Kickin' It With Crossan

I got to meet one of my favorite writers, theologians and thinkers this afternoon. I saw in the paper this past weekend that John Dominic Crossan was scheduled to deliver a lecture at Hope College in Holland MI on Tuesday, so I arranged to get out of work a bit early so I could go hear what he had to say. His topic was on "God and Empire" which just coincidentally happens to be the title of his latest book. Basically, he laid out a persuasive argument (to me, though clearly not to everyone there, judging by some of the questions he got afterward) advocating Christianity as an essentially non-violent faith built on the biblical idea of distributive, not retributive justice. I took some notes that I will offer in fuller detail later and/or elsewhere, but the basic idea is that throughout the scriptures, he sees two different visions of God's justice playing themselves out - at one point he summarized them as "Levitical" and "Deuteronomic." The Levitical was more about jubilees, restitution and "fairness" to the degree that such considerations can be managed and mandated, whereas the Deuteronomic was more about rewards and punishments for obedience to the decrees of the covenant. Crossan had the temerity (and candor) to plainly say that the Deuteronomic promise of blessings and curses (as found in Deut. 28) was, in his words, "bad theology." (!) And from there, he went on to spell out some direct, but tactfully delivered, challenges to the routine and institutionalized violence and exploitation that we too often take for granted as congruent with our lifestyle, our "standing in the world" and most pointedly our sense of "God's favor and special providence" on our nation, culture and perhaps even our race...

Basically, his talk was an overview of the central points of his God and Empire book, excerpts of which you can read for yourself on his website, www.johndcrossan.com. And if you follow this link, you can go right to the book and by using the "Browse Inside" feature, I suggest that you read his prologue, which will give you a good sense of what he said in his lecture. Perhaps within the next few days, Hope College will post the video somewhere on-line (though I can't promise that, I just know that they recorded the talk) but for now, here's their press release.

And here's a picture of me and Dom hanging out after the program! :o)

I was very pleased to thank him for the enjoyment and inspiration that his books have provided me in my own on-going exploration and commitment to pursuit of a non-violent faith and way of life.

Torch Passed, State of the Union, Etc.

I was set to write down some thoughts about the Ted/Caroline/Patrick Kennedy endorsements of Barack Obama today, comingled with some thoughts on Bush's SOTU speech and the across-the-board chastising that Bill & Hillary Clinton have been receiving for their decidedly uninspiring political gamesmanship lately, but it's late and I just really don't have much worth saying on the latter two subjects, at least right now... except that Bush and Clinton both make eloquent-if-unintentional arguments as to why they are best seen as relics of a passing political culture that can't come to its end soon enough for me. And I hope we don't have to endure it on into 2012, if that can be avoided (nominating and electing Barack Obama is the best way to ensure that, folks...)

And as for the Kennedy/Obama event, my friend Matt has already trumped anything I could say about it... cuz he was there! And he's got pictures that you won't see on any media-related website to prove it. One of which I am going to use here, while dutifully crediting him for snapping it from his primo seat right behind the podium. You can see a few more on his blog, which you should immediately skip over to check out after perhaps leaving a comment here if you feel led to do so...

Obama Wins Big in South Carolina

After a couple weeks of bickering and distracting controversies, how refreshing it was to see a big win by Barack Obama tonight. Even better yet to listen to his speech to supporters there... and to the rest of us tuning in to get another dollop of inspiration from this remarkable man. At this point, I think I already know which political leader I intend to follow for the next several years. I hope the Democratic Party and voters across the country agree with me and put him in the presidency, but whatever happens electorally from here on out, I think he's the national figure who I intend to pay the most attention to until further notice. He seems like the only one running who is currently able to fulfill that highest expectation of what I look for in a civic authority figure - one who has the capacity to inspire me on a personal level to believe that by working together, we can achieve a better society than the one we live in now.

