Michelle Obama: Just as Special as Her Husband

Last night Michelle Obama gave a speech at the Democratic Convention in Denver. Here is my take on that speech:

I have heard Michelle Obama speak before. She is intelligent, articulate, authentic, with a full grasp of the issues. In my opinion, she is the equal of her husband in terms of her skills as an orator and in terms of knowing what she is talking about and in her ability to move and inspire an audience. You want charisma, Barack has it, but so does Michelle. It's clear she is a wonderful mother and partner for her husband. They used to say that with the Clintons you got two for the price of one, but there was all that baggage that went with it. With the Obamas, you also get two for one, but no baggage this time, just an honest desire to serve and do what's right for this country. These are two self-made people whose gifts are there for all to see. I can only hope the American electorate gets it right this time.

John Woods
August 26, 2008

If You Can't Say Something ...

Written in response to Maureen Dowd’s column that kind of put down Barack Obama and his recent trip abroad.

Maureen,

I know your job seems to be snide critic of whomever you’re writing about, but god almighty, do you have to put down Barack who is our best hope to get beyond the morass that has taken over this country for the past 7.7 years. Yeah, Barack was warmly received abroad, which speaks to the fact that it isn’t Americans they dislike, but the incompetent people the Supreme Court unfortunately selected to run the government in 2000.

The fact is that we all have our foibles and weaknesses, so why ALWAYS focus on those when you’re writing about a person, especially one as smart and admirable as Barack seems to be. From what I have read, it’s clear he isn’t the touchy-feely back-of-the-bus guy that John “gaffe-a-day” McCain is, but he’s the first person running for this office to inspire the likes of me since JFK. So I look forward to a column where you don’t zero in on foibles and trash someone because of them—and rather tell me some good stuff you like about the person. It would be interesting to see what kind of e-mail you would receive in response to such a column.

Your friend in Madison,

John
July 30, 2008

A Tribute to My Brother George

This is my eulogy for my brother George, July 24, 1944 - May 26, 2008, delivered at a celebration of his life at his daughter Stacey's house on June 14, 2008.

An old cowboy sat down at the bar and ordered a drink. As he sat sipping his drink, a young woman sat down next to him. She turned to him and asked, “Are you a real cowboy?”

He replied, “Well, I've spent my whole life breaking colts, working cows, going to rodeos, fixing fences, pulling calves, bailing hay, doctoring calves, cleaning my barn, fixing flats, working on tractors, and feeding my dogs, so I guess I am a cowboy.”

She said, “I'm a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about women. When I shower, I think about women. When I watch TV, I think about women. I even think about women when I eat. It seems that everything makes me think of women.”

The two sat sipping in silence.

A little while later, a man sat down on the other side of the old cowboy and asked, “Are you a real cowboy?”

He replied, “I always thought I was, but I just found out I'm a lesbian.”

That’s the kind of joke George would tell me nearly every time we spoke on the phone. One of his talents was his ability to remember jokes and tell them with the timing of a skilled comedian.

You know, I can’t really get my head around the idea that George is no longer with us. I mean, he’s been part of my life for all my living memory. Every picture you see of him in my slide show, there I am right next to him. So I’m still trying to accept that I can’t call him up for his latest joke. In fact, about a month ago when he was very sick, I talked to him on the phone and said tell me a joke, which he proceeded to do. During his sojourn in Hawaii, he often called me and as soon as I answered, without saying hello, how are you, or what are you up to, he’d just start telling me a joke. Usually it was a bit off-color, and it always made me laugh.

George spent his first six years and I my first seven years at the Adriatic Avenue house in Long Beach. We shared a small bedroom with bunk beds, and we figured out how to take one of the poles out of the bed, put it between the upper bunk and the wardrobe, creating our own jungle gym right there in the bedroom. We were very fortunate not to break that pole. And I’ll never forget the day we were outside this restaurant/bar behind the house that had a faucet on the side of the building. We turned on the water and after it filled the gutter, we proceeded to march back and forth in this water getting our shoes and clothes soaking wet. I don’t know if this was my idea or George’s (most likely George’s), but man we were having fun. That was the one time our mother made us go to bed in the afternoon. She was not amused

One of our rituals during that time was walking to the Santa Fe Theater every Saturday for cartoons, serials, and cowboy movies. I think it cost about 10 cents to get in. As we walked to the show, we always went through a lot with a tree that we loved to climb. Then we waited in line and, once inside, found our way to our favorite seats in the front row. Our dad’s upholstery shop was just down the street, Santa Fe Upholstery, and it was always fun to visit the shop and mess around with the tools.

