Obama's notes: A lesson in expository writing

Not everyone does all of their editing on a wiki page or in the computer.

This image of Obama making edits to a speech comes from Jocelyn Hale, executive director of The Loft Literary Center. It reminds me of what we used to say in composition rhetoric classes back when I taught expository writing while going to graduate school at the University of Minnesota:

• Put everything down and then begin rearranging segments and replacing words
• If it is awkward or grammatically incorrect, pause, step back and rethink your idea
• You discover what you think as you shape your thoughts and research into words on paper
• You may surprise yourself with a changed opinion
• You refine your ideas as you craft and reshape your drafts
• Sometimes it's good to step back from the computer and and add some handwritten revisions
• Think about various contexts for your text: how does it carry over?
• Try reading your piece aloud
• Share it with someone else to see if it works for your intended audience

In Dreams Begin Responsibility: Martin Luther King Day 2010

Reiko Eoh's cartoon commentary on Martin Luther King Day 2010 reminds me of the phrase "In dreams begins responsibility," used as an epigraph for William Butler Yeats' poem "Responsibilities 1914" (and attributed, mysteriously enough, to simply an "Old Play").


The phrase is sometimes quoted as "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," the title of a frequently anthologized short story by Delmore Schwartz. In one of the PBS American Masters series documentaries, the rock musician Lou Reed (a former student of Schwartz), talks about the influence the poet and writer had on him as an artist. Reed calls it "the best short story I'd ever read."


I haven't yet read it, but would like to now. Wikipedia summarizes this way:

The story tells of an unnamed young man who has a dream that he is in an old-fashioned movie theater in 1909. As he sits down to watch the film, he starts to realize that it is a motion picture documenting his parents' courtship. The black-and-white silent film is of very poor quality, and the camera is shaky, but nonetheless he is engrossed. Soon the young man starts to get upset. He yells things at the screen, trying to influence the outcome of his parents' courtship and the other people in the audience begin to think he is crazy. Several times the character breaks down. In the end he shouts at his parents when it appears they are going to break up, and he is dragged out of the theater by an usher who reprimands him. The animadversion is important to the story, as it reveals a bit of the character's insecurity. In the end, the character wakes up from his dream and notes that it is the snowy morning of his twenty-first birthday.

(Schwartz's own parents divorced when he was nine, an event that is said to have had a profound impact on him.) LOVE this pic of Delmore at an angle in his chair, with all those books at angles and odds, too. And this other photo of him with his bookish cohort.

 Here is Yeats' poem:

"In dreams begins responsibility."

                   Old Play.

"How am I fallen from myself, for a long time now
I have not seen the Prince of Chang in my dreams."

                           Khoung-fou-tseu.

PARDON, old fathers, if you still remain
Somewhere in ear-shot for the story's end,
Old Dublin merchant "free of ten and four"
Or trading out of Galway into Spain;
And country scholar, Robert Emmet's friend,
A hundred-year-old memory to the poor;
Traders or soldiers who have left me blood
That has not passed through any huxter's loin,
Pardon, and you that did not weigh the cost,
Old Butlers when you took to horse and stood
Beside the brackish waters of the Boyne
Till your bad master blenched and all was lost;
You merchant skipper that leaped overboard
After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay,
You most of all, silent and fierce old man
Because you were the spectacle that stirred
My fancy, and set my boyish lips to say
"Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun ";
Pardon that for a barren passion's sake,
Although I have come close on forty-nine
I have no child, I have nothing but a book,
Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine.

January 1914.

That's a long way from Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, and from the headaches facing Obama. The common theme? Something to do with legacy, with the traces of history inherited from one's forebears. The specific challenge of shouldering the burden of "the dream," in all of its ambiguity. The film of the past ("screen memories," as Freud would describe them) that affect our Ability to Respond. The sense of "falling from oneself." The desire to affect both chance and change, and to avoid squandering energy on barren passions.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. put it in a letter from the Birmingham jail:

"We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right."

Pushing the Pause Button on Social Media

I'm about to get on an airplane tomorrow, to visit relatives in Holland and Germany, and I've decided to push the pause button on social media updates for the next couple of weeks. No facebook, no twitter, no elenabella. Instead, I'll slip into the comfortable obscurity of a face-to-face life, camera, sketchbook and journal in hand. This is an experiment: I'm sure there will be much to say about the trip. But I won't always have ready access to the web, so I've made the decision to (try to) put the internet out of my mind. My focus will be on direct conversation, biking, hiking, sleeping, relaxing, and experiencing the chance to explore a few places that are now deeply familiar landing spots over in Europe. I'll be sharing some highlights after July 7th: come back in two weeks and find out what we did on our summer vacation! Bon voyage! Auf wiedersehen! Abientot j'espere..

