Once again, a completed marathon

Tom ran the Houston Chevron Marathon for the third time on Sunday, January 18th. He had hoped to qualify for the Boston marathon, but hip trouble, a foot problem that his doctor has been unable to ameliorate, and a cold prevented him from giving his peak performance. He decided to take the run more easily than he had planned and to make his goal just to finish the race. And he did. I caught his smile as he finally reached that last stretch of the race down Rusk toward Minute Maid Park. Our children and I are very proud of him.

This Historic Day

I went to work as usual on This Historic Day, actually arriving just before the tutoring center opened. Up until 2 a.m. this morning after a 17-hour drive from Texas, I was surprised to make it to work on time. I took with me the small television my husband bought at Goodwill so that we could watch the evening news even while cooking, since we find ourselves in the kitchen too often during our favorite news hour. One of my colleagues and I set up the television in a corner of the lab; we didn't want to miss a minute of Barack Obama's inauguration. Most of the people I work with and most of the students on the campus where I tutor are African-American; it's been a real joy for me to witness what Barack Obama's presidency means to many of them. My supervisor called this morning to tell us she had made it to the Washington Mall, waiting for Obama's swearing-in as president; her voice sounded so happy, so in-the-moment. As the clock ticked toward noon, we turned up the sound on the television. While some students signed up to be tutored, and we could hear the murmuring of their voices in the background, others pulled up chairs to watch Barack Hussein Obama take the oath of office. We cheered afterwards.

How beautiful Michelle Obama looked standing beside her husband. How young those Obama girls are. How we hope the best for them and for us in the days and years ahead.

How proud I am of my son, who voted for the first time in this election and who participated in two Democratic caucuses in Texas. How I hope that his president, and mine, can help steer our country toward better days.

But, then, our recovery is not up to Barack Obama; it's up to all of us. As Obama delivered his inaugural address, I felt the thrill of being addressed as a citizen, not as a consumer; as a co-worker called to action, not as a shopper sent to the mall:

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

Yeah.

"We are the people who run this country,.."

Back from Texas. . . . but more on that later. Today on this historic day, I want to provide two links on my blog before stumbling off to work. Think Progress has two lists to commemorate the past eight disastrous years. Read them here:

• The Top 43 Appointees Who Helped Make Bush the Worst President Ever: This list will remind us why we look forward so much to a new presidency, a new hope. In Texas, I saw first-hand how people I love are swallowing the Bush Legacy Kool-Aid ("Thirty years from now, history will show how well the Bush administration ran the country.....blah...blah...blah).
• Thank You for Standing Up: A list of folks who spoke truth to power during those years. Yes, let's be thankful. And let's celebrate.

After a 17-hour drive and a late, late night arrival home, I wish I could put my feet up in front of the fire, tune in to PBS and NPR, and celebrate the moment when Barack HUSSEIN Obama puts his hand on the Bible and swears to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The partial quote at the top of this blog is from Molly Ivins, provided by Think Progress: "We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders and we need to raise hell.” Yeah.

Brave New World

I came across a quote by Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, and that quote sent me looking for others. Wikiquote has lots of Huxley quotes, but here are some of my favorites:

• "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human."
• "That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach."
• "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
• "Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him."
• "At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols."
• "Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities."
• "Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean."
• "Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in."
• "It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.'"

Contemplating Mortality

Photo by Benton

For larger view, click on photo

I recommend. . .

. . . this Frontline production: The Old Man and the Storm, a story of one extended family's struggle in getting their lives back together in New Orleans after Katrina. I watched the original broadcast of the news story earlier this week, but it can now be viewed online. Herbert Gettridge--what an amazing man!

The White House China

Laura Bush has unveiled two sets of china she has chosen for the White House, both paid for from private funds, I understand. The fancy set (320 14-piece place settings, at $492,798--that's $1539.99 per place setting) cost much more than the estimated worth of our current house (even before the housing market crash), and the casual set (75 seven-piece place settings, at $74,000--that's $986.66 per place setting) cost more than we paid (each, not combined) for our first and second homes, and, if I remember correctly, our third home, as well.