In the summer when George and I were about 10 and 11 and then living on Easy Avenue in Long Beach, everyday, we’d pay 10 cents and ride the bus down to the beach at Linden Avenue and sit next to the lifeguards who we got to know quite well. That was a wonderful summer. Our mom didn’t know it, but we would often find our way over to The Pike, the amusement park that existed in those days. We’d end up in the penny arcades (when everything actually cost a penny), play pinball machines and the penny pitch. We never had enough money to go on the rides.

In those days, we lived near the LA River, which everyone called the flood control or just the “flood.” It was reputed to have quicksand and bad people hanging out there. We were not to go there. Of course, for us it was like a magnet, and we couldn’t stay away and after several warnings, were told that if we did it again, we would get it with the belt. Yeah, we did it again, getting our shoes wet walking around trying to find the quicksand I guess. I remember riding home talking to George about how we would explain our wet shoes. We had a friend with a fishpond in the backyard and that was going to be our story. Of course, it didn’t work and we did get our spankings. I don’t know if we learned our lesson, but it certainly was a memorable experience.

Another memorable experience was the first time our dad was going to take us deepsea fishing. We were both so excited that we hardly slept and suddenly it was 5 am and dad was getting us up. We were ready in about 5 minutes and off to Pierpoint Landing in Long Beach (that’s gone now) and the boat. Me, I got seasick. I can’t remember if George did, most likely he didn’t. We didn’t catch any fish, but it’s still memorable. Later on when we were in junior high, nearly every day in the summer we went down to Belmont Pier in Long Beach to fish for whatever we could catch. There’s a picture of George and I in the slideshow taken after one of those days.

When George was 11 and I was 12, we moved to east Long Beach on Studebaker Road. I managed to get a paper route delivering the Press Telegram. After a while, there was an opening, and I made an impassioned case for George to get the job (after all, he had substituted for me a few times on an earlier route I had). It worked, and for quite a while George and I spent our afternoons pedaling our Schwinns from street to street, paper bags on the handlebars and rear rack, delivering the Press Telegram. Later on, when George was 13 and I was 14, we both had LA Times routes. I remember well that we were paid $11.50 every two weeks for routes that required each of us to ride about 7 miles to deliver about 50 papers each every morning before school.

As we got older, I remember our dad taking us over to what was then the only parking lot at Long Beach State College where he taught us to drive in a 1956 Ford Mainliner with a 3-speed stick shift. We both had trouble but finally managed the clutch-accelerator motions so the car wouldn’t stall. Before I actually got my driver’s license, our parents went to Las Vegas for the weekend. We had the keys to that Ford and decided to drive it even though that was a major no-no. Nothing bad happened, but our neighbor told my dad we did it. That resulted in me having to wait an extra 3 months to get my driver’s license. George still had a year to go. Later we took that car to Pasadena to the Rose Parade. Dad told us not to drive on the freeway because the engine was not in good shape. Of course, we did take to the freeway to drive home and that resulted in the engine throwing a rod, which basically means the engine was destroyed. With much trepidation, we had to call dad and tell him what we did. He actually didn’t get too mad at us despite having to pay $500 for a new short block.

During high school, we each had our own group of friends. George was the athlete of the family, and I was the spectator. The sport he actually played and for which he won his letter was, believe or not, water polo. Now I’m pretty good swimmer, but not good enough to make the team. George was, and he had the letterman’s jacket that I kind of envied.