And now, just for fun, that heroic moment when Obama swatted a fly. I like the fact that he slaps his own hand while smashing the fly: it's a double whammy, a calculated risk.

Support OLC Nominee Dawn Johnsen

As a follow-up to yesterday's theme, here is a bit of (unfortunate) suspense, and an important political issue in which cell phones and email messages play a role. I'm quoting below from the "We Support OLC Nominee Dawn Johnsen" Facebook page. Indiana senator Richard Lugar has just recently confirmed his support for Johnsen; please consider sending him a thank you, and encouraging others – including new Dem Arlen Specter, to join him.

There's more on this story from the Wall Street Journal, by Walter Dellinger: "Presidential Picks Deserve a Vote – Executive nominees shouldn't be filibustered."

Read below to learn about Johnsen's situation, with information about how you can help. Harold Koh is facing the same obstacle; there's a link regarding his case at the bottom of the post.

In January of this year, President Obama nominated esteemed Constitutional scholar Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel, making what was described by Salon contributor (and former Constitutional attorney) Glenn Greenwald as Obama's "best [nomination] yet, perhaps by far."

Despite her impressive credentials and wide-spread support within the legal community, since her nomination Ms. Johnsen has been targeted by fringe groups who have collaborated to form an impressive, albeit baseless, coalition aimed at obstructing her nomination and sullying her sterling reputation. As a result of this campaign of distortion, Ms. Johnsen's confirmation has now been delayed indefinitely and faces the threat of being filibustered.

Ms. Johnsen, a graduate of Yale Law School, a member of the OLC under former President Clinton, and a beloved professor of law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, is, in Greenwald's words, “a true expert on executive power, and specifically, the role and obligation of the OLC in restricting presidential decisions to their lawful scope.”

She has exhibited this expertise on countless occasions, consistently and publicly denouncing the widespread abuses of power that took place under the Bush Administration. Following the release last April of one of the Bush OLC "torture" memos, for instance, Ms. Johnsen wrote an impassioned article for Slate in which she decried the legal deficiencies pervasive throughout the memo, from the gross exaggerations of executive power to the incredible distortions of the law.

Please join us in voicing your support for brilliant legal scholar Dawn Johnsen against the baseless and disingenuous attacks that have been levied against her. As the NYTimes recently editorialized in her support, “There is no corner of the executive branch in greater need of a new direction than the Office of Legal Counsel. The impressive Ms. Johnsen is an excellent choice to provide it.”

Here are a few quick and easy steps you can take to support Dawn Johnsen:

1. Join the Facebook group in support of Ms. Johnson, and then encourage your friends and colleagues to do the same.

2. Please take 5-10 minutes and contact the following Senators. Ms. Johnsen made it through the Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote, and there is the threat of a filibuster looming. We are going to have to change a few minds to get her confirmed!

**IMPORTANT New Senator to contact** Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) (202).224.6551 http://bennelson.senate.gov/contact

Sen. Richard Lugar (202).224.4814 (D.C. office)
(317).226.5555 (Indianapolis, IN office)
http://lugar.senate.gov/contact/ (e-mail link)

Sen. John Cornyn (202).224.2934
http://cornyn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm (e-mail link)

Sen. Mitch McConnell (202).224.2541
http://mcconnell.senate.gov/contact_form.cfm (e-mail link)

Sen. Arlen Spector (202).224.4254
http://specter.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm (e-mail link)

Simply tell whoever answers the phone that you strongly support the nomination of Dawn Johnsen as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel and hope for Sen. [Blank]'s support when she is up for confirmation.

3. Call or email the Senators of your state, if they are not already listed above.
Here is the site to find contact information for individual Senators:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

4. Take 30 seconds to sign this petition supporting Ms. Johnsen's nomination,
sponsored by People for the American Way:
https://secure.pfaw.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=DawnJohnsen&autologin=true
JServSessionIdr010=4s1m9jhsm1.app305a

5. Once you have joined this group, please consider joining the group "We Support Harold Hongju Koh," a similar group in support of President Obama's nominee for legal advisor to the State Department who, like Ms. Johnsen, has been viciously and wrongfully targeted and faces a threatened filibuster.

