Mobtown Blues

Bitter soup

In the days leading up to the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I've been having an interesting e-mail exchange with a good friend on the subjects of race, class, poverty, and bigotry.  Our conversation began with an e-mail from my friend describing a discussion about race after church one Sunday.  Below is an excerpt.

I had spoken at this discussion a little about how as a child in South Carolina I'd lived below the poverty line, and I've heard people call my family white trash. My point was that we should distinguish between racism and poverty and seek to understand the complex ways in which they do and don't interact rather than assuming that poverty is a problem perfectly correlated with race.

...I'm convinced that skin color and household income are much less important to one's quality of life than the values with which one is raised and according to which one chooses to live. My parents taught me that if I worked hard in school I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up, and taught me the importance of being financially independent. They also taught me right from wrong, and to be curious about the world, and to be involved in my community...There are plenty of examples of people who overcome adversities of race, poverty, loss of a parent during childhood, etc, and become successful, and plenty of examples of people who have every advantage you can think of but become self-indulgent, unhappy, unproductive citizens. Race and poverty may correlate imperfectly with raising children and living by good values, but I'm hopeful that values are something that can be taught more directly than race-blindness or class-(un?)consciousness. 

My friend's reflections prompted me bring a bit of focus to my own thoughts on race and class, enormous and elusive issues that they are.  Below is my reply.

The place where race, class, culture, economics, personal responsibility, and public policy intersect is thorny, rife with pitfalls, and full of forks in the road.  Too often in our conversations about these issues, particularly the ones that take place in political and media discourse, we witness the temptation to generalize and oversimplify this complex set of issues.  An orthodox materialist might argue that everything is reducible to dollars and cents, and that once we reduce class disparities – through jobs programs, for example, or employee-owned companies, or community-based economic opportunities – we'll also reduce the harmful effects of racism and other forms of bigotry.  Someone who is orthodox about race and ethnicity, on the other hand, might say that racism is the root of our social ills, and that only by addressing the legacy of slavery and the reality of racial bias can we hope to achieve economic equity and erase class distinctions.  A person who is orthodox about gender issues would probably point to misogyny, patriarchy, and/or homophobia
as the source of inequities and injustice in other areas.

When I think about these issues and how they relate to each other, I usually think of a Venn diagram – or a soup.  In a Venn diagram, you have areas within each sphere that can be viewed and analyzed on their own merits: race as race, economics as economics, and so on.  But there is a significant portion of the diagram where the circles overlap, and within that section one can't talk about race as separate from class, or personal responsibility as independent of public policy and institutionalized bigotry.  I like the soup metaphor because…well, mostly because I like soup.  It goes like this: when you taste a creamy vegetable soup – a potage, if you will – you might be able to discern the flavor of sage, and to distinguish it clearly from the taste of thyme and the taste of onions.  But if all of those things have been whirled together, it is pretty much impossible to delve into the bowl, separate the sage from the thyme, and lay them on the table side by side, where each can be observed independently of the other.  Each ingredient is distinct, but blended and interrelated with all the
others in such a way that it doesn't make a lot of sense to identify one and claim that it's the whole soup.

Personal responsibility, lifestyle choices, and upbringing are extremely important, as you point out.  Your own experience shows the ways in which a positive family environment and mature decision-making about things like education and finances can help a person permeate class barriers.  In my career I've worked for, advocated on behalf of, and funded some really high quality programs that seek to redress class and race inequities through employment assistance, adult education, substance abuse treatment, financial literacy training, etc.  But the best social program in the world can't do a thing for someone who will not make the tough choice to make a change.  You've got to climb the ladder yourself, and the best that any human service initiative can do is give you a hand over the edge once you've reached that last rung.  So while some of my more liberal friends might be uncomfortable with the "bootstraps" way of thinking, there's no denying that personal responsibility plays a huge role in overcoming the pernicious effects of bigotry.