Barack Obama is still facing an uphill challenge to get the nomination and win the general election, but tonight's win and the message he delivered afterward certainly adds some fresh fuel to the effort. Here's a link to watch the speech if you didn't see it. I think it's the best one I've seen him deliver in this campaign so far - because it has just a bit more of an edge to it as he has now earned a clearer insight and achieved a sharper assessment of just what kind of obstacles and resistance he and the rest of us who seriously want to open up a new chapter in our political and cultural history will have to overcome. This campaign is becoming more engrossing and pivotal, in my opinion, with each new twist and turn along the way.

What I Did for MLK Day

Monday was a no-school day for the kids at Wedgwood, where I work. So I and other members of our Diversity Committee hosted a lunch and activity event that gave the youth a chance to interact with Dr. King's ideas in a variety of ways, involving games, crafts, quizzes and group discussion. I hosted a video station where we watched the following clips from the latter portion of Dr. King's career. These statements were all filmed shortly before he was assassinated in Memphis in April 1968.





There was another one where he speaks about "no man is free if he still fears death" but I can't find it anywhere on YouTube.

To be candid, I felt a bit frustrated that some of the kids who watched the video seemed to be a little worn-out or weary of talking about Martin Luther King, Jr. I'm concerned that he's been reduced to conventionality and may even be seen as kind of stale or overexposed to a lot of our young people who've probably grown up hearing every January about this saintly man who wanted everyone to get along and be treated equally. Like a lot of other "institutions," the good intention of wanting to memorialize and solidify a great person's legacy has the side-effect of dumbing down and mediocratizing the radical nature of what made Dr. King great in the first place. And it takes the edge off of the challenge his words and life continue to pose to us today.

But I was still honored and pleased to be able to share my respect for Martin Luther King, and to bring his passionate commitment of non-violence to the forefront as we all reflected on what we can do in our own lives to pursue the new reality that he gave his life to achieve.

IGE Talks - See Me on TV via the Internet!

My friend Chuck Neller has begun the process of webcasting our monthly IGE Talks public-access TV show. Here's the link - it will get you to the page where you can access a QuickTime file of our most recent "Community Peace and Justice" program. We have a couple years worth of old shows that Chuck may eventually put on-line, but this one is fairly good.

IGE Talks is a very free-form panel discussion show where several of us get together on the first Thursday evening of each month to talk about current events topics. It's a different mix of people, from all different backgrounds and ideological slants, basically whoever shows up, including random strangers off the street if they feel inclined to join us. But most of the regulars who participate every month are involved in community activism to some degree. This particular episode focuses on locally-oriented issues but I hope you find it interesting if you choose to give it a look.

The show lasts an hour and is pretty lo-fi. One camera, a few mics dangling around the room, you get the idea. But I hope you like it! Right now, the only version available is advertised as "slow connection" - lower resolution, presumably, but I think it shows what we do effectively enough. It's your chance to see and hear me if you wonder what I look or sound like, or what I have to say in a conversational style. The program opens with me riffing against the threat posed to public-access TV by Comcast as they seek to move us to the 900-range, though most TVs currently in use can't pick up those channels without a special converter box. (It has to do with deregulation and the coming switch next year from analog to digital broadcasting.)

Anyway. Whatever feedback, suggestions or complementary video links you want to send me through the comment box is welcome.

Cloverfield

Since I had to lead a training on Saturday morning, I worked a half-day on Friday and went to a matinee, where I dropped in on the theater and exchanged a free movie pass I had for a ticket to the next movie on the schedule, which just happened to be Cloverfield, a new hyped-up monster movie that I first heard about when I saw the enigmatic preview, featuring camcorder footage of New York City being destroyed and the Statue of Liberty spectacularly decapitated, before the Transformers movie last summer. I didn't get too caught up in the buzz that preceded the films release, but I was pleased enough to go check out a new monster movie even though there are a few other films out that I would have rather seen if the schedules had been more accommodating (sorry, those reviews for Juno, Charlie Wilson's War and No Country For Old Men will have to wait til later...) And I had managed to pick up enough of the marketing to know that Cloverfield intended to be an "event" movie of sorts, though I really wasn't clear on what the gimmick was.

