reprint from: earthfamilyalpha
01/17/09
from Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address: 3/4/1865 With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Doors
There were iris beds, a strawberry patch, a dog yard, a willow tree whose roots tangled into the septic tank, a dirt alley and a dozen neighbor kids out the back door of the house on Longview Street. Father stared out the window next to that back door every morning, drinking coffee and smoking. He stood there, and if I asked what he was doing he would say, "Looking out the window." Out the front door was a long porch, cool concrete, maple trees and pines, a lamp post, Longview Street, weeds, a cyclone fence, the golf course, then Sheridan Road. The cellar door opened horribly to dark steps, lined with mops, brooms, sponges, rags, cleaning brushes, vacuum attachments that followed children downstairs to a huge cellar with dark, high windows and a ringer washing machine which could swallow a child, shoelaces and all. Off to the side, under an eight-inch-thick concrete ceiling with a car parked on top of it, was a vault where we stashed supplies for nuclear attack or a tornado, whichever came first. The cellar door led to damp things, unfinished, underground things that made my heart beat fast, terror grabbing my throat and shoulder blades like claws that pulled me upstairs two steps at a time. The door to Grandmother’s room was open. There was a closet door in her room where it smelled of skin oil and perfume, where nylon print dresses hung silent above grandmother shoes and purses. Grandmother was forbidden to go through the kitchen door when Mother was in there working. "Can’t she help?" I asked, but Mother shushed me fast and Grandma pretended to be deaf. The garage door led to a blue, four-door Ford Fairlane, that took us from Illinois to California, the car that got vapor lock in the mountains. The garage door also led to shelves and shelves of tools and gimcracks Father used to fix things that were broken and vice versa. Once, to get a better view, Mother held the car door open while she backed out of the garage and left the car door jammed between the garage door elbow and the car. Once Father opened the large garage door, opened the car door, got in and backed the car in the garage into the car in the driveway. Later he said he’d always wanted to do that! Once Father slammed his finger in the car door, and once he slammed his finger in the garage door—index fingers on both hands, a matching set of vertical finger nails. One car door opened sideways, a lumpy brown Hudson Father bought for $50, the children’s taxi, he called it, saying it wouldn’t go fast enough for Mother to get a ticket, but she got one in the school zone in front of Greenwood Elementary School, the doors of which swelled with children of all descriptions, with multi-syllabic names from all over Europe, but when Grandmother asked me where my friends were from, I’d say, "America, Grandma!" There were two bathroom doors, one in Grandmother’s room; the other was the family bathroom in reference to which someone was always shouting, "Shut the door." There was a door to the front bedroom which was mine until Father built two rooms and another bathroom upstairs saying, "Wouldn’t it be nice for the girls to have a bathroom of their own, Anne?" There was a door at the end of the hall between my room and the large bedroom where Mother and Father slept next to jewelry boxes full of expensive jewelry which Mother didn’t like Father to spend money on, and costume jewelry she wore with color coordinated outfits. A plastic folding door petitioned off the nursery when my sister was a baby and there were sliding doors to Mother and Father’s closets which were dark and full of costumes that were hilarious. There was no lock on the attic door behind which were murderers. I pushed a chest against the attic door at night. In the daytime it was safe. I smoked back there until Father suggested I would be less likely to burn the house down if I smoked in the bathroom with the fan running so no one would know. The door to the upstairs bathroom was pink and Formica around the two sinks was pink and the towels were pink. So were the walls. The door from the dining room downstairs to the living room was an open arch and next to it was a brown arched tube radio we gathered around at night for radio dramas and world news in the corner of the living room furthest from the door to the front hall closet, full of coats, where it smelled like mothballs and where Mother kept the fur coat she wore when she dressed to go out the front door with Father, who kept his wallet, change, cigarettes and matches on an antique table next to the closet door, across from the piano next to the fireplace over which hung a large watercolor painting of a polar bear standing on an iceberg in the Arctic Ocean, which Father said made him cold. And there was the door to the train Father disappeared into every morning and stepped out of every evening, a black steaming engine pulling cars with green windows behind which sat people reading gigantic newspapers, a shrieking trail of doors rolling and clattering to Chicago and back, Chicago, where doors were stacked on top of doors in towers that turned streets into canyons, where a child could look up and not see the top, where revolving glass doors spun, never stopping, and an infinite tangle of doors led to restaurants and department stores, dentists and bathrooms, elevators and stairwells in patterns too complex for a child’s understanding and for that reason— exhilarating.
©Susan Bright, 1995, House of the Mother Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published one-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh. Here's a link to Obama's message today about the start up of: Organizing for America.
It is a blustery day in Austin, Texas
where the Bush stronghold, thanks to redistricting,
held ground even though my home town
and county went Dem 2:1.