Here is the group's page: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=61354015962

Obama Breaks Through the Handshake Taboo

My nephew Andrew passed this along from Papua New Guinea, with this comment: "This is the most powerful photo in the series [of Obama in Europe]. Remember they are not supposed to shake hands, but the two brothers couldn't resist the historic moment. The black royal cop never imagined in his wildest dream that he would usher a black American president into the British corridors of power. Nice."

Click here to find A.A. Gill's op-ed,"Larger Than Life in London" from the April 4, 2009 New York Times, about the significance of this handshake. And here is George Packer's "Obamism" piece from The New Yorker on April 13th.

I like the photo, with the black fence as vertical grid coming up in between and behind "the two brothers."

April is No Longer the Cruelest Month

It's April Fools' Day, one of my favorite holidays as a child. The images today are paintings by Susan Bee; they seem to capture the capacious foolhardiness of the day. I love her trees, laden with objects: this one is called "In a Medieval Garden."

I wish I had a good "fool" for all of you here at elenabella, but the best I can do is remind you to keep your ears open when listening to the news today on National Public Radio – they always do a delicious story that veers off into the absurd. I recall the year when the Starbucks CEO talked about an American coffee pipeline (hot Joe from the kitchen tap!) and the year a teenager described her cosmetic surgery procedure for belly button removal. Here is more, from that great aggregator, Wikipedia:

National Public Radio: Every year National Public Radio in the United States does an extensive news story on April 1st. These usually start off more or less reasonably, and get more and more unusual. A recent example is the story on the "iBod" a portable body control device.^[22] In 2008 it reported that the IRS, to assure rebate checks were actually spent, was shipping comsumer products instead of checks. ^[23] It also runs false sponsor mentions, such as "Support for NPR comes from the Soylent Corporation, manufacturing protein-rich food products in a variety of colors. Soylent Green is People.”^[24]

Google also does April Fools' Day hoaxes, so be on your guard.

It's also a good day to take a look at T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland," a poem that was recently modified by the new American poet laureate, to make it less depressing. Under the Obama administration, the poet laureate has been charged with going back and expunging negativity and obscurity from poetry, making it more accessible and transparent. The opening line of this famous poem now reads:

APRIL is the kindest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

I like that, and it does seem pretty clear. The Greek epigraph to the poem has also been removed (because, after all, who reads Greek anymore?!): references to Hades, even when in a dead language, can only signal a disincentive to hope. (It's also really annoying when poets produce footnotes to their work, making you dig deeper to excavate meaning: who has time for that? Try to get it into a tagline, people!)

Let's hope the new Obama poetic language initiatives work, producing an April more kind than cruel.

Harry Belafonte and Odetta as Henry and Liza

Harry Belafonte performed "There's a Hole in the Bucket" with Odetta (Odetta Holmes) on May 2, 1960 in Carnegie Hall. This version appeared on his album, Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall, where he also sang with The Chad Mitchell Trio and Miriam Makeba.

There are a couple of YouTube Videos of this song performed by Belafonte and Odetta. Not impressive for their visual content, they nonetheless capture the vocal moment when these two wonderful performers played Henry and Liza. What strikes me is how clear and simple and evocative the music is: just two voices and guitar, with all the annoyance and irony of an "infinite loop" between an exasperated woman and a man reluctant to "fix it" on his own.

The photo of Belafonte here is from the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C with Sidney Poitier and Charlton Heston, back when Heston had causes other than the NRA.

Sadly, Odetta died on December 2nd, 2008, before she could perform (as she had hoped) at Obama's inauguration. In 1961, she sang "I'm on My Way" before Martin Luther King's famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Obama asked her to sing that song at his inauguration 46 years later: it would have been an amazing "rhyme in time." (I do love Odetta's hats in these two pictures.)

This Guy Has It Down: Obama Reads Bush's Letter



Now who says we can't continue to enjoy political humor during the Obama years? This guy, from Funny or Die, has it down!

"Praise Song for the Day" by Elizabeth Alexander

Here is the poem that was written and read by Elizabeth Alexander last Tuesday at Obama's inauguration, typed up by my mother, poet Joyce Kennedy.