While lifestyle choices and upbringing are important, it's also important to acknowledge that racism and poverty are pervasive, institutionalized, and generational.  If my parents were born into poverty and deprivation, and their parents were born into poverty and deprivation, the odds of my acquiring the resources needed to become financially independent are slimmer than they are for someone whose parents took him to open his first checking account at age 12 and who received a great deal of advice on sound money management.  This is not to say that being born into poverty and deprivation is determinative, by any means.  But it does play a significant role in someone's ability to succeed financially and otherwise combat the systemic problems of institutionalized racism and class bias.  If cabs stop for me and not for you, if a landlord rents to me and not to you, if Allison gets the job but Ayonnah doesn't*, and if the only meaningful variable in those scenarios is skin color or the perception of racial differences, then individual lifestyle choices alone are going to have a harder time breaking down those barriers.

The systemic and generational nature of racism and poverty has an impact on the sorts of lifestyle choices people make, the ways in which they raise their children, and the varying degrees of opportunity available to people who make healthy choices.  Take someone who lives in a poor rural or urban community who wishes to eat healthier.  If the only grocery options in the area are corner stores, convenience stores, fast food joints, or discount markets, then she doesn't have many opportunities to purchase nutritious food.  And even if there is a nearby farmers' market or mainstream supermarket, she may never have been taught how to cook more nutritious foods.  Personal choice is a key factor, but it is far from the only one.  In the same way, if someone loves to read, but doesn't have that passion reinforced by parents or teachers and has never been taught how to use the local library, his potential in that area may not be realized.  And in most cases that I'm aware of, a lack of investment in nutrition, public health, community development, and education has a strong correlation to race and socioeconomic status.

You asked "what sorts of community programs do work best to instill healthy values."  That's a difficult question, since most social programs don't address the issue of values or behavior, but rather access to services and products.  There are a lot of evidence-based interventions that have been demonstrated to have positive impacts on the community, but which don't get to the causes that underlie the problems they seek to ameliorate.

A number of promising examples exist, however.  Some types of fatherhood and community-based marriage promotion programs seem to work (see the National Practitioners' Network for Fathers and Families for more info) in keeping families together and instilling positive parenting behaviors, although they too tend to be regarded with squeamishness by many social liberals who view such initiatives as advancing a conservative social agenda.

There's also a growing movement to combat childhood obesity and promote nutrition, especially in impoverished urban and rural communities.  Some programs that I'm familiar with combine access to nutritious foodstuffs with education about healthy eating habits, in addition to policy reform efforts to keep sodas out of school vending machines, etc.  See the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website for more info.

Something for which I've developed staunch support fairly recently is the effort to promote sound financial practices among low-income consumers.  My interest in this field, which is variously called "asset building," "family economic success," and "financial education," grew out of my experience in workforce development, when I realized that a person could get a job, show up every day, and do good work for the rest of his life, but never escape poverty.  Financial prosperity depends on a whole lot more than earned income alone.  It also involves knowledge about how to manage one's money, education about financial products and opportunities, and protections from the types of predatory practices that unscrupulous financial services providers employ to take advantage of lower-income clients.  Through proper budgeting, homeownership and retirement counseling, access to low-interest loans, debt reduction, credit repair, consumer protections, etc., families can be better able to keep and grow the income they earn.  More information on this is available from the National Endowment for Financial Education.

There are many examples that touch on many other spheres of life, of course.  These are just the ones that came to mind first.  It should be noted that the key element in the success in all of these types of efforts is individual behavior change.  The old saying goes, "give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day; teach him to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime."  I actually don't agree with those premises.  I would change that to: give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day; teach him to fish, and he'll know how to fish; actually watch him pull out fish on his own, and only then you can be fairly confident that he'll eat for a lifetime."  In other words, tools and the knowledge to use them aren't enough.  In order to actually effect change, a person has to put those tools and knowledge to use.  I mean, I know all about the health risks of smoking and have the ability to change, but I continue to do it.  Until I make that behavioral change, all the information and resources in the world can't help me.

One of the attractive things about behavior-based models is that they actually give people the means to make positive changes that can combat the effects of institutionalized racism and discrimination.  In the asset development model, for instance, lower-income people are actually learning how to make capitalism work for them in some of the same ways that it works for more affluent people.  If you can't destroy the machine, you can at least get a little control of it.  I'm also a fan of slightly more radical methods, such as creating parallel economic structures that permit historically marginalized populations to gain control over the means of acquiring and disseminating wealth.  Stimulating the growth of viable minority-owned businesses is one way to achieve this, as is the formation of mutual assistance associations among immigrant and ethnic groups.