In the 1962, my dad’s company sent him to Hawaii to run a job building a power plant. I lived with my Grandma Woods and attended Long Beach City College, and George lived with Uncle Jim finishing his senior year in high school. Then we were both to fly to Hawaii with my dad after George’s graduation. It was during the next nine months that George fell in love with Hawaii and got into pipefitters’ union as an apprentice. I joined as well, but dropped out after that summer. We both worked on my dad’s job. George bought an old surfboard and got into surfing. We lived right next to the beach and could hear the surf from our bedroom at night. Those were good times for us. We used to drive into Honolulu on the weekends in my 1957 MGA that I’d shipped over there from Long Beach and try to find girls, something we were not very successful at. I know that from this time forward, George had it in his head to return to Hawaii, and he finally succeeded some 40 years later.

In the spring of 1963, we returned to Long Beach. I went back to Long Beach City College, and George continued working. My dad’s next job was in Michigan. At that time we both had VW bugs, George a 1958 model and me a 1959. In June of that year after school let out, we followed one another across the U.S. mostly on Route 66. It took us four days, with me leading all the way, except when we finally got to our destination, Holland, Michigan, where he pulled out in front and drove into our new home for the summer ahead of me. I was put out about that for quite a while.

After that summer, our lives took different directions. I went off to Berkeley and George continued working in construction. We saw each other when I came home for the holidays, and we worked on jobs together in the summer, when my dad got us on whatever job he could. Everyone came up to Berkeley in June 1965 for my graduation. It was George, however, who stole the show. He took off with my dad’s camera after the ceremony and went up to the podium and managed to get his picture taken with Clark Kerr, who was then president to the University of California system. My mom has that slide showing George with his arm around Clark. It’s classic.

After that, we went our separate ways, I to the Peace Corps in Ethiopia and he to the world of work. I do remember receiving a letter from him with a picture of his new dark blue Mustang. That was a cool car, and one I had no chance of having then or later. A couple of years after that, we both got married and were members of each other’s wedding parties.

Then I took off for Illinois and later New Jersey and George got drafted into the Army at 25 years 9 months (the cutoff for the draft was 26 years). We saw each other on occasion over the next several years and kept in touch via phone calls and so on, but didn’t see each other often enough—which is, looking back on it, very unfortunate. We each had our kids, but they never had a chance to get to know one another as they were growing up, which is also very unfortunate. I know that George was a great dad. All you have to do is ask Josh and Stacey. He was always involved in their activities and really took fatherhood seriously.

George was a victim of the Southern California curse of having to commute 60 or 70 miles each way to work and home, driving from Temecula to the outskirts of LA. As a reader this gave him a chance to read many books, not by listening to them on tape, but by balancing them on the steering wheel as he waited for traffic to move. I don’t know anyone else who’s ever done that.

As I said, for many years as our kids were growing up, we only saw each other occasionally, but when George and Leslie divorced and George left for Hawaii, we retrieved our brotherhood and talked very regularly about our lives. I would call him or he would call me to check in. He always had his joke to tell me and would describe his work life and what he was doing to upgrade his condo and lots of other stuff that should remain private between brothers. He’d tell me he was sitting on his lanai smoking a cigar and enjoying the view of the ocean across the street. I didn’t really know he had this drinking problem, though my sister told me he did—I just never saw it.

George was always the sentimental one between us. He would sometimes tell me how much he loved me and our family and I would be trying to change the subject, not wanting to get into all that stuff. I never quite succeeded, and that’s probably a good thing. George, as you may know was left-handed, and I think this type of person is just more likely to be emotional and creative than guys like me. He was someone about whom a teacher could say, “he works and plays well with others, and everyone liked him.”

Tomorrow is father’s day. George was a great father as we can tell by his wonderful children Stacey and Josh. I am bothered about the fact that his future grandchildren will never be able to know him or he them. As Josh and I have discussed, he would have been a great and I mean a great grandfather.

It’s very hard for me to say goodbye to my brother. I always teased him that I am 1 year, 3 months, and 16 days older than he is. Somehow I thought that gave me the right to lord it over him. That wasn’t true and as we got older, that stuff disappeared. He lived 63 years, 10 months, and 2 days. A good stretch, but not long enough. I am very sorry he’s gone. I’m his brother, and I can say with no false sentimentality that I loved him, too, and that he will always be alive inside me and a part of who I am, just as I am a part of who he is.

