The Road to Safety

There’s a lot of talk these days about the big choices this election holds for all of us. It’s true–the stakes in this election could hardly be higher. Like everyone else, I’ve watched as spin became lies, was exposed as such, and somehow still remained a part of our political conversation. The cumulative effect has been, I suspect, a sort of national case of disassociation–we have been asked to believe twelve impossible things before breakfast, and, rather than calling bulls*t, we have tried. Oh, we have tried.

I can’t speak for you, but for myself, I have to say that the result hasn’t been pretty. There’s the perennial, “Hey, wait…” reaction when I hear one of the tired old canards trotted out and whipped round the track for the bazillionth time. There’s the anger that we never seem to move beyond this. There’s the frustration at the thought that millions of Americans are apparently being taken in by a group who has openly disavowed any ties to reality. And most of all, there’s the sneaking fear that I’m going crazy.

This political campaign defies logic. A candidate who has flipped and flopped and flailed around and openly taken to political whoring in pursuit of the Oval Office should have been laughed out of the race by now. But he hasn’t. And I think the reason is really very simple. I think the reason why Mitt Romney is still in the race is because while those of us in the dwindling middle class all want pretty much the same things–we want social and financial stability, a secure old age, college education for ourselves and our children, and the hope that when we leave we’ll have enough to leave a little behind–on a deeper level we really only want one thing–we want to be safe.

The question is, how do we achieve that? I am reminded of my medieval English lit class. Medieval English literature reflects the two prevalent cultures in Britain at the time: Anglo-Saxon culture, which had its roots in North Central Europe, where winters were savage, life was harsh, and wolves were fierce; and Celtic culture, which had its roots in the softer, milder climates of southern Europe. Anglo-Saxon literature’s most famous poem is Beowulf. Celtic poetry is less well-known, but much of it is short, lyric poems about the beauties of nature, myth, and tradition.

Beowulf happens in a dark, gloomy, savage, cold, and dangerous world where monsters prowl. Safety is to be found by shutting out everyone and every thing except for one’s sworn brothers and fellow knights.. The horror of the poem comes when Grendel, the monster from the mire, actually invades the hall, Heorot.

The world of the Celtic poems is very different. Many seem to have been written by hermit monks, who lived largely solitary in small huts out in nature. The poems speak of the joy of sunny days, the beauty of birds singing in bushes, the pleasure to be found in watching one’s house cat hunt for a mouse. They tell snippets of legends, fragments of stories. These poems speak of a world in which safety is found not by walling out the world, but by making one’s self a part of it, becoming a piece of the whole, forming bonds of love, friendship, and support with the animals, plants, and people that make up the world.

Which brings me to this campaign. Mr. Romney’s worldview is in many respects akin to the Anglo-Saxon view. He has spent most of his life in a world preserved by exclusion. He has built his safety behind walls of wealth, religion, and society. He sees financial success as something one achieves on one’s own, or with the help of one’s parents. One builds a wall, and then builds one’s success behind it, locked away from the rest of the world. One succeeds or fails on one’s own (or with the help of the folks). Professionally he has operated in a world famed for secrecy–call it “confidentiality,” if you will. One of the ongoing stories of this campaign has been his refusal to disclose details of his professional dealings–or even the customary number of tax returns. (He demanded the returns of his VP pick, but never mind.) When he speaks of international relations he speaks less of alliances than of a “strong military.” He doesn’t offer many details, but then again, I suspect they aren’t really important to him. What is important is the wall. Some members of the GOP are actually pushing for the erection of a literal wall along our southern border. Stripping all this down to fundamentals, what we are left with is that for Mr. Romney, safety lies in Heorot–America huddled around a warm fire behind tall, thick walls, hoping and praying that Grendel never gets in.

President Obama, on the other hand, sees safety less in walls than in alliances. His life has been lived as a global citizen in some respects–he spent his childhood, in part, in Indonesia, and in multi-cultural Hawaii. He was a member of a non-traditional family. When he left school he became a community organizer, helping poor and middle-class people form alliances. When he speaks of international policy he speaks of building global alliances, of acting in concert with other nations for our mutual good. When he speaks of domestic policy he speaks of our commonality, of the growing separation between rich and poor that’s killing us socially and economically, of the need for all of us to have a certain level of safety, if any of us are to be truly safe.

