Sometimes when Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey got up to speak I would hold my breath. She’s not a smooth talker, sometimes speaking haltingly like she’s trying to gather her thoughts. But as tentative as she could be in her delivery, she was always strong in her convictions.

Still, I’m happy about Lynn announcing this week that she will not run for an 11th term in the House of Representatives. For one reason. She can cut back on the speech-making and the mocking of her fumbles by media critics. One of her supporters standing next to me when Lynn made her announcement said, “Can you imagine taking on a job where half of it required you to do something you hated doing and knew you weren’t very good at?”

That was about the time the coastal California wind swept through Lynn’s Petaluma backyard, tangled her speech notes, she lost track of what she was about to say, then shrugged and said, “Well, you know.”

Smooth talking is definitely an asset in politics but it isn’t everything. Washington is full of silver tongued slicks in a suit. Dick Cheney is good with words. Anthony Weiner was a definite wit.

Actually Lynn does quite ably in one-on-one talks. Rachel Maddow closed one interview with Lynn, saying, “always a pleasure to hear your straight talk, Ma’m.”

Yes, straight talk. Not flowery. Not clever. Not mean. No winky-winks.

And always a brave heart. In doing exactly what her constituents wanted. Never wavering.

Lynn has opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and American involvement in Libya. She’s delivered nearly 400 speeches on the House floor in support of bringing U.S. troops home. She voted against the USA Patriot Act, saying that it recklessly violated civil liberties. She once proposed the government establish a Department of Peace with cabinet status. In 2006, she gave antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan a ticket to George Bush’s State of the Union speech.

She initially voted against the $700 billion financial bailout because she said it wouldn’t do enough to provide jobs. She pushed for a stronger public health care option than was eventually adopted in the Affordable Care Act and waited quietly while rowdies at a town hall meeting in Petaluma shouted her down when she said, “our health care system is broken.”

Nancy Pelosi has called her the “conscience of the Congress.”

Lynn went to Washington when she was 55 in 1992, the famous Year of the Women when a record number of women joined the House and Senate. It was not lost on those who gathered in Lynn’s back yard that coincidentally the same day she announced she would be leaving Congress another congresswoman, from Minnesota, announced her bid for president, even though about the only things the two have in common is their gender and their job title.

For example, Lynn Woolsey fought against privatizing Social Security when George W. proposed it. Now Lynn is re-engaged in the current Republican assault on Social Security. The Minnesota Congresswoman has bragged that were her GOP crowd in control they could get rid of Social Security over one long weekend.

Lynn’s good pal and colleague Congresswoman Barbara Lee credits Lynn for never being shy about connecting her personal experiences to her political beliefs. Lynn is the first member of Congress to have once been a single mother on welfare, so of course she supports social safety nets. When you ask her about choice she tells the story about her grandmother, pregnant with her first child and almost to term when something went wrong and the doctor told her husband there was no way to save both his wife and the baby. And he chose his wife. And two years later Lynn’s mother was born.

Lynn, who has promised to continue her anti-war efforts and work to protect the California coast from offshore oil drilling, is the real thing. Nancy Pelosi has called her the “conscience of the Congress.”

That’s certainly worth more than glib talk from suits in wingtips.

It was fitting that on a November weekend when the temperatures soared into the record-breaking 80s I was at two events where we were reminded that care-taking the environment is up to us in this most green corner of the universe.

As Ann Hancock from Sonoma County’s Climate Protection Campaign said, “If we can’t do it here, where will it happen?”

That was at the Peace and Justice Center dinner where Ann was honored for her environmental leadership. Ann used to be in real estate but wanted something on her tombstone other than “sold houses” and now is all about getting individuals and businesses and local governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. She calls climate change the preeminent public health issue. She says that climate change, “unchecked, will swamp all other issues.”

The next night Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, away from Washington and back in earth-friendly territory, said pretty much the same thing, that we need to keep the green light on, given how Washington is filling up with global warming and climate change scoffers.

Green-wise, California triumphed against giant oil companies in voting down Proposition 23 that would have turned back the state’s climate change efforts. But it didn’t come through with new money for state parks which would have been funded by an extra $18 on vehicle registration fees. Sonoma County did, however, vote for the measure.

