My post from last summer: The Women of Iran.

Although BP has said that all is going as planned with operation “Top Kill,” nothing will be conclusively known about its success until sometime Sunday.    While most articles about this environmental catastrophe refer to this as a spill, that word hardly describes what has happened and what continues to happen.  The word spill implies that there is some finite amount involved, however large it may be.  The Exxon Valdez spilled its contents into Prince William Sound twenty-one years ago.  There was a finite amount of oil onboard and the flow eventually stopped.  When the flow of oil from the Deepwater Horizon well is finally stopped, we can call it a spill.  Until then, it should be called what it is: an endless eruption.

The status reports issued by various sources since BP began pumping drilling mud into the well in an attempt to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.  First there were reports that all was going as planned.  Then there were reports that the operation had been suspended sixteen hours before.  Then there were reports that the operation was resumed and again, everything is going as planned.  Since not one single thing about this drilling operation seems to have gone as planned since the very beginning, taking BP’s word, or the President’s for that matter, about what is happening requires a moon-sized grain of salt.

That this has been going on for over a month with one attempt after another to stop the flow or contain the damage failing is proof that we have inflicted damage to the environment far beyond our ability to control what happens to the gulf and to ourselves.

In 1951, Rachel Carson published the The Sea Around Us. The book sold over 250,000 copies in 1951 and went on to win the National Book Award in 1952. The Sea Around Us and the books that followed, especially her 1964 masterpiece, Silent Spring, became pillars of the modern environmental movement.

As I watch the streaming video documenting our supreme recklessness with Nature, I remember back to about 1970, when Earthday made environmentalism cool, when my grandmother gave to me her book-of-the-month club editions of both those books.  I read them both that summer at my grandparents cottage on the north shore of Long Island.  That was years before mysterious plume of brown algae entered into the Long Island Sound and nearly obliterated the local scallop industry, and even more years before a second mysterious plume entered the sound again just as the scallops were recovering, delivering the final knockout punch to a way of life for generations (or centuries if you count the Native Americans who lived there before we did).

Carson was a gifted communicator and was able to teach science in very simple terms for non-scientists to understand.  Her writing style was beautiful and poetic.  In the very first section of The Sea Around Us, entitled “Mother Sea,” she describes the formation of the earth, its oceans, and the live upon it in a way that is scientific and at the same time as spiritual as any creation myth.  In her version of “Let there be light,” she describes the development of the food chain that binds us to our planet and to every other living thing:

All the while, the cloud cover was thinning, the darkness of the nights alternating more and more perceptibly with the palely illumined days, and finally the sun for the first time shone through upon the sea. By then, some of the living things that floated in the sea must have developed chlorophyll.  Now, in the sunlight, they were able to take the carbon dioxide of the air and the water of the sea and from these elements build the organic substances they needed.  So the first true plants came into being.  A group of organisms unable to produce chlorophyll arose, and found that they could live by devouring the plants.  These were the first animals, and from that day to this every animal in the world has followed the habit acquired in ancient seas, and, directly or through intricate food chains, has been dependent for food and life on plants.

When the oil gushing from this well is finally staunched, next week, next month or next year, where will we be?  What will we have learned?  How badly will we have damaged our only home?  We can already see where the oil has come ashore the destruction of the coastal wetlands along the gulf.  The local economies will be suffering for generations.  Beyond just that, however, are the massive plumes of oil deep beneath the surface.  Ironically, they may have been formed by the highly toxic dispersants that have been used, and continue to be used, by BP to prevent the oil from floating to the surface where they can be seen.  It’s the ultimate cover-up.  It doesn’t seem to have save the coastline from what may be irreparable damage and the long term effects to the health of the ocean, and with it, the food-chain and us.  The dispersants may very well have made it impossible for the oil to ever be removed.

This is all clearly the result of a powerful  industry aided by a regulatory system that is at best, impotent, and at worst, massively corrupted.  Fundamentally, the problem goes deeper than that.  The people of Louisiana are facing the destruction of their seafood industry.  Louisiana, long known for its shrimp, and its oysters, and its crawfish, is also long known for its even larger dependence on the oil business, and has long pretended that those two industries aren’t in conflict with one another.

The effects of these miles-long plumes of undersea oil are as of yet unknown and it may take years to determine.  They may live on for years, travelling around the world in ocean currents, leaving behind dead zones.

How many more times must this happen?  How much of our human habitat must we destroy? Where’s the tipping point?

The Sea Around Us

Jeffrey S. Levinton (Afterword). Oxford University Press, USA 1991, Paperback, 288 pages, $11.78

Silent Spring

Linda Lear (Introduction). Mariner Books 2002, Paperback, 400 pages, $7.50

The ratings are spectacular and the network changes its mind about Beale’s retirement.  The evening news is handed over to a young ambitious programming executive from the entertainment division (Faye Dunaway), and Beale becomes “The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves.”  His rallying cry to his audience is, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.”  Millions of people across the nation open their windows and scream it out into the night.  Glenn Beck can only wish he had that kind of clout.

Beale’s success leads to a primetime show that becomes the foundation for a network lineup that plays on all the fears and paranoia of the time and the network rakes in the cash.  The offerings seemed a little over the top at the time, with one program following the activities of the “Ecumenical Liberation Army,” a sly take-off on Patty Hearst kidnappers, the “Symbionese Liberation Army.” In a preview of the current reality show fad, every week the episode featured actual footage of crimes being committed by the terrorists, shot by the terrorists themselves.  Viewed today, however, the offerings of the fiction UBS network, seem like a naive preview of what our culture is today.

Glenn Beck’s daily paranoid and hateful rants, which indicate that sanity is not his friend seem like Beale’s ravings taken to an absurd extreme.  In the parlance of pop culture, Beck jumped the shark long ago, probably before his first telecast.

Beale, in spite of his mental breakdown, never completely broke with reality and seemed to genuinely care about the wellbeing of his audience.  The conspiracies that he warned of were real, and most of all, he urged his audience to think for themselves.  It is his truth telling about his network’s planned corporate merger and its plan to control what people see and think and believe that leads to his ultimate downfall.

Beck does no such thing.  It is he who must do all the thinking for his audience because only he can see all the evil around us, but in reality he is simply an agent of the corporate interests that control him.  If he were a true “Mad Prophet of  the Airwaves,’” attempting to reveal the truths that only a mad prophet can, he would expose the ugly truths of his own corporation and fellow travelers, such as Sean Hannity’s traitorous and obscene exploitation of service families to promote himself and line the pockets of his cronies.   Instead he takes to the blackboard and raves on and on about secret plots that make sense only to himself.  Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski’s manifesto makes more sense than Beck’s condescending lectures.  What he preaches may be nonsense and he may just be another clown, but taking a page from Beck’s own playbook in referencing Hitler, I’ll point out that no one thought Mein Kampf made much sense either, even before it became a blueprint for worldwide catastrophe.  He may be a clown, but the ignorance and hatred he is so proudly preaching is taking root.

