Happy Easter...
Hope you got all the good stuff you wanted in your basket and then some. Just don't over do it in the chocolate department...that's some serious stuff. And of course I always have to bring some food into it.
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Hope you got all the good stuff you wanted in your basket and then some. Just don't over do it in the chocolate department...that's some serious stuff. And of course I always have to bring some food into it.
Idealism...Only Takes You So Far...
It must be very hard living under a microscope for most of one's life. I needed to know more about Barack...or Barry in his younger
days in Hawaii while in school. I wanted to learn of his younger years and what had to be apparent struggles being from both a black and white background. His ancestry means nothing to me personally because the blood flowing in all our veins is the same. People are simply people...some being more human than others...and I haven't determined if that is a good thing or a bad thing yet. To be determined at a later date obviously.The most often chanted mantra about our Barry has been experience...could he be tough enough. This is something that Hills has taken to a new level of derisiveness at every opportunity. I have been a victim of this thought process myself. One must wear ambition carefully and allow toughness to be a given. Not everyone can do that of course. It would appear that Mr. B. possesses that gift.
We all start out young and untried looking for our talents and what direction to take them. Some are ambitious and some are not. Obama had to work harder than most to find his niche...and at a young age decided it would be a prominent one. Thus the beginnings of ambition to a public life. He was born in Hawaii when it was coming of age by becoming the 50th state. This state being among the "mixed- race" ancestry as a natural way of life among some of the freest-thinking people in America.
His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was the white daughter of a Kansas furniture and insurance salesman who it seems wanted a son. He moved to Hawaii on the eve of its statehood hopefully in search of a new take on life. Obama's mother loved the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., the music of Mahalia Jackson and had the hots for Harry Belafonte. So far...so good. When 18, she met and married Barack's father (same name)...that's where the Hussein enters the picture. So what. Dad a former Kenyan goatherd and an economist-in training had become the first African student in the history of the University of Hawaii in 1960...a time when inter-racial marriage was still illegal in almost half the mainland states. Alas, they divorced in 1963 when Barack was just a wee lad of 2 years. It seems that young Barack met Dad once more in his life for a month at Christmas in Honolulu when he was 10. Dad died in a car crash at 52 in 1983...and that was that.
Mom next married an Indonesian national. She began pursuing a Ph.D. in anthropology that required frequent fieldwork in Indonesia. This is how Barak spent 4 years of his childhood in the world's most populous Muslim nation. His mother wanted him to have a chance at the proverbial American Dream...so she left him in Hawaii for much of his adolescence in the care of his maternal grandparents. Stanley and Madelyn Dunham who managed to get him admission and a scholarship to the prestigious Punahou School in Honolulu. He went there as a fifth grader and left there as the tall and lanky figure much like that of Abraham Lincoln. That analogy was not lost on me by any means. He was one of 3 black students of 1,200. He went to college for 2 years in Los Angeles at Occidental and for 2 years in New York where he transferred to Columbia University. Not bad for a young black/white kid (does it really matter after all?) trying to find his way in this complicated world.
While in New York his father died and it gave him a sense of urgency about his own life. Obama said..."Now, that doesn't mean at that point I somehow instantly had these grand ambitions for political office. But I do think it was at that point in my life--those two years when I was in New York--where I made a decision that wanted to, I wanted to make my mark." He started to make his mark in Chicago...Illinois...land of Lincoln. He landed there not knowing anyone...yet he found his life's work there. He met his wife and found his faith in a higher being in Chicago. He's not a Muslim by any standard...much as many of the media and his political opposition would like to paint him. Only some of life's experiences due to his mother brought him in contact for a few years with a Muslim stepfather. The stepfather mistakenly touted a radical Muslim...therefore Barack must have been raised this way too. I've heard his mother was an atheist so I don't think she would have allowed that to happen.Obama was determined to get a law degree because he he felt this would help prepare him for a career in public service. He became the president of the Harvard Law Review. This wasn't because of his outstanding grades, though he did well by himself...no, he managed to impress both the conservative and liberal sides at a time when the rhetoric was passionate...and the stakes were minimal. He could have had a walk to a Supreme Court clerkship, but instead opted for a small civil-rights practice...part-time teaching of constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He fell in love with his wife Michelle Robinson (a young lawyer) at the law firm Newton Minow. Minow was a devotee of Jack Kennedy. He opposed Obama running for president until he saw a C-span segment of Obama's book tour with him interacting with the crowd. He said he was the 21st-century version of Jack Kennedy. "He is astonishing. I think the fundamental point is the country wants a different kind of politics. I also believe the race issue and the gender issue are yesterday, particularly with young people. I believe as the country sees Barack, gets to know him, they well see the same thing I see: really a combination of a first-class mind and a first-class temperament, all in the same person."
