Speech by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu on monuments to Confederate leaders

In the midst of a new community in the Big Red Barn with Obama

Cornell University's Big Red Barn

In January 2009, I had just started my PhD program at Cornell University. In December 2008, I completed my MPA degree at the University of Dayton and made a winter move to Ithaca, New York. As someone starting an academic program mid-year, I was out of sync with most people. I didn't know others in my program well at that point. Like most of us have experienced some point in our lives, I had a sense of being in the midst of the unknown.

The inauguration of President Obama was a big event. The university had a watch party in the Big Red Barn (BRB), an old carriage house for the university president turned into a graduate student center. It's a great place for various events like the ever-popular T.G.I.F. (Tell Grads It's Friday) with $1 beer and snacks. So, just a few weeks after moving to a new place I was standing in a very crowded BRB watching President Obama be sworn into office for his first term. Many people were emotional. The gravity of the setting and situation spoke to what I recall being a very diverse crowd. What typically was a loud and lively space was celebratory yet solemn that day. I think people realized how significant the moment was for our history and for our future.

I was excited for my own new adventure at Cornell and beyond in the academy, but I was also excited and inspired by the possibility and promise of a democratic life that was/is engaging, meaningful, and inclusive of people from all walks of life and backgrounds. I saw a bit of that diverse America standing in that wonderful gathering place known as the BRB. We would walk out later in our varied directions via snow-worn paths to return to labs, offices, and classrooms. We had a charge and I feel that many people saw themselves as part of something larger that day.

President Obama's inaugural speech acknowledged the many crises we faced at that moment--terror networks, economic catastrophe, rising costs of health care--but he asked us to grow up a bit and choose a better path. In his words:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation. But in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

And what might be more a historical footnote from that day in 2009 is the poem offered by Elizabeth Alexander, entitled Praise Song for the Day. It remains, to me, the most beautiful poem I know. I include it here as people amass in Washington, DC for the inauguration as well as the march to follow the next day. Alexander spoke of possibility and love. We need that more than ever.

Wendell Berry and Necessary Wisdom

Photo by Pam Spaulding

In a powerful and passionate invitation, Wendell Berry continues to call us back into a relationship with one another and with our world that is more authentic. With too many lines fitting for critical reflection and sustained attention, Berry's 2012 National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Lecture serves as a reminder of the dominance of a worldview that erodes another way of living and being. In one particular passage, Berry wrestles with the question about making sense of scale when issues are so large and abstract that they are simply numbers and not a felt and understood reality. He writes:

It is a horrible fact that we can read in the daily paper, without interrupting our breakfast, numerical reckonings of death and destruction that ought to break our hearts or scare us out of our wits. This brings us to an entirely practical question: Can we--and, if we can, how can we--make actual in our minds the sometimes urgent things we say we know? This obviously cannot be accomplished by a technological breakthrough, nor can it be accomplished by a big thought. Perhaps it cannot be accomplished at all.

Berry's hope (and mine) is that we might reclaim a way of life that connects us intimately with one another. I long for the world Berry tells about from his account of his family's history in the same place. The local economy. The connected lives.

We have a share in a local farm. We walk (sometimes). But I also want Amazon.com to send me things I've ordered in two days time. I want to have both realities: the manifestation of community that is idealized in my mind and which may not exist and the many conveniences I enjoy today. But Berry challenges me to think more deeply about my decisions. The "cost" of our market mentality goes beyond comprehension, especially when we (finally) acknowledge the irreparable damage we've made to the earth.

Without too much of my own reflections, I would suggest and recommend you take the time to read Berry's words. They are rich and powerful. They capture an essential element of our story as Americans and as human beings. It's important to be reminded of how we've lived and how we might change. It's important to acknowledge the loss of affection in relation to profit or objective answers.

For the text of Berry's lecture, go here. For the video, follow this link.

We've been here before

We're always dealing with new issues and new ideas. Aren't we?

Maybe it's because I'm reading many articles, books, pamphlets, and speeches from 70 years ago for my research. Maybe it's because I'm coming across stories about anti-Catholic sentiment in New York in the 18th century. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that very little--if anything--we think and do (aside from the discovery of graphene and those kinds of things) is new and original. I know this may come as a surprise and a blow to your ego, but we're not quite as creative as we might think we are. I guess I've always appreciated reading and learning about history because there is so much that has happened years, decades, and centuries ago that we wrestle with today as if they are totally new issues. I'm not diminishing the importance of contextualization or time and space. What I do want to say is that we've got a great deal to learn from the stories of others, especially those who have come before us.

Historical events and happenings aren't quite as static as we might think. The stories (or more often story) we learn about is limited. It's partial. There is always more. There are many more actors. The United States in the 1770s didn't consist of only a handful of pretty smart guys. That holds true for any other time as well. It's just that we don't learn about all of those folks at the same time. History is done, something simply to be documented. It's alive. This is another reason history is so fascinating to me: it's continually unfolding. Some of the work I'm doing these days is digging deeper into a part of American history that has been uniformly categorized. People, in that time, acted this way. However, I'm finding out something so different that it's almost difficulty to situate it then, in that period. But that's where it belongs. It's part of the larger narrative. But getting to that larger narrative is so vitally important.

Just as we need to recognize the fears that have shaped American society for so long, we must put that knowledge--those stories--into conversation with what's going on in our world today. It's this ongoing, unfolding conversation and engagement with different times and people that we acknowledge our little spot in this amazing thing called human history.

King’s ‘Dream’ was a radical economic equality message

King’s ‘Dream’ was a radical economic equality message

It's a little after the fact, but I came across this blog post by Roland Martin and was reminded of how frustrated I get when we turn MLK into something he wasn't. In the secular sainthood we've given him, we've done a tremendous job of disarming the most challenging aspects of what he championed. It is easy to make him a leader of African-Americans seeking justice from white America, but it's sure uncomfortable to think of his challenging of the U.S. economic system and militarism.