I believe Joe Biden’s presidency will be seen as one of the greatest in the history of our nation. His accomplishments are many, and his willingness to place nation over self is extraordinary – almost unheard of in today’s world. I am cautiously hopeful about Kamala Harris. Why cautious? Let me explain.

I was speaking on the phone with a technical expert the other day and he mistook my voice for that of a man. On the phone, It happens sometimes. In this case, I decided to take advantage of it. I knew if my voice was clearly that of a woman, I would likely be dismissed if I spoke as someone with knowledge about computers. I knew as a man I would be less likely to be challenged, so I went with Paul’s voice. To no surprise, the expert listened intently and quickly offered a solution that respected my knowledge. It has been a long time since that happened.

Much to my chagrin, women are still not taken seriously. As I have often said in my speeches, “Apparently I became stupid when I became a woman.” I cannot have multiple gifts, only one. I cannot have broad knowledge about a lot of subjects. If I am allowed to be an expert at all, it is about a single subject.

For a lot of folks, including many conservative women, Kamala Harris is too strong, too self-assured, too ambitious, and too aggressive. It’s 2024, yet I can still type those words, and not ironically. I deal with it all the time, and when I contrast my experience over the last ten years with my experience in the decades before, it astounds me.

People think we choose to transition genders because we think there is some cultural benefit. Uh, think again. Why would anyone give up so much power unless they felt called to do so? I will never again have the privilege and authority I had as a man.

Occasionally someone will speak positively about me as a “girl boss” type, strong and confident. They speak it as a compliment. And while that serves me positively in a few environments, it works against me in most. Too many men are threatened by a strong woman. More than a few women are threatened too.

Kamala Harris will probably choose Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro as her vice-presidential nominee, should his background check come back clear. Gretchen Whitmer would also be an excellent choice, but from where I sit, I cannot see that happening. Two strong women on one political ticket?

I live in Boulder County, Colorado, one of the most liberal counties in the nation. All three of our county commissioners are women. Since I’ve lived here, every Lyons, Colorado mayor has been a woman. I love living in Lyons and Boulder County. I currently serve as a member of the Lyons Board of Trustees and Mayor Pro Tem. The fact that I am a woman (and a transgender woman at that) has not been used against me, but I am not living under any illusions. If my name was still Paul, I do not doubt that I would be taken more seriously. I’ve lived in both genders. Almost nothing is easier as a woman.

I am encouraged by the enthusiasm I see for the Harris campaign. I have no doubt she is more qualified for office in every way than her opponent. Still, I worry. Unlike Germany, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Taiwan, and New Zealand, all of which had women as heads of state during the Covid crisis, all of whom did remarkably well, America is still pretty misogynistic. Equality might be in the Declaration of Independence, but in reality we remain a patriarchal nation. Hopefully, November 6 changes that.

And so it goes.

Most of the time I do not hide the fact that I am 73 years old. Most people think I am a good bit younger, a compliment I greatly appreciate, but the fact is that I am 73. At this age I’m not sure I need to be running anything other than a road race.

It is true that I run 7 days a week and have barely slowed down my travel schedule, even in today’s awful airport experience. I rarely take elevators unless the building has more than six floors, and I hold down five part-time jobs. Still, I don’t think I should be running anything. The closest I come is in my job on the town board.

It is not because I am not able. It’s that I’m a Baby Boomer and in great numbers we Boomers are refusing to get out of the way. Joe Biden is from the Builder Generation. Except for Rupert Murdoch and a handful of others, most of the Builder Generation folks got out of the way a long time ago.

It is time for younger generations to take over. Gen X, the Millennials, Gen Z, – they are all chomping at the bit to lead, except that we won’t let them. You saw the same debate I saw. That was an old man who was lost on that stage. I think he is the finest president in a generation, but at 81, it is time for him to step aside.

In the church world I inhabited, CEOs and lead pastors usually left somewhere between 60 and 65 years of age. I stepped down as CEO at 60 and left the company at 62. Thirty-five years was enough.  I intended to stick around as non-executive chair for about 8 more years but my transition abruptly terminated that plan.

I am terribly concerned about the future of democracy in our nation. This election is one of the most important in our 248 year history. If Trump is elected again, I am terribly afraid of the kind of nation my granddaughters will inhabit. My own wellbeing is at stake as well.

I have an acquaintance who is vacationing in the Middle East this summer. I mentioned to her this week that I could not visit that nation. I could be arrested and imprisoned. While I still think it is unlikely, with the current makeup of our Supreme Court, I am afraid if Trump is elected there could be parts of the United States where I could not travel. I’m already terribly uncomfortable in Texas, a state I must pass through frequently. It is telling that I felt much safer in Scotland this spring than I do in the southern United States. Our children and grandchildren deserve a better nation than the one we are leaving them.