I don’t see this as an election about right-and-left politics. Mr. Romney has, if anything, shown himself to be a man who governs in response to the deepest pockets and loudest voices. He has played the idealogue this campaign, but I suspect he cares less about ideology than he does about the bottom line. He’s a money guy, and he wants to be sure that all the guys in his “in” group are taken care of. This isn’t politics. It’s closer to nepotism. By the same token, President Obama has been more centrist than progressive in his policy. How much of that centrism is due to GOP obstructionism we will probably never know, but the fact remains that when we set aside the talk and look at what has been done the result has been centrist, mildly progressive policy domestically–and quite hawkish action militarily, at least in some respects.

Here’s the thing about medieval English poetry–the stormy, savage world of Beowulf and the warm, sunny, placid world of the Celtic lyric verses were both talking about the same part of the world–the British Isles. The difference in the world each poet sees reflects not what lies around him, but what he sees in himself. That’s this election. Both men claim to be offering us what we want most–safety, but if we can extrapolate from their past lives and their prevailing spoken remarks (I’m purposely excluding campaign stuff, because I really don’t see how we can evaluate Mr. Romney in a meaningful way if we include it–his spoken remarks have been inconsistent, nonsensical, and mutually exclusive in many cases) we can see that the men believe that safety is best achieved in opposite ways.

Mr. Romney believes that we are safest behind strong walls, excluding everyone we have decided is not like us, caring only for those who are inside the walls with us. He sees our national life as an exercise in wall-building–making the walls bigger and stronger, and taller, and if doing that means that we take supplies from those who are not within our walls, well, that’s just the way it is. Likewise, when time, money, and resources must be spent everything goes to building the wall. The idea of investing for the coming winter, of seeing to it that those who serve the “in” group have enough to eat and warm clothes to wear, comes a distant second. What matters is the “in” group, and the wall.

President Obama believes that we are more than our walls–that while a good wall is necessary, true safety can only be achieved by recognizing that we are part of a larger community–by forming alliances, by learning to appreciate the diversity and beauty that lies around us, but understanding that we are safest when our social safety net is wide-flung, strong, and inclusive. He believes we are safest when we have good, strong walls–and can navigate the world both inside and out. After all, Beowulf only manages to deal with Grendel and his mother when he leaves Heorot. Even for Beowulf, walls ultimately failed him. And I fear that Mr. Romney’s walls will fail us, too. Grendel has learned how to find his way inside our walls. And he has some pretty scary bombs out there in the mire.

The last four years have been hard ones. I tried–and failed–to get my house re-financed. I was threatened with foreclosure. My credit card interest rates drove my balances so high that ultimately I was left with no choice but bankruptcy. I’ve been sick–I was recently diagnosed with a life-threatening (but fortunately very treatable) condition. I still don’t have health insurance. There have been times when I couldn’t buy my kid shoes. These years have been hard. And I watched as many of the measures that were supposed to help were watered down and subverted by men more concerned with making sure that all the gold stayed in Heorot.

But here’s the thing. These years have also taught me that I am surrounded by a townful of caring, loving people. They are my safety net, and I am part of theirs. We are not rich. But we understand how to care for each other. And we understand that we are better together. At some point, we have all faced the question of how we will be safe, and we have all recognized that safety lies less in bank balances than it does in relationships. We have all made peace with the idea that we are our brothers’, sisters’, and world’s keepers. And that’s why I’m voting for President Obama again–not because I agree with everything he’s done, but because I believe that we share a vision–we believe that we can best keep each of us safe by keeping all of us safe, inside our walls, and out.

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Observing the Dog Wars

Okay, I think that we’ve officially entered the Silly Season. First we have the sad story of Mitt Romney’s pooch, who was crated, strapped on top of the car, and taken on vacation. There are a lot of ways to spin this. the ASPCA roundly condemns the practice of strapping one’s dog–however crated–to the car roof and zooming off for a fun-filled vacation. Not surprisingly, many agree. Also not surprisingly, the Romneys are holding fast to their “he liked it, and it was better than a kennel” position. I am unconvinced that the car roof was the only alternative to a kennel for the vacationing Romneys–possibly Seamus could have stayed in one of their numerous homes–but to be perfectly honest, in the absence of a weigh-in by Seamus himself I am prepared to give the Romneys a pass on the whole dog on the car roof thing.