One of my friends sent me a card on the passing of George that included a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery from The Little Prince. The quote goes like this: “In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them, I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing when you look at the sky at night.”

I think when I look at the stars, I will think of my brother George and wish him well and he’ll know I’m thinking about him. Good-bye bro. I love you and all the times we had together.

Barack, Reverend Wright, and Denial

The following is something I wrote and posted on The New York Times site, commenting on Nicholas Kristof's op-ed, Obama and Race, published March 20, 2008.

I have seen some, perhaps not all, of the taken-out-of-context videos of Rev. Wright’s comments from the pulpit. What I heard, and I say this is as a white person, is pretty much true things. Yes, he spoke with great emotion, but injustice evokes great emotion. And, as Barack rightly pointed out, it’s not so useful to break us up into two camps—blacks vs. whites. And it’s not really accurate. But from my perspective, this country is very flawed and to act as if someone is completely wrong to point that out is equally wrong and suggests that Rev. Wright’s critics are living in denial of the many injustices that have occurred and continue to occur in this country.

I remember seeing bumper stickers in the 1970s that said America--love it or leave it. I used to think if those were my only choices, I might have to leave. Now we have a potential president who actually says not love it or leave it, but, yes, the U.S. has a lot of problems, and some of them have to do with race prejudice and a real misunderstanding between the white culture and the black culture in this country. And then he says that we need, first, to acknowledge these differences, second, to talk about them openly, and third, to try to get beyond them and embrace our common humanity. That’s pretty remarkable.

And when the wife of this candidate says she finally feels proud of what’s going on in this country as shown by the amount of support this candidate has received, I agree with her. Because I can say that for many years, I have not felt good about many of the policies pursued by our government, especially as pursued by George Bush. I am not proud of what he has done—and to the degree that reflects back on our country, I’m not proud of our country.

I now read that Republicans feel Rev. Wright’s words are a gift that will allow them to win against Mr. Obama should he be the candidate who runs against John McCain. If that’s their weapon in the upcoming election, it simply affirms that they prefer to live in the denial I referred to above than to actually confront our problems and solve them. For the Republicans, it’s always “us vs. them.” For Barack Obama, it’s much more, “we’re all in this together.” The implications of the Republican perspective will always lead to perpetuating the problems we have now. The implications of Barack Obama’s basic assumption lead to realistically addressing our differences and coming together to bridge them. That makes a lot more sense to me than the former. I can only hope, for first time in a long time, enough people in enough states agree and Obama will receive the 271 electoral votes needed to win in November.

—John Woods, March 20, 2008

You Can’t Change the Way You Think

I was reading an interview with Rebecca Goldstein and Steven Pinker at Salon.com and she said that when she first met Steven, she told him that his books had completely changed the way she thinks. I know this is a common assertion, that when we learn something new, it changes the way we think about the world or particular situations. Or sometimes we are told that we “have to change the way we think to make progress in some area of life. I remember hearing Peter Senge, who has written extensively on “systems thinking,” that unless we change our thinking, we are bound to fail.

So what's my point? Suggesting that someone changes the way he or she thinks is the same as saying we have to change the way our hearts beat or the way our muscles contract and relax. Thinking is a manifestation of the biological organ, the brain, at work. We can no more change the way our brain functions than we can change how any other part of our body functions.

Ah, but we can explore what think about and how thinking works. Thinking really involves, as near as I can tell, two components—processes and relationships. Thinking is about having assumptions and drawing conclusions based on those assumptions about relationships and processes among the things that make up our worlds. That’s what every single human being in the world does when he or she “thinks.”

But we also have the ability to introspect, to think about thinking, to explore our assumptions and the conclusions we draw and examine their validity in light our experience and the experience of others. We can ask the question, do our assumptions lead to sound conclusions that result in intelligent behavior? Do our actions, based on our conclusions, make the world a better place for ourselves and others? Far too often, the answer to that question is simply, no.

