Happy Thanksgiving!

Maurene and I enjoyed a rather subdued Thanksgiving this year. It is the first day of the Bath Christmas Market and I am debating whether to go down to see the lighting of the Christmas tree in front of the Abbey. It is rainy and so I might forget it. But, my path to the Christmas tree passes by the famous (infamous) Weston. I could find some shelter there, if necessary. Yes, the turkey was delicious. The pie was exquisite.

Slightly blurry -I didn't compensate for the backlighting

Maurene's Christmas Cactus

Maurene's Christmas Cactus is in full bloom a month early. It expands each year and is now threatening to totally cover the Dining Room table.

Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi with Ram Dass

My 'Ram Dass' moment

In his book, Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying, Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert) relates how offended he was when he was asked if his train fare would be at the 'Senior Citizen' rate. I always thought that story was significant because it showed how resistant we can be to our own aging -especially in a youth oriented culture.

Yesterday, I walked into town to do a bit of shopping. It was a lovely late autumn day and I had assured Maurene that she didn't need to make a list for me -after all, it was only four items. But, as I began shopping I could only remember the three items that I was purchasing at Marks and Spencer. The fourth item had disappeared somewhere in the less that rapidly firing synapses of my brain. I tentatively clutched the mobile phone thinking that I was going to have to ring Maurene to ascertain the identity of the fourth item. In a moment of grace, the fog lifted and I was able to remember. I raced off to the appropriate store, made my purchase, and headed for the bus stop (the walk back with a full bag of groceries wasn't all that inviting.)

I boarded the bus and informed the driver that I was heading for Chelsea Road. Without asking he began to punch in my destination on his console. I laid down my fare and he responded, 'Oh, I thought yours would be free.' In other words, I appeared to be a pensioner.

As the bus rattled through the narrow streets of Bath, I thought about my appearance. I also looked around the bus and saw how many pensioners had used the service to do their own shopping, or make a GP appointment, or simply move about the city. Thoughts of reduced carbon footprints, less congestion, and care for those on fixed incomes made free transport for pensioners seem a logical and compassionate way to improve the lives of everyone, not just those who had passed the age of 60.

In a time of global economic meltdown, can human civilization re-tool its infrastructures to meet the challenging demands that face us? Tony Benn, my favourite pensioner comments in the film, Sicko, how Great Britain retooled after the Second World War by not only rebuilding its devastated buildings and infrastructure, but by implementing the National Health Service. He saw the wisdom in moving from an economy that was geared on 'killing people' to an economy that was geared on 'healing people'. It seems that wisdom comes with aging -and that is a blessing for those of us who can't remember four items on a list and appear older than we believe ourselves to be.

Nothing to say, really. . .

Happy 60th Birthday, Prince Charles. . .

Even at a young age, Prince Charles was a devoted Cincinnati Reds fan.

Hope revisited. . .

From today's Guardian: three parodies on the iconic Shepard Fairey poster of the President Elect.

The Brits are excited. . .

This T Shirt just went on sale at Philosophy Football. They are a company that creates T shirts for liberals, Marxists, anarchists, etc. Of course, they are happy about the choice that Americans made on election day.

I spoke at a Rotary dinner tonight. They asked lots of questions about the election and were also quite happy with the results. Today's newspapers all had large supplements on the election.

The words on the T-shirt are from Barack's Tuesday evening victory speech:

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference...." Barack Obama, Chicago, 4 November 2008

'That one' is no liberal

First, let me say that I am delighted that Barack Obama is the President-designate. He won't be the President-elect until after the electors make it official in January. But this isn't the only mis-identification that is being tossed around.

How often have we heard that Barack Obama is the 'most liberal member of the Senate'? In the dying days of the campaign his opponents even labeled him a 'socialist'. This tag strikes fear in the hearts of most Americans. In reality he is neither a liberal nor a socialist. He is a centrist, probably best described as 'right of centre'. As a London Times journalist posited this past Sunday, Barack Obama is closer to David Cameron (the leader of the Conservative opposition) than Gordon Brown (the Labour Prime Minister). The erroneous tag of liberal/socialist/ communist is part of the fear language that is always carted out by the right when they wish to tar and feather an opponent.

Barack Obama assailed John McCain for not mentioning the 'middle class' during the three debates. I wonder why both candidates failed to mention the poor -whether working or unemployed. No socialist there.

President-designate Obama is proposing a insurance company based health-care system. In other words, he is leaving the health issues of a huge number of Americans in the hands of HMOs and pharmaceutical companies. No socialist there.

