Barack Obama and Race

The passage below from the recent speech by Barack Obama, bluntly titled “Barack Obama's Speech on Race” addresses a topic that we, as a rule, avoid speaking about. Obama has, I think, done a reasoned, articulate, and compassionate job of speaking of the race divide in this country, and while some, like me, are impressed and heartened by the speech, it has also earned him much criticism. No wonder we don’t talk about it. I hope Omaba’s speech does open up the topic despite the acrimony.

Here are a few of Obama’s words: And occasionally [African American anger] finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity within the African-American community in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful. And to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience — as far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything. They built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pensions dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and they feel their dreams slipping away. And in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Listen here or read here.

YouTube Standouts

Darlene sent this link this week--just what I needed: Leonard Cohen-"Dance Me to the End of Love."

"What a Mom Says" is cute.

And Mateo's favorite is "Rabbit in My Rucksack"
And 6/17/08, Mateo's new favorite Jerry Needs No Help...

About Travel

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.—Pico Iyer

Style

Style is something to be used up. Part of its significance is that it will lose significance.--Sturart Ewen

"We are destroying deep time," says Sven Birkerts

Sven Birkerts (in The Gutenburg Elegies) says there is no wisdom without resonance. He says, "Resonance is a natural phenomenon, the shadow of import alongside the body of fact, and it cannot flourish except in deep time. Where time has been commodified, flattened, turned into yet another thing measured, there is no chance that any piece of information can unfold its potential significance. We are destroying this deep time...No deep time, no resonance; no resonance, no wisdom. The only remaining oases are churches (for those who still worship) and the offices of therapists."

Split in Two

Barbara Mellix writes about her experience of going to collgege after being out of high school for sixteen years, and I think, describes it beautifully. Talking about her papers in her first writing class, she writes, "There is a poverty of language in these sentences." Later she says, "I had the sensation of being split in two, part of me going into a future the other part didn't believe possible." She concludes the article with this: "Writing and rewriting, practicing, experimenting, I came to comprehend more fully the generative power of language. I discovered--with the help of some especially sensitive teachers--that through writing one can continually bring new selves into being, each with new responsibilities and difficulties, but also with new possibilities. Remarkable power, indeed. I write and continually give birth to myself."

Escapists?

The United States of America proclaims itself a land of immigrants. It would not want to be known as a "land of esscapists," yet many did just that: escape from the intolerable conditions of the Old World for the promises of the New.

From YiFu Tuan' book, Escapism.

Four Reflections on History

1. Last summer I taught a composition course for an IUSB program called the Leadership Academy. We studied Civil Rights history, mostly covering African American and Hispanic actions. The growth and empowerment of the African Americans and Hispanics seemed visible to the observer, but I also felt I could see all of us opening up and growing, moved and impressed by the beauty of this history.

2. I recently read a piece of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. While he was in prison, he became an avid reader. He discovered that black people had a history beyond slavery, and as he read history after history, his vision of his place in the world grew and grew.

3. Even in the final book in the Harry Potter series there is an interesting debate about how history is written. Hermione says, “Wizarding history often skates over what the wizards have done to other magical races.”

4. I have long been moved by this passage from Neil Postman which I think refers to the history of ideas more than the history of events: History…teaches…that the world is not created anew each day, that everyone stands on someone else’s shoulders.”

A Serious Pilgrimage

I have friends who are now recovering from serious illnesses. So I was taken by a line by Oliver Sachs in his book A Leg to Stand On where he describes his own recovery from a serious leg injury: “Uneventful recovery.” What damned utter nonsense! Recovery was a “pilgrimage,” a journey, in which one moved, if one moved, stage by stage, or by stations. Every stage, every station, was a completely new advent, requiring a new start, a new birth or beginning. One had to begin, to be born, again and again. Recovery was an exercise in nothing short of birth, for as mortal man grows sick, and dies by stages, so natal man grows well, and is quickened, by stages—radical stages, existence-stages, absolute and new: unexpected, unexpectable, incalculable and surprising. Recovery uneventful? It consists of events. (O.S.)

A demigod?

Language does not merely report the world...[it] creates worlds...Language creates, distorts, carries, discloses, hides, allows, oppresses, enriches, enthralls. For good or ill, language itself is something of a demigod. (Ken Wilber, The Marriage of Sense and Soul)

Barbie's Butt

You can study globalization and read Barbie’s butt at the same time. That is what Jennifer Tang reported today in a column appearing in the South Bend Tribune. The first Barbies had “Made in Japan” on their bottoms. Then it became “Made in Hong Kong,” then “Made in the Philippines” or Malaysia or Thailand. Now you know, it’s “Made in China.” Barbie kept moving. Tang cleverly says, “To see a developing nation disappear from Barbie’s rump is a reliable indicator that it is no longer “behind.” “Who knows,” she asks, “which country will appear next on Barbie’s butt? Would it be irony to find it saying “Made in USA”?

