Add my name to those voting for Barack Obama for president. I am moved by the man, period. I can go on to explain the linear-type traits and experience that qualify him to lead the nation, but I’m more interested in why people play down his inspiration and hope. Is he insincere, I don’t think so. Is he manipulative or is he persuasive? Is he living his destiny? Are we? Should we bring lofty imaginings into the picture? Yes, because if ever there were a time for imagination, this would be it. I don’t need to go into the litany of problems such as war, the economy, health care, genocide, poverty, tax cuts/burdens, education, climate change, torture, and on. We know the problems, we can hear lists of ways to fix them, but what inspires and moves us to do anything about them? What I’ve seen of movements attempting to create change is the multiple avenues through which it is sought: community organizing (power up), policy design and implementation (power down), consciousness-raising needed in order to fuel the first two for them to be effective, and commitment to things not seen only imagined (some would call that faith or hope or even foolish fancy).
I recently learned a new buzz word/phrase being bantered about these days, “Kumbaya moment (KM).” I saw this reference in two different articles. In the first one I thought the use of KM was an interesting notion. As I read on in the newspaper, I found another reference. So then I wanted to relocate the first article, but doing this felt like I was in a card game of Concentration, where each card of the deck is laid out face down, with the goal being able to remember where a pair of the same number/suit is by turning up two cards per turn. With no success, I turned to Google to see if it would by chance bring up the article. What I got were a whole slew of articles about KM. It seems that John Edwards used the concept of Kumbaya first, calling Obama the “Kumbaya candidate." I found this tidbit in an article by Meghan Daum writing for timesunion.com. She went on, “The term allows its users to have their coolness cake and eat it, too. To invoke "Kumbaya" is to display one's counter cultural credentials while simultaneously letting it be known how stupid and irrelevant those credentials are in today's world. Like those loathsome shibboleths ‘think outside the box’ and ‘let's take a blue-sky approach,’ which combine self-help jargon with corporate doublespeak, "Kumbaya" manages to be completely earnest and completely disingenuous at the same time.
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=677605&category=OPINION&newsdate=4/3/2008
Now being a former camp counselor and youth director, I’ve sung Kumbaya more than my share and I’ve had some very funny KMs. One came in a staff call when I worked for a non-profit, national grassroots organization working for inclusion of all people of all sexual orientations and gender identities in the United Methodist Church (UMC). There were four of us around the table and two by speaker-phone. We had just received news of a woman who had committed suicide under the stress and heartache of her church’s condemnation once members found out that she was a lesbian. We already knew about charges being brought against another UMC pastor for being openly gay. It was a doubly hard day. In the sad moment, I suggested that we sing Kumbaya. It’s true. We began to sing, the six of us, and then it was so somber that I got tickled and couldn’t hold in the laughter. Pretty soon, the only ones singing were the ones on the phone lines because they couldn’t see or hear that the rest of us had quit singing. That of course made it even more hysterical. Bad, bad, bad, but I couldn’t help myself. In actuality the song has gotten a bad rap, especially by sincere/disingenuous people like me. In all seriousness, there is meaning for our country and globe in this song, clear and present need even, “Come by here, oh God.” Our world can sure use some Divinity (however conceived) showing up right about now or, at least, our best selves rising to the fore. There are lots-o-problems going on and a spiritual life force would be welcome. If hope is part of that, come on.
Last week was a stand-in-line-for-hours week, and there just aren’t very many of those here in Montana…at all. At a Helena Starbucks or one’s favorite non-corporate coffee joint, the longest line might be five, and it only seems long because there is a lot of space between the customers. We have a lot of open landscape out here and not a lot of people so people forget to bunch up. It’s sometimes very annoying. I mean standing in line for dry cleaning is not the same as standing in line for a prescription. You don’t need privacy for picking up the freshly cleaned down comforter.
A week ago last Tuesday, I stood for a couple of hours outside the Helena High School gymnasium to see former president Bill Clinton, a historic occasion for Helena and Montana, but then our delegate count is r-a-r-e-l-y seen as making a difference in national politics. However, with the presidential race as it is, we had some impressive visitors. Entrance was free too, just like Willie Nelson’s concert this past July, and with about the same amount of security, though Bill did have Secret Service dudes once he arrived and Willie only had the county sheriff’s department.