Glenn Beck, Fox News, meet your match:

Network (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Owen Roizman (Cinematographer). Warner Home Video 1976, DVD, $15.32

The new lords and ladies are the Dick and Liz Cheneys and the people for whom they shill. They are the Rupert Murdochs and the Richard Mellon Scaifes, and they are guaranteed to own more and more of the country as long as more progressive taxation (i.e. pre-Reagan, not pre-Bush) is not restored. They are the ones who didn’t want a public universal health option, did not want the wars abroad to end abruptly, did not want the Copenhagen Climate convention to succeed. They are driven by pure greed and narrow profit-seeking for themselves. They always get their way, and they always will as long as you poor stupid bastards buy the line that when the government raises their taxes, it is taking something away from you. It is the alliance of the Neoliberal super-rich with the new lower middle class populists led by W. and now by Sarah Palin that produces clown politics in the US unmatched in most advanced industrial countries with the possible exception of Italy.

Sculpture by Rodin, Photograph by Caroline Bubbers

Does this work for you:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou are more lovely and more temperate
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

How about this:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

Finally, how about this:

I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light – but hey, that would be going into sexual details …

Ouch.  It starts out pretty good, but soon turns awkward, and, well, nerdy.  Since we know that unlike Shakespeare and Browning’s words, which were written for the world to see, we  don’t get uncomfortable reading them as we do with Mark Sanford’s love letters to Maria, his Argentinean paramour.  And if it weren’t for his holier than thou past, we might feel some sympathy for his predicament.  In this private email, the Governor, ran into a common problem that writers face when they attempt to capture romantic love in its physical incarnation: language.  It’s hard to find the right words that evoke the emotion and sensation without being either crude or giggle-inducing.  “Breasts,” Governor.  You can say that word and not burn in hell for eternity.  “Breasts” works because it’s neither too pornographic nor to clinical.  If you still want to maintain your biblical piousness, I suppose you could use “Bosom,” but I can’t promise I won’t giggle.  The intended recipient of your email may giggle at bosom, but she would still be touched by your sensitivity and vulnerability in expressing yourself.  In love letters written by pious amateurs, surely it’s the thought that counts.

For the past several years I have been working sporadically on a novel.  Ironically, while I have never been a fan of metafiction, Winslow falls into that self-conscious category.  Even more ironically, a major portion of it is in the form of an historical novel, a genre I have never highly regarded.  Finally, this historical novel-within-a-novel is written in epistolary form.  The layers of artifice seem never ending.

How did this come about?  As near as I can tell, it was a kind of psychosis brought on by interrupted circadian rhythms, sleep deprivation, and oxygen-poor airliner air.  I had been working in Seattle for about six months on a consulting contract, each week flying out on early Monday morning and returning home to Baltimore on Thursday night/Friday morning red-eyes.  Over time, this schedule took its toll on me.  The three hour difference in time zones doesn’t seem like that much, but after a while, switching twice a week left me settled into my own time zone.  My home was Eastern Time, my job was Pacific Time, and I existed in an alternate dimension called “Fred Time.”  My client, who shall remain nameless, would probably agree that I was in an alternate dimension.

While working in Seattle, I tried as much as possible to keep myself on eastern time.  This meant getting up before dawn and going to sleep early.  Over time, however, that was difficult to maintain, so while I continued to get up early, I was going to sleep on Seattle time.  I did manage to get quite a bit of writing done during that time.  I wrote in the mornings and evenings in my hotel room and during thirteen hours I spent each week on airplanes.  My story “Indian Summer” was written while watching the golden sunlight fade away on the face of Mount Rainier.

I also began working on what I thought might be a long short story or a novella.  I had been haunted for many years by a short story I had written that I could never get right.  Finally, I realized that my whole approach to it had be wrong and decided to start over, this time writing in first person rather than third.  The story was about a beleaguered young teacher at a fictional private school in a fictional upstate New York town named Winslow.  The writing was going well and I decided to enlarge the story even more with a bit of the history of this school and town that I had invented.  Trying to imagine what the town might have been like a hundred years ago got me within range of the civil war.  It was then that “Fred Time” and that alternate universe took over.  One morning, I got up as the sun was rising and wrote:

The Battle of Antietam was the single bloodiest day in American combat history. The events of that day are documented and the numbers of the dead and wounded have been counted and re-counted. Those numbers include the twenty-seven sons of the town of Winslow, New York. The numbers of the spiritually wounded include eight widows and nineteen children. The sorrow that enveloped Winslow lasted generations and is still recalled by the statue that stands in the square in front of the post office.

Time has forgotten, however, the wounded that are never counted. They were not widows; they were not orphans. They were the young women of the town of Winslow, who had tearfully posted their perfumed letters at that very same post office. Some of those letters were later found, muddy and blood-soaked on the battlefield. Their sorrow was private and they carried it for the remainder of their days. Their betrothed had left the earth, leaving no tangible sign that they had ever existed. These women would never see their lovers smile in a child’s face.

Instead, they were left to mourn their whole lives, driven from joy to sorrow and then back again by memories of lives they had only imagined.

I had no idea where it came from.  I didn’t even know what it had to do with the story I had been working on the night before.  I had no idea where Antietam was, whether it was a Union or Confederate Victory and why I even cared.

As it turns out, The Battle of Antietam was fought near Sharpsburg, Maryland, about fifty miles from where I live.  My excuse for not knowing that is that I grew up in New York and only moved here in 2000, so my knowledge of the state’s history is limited.

Since the story that I was working on was a contemporary one, I realized that I was now working on something much larger than a short story or a novella, and considerably more complex.  I wasn’t sure how to proceed.  I set it aside for a few weeks, occasionally rereading what I had decided would be the epilogue of my unexpected epic.  Those “perfumed letters” kept coming back to me.  And that is how we return to the original topic of this post: love letters.

One Sunday afternoon, in the comfort of my home office, I sat down at the computer and challenged myself to write one of those “perfumed letters.”  I imagined a seventeen year-old girl, perhaps the minister’s daughter, writing to her eighteen year-old beau, the young prince of the town that bears his family’s name.  It was very early in the war, too early for anyone to comprehend the devastation would would occur.  Both of my lovers had heretofore lived idyllic, somewhat sheltered lives, and they are idealistic.