This link goes to Alexander's bio in a program for a 1994 conference called "Furious Flower: A Revolution in African American Poetry" honoring Gwendolyn Brooks – there's even a letter there from Bill Clinton, sending his and Hillary's greetings to the participants. (I wonder how often – if ever – that happened in the Bush administration.) The conference notes make me realize how little poetry we see in bookstores any longer, in even those bookstores that are still around.

I thought it was fantastic to have a poet at the inauguration, as it was to have world class musicians playing at the magical moment when power changed hands, right at noon, in advance of the bungled oath. My mother has this to say about the public response:

In googling for the poem, I was surprised to find a great deal of negative criticism. Seems people did not think it "poetic" enough--it didn't "soar," it was filled with banal, every-day images, prosaic language, etc. They didn't like the way she delivered the poem, either – the fact that people started dispersing as she was reading (I noticed that, too) meant that the words were not inspiring to them. Of course, a lot of the criticism, as in many blog responses, comes from opinionated, loud-mouthed (metaphorically) people who probably don't know a fig about poetry.

The comments come, I'm sure, from people's notions of what poetry is, what it is supposed to do. I thought Alexander's poem fit in well with Obama's respect for "the least of these," for community, and for the power of words.

I do think it is very difficult to write an "occasional" poem. One of the bloggers invoked Robert Frost, the poet at John Kennedy's inauguration (and the first one to read at such an event). But Frost wrote a banal poem for the occasion which luckily got blown away in the wind (another version has it that he couldn't see the words with his 87 year-old-eyes) so he recited one of his good poems from memory.

I didn't find Alexander's poem banal – I thought it drew well on themes associated with Obama, in language ("say it plain") that could be understood by many. It's interesting what a bad rap poetry gets (a headline in The New York Times this past week, on another topic entirely, was "No Time for Poetry"): it's usually seen as either too accessible or too obscure. I attribute this to the fact that so few people seem to read it or give it any serious thought, resorting to relatively inchoate notions of some kind of "soaring" language. Like other art forms, it exists within traditions – Alexander clearly knows them well.

(Of course the reading is on YouTube, too: the comments there are particularly dumb, of the "im not that interested in poetry and stuff but even i know poetry rymes" school of criticism.) Here's to some praise for the Praise Song – and may we always have presidents who include poets in the mix.


Praise Song for the Day:
A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
The will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp.

Praise song for walking forward in that light.

Elizabeth Alexander, 2009, All Rights Reserved

Mixed Race Family of Humans

Remember "Society's Child," the 1965 song written by Janis Ian when she was 13 years old, on the topic of interracial romance? The song describes the turmoil of a young girl who tells her black boyfriend she can't see him anymore: her mother says "But honey, he's not our kind," and her teachers "all laugh, their smirking stares/cutting deep down in our affairs."

The song was a sensation at the time, partly because of the then-taboo topic, and also because it was written and performed by someone so young. (I remember being intrigued by that image of Janis Ian, slouching in her newsboy's cap: there were more kinds of difference going on than just race.) I recall intense conversations with friends who insisted that the children of any mixed race couple would be accepted by no one; neither blacks nor whites: they'd "belong" no where.

I thought of this when reading a about the families of Barack and Michelle Obama in an article in The New York Times called "In First Family, A Nations' Many Faces":

The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.

My own family includes Sarah Lepani, the mother of my sister's husband, who lives in a village in the Trobriand Islands. My sister married Charles, from Papua New Guinea, where white people are called "dim-dims": their children joke about being only "dim."

My brother married an African-American who spent some years in her 20s in Paris. Their two daughters are the same ages as Malia and Sasha Obama, so they are able to identify with those young girls – who now somehow belong to "everyone."

I married someone from Germany. One of Andreas's aunts married an Iranian, so he has cousins who grew up in Tehran. His sister, Susanne, was married to Adama, from Africa, before his tragic, untimely death from meningitis. Some of Adama's brothers and sisters are Christian, others are Muslim – as determined by their father, who saw advantages in each religious view.

In my extended family, then, there are those who speak Kirawina, "place tok" from the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea, as well as English, German, French, Spanish, and Persian. We represent cultures from North America, Europe, the Persian Gulf, Africa, Australia, and Melanesia. I can appreciate the beauty of Obama's family, the richness of the differences they represent.

