Lizkdc Dislocation

The Man at the Door (Ted Kennedy's Death)

Of all the stories about Senator Kennedy in this morning's Globe, this one reached out and grabbed me. It's about Ted Kennedy quietly attending wakes for local servicemen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sharing a gift of insight arising out of sheer, damned misfortune--nobody knows better then he what it's like to get the bitter news that turns your life upside down.

There's a tiny detail in the article recalling the first time it happened, a death forgotten or never known by those who don't follow Kennedy history.  It was August, 1944, in the midst of World War II, when a priest came to the door of the family home to tell them that the oldest Kennedy son, "Joe Jr," had been killed in a bombing raid over Germany.  Ted was just a kid at the time, the youngest of nine. That man on the doorstep in his black clothing, bringing bad news that couldn't be unsaid, must have left a mark.

A Roundabout Farewell (to Sarah Palin)

My own mother took me to task for what she termed the heartlessness of my reaction to the Sarah Palin resignation.

Now she's a woman who is so soft-hearted that she's a hero and a prize and also, incredibly annoying.  Like the other day there was a pot of dead flowers and I was throwing them away and she was, literally, trying to talk them back to life:  "you're gonna be okay, you just need a little more time!", and I was all, fine, I'll take them out to the back garden and plant them in a corner and we'll see if they come back to life, ok? Humoring her like a five year old. I poked a hole in the soil with my finger and jammed them in the ground. 

We went off on our trip to Ohio and it rained a lot and we came back and not only had they returned to life but put out little pink blossoms. The little floral bastards.  Mom still talks to them, commiserating in a condescending voice when I am in earshot: "See! Some people are so mean, but I knew you just needed One More Chance."

Worthy to Be Remembered

Glimpse, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Faneuil Hall through columns of Boston City Hall

Well, there it is, the State of the Union.*

Somebody slap me. Because I sort of feel like . . . getting up tomorrow and doing better, and making private resolves, and acting more generously, in the spirit of Obama saying that he was going to act under the premise that everyone in the Congress was operating out of love of their country, whether they agreed with him or not.**

Question Time (Stewart and Blair)

Below is the most detailed, balanced, informative discussion of the Iraq War and the broader "war on terror" case for war that I've heard from a head of state who lead those efforts.

Check it out at the end of the post. . .

TwitterFlattery (Election '08)

IMG_1681.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

TwitterFlattery: Barack is now following...

By the time the next election rolls around, post-2008, social networks will have moved beyond the young and the wired just like text messaging and email before them.

But just for this moment in time, I must confess to grinning when I signed up for election updates and got this.

In the blink of an eye, a few years later, will this look as dated as the photos in the JFK Library of folks gathered round their cabinet black and white TV, men in tie and jacket, women in skirts and heels, watching little Kennedy and Nixon heads square off?

Throw it up, superdelegates!

In this grim era of serious electoral machinations, we need more purple stretch pants and gold go-go boots.

I'm gonna vote Obama way/what your mama say?

via Popwatch

Unbitter (Obama on Elites)

IMG_1275.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

Sign of spring, Zeigler Street

Huh, it just hit me more forcefully then ever in this bit from Barack--Obama's background is more similar to my own then either Hillary or McCain's.

A chuckle and then some serious comments on the crazy, distorted fun house mirror in which two millionaires and two of the most powerful people in the country can get the media to declare Obama the "elitist."

Mash-Up

IMG_1516.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

From "Take your time: Olafur Eliasson" at MoMA NYC

Melding of today's results from the PA elections and Battlestar Galactica S4.

Ahem.  Say it with me.

"We're going the wrong waaaaaaaaaay."

Props of the Unexpected!

As my buds Lisa and Carol in their lovely Arkansan lilts: "Oh, my good Lord!"

Mike Huckabee, while I was downstairs dissing him to my Mom on the subject of people and their radical pastors, just said said something generous and honorable, and I think, accurate, on the whole debate about Obama and Minister Wright.

[Y]ou can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. It's interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what ... Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable, years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Rev. Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say 'Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that...

As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say 'That's a terrible statement!' ... I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I'm gonna be probably the only conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you — we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

Race, Anger, and Self Respect

I'm going to first make it easy to check out what Senator Obama says, if you haven't had a chance to yet.

Transcript here.

Even some noted conservatives are calling it one of the best speeches given on race and America in our time.

In it, the senator speaks with abiding reverence towards and understanding of our Constitution, but also of slavery, calling it the "original sin" of our nation, because it broke our own founding promise to ourselves.

And he goes on to make his most basic, proudest point.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. '

That's Senator Obama talking.

Now, I do want to mutter a few, less important asides of my own, that have to do with white people reacting to angry black people.