The Presidential Inauguration, Forty Years Ago

Today, Barack Obama was inaugurated for his second term.

Forty years ago (actualy, January 20, 1973; thank you Wikipedia) Richard Nixon was inaugurated for the second time. I was there protesting.

I commented today on Facebook about this. I hadn't thought about this for many years. But forty years is a long time, and it's actually a funny story. It was a different time then.

I had a friend named Valerie. We were in high school together and Valerie and I were platonic friends, but I loved her, as only a teenage boy could love a girl. She didn't know it though. I was a hippie. I had shoulder length hair, and wore patched blue jeans and flannel shirts like Neil Young. She was a hippie, too. She had long straight hair, and also wore jeans and flannel shirts. She lived with her single mom, and went out with a guy, another hippie, named Micheal.

I was cool with all that because, well, hippies were cool with everything.

One afternoon Valerie called me. Hey, she said, we're going to Washington to protest Nixon's inaugeration. Do you want to come?

I swear this is what happened next. I turned and yelled to my mom in the kitchen. Hey mom, it's Valerie. She's going to Washington to protest Nixon's inauguration and wants to know if I can come.

And my mom, who I think was probably at her wits end with her youngest child, said sure, why not.

Valerie, Michael, some guy who I've forgotten, and I all crammed into a Volkswagaon Beetle (what else?) and drove through the night to Washington, arriving in the early morning to what I can still remember to be onel of the biggest assemblies of hippies the world had ever seen.

Pot smoke was in the air. We did some sightseeing (you have to remember we were high school students from Ohio on a road trip) but everything was closed for the expected violence. I looking at the Lincoln Memorial with my jaw on the ground. The mall and the Washington Monument were all closed, at least to long-hairs like us. That's what we were called. Long-hairs and freaks and hippies.

I remember signing up with the SDS, only later thinking the table was staffed by the FBI and there would be an agent at my home when I arrived. I mean, there was no email, Twitter, Facebook, anything. What was the SDS going to do? Send me a brochure?

And it was that weekend when I learned about the nature of political movements. A lot of people came just to party, get high or drunk, and cause mayhem, because they were young and bored and just as entitled and young people are accused of being today. Intellectuals weren't any better represented then than they are now. Smart people are always in short supply. I remember seeing a long-hair pounding on the hood of car that held a bunch of straight people, yelling his outrage at them. Then, straight meant mainstream. It has a different meaning today, but I still use the word with its archaic defiinition.

There's a good chance that guy went back to his suburban home in New Jersey, and later worked on Wall Street. That's what happened to those times. Even Neil Young has turned into kind of an old fogey, interested in selling his music in $500 CD collections.

Me? I wrote on Facebook today that then I was 17-years-old, had long hair, and a penchant for blue jeans and flannel shirts. For me at least, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

The Times They Are A Changing

I feel like I got shot out of a cannon when I finished grad school. Others who had gone through the program warned me about it. You're so steeped in your studies you don't realize how single-focused you are. At times, when Sue wanted me to think about something--anything, plans for the weekend, what to cook for dinner--my answer would be, let me just get through this...and this would be an assignment, finishing a scene, finishing the semester, something, anything that was so encompassing of my mind that I couldn't fit one more thing into my head without the feeling that it would explode.

And then, suddenly, you're back out in the world. And what a world it is. Occupy, and all the craziness and noise that it brings as people shout and argue their values when to me it seems so simple: Our society has been overtaken by corporate greed with a complicit government. Anything that falls from that is suspect, including your political bent (liberal or conservative), your religion, or your place in society. It's something I'm definitely excited about, but it also wears me out as people seem fixated on getting their point across. We know what the problem is. If you don't, you haven't been awake for the past four or five years.

There is an increasingly worse economy that has made it even harder for a fifty-something-year-old man to find a decent job, and by decent I mean one that not only pays enough so I can pay my bills and have a little extra, but also one that I find fulfilling.

There's a political world where the president who I had reluctantly put so much hope and faith in, has done nothing in the line of what he ran for, and he is now putting troops in Africa, even though we're fighting losing and expensive wars on two fronts.

But all this makes for things to be so exciting. My plays are getting good feedback. That's a start. That means so much to me. Those plays are the real me, so personal at their source and they harken back to me as a boy, and now it seems I'm pretty close to where I wanted to be "when I grew up."