And it's not that long ago that my mother's mother, who was a Scotch-Irish American, made the big cross-cultural step of marrying the son of Norwegian immigrants.


"Democratic Vistas" by Richard McGuire

I was very struck by the cover of the New York Times Book Review this week, an illustration by Richard McGuire.

Called "Democratic Vistas," it shows Obama looking out over the long stretch of the U.S., his left hand on an "open to the left side" Bible. Far off, across city, field, plain, and the Rockies, there's an image of the Golden Gate Bridge.

It's a gorgeous image, and it hasn't been posted to The New York Times website – to have seen the image Sunday, you had to get your hands on a print version of the paper.

I emailed Richard to ask if I could scan and post it here, and he generously said yes. I think he should offer it as a lithograph (if he's able to do so), to sell among all that other Obama memorabilia.

McGuire has created some wonderful children's books, in addition to many covers of The New Yorker. He's also been working on an animated film project, Fear(s) of the Dark, produced by Prima Linea. He discusses that project here in an interview with Steven Heller. Heller is co-founder fo the MFA in Design Criticism at the School of Visual Arts, and author of the very interesting on-line Daily Heller. Here's an admiring post about McGuire at a weblog called daddytypes.com, too.

That's it for now...I'm off to watch at actual Transformative Moment take place, as Obama becomes our 44th president. It's quite extraordinary and thrilling!

Lift a Pint to This One!



Birthday Shouts to Charles and Veitania

I want to send out belated birthday greetings to my brother-in-law, Charles Lepani, and my niece, Veitania, who both had birthdays in late October. Here is a photo of the two of them, celebrating.

Charles is now living in Canberra as High Commissioner of Papua New Guinea to the Australian government. His remarkable career has taken him from childhood in the Trobriand Islands (where his mother Sarah still lives, and where his father, Lepani Watson, was bigpela man) to Australia, Port Moresby, Boston, Hawai'i (where he was the director of the Pacific Islands Development Program of the East-West Center, where Barack Obama Sr. was a student when he met Barack's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham), Belguim, and back to the Pacific. Happy Birthday, Charles!

Veitania (also known as Tani) was born in Belguim sixteen years ago. When she was eleven she came to live with us in Indiana for almost six months, fresh from an extended visit with Kathy to the Trobriand Islands. She delighted us with her stories, her dancing, her beautiful voice, her openness to new friendships and a brand new school ("Where are the desks?") and to life in a bunkbed in the basement with Savannah. It's been way too long since we've seen Veitania, who is growing into a gorgeous young woman, filled with spirit and promise. We love you, Tani – Happy Sweet Sixteen! (and tell us...just what was in that golden bag?!)

Happy Birthday, Kathy!

My sister Kathy is having a birthday today, far from here, in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, where she is working as a consultant on HIV/AIDS issues and visiting Suzie, Andrew, Thierry and Thealani. Here's a big shout to my beloved sista, for whom I feel such deep admiration and love, and to her son Andrew and his wonderful family. Hello to her son Nathanial, too, who scored the winning goal in a soccer game in Madang with his adopted team, the Eastern Stars, a Milne Bay team!

Here is what Kathy has to say about the US election from the PNG point of view:

PNG is in a high over Obama's win. The hotel where I'm staying has an Obama Special for the month – a pizza with mixed toppings and a bit of ham and pineapple for the Hawaiian connection!

Committed Bonds of Affection: What's Not to Love?

Today there have been rallies across the country in a "National Day of Protest" marking the passage of Proposition 8 in California, as well as ballot initiatives in Arizona, Arkansas, and Florida outlawing same-sex marriage.

You can find stories, videos, and photos about the day's events at Join the Impact, as well as information about "ways to promote love and equality in your own community."

Ellen Degeneres and John McCain talked about gay marriage – "the elephant in the room" – last May, and that video is here.

I've been watching some of the television interviews this week featuring Dan Savage, a gay activist who has long held his own against some pretty harsh attacks from the right. (Click here to see him on The Colbert Report.) The most intense this week was from Tony Perkins on Anderson Cooper 360º. Perkins is president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian think-tank and public policy foundation.

From a strictly visual standpoint, it's interesting to hop over to the Family Research Council, with its absolutely bland and colorless faux official government branding. Their tagline claims to defend faith, family and .... freedom. Hmmm.