So I sat down just as the previews were finishing up and noted that the audience were mainly a bunch of young guys, suburbanites, the kind of people who probably spend a fair amount of time on the internet and playing video games. It wouldn't have surprised me if I turned out to be the oldest guy there (I'm 46.) Given that it was an early afternoon weekday showing, that would make some sense - but I had a distinct sense of being at the farther range of the movie's target audience. I think this is relevant information for what I have to say about the film. And I'm about to lay out lots of spoilers so stop here if you plan to see it and want to be surprised.

The show starts abruptly, with color bars and a lead-in text indicating that what follows is a "found tape" that is now owned by the US Government. There turn out to be two distinct recordings on the tape, one made in April, the other in May of an unspecified year. The April section is a happy and pleasant document of time spent together by two attractive young people, a man and woman. Taped over the top of that is first, a context-establishing scene of that same couple and dozens of their friends at a loft party in Manhattan where various relational dramas unfold and we meet the characters who are about to be traumatized by this horrifying monster attack. Because of the vagaries of how the stop/start/record buttons are hit throughout the course of the catastrophe that follows, little snippets of April's happier times occasionally pop up to punctuate the narrative, adding ironic disclosures and plot twists every time they occur. But the main course is, of course, the impressive cinema verite' capture of unfathomable terror and destruction as a gigantic and ugly force of nature unfurls its wrath on the greatest city in the world.

So we do indeed have a massive gimmick here and for what it is, the filmmakers came through quite impressively, making what must be very sophisticated CGI effects come across on the screen as if they were captured in a hand-held viewfinder. But like other gimmick films, one has to really suspend disbelief and actively decide to go along for the ride in order to enjoy the proceedings, and there are some obstacles that I had to overcome to even give the film a chance. Overall, I'd rate the movie a perfect 5 on a 1 to 10 scale - for each of the positives I can name, an equally significant negative sits right there to counteract it.

Visuals: The "10" is the aforementioned effects work, where it looks for all the world like what's portrayed on screen was what the characters saw in real life. The technical aspects are pretty seamless, or at least they were on first view in the theater - I never had to roll my eyes feeling wearily over-exposed to obviously rendered computerized cartoon effects. The "1" drawback to this approach is that the use of shaky camera shots for many minutes at a time really can induce nausea. I had eaten an "Italian classic" sandwich for lunch before the film and I have to admit, I did not feel very good as the undigested food never really got a chance to settle, with all the camera bouncing and crazy angles. I seriously advise seeing this film on an empty stomach if you have any kind of motion-sickness tendencies. I needed to take a break about midway through just to get over the queasiness and missed the collapse of the Brooklyn Bridge (oh too bad.) I also have to wonder if large-screen digital projection is the best way to see this work. It seems to me that camcorder images were never designed to be viewed on that scale and I think it would work just as well or better on a large scale TV.

Story: The innovative approach of stringing this story together as a found tape is clever and well-executed, though the extremely coincidental but poignant sequencing of the narrative requires us to relinquish any challenges based on the laws of probability. A lot of planning had to go into putting this story together in such a way that it could appear to be a random, unintentionally produced video record of uncommon but historically significant events (assuming that such a thing were to ever actually happen.) So watching it puts us in this weird zone of looking at something that is supposed to appear realistic and credible, yet the evidence presented to us utterly reeks of artifice and manipulation!

Characters: I simply could not care about or take seriously the central personalities involved. Their lives and motivations didn't connect with mine in any meaningful way, and the premise of going back into a city under unimaginable siege by a fearsome monster, to rescue a friend when people are being killed randomly all around you, and furthermore having one guy operating the camcorder throughout it all - this all just strains credibility at a fundamental level. People simply don't behave that way - though it's of course possible to "act" that way. Most everyone at the party fit that same 21-27 year old age range, similar to the people I saw around me in the audience, and their banter and interests just seemed too similar to what I see on those dreadful young-adult oriented reality TV shows when I'm channel surfing.

