Obamapalooza

This doesn't have anything to do with the Democratic Party demolition derby for the opportunity to be elected President in November. I just flashed on that phrase the other day while watching news clips of Senator Obama last weekend in Portland Oregon with a crow so large all that was missing was a mixing table, some scaffolding for lights and a couple of giant beach balls and I've thought we were revisiting the "US" Festival.

From what I watched, the only thing missing was someone to warn the crow to 'stay away from the brown acid' and, if doused, to get to the first aid tent quickly. Sadly, with all the kids sitting in the studios at CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the Cartoon Network, you have to be a fossil like me to remember those days, which explains why none of those pretty prattlers came up with that line.

I don't want you to think I'm not interested in whom we elect as the next President because I very much am. And I'm unfazed that we've had a patch of uneven results in years previous. No matter which side of the aisle you sit on, let's face it, the icebergs on the starboard bow are the work of a lot more than just Global Warming and we've all played a part. Don't be shy: when you buy a ticket you get the whole ride so step up and really step in it because the rest of us seem to have already done so. Let's just hope we don't track it across the Rose Garden.

However-let's also agree that with our current flavor of democracy, 'Big Races' and 'Big Issues' get all the ink and all the TV news time but it's the little nuances to our lives--the how many kids in our third grader's homeroom--when was the last time the street in front of the house was paved-what does a half gallon of milk cost now and how many jobs to pay for all of this are we working--that's where the road and sky collide. Does that make a State Senator this November more important than a Congressman/woman? Is a first selectman as important as the President of the United States? Who can more immediately change the quality of your life, for better or worse?

We each have to make a decision on those questions and how we choose reflects how we view the world in which we live. I've suggested in other spaces and places that, for any number of reasons, we live now as circles within circles. John Donne is correct beyond his wildest dreams, and another Jon, Anderson centuries later and with more melody and music, suggested it can happen to everyone eventually. It's human nature, perhaps, to dream of a better world and to strive to make it happen, but it was a very old fossil Sir Winston Churchill, who counseled, "Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old." And sometimes, especially in our throwaway attention-deficit driven world, saving and remembering are lost arts.

Intending no disrespect to families who can trace lineage generations and centuries back to the same town and the same street, sometimes in New England (and elsewhere) too much past can keep us from getting to the future. Which is kind of funny because the expression we all know says 'the future will be here in a moment' which is wonderful advertising copy but not especially accurate. Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday. And when you want to best assure yourself that your reach doesn't exceed your grasp, you hold on tightest to whatever is closest--family, friends, the familiar. McMurtry's right, I fear. It's a real short movie, so don't get the big popcorn, we'll never finish it.
-bill kenny