More Thoughts about the Path

I received some new pictures of the camino this week from Elena, pictures that clearly show it as a path. Once again, I was trying to figure out why it feels to good to have completed this walk (a second time). I think it cleared my mind of junk and left it clearer to see what I really value. I feel I'm a stronger person though maybe a little more eccentric as well. This walk made me happy. It made the world seem like a bigger place.

Here's a Woman Who Really Takes a Run

I saw a photo similar to this a few weeks ago in the South Bend Tribune (this from WNDU website). This is Rosie Swale Pope of Wales, and she is running around the world. In the last four years she has traveled 2,100 miles while pulling the cart that becomes her shelter at night. Her husband Clive died of cancer in 2002, and according to the Tribune, Pope "wanted to do something special to remember him. 'I looked at a map and thought... Hmm, I'll run across the world.'"

So, on July 5, she was in South Bend. A little later, she was at the Goshen Center for Cancer Care waiting for the results of a test for breast cancer (benign). Also, while in the Goshen area, she had some repairs done on her carriage by an Amish buggy maker. She plans to run from here to New York and then fly back home to finish in Wales. Go Rosie!

Cruz de Ferro/Letting Go

One of the spots on the Camino de Santiago is the Cruz de Ferro (Iron Cross). I had read about it beforehand and expected a larger cross. However, what I had read said bring a stone from home to put at the foot of the cross. This stone is to symbolize something you want to leave behind. I gather most people are like me; they forget to bring a stone and pick one up along the way to symbolize the stone from home that is to symbolize what they want to give up. I arrived at the cross, tossed my stone on the pile, and told it good bye. I was going to leave behind my habit of worrying what people think of me.

Obviously, an act like this is worthless unless you do it with a certain attitude. Symbolic rituals, I have discovered can be rather powerful when the act and the intention are just right for the time and place. This tossing of my stone has helped me when I find myself with some trivial worry about what others think. Today I have a disappointment at work. It feels like I threw away my stone and have received back an end-of-the-course test. What charming karma . Perfect I guess.

Camino Photos

I've been working on this online album: http://pictures.aol.com/galleries/mhardy6262. I've afraid I'm not clear as to how to do it. When I try to view slide show, it goes backward. Slide 54 is actually the first picture and slide 1 is the last. I still have a few more slides to add. Above is a view of the cathedral from a park outside the old tourist section. Even away from the Cathedral of St. James, it remains a visual anchor.

my infinite minutes of fame

Jamie, my yoga instructor, read this poem at the end of class last week. "It's my favorite," he said. My favorite too I believe.


Famous
By Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

“Famous” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Used by permission of the author.
Naomi Shihab Nye’s (1952—) mixed heritage—her father is Palestinian, her mother is American—shapes the subjects of her poetry....

Peace

From "Practicing Peace in Times of War" by Pema Chödrön

We often complain about other people’s fundamentalism. But whenever we harden our hearts, what is going on with us? There’s an uneasiness and then a tightening, a shutting down, and then the next thing we know, the chain reaction begins and we become very righteous about our right to kill the mosquito or yell at the person in the car or whatever it might be. We ourselves become fundamentalists, which is to say we become very self-righteous about our personal point of view.

100 People in the World

I've seen something similar to this before but reading it today on "Ken Wilber Online," I was impressed again:

...calculations done by Dr. Phillip Harter of Stanford University School of Medicine [say] If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of only 100 people, it would look something like this:

There would be--
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 North and South Americans
8 Africans
30 white
70 nonwhite
6 people would possess 59% of the world's wealth,
and all 6 would be from the United States
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer malnutrition
1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer

It's an interesting perspective of the world though I'm not sure what it tells me.

Travel Blog/Reading Blog

I'm moving back to the reading blog though maybe, I'll need to make a few more comments about the camino and/or travel.

Thoughts after the Walk

I said to Brook, "The people making this walk seem so articulate."

¨They would need to be," she said, "to take a trip like this." She´s right. To make a trip like this, you need a story that imbues a 750k walk with meaning.

The camino is, literally, an extremely long path for walking. However, it also symbolizes a larger life path, and I think, because of the extreme physicality of the walk, it allows us to feel in our bodies what before was merely an unexamined thought.

One day I was resting on a bench at the side of the camino with Linda (from Canada), and as we sat, a number of pilgrims walked by. Linda made a comment about all of us being together on the path. For some reason, that rather cliched remark had a much deeper and more poignant meaning while sitting on such a very long path.

Insights about love, companionship, loneliness, hopefulness, and happiness also seem clearer and more visceral here. I have asked a few people here in Santiago what the walk has meant to them. One woman said, "Ask me in six months." Others have commented that it helped them understand themselves better (true for me as well). One woman told me she has left behind the last two years of suffering. I have realized that I complain too much about the ravages of war without doing enough for peace. When I get home, I want to do some work that contributes to peace.