Overall message: There was none, really. No insight or comment on the "human condition" came through what I saw - there's of course always that "will to survive" thing but that was about it, and even then the story was mainly a series of close calls and narrow escapes, basically "stunts" that the characters had to survive in order to progress to the next nail-biter, until the final scene which really just leaves us hanging, nothing really explained but plenty of room for more films, or should I say "tapes" in this series? I found out afterward that the guy who directed this also made the TV series "Lost" which I've never allowed myself to get hooked on because I just don't watch episode TV all that much, but this information indicates to me the perspective that a film like this is coming from. I'm basically talking about ephemeral postmodern entertainment that has just about as much significance as the creation or the mastery (as a player) of a high-end videogame. Which is to say, there is significance, but it's a self-contained world, it seems to me, where there is little connection to the larger, non-gaming community or the human concerns that people in general have in common. As far as I could tell, Cloverfield really doesn't have anything to say to people, it's more of a reflection of attitudes and perceptions that occur within its target audience. Others have already pointed out how similar the destruction of Manhattan in the film was to the video footage of the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001. And I think Cloverfield comes from that same, slightly numbed-out and helpless vantage point of "wtf is going on around here" that so many of us felt, and I imagine young people in particular, on that day and in the months and years since. I think we can add the video footage of the "shock and awe" bombardment of Baghdad in 2003 to that same catalog of mediated video visualizations of destruction that today's young adults have grown up with. And the YouTube/MySpace connection is already part of the conventional wisdom on what this film represents.

Since I saw it, I've discovered that a lot of viral marketing has gone into creating the buzz for this movie. There are websites and hidden clues all over the internet that provide fascinating backstory for those inclined to chase those loose threads and weave them into something. I don't expect that I'll follow up on that offer - there was a time when this idea would have intrigued me but I'm older now and I have more important things to do on the computer. It could just be that my ability to fully enjoy this latest variation on the perennial monster-movie theme is declining with age and worldly preoccupation. Despite my mixed review of the film, I found it worth seeing and its images will probably stick with me a lot longer than I Am Legend, the other recent sci-fi monster flick I've seen. I will be interested in hearing what my 20 year old sons have to say about this movie.

How and Why I Voted

In the Michigan Primary, I voted for Dennis Kucinich even though I harbored no illusions that he would win or has any rightful claim to the presidency of the USA. I had already ruled out voting Republican even though that's where the real action was in this particular state race. I voted for Kucinich for two reasons. One is that I am in closer agreement with him than I am with Hillary Clinton on the issues. The other is that he actually bothered to visit the state during our brief moment in the Campaign 2008 spotlight. I had a hard time justifying a vote for either a "procedure" (the "uncommitted" ballot urged by Obama and Edwards campaigns) or a front-runner (Clinton) who was destined to get the most votes anyway. I thought, maybe, that Kucinich would get somewhere close to double-digits, with the field cleared for him a bit, but even without Obama or Edwards on the ballot, he still only pulled in 4% of the votes cast. That's pretty pathetic, if you ask me. I wonder why he continues at this point, since no one with political clout really seems to be listening to him or following his lead.

Anyway, the election was overall a non-event and to me a very discouraging indicator of just how messed up participatory democracy has gotten at this moment in our history. Time to move on and leave it behind.

