Being a Neighbor to History

On Thursday, the Senate voted to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor (now Justice Sotomayor) as the 111th Supreme Court Justice of the United States. The vote was taken 5 blocks from my humid, cave-like basement bedroom. Yes, that's right, 5 blocks away! Now, let's consider why this is historical. First, a supreme court justice was confirmed. Second, Sotomayor is only the 3rd woman to be confirmed as a justice. Third, she is the first Latino to be a justice. When people talk about these great historical facts, I often feel like ranting about what is wrong with our society that only 2.7% of Supereme Court Justices have been woman or that more minorities have not been included in the past (many of you have probably been subject to such rants in the past...). Yet, today I would like to focus on a larger theme...the shaping of history.

I grew up in a small Ohio town that has a sign because William Henry Harrison's log cabin of the famous (or so they claim) log cabin campaign was built there. Great historical events didn't take place in my backyard (no battlefields, no inventors, no sporting stories...). But this summer, I am in a city full of history- Washington DC. The burning of the Capitol during the War of 1812, the Inagurations of presidents, the passing of laws, protests. In fact, some civil rights marches were planned in my living room. Two houses down from me lives a former Senator from Arizona. Only about 2 or 3 blocks away is the house where Barrack Obama lived while he was a senator and while he was running for president. It seems that everywhere I look I see statues (mostly of men on horses).

History is in the air in DC (and perhaps with the led in the water)! But if you watch the people leaving the government buildings, they are just normal people. They shop with you at the grocery stores and corner markets. They wear flip flops with their dress clothes to walk home. The people who run our government are just that people. They may seem to be shaping history by confirming justices or passing stimulus bills or agreeing to lower the number of nuclear weapons the US has, but they are people who are just like the people in my hometown. They go to church, they grocery shop, they watch TV and eat pizza, and they even have fears and dreams. Shaping history (or appearing to be shaping history) seems like hard work to me, but realizing that these people are at times just as powerless as the rest of us offers some perspective. They have bad day when the red line is running slow, they dance like fools during the screen on the green, they send their kids to school....they even walk on sidewalks!

So, next time you shake your fists at the people in those big white buildings in DC, remember that they are people.

PS- I am not saying that we shouldn't disagree with them. In fact we should disagree, but perhaps we want to stop seeing them as giants or monsters...