At Last

I had Monday off for MLK day, and I took Tuesday off to watch the inauguration. It was such an historic event for me personally that I wanted to watch it unfold live. But it wasn't historic for the reasons most people might expect.

Granted, Barak Obama is the first black president we’ve had. His election broke barriers that I don’t think many people thought could be breached in their lifetimes. I certainly didn’t expect to ever see it.

Growing up in the South in the late 60’s through a good part of the 80’s, I know how deeply racism is ingrained there. And while it’s more obvious there than in other parts of the country, it seems to exist everywhere. In towns and cities small and large, there’s de facto segregation, and we still have a long way to go as far as addressing racial issues.

The history I reveled in had nothing to do with race, though. I didn’t vote for a black man: I voted for a person. Black or white, male or female never entered my mind when I was deciding how to cast my vote.

I voted for hope. The kind of hope he exuded the first time I saw him speak. The optimism paired with honesty that was the bedrock of his campaign. The leadership I knew we were going to need all too soon.

A confident, reassuring voice in the dark night we’re in today.

The historical event for me was a rebirth of faith. Faith that, in America, all things are possible. That the road ahead might not be pretty, but that we will get to the end of it and regain our stature as the shining city on a hill.

In these awful times, I need a comforting voice to tell me not to panic. Not to give up. To remember what our country is about. About its ability to renew itself and come out better for its trials and tribulations.

I voted for hope. I voted for a dream of an America that’s different from the one we’ve been living in for the last few decades. One grounded in optimism but that doesn’t ignore the blatant facts of the day: rising unemployment, financial institutions teetering on the edge of an abyss, the highest foreclosure rate I’ve seen in my lifetime.

Roosevelt got it right with his fireside chats. These days, the fireside is YouTube, but Obama's addresses to the nation at large serve the same purpose. They keep people informed and reassured that, on behalf of “we the people”, the government is addressing the important issues.

Reagan is widely regarded as the “great communicator”, but Roosevelt had already out-done him decades earlier. Roosevelt talked us through a depression and a world war. That was no small feat. He understood the power of words, their ability to inspire and edify.

Obama knows that, too. Otherwise, his addresses would not be so frequent or consistently eloquent. That actions alone can accomplish only so much. That creating hope combined with faith in leaders is half the battle.

His words both challenge and inspire without varnishing the naked, ugly truth. They encourage cooperation and discourage divisiveness. They call on our better angels to leave ideology at the door and talk to each other like the simple, flawed human beings we are, facing some of the biggest challenges in our nation’s long and proud history.

They call on us to be human before anything else and to recognize the greatness we collectively own as a nation.

Some people don’t think words matter, but they do. They can either degrade or uplift. They can beat people down as easily as they can encourage and enrich. They can be a tool of the devil or one of the divine.

That’s why I voted for a man named Obama. His words made my heart sing in a way no politician's has.

I had a choice. So I ran to the light.

At last. At long last.

Okay, already

I swore that I would slap the next person who asked me how I was with “Only OK?” when that was my answer to their perfunctory question when I know they don’t give a rat’s ass about how I really am.

My eyes were swollen, watering and itchy from cedar pollen. I was well on the way to put my body weight in mucus through my nose even though I’d only been awake a few hours.

I told her it wasn’t a banner day for me.

I didn’t slap her, partly because she didn’t use that annoying sing-song tone that indicates a mindless cheeriness that I suspect they don’t even really believe, and partly because I didn’t want to lose my job.

I don’t wear my heart (or my allergies) on my sleeve (unless I sneeze unexpectedly and leave nose-goo everywhere). Nor do act like I feel well when I don’t. Most of my days are neither fabulous nor horrible. Most people’s aren’t, I suspect. They’re just days.

“Okay” is infinitely better than “life sucks” or “please excuse me while I go slit my wrists”.

Every day is a gift from God, whether it’s a good day or a bad one or an average one, I realize. And since God doesn’t seem to mind me being “just okay”, why the hell does anyone care?