I honestly don't know what can be reasonably or substantively done to attack the root causes of racism, classism, and other forms of bigotry.  But to combat the ill consequences of systemic discrimination, I believe what is required is a combination of better public policy, better social programs, and the sort of outreach and mobilizing efforts that encourage people to organize and learn to the wield the tools of power for themselves.

+++

*See the report "Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination" by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2004.

Paschal Mystery, Part 1

Every Easter weekend for the past four years, K and I have traveled to the pastoral Northern Shenandoah Valley to spend the holiday with our good friends, who own a sheep farm near Boyce. John is a stonemason and a bricklayer, Kelly is a carpenter and an architect, and both are leaders in the Sacred Harp community. Their monthly shape note singing is consistently one of the strongest and most enjoyable sings that Sacred Harpers are likely to experience anywhere in the country. 

Once a year, Episcopalians from the Clarke County, Va. area gather before sunrise on Easter Sunday to celebrate Christ’s resurrection at an unheated, unlit stone chapel off of Route 340. Constructed in the 1760’s, the building was once the personal chapel of the sixth Lord Fairfax, the colonial governor who commissioned a young George Washington to survey his proprietary holdings west of the Blue Ridge.  Although these days the chapel is not used for regular worship, the local Episcopal community holds Easter sunrise services there annually, perhaps as a means of connecting with the rich Anglican tradition northern Virginia. Each spring, John and Kelly are invited to organize Sacred Harp singing for the sunrise service, filling the small chapel with the sorts of hymns that Lord Fairfax himself might have heard there over two centuries ago.

Most people who wish to participate in the Easter sing at Old Chapel arrive at John and Kelly’s farm on Saturday. For K and me, this is one of the highlights of the whole year. Singers arrive in twos and threes, from as close as nearby Berryville to as far as New York. Those who arrive early get to dye eggs for the Easter egg hunt the following day and are treated to a tour of the farm. Visitors skirt chickens and ducks as they make their way to the fields where the spring lambs bleat and cower against the protective warmth of their mothers’ thick, curly coats.

By late afternoon the farmhouse is filled with around a dozen travelers, all bearing bedding and baked goods, songbooks and bottles of wine. The rooms are soon aglow with light and conversation, and the mingled aromas of corned beef with cabbage, stuffed shells, muffins, and casseroles waft tantalizingly out the screen door and beyond into the gravel driveway, tantalizing visitors with the promise of nourishment and warmth inside. We crowd around the dinner table, sitting on an assortment of mismatched chairs. Someone offers a blessing, another a toast, and we take care to save a plate of food for anyone who might be arriving late.

After dinner we gather in the living room to practice the hymns we’ll be singing the following morning for the service. This year I was asked to choose the songs, and I did my best to match them to the readings, which included selections from Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Romans.

We open with “Abbeville,” a fitting invocation for any feast day (“Come, holy spirit, come, with energy divine…”), followed by “The Ark” (“Jehovah shut them in”), “Confidence” (“Away, my unbelieving fear!”), “Florida,” (“Let sinners take their course and choose the road to death”), “Austria,” (“Break, sovereign grace, these hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh”), and “To Die No More” (“Oh, if my Lord would come and meet, my soul would stretch her wings in haste”), among others.  From time to time during the rehearsal we pause to set the pitch, go over particularly difficult parts, and discuss the seating arrangements at the chapel.

The rehearsal ends and the books are put away. Those who like to get to sleep early grab one last coconut bar or piece of molasses gingerbread and go to lay out their air mattresses and sleeping bags in the garage apartment or the new outbuilding.  The rest of us pour another glass of wine or go out for a walk in the brisk night air. While K retires to the upstairs bedroom that had been reserved for us in the main house, I stay up far too late talking with the young folks (it doesn’t seem that long ago that I could comfortably number myself among them) about drinking, drugs, fornication, and other peccadilloes.  The moon is cold and bright when I finally mount the stairs toward bed.

