I have been so busy organizing around the 193 issue—about which much more later–that I didn’t notice I had been nominated as a featured blog at Philly Future. And, I won. I hope this is an omen for future elections.
Thanks to all of you who nominated and voted for this blog. I’ve only been doing this since February, but it seems that the little essays I post here, essays that A Smoke Filled Room frequently calls “long but chewy,” have found a niche in the blogosphere. I know they are not for everyone all the time…I don’t always have the patience for reading them myself, which probably accounts for all the editing mistakes. And I certainly can’t write them everyday. So I encourage those of you who are new to my blog to dip into the archives. Aside from the posts that are announcements of political events, few of these posts are all that time sensitive. Trying to articulate a set of ideals and a strategy for progressives is a long term project.
Which reminds me of one of my favorite jokes.
There was a man named Ephraim, in a Jewish village where my grandparents come from in the province of Bukovina, who had the job of waiting for the messiah. This Ephraim went to the gates of the village every day to watch for the messiah so that everyone in the village could be immediately told to stop work when the messiah arrived. One day someone asked Ephraim if he didn’t find his job a little dull. “Yes,” said Ephraim, “it is not the most exciting job in the village. But it is steady work.”
Doing progressive politics these days is not always exciting–though I have to say I can’t wait to get up every morning and get going–but it is, and it takes, steady work. I hope more folks will learn how rewarding that steady work is. Among the best places to do progressive politics in Philadelphia right now are Neighborhood Networks, Philly for Change, and NABR