1. The Deke and I postponed driving to CdA again today when we woke up to snow falling fast, oh fast. I played acoustic blues on the Echo Dot for a couple of hours and then we turned our attention back to Making Obama. The fourth episode focused a lot on the time Barack Obama served in the Illinois State Senate and also on what I'll call his Icarus moment in political life when he overreached, flew too close to the sun, and decided to contest U.S. Congressman Bobby Rush in the Illinois District 1 Democratic primary.
He lost to Rep. Bobby Rush in a landslide. Rush accused Obama of not being black enough to represent District 1 -- a question about Obama, by the way, that immediately surfaced as soon as he won the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. Barack Obama addressed this question of his blackness during Episode 4, but just as the interviewer asked him about it, our dogs started barking their brains out at a delivery truck and delivery person out front. I didn't hear Obama's response. I couldn't rewind the podcast, so I'll have to go back sometime and listen to that part of the episode again to hear what he said.
I think about this question a lot, not as an African-American, but as a North Idahoan. Part of Bobby Rush's critique of Barack Obama's blackness had a lot to do with Obama being Ivy League educated. Bobby Rush was active in the Civil Rights Movement. He was a member of the Black Panthers. He accused Obama of only having book knowledge about these things and accused him, because of his education, of being an elitist.
I wonder, often, if I'll always be, to some degree, an outsider in my own hometown because I left, I earned a graduate degree, studied Shakespeare, and was a college instructor. I am not a sportsman. When I go out into the woods, I take a camera. I don't drive a pickup. My experience as a laborer ended when I was nearly killed at the Zinc Plant in 1973, so, unlike so many of my other friends around here, I don't have stories to tell about logging, mining, building, repairing, hunting, working in gravel pits, running big pieces of equipment, welding, or working at other kinds of industrial jobs nor do I have recreational stories to tell about snowcatting, skiing, motorcycling, 4-wheeling, or boating.
I read. I write. I taught. I preached some. I acted in plays. I have officiated two weddings. I love to cook. I listen to podcasts When I'm at the bar or at breakfast with the guys or doing other things with guys here, I love listening to all the stories. I don't even pretend to have any to tell, unless the subject turns to remembering athletes or games from our youth or to the short amount of time I worked in the Zinc Plant.
I'll never run for office in North Idaho, but, if I did, I'd understand if an opponent accused me of not being North Idaho enough and, while it would dismay me, I suppose I would understand if an opponent called me elitist -- if by elitist the opponent would mean educated, a lover of poetry and theater, interested in a wide variety of things, a drinker of craft beer, a driver of a Subaru, a lover of classical music and jazz, an Episcopalian, and a person who has never lived in a house with firearm.
I'm very grateful that even though I'm not much of a North Idahoan when it comes to the things I do and don't do, I feel like I belong here. Even if people I've known for years might regard me as a "little different", I always have a seat at Sam's for breakfast, a stool at the bar at the Inland Lounge, and a place at the table when we all get together out at the lake, up the river, at Corby's, or watch a basketball game together.
I might get picked on for drinking "preppy beer" or for having been a "professor" or for leaving the crab feed with bags of shells to boil into stock, but once we get to yakkin' and joking and laughing, all that stuff falls away. At a level of friendship and shared history that runs deeper than the things I do and don't do, I feel accepted. I belong. It's deeply satisfying.
If you'd like to listen to Episode 4 of Making Obama, click here.
2. The Deke made a superb dinner tonight. She made a delicious tomato sauce with ground beef and served it over spaghetti squash and made a very good green salad featuring, among other ingredients, butter lettuce, chopped Brussel sprouts, feta cheese, and a superb oil and vinegar-based dressing.
3. I find it difficult to follow news stories on a day to day basis. I often think news comes out too fast and I like to wait a while -- sometimes a month or longer for stories to come out in longer pieces after the dust has settled and writers have had enough time to sort through things better -- but never perfectly. Online, I saw that in the upcoming March 12th issue of New Yorker, Jane Mayer has a long story about Christopher Steele's background in intelligence gathering and the dossier he compiled back in 2016. I read it and was much more able to track the ins and outs of this story in a single article than I ever was while news about it was breaking on a day to day basis.
I don't know if non-subscribers can access this article, but it's worth a try to provide the link. It's here.
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