Life, food, events, and community in Albuquerque, NM

Barack on TV...Jack in the Basement

NOB HILL--Something happened yesterday afternoon. I thought I owed it to myself to watch Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama, and Obama’s speech in response. After all, every news commentator on TV was talking about the event. Well, it brought tears to my eyes.

It sent me down to the basement to rummage through the boxed remnants of my past. And I found what I was looking for.

I am sure most of you don’t remember John F. Kennedy. He died 45 years ago. No, I never met him. No, I never voted for him; I was a little too young. The voting age was 21 back then. But he was my president. He was everybody’s president.

That may be stretching it a little, but not much. For instance I went to North Park College in Chicago, a Swedish oasis of Evangelical Christianity. Yet the one of JFK’s signature programs, the Peace Corps, was a right of passage for many of the students.

What a concept! Let’s improve our standing in a hostile world by sending ordinary Americans overseas on a helping mission of peace! There were no high salaries, just foreign language school, subsistence wages, and hard work. And an education for both the Americans and the people of the world. It was an approach based not on fear, but understanding and an earnest helping hand. In a word, Friendship.

Leadership means more than leading a country into war. It means leading us into the future...hopefully an abundant and peaceful future. JFK knew that. In the midst of the cold war, in a time when the presidential debates concerned themselves with whether we should defend the islands of Quemoi and Matsu in the event of a Chinese attack, in the era of backyard bomb shelters and A-bomb drills in every public school, in those times when I contemplated the end of the world every Saturday afternoon during the weekly air raid siren test...in those perilous times John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps.

More inspiration? How about sending an American to the moon “by the end of this decade.” How about standing in front of the Berlin wall, shouting to both East and West Germany, “Ich bin ein Berliner!” How about, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Maybe somebody should be saying some of that today.

The United States has not been the same since Jack Kennedy’s death. It was a turning point in history that imprinted itself on every American alive in 1963. I was eating lunch in my college dining hall when I heard he had been shot.

Next came the assassination of Martin Luther King. Then Bobby Kennedy. My God. When would it end?

Yesterday I heard Obama speak. I heard him address our hopes for a better world. Everyone there knew exactly what he meant. Here in Albuquerque, I had tears in my eyes.

I went down into the basement and found what I was looking for. After John Kennedy’s death, my mother had given me a little rug with JFK’s picture on it. Hokey, I know. But in my 31 years of teaching here in Albuquerque I always put that rug up on the wall of my classroom. Now, 5 years after I retired, I unpacked it again.

I hung it up in the big front window of my house, facing the street. I don’t know why. Well, maybe I do.

As Barack Obama said yesterday, “The dream has never died...The Dream Has Never Died.”

46 Comments

Comment by Jim Scarantino on January 29, 2008 at 7:38am: Bravo, Johnny.

Comment by hbl on January 29, 2008 at 7:40am: Thank you Johnny for eloquently expressing why I support Barack Obama for president. My parents were not even married when Kennedy was President; I was not old enough to remember the MLK or Kennedy assassinations of 68. But I can recognize that my nation has lost its way. The need for change and hope is not empty rhetoric. It is real, needed and necessary. We need a leader who is a dreamer and a creator! A leader who can envision this generation’s “moon landing” and make it happen. I feel blessed to live in a country where discourse among citizens is encouraged and I can vote without fear.

Comment by bg on January 29, 2008 at 7:55am: If by Tuesday I think my vote for Obama will make a difference to stop the (MSM Juggernaut) Clinton corporate business-as-usual , I will vote for him. Otherwise, I'm sticking with Edwards.

Comment by Uncle Jess on January 29, 2008 at 8:38am: Great post Johnny! Its no wonder that even conservatives supported the Peace Corps - it has to be the most cost effective program the gummint ever had. In a past life I worked for the State Dept, we figured that you could support a Peace Corps volunteer for a year for about what it took to air condition a regular employee.

I remember the day JFK was shot. I was running laps in gym class. The coach had a transistor radio and would give us updates as we passed. On one lap the update was 'He's dead. Keep running.'

Comment by bleve on January 29, 2008 at 9:22am: "I look forward to a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose."

"Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind."

Both those quotes are from JFK. Not sure I've heard anything similar from Obama. JFK was willing to call out the war profiteers in Vietnam and eventually payed for it with his life. My question is how deep has Obama looked into the ethical quagmire of this war/occupation, and its cost on the working class of this country?

We have an illegal occupation as well as flat out theft of American tax-payer money yet none of the media picked, top-tier candidates confront this with a passion or a grasp that we as a people should demand.

Where does Obama (or any of the candidates for that matter) stand on unconstitutional signing statements, illegal privacy breaches on the American public, secret energy policy meetings, media corporations holding our 'democratic debates', private corporations counting election votes with no oversight, etc. etc. etc.

We don't know cause they are not asked about it by the mainstream media and they are not morally moved to speak about it, which actually speaks volumes about their character and what we can expect if either obama or clinton gets elected.

"Change", "Hope", "New Direction" are all hollow buzzwords... where is the substance?

Comment by bleve on January 29, 2008 at 10:07am: "If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."
-Ron Paul

Comment by bleve on January 29, 2008 at 10:49am: Unbelievable... true colors indeed. Thank you for confirming my suspicions efp. Wow.

Comment by Kenny on January 29, 2008 at 10:58am: I think all of us who were around on that day remember his death. All I remember of the day was walking home from school crying.

I truly hope Obama can turn this country around and get us back on track.

Comment by Doc Mara on January 29, 2008 at 11:32am: Ron Paul is totally insane and a hypocrite. I notice he's strangely silent while Bush tries to tap our phones. Nice post JM. Barack has my vote too.

Comment by bleve on January 29, 2008 at 11:36am: I'm good at lots of things efp... your point eludes me however. I believe the war machine will continue with obama or clinton.

I did find out that the quote in question was not stated by the politician with a racist record who you will be voting for.

Barack on TV...Jack in the Basement

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