I’m willing to concede that Seamus may indeed have “loved it”–Irish Setters are famously beautiful but dumb. Maybe Seamus did love the prospect of an eighteen-wheeler roaring toward him. Maybe he did love the endless, incessant, inescapable buffeting of the wind driving him ever back, back, back against the back wall of the crate. Maybe he did love the way the crate rocked and shook as the car raced toward Ontario. Maybe he did love bugs in his teeth. Maybe the Romneys strapped the crate on sideways. Maybe it was indeed an ill-advised turkey, rather than terror, that caused Seamus’ sudden attack of diarrhea. Who knows? So–in the absence of any sort of word from Seamus, I’m willing to file this under “things that make me go ‘huh?’” and move on.

What is bothering me more these days is the GOP’s answer to the Seamus-on-the-roof story, and that’s their “revelation” from Dreams of My Father, President Obama’s memoir about, in part, his childhood in Indonesia, that in his childhood Barry Obama ate dog meat. The implication is that but for the eagle eye of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh the First Family would be barbecuing Bo in the Rose Garden. Apparently the plan is to use the story about child Obama eating dog meat in Indonesia as some kind of answer to Seamus-on-the-roof.

It would be funny, if it didn’t reveal how very insular, smug, and dim-witted the spinmeisters at the GOP believe us to be. In the first place, equating an action taken by a grown man, married, with children, and presumably in his right mind, with the action of a child, arguably still at the “eat-what’s-set-before-you” stage of life, is ridiculous. The two things simply aren’t equivalent. No matter what one thinks of Seamus’ car trip, there’s simply no way to equate the fact that the adult Mitt chose to strap his dog to the roof of the car with the fact that a young child ate a piece of meat he was given by a caretaker. None.

What’s more troubling, though, is what the “You ate dog” response says about the insularity and bigotry that we are being asked to embrace. Let me say right here that I do not eat dog. I have no plans to try. But I recognize that this is because of a powerful cultural bias, not because dog meat is inherently inedible. Biases are powerful things, and food biases are some of the most powerful of all.

Andrew Zimmern’s show, Bizarre Foods, regularly invites viewers to confront their biases by exploring how people around the world  meet the nutritional demands of their bodies. I watch. And sometimes I wince. But the show carries a profound message–one important enough that I used it as the basis for a writing class I teach. The message is this: Humans all have certain nutritional needs, and how we meet those needs is driven by where we live, what foods are available, and yes, our cultural and religious taboos. Understanding and respecting that fact is the first step toward understanding that humanity is truly all one family–we eat what is around us, and for millions in third-world countries–like Indonesia–that has prompted the acceptance of a much wider variety of protein sources than we, who live in a far wealthier world, are accustomed to. Like privileged children who turn up their noses at bread crusts, in the context of the world population we are picky eaters. We can afford to be. We’re rich.

To build a political “smear” on a simple fact of life–Barry Obama was living in a part of the world where the consumption of dog meat was acceptable, and one of his caregivers gave him some–says more about those who have crafted the smear than it says about President Obama, who no longer lives in Indonesia, who can make his own protein choices now, and who, judging by Bo’s continued happy existence, does not appear to number dog meat among those choices. It says that the crafters of that particular bit of propaganda live smug, safe, sheltered lives, lives in which they can afford to pick and choose what they will eat, rather than eating what they must, the way that much of the world does. It says that they can see no difference between the biases that govern all of our food choices and morality–possibly even religion. It says that they are willing to convict someone for being different, for having a broader, more inclusive cultural experience. At worst, it says that they are willing to condemn those who live in other parts of the world, who use other proteins, fruits, vegetables, and starches to fill out their food pyramid to either ostracism or malnutrition. Mostly, it says that they simply have no concept of or respect for the exigencies under which most of the world lives. It makes me wonder how much they understand about how the less privileged in America live, and the dietary choices being made in smaller, humbler homes just down the street.