My life is Sue grows everyday. I love her a little more each day and I don't know what I'd do without my best friend. We walk through this crazy world hand in hand and as long as I know she still loves me all is right with the world. There are a couple of lines in Highland Center, Indiana about this, where Hank says to Alice Anne, Are you scared? and she answers, Not if I'm with you. That exchange took place between me and the real Alice Anne when we were on a plane coming to Boston when she had two more months to live. See, it's all so personal, as the world should be, I think.

You can even see Action Bob has put on a new face. Google opened the door, I walked through, and though I'm not 100% happy with this new interface, I'm willing to give it a chance. What I don't like is Google forcing me to do things its way. This is just one more example of corporate greed, small yes, but enough is enough. Corporations and governments, I believe, should serve the people. Corporations (are you listening, Google?) should give their customers what the customer wants, not what the corporation wants them to want. The only company that got away with giving customers what they didn't ask for was Apple, and Steve Jobs is dead. Google is no Apple, not by a long shot. Don't give me that free-market line, either: If you don't like Blogger move. You can't. They got you locked in. The free-market, as you call it, is broken, just like our political system. And that's what the Occupiers are protesting about. If you don't get it, that's not my problem. Stay at home and watch your television. Someone will come along shortly and wipe the drool from your mouth.

Save the Midldle Class...Ride a Train

President Barack Obama tonight will deliver his State of the Union message, and it's said that he's listened to the people, taking note of the drumming the Democrats got in Massachusetts, losing Ted Kennedy's senatorial seat to virtual unknown, Scott Brown. And to all you Teabaggers out there, yes it was Kennedy's seat, and your crowing about it being the People's Seat is just a bunch of empty blathering that people in need of slogans pass off for intelligent conversation, so give it up. JSYK, it IS now Scott Brown's seat, it doesn't belong to any of you people who voted for him, and he's responsible for everything that happens there now, just like Kennedy was. And if don't believe me, go try sitting in it. You won't get passed security. (This is what you get from a bunch of people who name their political party after a gay sex act.)

But President Obama is listening, he says. Jobs are the priority. Saving the middle class is the priority. Whoa. Nothing like taking a year to figure out what a lot of us have known for oh, say TEN YEARS!! Man, is it that obvious? We need jobs? With unemployment running close to 20%? (I use the unofficial number that would include the unemployed, the underemployed, and those who plain old gave up looking for work.) Is it that obvious that the middle class has been hung out to dry after holding up this country since WWII? Who says Washington is out of touch?

And he's going to start by investing $8 billion in a stimulus package to build a couple of high speed train links. Eight billion. Wow. Of course, compared to the $182.5 billion used to bailout just AIG, just one of the many financial companies our tax dollars saved, $8 billion doesn't look like a lot. BECAUSE IT ISN'T! Eight billion dollars is barely a drop in the bucket.

All right. Phew. Take a breath, Action Bob, and let's set the record straight.

The middle class was left hanging by the government, but guess what, the middle class stuck its own head in the noose as the government held it. But the middle class, more than AIG, more than GM, more than Lehmann Brothers, needs bailing out, because quite simply, without the middle class there will be no more United States. The rich will just go somewhere offshore, though not where their factories are because those countries are inhabited by poor brown people and rich, white people who inhabit Wall Street and the upper echelons of the financial world don't like being around poor brown people.

The middle class actually cut its own throat starting back in the 1980s and of course, greed was at the bottom of it. Reagan and Clinton (just to show I'm not partisan or a liberal) both deregulated the banking industry, that allowed the megainstitutions we have today like CitiGroup come to be. Banks, stock brokers, insurance companies, mortgage companies all came under one roof, and that's a lot of foxes watching a lot of chicken coops. Add a dose of greed and you've got the makings of some delicious disasters.

Corporations began manufacturing and selling offshore, negating the need for the middle class that, since WWII, bought all the crap that American industry was manufacturing with built-in obsolescence.

But here's where the middle class cut its own throat. It bought in to all this because the stock market and the housing market were doing tremendous, and that's where the middle class put all its money. So, even though prices for everything from gas to a college education were going through the roof, it seems the middle class was more focused on their retirement rather than today, and retirement looked pretty good for them. Or so they thought. Now we know that the middle class retirement years were all smoke, and that's where they all went, as in up in smoke.

Eight billion dollars for a couple of high speed train spurs isn't going to cut it to make enough jobs to save the middle class. I'll blog about this again, but it's what I was afraid of: Obama just wasn't the visionary that we needed for this country. And neither was McCain, so all of you Teabaggers just shut up. We're in this together, and the one thing I agree on is it's the people who are going to get us out of this mess. Maybe. Right now, it looks pretty grim, though, doesn't it?

