented that when we used to ride in cars together we'd complain to our parents from our car seats, "She's looking out my window!" But we've grown up a bit, and so now my protests are more like, "She's disagreeing with my worldview!"
We spent the holiday dinner with our dad, who unfortunately did not win the election. At least not in the sense that winning describes the person with the most votes. It seems that there are other things he did win, in a matter of speaking. He did very respectably, with around 1300 votes to the victor's 1600. These are 1300 people who didn't even know my dad in the slightest before the election, who nonetheless chose HIM to represent them. He says he gets fan mail(!) all the time from people thanking him for having run (while I was visiting he even got a letter from the governor), and for simply having attempted this people regard him with much more respect. I likened it to a village from a fairy tale, with a menacing dragon living nearby. People want to be rid of the dragon but no one can make themselves be the one to do it. My dad took it on, and even though he didn't slay the dragon, for even having tried to he demonstrated a worthiness that most people only idly aspire to.
My sister studies public policy, and she wrote about my dad's election on a mailing list for classmates:
"[N]ot only do our nation's leaders often get their start on the local level, but the issues in these elections often represent the very essence of our democracy. In my dad's election, he and his runningmates are campaigning for the very basics of transparency in government, increased and improved communication between government and citizens, and an end to one-party rule. I know many ... students who have worked on democratization projects worldwide with these same objectives, and I find it interesting we often overlook how simple it is to support these goals in our native neighborhoods..."