Lynn Woolsey was at a dinner for LandPaths, a greenie group that helps acquire private land for public access, builds trails, puts on hikes and finds ways for people to not only get into the outback but help maintain it, seeing how there isn’t enough public money or rangers to do it.

The LandPaths people talked about the importance of having not only good ways to get out into open spaces but a place to sit and take it all in. They call it a “sit spot,” where you might prop yourself on a rock or a piece of beach and just be quietly alone in nature.

I was thinking that the scoffers and disbelievers and even those who think we can put environmental issues on temporary hold could all use a sit spot. Take off those business suits and shiny shoes and pull on some hiking boots and maybe those funny looking pants that zip off into shorts and give themselves a time-out. It wouldn’t necessarily change their politics but it might give them renewed appreciation for clean air.

One Land Pather said that being in nature was more than a luxury or a right. It is also a need. The other day I took an early morning bike ride on a county parks trail. The air smelled like vinegar which probably came from fermenting grapes, apples or over-ripe compost. There was also the not so faint perfume of cow poop. You could bottle it, color it green and call it Aroma Sonoma.

There were joggers and bicyclists and a group of school kids. A homeless guy with his life in a grocery cart. A slow-moving couple, one pushing a portable oxygen tank. A woman sat alone on a bench. She could have been looking for rain clouds or coming up with a poem. Maybe wondering what she was going to do about keeping her house or finding another job. Or maybe she was just in her sit spot.

Helen Mirren may have just helped out John McCain. At least in the ageism debate.
Many people automatically assume that a 63-year-old woman is too old for a bikini. And many argue that a 72-year-old man is too old to become president.

Both concerns come from the popular “ism” that a person’s chronological age is their most defining characteristic and therefore determines who they are and what they can do.

Helen Mirren has demonstrated that she does swimmingly in a red bikini, as evidenced in photos of her Italian vacation which won hurrahs for her flat stomach, smooth thighs and chutzpah. But, even though her physical charms appear limitless, and they are enviable, it’s still her superior acting that counts most.

Now, how about John McCain? We’ve got his various political positions to bat around. But is his age a fair target? I hope the Obama campaign can take the high road on this issue. First, because their guy, at 47, could be vulnerable to ageism from the other end. And because he doesn’t want to offend people over age 50 who are expected to make up half the voters in November. There are a lot of Boomers, especially ones hitting retirement age, who are sensitive to being labeled by the year they were born.

Men age, women rot.

I discussed the age issue with a couple of powerful Democratic women who you might expect to seize on any negative they could find on McCain. But they think his vintage should be left out of the contest. California Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey and former Colorado congresswoman Pat Schroeder know their “isms.” Both were Hillary Clinton supporters and smarted over the sexism that came out during her campaign.

Schroeder, who was in Congress for more than 20 years and made a bid for the presidential nomination in 1987, was a regular on talk shows earlier this year, blasting the media for its misogyny, likening the treatment of Hillary Clinton to the Salem Witch Trials. Schroeder saw some ageism, too, in the Hillary attacks, recalling Rush Limbaugh’s comment about Americans not wanting to watch a woman president grow old before their eyes. And even though Schroeder still thinks sexism was the greater culprit, she said, “There’s no question that sexism and ageism are very related. It’s the old thing about ‘men age, women rot.’

Were a woman contemporary of McCain to put herself out there, the response would be harsher, said Schroeder. For example, she thinks Dianne Feinstein would make a great candidate. But Feinstein is 75. And if she ran, said Schroeder, “they’d nail her on her age.”

The last time Lynn Woolsey ran for re-election, a columnist, who supported her younger male opponent, said it was time to get someone younger with more energy. Woolsey defended herself, saying, “I can’t help my age but I don’t believe anyone has more energy than I do.”

Woolsey, who is two years younger than McCain, said she doesn’t think 72 is that old. “Age isn’t the issue. But health and vitality are.”

Schroeder said that’s what people should be looking at – “to make sure the person has good mental faculties and is in fairly good shape.”

And then you can go after that person on the really important things – like the war, health care, immigration, women’s rights, messing with the ocean digging for oil.

The rest is no more relevant than how you stuff a wild bikini.