Election Burnout

That must be it. From my last post to this, I've had few thoughts and nil passion for anything to do with the presidential election. Right now I feel like I'll wait till the campaign starts in earnest, after the conventions, in August, to pay major attention again. Or maybe that'll pass. The campaign is no less exciting. I'm just less excited.

I'm not disinterested in the candidates. I finally figured out what I am worn out from: the nattering press, the pundits, the columnists, the incessant analysis. Everything from whether Sen. Clinton is a sore loser to whether Sen. Obama is a sore winner, whether President Clinton is harboring a grudge --is chewed over like week-old eggs and spat out into one long harangue of over-analysis and partisan skewballs. And me, a newsaholic overcompensating from the deprivation during four years abroad, drank in the round-the-clock torrent of political calculus for 17 months, and finally overdosed.

This two-by-foured me weekend before last when I got away from it all. I went to the most marvelous wedding in West Virginia, of my cousin Margo Blevin and her partner Dave Denton, whom I met at my mother's 96th birthday party in April of 05. (Margo is 69 and robbed the cradle marrying 68 year old Dave. They met on eHarmony! Can you beat that?)

It was a thrilling occasion and so much of my family was there for a long weekend of celebration and festivities at the foot of the Monongahela National Forest at Davis & Elkins College, where Margo, before she retired from the position, was the director of the Augusta Heritage Festival.

The whole town celebrated. Margo is a celebrity there, having restored several historic buildings in addition to her work on on the renown folk arts, crafts and music festival. My mother had attended several of those summer-long festivals and I met a lot of "Aunt Faye's" friends there. In the warmth of the wedding celebrations and the endearing West Virginians, I was saturated with activities and feelings that had little to do with the election and it felt like a great weight was off me.

Back in the bucolic life of midcoast Maine, life goes on. Work goes on. Play goes on. I'm part of some arts festival activities here and helped launch the Haiku Tent at a big boat launching event last weekend. Hoopla I can believe in.

But do I eschew the political news these days? Well, maybe a little. But mostly it's just to indulge in a scoffing break. No, I mean it, really. Just one more hour and I'm done with it.

Nobody's fault but my own.

So much for my first non-election post in a while.