Daniel’s Pilgrimage

Well, this is going to be the first presidential election that I’ve ever voted in. Two years ago I documented who I was voting for right before my first ever time voting. I figured I’d do the same thing this time around. Here we go:

President

Obama(D) vs McCain(R) vs McKinney(G) vs Nader(I) vs Barr(L) vs Baldwin(IG)

I’ll be voting for Obama. I probably line up more with Nader or McKinney but being in a swing state and definitely lining up more with Obama than McCain I can’t do third party. Not that I think poorly of John McCain. I have a lot of respect for him and his service for this country, just have philosophical differences. FYI, any personal attacks against any candidate will be deleted from the comments so don’t waste your time.

US Senate

Warner(D) vs Gilmore(R) vs Parker(IG) vs Redpath(L)

This one is easy, Warner was a good Governor who worked across the aisle and seems to be a solid guy. He will represent the Commonwealth well in the Senate.

US House

Bobby Scott is running unopposed and people seem to like him.

Richmond Mayor

Grey vs Jones vs Pantele vs Williams

This is the one that has interested me the most so far. I’ve been down to Grey and Jones for a while now and keep going back and forth between them. I said before that Grey lost my vote in the second Style Weekly debate… but I think I’ll still end up voting for him anyways. I don’t trust Pantele AT ALL so he’s not even been an option. I’ve liked some of what I have heard from Williams but he didn’t run a serious campaign.

City Council District 7

McQuinn vs Kenney

Last election I opposed McQuinn but she had a quality opponent last time in Reggie Malone. This time Kenney only seems to be running because he has issues with Delores. She’s got my vote this time as she has done a reasonable job over the past 2 years.

School Board District 7

Coleman vs Edmonds vs Bond

It’s amazing to have such a small election with 2 high quality candidates. Either Don or Torey will serve us well. I’ll be voting for Don since I know him better and wish I would have voted for him 2 years ago. Part of me wishes Torey had run for City Council. I probably would have supported her there over McQuinn. Maybe in 4 years.

Update: I voted. The only change is that I wrote in Torey Edmonds for City Council. I guess that is my way of showing her support while still voting for Don for School Board.

I provided the video coverage for RVANews for the last 2 Mayoral Forums but on by Style Weekly. The videos from the Arts and Culture Forum that happened a couple weeks are all in one place on RVANews.com. I’m working on getting the video clips of tonight’s Living and Working in Richmond Forum up as quickly as possible. They will be on RVANews’ Vimeo page as they go up. I’ll also amend this post with a link when they get their own page. This time I got to do cool stuff like patch into the sound system and since I decided to leave the liveblogging to others I actually did some work to make the video turn out better. Good learning experience for covering future events. I hope you enjoy getting to know the candidates!

Update 1: The videos are all up on the RVANews Vimeo page. They will get their own post on RVANews soon.

Update 2: The page got up on RVANews this morning. Enjoy!

So, as you know if you’ve been reading this blog… we’ve gone through some crap over the years. One thing that helped me get through some rough times has been my love of beer. There was nothing like a high quality beer to help take the edge off or to help me relax, etc. But I noticed a couple months back that it wasn’t helping anymore. The options seem to be 1) try more of it and maybe that will help, or 2) stop drinking. Well, I tried #1 a couple times and all that gave me was a slight hangover the next day. So a number of weeks back I decided to try #2. That has helped a lot actually. I do miss the taste of beer, but I am feeling much better.

That got me thinking about all the things in life that we do that helped at first but aren’t helping anymore… and yet we just keep doing them. We may justify it by saying “at least it’s not drugs” about our shopping addiction, but we still need to realize the point when our relationship to it changes. So, before life becomes a wreck of addiction or compulsion we should examine what we are doing with ourselves. Is it still helping? If not, stop doing it!

Just an FYI to those who care. I’ll be filling in for the pastor of First Mennonite Church here in Richmond this Sunday. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to talk at a traditional church service, should be a good experience. I’ll put up some sermon notes afterwards.

I’ve been thinking about confidence a lot this weekend. It started with me thinking about how much life has changed in the past 8 years or so. I had soooo much more confidence in myself, others and our society 8 years ago than I do now. My faltering confidence in myself has over the years made a number of areas of life much more difficult. I was pondering that and what it would take to get my confidence back quite a bit this weekend.

The second part of my thinking about confidence came in two parts while at Buzzy’s this morning… I picked up a copy of the Times Dispatch and was reading about President Bush’s mortgage bailout plan. After I was just thinking about confidence this quote really stood out to me: “People are beginning to doubt our system, people were losing confidence and I understand it’s important to have confidence in our financial system.” Basically, our whole financial system will collapse if people don’t have confidence in it.

And then in a later section of the RTD they profiled the new church that is starting in The Byrd. Area 10 Faith Community had their first public service this morning. If I had known about it beforehand I probably would have gone to show support. It sounds a ton like the Horizon churches in their early days and Elevation Church that Dave is planting now. Kristin Swenson, the assistant professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, was quoted as saying that “Church planters tend to be energetic, committed people, confident that they can build a community of support in what they believe to be an authentic Christian experience”. It is very true, and reminded me of the confidence that I had before when I was helping churches get started. This weekend I wished I still had that confidence.

I’m not really sure what the point of this post is other than to share some weekend thoughts. Can anyone out there relate to a loss of confidence like I’ve described?