One of the newest additions to the farm family is a little lamb just a few weeks old, whose mother rejected him at birth. Spindly, bandy-legged, and feeble, he normally would have been left to die, a victim of the law of natural selection and the stark realities of farm life. Instead, John and Kelly’s daughter took pity on him and began nursing the pathetic thing with a bottle. When it became evident that he would not pass away from malnutrition, he was given the name Hope. He is still regarded with skepticism by the other sheep, which seem not to recognize him as one of their own. Although he is sometimes able to steal milk from one of the ewes, Hope is a pariah in the flock, and continues to rely on humans for his food. John jokes that the lamb’s name will remain “Hope” until he reaches 100 lbs, at which point his name will become “meat.”

This, then, is the paschal mystery. A tiny, defenseless creature is born, trembling and frail, in the darkness of a manger. Despised and rejected by his kind, he survives through a mercy that runs contrary to the custom of his world, which dictates that the strongest live, while those that cannot or will not fight are left behind. He is innocent and beautiful. He is loved by every person who lays eyes on him. And, because the universe he lives in expands and contracts in a particular way, he will, through no fault of his own, eventually be put to death. His body will be broken, his blood collected, and his flesh will go to feed and strengthen others. The compassion that attended his birth will be present in the people who bring about his death.

There is no irony in this story, only paradox. Inside the house are fellowship and light, food and singing, all the most precious, most exquisite things that we doomed, weak, flawed, and suffering beings could possibly hope to encounter in this life. Outside, the fields are dark and cold, and the moon glitters above them as keenly as a blade. The tiny lambs who bleat and huddle against their mothers for warmth are on intimate terms with fear and mercy, contentment and pain. The wind moves among the Leyland cypresses at the edge of the road, the fragile world turns on its own strange axis, and everything is held in place by an impossibly sweet, deep, and terrible love.

The myth of transcending race

If Barack Obama fails to receive the Democratic presidential nomination – or if he does receive the nomination and is beaten by John McCain in the fall – it won't be because America isn't ready for
a black president.  As I've said in a previous post, I think that the notion that America isn't "ready" for an African-American president or a woman president is inane.  No, if there's something that America doesn't appear to be "ready" for, it's is an honest, in-depth discussion of race.

Earlier this week, Sen. Obama delivered what is being rightly hailed as one of the most significant speeches on race that has ever been delivered by a major political figure.  For many of us, the speech came as a welcome dose of eloquence and candor on a subject that too often is handled in the most superficial, divisive manner.  For those of us who support Sen. Obama's candidacy, it was only the most recent example of why we so strongly desire this man to become president.  As John Stewart said the following day, in words that were (perhaps unwittingly) echoed by Governor Bill Richardson in today's endorsement of Sen. Obama, "at 11:00 on a Tuesday, a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race, as though they were adults."
 
Still, not everyone was swayed.  Glutton for punishment that I am, I've spent the past few days perusing the comments on blogs and news sites ranging from the Post and Times to God's Politics, and while much of the reaction to the speech was favorable, I read a lot of comments from Americans who continue to express chagrin over the speech and the controversy that precipitated it.  Some said that Sen. Obama did not go far enough in distancing himself from the inflammatory comments of his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, while others questioned the existence of
institutionalized racism in 21st century America.  The comments that annoyed me the most were the ones from people who crowed over the failure of the Obama campaign's alleged goal of "transcending race."

Incidentally, I'm not even referring to the posters who are obvious nutcases, the fringe types who do nothing but write in all caps and incite flame wars.  I'm talking about people who for the most part framed their arguments reasonably, intelligently, and civilly, from principled conservatives to proud supporters of Hillary Clinton, from committed Christians to self-proclaimed atheists.

What frustrated me about reactions like these was that so many of them quickly shoved the discussion out of the realm of substance and subtlety and back into the harsh glare of generalization,
mischaracterization, and pedantry.  Sen. Obama has never expressed a desire to "transcend" race – another inane notion – and the issues he raised in his speech are far larger and more important than his relationship with Rev. Wright.  Need proof of institutionalized racism?  Take a look at the income disparity between white and black workers , as well as any number of other indicators that show correlations between inequity, lack of opportunity, and race.

