corrente

Hey, maybe today’s gonna be better. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a piece of good news. Maybe I can spare my liver and my living partners from another morose night of listening to the blues and playing along in between slashes of whiskey. Maybe tonight I can cuddle up with a mug of chamomile and a snoring dog and reflect on this, taking a drink not to forget but to remember that there’s still a way to make voices heard:

NORWICH, Vt. -- The resolution calling for the return of U.S. troops from Iraq was the 31st item on the town meeting agenda here in the white-walled gymnasium they use for square dances and thrift sales. After a day of balloting, it passed…

…Town Meeting Day, a New England tradition that dates to the 17th century, has been hailed as a paradigm of representative democracy. On Tuesday, voters in 56 Vermont towns, more than one-fifth of the state's 246 municipalities, became perhaps the first in the country to participate in a formal referendum on U.S. involvement in Iraq.

…By Tuesday evening -- it snowed all day long -- 39 of the towns had passed a version of a resolution that asked state legislators to study the local impact of National Guard deployments, the congressional delegation to reassert state authority over Guard units, and the federal government to bring U.S. troops home from the war.

I am, today, calling some of the local party folks to see if we can do something like this vote in Colorado or New Mexico. Non-binding, sure, but a powerful message to the chickenhawks, one might hope. There's still a little of the optimist in me, after all.