Innaguration Day Boston

I'm a photographer and a writer, not by choice, but because that's the way I was made. Like I tell my daughter who is studying journalism: Are you sure? You have to have ink in your veins.

I went out and documented Innaguration Day in Boston. I have .avis that for some reason won't upload to blogspot. Hmmm...maybe it's time to move addresses.

Anway, I saw so many signs of the failing economy out there. Sure, there were pretty pictures, too. But you know, the signs are there, people. The cracks are showing. And frankly, someone with my sensibilities should be listened to. I'm just saying.

It was a gorgeous day, though. After all the snow. It was cold and crisp and it was the kind of day that lets you know you're alive. And Boston is a pretty city in the snow.

In the Wollaston CVS.







Her sign said she came there everyday and put down 100 stones to commemorate the lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over alongside Trinity Church, on Boylston.









One tough-looking Obama.

Overflow at the Old South Church, listening to President Obama's speech.

The election is over

Somehow I thought there'd be dancing in the streets. That the heavens would be opened up above the T platform in Wollaston, hovering over us all day long. But it was pretty much business as usual on the street, at the office. Except for a few of my younger co-workers who could not contain their elation, it was pretty much the same.

But it was different, wasn't it?

Walking to the polls on that beautiful Tuesday morning, through our neighborhood, past the old Victorians, through that golden light reflected off the fallen leaves thick on the lawns and the sidewalk, still clinging to the branches, it hit me more than ever that it was do or die for our country. That if we didn't turn it around on that day, we would sink and then we'd never have a chance to get out of everything we've dug ourselves into.

Even now, I'm not so sure that we can. It's like now, the concept is sold, now we have to execute it. I'm not so sure it's possible. It's an awfully tall order. But now it seems we'll have the rest of the world behind us. I think we'll be welcome back into the world order, and for those of you who don't understand that, what that means, well, I've said it so many times now, I'm sick to death of explaining myself. If you don't get it, it's not my job to educate you. You can drown in your own shit.

But I'm old enough to remember Kennedy and the Kennedy years, Camelot and all that. And just like the war in Iraq is so reminiscent of Vietnam, I do hope that this administration isn't the mirror of the Kennedy administration. Obama is not a god. He is a politician, and a darn good one, just like Kennedy.

I'm glad it's over and I'm glad Obama won by a landslide. And those who are saying that there's a lot of people who wanted McCain, the same was said by the Democrats during the last two elections. Be adult and rally around the president-elect and your country. But I'm afraid that's not going to happen, either.

There was a lot of ugliness and hatred. And it's still happening. Maybe it's who I choose to associate with, but my Facebook turned into an ugly, hatred-filled exchange by people I don't even know, people who I befriended because of our common interest in acting. And it was curious to stand back and watch these strangers. For awhile, anyway. How these people can stand to look at themselves in the mirror is beyond me. They think they're so smart, so worldly, and oddly enough most of them describe themselves as being Christian. What is it that Christians seem to be the meanest people on the planet? Is it because they believe in all that business about forgiveness? Just like the Catholics who have Confession, so no matter what you do your spiritual permanent record will be wiped clean, Christians fall back on some Jesus factor? Let me clue you in: There ain't no heaven and there ain't no hell. This is it. And what they fob off as practicality is simply meanness and greed and selfishness.

So, I'm glad the election's over. And I'm glad Obama won. But "it" ain't over. There's still a lot of strife and hatred and racism and I think it's still all going to come to a boil. I hate to say it, but I do.

Check this out, darlin'....

It seems I'm constantly a day late and a dollar short...

Now ain't that just a plumb down-home way of saying I just don't get things right sometimes?

We all talk funny in this country...and a lot of us--the ones with a bit (or a lot) of Southern influence in our raising--seem to talk a little funnier than our more sophisticated, better-educated counterparts, particularly in the media.

I guess last week or so Obama brushed off a reporter in Detroit, and called her "Sweetie" to boot...I didn't hear about this until today...oh lordy, I groaned, here we go again...

Okay, first, let's get this out, that reporter for WXYZ in Detroit asked one lame-ass question: What are you going to do for the American auto workers? She threw that out to Obama as he was walking by. That's really the best question you can come up with when you got the potential leader for the entire free world in front of you? Something that open-ended and unfocused? If I were her editor, I'd call her a helluva lot worse than sweetie when she got back to the newsroom.

From the sound of her voice, she sounds pretty young. I guess this is the generation we're handing the country over to...people who can't read or formulate good questions.

