Sarah Burris's blog

I've been on vacation for the past week in Florida where I was surfing and for the first time in my quarter-century life I was able to go to Disney World and be a kid again with my family.

Between the high speed loops, twists, and drops that are typical with super awesome amusement park rides, there also were rides that tried to teach us a thing or two. Like most on vacation, I snubbed my nose in the air and went looking for another pub at Epcot....

My mom forced us to go on this ride called Living with the Land (official site here) which takes you through a short history of farming and the last half is a future of farming project that Disney partner's with the Department of Agriculture on. Who knew!? I believe the ride itself is within a section called The Land which is sponsored by Nestle ... I might not be remembering that correctly so forgive me.

The first quarter of this final section on the future of ag was the kinds of sustainable agricultural practices that can help green our farming techniques, sequester carbon emissions, certain plants we can plant to better maintain the soils etc... all things I've spoken of before.

But further it goes into ways that we can genetically modify our plants so that we can grow them in things like sand or in places that traditionally can't support plant life. (Disclaimer: in the past the European Union has opposed genetically modified foods, indeed many have, because we are not fully aware of effects of long-term exposure of such things. I actually haven't fully formed an opinion on this, but encourage others who know more about it to enlighten me via the comments section.)

If you aren't sure what genetically modified agriculture is think of it like seedless watermelons or the grapple - which is an apple looking fruit but tastes like a grape.. these are created by changing the fundamental genetic makeup of a plant. This is useful in many ways like the examples above but can go even further by like amping up vitamin content or reducing sodium in foods, etc...

The second part of the GM foods was more about ways to grow crops without implanting them in soils but growing them above ground and having a root system that is watered by spraying it. A third was turning traditionally more spread out crops like peppers or squash that are often planted in acres of rows of pants into trees so that these then grow up instead of out using less space but more are able to produce en mass. They call it verti-gro.. no, seriously...

Having been back for less than 5 hours, I was lucky to catch my favorite farmer for a nice sushi dinner to discuss this amazing ride. According to him less than 1/3 of the land mass of the world is usable for crop production, simply because the conditions just aren't there. Sand, rain forest, even cities all take up land that is there to produce our food for the now nearly 7 billion people in the world, many of which are going hungry and die in staggering numbers of starvation. Because the United States began as an agricultural society, our cities naturally formed around the hotbeds of activity ... which were around the best areas of farmland in the country. Thus, much of our land is covered by buildings and suburbs. Growing up, not out, helps us combat the increasing need for food and for having our McTrackHomes.

The reason I bring all of this up, is two fold. One, the future of farming is a future that is quickly dying as youth flee our rural areas. Secondly, it factors into the grassroots movement I heard about on NPR encouraging President Obama to have an organic plot of farmland on the White House lawn.

Eat the View was one of the projects voted to be presented to the new President by On Day One, a project of the Better World Fund, that is pushing people to lobby for the causes they want to see Obama tackle on day one. Eat The View is all about going to organic farming, which I love and eat when possible but isn't the most possible or practical cause for agriculture in America. That said, pushing the President to have a veggie garden on the White House lawn is actually something that is possible. Eat the View is also on Change.org

During the Great Depression and World War 2 people began planting Victory Gardens in efforts to provide more available American food. In 1943 a third of all the vegetables consumed in the country were from those gardens. One such Victory Garden was from the Governor of Oklahoma, who was a little bit of a freak Governor, but one great thing Gov. William Murray (known as Alfalfa Bill) did was plow up the grounds of the Oklahoma Capitol and plant food and allow cattle to graze so that the poor could harvest potatoes or slaughter the beef so people could feed their families.

While I don't expect the new President to grab his team of donkey's and hitch up a plow with Pelosi doing it at the Capitol, it does present a similar idea to the Oklahoma's crazy former governor, particularly in a city like Washington that suffers from such a large homeless and impoverished population.

Soon to be First Lady Michelle Obama has said that she plans to be involved in the community, as the Obamas have been involved in every community particularly with feeding the homeless.

Further, it sets an example for rural youth who are rushing to cities for more of the cosmopolitan lifestyle that even the President believes that farming is such an important element to our world that no farm should go unused and growing food is an honorable task that even the President considers essential to developing.

Finally, if you've ever been to Washington DC, its a beautiful town with millions spent on up-keep for the flowers, shrubs, etc all to make it look pretty for foreign dignitaries, heads of state, and tourism which is a mega industry in the city. Can you imagine how much money could be saved on constantly planting and/or replanting flowers and bushes (not just Bushes) if we went to food as landscaping? The Cherry Blossom festival could also be a spring planting season, and what could be better than a fall harvest as a November Election photo-op?