For over a decade, I've lived and/or worked in a majority African-American city.  Much of that time has been spent working for nonprofit organizations on issues deeply intertwined with race, such as workforce development, ex-offender re-entry, and access to health care.  In boardrooms and neighborhood centers, prisons and churches, schools community clinics, I've participated in countless conversations in which race was either discussed overtly, or else was felt as a strong undercurrent in the discussions.  Some of those conversations have been quite heated.  Many of them featured remarks by African-Americans and white people alike that, excerpted and de-contextualized, would sound quite shocking, even abhorrent, to the average listener.  I've left such forums feeling angry, or proud, or ashamed, or hopeful, or, often, a mixture thereof.

I don't feel that my participation in such dialogues has made me more of an authority on race than anybody else, or that they've enabled me to "transcend" race in any way.  In fact, they've caused me to see racial fault lines all the more clearly, and to realize that mere good intentions are next to useless in dealing with issues of race in any meaningful fashion.  Once you come face to face with your own racial biases, it's sort of hard to go back to pretending that racism as a pervasive, pernicious force doesn't exist in our society – or within us.  Race in America cannot be "transcended," not by a speech, not by a million of them.  It's a reality that's deeply rooted in the
politics, policies, and cultural consciousness of this country, and once you learn to recognize it, it's hard to go on believing that it can be wished away.  And I'm willing to bet that any black legislator who attends a historically black church and who used to be a community organizer in a largely black city knows that all too well.

So if race and racism can't be transcended, what can we do about it? I think that asking questions is a good place to begin.  For example, instead of proclaiming that Barack Obama should have denounced Rev. Wright more vigorously, why not ask why he didn't?  Instead of labeling Trinity United Church of Christ as racist or un-American, why not ask about why one might hear rage coming from the pulpit of a black church?  For my liberal friends who bristle at any criticism of
affirmative action policies, instead of immediately painting the critics as racists, why not ask how we can address racial and other disparities in more sophisticated ways?

In an intelligent and straightforward post on the God's Politics blog, Brian McClaren offers us a way to get the conversation started, using Sen. Obama's speech as a starting point. 

The best case scenario would be for mixed groups to read and discuss
the speech together – gathering a group of friends from work or a
sports team or a neighborhood or church. Three questions would guide
this kind of dialogue:
What can we learn about America?
What can we learn about people of other races?
What can we learn about ourselves?

My favorite part of Sen. Obama's speech was when he admonished Rev. Wright not for expressing anger over racism in America, but for doing so in a way that gave in to hopelessness and bitterness.  And though my 10th grade English teacher warned her students to never close with a quote (or end a sentence with a preposition), that's what I'll end this post with.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about
racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as
if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made
it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the
land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and
poor, young and old – is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what
we know – what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true
genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the
audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

2008YIP: Days 30-36

Day 30: Conversation with a Composer

I'm an unabashed fan of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's new music director, Marin Alsop.  She's a brisk breath of fresh air, just the jolt of energy the BSO needed.  Here she talks with violinist Mark O'Connor at the Baltimore Theatre Project as part of the "Conversation with a Composer" dialogue series she initiated.

Day 32: UCC Hymnals

Those of us who've been meeting to sing Sacred Harp in Baltimore every Thursday for the past four or so years are grateful to the pastor and congregation of the First United Church of Christ in Fells Point for allowing us to use their beautiful old sanctuary as a regular singing space.

Day 32: The low and heavy sky

I'm drawn to the television antennas looming over Woodberry.   They lend a sort of 'La Jetee' / William Gibson-y aspect to the skyline.   

Day 33: Massanutten Mitch say, "Six more weeks!"

K is the only person I know who demands a gift for Groundhog Day.  This little fella was UPS'd by the good folks at Build-a-Bear, and came with his own flop hat and pajamas (for hibernating).  Since the name "Punxsutawney Phil" was taken, K dubbed him "Massanutten Mitch."

Day 34: Cathedral of the Incarnation

The church that we've been attending for the past few months.  Zut alors.  I think we're in danger of becoming Episcopalians.

Day 35: Lady Grey

I've been drinking a lot of tea of late.

Day 36: Here's Hoping

My Super Tuesday wish.  This is the cover of the December 2007 issue of the Atlantic Monthly.

2008YIP: Days 24-29

I've been remiss in posting the results of my pic-a-day project here.  Let's see if I can catch up.