The Wooing of a Michigan Voter

I was asked by Matt today about things I've seen and heard as the Michigan presidential primary date draws near. Here's what I said in reply:

didn't get to any events though McCain, Huckabee and Romney have all been close to where I live. Seen a fair amount of advertising, and also had some interesting robo-calls. One from Mitt Romney greeted me (after a very short pause) by my name and identified the suburb where I live. I wonder if my wife had answered it, would it have recognized a female voice and said "Hi Julie"? I got another one yesterday from Huckabee's campaign (though I didn't know it until after we'd gotten into the call.) An automated voice asked who I was going to vote for so I said "Romney" to see where the computer would take me. It asked me to identify if I was pro-life or not, then when I said "yes" it pushed the fact that Romney switched his stand on abortion, while Huckabee favors a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. It asked me to identify which of the three following issues is most important to me: illegal immigration, gun ownership or tax relief. I chose "tax relief" and was informed that Huckabee wants to make Bush's tax cuts permanent while Romney refuses to make that pledge. After each point I was asked if this information made me more likely to trust and support Mike Huckabee. I answered yes after the first one and made no reply after the second one. Then the call terminated. Is this what they call a push poll?

This afternoon I was at the Grand Rapids airport (to pick up my wife returning from a business trip), which is where the candidates typically do their tarmac campaigning (I shook Gerry Ford's hand there years ago in the 1976 campaign; now the airport is named after him - also saw McCain in a hangar there in 2000.) I saw a sign promoting a rally for Romney tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. but I have a training to attend so won't be able to make a stop. (Just to let you know, I'm not likely to vote for Mitt when it comes right down to it, though I hope he wins in MI.) Tonight I just saw a McCain TV ad that emphasized how he's made a lot of people angry over the years (clearly trying to overcome the skeptics who hold lingering resentments from his opposition to Bush in 2000, I suppose) but by the time the ad is over, you get the message that the people he ticked off were the kind of people we're all pretty upset with these days... It was a good ad, featuring him looking you (the camera) right in the eye and looking like a very traditional presidential kinda guy.

The local Sunday morning "To The Point" political talk show had Huckabee and Duncan Hunter as guests (may have had others on earlier but I missed the beginning of the show.) Hunter intrigued me a bit because he seems like a genuine throwback to the traditional law 'n order conservative type of candidate that to me seems kind of quaint and outdated in this era. Reminds me of some of my older relatives who were John Birch Society members when I was a kid - he spoke about "Communist China" for instance as an emerging military threat. Apparently just a little too old-fashioned for today's post-Bush Republican party. Huckabee's specialty was identifying himself as a kindred spirit to the working class folks struggling to get by, put food on the table, hoping to hold their factory job until retirement if possible. He acknowledged America's debt to MI as the "arsenal of democracy" when our auto plants switched over to make bombers in WWII and said as MI saved America, now it's America's turn to save MI. Pure pablum but pretty tasty to a class of voters who feel pretty ignored by the powers that be. The line has caught on since I've also heard Romney and McCain make very similar points - kind of like Hillary aping Obama's and Edwards' calls for "change."

The Grand Rapids Press endorsed Romney last week. Obviously all the drama is on the GOP side tomorrow - the Democratic primary is a farce and I hope the officials responsible for this are terminated from their posts ASAP.

Geography of Nowhere

I just finished reading a short little book that is probably hard to find these days, since it was published in 1995 by a small press and may have not received very wide distribution. It's title The Geography of Nowhere, by Gary Eberle. (Yes, it's one of my famous "library clearance sale" deals.) I posted the following review on my Facebook profile:

A concise and very readable essay responding to the experience of living in the "postmodern condition" - that highly self-conscious state of awareness that makes it difficult to settle into a sense of confidence, certainty and purpose in life. Eberle offers a recap of the cultural and intellectual journey of Western civilization over the past several hundred years, which may be helpful to some but well-traveled territory to others (it was written in 1995, so many of his observations are fairly commonplace in pomo studies by now.) He winds up in predictable territory, invoking the teachings of Joseph Campbell and others like him, calling us to reinvest the traditional myths of our culture with meaning while also forging ahead in the understanding that fundamentalist rigidity is not in humanity's best interests. I found much to enjoy in the book - but my biggest quibble with Eberle is that he still tends to regard relativism and ambiguity as negative outcomes, which to me speaks more of his own discomfort, though I recognize that many of his readers will regard the loss of certainty and authority as disorienting or disturbing. I enjoyed reading it and would be interested in finding out where he's at nowadays, since he lives in my community, or at least he did when he wrote the book (teaching at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids MI.)