It may be that Obama owes much of this to his mother. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995 at the age of 52. He said if he had known that her life would be short he might have written a different book...Dreams of my Father...yet he dedicated it to his mother and her mother..."the women who raised me." His mother of course being the greatest positive influence in his life. For most of the 70's, 80's and 90's she traveled between Hawaii and Indonesia, doing academic research and paying the bills by teaching English or working for nonprofit organizations such as the Ford Foundation. Her single most bold step in life probably was marrying Barack's father, a fellow undergraduate at the University of Hawaii. They met in a Russian-language class. Turned out that his father was already tribally married to another woman in Africa. So, after he left Barack and his mother to further his graduate studies at Harvard on a scholarship, he would marry and divorce another American woman and go on to father other children. Apparently Barack's mother kept up a friendly correspondence with him through the years.
Obama's grandmother Madelyn, at 85 still lives in Honolulu Hawaii in the same high-rise that helped raise him. His grandparents eloped just prior to Pearl Harbor being bombed. His grandfather Stanley enlisted and Madelyn gave birth to Ann while living on the army base. While grandfather was with Patton in Europe...grandmother Madelyn was a Rosie the Riveter in a bomber plant at home. When he comes home he uses the GI bill to go to college. Madelyn doesn't...she's working as a secretary. Madelyn worked her way up as high as was possible for a woman with no college education. She became the first female vice president of the Bank of Hawaii, and earned more money than her husband. It was she who instilled a lot of very midwestern held values...a traditional sense of caring and hard work. He said, "some of those values didn't sort of manifest themselves until I got older." Sounds like an everyday Joe to me. The picture is of his mother as a child with his grandparents in Hawaii.The years go by and down the road Obama finished with Columbia. He spent a year working as a writer and financial analyst for a publishing and consulting corporation where he received his first impressions of community service in Harlem. He knew what he needed to do: "I wanted to devote myself to something larger than making money or having a good time." Three and a half years of community organizing in the impoverished neighborhoods of Chicago's far South Side. His job was to work with the Developing Communities Project, a church-based effort aimed to organize low-income residents to improve local conditions.
In the winter of 1988 he decided to go to Harvard Law School. By then he knew he wanted a career in the public arena. He wanted to
make the system change from within...not just from the outside. He felt that he finally grew up. It was said of Obama that he wanted the decisions that the group made to reflect the groups intent...not just one individual's intent. They were comfortable giving him the presidency of the Harvard Law Review because they knew he was going to listen closely enough that, whatever decisions had been made, people would know that he had (listened). It was also said that he was masterful in how he facilitated people talking. That's good to know.Here's a poem he wrote in high school while being well known as a jock. This was for the school's literary magazine...
I saw an old, forgotten man on an old, forgotten road.
Staggering and numb under the glare of the spotlight.
His eyes, so dull and grey, slide from right to left, to right,
Looking for his life, misplaced in a shallow, muddy gutter long ago.
I am found, instead.
Seeking a hiding place, the night seals us together.
A transient spark lights his face, and in my honor,
He pulls out forgotten dignity from under his flaking coat,
And walks a straight line along the crooked world.
He'd forgotten this poem years later. In an interview when reminded of this poem...he reflected that it sounded in spirit that he was talking a little bit about his grandfather. I liked that. We'll soon know whether this young Lincoln like man in his ambition will wrap this nomination up neatly or have to cross these paths to glory once again to achieve his presidential goal. Until then...I release you back to nail biting time and the ever present media bombarding us daily with this and that.
cross-posted@TheBlueRepublic
*while at this time I am not an advocate for Obama or Clinton...I wanted to make some information about him known...because he is the target of much misinformation that just doesn't go away...thanks to our media beating it to death.
If You're Irish...
SpongeBob O'Erin is wishing you a very happy green day. May your beer flow green aplenty...and keep the potatoes and cabbage coming!Labels: holiday...
