People All Over the World . . .

It's been quite a weekend. I was a guest at an out-of-town wedding this weekend, so I had the very "girl" problem of figuring out what outfit would look best when accessorized with my ever-present walking boot. (My bum ankle continues to heal, but certainly at its own pace, not mine!) The wedding itself was lovely - a very personal expression of the two parts of the couple. With cake.

That same day, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held their rally on the National Mall aimed at giving voice to the moderates among us. Squeaky wheels, we are told, are first in line for the grease and there's been no shortage of whining from both sides of the aisle, leaving most Americans sighing in the middle. The idea behind the rally was to demonstrate that there really are a large number of people who can disagree without thinking the other guy is Hitler. Stewart summed that up in his closing speech, saying that compromise is not just necessary to move forward, it's something we all do every day, without making a large fuss about it.

I thought about that. I have neighbors, family, acquaintances, and friends of various political stripes. We could vehemently disagree on issues and scream our suspicions at each other, but that doesn't get leaves raked and houses looked after. So we do what I suspect most people do - we shrug off our surface differences, plant our own election signs in the yard, hand each other surplus home-grown tomatoes and take care of pets while one another are out of town.

Same with marriage. That happy couple won't always agree straight down the line with each other (they're people, not sheep), but that doesn't mean one of them's totally right and the other is evil.

At the rally, there was the "Train trifecta" - "Peace Train" gave way to "Crazy Train" and the two sides couldn't agree on either one. It took the sweet Philadelphia soul of the O'Jays to bring everyone together.




It left me humming - "People all over the world join hands . . . "

And it gave me hope. If we can laugh, even at ourselves - strike that, especially at ourselves - we'll probably be all right.