Day 23: return of the lights

Day 24: only the straight gaze

Because what I want most is permanence,
What I do best is bury fire now,
To bank the blaze within, and out of sense,
Where hidden fires and rivers burn and flow,
Create a world that is still and intense
I come to you with only the straight gaze.
These are not hours of fire but years of praise,
The glass full to the brim, completely full,
But held in balance so no drop can spill.

- from 'Because What I Want Most is Permanence,' by May Sarton

Day 25: Donna's

 

Day 26: Greggo

My friend Greg plays a mean five-string.

Day 27: so much depends

"COUNTRY COMFORT IN LANCASTER COUNTY.  GENTLE  STYLE AMIDST A GENTLE LIFE GENTLE PLEASURES.

"Hotel Olde Amish Inn rooms are, equipped with most of the facilities. Like  Cable T.V. in room, Phones, Hair Dryer, Digital Alarm Clock with easy to read display at Night Time, Non Smoking Rooms, Individually controlled Heating and Air Conditioning, cable T.V, in room phones, Wake up Call Service, Refrigerator in some rooms. Luggage Stand, Space specially made  for hanging your Coat and Clothes, Ice Bucket."

- from the website of the Olde Amish Inn, Ronks, Pa.

Day 28: Believe

A revenant of then-Mayor, now-Governor Martin O'Malley's "Believe" campaign.  I was never really clear on what, exactly, we were supposed to believe in.






Day 29: The Hippo

The grey lady of Baltimore gay bars.

One Baltimore, many Smalltimores

A few days ago I received an e-mail from Stephanie Shapiro, a Baltimore Sun reporter.  She was working on an article about the concept of "Smalltimore" and had come across a post I'd written on the subject a couple of years ago.  We had a great conversation about how Baltimore is a large-ish city with a small town vibe, about how you're likely to run into the same people on a regular basis, about how it can seem that nobody in this town is removed from anyone else by more than one degree of separation.

Yesterday evening, for example, K and Carlybird and I went to see Persepolis at the Charles.  While standing in line for popcorn, I saw a former coworker, a guy I know from another nonprofit, and a friend of a friend.  This morning at church I saw a woman I know from a board I serve on, a gentleman that I randomly volunteered alongside at a Sojourners event last week, and a person that I'd encountered for the first time at a meeting several days ago.

On the phone, Ms. Shapiro and I talked about how the idea Smalltimore is both a positive and a negative thing.  The fact that one tends to see the same faces at the Golden West as one does at the Patterson or the Waverly Farmers' Market reinforces the notion that we're part of a community, that we're all sharing in the life of the city.  But on deeper examination, it also points to the fact that Baltimore remains a very segregated place.  If you live in a city of over 650,000 and you keep bumping into the same folks over and over again, it means that only a relatively small subset of the city's overall population is frequenting the places you frequent.  I know I feel that way when I visit Federal Hill, which feels to me less like Baltimore and more like some upscale D.C. neighborhood that's been magically transported 35 miles up I-95.   Or when my work takes me into neighborhoods on the west side that I've never been to before, despite having lived in this big small town for nearly 20 years.  Perhaps the sobriquet should be pluralized: Baltimore is comprised of many Smalltimores. 

Ms. Shapiro's article appears in the 'Entertainment' section of today's Sun.  The piece leads off with a quintessential Smalltimore vignette about a woman who discovers that she's dating the same man as her friend.  Ed Scheinerman, a math professor at JHU, uses statistics to deconstruct the Smalltimore phenomenon:

"These small-world connections, which, when they happen seem so marvelous and so out of the blue, are really very common...You probably know about 1,000 people and they probably know about 1,000 people.  That would add up to 1 million people if there was no overlap. So, two steps out from your social circle is a huge circle," making frequent connections inevitable[.]

Makes sense to me.

The other day, mere minutes after my interview with Ms. Shapiro had ended, I received an e-mail from her.  "P.s.," it read.  "My husband, _______ [someone I've known for years], says hi."

Welcome to Smalltimore, hon.

Gambling on greatness

Driving home from singing last night, I heard L.A. Times columnist Joel Stein and his mother on the public radio show 'On Point.'  They were discussing Stein's recent column on 'Obamaphilia,' in which Stein writes about how, concerned that his enthusiasm for the junior senator from Illinois was turning him into some "dreamer hippie loser,' he called his mom for a dose of feet-on-the-ground common sense.  Mr. Stein's mother, it should be noted, is an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton.