That smear reeks of snobbism, self-congratulation, narrow-mindedness, and insularity. It is beneath us. And if you doubt me, reflect for a moment on the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans partake of beef in myriad forms, while half a world away there is a nation that holds cattle sacred–and that is probably as appalled by our addiction to McDonald’s as we are by the idea of eating dog meat.

At its root, this smear comes back to the same tired meme that stained so much of the last election. It is an appeal to the lowest human instincts, to racism and xenophobia. The smear is designed to remind us all that President Obama is different, other, and quite possibly dangerous. It is a return to the canard that “he is not like us.”

So here’s the question: Who is “us?” If the measure of “us-ness” is buying into this bit of ugliness, I hope to all gods that he is not “like us.” And I hope I’m not like “us,” either.

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Inspiration

I just paid a visit to Gryphen at The Immoral Minority, one of my favorite blogs. He’s one of the Alaskan bloggers I stumbled upon back during the 2008 presidential campaign, and though my faithfulness has waned a bit in the years since the election the last couple of weeks I’ve found myself curious to see what’s up by him. He’s an unabashed liberal, and I lean that way, so I often find him entertaining, even if sometimes he does make me wince a bit.

Anyhow, today’s post was a response a response someone made to a post earlier today (Gryphen is clearly more devoted to his blog than I am to this one; as far as I can remember, this is the first time ever I’ve posted twice in one day). It was a little confusing, but basically here’s what I’ve pieced together. Gryphen came across a picture of President Obama with a crowd. In the foreground is a little African American girl. Her face bears tribal paint. She is saluting.

It’s a lovely picture, and Gryphen says so under the heading, “Leaders Should Inspire. Clearly This One Does.” He speaks of pride, and inspiration, and how this picture expresses those feelings for him, and invites readers to comment on their own response to the photo. Go read his post; you really should.

As I noted, Gryphen is an unabashed liberal blogger from Alaska who achieved a certain level of name recognition in the last election. Along with that recognition he also acquired a number of followers who are clearly Not Admirers of President Obama or his good pal Gryphen, but of Sarah Palin. And one of those followers was apparently up and angry at 3am this morning. Gryphen’s post went up at 3. By five minutes after three there was an scorching response informing Gryphen that if he were more open-minded it would remind him of Ms. Palin–I believe the word “adore” was thrown around. Apparently there was a picture attached, because in his follow-up post Gryphen posts a response to the angry blogger, along with the picture he or she provided. Here it is:

To me, both pictures show a politician interacting with a crowd. The Obama crowd seems happy. The girl who is saluting sums up something important for many of us.

To me, the Palin photo also shows a happy, perhaps somewhat raucous, crowd. The little girl seems a bit shy, but overall the subject matter seems more similar than different.

So while I don’t necessarily see the same thing in this photo that the folks at The Immoral Minority seem to see, I am left with Gryphen’s headline: “Leaders Should Inspire…”

And I find myself thinking of the post I wrote on Inauguration Day in 2009, on my now-pretty-much-defunct political blog. I posted it just before I wrote this one, so it’s right here. It’s sort of long, mostly about how I spent the day fighting with an abusive collection agency on behalf of my neighbor lady, but here’s the guts of it:

… there is something incredibly beautiful and moving about a nation devoted to equality, to respect, to dreams. There is something powerful about the sweep and bounty of it, the scope of a vision that spans a continent, and a hodgepodge of peoples who when it comes down to it all want the same things: to realize their dreams, to feed their families, and to live with some degree of dignity and freedom.  There is something about the phrase, “…amber waves of grain…”

That lump in my throat has been an embarrassment to me not because I thought the idea of America was foolish, but because I came of age in an era marred by a series of unjust wars, corrupt governance, and cynical, avaricious, money-grubbing politics. I was embarrassed because the gap between what we could be, and what we were as a nation was so great. We had lost our vision. The man I see smiling down at his wife has given it back.

Gryphen’s headline, and the reader’s angry response, brings something into focus for me. Leaders inspire. Like Candidate Obama, Vice-Presidential Candidate Palin also inspired. The difference lies in what they inspire. President Obama inspired hope, inclusivity, civility, and a dream of a better America. Sarah Palin inspired angry mobs.