And here's a passage that I'll quote for the purpose of seeing if it generates any comments:

Rationalism alone will never satisfy us [...] The problem now, however, is that we have lost faith in faith, and so the challenge before us is not somehow to "unlearn" what we have discovered from three hundred years of science and simply embrace old faiths again. The real challenge is once again to find the will to believe and then to undertake the task of integrating what we about life on earth with metaphors (symbols) that will be embracing enough to allow us to live and be in a state of integration with ourselves, our society and our world. Faith, however, is not easy in the postmodern world, as if it was ever easy in any world. Those who are in thrall to the gods - as the fundamentalists seem to be - reject the knowledge of science, and those who embrace science have difficulty with faith because they have become too conscious of faith as "mere" faith to give themselves fully to it. When T.E. Huxley coined the term "agnostic" in the (19th) century, he was speaking for the modern scientific mind in refusing to believe anything that could not be demonstrated by proofs acceptable to reason. This was a precarious enough position in the late 1800's, but the current dilemma is even worse, for the postmodern mind knows now that even the proofs of reason are, deep down, unreliable and so we are burdened with the knowledge that any faith we have is "merely" a metaphor standing for something else. In a world where cultures are colliding with each other with greater frequency and intensity, we have come to believe that no one metaphor or system seems to hold any more (or less) of the truth than any other and so we flounder in relativism.

So do you agree with Eberle's assessment that we "flounder" in relativism?

Wonderful World of Grants

For the past couple of months, I've been working on a substantial writing project at work. I'm fairly sure that it's been mentioned here and there on my blog in recent weeks, but if I haven't actually written about, it probably just feels like I did because it's been lurking like an ominous menacing presence in the back of my mind since before Thanksgiving.

The project is a grant proposal that I agreed to write on behalf of the Michigan Federation of Children and Families, a state-wide network of agencies that provide services to families going through crises of various sorts. We want to put on a regional conference on the topic of treating childhood trauma, and we've made a lot of arrangements with notable speakers and experts in this field. I think it's probably best to not go into much detail on who we've contacted since this is all still tentative. But what makes all this somewhat blog-worthy (besides it's just what's on my mind) is that it got me involved in a whole 'nother realm of grant writing, which I've already been doing for over a year now, with fairly decent results. The winning proposals I've written have been for private foundations, mostly locally based here in Grand Rapids and environs. This grant was being directed to SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a division of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. In other words, a Federal Grant. A more complex and intimidating process, to understate the situation. Here's a link to the application guidelines document if you are looking for a fun little pastime, but be forewarned, it's a 36-page pdf so don't click it if you're reading on dial-up. :o)

I say that the grant "was" being directed to SAMHSA because after weeks of assembling information, soliciting support letters from sponsor agencies and investing a lot of mental energy into getting the application together (not just me, but seven or eight others on our planning committee as well, plus interns) we discovered yesterday that the funding for these conference grants is not available. We were aiming at a January 31 deadline, as we interpreted the information on the website, but upon further review, we saw that the grant funding expired on October 31, 2007. We thought that the cycle repeated for another year. We were mistaken. Now I am relieved.

This discovery led us to contact SAMHSA directly where we learned that, according to the Conference Grant Coordinator himself, conference grants may be offered again later this year (no promises or firm dates though.) He added, as an afterthought, his professional observation that the chances of winning the funding were exceedingly slim in any case. They get over a thousand applications at each deadline but are only able to award around 10 grants out of the batch. Further discussion with more experienced hands in our planning committee indicated that the coordinator probably had an interest in squelching our hopes, in that it saves him the task of reviewing applications that are unlikely to get funded, since those that do get approved are generally based quite a bit on pre-existing relationships that he and others have with agencies and individuals they've gotten to know through the insiders' game... basically, same way it works here on the local level, where a well-written application and a sensible proposal are nice features but of mainly secondary importance when it comes to deciding who gets the money.