Sarah Davison, of Winslow, New York writes:

Dearest Joshua,

Once again, I hope this letter finds you safe and in good health.

I can scarcely believe that it has only been a fortnight since you and the others are gone and already I am writing my fourth letter to you. I have no way of knowing where or when this letter may find you, but I am sure that wherever you are, you are smiling and saying, “stop using those fancy English words, Mrs. Shakespeare.” I’m sorry my darling Sweet Boy, but someone must bring some refinement and culture into your life. I have always wanted to use the word “fortnight” and now that I have the opportunity, I am going to write it as often as I can in this letter. I hope that each time you read it, it makes you smile and laugh and that it makes you miss your beloved “Mrs. Shakespeare” as much as she misses you.

Since that day, a fortnight ago, when you and the other young men disappeared down the road to Albany, I have been willing myself to be strong. The other women in town are looking to me, the daughter of their minister, for strength and courage. I hardly know what to say to them. I smile and stand straight, with the posture expected of the young lady I am supposed to be, but in my heart, I feel an emptiness that I know will only be filled when the Good Lord sees fit to return you safely home. I have promised myself that I would not burden you with my girlish lamentations, for you surely have many more pressing things to think about, but my darling, I cannot keep from you what I must hide from everyone else. Even my mother seems to be looking to me for some sort of solace. On the night after you and Daniel left and after the house had fallen silent, I heard my mother in the parlor downstairs, quietly weeping for my brother and praying that he would come home. Please do not tell Daniel of this. Just tell him that we all miss him and pray for his safe return.

Had you not been gone for this past fortnight, I don’t think I would have seen you more than three or four times. There would have been Sundays in church, of course, and then your weekly visits to the parsonage to deliver The Crier. I might have made an excuse to come to your father’s store for some contrived purchase, just so that I could see you. Now that you have left town, however, I don’t know how I could have taken so little care to see you as often as I could. I have no idea where you might be at this moment, but I am certain that you must be marching somewhere. Whether you are fifty miles away or five hundred, it really makes no difference since I cannot see you in either case, but my heart feels every mile farther you march away from me. Is it not strange how the heart can so accurately measure distance?

Your father has begun publishing The Crier twice weekly since the whole town is now anxious for any news of the war. If you were here, of course, that would have given you one more chance each week to see me! He has also hired little Samuel to deliver the paper to the shops and houses closest to town. You should have seen him on his first day! He so looks up to you and he was proud to be huffing and puffing his way up Main Street with your canvas bag slung over his shoulder. The bag is almost as big as he is and, when you see him from behind, there is no little boy, just a canvas bag filled with newspapers waddling up the street on two little feet.

Abby has moved in with us for a time. With Daniel gone, she is by herself, so it is good that she has a family to live with. She has been very quiet lately and seems to be feeling unwell. Yesterday morning at breakfast, she became sick but thankfully, this morning she ate well. Don’t tell Daniel of this as it will only trouble him and there is nothing he can do. Although she has no family of her own, she is now a part of our family and I finally have that sister I’ve always wanted. I will try to keep her spirits up.

I have imagined that on your way south that you have traveled through Manhattan. My father took Daniel and me there once when we were children. I remember seeing the girls in their pretty fashions. Tell me darling sweet boy, did they smile and wave to you in your uniform and did you return their smiles and get an extra spring in your step?

Oh, forgive me. You know I have such a jealous nature when it comes to you. I remember how you teased me at the church dance last fall. You had told me that you don’t like to dance, but you promised you would dance with me when we sat in church the week before. Then at the dance, you went right ahead and danced three times with that Ruth Campbell. I know you did that just to make me jealous. I saw you looking over to me all the time to see if I saw you. I’m sure you remember the pain of my boot heal on your toe when you finally did allow yourself to dance with me. My temper is now well known to all. My father tells me that there must be some Irish blood in the family stock, but I’ll have none of that. You deserved it, Joshua Winslow! In educating you, didn’t your father teach you not to trifle with a girl’s affections?

Now that you are gone and I miss you so, I forgive you for all your ill manners and I apologize for my very wicked behavior. All I pray for now is for your safe return.

In spite that brave mask I am forced to wear for others, my father knows of my anxiety. He scolds me less for the gossip I like to talk about at the dinner table and for my strange interpretations of his sermons. He knows of my love of the written word and has asked me to compose a new benediction for him that mentions the brave twenty-seven of Winslow:

“May the Good Lord and his son, Jesus, bless each and every one of you with courage, wisdom and charity, and may he watch over our beloved sons, every day and every night until they are delivered safely home again.”

My darling Joshua, be well and be safe and know that I am praying for you and dreaming of you. My letters will continue to flow over the fortnights to come.

All my love,

Sarah

PS – We have acquired a new peacock and I have decided to name him Jefferson Davis, since he loves to puff himself up and strut his way around the pen all with the pomp and arrogance that I imagine a Southern Gentleman to have. He is no match for me and my broomstick as I am sure that rebel scoundrel is no match for the brave twenty-seven of Winslow.

By the time I was done, needless to say, I was hopelessly in love.  I was enraptured.  I was overcome with that blissful sense that everything on earth and in heaven is in harmony.  I sat at my desk and sighed.

Then I came to my senses and realized I needed a second opinion.  As proud and as touched by what I had written, I realized that it may just be a case of literary…self gratification. I printed it out and then nervously gave the letter to my wife. “Tell me,” I asked, “is this a letter that a seventeen year-old girl would write or is it just a letter I would like to receive from a seventeen year-old girl?”

“That’s good,” was the verdict.

I needed more.  “Is it believable, or is it a creepy middle-aged man’s fantasy?”

“No,” she said. “It’s good. Write more.”

“Write more” is a ringing endorsement to me, especially from my wife.

That was a couple of years ago.  Since then I have occasionally worked on the various parts of the novel: a present time narrative line, a narrative line from the early 1980’s and the epistolary novel set in 1861 and 1862.  I haven’t decided whether the letters are “true” or are just imagined by one of the characters in the other two story lines.  Making them imaginary frees me from having to be historically accurate and helps justify the idealized relationship between Sarah and Joshua.  I’ve written Sarah letters and Joshua letters sporadically since then.  Each of them tries to explore some aspect of love, be it emotional, psychological, physical, or spiritual. Collectively they also tell two stories: life in Winslow during the Civil War as told by Sarah, and the life of a Union soldier as told by Joshua.