According to a story from ABC News, "only two term presidents have time to order custom china," so I guess it takes a long time to have the custom china made. I have two responses to this event, one negative, one positive:

1) Ummmm.....why spend that much on china, especially when the country is in terrible financial difficulties? The Bush administration inherited a budget surplus and is leaving the White House with over a trillion dollars in budget deficit: U.S. BUDGET at the beginning of the Bush presidency: +236.2 billion (2000, Congressional Budget Office); and now: -$1.2 trillion (projected figure for 2009, Congressional Budget Office). (h/t to Steve Benen) Okay, Okay, the President of the United States hosts state dinners that should be elegant. Also, what's half-a-million dollars compared to the billions spent in our government? Still. . . .

2) On the other hand, Laura Bush demonstrates a practical turn of mind which I can admire (while not particularly admiring the cost) in deciding that the family of the president needs a "casual" set of china for everyday use rather than the formal state services.

A New Year, New Hope, Old Problems

Some updates included

I've let a week pass without posting, but I've continued to read the news online, to watch our evening news broadcast of choice, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and to enjoy a quiet holiday without travel for the first time in years. Except for a social engagement or two (a house full of teenagers on New Year's Eve, a dinner party before Christmas), we've enjoyed a lot of family time. We've played board games, gone bargain shopping, crocheted and knitted together (our son taught himself to knit and is working on a cap with a skull design; I taught our daughter how to crochet, a craft my grandmother taught me), visited Atlanta's High Museum of Art to view the first emperor of China's terracotta army exhibit, taken walks, read books, prepared tasty dinners, and watched episodes of Babylon 5 (we're in Season 3 now and are uncomfortably aware how the science fiction series reminds us of real-life consequences) and episodes of Jeeves and Wooster for comic relief. We're a family of homebodies, I guess, the home being wherever we happen to be since we have moved so many times. I will return to work when the students return to the campus where I tutor, but until then, I'm enjoying having the time to spend with my kids and to begin new projects. Not a bad beginning to a new year.

One hopeful sign of the new year is the much-needed rain we've received here in the Atlanta-metro area. The drought may not be over, but at least the water levels in Lake Lanier are rising. We've had a series of gray and rainy days over the holidays, but I won't complain. More rain fell last night, and in the late morning, huge ships of dark clouds sped across the sky, powered by a mighty wind. Behind the clouds were clear skies and falling temperatures, but the rain is supposed to return in a couple of days. I removed some dead plants from my flower and herb beds in front of our house, thinking of spring as I turned over the very wet earth to release the roots of last summer's purple and white globe amaranths. The drought isn't over, but at least there's hope that winter and spring rains will help guarantee a fruitful garden.

But here at the beginning of a new year, I am also reminded of what doesn't change:

• The pettiness of people who have enough of the world's goods and power to be generous but who aren't--case in point, the Bush White House's refusing Blair House to the Obamas. Other bloggers have commented on this pettiness here , here, and here. Update: Jonathan Chait at The New Republic suspects not pettiness but bureaucratic bumbling or just misunderstanding.
• The stupidity of rewards (and national attention) going to people who are notorious rather than those with the skills, education, or wisdom to deserve the honors: cases in point, Joe the Plumber and Ann Coulter.
• The bitter and all-too-often disregarded consequences of war: case in point, the civilian deaths in Gaza.
• The consequences of believing in something too good to be true and of putting all one's eggs in one basket: case in point, fund manager Bernard Madoff and the people who trusted him.
• The seduction of a happy ending to a horrific event: case in point, Herman Rosenblat's fake Holocaust memoir.

Oh, yeah, my list could go on and on, but I don't want to depress myself further. As the narrator says during the opening credits of Babylon 5: "The year is 2260: the place, Babylon 5. The Babylon Project was our last best hope for peace. It failed. But in the year of the Shadow War, it became something greater: our last best hope for victory."

May someone be blogging--or its equivalent--in the year 2260, and recording a more hopeful list than mine.