I try to tune into signs around me that there are things to which I need to pay attention. Lately I have noticed that I need to listen to and create stories.

Several years ago my sister took a series of personal growth courses. She invited me to attend one of their open house evenings and the two things that struck me most were when people shared their stories and the lesson that the problem with assumptions about why people behave the way they do or how they react to us is that often we don't know the other person's story. We tend to fill in the blanks based on our own stories.

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Kathy Kiely and Jill Lawrence reported recently at USA Today that Hillary Rodham Clinton made these "blunt remarks about race" in an interview when asked how she could win the Democratic nomination.

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."


"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

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Mothers love their children and are proud of them. The want the world for them and would shield them from life's every disappointment and pain if they could. And no matter how old the child, a mother carries her love, pride and concern in her heart forever.

I know these things because my mother reminds me regularly. Often when discussing my career choices.

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Do you ever notice how when you learn about a new idea or thing you start noticing it everywhere? Like when you buy a new car and suddenly everyone around you is driving the same one. Or you learn about a hot up-and-coming singer and you hear their latest hit song at the mall, on hold music, in a TV commercial and so on. Your mind gets tuned into that thing and it begins to leap out at you and infiltrate your consciousness.

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With the relentless focus on the voting behavior of black and white women in the Democratic primaries, far less attention has been paid to the voices and votes of Latinas (not to mention that women of any other race or ethnicity are for all intents and purposes invisible to the mainstream media). Perhaps this is because the media cannot ascribe reasoning to other demographic groups of women as easily and instead might have to consider that women are capable of understanding policy positions from candidates and voting on that basis.

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