Sunday, long weekend, anticipating Obama
Jan. 18th, 2009 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ffloGlad I have TV for the pending change of presidents. Haven't turned it on yet today, but saw enough yesterday to know I'm gonna be into some celebrating, though not in D.C. myself, as earlier hoped.
Figure to watch some football later today. The Baltimores have gotten this far. If I watch tonight I'll be up on at least one of the teams in the Super Bowl.
Here it keeps snowing on top of the snow. Piling it up pretty deep.
Skipped bowling last night, as the rest of my team was going to be doing, but regretted the choice today.
Looked at the old old email this morning, the stuff downloaded onto this machine years ago. It reminded me of some old ways of being me that I'm not any more. Striking how, five and six years ago, I felt dramatically less guarded. Part of that may have been from having safety mechanisms in place that, y'know, protected me, while harming me, or something like that. Don't know. Just know I was taken back to some of how it was to be in the world then, via those old words, and know now it feels quite a bit different.
Also found that I used to have multi-paragraph email correspondences with people. Rarely do any more.
Had completely forgotten that we (I) had a good bit of conversation by email with Holly's mother.
I'm finding it undeniable that I have hope about President Obama. This guy, in his having been elected at all, in some of what he can reasonably be thought to represent, and in his claims for what he's out to do, personifies and embodies the possibility of something better. Much better. And it does help that he keeps saying it's not about him, and it does help that he keeps saying he's going to make mistakes.
Some of it is bullsh*t, of course. There's no political speech that's free of an element of bullsh*t; the context bestows an absolute necessity for calculation, and any person savvy enough to get somewhere in politics has at least lucked into playing that game with a modicum of competency. Part of what's encouraging about this guy is that he seems to be poised to use that savvy calculation, along with his current political capital, to move things away from so much of what's been disgusting in America these past many years. Like it really is part of his basic toolkit, the brass-tacks calculation, which jives with the impression he may sorta know what he's doing. Moreover, what he aims to move things toward, in the rhetoric he slings, is a set of aims I mostly dig, and sometimes dig very much.
It's good to be suspicious of leaders. It's also good, finally, to have someone who qualifies as a leader, of whom (then) to be suspicious. And I know my heart will be buoyed by the exuberance of the realization, in a couple of days, of this triumph, for all of us, over the America in which he could never have been elected. That's huge beyond words, and it happening the day after MLK Day is so cool. I wanna watch the parade and everything.
I was looking at Bill Moyers, whom![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kercov loves; he was talking to Simon Schama, a thinky humanist sort, who was sharing his semi-outsiderly take on the political and cultural zeitgeist in the U.S. I liked when he said we're about "innocent ebullience followed by tragic illumination." That seemed just about right.
Figure to watch some football later today. The Baltimores have gotten this far. If I watch tonight I'll be up on at least one of the teams in the Super Bowl.
Here it keeps snowing on top of the snow. Piling it up pretty deep.
Skipped bowling last night, as the rest of my team was going to be doing, but regretted the choice today.
Looked at the old old email this morning, the stuff downloaded onto this machine years ago. It reminded me of some old ways of being me that I'm not any more. Striking how, five and six years ago, I felt dramatically less guarded. Part of that may have been from having safety mechanisms in place that, y'know, protected me, while harming me, or something like that. Don't know. Just know I was taken back to some of how it was to be in the world then, via those old words, and know now it feels quite a bit different.
Also found that I used to have multi-paragraph email correspondences with people. Rarely do any more.
Had completely forgotten that we (I) had a good bit of conversation by email with Holly's mother.
I'm finding it undeniable that I have hope about President Obama. This guy, in his having been elected at all, in some of what he can reasonably be thought to represent, and in his claims for what he's out to do, personifies and embodies the possibility of something better. Much better. And it does help that he keeps saying it's not about him, and it does help that he keeps saying he's going to make mistakes.
Some of it is bullsh*t, of course. There's no political speech that's free of an element of bullsh*t; the context bestows an absolute necessity for calculation, and any person savvy enough to get somewhere in politics has at least lucked into playing that game with a modicum of competency. Part of what's encouraging about this guy is that he seems to be poised to use that savvy calculation, along with his current political capital, to move things away from so much of what's been disgusting in America these past many years. Like it really is part of his basic toolkit, the brass-tacks calculation, which jives with the impression he may sorta know what he's doing. Moreover, what he aims to move things toward, in the rhetoric he slings, is a set of aims I mostly dig, and sometimes dig very much.
It's good to be suspicious of leaders. It's also good, finally, to have someone who qualifies as a leader, of whom (then) to be suspicious. And I know my heart will be buoyed by the exuberance of the realization, in a couple of days, of this triumph, for all of us, over the America in which he could never have been elected. That's huge beyond words, and it happening the day after MLK Day is so cool. I wanna watch the parade and everything.
I was looking at Bill Moyers, whom
kercov loves; he was talking to Simon Schama, a thinky humanist sort, who was sharing his semi-outsiderly take on the political and cultural zeitgeist in the U.S. I liked when he said we're about "innocent ebullience followed by tragic illumination." That seemed just about right.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Jan. 18th, 2009 08:08 pm (UTC)I read a Time magazine piece on him in the grocery store, and I got the impression that Obama is a process person--in the world of craftsmanship hobbies, it means someone who enjoys making a thing more than the thing itself. Bush didn't seem to be a process person at all.
I didn't even know there was such a thing as a process persion in administrative stuff until I had a conversation with Bunny, the recently resigned president of the NAR (Nat'l Assoc. of Rocketry--a hobby nonprofit). I figured it must be a tremendous relief to be done with that miserable job. But he explained that he'd gotten his degree in business administration, but his day job was pretty much technical financial stuff. He really wanted to run an organization, because he found the process of running something fascinating and fun. He did a fine job, because he was really into the nitty gritty of it, and his values were in line with the membership.
Anyway, If Obama is a Bunny at a national scale, things can't help but be better.
no subject
Date: Jan. 18th, 2009 11:54 pm (UTC)i don't dare watch inauguration stuff till the day of. can't they cover gaza till tuesday and then overdose on all this crap?
no subject
Date: Jan. 19th, 2009 01:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 20th, 2009 12:57 am (UTC)