The upshot of all this is that our planning committee has had a bracing slap of reality and after a conference call yesterday afternoon, we've agreed to continue pursuing our plans, but shifting our fundraising focus away from the federal government (even though that $50,000 pot of gold they were offering looked so enticing, I think it's wiser that we not chase that particular rainbow.) The agencies we represent have the ability to raise funds on the local level and I think our conference will end up being better without having to obsess over the red tape and meticulously prescriptive level of control that comes with federal funding.

So my workload between now and January 31 just got a lot lighter. And I think I'm a better person because of it. :o)

A Response To Some Anti-Obama Backlash

I posted this yesterday to my email list, in response to some negative comments that a person made likening Obama supporters to those who should qualify for "disabled parking stickers" and "special educational vouchers." (His basic point being that Obama is less qualified than the other Democratic candidates and doesn't deserve the broad support he's enjoyed recently.) Here's what I had to say in response to that...

I see enough "lacking" in Obama that I could easily join you in taking a negative view of his popularity but overall I feel good to see him ascending at this point in the race. I see him as far from the worst candidate that could emerge and clearly prefer him to Hillary Clinton because he offers a stronger possibility of creating a truly fresh civic environment in our society. I see the USA as suffering from a mass-depression where very few people actually feel good about the way things currently go or our future possibilities. Some would be very happy with a return of Clintons to the White House but I don't think that the enthusiasm would be contagious. Obama creates strong positive feelings in a wider cross-section of people than any other candidate, either Republican or Democrat, and that to me is more important than a resume or policy papers. I think that's the unique and rather wierd thing about the US Presidency - how the person in that office seems to set the tone for our nation during the years he (so far no she) is in that role. Hillary's problem grows out of the baggage that she can't help but bring with her.  I think Bush suffered from some of this as well, especially when he restored some of the shady characters from past administrations and also when he worked to deliberately differentiate himself from his dad. Baggage remains unavoidable. Same situation would likely occur with HRC and I just don't think our country would benefit from that on-going psycho-drama.

I like John Edwards and would be fine with him as the nominee but if he can't get the masses to rally behind his message, that implies to me that he's just not the guy for this time. Would he consider being a VP candidate for the second election in a row? I hope he would.

Bill Richardson comes acress as too bland and doesn't really connect with people as the central person to turn things around. And Kucinich can't find a way to mainstream himself and maybe doesn't really want to function on that level anyway. The others (except cranky old Gravel) have dropped out so that settles that.

Barack Obama rises as a cool celebrity and he gets young people involved. That enthusiasm may indeed be the harbinger of a more dramatic social change than seems plausible at this time... we'll see how this unfolds over the next few weeks, and then over the course of the coming general election campaign.

But if Hillary Clinton winds up being the nominee, then I think we as a society will remain in a sociological stalling action as more old scores from the 80's-90's "culture wars" get settled. Obama offers at least a possibility of transcending that tiresome cycle.

Get Up On It Like This

Today felt kind of like the first day of the business year. A lot of folks I work with were back in the office after taking breaks of various length over the Christmas/New Year's weeks but this morning there we all were, back at it in meetings, wrapping up the last straggling loose ends of whatever we had left on our desks at the end of the year and for the most part seeming a bit energized and ready to get to it, whatever "it" was.

For me, it's putting together a pretty significant grant proposal to SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a government entity that provides funding for various treatment and educational purposes. As it's name implies. I'm part of a project aiming to put on a Child Trauma Treatment conference at the end of April, 2009. My role is that of the grant writer - basically, I'm putting a lot of information together that various people are sending me and doing my own bit of writing to make it all flow nice and smooth. I've done a fair number of grants over the past year now but this is a big one, both in terms of the amount of money requested ($25,000 or so, which I know is small potatoes to some grant writers) and the intricacy of the proposal - government grants requiring much more hoop-jumping than your typical private foundation grants, which are usually based as much on relationships between organizations as on the amount of fine-tuned detail and evidence-based research that went into the planning of whatever one seeks to fund.