Obama's energy plan does move us toward a more renewable energy future. But it fails to nationalise public transportation, make it a priority, and move America toward reliance and utilisation of buses, trains and other forms of mass transit -which saves huge amounts of energy. It is only in the most major of our major cities that public transport is viable. And so, our city streets are clogged with cars which are only carrying a driver and a brief case. No socialist there.

These are only three examples of the centrist positions of Barack Obama. Fortunately, for all of us, the collapse of the world's fundamental economic structures brought Barack Obama into office. But, in these early days of the crisis, unregulated capitalism hasn't been discredited, as much as it has been propped up. Just ask anyone with a 401k how they feel about the massive CEO bonuses and golden parachutes which are still going to be paid.

It is time that liberal and socialist be forever banned from the American political lexicon. You have to go back to Eugene Debs to discover a liberal/socialist who had any political clout. And he isn't honored with any shrines in the nation's capital or a prevalent place on Mt. Rushmore. His memorial is confined to an obscure little house in Terre Haute, Indiana.

No, there won't be a massive swing to the left as some fright wing pundits are claiming. American politics will stay firmly rooted in the centre -and probably 'right centre' at that. The tragedy of this election was that there wasn't the viable choice that was often referred to by both presidential candidates. The election was fought out between the forty yard lines. For me, McCain's naming of Sarah Palin as his running-mate was my primary motivation for backing Barack Obama. My hopes are minimal, and in times like these, limited amounts of hope might be all that we have.

From today's Guardian. . .
President Obama
Wednesday November 5 2008

They did it. They really did it. So often crudely caricatured by others, the American people yesterday stood in the eye of history and made an emphatic choice for change for themselves and the world. Though bombarded by a blizzard of last-minute negative advertising that should shame the Republican party, American voters held their nerve and elected Barack Obama as their new president to succeed George Bush. Elected him, what is more, by a clearer majority than one of those bitter narrow margins that marked the last two elections.

Having snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in 2000 and 2004 it felt at times fated that the Democrats would somehow complete a hat-trick of failures on election day 2008. Instead, fuelled by unprecedented financial support, the key things went right for them yesterday, from the moment just after midnight when Dixville Notch voted 15 to six for Mr Obama (the first time the early-voting New Hampshire hamlet had gone for a Democrat in 40 years), through to the early Obama success last night in the prized swing state of Pennsylvania and on into the battleground areas of middle America.

In the last two presidential elections, the American people divided down the middle, producing a both a geographical and a demographic divide that seemed increasingly set in stone. Blue Democratic America consisted of the west and the east coasts plus the upper Midwest. Red Republican America covered the swaths in between. Women, minorities, the poor and the highly educated voted Democratic. Men, white people, the rich and the religious delivered for the Republicans. In the mind of Mr Bush's strategist Karl Rove this division was the template of 21st century American politics, a base for a conservative counter-attack against 20th-century liberalism.

Rove's America was not just turned on its head yesterday. It was broken up and recast in a very different mould. One of Mr Obama's many achievements has been his refusal to accept the permanence of the blue-red divide. He has reached out across the divide to states and voters that the embattled Democratic party of the Reagan-Bush years had forgotten about, places like the South and the Rockies, voters like farmers and small business people.

With the Democrats powerfully consolidating their position in both houses of Congress yesterday, the shift was consolidated at state and district level. This marks the end of the conservative ascendancy of the past 30 years. Whether it now marks a new, sustained era of American liberalism of the sort which followed the election of 1932 must remain to be seen. What is not open to doubt is that Mr Obama's win is a milestone in America's racial and cultural evolution. It is 45 years since Martin Luther King, in the greatest of all late-20th century American speeches looked forward to the day when his children would not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. Almost unbelievably, that dream has now become a reality in the shape of America's first African-American leader and its first black first family. It is a day many thought they would never see. It is hard to know whether to weep or shout for joy now that it has arrived - probably both - but it is a lesson to the world.

Mr Obama will take office in January amid massive unrealisable expectations and facing a daunting list of problems - the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the broken healthcare system, the spiralling federal budget and America's profligate energy regime all prominent among them. Eclipsing them all, as Mr Obama has made clear in recent days, is the challenge of rebuilding the economy and the banking system. These, though, are issues for another day. Today is for celebration, for happiness and for reflected human glory. Savour those words: President Barack Obama, America's hope and, in no small way, ours too.