Hope you have a Happy New Year!

First let me wish you a very Happy Merry Mistletoe and other such things! If you're looking for a family escape by pretending to read the blogs today, or write blogs, or pretend to do work as a means of ignoring that same story about the odd shaped moles on your relatives, then I'm happy to provide some interesting factoids along with your eggnog.

Now that the election is over I can go back to doing things that require more reading, like books. So I finally picked up The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church by Christine Wicker, an x-evangelical who discovered she'd been duped.

One thing you see 'round these parts of America are megachurches. You know, those giant buildings filled with pristine carpet and that always smell like new construction and chlorine. Driving south on the 35 from Kansas City into Oklahoma City, I'm always faced with what I lovingly refer to as the big-damn-cross, displaying the perfect marriage of Jesus and an one of the wealthiest cities in Oklahoma displaying their support of another excessively wealthy church.

According to Wicker, while these churches are flourishing under such wealth and power, their pews and/er stadium seats are increasingly empty.

"Even as evangelical forces trumpet their purported political and social victories, insiders are anguishing over their significant losses, fearing what the future holds. The idea that evangelicals represent and speak for Christianity in America is one of the greatest publicity scams in history, a perfect coup accomplished by savvy politicos and religious leaders, who understand media weaknesses and exploit them brilliantly."

Partnering Wicker's book with another reTHiNK: Decide for Yourself, Is Student Ministry Working? by Steve Wright. This gem appears on page 53

"Student ministry in many cases has become the local YMCA or teen amusement park; students check in and out, but mostly out. After all, once they have experienced years of fun-and-games, all-you-can-eat, no-responsibility, free-from-parents amusement, then we have helped train their appetites for pleasure to find more alluring fulfillment in the adult world."

It goes on to quote major studies into patters in youth participation via the evangelical church post-high school

• "A recent TIME Magazine article points to research that found 61 percent of the adults polled who are now in their twenties said they had participated in church activities as teens but not longer so. Some argue that young people typically drift from organized religion in early adulthood, but others say the high attrition is a sign that churches need to change the way they try to engage the next generation.
• A study from UCLA found that almost half of college students drift away from their Christian upbringing. While 52 percent of incoming students said that they regularly took part in church events, the number shrinks to 29 percent who are still involved in church activities by their junior year.
• Josh McDowell estimates, 'over 69 percent of youth are leaving traditional church after high school.'
• LifeWay Christian Research reports, 'The overwhelming majority of children from evangelical families are leaving the church as they enter adulthood.'
• Mark Matlock finds, 'Depending on whose numbers you use, 58 percent – 84 percent of graduating youth from church youth groups are not returning.'
• David Wheaton, author of University of Destruction, states that 'as many as 50 percent of Christian students say they have lost their faith after four years of college.'
• George Barna gives troubling news in his book, Real Teens: 'Now only 33 percent of churched youth say that the church will play a part in their lives when they leave home.'
• Glenn Schultz at LifeWay Christian Resources estimates that 75 percent of young people leave church in their late teens and aren’t reconnecting later.
• Student Venture reports that about 70 percent of seniors in high school who claimed faith, stop attending church during the college years.
• Ron Luce in Battle Cry for a Generation estimates '88 percent of kids raised in Christian homes do not continue to follow the Lord after they graduate from high school.'
• LifeWay Research found that 70 percent of young adults ages twenty-three to thirty stopped attending church regularly for at least a year between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two."

Holy plastic Jesus, Batman! This is a lot of flight. But wait... there's more... Witnessing Suburbia: Conservatives and Christian Youth Culture by Luhr Eileen will be released in February from UCal Press. (Read chapter 1 here) This book details the rise of the evangelical pop-culture movement in the United States.

"The disparity between a church-sponsored record burning for youth and a family-centered moral critique reveals the self-conscious "modernization" project undertaken by some conservative Christians in the late twentieth century. In both instances, music provided an entry point to debates about cultural reform. Both strategies demonstrate how conservative Christians linked youth culture and social problems and how they aggressively sought to reestablish "youth" as a category of innocence in need of adult protection during the late-twentieth-century culture wars. In both formulations of the reform agenda, culture, rather than socioeconomic structure, was the catalyst for change. . . .