Here in Bloomington Indiana, there was an election night party at Rachael's Café, owned by Rachael, a transwoman who has created a welcoming, spacious café on East Third Street. The word on the street is that Barack Obama called the café a couple of days ago, thanking Rachael for hosting that bash. That's a thrilling way of honoring sponsors, and it gives me hope regarding the future of civil rights for our GLBT citizens.

Gotta Love Garrison...and the Outcome

I am still hanging onto the election afterglow and the sense of optimism and hope it opens. And I have a deep affection for Garrison Keillor, bard of my home state of Minnesota, and one of the great media mavericks of our day. So thanks, Lynne S., so sending this my way...I'll let Garrison do the talking today. (Our house guest Lenni, from Germany, keeps using the word "cool" too, to talk about what just happened.)

But first, a nice link. The Prairie Home Companion broadcast from Indiana University last February 8th, 2008. It was a wonderful occasion, showcasing some of the extraordinary musicians here at the Jacobs School of Music (some of whom are pictured here). You can find the podcast here.

Sitting on top of the world
Garrison Keillor November 12, 2008

Be happy, dear hearts, and allow yourselves a few more weeks of quiet exultation. It isn't gloating, it's satisfaction at a job well done. He was a superb candidate, serious, professorial but with a flashing grin and a buoyancy that comes from working out in the gym every morning. He spoke in a genuine voice, not senatorial at all. He relished campaigning. He accepted adulation gracefully. He brandished his sword against his opponents without mocking or belittling them. He was elegant, unaffected, utterly American, and now (Wow) suddenly America is cool. Chicago is cool. Chicago!!!

We threw the dice and we won the jackpot and elected a black guy with a Harvard degree, the middle name Hussein and a sense of humor—he said, "I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher." The French junior minister for human rights said, "On this morning, we all want to be American so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding before our eyes." When was the last time you heard someone from France say they wanted to be American and take a bite of something of ours? Ponder that for a moment.

The world expects us to elect pompous yahoos, and instead we have us a 47-year-old prince from the prairie who cheerfully ran the race, and when his opponents threw sand at him, he just smiled back. He'll be the first president in history to look really good making a jump shot. He loves his classy wife and his sweet little daughters. At the same time, he knows pop music, American lit and constitutional law. I just can't imagine anybody cooler.

It feels good to be cool, and all of us can share in that, even sour old right-wingers and embittered blottoheads. Next time you fly to Heathrow and hand your passport to the man with the badge, he's going to see "United States of America" and look up and grin. Even if you worship in the church of Fox, everyone you meet overseas is going to ask you about Obama, and you may as well say you voted for him because, my friends, he is your line of credit over there. No need anymore to try to look Canadian.

And the coolest thing about him is the fact that back in the early '90s, given a book contract after the hoo-ha about his becoming the First Black Editor of The Harvard Law Review, instead of writing the basic exploitation book he could've written, he put his head down and worked hard for a few years and wrote a good book, an honest one, which, since his rise in politics, has earned the Obamas enough to buy a nice house and put money in the bank. A successful American entrepreneur.

Our hero who galloped to victory has inherited a gigantic mess. The country is sunk in debt. The Treasury announced it must borrow $550 billion to get the government through the fourth quarter, more than the entire deficit for 2008, so he will have to raise taxes and not only on bankers and lumber barons. His promise never to raise the retirement age is not a good idea. Whatever he promised the Iowa farmers about subsidizing ethanol is best forgotten at this point. We may not be getting our National Health Service cards anytime soon. And so on and so on.

So enjoy the afterglow of the election awhile longer. We all walk taller this fall. People in Copenhagen and Stockholm are sending congratulatory e-mails—imagine! We are being admired by Danes and Swedes! And Chicago becomes The First City. Step aside, San Francisco. Shut up, New York. The Midwest is cool now. The mind reels. Have a good day.

oldscout@prairiehome.us

On the Obama Agenda: A Sane Farm Policy

I was so impressed with this piece from the most recent issue of TIME magazine that I am copying and pasting it in full. I never thought I'd see the day when a mainstream magazine like TIME would take a strong position on the Farm Bill. I give a lot of credit to the food activists out there who are so vigilant in their efforts to recast the whole spectrum of issues around agriculture, ecology, and food.