When all is said and done, however, they are, quite simply love letters.  One of the things I discovered as I was writing these letters, is that to a large extent, I’m able to throw away all the rules that I normally live by when dealing with emotion in writing fiction.  In general, the more intense the emotion, the more controlled your language needs to be.  To make emotions real for your reader you need to show, not tell.  Emotion isn’t verbal, so it cannot be directly described.  Instead you need to record the effects of emotions.  Physical sensations, descriptions of body language and movement, tone of voice, and dramatic structure evoke the emotion in your reader.  Emoting uncontrollably on the page doesn’t work.

Except in love letters.  Writers of love letters, whether they be literary writers creating fiction, or confused Governors writing emails never meant for anyone other than his lover to read, can throw caution to the wind, have no fear of appearing silly or foolish and simply let go.

Whether or not I ever finish this novel, let alone publish it, writing these letters has been a learning experience for me as a writer.  The fate of my characters is known from the beginning.  Sarah never sees Joshua again because five days after writing his last letter he is killed in the Battle of Antietam.  As the narrative content – the stories Sarah and Joshua tell each other – evolved, so did the characters.  During the course of the year and a half that this correspondence takes place, both Sarah and Joshua are changed by both the words they write to each other and their separate experiences.

Along with the, well, mushy parts of each letter, I also have each character write about their current circumstances and experiences, much in the same way Governor Sanford tells his beloved Maria little tidbits from his political life.  The experiences that I describe are not planned, they are complete improvisations created in the moment.  The historical accuracy of these improvisations is extremely questionable, so I’m leaning toward the view that they are figments of another character’s imagination.  It also helps me continue to tell myself that I am not writing an historical novel.

Governor Sanford’s love letters show great potential.  The emotions seem genuine but he still seems self conscious expressing himself.  He also seems to be unsure of his lover’s devotion to him and tries to impress her with his political credentials.  Relax, Governor. You had her at “hola.”   It’s private, just between you and her, light the fuse and let loose your passion.

While Sarah and Joshua’s letters never come close to the eroticism that Governor Sanford attempts, here’s one of Joshua’s letters that the Governor might use as a guide to how to lay it on the line. It’s not erotic, but it’s about as sensuous as two teenagers from religious families can be in a nineteenth century small town.  In place of Sarah and Joshua, I have substituted the names of Governor Sanford and his beloved:

My Dearest Maria,

Your father may understand the ways of the Lord and the hearts of men, but he has no understanding of the ways of the Union Army. We have not reached the Blue Mountains of Virginia. We have not reached Virginia. It appears that we’ll not see Virginia or even Maryland this year. We’ve marched some, we trained some more, but mostly what we do is wait.

After mustering in Albany, we traveled down to Manhattan Island by boat. We camped there for two weeks while we waited for some more boats to carry us across the very river we came down. Every day we could see ferryboats crossing the river, but we had to wait for the Army’s boats which were being built in Delaware.

After we landed in New Jersey, we marched some, and then we stopped and set up camp on the plains near Trenton. It was a long march and we were glad for the rest, but we have now been here for close to three months. We train on most days and are now very disciplined and sharp, but we have yet to see a rebel flag, see a rebel soldier, or hear a rebel gunshot. There may be a war being fought somewhere, but it’s definitely not in Trenton New Jersey.

We’ve met some boys from other parts of the Union. Having spent all my life in Winslow, I only know farming, farming ways and farming people. I have made friends with a boy named Pete Shotten, from Deer Island, Maine, whose father is a fisherman. There are some other boys as well from his town and they are all sons of fisherman. There’s also a boy named Johnnie Woodbine from Port Jefferson on Long Island. His father is a fisherman. I have to say that after listening to them talk about how much they miss their lives on the water and their homes, I think that I would someday like to live near the sea, at least for a little while. We’ve also got a boy named Boucher who comes from far north in New York, near Canada. His name is pronounced “Boo-shay.” Before he joined the army, he trapped furs with his father and brothers. He speaks English, but we call him “Frenchy” because of his name.

While we have been camped here, there haven’t been too many hardships. The training is hard, but the New Jersey farmland would make all of the farmers in Winslow jealous and the growing season is longer here, so we are well supplied right now. The camp has a still, a laundry, a chapel and a post office. The officers order us to visit the laundry. They don’t have to order us to visit the still or the chapel or the post office.

On the day when that last batch of letters from Winslow arrived at the post office tent, the tent and the whole area around it for at least twenty yards was filled with lavender scent. You and your friends sure mixed up a potent batch of lavender water. The other men have been teasing us about it and they have taken to calling us Winslow boys, the “Perfume Brigade.” They tease us but I think they are also a little jealous that we are all together and come from a home where all the girls would send fragrant letters to their men.

For all of us, those letters remind us all of how much we miss home and to thank the Lord for what we have waiting for us.

For me, that scent brought back a memory of a very special day. It was that day this past June when you and I had our first picnic alone, down by the stream at the edge of Jeb Wilson’s property. I hope you remember it. You had worked so hard to make sure everything was just right, and then everything seemed to go wrong. The ants got into the peach cobbler, you dropped the plate of fried chicken on the ground and I kicked over the jug of cider. All we had left of our picnic were some cherries. You were so upset after all the work you had done, but I didn’t mind it at all. Having that time alone with you in that beautiful place was all that mattered. Finally, you laughed.

That was the day you let me kiss you. We were sitting beneath that old oak tree at the end of Wilson’s rock wall. My ears were filled with the sound of swollen stream and the songs of your laughter. The golden sun was flashing off the pretty yellow dress you wore.

When I hold your scented letter to my nose now, I remember how, after seeing you home and continuing on home myself, I held my hand up to my nose, which had touched your hair, your shoulder and your hip. The scent of lavender reminds me of the taste of cherries and the touch of your lips on mine.

My dear, sweet Maria, please don’t fret because you didn’t say the words to me before I left. You have told them to me now. Paper may get old and crumble, ink may run and fade, but those words are immortal.

You asked me about what I dream and about how will I know that you will love me forever. Let me tell you about a dream that I have. I have it every night. I have had it every night since leaving home. Every time I dream this dream, liking a painting slowly coming into being, it has more form, more detail, and becomes more real. Every morning when I awake now, I believe I am in Winslow and you are beside me. Please tell me if you can imagine this dream:

It is early June. We are in that spot by the stream where we had our picnic. My love for you could never be contained in any church, any structure built by man, and your love for me is a wonderful gift from God, no less then all of his other gifts: the trees and flowers, the birds, his gift of beautiful summer days, the gift of life itself, and so we have asked your father that it be here in this sacred place among all the things that you and I love and cherish. The small roses in your modest bouquet were clipped from your grandmother’s rose garden. Your simple white dress was sewn by your mother who added piece of lace from her own wedding dress. Your beautiful brown hair was braided by your closest girlfriend and decorated with wildflowers gathered by the young girls in your Sunday school class. You are a vision of Nature.

