On Cartoons, Knitting and Politics:

I turned on the TV this morning to see the election results because I fell asleep before the results were in last night. The channel that came on was showing a cartoon version of the book ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon.’ I was drawn in once again by the simple complexity and the sheer amount of possibilities that owning a purple dream crayon held.

In that second I didn’t care who had won, the sun would come up and my day would be filled with work and play as always. Just like Harold’s purple crayon goes on and on in the story, time will continue no matter who won.

I didn’t care at the moment, in one click of the remote I would and could know who had won or lost the presidential election in the US. I was a child once again safe and happy in a world that my biggest trouble was, ‘Would Harold get back home again safely before his crayon ran out?’

A few minutes later the story ended and I was back in reality again. A commercial came on and I changed the channel. The answer to my political question of the day was finally answered but win or loose not one of my personal needs for the day had been changed or met by the answer.

Whether or not the man I backed got into office, time will tell if the choice was the right one. Government is more then one person or decision anyway, and there is an enormous amount of mess to clean up and still be discover from the current administration before it will be over. One or two, four year cycles may not be long enough to fix it. And the new administration will make it’s own share of mistakes in the process.

The closest I have to a grown-up purple crayon is my knitting/lace making. The thread goes on and on in the colors of my choice. I add a knot or graft a connection into the process and make something new and stronger then the fiber it had once been.



In the mean time I’ll watch cartoons and knit my socks like ‘Dragon’ and his friends while still hoping and praying for the best but knowing that most of the people will have more to suffer before it is over because no one person has all the answers. Life is never as easy as in children’s books or cartoons but a lot of answers can be found in the simple things in life.