TIME Magazine, Commemorative Edition Tuesday, Nov. 04, 2008

A Sane Farm Policy, by Michael Grunwald

U.S. agriculture policy is a jumble, but the basic goal is simple: redistribute money to big commodity farmers. The median farmer's net worth is five times the median American's, and the top one-tenth of farmers get three-fourths of the subsidies. It's a welfare program for the megafarms that use the most fuel, water and pesticides; emit the most greenhouse gases; grow the most fattening crops; hire the most illegals; and depopulate rural America.

Antiobesity, antipoverty, free-trade, balanced-budget and environmental activists have clamored for reform, but nobody works farm policy harder than the farm lobby, and farm-state politicians — including Obama — have protected the status quo. Still, Obama's agri-pandering didn't win him the Farm Bureau endorsement, even though McCain opposed farm giveaways. And Obama has suggested that he's open to more sensible policies that would promote less energy-intensive agriculture.

How about repealing the $307 billion farm bill and slashing subsidies — especially the for-no-apparent-reason "direct payments" we send to commodity farmers in good times and bad. Farm lobbyists will squeal, but 60% of U.S. farmers receive no subsidies. Instead, Obama can increase conservation subsidies for farmers who adopt green practices. He should also repeal the counterproductive mandates that will require the production of 36 billion gal. (136 billion L) of biofuels by 2022. Biofuels like corn ethanol sound great, and Obama supports them, but they accelerate global warming because shifting production from food to fuel leads to massive emissions from deforestation when farmers expand to grow more food. The biofuel boom is also jacking up the price of grain, which is increasing food prices and triggering food riots in countries like Yemen, Haiti and Pakistan.

The farm lobby and its water carriers in Congress are long overdue for a smackdown. But sensible farm policies could still include goodies for farmers. For example, Obama should ditch the preposterous ban on subsidized farmers' growing healthy fruits and vegetables. He should expand purchases for the successful school-lunch program while shifting the menus away from fattening crud. And he can expand markets for farmers and other American exporters by ending the humiliatingly futile Cuban embargo, which has been forcing the Castros out of power for 46 years now.

Obama and the Dalai Lama

Many thanks to Martha S. for sending me this "picture of happiness and joy – a photo of two extraordinary humans." As she put it, "This photo speaks volumes as to hope and potentiality."

We are very fond of the Dalai Lama here in Bloomington, Indiana, where he has family connections. He has visited a number of times, causing a huge flurry of excitement (and prompting visits from Richard Gere and others). Some of the young people I know have had the privilege of meeting him.

There are two Tibetian monestaries here in Bloomington. The Dagom Gaden Tensung Ling Tibetan Buddhist Monastery represents the Gelugpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. The Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center hosted the Dalai Lama. It has a summer camp and grounds dotted with colorful cottages.

You see a lot of "Free Tibet" bumper stickers in Bloomington. One of my favorite memories of the Lotus Festival is of standing next to a Tibetan Buddhist monk during a Balkan Beat Box concert under a big tent. We were both grinning ear to ear, amazed by the antics of those wild and crazy musicians. The Tibetan monks make large beautiful sand mandalas during the Lotus Festival. Here is what they say about that:

On several occasions DGTL monks in cooperation with visiting monks have created sacred sand mandalas to bring healing energies to local and regional communities. Over a period of days or weeks, monks work meticulously to construct the image of an individual deity's celestial mansion from millions of grains of brightly colored sand and ground gemstones. The resulting mandala, which is deeply meaningful to tantric practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, represents a map by which the ordinary mind can be transformed into an enlightened mind.

When the mandala is finished, the monks perform a sacred ceremony, destroying the mandala, distributing some of the sand to onlookers, and pouring the rest into community streams or rivers; the streams and rivers, in turn, send the blessed sands on a journey to heal all sentient beings. The swift destruction of the completed mandala often dismays Westerners, but it is a central part of the painting ritual, symbolizing impermanence, an important concept in Buddhist philosophy.

Martha's message came with a note from Slim Chandra-Shekar, of the Gayatri Project: "At 11.00 p.m. EST on election day, when Obama was declared President-Elect of the United States, there was a palpable shift in the energy of the country and of the world. It was not just moments of joy and celebration, but an upward shift in the collective consciousness of the human race!" You can learn more (and hear some prayerful music) here.

Seances and a First Faux Pas

Two lighter moments at Obama's press conference last Friday: one was his endearing reference to himself as a "mutt" in that discussion of the selection of a family dog. The other was his answer to the question about whether he'd consulted with the former presidents. You can find a little news summary here. Here is the gist:

At his first news conference since the election, Mr. Obama said he had spoken with all living former presidents as he prepares to take office in January. He smiled and added: "I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any seances."