While Mom Stein (sorry, but I forgot her name and I can't find it anywhere) didn't dissuade her son -- or me, for that matter -- from supporting Barack Obama's candidacy, she did make the most cogent argument I've yet heard for why Sen. Clinton should get the Democratic nomination for the presidency this year.  Her reasoning went something like this: Obama's smart, he's inspiring, he's got good ideas, but he's still largely an unknown quantity.  The 2008 presidential election is the most important election of our time.  Given how much hangs in the balance, voters should choose a candidate who is not only experienced and battle-tested, but who brings a degree of certainty and reliability to her bid for the Oval Office.

I have to admit, that argument gave me pause.  I found it a lot more compelling than the 'experience vs. inexperience' line that has been failing to sway voters in the last eight or so primaries and caucuses.  And it is infinitely more persuasive than the canard about Clinton offering substance in contrast to Obama's empty rhetoric.  In fact, let's put that one to bed right now.  Here are Sen. Clinton's stances on the issues.  Here are Sen. Obama's stances on the issues.  If you can find seams between them that are wide enough to slip more than a piece of paper through, let me know.  Both candidates are thoughtful, substantive, detailed, and well-reasoned in their policy positions.  The message that Obama is all hat and no cowboy is a talking point, nothing more; it is a fiction.

No, what brought me up short about Mom Stein's argument is that, well, there is an awful lot riding on this election.  The economy is going down the tubes, we're fighting two wars, the rest of the world hates our guts, around 50 million of our fellow citizens lack health insurance, and lots of places around the globe are doing a spectacular job of blowing themselves up real good.  The world is, in short, a mess, and we need to be sure that the next U.S. president will help to fix it, or at least not screw it up more than it already is.  And let's face it, Hillary Clinton would probably do a pretty good job in that role.  Love her or hate her, one must admit that we know where she's coming from, we know what she stands for, and we have a fair sense of the sort of job she does.  Despite the baggage she carries, her credentials are solid and we know she's tough.  Hey, if she's been able to live with Bill for the past however many decades, she clearly doesn't lack for strength. 

I believe, in short, that Hillary Clinton would make a good president.  There's no question that she would make a better president than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., although that's damning with faint praise.  A lobotomized howler monkey would be a better president than George W. Bush, so I'm not sure that we want to set the bar that low.  Still, a Clinton administration would be like a Caribbean vacation compared to the cruise on the 'Titanic' that we've been on for the past eight years.  She would probably -- and don't get too upset by this -- do a better job than her husband did.

But here's where I part ways with Joel Stein's mom.  Electing a President Obama would not be as safe a bet as electing a President Clinton, but the prospective rewards are much higher.  In Barack Obama I see something that I simply do not see in Hillary Clinton: the potential for greatness.  Clinton would probably be a good president, but Obama could be a great one.  He could be the leader who repairs our frayed relationships with other countries and instills in Americans that sense of community, of unity in diversity, that our bruised nation has lacked for a long time now.  He could restore America's moral authority and make us proud of our democracy again.  I think most of us have the sense that Obama would, at the very least, make a fine president.  But, I say again, he could be great.  And he could make America great.

You don't win much if you don't risk much.  It is precisely because so much is at stake in this election that I don't want us to settle for the safe bet, for the all-too-familiar choice.  The proudest moments in U.S. history have come about when we took the big risks, when we broke with the old ways of thinking, when we pitted ourselves against the odds...and won big.  We can do it again.  We can be audacious again.  We can once again defy fear, defy conventional wisdom, defy mediocrity.  We can reach for greatness.

Yes, we can.       

Game on

Go vote, Maryland.

Our turn.

The polls open in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow in what is being touted as the "Potomac Primary" or the "Chesapeake Primary."  Those slick little monickers are themselves indicators of the unprecedented importance of tomorrow's primary.  I've been voting in Maryland for two decades now, and I can't recall a time when our primary has rated its own nickname.   For the first time in memory, voters in the Old Line State have an opportunity to have a real impact on a presidential campaign.  It's a pretty heady thought.