Most likely, because they don’t really. “Okay” seems to threaten their warped concept of the universe where every day that’s not a festival is a total loss.

I know about loss, and “okay” is good enough. Or should be. I guess I could tell them that no one I know died today and that I have enough money to pay my bills, but that doesn’t rise to level of spectacular. It’s okay, and nothing more.

I had a really great day watching the inauguration on Tuesday. But since I was at home instead of work, no one got to ask me if I was having a great day. I told them that I’d had a great long weekend, but apparently I should still be having the same kind of day today that I had then.

They haven’t taken care of the stuff I have since I got back to the office on Wednesday. Deadlines and problems catching up. I still have things in my in box that have been there for months but that I still haven’t had time to get to.

So I refuse to participate in their delusional, self-induced pep rallies. Things are not “all good”, nor have they ever been. I have more important things to concentrate on than pretending that they are. In fact, the next person that says “it’s all good” gets a slap, too.
The people I work with largely think I’m a cynic, but I’m not. I have hope and faith that surpasses even my own understanding. I don’t really where it comes from, unless it’s from God.

When all else fails, claim divine guidance.

“Okay” is good, and if you don’t really care, don’t ask. Harass someone else. Just leave me the hell alone in my okay-ness. I’m happy there.

It’s a comfortable place to be.

Here's to You, Mrs. Robinson. . .

As mother-in-laws go, you have to about the coolest. You were the one sitting by you daughter’s husband when he found out he was going to be the 44th President of these United States. The picture was priceless. I had just found out for myself, so seeing that gentle squeezing of hands at a monumental second in our common history made me laugh with sheer happiness.

I had expected the returns to go on for far longer than they did. We seem to have grown used to contested elections. If you had any reservations or doubts about the outcome, you didn’t show it. You seemed to be recognizing what you thought was inevitable.

I’m a political hound, and could talk for hours about how winning North Carolina sealed the deal. Pennsylvania and Ohio didn’t hurt. At 11:00 pm central time on the dot, the second the polls closed on the west coast closed, everyone called the election.

And there you were.

I don’t know what you said to him, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it was something as simple as “That’s done. What’s next?”

I grew up in Tennessee during a time when people of color were not granted the simple right of dignity that is inherent in being human. We didn’t have “colored” drinking fountains, but we might as well have. I never understood why my little black friend, Joseph, couldn’t come over to our house because of what the neighbors would think.

His family was warm and gracious to me. I just wanted to return the favor.

All these years late your daughter looks beautiful. The yellow suit treats her well. It’s stunning, in fact.

She carries the quiet dignity that I’m quite sure that you taught her. The dress only accents it.

Both you and your daughter are mouthy, and I like that. I’m not real good with holding my tongue, either. Not if I think something needs to be said. Saying what’s on your mind is better than carrying around a bag of resentment, most times.

Mrs. Obama, nee, Robinson runs a tight ship and speaks her mind. That speaks volumes about you.

So here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson.

Ku-ku-ka-chu.

Time on my Hands

When I was in kindergarten, the weather was getting so bad they sent us home from school early one day. Floods were breaking out all over, and tornadoes were a definite possibility. The gravel roads and wood plank bridges didn’t always last too long in a bad storm, so they wanted to get us home while they could.

When the bus got to the little road that led to another little road where we lived, the driver let us off. He didn’t want to take the bus across the bridge the led to those two roads. The water was already about to come across the top, and he would have had to drive us to the stop a few miles away and then turn around and come back, hoping the bridge was still there.

So he put us out where we were. Today people would raise a ruckus, I guess, but back then, we were expected to be more self-reliant, even as kids.

While I was walking across that bridge and looking at the water that was starting to lap up over the planks, I wondered if the creek had gotten shorter or the water had gotten taller. I almost stepped in to find out (something my mother doesn’t know to this day, so please don’t tell her). I used my better judgment at the age of five not to be swept away by a flooded creek.

We went trudging home, my big sister and me. It was a long way, and Mama didn’t even know they’d let school out early or dropped us off so far from home. Normally, it was about a half mile to the bus stop, but we were a couple of miles farther out. I was 5 and she was 6.