The 87-year-old former first lady consulted astrologers during her husband's presidency but had never tried to contact the dead. She consulted a star-gazer to help set her husband's schedule.

This made me think about how I've formed impressions and prejudices about the practice of holding seances. I did think Nancy Reagan had held them at the White House; that was regarded as a kind of national joke.

Poets, of course, are not averse to the occasional seance. The Irish poet William Butler Yeats attended many seances, beginning in 1886. Interested in the occult at an early age, he visited the famous theosophist, Helena Petrovna ("Madame") Blatavsky, and joined a Theosophy Society. Theosophy, meaning "god-wisdom" (from the Greek) is a doctrine of religious philosophy and metaphysics holding that all religions are attempts by the "Spiritual Hierarchy" to help humanity evolve to greater perfection; each religion therefore has a portion of truth. (Unitarian Universalists agree.)

In 1917, Yeats bought Thoor Ballylee, a Norman stone tower in County Sligo, Ireland, near Coole Park. I was able to visit the tower once while attending the Yeats Summer School in Sligo. (Now that's a summer camp I can heartily recommend.) Yeats lived inside the tower, climbing a narrow spiral staircase between floors designated for writing, reading, and eating. It was a "not so big house" (and, I would think, a toddler death trap).

After Maud Gonne, the great love of his life (or so the myth goes) turned down Yeats's repeated proposals of marriage (as did her daughter Iseult), Yeats married Georgie Hyde-Lee. Living with her and their children Anne and Michael in the tower, Yeats encouraged George's gift of "automatic writing." Believing that her hand was directed by a divine force, they produced A Vision in 1933, a notebook of spiritual thoughts. (In this, they are in the tradition of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley, sometimes considered co-authors – in a curious way – of the book Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus.)

A Vision lends itself well to the hypertext resources of the web, because "a symbol system can only be understood and evaluated by entering its web of internal relationships and noting how and where external criteria impinge on it. The problem is that we cannot start with the complex whole all at once; and if we start at any one point, we immediately introduce distortions" (from M. A. Arbib & M. B. Hesse, The Construction of Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; Edinburgh Gifford Lectures, 1983. "The Construction of Reality").

Robert Duncan had a connection with seances, too, but I'll write about that another day. In the meantime, I'm thinking that it's not such a bad thing to try to occasionally "contact the dead." Don't we channel them all the time, especially when we are reading? I like the idea of a president who reads about his predecessors, trying to garner insight and wisdom.

Beyond that, I think Obama set a great precedent in phoning Mrs. Reagan to apologize for his "careless, offhanded remark." Apparently they shared a warm conversation. I can't help but wonder: if this had happened a couple of weeks ago, what kind of media brouhaha would have ensued?

Confirmed as a Friend

It's how we communicate today....my son just confirmed me as a friend on Facebook. (And my daughter did, too.) Of course the two of them have a zillion friends: who knew? (Actually, my house is filled with sleeping teenagers at the moment, so I am not surprised.)

My friends are all in a flurry these days, finally creating Facebook pages. I blame this on Barack Obama, who I guess has more friends than anyone on the planet: God Thanks for That! (as my husband would say.) I am Barack's friend, too...and I never thought I'd say that about a president-elect. And of course he has the Facebook founder on his team: brilliant.

I was very impressed with Obama's first press conference and was thinking about Jon Stewart's next problem: "How do we make any of this funny?" So what do you think: what if Barack just wore sunglasses? The mirrored kind?

I mentioned that to my friend, Dylan, who is one of the wittiest people I know. He holds the honor of being my first Facebook friend under the age of 18. (I adore his parents and little brother, too.) He told me that he loves it when Barack wears sunglasses. We engaged in a bit of banter wall-to-wall.

I resisted Facebook for a long time, afraid of more background noise and lost time at the computer. But my friend Lisa suggests that Facebook "is all about fun and jackassery" – and that suddenly made it irresistible. Anyway, it's one of the "who knew?!" ways we communicate today.

Oh, and that kid on Jack's shoulders? Perhaps the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea someday! (Maybe following in the footsteps of his Dad and/or his Bubu Charles, either of whom might get there first.) Remember this name: Thierry Lepani.