And Obama gets whacked for calling her Sweetie and telling her to "hold on one second..." She signs off by saying, "this sweetie never did get an answer." Now ain't she cute? I think we finally found a replacement for America's other little darlin', Katie Couric.

Then all the pundits had to give their analysis, what the women think; we got a recap of the feminist movement, it's causes and effects; we got an analysis of Obama and how the comment showed just how green he is.

The best one I heard is from this guy, the one that made the most sense to me was this one. Of course he's some fat white guy:



We get to hear Obama's entire apology, something nobody else ran...and I love this guy's final comment, about how guys might be able to relate finally to Obama...

This is something I fight all the time. I call women, darlin' and I don't mean any disrespect at all. As a matter of fact, if I do call you that, it typically means I like you. I'll call you, hon, too, and it means I'm feeling for you. I also call men, dude, bro, and man.

I hold doors for women (hell, I hold doors for everyone; it's a miracle I get to where I'm going for letting everyone go ahead of me), I let people get on and off elevators before me, I offer my seat to older women and men on the subway. Just the other night I offered my seat to a white-haired gentleman, dressed in the uniform of intelligentsia around these parts: blue blazer, khaki pants, blue button-down shirt, a rep bow tie. He declined, I think he was a bit amused by the whole affair, and I spent the rest of the trip wondering if I insulted him.

But I gotta watch myself. The other week in a meeting I told a young woman of color to calm down because she was all excited and in my face because I made a comment about her blog, and she threw it out that she hates when men tell her to calm down. Just like a man can't call a woman sweetie, a man can never tell a woman to calm down. She can holler and scream all she wants because she's sticking up for herself and being strong. She's not being aggressive or impolite. Conversely, a man has to stay calm and collected, otherwise he's being aggressive and will find his next meeting in the HR department. Welcome to the double-standard that occurs so often in this society.

The best thing you can do in these situations is know your audience. If you're around people who take offense to certain things you do, no matter how innocent it is, it behooves you protect yourself (and also respect them for the people they are, too) and don't do what offends them, again, even if it is of the most innocent intent. So, I don't call women darlin' at work, even though I do it all the time in the outside world, and I'll be careful in particular what I say to certain people.

It's called survival and putting food on the table.

And I've also learned to remove myself from something or someone who potentially could get me in trouble, again, even in the most innocent of situations.

Obama can't do this. He's in the public eye and can't run and hide like I can. Obama should know not to call someone sweetie, just like I know I have to be careful who I call darlin' and who I tell to calm down. His apology was the politically correct thing to do, and as the commentator on the video says, it's a good one. Obama, as I could tell all along is a good politician, which frankly worries me more than him calling a reporter sweetie.

Ferraro, Obama, and a grain of truth

The Democrats have always had a way of shooting themselves in the foot. The Republican Party is like this Nazi army that just marches and follows orders. They follow the rules they've set and don't deviate from their game plan. They're like mean political machine.

The Dems have always come across like one big crazy band of loons roaming the countryside, never together, like this patriotic amoeba moving this way and that and generally moving in the same direction.

Those are generalizations. In truth, the Dems aren't any more good guys than the Republicans are the bad guys.

So why, when they've got a fairly good shot at the White House (but not the apparent shoe-in that Gore had and blew) does Geraldine "Jerry" Ferraro shoot off her mouth the way she did the other day saying that Obama wouldn't be where he was if he were black?

I mean, does the party really need someone doing someone like that at these times?

Oh, she was just saying what she felt, exercising her First Amendment rights?

Okay, maybe. But a couple of things. First, the Dems don't need someone saying something as divisive as that. It's time to start pulling together, and a big problem with this prez election is the same problem we've always had: It's not about the voters or the country but about the egos of the candidates. Right now it's just one big mud-slinging popularity contest.

The other thing is that in this election, race (and sex) are out there. Whites in Ohio voted for Clinton, or against Obama, depending how you want to look at it. That's racist, but no more racist than blacks voting for Obama in Mississippi. Also, people are voting for Clinton simply because she's a woman and they want to see a woman in power. That's sexist.

So, let's get it all out there. It ain't a perfect democratic process where people are voting for the best person. They are voting their prejudices, which they've always done, it's just a lot more apparent now.

But here's the thing: there is a grain of truth to what Ferraro said. Obama is where he is because he's a person of color (he's not black, but bi-racial.) Guess what, in some ways, Clinton's where she is because she's a woman. The country is dying for a change, and in part both Obama because of his race and Clinton because of her sex represent that need for change.

But to say, or imply, as it seems Ferraro has, that Obama has had it easy because of his skin color is just nuts. He's had it about ten time harder to get to where he is because of his skin color. And you could probably say that about Clinton, too, because of her sex.