After our vows and our meal, Callie Shaw’s violin plays that old Irish waltz that you love. In that golden afternoon moment, my hand on your hip, your hand on my shoulder, our two hands clasped, we begin our lives together.

If you tell me that you can dream this dream too, then that is all I need to know that you will love me forever.

All my love,

Mark

Well, okay, maybe asking his lover to marry him is a little more complicated for a married 21st century governor than it is for Joshua.  But again, it’s the thought that counts.

Neda Agha Soltan

1982-2009

Neda Agha Soltan, an Iranian student, was attending a protest in Tehran today when she was shot in the chest by a Basij militiaman.  Her death was captured in a shocking video that has now been seen around the world.  She may not have desired it, but she has become a symbol.  Her name, Neda, means “The Voice.”

Her death may have been foretold by another Iranian woman, who anonymously wrote on the night before:

"I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…"

After Neda was murdered, she wrote again:

Yesterday I wrote a note, with the subject line "tomorrow is a great day perhaps tomorrow I’ll be killed." I’m here to let you know I’m alive but my sister was killed…

I’m here to tell you my sister died while in her father’s hands
I’m here to tell you my sister had big dreams…
I’m here to tell you my sister who died was a decent person… and like me yearned for a day when her hair would be swept by the wind… and like me read "Forough"… and longed to live free and equal… and she longed to hold her head up and announce, "I’m Iranian"… and she longed to one day fall in love to a man with a shaggy hair… and she longed for a daughter to braid her hair and sing lullaby by her crib…

my sister died from not having life… my sister died as injustice has no end… my sister died since she loved life too much… and my sister died since she lovingly cared for people…

my loving sister, I wish you had closed your eyes when your time had come… the very end of your last glance burns my soul….

sister have a short sleep. your last dream be sweet.

These moving and powerful symbols are emerging from a culture that, to Western eyes, has historically been oppressive to women.  Nonetheless, they emerge as brave and fierce opponents of oppression.  Embedded in their cultural heritage is figure as meaningful to Iranian woman as any Judeo-Christian symbol is to us: Fatima, daughter of the Prophet, wife of Ali.  Through the centuries, just as our Christian symbols have been manipulated to suit the purposes of the powerful, so has Fatima. In spite of this, she has survived.

From Massoume Price’s Lecture “Distinguished Women, Past and Present: Fatima is Fatima” :

Yet at another level she is the fighter and the defender of the true faith and justice. After her fathers’ death the power struggle starts, her family representing the true faith, the pure and the holy blood is pushed aside. It is her speech that stirs, accuses and reveals all that is wrong and how deviations will happen with the greedy leaders who will change the course of Islam for ever and for worse. At the domestic level she is the loyal daughter, the devoted wife, the caring mother and a symbol of endurance. Such themes have been used for centuries to project her image as that of the ideal Muslim woman. The one who will not hesitate to sacrifice all including herself for the sake of her family and the true fate.

Friday, the 19th of June 2009

Tomorrow, Saturday, is a day of destiny

Tonight, the cries of Allah-o Akbar are heard louder and louder than the nights before.

Where is this place?

Where is this place where every door is closed?

Where is this place where people are simply calling God?

Where is this place where the sound of Allah-o Akbar gets louder and louder?

I wait every night to see if the sounds will get louder and whether the number increases.

It shakes me.

I wonder if God is shaken.

Where is this place where so many innocent people are entrapped?

Where is this place where no one comes to our aid?

Where is this place where only with our silence we are sending our voices to the world?

Where is this place where the young shed blood and then people go and pray?

Standing on that same blood and pray…

Where is this place where the citizens are called vagrants?

Where is this place?   You want me to tell you?

This place is Iran.

The homeland of you and me.

This place is Iran.

Here’s NYU Professor Clay Shirky:

I’m always a little reticent to draw lessons from things still unfolding, but it seems pretty clear that … this is it. The big one. This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media. I’ve been thinking a lot about the Chicago demonstrations of 1968 where they chanted "the whole world is watching." Really, that wasn’t true then. But this time it’s true … and people throughout the world are not only listening but responding. They’re engaging with individual participants, they’re passing on their messages to their friends, and they’re even providing detailed instructions to enable web proxies allowing Internet access that the authorities can’t immediately censor. That kind of participation is really extraordinary.

The rest of the interview is available on TED.

Shirky’s insightful book about the internet revolution:

Here Comes Everybody

Clay Shirky. Penguin Press HC, The 2008, Hardcover, 336 pages, $7.90

In 2000, my family moved from New York to Maryland.  Like most New Yorkers, I will always be a New Yorker no matter where I may happen to live.  It’s hard to disguise.  All I have to do is open my mouth. Nonetheless, I’ve tried to embrace the community in which I live.  I’ve adopted the Washington Nationals (I could never, ever, root for an American League team), and given how they are currently doing, it’s felt a lot like being a Met fan during most of their history.

I’ve had no problem at all finding a hero columnist in my adopted hometown newspaper and I can easily consider him be a peer of my other columnist heroes.  The Pulitzer Prize Committee agrees with me and has awarded Eugene H. Robinson the 2009 award for commentary.

Placing the news in context, helping us to understand why the issues of the day matter, challenging us to think and to feel.  That’s what great columnists do.

Congratulations Mr. Robinson.

A Special Brand of Patriotism.

“The problem with transparency is that it’s transparent for the terrorists as well.”

- George Will

“Some things in life need to be mysterious.  Sometimes you need to just keep walking.”

- Peggy Noonan

“I’m not confident that forswearing the use of these techniques is prudent.”

- Bill Kristol

“What we really need is to have all these techniques at our disposal… they talk about the banging of the guy’s head against the wall. It turns out to be very controlled and it’s a soft wall that gives way… I’m not at all sure that’s torture.”

- Brit Hume

What country do these people live in?  Certainly not the country I was raised to love and cherish.  Were they asleep in school when The Constitution and The Bill of Rights were covered?  When they were in Sunday School (no doubt they all went to Sunday School), did they miss all the parts about…Jesus?