Last Saturday though, the real rock stars showed up in Butte (rhymes with “cute”) for the (Democrats) annual Mansfield-Metcalf Dinner: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It was another couple of hours of line-standing to get in, this time in a very cold wind. The word was that we were not supposed to bring coats or large purses to speed up security screening and so many folks were not prepared for the icy chill. That was another two plus hours of waiting in line and however festive the anticipation was, it was still COLD. Usually-amiable people got pretty testy when anyone tried cut in line and the misguided souls were quickly booed to the end of the line, especially one a mile long (okay, maybe .75 miles). However I did see an elderly World War II vet --his cap said so- step into a gap in the line ignoring the .75 and though he was yelled at, I saw that someone let him in not too far down the line. What did he have to lose; he’d dodged bullets, what was getting in trouble for cutting, really?
Side note: I’d never spent any time in Butte, a mining town of ruffian legend, its population was once over 100,000 (that would be roughly 10% of the whole state’s today) made up of numerous immigrant communities, a mix that led to the name Butte, America. It’s also said that Butte was where the American labor movement was born. The introduction to the town added to my overall adventure. We went to the Berkeley Pit, a former open pit copper mine that is about a mile and a half wide and about 1,780 feet deep; stopped by the Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church (speaking of one of the immigrant groups); drove up the steep hill to Montana Tech to take in the view; meandered through Walkerville; had lunch at a sports bar that was once a bank with vault seating available; and finally got to the place I really wanted to go, the M&M Bar. It's an infamous place, starting in 1890, watering many an off-shift miner, surviving prohibition as a "cigar store," and still serving customers 24/7. I had a cell phone picture taken of me on the inside it but the photo didn’t get saved. Too bad, because an hour or two later Obama had his picture taken in the same spot. I did get the backdrop of the memorial to Evel Knievel, a hometown Butte boy
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What can I say about the Mansfield-Metcalf Dinner (box lunch for those of us in the stands)? For one, it was only the second occasion where Barack and Hillary appeared at the same dinner, Virginia being the other. Two, it was interesting to sense the sharp feelings between the two candidates’ camps. There was at least one unifying line and it was met with mighty cheers when Clinton said that one thing about this election, “George W. Bush won’t be on the ballot.” Woo-hoo. Third, though their speeches addressed the same concerns, as one friend put it, “Obama made you feel like we could get things done while Clinton just made you tired” with her long lists of what we need to do and how we need to do them. Both candidates are intelligent, resourceful, impressive and experienced. However, I disagree that Hillary’s experience of having lived in the White House counts as the qualification that many herald. There have been plenty of presidents (the entire bunch of them) who have never lived in the White House before they got there. Also, when she says and infers that only she knows how to fight and hold her ground, I think about Obama being a black man in America. Hello. I think he knows how to hold his own. And as far as his church and Rev. Jeremiah Wright goes, the true revelation is that many in White America haven’t imagined what the Black experience is in these supposedly united of states.* In addition, have these same people listened to some of the prejudiced rhetoric that is spoken weekly in United Methodist pulpits, Hillary’s denomination? Furthermore if what it took for Obama to speak directly about race was the You Tube sound bites by Wright, then so be it. Though there are disagreements about Obama’s address from within and without the African American community, it still was a person of color running for president speaking candidly about race. That, to me, is a fresh breeze with a hint of moisture on a hot, dry day. Call it a Kumbaya Moment, that’s all right, I’ll even stand in line to hum along.
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*On Black experience in America:
An email from my black Elder Brother, Gil Caldwell, definitely worth a read.
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath -
America will be!
Langston Hughes
In my 74 years of living, America has never been completely America to me...74 year ago I was born into American racial apartheid; the hospital where I was born, the neighborhood to which my mother returned with me, the churches, schools, stores, theaters, parks, buses, trains, all and much more were shaped by America's original sin, racism....Yet as I grew up, I knew that one day America would begin to be America for me.