So, it's just stand back and watch the idiots come out of the woodwork. The best elections always do that.

Super Tuesday

So Obama and Clinton are neck and neck and today is Super Tuesday and hopefully we'll break this horse race wide open.

I can't imagine Clinton as president. It's kind of like you get this package deal with the Clintons, and they are just so underhanded. So slimy. So sleazy.

If Hillary wins, I'll be feeling like someone picked my pocket. I knew this young girl once, she was all good intentions but fast-talking and always trying to impress you with how cool and street-wise she was when she really wasn't, and she was entertaining as all get out, but every time I was finished talking to her I always had the urge to touch my back pocket to make sure she hadn't lifted my wallet. There was just something about her you couldn't trust. That's the same feeling I get from Clinton. Fast-talking, someone selling me a bill of goods, someone trying to win my favor for their own benefit. And underneath it, there's something sad going on. And that wouldn't be so bad if the sadness wasn't so dangerous.

But I have my doubts about Obama, too. His lack of experience is a huge liability, but not a big as the lack of integrity that the Clintons have. The young vote has to come out strong for him if he's going to take the White House. And I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. This country needs a big change. A big shaking up. The only trouble is, we can't have change just for the sake of change.

McCain? I wouldn't feel bad about him at all if he weren't so old. He's what?--71? He'll be 72 if he takes office and 76 after four years of hell. It's awful but a vote for McCain is almost like betting the Grim Reaper for his running mate, whoever that will be. Colin Powell?

The media has ruined the electoral process

Tomorrow's Super Tuesday. Not a football game, but might as well as be. I wouldn't mind seeing Clinton and Obama in pads, down in three-point stances, then on hut one, hut, two, hut three they fire out throwing forearms at each other's heads. It would be better than the sniping they do at each other. It's like I used to tell my kids when they were little and they'd be bickering at each other and come running to me. I don't want to hear about it unless blood's involved. I wouldn't mind seeing a bloody nose or two on the campaign trail.

Oh, wait, we're all much too civilized for that, aren't we?


All you read about in the news (and yes, I still get most of my news by reading it, and not listening to late night talk show hosts joke about it) is how the media is rating the candidates on their lack of messaging, or connecting with the voters.

Effing reporters anyway. They've gotten as bad as lawyers. Lawyers ruined government because all they think about is making laws. Reporters have ruined the electoral process the same way. Reporters, or writers, think in terms of messages, the one big idea, breaking communication down into its parts. So all these reporters are judging the candidates the way they'd judge communication experts. And candidates, thank the good Lord, or not candidates, they are not equipped to run the country. And for some damn reason, because the politicians craved the press' attention so much, they just played along. This happened over time, but now our campaign process has been taken over by the media. A bit of the inmates running the asylum, with candidates jumping through hoops that the reporters set up.

It's been described as a circus, and that's what it looks like from my perspective, complete with some of the goofiest clowns on the planet.

Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are cousins

Lynne Cheney, the vice president’s wife, revealed this bit of political trivia during a television interview Tuesday.

Obama's response?

"Every family has a black sheep,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

As my co-worker, C, pointed out, this is better than learning that Al Sharpton and Strom Thurmond were related.

The presidential horse race

Hillary Clinton raised $27 million in the past three months ($27 million!!). Barack Obama raised $20 million. We don't even blink at numbers like that anymore, whether it's fundraising for a presidential election (if you want your candidate to win, damnit, you damn well have to pay for it) to professional athletes to the daily cost of the war in Iraq.

I think usual normal working stiffs just can't comprehend the size of the dollar amount. Just figure out your annual income, think about how hard you work everyday just to make ends meet, then just overlay that figure over a politician's war chest or a baseball pitcher's contract. You start by doubling, then doubling, then doubling some more, realizing that you would make that much sometime around the next ice age. The figures, you realize, are epochal.

Lots of people are saying Clinton is going to win. Bush, they say doesn't have a chance. Obama is losing steam, as indicated by his "lackluster" fundraising in the past three months. (I wish my paycheck was that lackluster.) I don't know about Clinton. The Northeast is so insular. People here forget there areSti 3,000 miles between here and northern California, and I still can't see people in say, Nebraska, voting for Hillary. But other, smarter, more politically astute people start dickering with all the electoral votes, and they say it's clear she'll win.

I'm not sure I'd want either one in the White House, but I know a few people that would just spit nails if Clinton won, and it might be worth seeing the look on their faces to have it happen.