. . .The era's "parents movement" intersected with what has become known as the culture wars. The political battles of the culture wars are well known, but many of these struggles also involved popular culture, especially since entertainment provided a ready example of the challenges posed to parental authority."

I won't go on, but chapter 4 is titled "An MTV Approach to Evangelism: The Cultural Politics of Suburban Revivalism."

If you're an ADD reader like I am, then going back and forth between the 3 books won't be a problem, but the curious mix they provide is an understanding of how evangelicals came to power, how they are losing power, and a faith based perspective on why the evangelical youth movement lost its power, authenticity, and credibility particularly among young people.

All interesting reads - hopefully I've detained you from your families long enough. Have a great holiday and a Happy New Year.

Wednesday, President Elect Barack Obama announced the new Secretary of Agriculture was to be Governor of Iowa Tom Vilsack. In his press conference Vilsack specifically addressed his hopes for utilizing alternative fuels tapping rural America for ways to combat the climate crisis.

Back in rural Oklahoma I was spending the day with friends and farmers Clay Pope and his new wife Sarah Love-Pope who have taken family farming to a whole new level. As an environmentalists Sarah said she had never considered moving to a farm and putting her money where her mouth was.

"Some of the greatest environmentalists are farmers, because they own the land and they decide how it will be cared for," she said while driving a truck through their fields.

Clay agrees. His work as the director of the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts has fueled a new incentive for farmers to use techniques that reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere. A company could buy carbon credits that could then be passed off to farmers who use these environmentally friendly techniques like no-till which can both protect and repair the land. Pope has said before that carbon can be a cash crop to farmers new and established.

A major problem with rural America continues to be retention of its youth, but the Department of Agriculture has a great opportunity to utilize the existing enthusiasm for Obama to educate youth on ways they can impact their world by investing in the communities they grew up in. Turning environmentalists into farmers is one way youth can help combat global warming but other than the goodness of their heart, there is little in the way for incentives.

The Department of Ag could increase grants and scholarships to youth who seek Ag degrees or the new Associates Degree the Oklahoma State University now provides for Wind Turbine Engineers and Technicians. Additional subsidies could be provided to children who return to take over their family farms is another way. And developing our country's broadband infrastructure to enable youth to have a connectivity to their friends or to entertainment available online.

See my adventure with the Pope's in Loyal, Oklahoma here

I'm encouraged to see Gov. Vilsack take the reigns, but I hope the new Department of Ag makes an effort to reach out to youth to understand more about what is needed to revitalize rural America.

After a year of the likes of MTV's Street Team, Rock the Vote's Rock the Trail, and others harnessing the power of youth reporting on youth, Kids network Nickelodeon has decided to also get into the politics game for some of the younger members of the youth movement who are at the tail end of the Millennial Generation.

Reporters Lily Collins (daughter of singer Phill Collins) and J.J. will be the reporters on the scene at the Presidential Inauguration to report from their perspective.

According to the AP

"Throughout the presidential campaign, Nickelodeon found that interest among its young viewers matched that of the adults. Nick's own online "election" had 2.2 million children voting, with kids supporting Obama over John McCain (51 percent to 49 percent) in a closer margin than the real election.

"We decided to carry it through so that kids would have the full experience of the presidential election," said Marva Smalls, executive vice president of public affairs at Nickelodeon.

The coverage will show up during commercial breaks and, most prominently, during the periods between regular shows in prime-time. Nick will offer a retrospective of past presidents taking the oath of office and interviews with young people about Obama's election and his inaugural address."

The piece goes on to say that because the Obama children are within the Nick demographic the network believes it is a major reason viewers connect with the new First Family so well.

Like others, Nick covered the primaries in some way as well as the conventions and election night, but this seems to be a much more detailed coverage of the events.

Nickelodeon first began to dive into the youth news with Nick News, a series hosted by Linda Ellerbee in 1992 and has consistently brought both global and domestic issues to young viewers and covered them in a way youth can both understand and relate to.

Its always great to see other young reporters who bring youth the news, I hope Nick News covers the youth movement moving forward and the impact those formerly in their demographic then grow into some of the best movers and shakers of our generation.

We know that youth turnout is very difficult to actually count because so many states (I'm talking about you Kansas and Oklahoma) don't parse data based on little things like age or gender or any identifying information other than who voted for which candidate. I guess we should be grateful, right?

Sadly, we have to use exit polling to understand how these young people voted in so many states. Exit polling is traditionally unreliable because they disproportionately survey older voters and as we know young voters are difficult to both find and contact (what with that darn modern technology and all...).