That day began to become a reality in what was called the Civil Rights Movement....I was an unknown "foot soldier" in that Movment...I was in Mississippi, I participated in two phases of the Selma to Montgomery March, I was at the March on Washington, I marched next to Martin Luther King in a March on the Boston School Committee....Slowly as I became active in a Movement that would transform America, America began to become America for me.
Then when I was 73, the race for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party began and in that race was a man whose name is Barack Obama.... At first I was not too enthusiastic about his candidacy..I remembered the candidacies of other Black persons; Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun....I remember that at one time there had been the possibility of a candidacy for the Republican Party presidential nomination by Colin Powell...But "politics as usual" surfaced again and not only was Colin Powell thwarted by attacks that many of us thought were unfair, his wife was personally attacked as well....Of course I must acknowledge that Alan Keyes has also sought the Republican presidential nomination.
But, as the candidacy of Barack Obama began to succeed and succeed, despite reservations in the larger community and the African American Community, the idea of America becoming America for me, took on more new life!
New life, despite the foolishness of "Is Barack Obama Black Enough?"....Despite attempts to use his admitted drug use against him...Despite, the childish efforts to pronounce his middle name, "Hussein" with a cynical sarcasm that sought to frighten an electorate that was too wise to be frightened....Despite the efforts of some African American Civil Rights icons and successful business persons to make Senator Obama look small in an effort to make their candidate look large...Despite the efforts of a former President to minimize the achievements of Barack Obama by saying words to the effect, "He is another one, just like the other ones" (Words that not only belittled Obama, they belittled the significant impact of the "other ones")...America becoming more America for me grew and grew, despite the illogical and irrational efforts to convict Barack Obama of "guilt by association" by bringing up the names and words of Minister Louis Farrakhan and Rev. Jeremiah Wright....Despite the efforts of a former Vice Presidential candidate who said "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position."...(I had not heard this kind of "reverse victimization" before")...It is akin to saying, "If Tiger Woods was a white man, he would not have achieved the success he has." This is a new way of "dissing" Black accomplishment.
But, but, but despite the above foolishness, my vision of a new America grows and grows. Each day as I see and hear the enthusiasm of persons of all colors who are much younger than I, continuing to be excited about the prospects of CHANGE that a Barack Obama Democratic Party nomination and presidential election would offer, my hope and my pride expand. An "America that never was America to me," begins to take on "being" in ways I have never known before. My generation is a generation of "Segregation Survivors". Some would hope that we would go to our deaths in silence, so that it would be as though we never existed. The contradiction and hypocrisy represented by the reality of our segregation experience has given rise to the sickness of a national amnesia that dares not remember what we were made to be and who we are today. But, some of us have refused to be "Invisible" nor silent, women and men. Now as we are on the edge of our transition from this life, we see in the Barack Obama candidacy, even those who do not support him, something in America we never expected to see.
Despite the racial blood, sweat and tears of the past, we now see in the race for the presidency of our nation, an America struggling not to be born again, because it has never been what it is struggling to be now, but rather to be born for the first time! We live not far from the Stone Pony night club that Bruce Springsteen made popular. I could never listen with much enthusiasm to, "Born in the USA" that was/is sung with so much power by Springsteen. But now in 2008, the 40th anniversary year of the assssination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the nation of my birth evokes pride I have not known before. I can listen with pride to Bruce Springsteen's song ways I never felt before. The success of the candidacy of Barack Obama no matter what happens, enables me to say with Langston Hughes, "America will be!" Hallelujah!
Gil CaldwellAsbury Park, New JereseyMarch 13, 2008
Gil and I have co-authored Truth-in-Progress: Letters in Mixed Company, a manuscript waiting to be snapped up. More information to come.
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unworkable so forget that. Here is picture from the old shop; remember this cartoon picture for later as it has now been painted over at the Laundry. One of the photographs at the bottom of this page is of the sandwich kitchen looking into it when it was at the Laundry. This picture can be compared to the first picture in the slide show B&B Market over in the right hand column. Now the kitchen has been cleaned out, newly floored, and awaiting more renovations. Second up in the slide show is John Leaf, one of the B&B owners, in the new space for the sandwich shop. The market has been spruced up and now sells gourmet and organic foods as well as the customary corner store staples. Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer and Rogue brew, Spam and multiple mustards, and Nutella. Life is good.