Three battered years later, President Obama still inspires me to believe that an America where everyone has a fighting chance to succeed is still possible, where the prosperous among us understand that prosperity is a gift to be both accepted with gratitude and shared, where we can express our differences respectfully, where we are all necessary, all valued–and all responsible for each other. He inspires me to believe that the American Dream is for all of us, for me, for you, and for the strangers within our gates. He inspires me to believe that America’s best self is still worth fighting for.  President Obama inspires me to be my best self–and to share that best self with the people in my home and community.

But the issue is broader than that. After all, President Obama is, well, the President. Sarah Palin has chosen not to run for office. A fairer comparison these days might be between what the two parties seem to be offering at the moment. Who inspires conversation? Who inspires their followers to listen? Who inspires compromise? Who reminds America that we truly do succeed or fail as a nation, and that as Americans we have taken pride in the fact that we are all created equal, and that every child born in America is entitled to tools to carve out his or her own success? And who is dedicated to dividing us, into perpetuating their power by rendering us powerless? At their most fundamental level, they are pursuing a policy of division–Democrats vs. Republicans, union vs. non-union, rich vs. poor, men vs. women, conservatives vs. liberals, Wall Street vs. Main Street, country vs. city, Christian vs. everyone else, those who “belong” vs. immigrants.

Who is willing to compromise? And who is holding the nation hostage, hoping for national failure to improve their chances of seizing power? And who is not even taking the trouble to conceal their basic priority? Does that inspire you? If so, how?

What it comes down to for me is simple. It’s not just a matter of which leader inspires me–what’s more important is what a leader inspires me to do. I will vote for President Obama again not because I have profited financially from his administration–hamstrung as Congress has been by Republican intransigence I have come to believe that simply limiting the harm they have been able to inflict is a worthy achievement. It’s not even because I think he believes like I do on policy. I will vote for him because he inspires me to be a better person.

 

 

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Inauguration 2009

It is here. Bush has signed his last executive order, commuted his last sentence, embedded his last employee. People have swarmed into Washington; my television pans over colorful masses of cheering, shouting, crying people. Noses and cheeks are red, collars turned up, hats pulled down. As a nation, we are not at our sartorial best; we Americans have never really gotten the hang of cold-weather hats, it seems.

And still, we are beautiful. The joy in our faces makes us so. There are a few angry notes; part of the joy today is joy that at long last, Bush’s reign is over. The past two months have been a long exposure of a presidency’s-worth of shady business, good old boys, environmental rape, the politics of fear, the obscenity of a war for profit, and torture. More, they have been an exercise in cynicism—open acknowledgement of criminal acts followe by a shrug, and a “so what?”

Today, a handmade sign in the crowd reads, “BUSH: Get the Hell Out!” and when Cheney and Bush are announced during the ceremonies they are booed. Booed, by people who are here to celebrate their joy. But then, that’s part of their joy—that at long last Bush, Cheney and their vicious policies are behind us.

The swearing in is shorter than I expected; I have never watched one before. I understand that the true transfer of power happens behind closed doors, with the signing of documents, but this moment, the moment in which the President swears to honor the Constitution and lead our nation honorably is the heart of it, and somehow I expect it to last longer. It’s just a few words—words that I miss because a collection agency employee chooses that moment to call my telephone and ask me to go tell one of my neighbors—“Maxine,” she calls her (no last name) that she should call them (the Collection Agency) about a “very important matter.” I am no a fool; like everybody else, I know that’s code for “send us the damned money.”

I ask how she got my name.

“Your neighbor gave it as a reference,” she says.

“But I don’t even know the person you’re talking about,” I protest. (It later turns out that I do, it’s the nice old lady who lives across the street in the old farmhouse where she’s raised a family and from which she’s buried a husband. I do not know it’s her because I always call her “Mrs. –,” as I do all women older than I am unless invited to do otherwise. Good manners die hard.)

Good manners die hard, so I don’t just hang up on the vulture, even though I can see that the swearing-in is over and the speech has begun—a speech I very much want to hear. I take the time to explain that I am watching the Inauguration and do not wish to undertake collection agency duties on anyone’s behalf at this very moment.

“They’ll show clips tomorrow,” she insists.