This evening K attended a rally for Barack Obama at 1st Mariner Arena in downtown Baltimore.   Yesterday after church, she said that one of the reasons that she, I, and other people of our generation are so galvanized by Obama's candidacy is because of its rebuke to the conventional wisdom that says that those of us in our twenties and thirties are disaffected, disengaged, and cynical.  That we're tuned out of and turned off by politics.  That we might wear the buttons and make noise at the campaign events, but we don't show up on election day. 

That conventional wisdom, which has been proved correct in election cycle after election cycle, is undergoing some serious revision this primary season.  Because the truth of the matter is that younger voters aren't cynical, we're just cautious.  We hunger for a candidate that we can believe in and be proud of, but also one who stands a chance of winning.  For too long now, our choices have been between candidates who pass the ideological smell test but don't have a snowball's chance of being elected, and candidates who have the money, organization, endorsements, and substance, but who fail to inspire.  Every four years, Democrats are faced with a choice between nominees like Mike Dukakis (smart and genial, but weak and unelectable) and Bill Clinton (smart, genial, tough, and electable, but equivocal, untrustworthy, and sharklike). 

In Obama, younger Democrats have a candidate whose lofty rhetoric is not only inspiring, but grounded in substantive, thoughtful positions on the issues that matter.  We have a candidate whose ideas are firmly grounded in the liberal Democratic tradition, but who communicates them in a way that appeals to more than just liberal Democrats.  We have a candidate who is passionate about healing old divides and bringing diverse groups of people together, but who isn't afraid to hit back when he's attacked.   We have a candidate whose very face and name can do incalculable good toward repairing America's image abroad.

K and I are fast approaching the day when we'll have to lay aside the label of "younger voters."  But for tonight, on the eve of the primary, we're relishing the novelty of not only being able to make a real difference in the presidential race for the first time, but also being able to cast our votes for a candidate who's smart, genial, tough, electable, and inspiring.  One who -- dare I use the cliche -- gives us reason to hope. 

The polls open tomorrow at 7:00 a.m.   I plan to be there bright and early.  And when I finally get to touch that screen, I'll do so with head held high.

Give me a calm and thankful heart

Last night K and I attended Ash Wednesday services at the Cathedral of the Incarnation.  Among the readings was Psalm 51, which contains the line, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me."  The sentiment put me in mind of a Sacred Harp song that we sing quite frequently: "Give me a calm and thankful heart/From ev'ry murmur free..."

The lyrics were written by Anne Steele, an 18th century Briton credited with being the first woman to pen hymn texts that were widely reprinted in contemporary hymnals.  A Baptist who published her works under the name "Theodosia," Steele's poetry can be found in the hymn-books of just about every mainline Protestant denomination; several are in 'The Sacred Harp.'

Anne's mother died when Anne was three years old.  When she was 19, she sustained a severe injury to her hip that impeded her mobility and caused her health problems for the remainder of her life.  She suffered perhaps the greatest blow at age 21, when the young man to whom she was betrothed was drowned.  She never married.  Despite these tragedies, Anne was described as a cheerful, friendly person with a generous spirit.

The poem that we Sacred Harpers sing as "A Thankful Heart" was actually composed on the occasion of her fiance's death.  The stanzas printed in our tunebook are part of a larger work that includes the verses:

Is health and ease my happy share
Oh may I bless my God;
Thy kindness let my songs declare
And spread Thy praise abroad

While such delightful gifts as these
Are kindly dealt to me
Be all my hours of health and ease
Devoted Lord to Thee

In griefs and pains Thy sacred Word
(Dear solace of my soul!)
Celestial comforts can afford
And all their power control

When present sufferings pain my heart
Or future terrors rise
And light and hope almost depart
From these dejected eyes

Thy powerful Word supports my hope
Sweet cordial of the mind
And bears my fainting spirit up
And bids me wait resigned

                               

Ever since I first read that story, I can't sing that song without a lump in my throat.  The thought of someone writing words like those in the face of such hardships helps me to step outside myself, outside the pettyness of my own perceived troubles and anxieties, to catch a glimpse of the hope that glimmers on the far side of fear.

This Lenten season, I will fast from selfishness and feast on compassion.  I will fast from anxiety and feast on gratitude.  I will fast from despair and feast on renewal.