Battleground states have more accurate data because everyone needs to know every little tiny vote. Also states with more sophisticated election boards or Secretaries of State tend to have data available for people like us who want to take a closer look without having to deal with a partisan infrastructure for data. Not very independent...

What I've been looking at this week is comparing states that have active youth outreach vs. states that don't and how the turnout differed.

Montana has had Forward Montana working on the ground since before the 2006 election. They are active every month of every year, not just in the lead up to an election.

This year Montana had a 22% turnout in the exits that went for Obama 61/37. In 2004 it was 21% of the vote share but they went for Bush 52/43.

New Mexico which just recently had a youth org start up and rocked it this year. According to Karlo at CIRCLE

"New Mexico's youth turnout rate is consistently below the national average despite a large increase in turnout from 2000 to 2004. Like Indiana, young New Mexicans preferred Bush over Kerry."

But in the exits (which... again give a very conservative estimate of youth turnout) 71% of 18-29 year olds went for Obama in New Mexico. Contrast that with 17% share in 2004 that went for Bush 50/49. That is a substantial difference.

According to CIRCLE’s estimation

"using aggregated counts of votes from each of these states ... (including NM), youth turnout in the heavily campaigned states was especially strong at 59%, compared with 47% for all other states combined."

Kansas ... bless their hearts... have no youth outreach at all. But this year had a very strong Students for Barack Obama chapter at the University of Kansas and a few other areas of the state. They had a dramatic change of heart since 2004.

Kansas had exits showing 51/47 for Obama with also a 19% share. 2004 Exits show a 17% share with 55/44 for Bush over Kerry. That is a 7% change of heart for a party and a 2% increase in share. And that's a conservative estimation...

Oklahoma, by contrast, had no outreach to young voters outside of traditional Young Democrats chapters. Oklahoma was the only state in the country to have more young voters vote republican in their Primaries than democrats.

Exits show that in 2008 - 60% of 18-29 year olds went for McCain in Oklahoma and there was no increase in the share from 2004 to 2008. In 2004, however, they went 62% for Bush over Kerry... so there IS that.

My guess, is that the dramatic turnout we've seen nationally only calculated to a 2% increase in youth enthusiasm for Obama in 2008 than for Kerry in 2004. That's also with a very competitive US Senate race where the democrat was a Young Elected Official.

I've said it before, I'll say it again... if you build it... they will come. We have 4 examples of all kinds of youth outreach here. 2+ year plan, 1-2 year plan, electoral only college outreach, and no outreach with results that show the results. In Montana and New Mexico they nearly flip-flopped in GOP to Democratic support - and in Kansas there was a 7% increase in democratic participation. Oklahoma saw.... nothing.

If we begin to not merely develop a 50 state strategy but develop a 50 state youth strategy then I think we can start to see the kinds of results coming out of Montana and New Mexico in states even like Kansas and Oklahoma.

If you missed I (I certainly did) the Chronicle of Higher Ed talked about a Report on New Media where it kinda pokes fun at institutions of higher ed. Yay!

"... debate promises to be fierce on how exactly educational institutions should recognize this youth culture.

Some secondary schools and libraries, for example, limit access to social-networking sites and ban cellphones. The report argues implicitly that bans aren’t the answer, and that young people are learning despite -- not because of -- the environments that parents and educators want them to operate within.

"Youth could benefit from educators being more open to forms of experimentation and social exploration that are generally not characteristic of educational institutions," the authors write."

The report of which they speak, are the recent findings from a long study hosted by The MacArthur Foundation from the Digital Youth Research. A major finding about youth and their relationship to new media was that

"teens and their use of digital media show that America’s youth are developing important social and technical skills online – often in ways adults do not understand or value.

Contrary to popular belief, spending time on xBox Live and Facebook are neither corrupting the brains of youth nor are these sites encouraging isolating bahvior. Rather, these tools are helping both educate and connect youth.

According to the head researcher of the project Dr. Mizuko Ito

"There are myths about kids spending time online – that it is dangerous or making them lazy. But we found that spending time online is essential for young people to pick up the social and technical skills they need to be competent citizens in the digital age."

See her full interview here:

The details of the study show the researchers interviewed over 800 young people and their parents, both one-on-one and in focus groups; spent over 5000 hours observing teens on sites such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and other networked communities; and conducted diary studies to document how, and to what end, young people engage with digital media.