The memos released by the Obama administration offer the incontrovertible truth.  Our government has tortured.  Not only that, it was officially sanctioned and institutionalized.  Our government violated its own laws, it violated international treaties, and it has committed acts that we have condemned when committed by every other nation on earth.

Fortunately, there is a remedy.  Unfortunately, the remedy is not saying “We promise we’ll never do it again,” as the Obama Administration wishes it could do.  Investigations and prosecutions will no doubt be politically messy, especially when you have nitwits like those quoted above willing to rationalize anything.  Nonetheless, the spirit and soul of our nation is at risk and they are more important than political expediency.

Because this is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, all of us have committed these crimes.  These crimes were committed in our name.  If we do not hold those who perpetrated these crimes accountable, then the guilt will be ours.  By looking the other way, we will be war criminals.

Some words from Jacob Bronowski, who bore witness to what can happen when human beings rationalize inhumanity:

“We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.”

The Ascent of Man

Jacob Bronowski. Little Brown & Co (P) 1976, Paperback, $43.99

This didn’t suddenly happen on January 20th, it didn’t just happen last fall, or even in the last eight years.  Over the last thirty years, we have seen the most massive transfer of wealth in this country since the early days of the twentieth century, and one only has to look up “1929” to see how well that worked out for us.

Ironically, it was the assault on all the protections that were put in place as a result of the Great Depression that has gotten us to where we are now.  We can accurately point the finger at the Republicans for their slavish devotion to the free market, economic Darwinism, and trickle-down theories, but there was no shortage of Democrats to act as willing accomplices.  The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 was signed by Democrat Bill Clinton after having been passed by a veto-proof two-thirds majority in Congress.  The  repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had prevented savings and commercial banks from also being investment banks, brokerage houses, and insurance companies,  set us on a path that future historians may view as inevitable.  The depression-era regulations, designed to prevent exactly what had happened, seem to have worked very well.  It was when they were systematically weakened and eliminated that something happened that bares a closer resemblance to the meltdown of the early 30’s than anyone wants to admit. To all you sober-minded economists who appear on the Sunday morning talk shows, I know what you’re thinking but won’t say.

While all this was happening – the transfer of wealth, the reckless destruction of financial protections – there was no outrage.  Americans were convinced that government was incompetent, businessmen were the true wise men  (and yeah, it was mostly men), and what was good for CEO’s was good for them.  One of President Obama’s few gaffes during has campaign was his tactless remark about voters in Pennsylvania being difficult to reach because they are cynical of politicians and “cling to guns and religion.”  It was a huge mistake, but I remember thinking, “Poorly stated, but not wrong.”  I admit that I fall into that ideological group known as Eastern Liberals.  The uproar that followed, however, proved the exact point Obama had been trying to make.  His opponent, Hillary Clinton, started wistfully remembering going a-huntin’ as a child with a beloved uncle and got herself seen doing shots in working-class bars.  Obama himself tried to get into act until a set of bowling pins showed him that pandering just isn’t his style.

It’s no surprise that Americans who live in depressed rural areas, or those former industrial states now called the rustbelt are cynical of politicians.  For years, politicians have claimed kinship with them and played to their fears and emotions.  Their hardships were not caused by incompetent corporate management, or by greedy CEO’s, or by a tax policy that encouraged companies to send jobs overseas, or by the fact that the people who do most of the work in this country don’t have lobbyists funding political campaigns.  Instead, their hardships are caused by the anti-gun activists, Cadillac-driving welfare queens, easily available condoms, CEO’s paying too much income tax,  Mexicans, and Michael Moore.

During election years, Republicans standing in front of abandoned factories was as ubiquitous as Democrats standing on front of piles of rubble in the South Bronx.  And yet, all they’ve ever managed to do was to convince people to vote against their own interests.  After generations of misdirection and pandering by politicians as things have gradually gotten worse is it any wonder that they are not trusted?  What’s amazing is how long it took for the fraud to be exposed.

It still continues.  I’m getting a tax cut.  Chances are so are you.  So are the vast majority of American families.  Most of us don’t even come close to earning $250,000 a year.  Yet, the rhetoric that is repeated over and over by ideologues and by mainstream journalists is that Obama is raising taxes.  Raising the top marginal tax rate from 35% to 39% to help support a middle-class tax cut only sets the marginal rate back to what it was in 1999, before George W. Bush’s budget breaking tax cuts.  And this marginal rate applies to income over $372,000.  How many of us does that apply to?

Historically, the marginal tax rates were highest from 1932 through 1980, peaking at 92% in 1952-1953.  In an admittedly simplistic analysis, the marginal tax rate was at its highest during the 1950’s and 1960’s when the middle-class expanded and their quality of life improved.  Executive compensation during that period remained relatively flat.  Even adjusted for inflation, a corporate executive of today wouldn’t get out of bed for what his 50’s or 60’s counterpart earned (and yeah, it’s still mostly men).

I lose no sleep over the fact that someone who earns millions of dollars in compensation is going to pay 4% more, and I find it hard to believe that anyone else besides Joe-The-Make-Believe-Plumber would shed a tear.  Joe, however, is an example the way we have been deluding ourselves.  If Joe was in that bracket, if Joe was actually earning 10 million dollars a year, like all of us wish we ourselves earned, he certainly would resent paying an extra 4%.  I know I would, and I’d be certain to talk about it to my senator over lunch at the Capital Grille.  Joe, unfortunately, has as much chance of earning 10 million dollars a year as a real plumber as I have of playing centerfield for the Yankees.  Or outselling Stephen King.

But no, it’s all about jobs isn’t it?  When the wealthy get their taxes cut, they invest, they create jobs!  How has that worked out for us?  Based on what we see from the series of financial scandals that have been rocking us since Enron and before, they haven’t really been investing.  They have taken the wealth of our nation and, like gambling addict Bill Bennett, they have been on a binge of epic proportions. They literally broke the bank.

Outrage, welcome back.  You have been missed.

Disclaimer: I’ve been to the Capital Grille several times (although not with my Senator), and it gets my ringing endorsement.  The food and service are exquisite, but all the well-healed old white guys, who comprise most of the other clientele, make me feel like someone’s going to grab me by the collar, lift me out of my chair, and say, “Who let you in here, Punk?”

Senator Cardin, you have an open invitation.

Related Post: Pizzigati’s Wakeup Call

This week, Salon.com is publishing a series of articles about the problems combat veterans are facing coming home.  Untreated PTSD and callous treatment by the military are driving suicide and homicide numbers to the highest levels in decades.  In the first article, we read about Adam Lieberman, whose problems were ignored by the army until he attempted suicide.  Before that, he was a drunk, a fuck-up, anything other than a soldier traumatized by harrowing and gruesome combat experiences.  Just reading about them sends jolts through my nervous system:

"A guy’s face was blown off from his nose to his chin," he said as we sat at his dining room table with Heidi while he was home on leave recently. The U.S. soldier was gagging, drowning in blood without a mouth or nose. A medic performed an emergency tracheotomy. The soldier died anyway.