I say maybe later and hang up as quickly as I can, but it is too late; I have missed the moment that may well be one of the most significant moments in American history—the moment that my teachers told me was impossible. We have elected a young, relatively inexperienced man of African-American descent to lead us. A man who a generation ago would have had to drink at a separate drinking fountain, who would have entered the movie theater through a different door, who would have gone to a separate school, who might well have had a hard time voting—and could well have been beaten for it afterward. A man who might well have been illiterate not because he could not learn, but because he had no opportunity. A man who, had he been alive when the White House was built, might well have been helped build it as part of a slave labor force.

The times, they are a-changing. The irony is that while that national history lies behind us, President Obama seems remarkably untouched by it. When race was raised, his response was that we live in a post-racial America. Our history was our history; this is now. I realize that while those of my generation still bear the scars of our racial divides, my son’s generation does not. Obama is my son’s President because they live in the same world, a world where everyone is polyglot—a little of this, a little of that, and what matters is what you do and how you act, rather than where you started out.

He is my President because I, like millions of others, chose that it should be so. I became involved. I donated to his campaign. I read the coverage. I haunted the fact-checkers. I started this blog. And I did it because then-Senator Obama reminded us all that we can be more than we have been, that we hold the power of change in our hands, and that our leaders rule by our will, and only by our consent. He reminded us all that we are necessary—every one of us—to the rebuilding of America, and that, with our help, America can be rebuilt stronger and better than it was before. But it will take all of us, working together. None of us can cede responsibility to another.

I change my mind about ignoring the collection call. I go to my neighbor’s house, knock on the door and tell her it. “I’ve got the number at my house,” I say. “If you’d like it, I’ll pass it on.”

“I’ve been getting these calls for a while now,” she tells me. “I’ve never heard of the company they say I owe. I don’t even know whom they’re trying to reach. They just keep calling me, and they won’t stop.”

“That’s odd,” I say. “They told me you’d given my name as a reference.”

“I don’t even know your name,” she says indignantly. “And it’s not my bill.” It’s true, she doesn’t know my name. We have been waving-across-the-street-and-shouting-hello and occasionally dragging-her-trashcan-to-the-curb neighbors. I know her last name because it’s on her mailbox. My name is not on my mailbox. How would she know it?

The light dawns. The agency has called me not because my neighbor lady gave them my name, but because they have obtained my address, my name, and my telephone number by some means, quite possibly illegal, and decided to turn me into their local branch collection office. And if they’ve done it to me, quite possibly they’ve done it to everybody else on the street. The thought of this woman being shamed—and it is shaming to get collection agency calls—throughout the neighborhood for a debt she has not even had the pleasure of incurring makes me angry.

I am also concerned. The collection agency has enough information about me to quite likely obtain credit card and bank information. They are clearly not hampered by rights to privacy. It is hardly surprising, I think, in a nation where President Bush and his minions set the bar so very, very low in that regard.

As I walk back across the street I realize that I am deeply angry. This stops now, I decide. At home I call the collection agency back at the number they asked me to pass on to my neighbor lady. I ask to speak to the manager. I tell him that one of his agents has been harassing an old lady for a debt she knows nothing about, and that they have now begun calling her neighbors and enlisting their aid in applying local pressure.

“This is wrong,” I tell him. “This lady is old. She’s in poor health. She did not incur the debt. She has little money. And your agent has not only been dunning her for a debt that’s not hers, she’s shaming her throughout the neighborhood. The only reason I was called is that I live close to her. I suspect several other people on our street got similar calls. This has to stop. Now.”

The clarity of it astounds me. There are some things in life about which there are no gray areas, and this is one of them for me.

“Let me check the file,” he says hastily.

And he does, and sure enough, several other numbers from our area code pop up as “contact numbers.” “I’m taking them out of the file now,” he assures me. “I’m taking yours out, too.”

Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. The company called expecting apathy, or cowed compliance. Instead they ended up sticking their hand into a buzz saw. I have not shouted, but I come from a long line of German people who can be very, very direct and very, very firm and still speak in well-modulated tones. There is a knack to saying, “You will…” and having people understand that they will indeed. I have that knack.

He asks respectfully that I have the neighbor lady call him on his direct line so he can straighten out the mess. He gives me his number and his extension. I offer the information to the neighbor lady. Then I call the agent who called in the first place.