From this they created two categories of interaction of young people online: 1. Friendship driven and 2. Interest driven. This is what it sounds like with friendship drive being around social groups and peer circles and interest driven groups are around specific information or groups that aren't local friend groups perhaps bands or X-Files addicts... things like that... Not that I'd know...

The release shows a few significant findings I'd like to highlight.

1. "There is a generation gap in how youth and adults view the value of online activity.
• Adults tend to be in the dark about what youth are doing online, and often view online activity as risky or an unproductive distraction.
• Youth understand the social value of online activity and are generally highly motivated to participate.
2. "Youth are navigating complex social and technical worlds by participating online.
3. Young people are motivated to learn from their peers online.
• The Internet provides new kinds of public spaces for youth to interact and receive feedback from one another. (this sounds right out of the mouth of Danah Boyd who was on the research team)
• Young people respect each other’s authority online and are more motivated to learn from each other than from adults.
4. Most youth are not taking full advantage of the learning opportunities of the Internet.
• Youth can connect with people in different locations and of different ages who share their interests, making it possible to pursue interests that might not be popular or valued with their local peer groups."

I feel like we know this from our daily lives already. We connect to our friends and our peers. Its what has created a true global generation that is connected to each other beyond the traditional barriers that generations before us continue to suffer.

At the same time it could be one of the major reasons that we are one of the most educated generations (a finding from Generation We). Not merely because higher education has become a requirement for those who seek a leg up, but because an increase in information delivers an increase in education simply because its at our finger tips.

When you look at older young people over 18, the Chronicle piece continues, the report analysis which believes those attending college in the next few years

"will not be as devoid of social and literacy skills as one might think, given worries about how much today’s young people are fixated on their phones and screens. Those results dovetail with a September report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which said teens’ electronic gaming experiences were “rich and varied, with a significant amount of social interaction and potential for civic engagement."

Yes, this can be used as contextual validation that you need that Wii as a gift for the holidays...

The entire white paper can be found here (PDF)
The Digital Youth Report website is here

h/t from Maya at Mobilize.org.

There was an interesting piece on CNN yesterday as the terrorist attacks unfolded in India.

"With more than 6 million members worldwide, an estimated 80 messages, or "tweets," were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates."

The report goes on to day that reports of what people were seeing, pictures, and blood donation requests and details were being set out over twitter.

"As Twitter user "naomieve" wrote: "Mumbai is not a city under attack as much as it is a social media experiment in action."

Neha Viswanathan, a former regional editor for Southeast Asia and a volunteer at Global Voices, told CNN, "Even before I actually heard of it on the news I saw stuff about this on Twitter.

"People were sending in messages about what they were hearing. There were at least five or six blogs from people who were trapped, or who were very close to what happened."

The use of these fun technologies has been something our generation has used for quite a while, and politicos used throughout the campaign and on Election Day, its no surprise that the international community is as advanced if not more than the US is. I totally see this as a reflection of where we're progressing.

"A group of Mumbai-based bloggers turned their Metroblog into a news wire service, while the blog MumbaiHelp offered to help users get through to their family and friends in the city, or to get information about them, and has had a number of successes.

Flickr also proved a useful source of haunting images chronicling the aftermath of the attacks. Journalist Vinukumar Ranganathan's stream of photos were published by CNN and other major broadcasters. . .

A Google Map showing the key locations and buildings with links to news stories and eyewitness accounts, and CNN's iReporters flooded the site with their videos and images of the terror attacks."

While its not an attack, the Inauguration is sure to be a great reflection of how we can use tools to better report events as they unfold.

Update: Kim Ong, the author of the video, sent me a quick response to my congrats about the awesomeness of the work. Kim suggested we also check out Youth Malaysia a sweet site about their movement. I'm now on a hunt to find other similar sites/countries that are empowering young people, we've seen their impact in the google news alerts, but I'm sure there are more.
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When I interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier this year, one of her praises for the Millennial Generation is our ability to span the globe to unite as one group working together for issues that impact us.

Here is a new video uploaded from a YouTuber in Malaysia who interviewed people about their thoughts on Generation We. Its really pretty cool to see stuff like this

The Senate runoff in Georgia will be working hard to keep the enthusiasm going from the November election and get the same excited democratic Obama supporters to come back a month later and vote again.

This, understandably, includes young voters. The Georgia Young Dems are one of the groups rewarded with a GoGrant a few years ago and have since bulked up in time for the 2008 election. Little did everyone know that the job wouldn't be over on November 4th.

The GA-YD's are looking for vote pledges, and they are working to empower the state's young voters to come out once more on December 2nd.