During another engagement a gunner atop Adam’s Humvee suddenly collapsed in Adam’s lap. Only a thin flap of skin attached the gunner’s head and torso. Beheaded. Adam vomited.

He once saw the lower half of a friend’s body sheared off by a roadside bomb. In the seconds that followed before he died, his friend still moved his right arm and tried to talk. He looked at Adam. Adam described the look in his eyes as "terror."

Even after the attempted suicide, instead of proper treatment, the army charged him with defacing government property for writing his suicide note on a wall.  Then they got his mother to help them whitewash it.

The introduction to the series: "Death in the USA: The Army’s fatal neglect"

The first article: "The Death Dealers took my life!"

I have always been amazed when conservatives rail against the idea of “wealth redistribution.”  They seem to be completely ignorant of history and that one of the fundamental purposes of government is to redistribute wealth.  This has been true since the beginning of civilization.  Sometimes wealth is distributed less inequitably than others, but make no mistake, wealth has always been redistributed.  When we consider the wealth of the entire nation, the profits that are produced by all of the people, it has always been redistributed.

In his book, Pizzigati, traces the history of that redistribution, from times where most of the income flowed into a tiny percentage sitting at the top of the pyramid, the so-called gilded age, to the golden age of the middle class, the 50′s and 60′s when tax rates for the rich were the highest, labor unions were strong, and government intrusion into business was at it’s height.  It was during that time that CEO’s of major companies, although well paid, were low-key figures, and who’s homes were modest compared to today’s royal standards.  And it was not that long ago.

Pizzigati specifically takes on some of today’s CEO’s and their unbelievable compensations and asks several questions.  First, are they, is anybody, worth that much money?  Given what many of them actually did to the companies they led, the answer is no.  Second, is the growing chasm separating the tiny group at the top of our society that owns ninety percent of the wealth from the vast majority who create that wealth god for us as a nation, and as a society?  How has it poisoned our culture?

Pizzigati’s remedies may come across as radical and could be labeled by the right as socialist, or even communist, but they are not.  He is simply arguing for a return to a set of national and social values that flourished during a significant portion of the twentieth century and created the richest, and for a time, the one of most equitable of nations.

Updated 2/1/2009:

Too Much: Sam Pizzigati’s web column.

Greed and Good

Sam Pizzigati. Apex Press 2004, Hardcover, 659 pages, $14.95

These words reference and were inspired by I Corinthians 13.  I am by no means a bible scholar, but I happened to recognize these references to a particular passage that I am using as a theme for Winslow.  I’m also not particularly religious, and I firmly believe in secular government, but if you’re going to reference scripture, and use words that can touch believers of all faiths (and even non-believers whom Obama made a point of including) you can’t find a better passage to reference than this:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face-to-face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I think it’s entirely appropriate that a poet speak at a presidential inauguration.  I just saw filmmaker Ken Burns on television describing America as a country based on nothing more, nothing less, than ideas.  I believe that is true.  We are a nation of immigrants, all from different cultures and different religions.  The only thing that binds us together are the ideas first expressed by Thomas Jefferson what he wrote of “truths we hold self-evident.”  The power of these truths is that they have been in the past, and should be now and in the future, stronger than anything that divides us.

Words, that express ideas, that attempt to articulate truth, matter.  They matter deeply.

One can be skeptical about art that is produced to support a state event.  How can it be any good?  Isn’t it just fancy propaganda?  To ask that question ignores the difference between  art and politics.  Art seeks to express deep universal truths.  It may or may not align with a political agenda.  Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.

I imagine that it’s very difficult to create a poem that both serves its inspirational purpose, but also reaches beyond political agendas to to touch some universal truth that resonates with us.  As much as I love it, Ginsberg’s “Howl” (“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…”) isn’t going to cut it at an inauguration.  The poem must be patriotic, which doesn’t mean it has to be propagandistic.  The poem must be positive, but not falsely so.  It must be emotionally moving, but not sentimental.  But its most important purpose at such an occasion is to give voice to our common identity, those ideas that bind us together, and the journey that we have been on in perfecting how reality reflects those ideas.

As a writer, and especially as a poet of modest talent, I’m in awe of how well Elizabeth Alexander spoke for us.  Every word, every image, contains an epic story:

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one 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 someone 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 thy self.”

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 preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

From “From Books, New President Found Voice“, Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Photograph by Caroline Bubbers

Election day of 2004 found me in, of all places, Austin, Texas.  I had been working as a contractor at the time, designing a dimensional database for an Austin-based company.  That night I watched the election returns with some co-workers at a jazz club on Sixth Street.  The place was empty except for us, the bartender, a single waitress, and the four musicians on stage.  The sound was turned all the way down on the multiple televisions scattered throughout the club, but the CNN graphics told the story well enough.  It was going to be close again, but we were going to also lose again.  I couldn’t decide whether I was shocked that we had re-elected the man I believed to be the worst president in history, or it was completely predictable.  I admit that I had been frustrated by the ineptitude of John Kerry’s campaign.  It followed in a long line of inept campaigns:  Al Gore’s, Mike Dukakis’s, George McGovern’s.  Still, the sheer incompetence of George W. Bush had been stunning in itself.  We were already embroiled in a preemptive war that we had started based on provocations that at best had been imagined and at worst, manufactured.  Our president had embarrassed us all around the world.  He embarrassed us every time he opened his mouth.  Clearly, anyone could be better.

Little did I know that the worst was yet to come.

I was still working in Austin the following August when Hurricane Katrina swept through the gulf and devastated New Orleans.  New Orleans, just like Austin, was among the few places I had traveled to on business over the years that I had fallen in love with.  I guess it’s a weakness for places with thriving musical scenes, great restaurants, and a unique local cultural identities that defy the force of suburban blandness.  (Yeah, I know I live in Columbia, MD).  The cruel, seemingly vindictive, neglect that caused New Orleans to become a post-apocalyptic nightmare enraged me, even while my conservative business associates were making callous, even racist wisecracks about the misery in New Orleans.  On September 3, 2005, I wrote to a friend:

I first visited New Orleans in 1994 when I went there for a week to work a Computer Associates Trade show. It was love at first sight. The music, the food, the architecture, the way people talk, the pride and love that the they have for their history and culture. I was back there many times over the years and it became my favorite place in the whole world. I’ve got no illusions about the poverty and crime there — there were parts of the city that were very dangerous — but I still loved the place.