There is no good reason to ask why
tears came to my eyes when Obama took the stage
in Grant Park, or maybe there is.
I grew up on the North Shore about 40 miles
from Chicago, which is my mother city.
Yesterday — as I made calls to people in Pennsylvania,
where I was born, where my family lived for decades,
to Indiana, where I went to college one year,
to New Mexico where J's family kept a vacation home,
to Colorado where J and I slept alongside
Mineral Creek one June evening and woke up
covered in ice — America was familiar to me again,
felt like home.
An Hispanic woman in Albuquerque told me she
was a Republican but would no way vote for that
paper doll McCain picked. She was Obama all the
way and so was everyone in her neighborhood.
She told me she was 73 years old and lived
alone, but if he won she was going to down
two beers to celebrate.
In Ohio a young man answered the phone
and called his mom. As I talked to her, he
and what sounded like ten friends -- but could have
been just a brother or two -- hooted and cheered
and shouted: Obama! Obama! Obama!
The promise of the Civil Rights movement,
the affirmation of the American Dream,
the courage of a single man standing like a tuning fork
before untold thousands everywhere he goes
in a country where anyone can pick up a sophisticated
sniper weapon —
these are all a good excuse for tears,
tears of joy, relief, tears in Spanish, Hindi,
Arabic, a vast sigh of relief all over the world.
D. C., where I followed Jesse Jackson around
in 1968, went 93% for Obama — danced
in the streets in front of the Bush White House.
In Austin in February 07 when 20,000 people
stood in the rain for more than an hour listening
to his Wheel of History speech there was zero
security — just a man telling a story, an American story.
As I walked, several years ago, from Powells to
Seminary Bookstore in Hyde Park I couldn't shake
the feeling that I was taking deep steps —
through my own history, alongside
that beautiful lake I call Mother Blue —
deep steps on soil that reminds me water and
earth, wind and sky, are connected.
I haven't recognized the America I came from
in our government for decades, maybe ever.
It is an America of achievement and optimism,
a can-do America, a gathering of neighborhoods
and communities, a kind of honor and sense
that comes from the circle of the family.
Casting aside the cloak of cynicism
I have dragged around my entire adult life,
and at the risk of uttering blatant optimism —
Last night I saw
the America we want to be.
©Susan Bright, 2008
Susan Bright is a poet and the publisher of Plain View Press in Austin, Texas.
I am so disappointed in the FISA vote that I am not going to contribute for awhile -- until the campaign makes it clear that Barak hasn't abandoned campaign promices to restore the constitution. This is important.
Articles in the Huffington Post, Truth Out, Common Dreams -- and others -- have made the point that it is a HUGE strategic mistake for the Obama Campaign to spend time going after the 10% of the vote that is "independent" or after liberal republicans or disenchanged ones, and abandon the work of energizing a new wave of people -- the ones that have driven the campaign.
Low fund raising totals last month come from the perception that Obama has abandoned his base. I was a precinct capt, made hundreds of phone calls, sat thru the Texas State convention -- until this campaign gets on track again -- I'm sitting it out.
Susan Bright
7/14/08
On a work day afternoon, 2/23/07, Barak Obamaspoke in Austin to gathering of 20,000 pluspeople. Friend Carolyn and I walked alongRiverside drive, closed to traffic, to the beatof "For the Funk of It."We found our way into the thickof the crowd, wrangling a view of the stage.I'd heard Obama at the Dem conventionin 2002, and have watched him with interest —watched the film of his visit to Kenya,grew up outside Chicago, know the roughMidwestern chill of Springfield whereLincoln said, "A nation divided cannot stand."I was curious to see Obama in person,like many, want him to vote for cutting funds forthe war now, but am encouraged thathis bill for re-deployment stipulatesno permanent military bases in Iraq.Today, in an almost conversational tone, Obamagave a speech I will in the future think ofas his Wheel of History speech.He talked about American history —the revolution, the civil war, suffrage,the labor movement, civil rights.He'd said the roots of terrorism were in Darfour, in injustice."If all of you are willing to put your shoulder to the wheelof history at this moment, then amazing things can happen."Obama has a way of talking to thousands of peopleas if he were talking to a small group, backs offrhetorical crescendo, is more intent on connectingpast to present to future, less eager to lead cheersthan tell a story about civil rights.I couldn't help realizing how completely vulnerablehe was, on a raised platform, surroundedby thousands of people, no security at the gateof a free event, we signed our names to get in,or showed email invitations.He quoted MLK --"The arc of the moral universe is long,but it bends toward justice."He talked about the Wheel of History,and the building of a movement.Give it a listen. Part two and three are the best.*Photo from the Obama website. You can watch the video here too.©Susan Bright, 2007
google earthfamilyalpha today to see our whole post about the Obama visit.