According to the blog

"Once again, it is going to be the Youth Vote that makes the difference in which candidate will win. Natiowide, on November 4th, Young Voters came out in record numbers to support Democrats, we need to do it one more time. YOU have the power to change this election for Democrats. Here's what we, as Young Democrats, can do over the next 2 weeks.

1. Pledge to Vote
2. Hold a phone bank party!
3. Volunteer for a campaign

Find details to do all of these great things on the GA YD blog. Further the Georgia Democratic Party sent a call out for operatives who are in post election mode to come to Georgia and work for a few weeks to help get out the vote for Martin's race.

Much luck to our friends in Georgia - get our fellow young voters to the polls!

One thing about the Inauguration to be aware of is the many balls that are happening in Washington. Inauguration is a lot like the acceptance speech at the Oscars only they don't play you off the stage. Inaugural Balls are like the post Oscar Parties, only people wear a hell of a lot more black clothing and people are drunkenly talking about numbers, charts, graphs, and policies, rather than movies, publicists, and who's dressed the worst.

Now you have to know your balls quite well. There are a lot of balls in DC..... more than you'd think. And everyone dresses up special for their balls. Even some caucuses have balls! Thus far there are 9 official and 31 unofficial balls. Everything from Native American balls, to the official Commander and Chief Ball hosted by military personal ... you could I suppose call that the Brass Ball.. There are Hawaiian balls, in the past a Texas/Wyoming Ball presumably because that was where the Pres and VP were from. I've been told that Texas has very large balls or at least they like to think they do.

CNN did a recent special about the Balls and the extravagances that you see at these balls. Everyone wants to have a big expensive flashy ball - I mean who doesn't want to see some flashy balls right? Especially in Washington which often times is filled with so much darkness and seriousness. But, at a time when the economy is in peral and our Commander in Chief will face some pretty steep challenges on Day 1, do we want him out the night before taking in so many balls? I mean... you really have to pace yourself...

In the past balls have been paid for by flashy lobbyists and companies hoping to wine and dine key members in the Washington community. But if you've given you r two cents on Change.gov then you have also been asked to be a contributor to the transition and inauguration to prove that small donors can fund this thing just like we funded the campaign. That said... of the millions upon millions of donors to the Obama campaign only a select 4 million are expected to come to DC and lets face it... there just aren't enough balls for all of us to attend.

Similarly, most balls require tickets which are often times pricey, so the kinds of people who are able to attend either have to have the hook up or they have to have money. This means, largely that young people are once again... shut out of the influence, the celebration, and the flashy crab cakes.

But the Babyboomer Professionals get the Celebration of Change Ball... where they will all get to groove to some easy listening and sip on champagne while undoubtably talking about how big and awesome their ball is. No word on whether it will be a disco ball.

The cheapest balls I can find are certainly the unofficial balls like the Garden State Ball(New Jersey is the Garden State) which is only $125 with black tie optional... its unclear whether you get wacked at the end of the night or if the wine is from a box...

The Change the Nation Celebration Ball plays the song Celebration when you look up the invite. That is a cheap ball at $125 and hosted by a consulting firm in Maryland... So if you want to schlep way up north to see some hawt ball action, its only $125 and $125 for the cab to get there.

The Illinois State Society is hosting a $300 Gala, no word yet on if you must pronounce it gay-la or gall-la if you attend.

The Creative Coalition which works to lobby for arts policies and such is hosting their super pricey Hollywood Liberals Gala where the LA and New York finance committee will be in full ball on ball mode. Last time I saw Susan Sarandon she was quite drunk, so I'm sure the Creative Coalition won't mind if I forgo the $10,000 and sit this one out ...

While I can make jokes about the size of people's balls, or their caucus balls, or the attire for their balls, or whether they like to call their balls gay-las or whatever... the long and the short for balls is that young people, who had a huge part in the success of President Obama's election are being once again.... ignored.

No ball for you... and even if there was a youthy ball, a small youthy ball, with popcorn and boxed wine, Snoop calling Obama the Prizzle... whatever ... we would then have to figure out how the hell to help young people pay the thousands of dollars for hotel rooms or to rent apartments for the weekend.

CNN has one thing right - we want to party with Obama, we want to celebrate the success, but having big balls is not quite as great as passing policies that impact our lives, particularly when you're a demographic or interest group that will have no access and/or no credibility when it comes to admission, official Presidential Balls or not. Our night can just be about free ballin'.