Child kidnapping had just become prominent, so we had both been thoroughly schooled in not getting into a car with anyone we weren’t related to. When the preacher’s wife pulled up and offered us a ride, we both politely declined. We told her we’d get in trouble. After much coaxing, she us inside her big, shiny car and home in style.

Mama wasn’t mad like I thought she might be. And she refined her message to say that it was okay to get into people’s car if they were the preacher’s wife’s or someone like her.

I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about that today, except that I’ve been home sick and bored. I have too much time to think about near-misses and what-ifs. What if I had stepped off that bridge to measure the water? What if it hadn’t been the preacher’s wife, but someone with sinister motives and just as smooth a tongue?

Being sick is not good for me. And not just because it makes me grumpy and impossible. I get bored about five minutes in, and then just sit there stewing, trying to think of something I can do that won’t tax my impaired resources too much.

This is what I did today.

Catch Up Time

We had lunch today at our favorite seafood place: Eaves Brothers. It's been around since before Shannon was a kid (that’s well over 50 years), and a few years ago they added restaurant space to their long- and well-established fish market. It's a simple place where you order at a cash register, get a number and someone brings your food out. Everything else is up to you.

The food, likewise, is simple but excellent. They have the best grilled salmon I've ever eaten.

While we were there, I noticed that something new had popped up next door. I thought it was some sort of gift shop, but couldn't see through the dark windows into the interior. Then I noticed something about a liturgy posted on one of the doors.

Being naturally curious (I think that's why I get along with cats so well, by the way), I looked them up to see who or what they are. This is what I found: http://mosaicaustin.org/.

I skimmed the site and didn't have a clue what they were about. It's typical of alternative religious organizations in Austin. I won't use the word "church" because I'm not sure they rise to that standard.

The ones that are inclusive are flaky. When it comes to religion and spirituality, flaky's not an option for me.

And the ones that aren't flaky are not inclusive, no matter what lip service they pay to being so. I always end up feeling like the bastard child at a family re-union who is tolerated but never taken seriously. They pat themselves on the back for not throwing me out the front door, but that's about it. I'm the bastard they congratulate themselves for being tolerant, while never bothering to go beyond that.

Tolerance doesn't equal acceptance. Not today, not ever.

I hope that doesn't sound too bitter. I'm actually beyond bitterness and further into acceptance of them they they are of me. Above all I'm practical. If they don't want me, then I'm not wasting my time.

I would say that the Church should have nothing to do with politics, but when I look back at the civil rights movement, which was happening all around me when I was a kid, I can't say so definitively. The Church was often the primary forum for civil rights leaders. And often their primary source of support, both spiritual and financial. And we have a national holiday for a preacher, for heaven's sake.

The Church takes baby steps, a friend of mine told me recently. I would like it to take big strides, make bold moves, but I'm not holding my breath. I would love to see it take the lead in addressing issues like social justice, equality for all people and environmental preservation and restoration. We are the stewards of the Earth and our brothers' keepers, after all.

While they can't ignore their own back yards, I would like them to realize that the concept of "back yard" is largely irrelevant today.

Whether it's Zimbabwe in chaos, an epidemic of cholera, famine in Darfur or the polar ice-caps melting and floating out to sea, we have a collective moral obligation to address those issues. Women in Afghanistan have been forced back into burkas and have been publicly stoned to death for going out in public without a male relative while the "police" looked on. Gay men as young as 16 are routinely hanged in Iran as "enemies of the state."

Not to mention the epidemic of homeless people living in their cars. There's a couple that I've seen in our neighborhood (an affluent one) a number of times that I'm pretty sure are living in their car with 3 cats and two dogs.

It's too much for one person, or even two, to fix or even address. We give money when we can to causes that will make a difference in our backyard, but our resources are limited. My hope is that the Church will begin to address the ones we can't. It's the only institution large enough and pervasive enough internationally to do so.