For me, that suggests that I look at my assumptions, my personal understanding about the relationships and processes of the world, and how those lead me to behave in ways that make me a happy and fulfilled person. If I’m an unhappy guy filled with anxiety, that’s my body telling me to examine my assumptions because they’re not leading to sound decisions. If someone tells me to change my thinking, what that person is really saying is examine my assumptions and make some changes that will lead to better results. What he or she is saying, is take better advantage of our natural processes of thought to make the world a better place for ourselves and others.

So remember, you can’t change the way you think. But you can change the quality of your understanding by examining the validity of your assumptions and the information you have and come to better conclusions that will lead to actions that will naturally make you feel good about yourself and your place in the world.

—John Woods, December 11, 2007

Reaganesque

When I listen to the Republican “presidential” debates (quote marks intentional—I see no person on that stage who I would consider presidential), I am struck by their almost fawning references to Ronald Reagan, as if he should be considered for sainthood or at least placed among the top five presidents in American history. I have never ever understood that perspective. It just doesn’t jell with my observations of this mediocre person who somehow got elected twice to be president.

Now we hear how Fred Thompson wants to be the second coming of Reagan. Americans seem to have a short memory. Let’s review some of Reagan’s accomplishments. When he was president, we had a huge jump on the budget deficit. We had Iran Contra. We had the savings and loan debacle. We had the loss of hundreds of soldiers in Lebanon. We got star wars—a massive waste of money and resources. We got a president who after every press conference had to have someone come out and correct all his mistakes. We got a guy who only became animated when talking about his acting career. We got a guy whose wife consulted an astrologer before advising him on important matters of state. And we got a guy who had to have 3x5 cards to tell him what to do in every meeting he attended. He was an actor before he somehow moved into the White House, and he was an actor during his eight years living there. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn't put tape on the floor telling him where to stand as he read his statements from those 3x5 cards. And oh yeah, we got a guy with a dysfunctional family who was seen as a champion of family values by far too many wishful-thinking supporters.

For me, I have no interest is having another Reagan, though, Bush 2 has far outdone Reagan in the damage he has done to this country. Still, it has always bothered me that we elected a b-movie star president twice. That is sad commentary on our country and the state of our political culture. It’s sadder still, of course, that George Bush was selected by a biased Supreme Court to be president in 2000. The damage that has come from that decision can never be overstated. Any Republican who claims to be the successor to Ronald Reagan ought to examine what he’s wishing for. His biggest nightmare would be to use that guy as their role model.

—John Woods, September 7, 2007

Larry Craig’s Karma

Here’s what he said: “I am not gay. I have never been gay.” What’s wrong with that statement? To quote Shakespeare, “I think he doth protest too much.” Either you’re gay or you’re not gay. There is no, as implied by the statement above, “I am not gay now, but it’s possible I was gay in the past.” I believe Larry Craig is gay, and it is pathetic and sad that he felt he had to bash gays and be a big “family values” (whatever those are) advocate to keep his job. All the while, he’s covertly soliciting sex in men’s bathrooms.

As a straight guy, I have never encountered such foot tapping and playing handsie and footsie while in the “stall,” and if I had, I wouldn’t have had a clue what it meant. It’s very clear, however, that old Larry knew all about it. And while he would have liked to suppress his homosexual desires, apparently he’s no more able to do that than I am to suppress my heterosexual desires. So he got caught, and he is paying the price.

Shouldn’t we be compassionate toward someone like Larry Craig and his sad predicament? The answer is yes, we should. It is telling commentary on our society that gay people have to act as if they were not gay to conform to the conventional mores our culture. I’m pretty sure there is a degree of self-loathing in Larry Craig that comes from having to lead a double life.

The real irony of all this is that the price he is paying is one he helped set as a gay basher in the first place. In other words, he is now getting a taste of what he has hypocritically been dishing out for most of his career in Congress. If you ever needed an example of karma at work, look no further than this episode. Then hope that we can someday have a culture and politics where honesty and integrity are the rule rather than the exception, and the only karma that comes into play is the good kind.

—John Woods, August 30, 2007