I would prefer to see an open Democratic convention, with a limited number of presidential candidates suggested by Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries. I figure the chances of that are pretty slim.

I don’t write about politics much, because outside of my work as Mayor Pro Tem, I am hardly all that knowledgeable. But I have written to my congressman, both of my senators, and the president himself to ask that Biden withdraw from the race. It feels like a civic duty to have done so.

And so it goes.

I was watching the television show Godless with a friend. In the second episode a character is introduced as a colonel and the de facto mayor of the town says, “Colonel of what?” I turned to my friend and said, “I’m a colonel.” She laughed. I said, “Seriously, I am a colonel. I am an official Kentucky Colonel, you know, like Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame. I also met Colonel Sanders once. I wrote about it in my first book.”

When you’ve been alive a certain number of years you have a lot of stories to tell. Some escape being retold, something for which your children are grateful. I’ve not talked about my life as a Kentucky Colonel in a very long time

I’ve always loved fried chicken. My grandmother’s chicken was the best, my mother’s a close second, followed by Aunt Ruth and Aunt Lela. Way, way, way down the line was the chicken from Colonel Sanders.

We went to a restaurant after church almost every Sunday when I was growing up in Akron, Ohio. One Sunday a brand new sit-down restaurant had opened in a shopping center in Fairlawn. There were tables and waiters and whatnot. As we sat eating chicken, a white Cadillac pulled up and Colonel Sanders stepped out and came into the restaurant. He went from table to table asking people how they liked the chicken. He asked my mother and she lied and said, “It’s delicious.” I knew it was a lie because I knew it was not delicious. It was just okay. In fact, in my book of stories, Laughter, Tears, and In-Between – Soulful Stories for the Journey, I titled that particular story, “Just Okay Chicken.”

We didn’t know anything about Colonel Sanders at the time, other than that his picture was on the sign in front of the restaurant. We didn’t know he was from Indiana, not Kentucky, that he had a history of numerous business failures before hitting it big with KFC. We didn’t know he was made a Kentucky Colonel in the year more colonels were named than any other in history. We just knew he got out of a white Cadillac and wore a white suit with a black western bow tie. He didn’t speak to me, nor I to him, children being expected to be silent and all.

As for my own declaration as an Honorable Kentucky Colonel, it happened sometime around the early to mid-90s. I had a friend who was the Assistant Secretary of State of Kentucky and he nominated me. The official declaration arrived shortly thereafter, signed by the governor and the secretary of state. I have it in a box somewhere in the basement. It’d be kinda fun to get it out and put it on the wall in my office. You know, as a conversation starter.

“Just Okay Chicken” was a lot of reader’s favorite story in my first book. I have a few copies of the book left. I’m saving them for my granddaughters. You can find the book on Amazon. I know because I just looked it up. Since it was published 23 years ago it’s out of print, but you can buy a used copy for eight bucks if you find yourself oddly driven to read 48 short stories from my previous life.

Do I eat Kentucky Fried Chicken anymore? Nope. I’d prefer my arteries not stand on end, hardened like Kentucky limestone. Occasionally I do dream about my grandmother’s fried chicken. She’d pick out a chicken from the pen by the barn; my grandfather would cut its head off on a tree stump and the chicken would take off running around the yard, headless. I remember one chicken that went clear around the side of the house, across the driveway, and into Grandma’s garden before she finally gave up the ghost. My brother always hid when the chicken’s heads were cut off. I watched with delight, much as I enjoyed the poems of Edgar Allen Poe later in my childhood. I guess there was a sadistic streak that has since gone underground.

Grandma never let me watch the de-feathering and whatnot. I didn’t see the chicken again until it was frying up in a larded pan. If allowed, I ate four pieces, a leg, both wings, and a thigh. Come to think of it, when I was around she probably had to fry more than one chicken. The chicken dinner would be followed by blackberry cobbler or maybe a butterscotch pie. Grandma Stone seemed to believe her calling was to satisfy the gustatory cravings of a four-year-old.

Later in life I read that Colonel Sanders was really into astrology. The sale of the company to John Y. Brown, who later became the governor of Kentucky, was helped along by Brown’s knowledge of Colonel Sander’s fixation with the stars, his offer being made when the stars were aligned just so. That was clever.

When introduced to speak at religious gatherings, I’m usually referred to as Reverend Doctor Paula Stone Williams. I never request that introduction, but it comes with the territory. What if I asked to be introduced as Reverend Doctor Colonel Paula Stone Williams? Too ostentatious? Yeah, there’d probably be somebody in the back who would say, “Colonel of what?”

And so it goes.