The will to do so in a unified way is not there yet. People argue too much about who's going to heaven and who's going to hell to even see horror staring them in the face.

And to be honest, none of any of this has to do with politics: it has to do with basic human rights and social justice. Finding room for "other".

Being "other" created empathy for all oppressed and suffering people in me. And I have things good by comparison to a lot of people.

Still, there's a cloud of "other-ness" that follows me everywhere I go, even though it's probably the very least important thing about me. I'm a person, not a sexual orientation.

Shylock in The Merchant of Venice summed it up nicely:

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example?

That's me. It's a poetic passage from a deeply cynical play where Shylock was the "other". That's how I feel just about every day.

And to be honest, I'd rather the Church rush to embrace causes like massacres, torture and poverty before they come to help me. Those causes need the help more than I do.

While I think that some sort of legal status should be granted to gay people, we have bigger problems facing us, and not as gay people or straight people. Just as people. I can wait, but I’m not sure others can. Not the ones dying in Africa or Asia or anywhere.

I guess I have no choice but to wait for the Church to catch up with me.

Goodbye and Good Riddance

To the year 2008, I say goodbye and good riddance. And later on this month, I’ll have the pleasure to say the same to an administration whose ideology far out-paced its competence. From the fiascos in Iraq and New Orleans to the willful neglect of the center of terrorism in Afghanistan, they have acted as though they expected an intervention of the Almighty to save their butts.

When the markets crashed and the larger economy began to implode, they stood idly by until backed into a corner by an ideologically divided Senate. And to date, they have done nothing to address the underlying cause of the crash: the “exotic” and unregulated financial instruments that proved to be so exotic that no one can place a value on them to date. Or really explain what they are and how they work.

The governor of Chicago (he’s never actually lived in the Springfield, the Capital) got caught trying to sell a Senate seat. Bernie Madoff admitted to a decades-long Ponzi scheme that’s taken down any number of philanthropic organizations. It’s been one mess after another to the point that I am scandal-fatigued.

Tim Russert died, so the Sunday mornings I loved no longer zing like they used to. And I loved my Sunday mornings with Tim. It’s always CBS Sunday Morning, Face the Nation and Meet the Press, and the latter was almost always the high point. Without Tim to cap it off, it falls flat more often than not.

Still, we had one good thing from 2008: a new President-elect, one known for his intellectual curiosity, openness to opposing opinions and even-temperedness. And he’s black. Never thought I’d live to see it.

I suppose I shouldn’t judge 2008 too harshly. After all, it did provide the venue for the radical wing of the Republican party to cut their own throats. After 8 years of the Administration systematically bullying and stomping down any opposition, it had no good candidate to run and, after the election, no unified agenda.

And then there was the fun of watching Sarah Palin trying to be a serious national politician. Alaska has a population of about 670,000 people, far fewer than the Austin metro area. She is the governor of a small city spread out over 572,000 square miles with a population density of 1.1 per square mile. What McCain was thinking, I don’t know. But it was fun to watch.

And we did have a lovely Thanksgiving and Christmas, playing hosts for the first time in a while. My mother and I talk more than I think we ever have. And my niece has written me several lovely letters.

And, as of today, January 1, 2009, I’ve only lost 25% of my 401(k). It was 40% in the hole a few weeks ago.

I’ve come to measure prosperity in a different light. I have an almost new car that I can afford to pay for, a job with little sign of going away, health insurance (even though it costs more than I like), more vacation time than I can take and an apartment in a neighborhood I shouldn’t be able to afford.

Still, I welcome the new year warmly and hope and pray for better days ahead. I have my fears, but I hope for the best.

Last night, a 100,000 or so people gathered downtown to watch a 34 foot tall wooden clock the cost $15,000 burn. They call it “First Night”, even though it’s really the last night and the first morning of the new year. And while I wasn’t on hand to witness the spectacle and have qualms about setting anything that cost that much on fire, I’m sure it was cathartic for those who were there.

Nothing says goodbye and good riddance like burning down a 34 foot tall $15,000 clock.

Except just saying it.