By Keith Brock
January 20, 2010
Life doesn’t always work out like we plan, does it? I believe President Obama and candidate Coakley also came to this conclusion last night, as did I. Driving back across the desert to Southern California from Phoenix, Arizona from a very stressful couple of days at the side of my mother who had just suffered a severe stroke immediately following open-heart surgery, I was exhausted, depressed and emptied, as a vessel that has poured all of its love and devotion upon another and needs replenishing itself. As the trip progressed across the beautiful and wide vistas of sand and sage with little to interrupt the view for mile upon mile, I started feeling the uncomfortable feeling of an illness clasping my body in it grasp; feeling the tightening of its grip until I knew it would not be wise to continue on home where a house full of grandchildren and visiting step children would be waiting. After a brief discussion with my wife, we stopped and she took over, wheeling the car north well over a hundred miles on a windy and dangerous two-lane road, choked with 18 wheelers, with a new destination of Laughlin Nevada as the final destination.
As we entered the small gambling strip on the Colorado River we chose one of the 20 plus story motels on the river with glass window, overlooking the short strip, for a wall. I barely looked out at the night of dancing lights as I literally fell in bed and, for the most part, remained there from Sunday evening at 8pm until Wednesday early A.M. In all the sleep and aching muscles I only had one tonic that brought me from my lethargy and gave me life – the talking heads and the unfolding events of Brown vs. Coakley, a local election with National ramifications. Feeling like a truck ran over me, I flipped between CNN, MSNBC and FOX, watching grown men and women almost cry in anguish as the night of the vote unfolded- or cry out with joy. I was a captive audience - propped on pillows – flipping from channel to channel, not missing anything.
Exhausted, I lay back. I would spend a total of two days and three nights aching, some of it contemplating what the events I just witnessed meant for the future of our country. I knew this was an important election, one I appreciated having an opportunity to follow closely and having the opportunity to see unfold detail by detail. Especially gratifying was to know that members of the Tea Party Patriots – that group of people who the President had flipplantly mocked, flippantly scheduled an event out of town on a Saturday when he found out we were coming to his town to confront him – was heavily involved in giving money and putting people quietly on the streets to make a difference. We don’t have to toot our own horns. All we have to do is to let the elite believe they know everything, have all the power, and quietly do what one could only see in the “Twilight Zone!”
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