I’ve been in a slow burn this whole week. Having traveled a bit around America and having met lots of folks on all sides of the political spectrum, I have a pretty positive opinion of the generosity and decency of the American people when they know the truth. I know that all of us would have been fine this week if the entire country ground to a halt while every single plane, bus and truck in the land were sent there to rescue people. All that was needed for that to happen was for the president to pick up the phone and to call a few CEO’s. They would have done it and the rest of us would have managed. I should not have been able to get on my plane back from Austin last night because the plane I was on should have been flying refugees, food or medicine. Instead there are dead children on the floor of the convention center where I once pitched my software. They weren’t killed by looters or by the “armed thugs” on Magazine Street, or by an “act of God”. They were killed by that vacuous, amoral idiot in the White House. Born-again Christian? That’s a crock. Somehow, in all that time he claims he spent reading the gospels, he missed part where it says that we are here to take care of one another. I guess it’s easy to miss, since Jesus only says it two or three times on each page.

Katrina was, of course, the turning point in George W. Bush’s relationship with the American people.  It exposed the corruption, the cronyism, the incompetence, the contempt for the basic values on which this country was founded.  But it had been going on for years.  Sometimes it was obvious, but most often it wasn’t.  It was a gradual slide that happened over decades.

That night in Austin, I was reminded of an election night, long ago, and in another city.  I was young, idealistic, and enraptured by my beautiful and equally young and idealistic dinner companion.  We had no idea what our lives would be, who we would become, or even if we would be together in the future.  Such is the stuff of college romances.   The Italian restaurant in downtown Albany, like the club in Austin twenty-four years later, was empty but for us.  It was “our place,” and I’m cursing myself because I can’t recall the name of it.  There was a small black and white television set  on the bar that night, that I could see over my date’s shoulder.  We didn’t pay much attention to it during our dinner.  Instead, we enjoyed our veal marsala, and our cabernet, and the family who owned the restaurant and knew us, served us with warm quiet smiles, leaving us to ourselves.

Suddenly, something on the TV caught my eye.  One of the candidates, our candidate, was making a speech.  It was far too early in the evening for anyone to be making a concession.  I called out for the sound to be turned up, and we watched in shocked silence as Jimmy Carter conceded to Ronald Reagan.  In retrospect, I guess we should not have been shocked.  The polls in the weeks leading up to the election had been discouraging and we should have expected it, but as I remember it now, we were stunned.  Perhaps it was the decisiveness of the defeat.  Maybe it was the fact that we had both grown up in liberal families in New York City that left us so unprepared.  My date was inconsolable and I’m ashamed now that my first thoughts were about how this was going to affect the rest of my evening.  For better and worse, it affected the rest of our lives.

What had happened, which seemed disorienting at first, was a fundamental change in values.  “Government can’t solve the problem, government is the problem,” declared Ronald Reagan.  At the time, this played well to a population facing record unemployment, high interest rates, and recurring energy crises.  As a policy statement, over the years it came to mean, government shirking its fundamental responsibilities in the name of privatization.  “Government can’t do anything right, they screw everything up,” became the mantra, and everyone, especially the most vulnerable people in society were forced to fend for themselves.  The free market was God, whether you manufactured refrigerators, built cars, sold mortgages, or provided healthcare.  Somehow, if you needed a coronary bypass operation, you were supposed to shop around for the best price as if you were buying a mini-van.  And the Kafkaesque experience of dealing with getting HMO to actually pay for a claim is supposed to be better than dealing with a government “bureaucracy”?  One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that while dealing with health insurance companies has gotten decidedly worse, dealing with the DMV has gotten easier.

But that’s just so much liberal whining.  We learned that trees cause pollution and we were lectured about Cadillac driving welfare queens that no one could actually find.  Instead of expecting the State to coddle us, it was entrepreneurship that would lead the way.  It was the golden age of the entrepreneur.   Entrepreneurship certainly had created innovation in the past and had made this country great.  But just how many of us need to become entrepreneurs?  All 300 million of us?  And what about the two thirds of all new businesses that fail?  Our needs are modest.  Most of us simply want honest work that we can do proudly and allows us to support our families.  Living truly enriched lives, loving our families and instilling compassionate values in our children, improving our communities and the lives of our fellow citizens were given lip-service while we made Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal a bestseller and CEO’s became rock stars.

Instead of improving our society, by making it more just, more fair, more humane, we embarked on a massive redistribution of wealth, which conservatives deny they perpetrated.  The wealth of this nation has been redistributed from the vast middle class that was born in the years following World War Two and had survived until the early 1980′s, to an increasingly smaller and smaller minority who had the money to buy lower taxes, and increased protection by the government.  Ronald Reagan may have been right in declaring “Government is the problem,” but in a way he never intended.

Over time, the changes permeated our society.  Liberal  became a pejorative term, as used not only by southern conservative republicans, but by newscasters and pundits.  Even liberals started calling themselves progressives just to avoid the L-word.  The Vietnam War became a glorious cause, not a horrible mistake, and the one lesson the president had learned from it was not to give up in the face of overwhelming opposition from his own people, not to mention international allies.  Our failure in Vietnam was because we surrendered became the commonly accepted wisdom.

It all became a nightmare to me.  I had seen all those events through a child’s eyes.  The war, the civil rights movement, a nation struggling to make itself more perfect.  As an adult I saw that nothing had been learned at all.  Questioning an immoral and unjustified war was an act of treason.

And so on that election night in Austin in 2004, I wondered how it was possible that we had re-elected a man who had already proven himself completely unsuitable to the job.  And I remembered that night in Albany, when it all began, when the world suddenly became out of kilter in my eyes.  When I was told, “You don’t matter, your values are false, everything you think and feel is immoral.”

It took Katrina, and all the rest of the past four years of this disaster — torture, neglected veterans, illegal wire-taps, the assault on the environment, the economic meltdown — to show just how far we have gone off track.

But there have been things that I never believed I’d see.  A woman mounted a serious campaign for the presidency.  Even more surprising, she was defeated by an African-American man.  And then that African-American weathered still raging storms of fear and racism to a decisive victory.  I don’t think that young couple in the Albany restaurant, as naive and idealistic as they were, could ever have imagined that.  Although I can’t really speak for what she now believes, I’ll take a chance and try to say whether we can imagine it now.

Yes we can.

- Barack Obama