I tell her what I have discovered, that it’s wrong, and that it must stop—no more calls. She tells me that I am “spying” on my neighbor lady. “You just had to know what was going on, so you called back. It’s none of your business.”

“You made it my business when you called me,” I tell her.

But she isn’t listening. She’s still talking about nosy people who can’t mind their own business and snoop into their neighbors’ private affairs.

When I try to speak she says, “So now you’re going to talk over me? Now you’re talking over me? “ And then she goes back to her remarks about my nosiness, and how I’ve inserted myself into a situation where I had no business being.

When I hang up I realize that I have done something that I never do—I have raised my voice.

I am not a shouter, and I never hang up on someone while they are speaking. I have been rude, and for a moment I am embarrassed. But then I look across the street at my neighbor lady’s house. It sags slightly to the right, and the paint is flaking off. I think of her inside, afraid to answer her telephone because she can’t know when it will be the impossible woman from the collection agency insisting that she pay money she does not have for a debt she did not incur, and I realize that there are some things worth shouting about, and that sometimes those of us can shout have to raise our voices for those of us who can’t.

The manager has been apologetic, but I have serious doubts about his efforts to “resolve” the situation. He may have meant them; he may have been saying what he felt would best suit his needs; he has, after all, simply made the same request that his obnoxious, pushy agent made: that my neighbor lady call him “about a very important matter.” While he has said that the “contact” numbers were obviously bad (I can almost hear him thinking that mine, in particular, had been very, very bad) the fact remains that his agency seems to routinely use numbers that result from invasions of privacy.  I call the district attorney. They refer me to the police department. Before I call the cops I figure I’d better talk to the neighbor lady, whose business this was before the collection agency called me.

I cross the street again that afternoon. “Come in,” says my neighbor lady. I go in, and sit at her kitchen table, and I tell her about the manager, and how he’s asked her to call him directly so he can resolve the matter. I also tell her that I have called the district attorney, who recommends the police, that identity theft and fraud may be involved. She agrees, and seems happy for the help. Talk turns to other things: my son, her children, her health, my work, her lovely, dilapidated old house. The collection agency has turned us into sitting-at-the-kitchen-table-and-nattering neighbors. I leave her my number when she mentions that she sometimes has trouble catching her breath.

Back home, a news clip of the Inauguration is running.  I sit down to watch. A choir from San Francisco is singing “America, the Beautiful.” The young faces and red hats are vivid in the icy air. A flock of white birds wheels around the Capitol Dome. President Obama slips his arm around his wife, smiles, and leans over to murmur in her ear. She cocks her head, smiles at her lap. The young voices of the choir soar with the white birds.

The pure, sweet voices pierce me, and suddenly I find myself crying.  This is nothing new. I always get a lump in my throat when I hear the “Star-Spangled Banner,” “America the Beautiful,” and “This Land is Your Land”—songs that talk about the dream of America, the America we learned about in first grade.

I’ve always been that way—there is something incredibly beautiful and moving about a nation devoted to equality, to respect, to dreams. There is something powerful about the sweep and bounty of it, the scope of a vision that spans a continent, and a hodgepodge of peoples who when it comes down to it all want the same things: to realize their dreams, to feed their families, and to live with some degree of dignity and freedom.  There is something about the phrase, “…amber waves of grain…”

That lump in my throat has been an embarrassment to me not because I thought the idea of America was foolish, but because I came of age in an era marred by a series of unjust wars, corrupt governance, and cynical, avaricious, money-grubbing politics. I was embarrassed because the gap between what we could be, and what we were as a nation was so great. We had lost our vision. The man I see smiling down at his wife has given it back.

I see her smile back, and I think of words she spoke at the beginning of the campaign—words that were used to smear her, to paint her as an “angry black woman,” and to discredit her husband. When he was nominated she said, “Today for the first time I am proud to be an American.”

I know exactly how she felt. Today, for the first time I am not only proud to be an American—I have always been that—but I am proud to be proud. I can sing our songs and know that they are not a lost past or an impossible dream. They can be real. They can be us. We can choose our better history, be our better selves. And today, we have made a good start.

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