So that's occupying a fair amount of my time and creative energy. But not all of it. Tomorrow night I get to stand up for my first live training event in a few weeks and I'm eager to get back into that teaching mode again.

Yesterday I watched a very amusing and fascinating movie called "La Voie Lactee" which translates to "The Milky Way," by the great surrealist director Luis Bunuel. If you have never watched a Bunuel film, I would say just be ready for a good mental stretching. He does strange things with continuity and narrative structure. For many in today's contemporary audience, he may not seem as strange or jarring as he was in his original context because a lot of films have adopted self-consciously bizarre techniques and structures, influenced by him and other directors from years gone by. But even with the technical advances that have occurred in the decades after Bunuel passed from the scene (his last film was shot in th mid-70s I think) he still occupies a unique and unparalleled niche. His oblique satire and subversive cultural insights remain sharp, though one has to work a bit to translate from the European milieu he worked in through the later stages of his career (he also made some excellent films in Mexico in the 40s and 50s.)

Anyway, The Milky Way is probably the most fascinating film I've ever seen on the subject of theological disputation and its notorious by-product, heresy. One should probably share an interest in this subject before bothering to watch the film. If that's not your particular cup of tea, there are friendlier entry points into Bunuel's world. Try "Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" or maybe something like "Diary of a Chambermaid" which is a fairly straightforward film, actually, but can help get one acclimated.

I won't say all that much about The Milky Way here because I don't want to spoil any surprises, but I will link you to its trailer and let you judge for yourself whether or not to make the effort to track down this fairly obscure little gem.

Votes Tallied

Finally after all the run up and hype some binding decisions have been made in this arduous journey to select a new president of the USA. I'm listening to Barack Obama's speech as he winds down his victory address to a pretty enthusiastic crowd. Obviously they must all feel pretty good at his headquarters... mostly what I heard though in his talk were a bunch of politician promises about hope and fixing problems and making the change that's really going to get the job done this time. I will give a substantial benefit of the doubt on this one, despite the warm fuzzy generalities, because I do basically like the guy and would enjoy seeing him move into the White House a little over a year from now. A couple months ago I posted critical comments about Obama's campaign, and I have to say that I'm not as enthusiastic about him as I was when I first logged on to his website back in the spring, around the time he announced his candidacy. But actually seeing him win, and convincingly, especially over Ms. Clinton, does increase his appeal as someone who really might make the kind of major cultural impact that could pull many of us out of the weary, cynical, apathetic slump that has festered after 7 years of Bushism and the Clinton-fatigue that preceded it. I know that my own sense of idealism and possibilities about the future has significantly diminished since the turn of the millennium. It would be nice to feel a sense of freshness about what our country could become and represent to the rest of the world, for a change. Maybe someone like Obama could be a catalyst to move us in that direction...

Actually, both outcomes seem pretty decent to me, given the alternatives. Huckabee has a populist touch to him that bodes well for the Republicans - I hope he is able to loosen up the corporate big biz grip that Bush has been beholden to for all these years. Not sure that I could really support him as someone I'd vote for - I'm pretty much ready to pull for whoever the Democrats nominate at this point - but if the Democratic Party fumbles this opportunity to win the White House, I'd rather see Huckabee in there than Giuliani, Thompson or Romney, each of whom represent all the wrong moves for the future of our country.

Michigan will hold a compromised primary on January 15. Neither Obama or Edwards (my two favored options) are on the ballot due to the mess created when the state party chose to violate the rules and vault ahead of the earliest date allowed by the national party. I will sort out my options later. But it is very interesting to see something concrete happen as we finally get about the serious business of undoing the mess that George W. Bush and the "divider, not uniter" policies he pursued, have created for so many people in our world.