Here Comes The Bride

How many weddings can one girl be in? Well, besides Jane Nichols from 27 Dresses... I don't think I'll be in 27 weddings in the next few years. But that's only because I don't have 27 close friends. ;)
Clara, of course, got engaged in June. We were expecting that one... actually, I used to write on both their Facebook walls and ask if they were engaged yet. It was very exciting when Jason proposed, because it had finally happened. She asked me a few weeks ago to be a bridesmaid, and of course I said yes, because we daydreamed together about her wedding the whole time we were roommates. :)
Then there was Leah, who is a very sweet friend who's dating Natalie's boyfriend's best friend. That wasn't too much of a surprise, because she and Andy are both seniors this year and have been dating since I've known them.
And then came Saturday. Natalie's boyfriend Dane and Mary Beth's boyfriend Jim came to visit; we hung out, played Settlers of Catan, and then they had some couple time... but then they left, promising to return soon, and we sat down to do homework.
So when Mary Beth dragged Natalie and I into my room and shut the door, we wondered if she could possibly be telling us what we thought. And we were right! Mary Beth is engaged!! To make things even more romantic than they already are around here, Jim proposed months earlier than he had planned to- as in, seven months earlier- and said he just loved her so much that he couldn't help asking her then and there. Don't you love it!?
Sunday afternoon Mary Beth told us that she had gone to meet our friend Catherine for church and she had come out of her room with a ring on! She and Tim are very cute together, and even Dr. Clark got sentimental about them in Music History.
Time to start planning weddings... :)

Catching up; or, mothers in office

It has been a busy couple of weeks, at school and in the journalism world. We have discussed the elections in every class; in fact, we've spent only a half an hour total on history in my History of American Journalism class. Covering the elections and learning to look at them from the point of view of a reporter has taken precedence.
Every day, each of us brings in two articles on current events to talk about. Usually at least one of them is on a presidential candidate, and most of them are from the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Detroit News. Today, to keep things interesting, I found an article from the Jerusalem Post, by Shmuley Boteach. The title of the article is, "Should a new mother run for vice president?" Despite the title, the article is really about America's new version of poverty: spiritual poverty. Boteach asserts that our problems are not high gas prices, mortgage failures, or anything that can be solved with cash. Our real issues, though perhaps more subtle from the outside, are much more serious: drug and alcohol addictions, broken marriages, single motherhood. These cannot be fixed with money, but Boteach wonders if they will start to mend with a mother in office- or if that will only make things worse.
His argument is that the women and girls of America will be watching Palin to see if she manages her family and her campaign well; then, if she and McCain are elected, then the scrutiny will continue, and they will be watching to see if she manages her family and the country well. If she does, Boteach suggests, this will encourage women to watch over their households (or simply their own lives) with the same attention they give their careers and their social lives. If, on the other hand, Palin fails to balance family and her executive office, American women will conclude that they cannot succeed in both family and careers, and the issues at hand will continue to grow.
I thought his article was interesting even if it oversimplified the cures for America's moral degeneration. I would have liked to see some quotes or some sources cited, but to be fair, it was an opinion piece and his analysis was good. Perhaps having a good, balanced woman in office will not solve women's tendencies to disregard their moral state, but it certainly could not hurt. May God bless and keep our country in these elections.