Sunday the 18th

This morning I got up took a cold walk through Rockville to the 9:15 "contemporary" service at the Rockville United Methodist Church. The folks I met there were nice, and the two female pastors put together a good service. I don't know what their 11:00 service is like, but this morning one wasn't well attended. It almost reminded me of the pictures I saw last summer in Boston of churches closing in that area. The pictures showed sanctuaries—at least one of them Methodist—that would have seated 300 or more but held only about 7 older people. Rockville UMC had a mostly aged white congregation, but that wasn't the full picture. A fellow my age sat in front of me. On the same pew with me was a woman probably a little younger than I, a few rows ahead was an African-American couple and a near them sat a young Asian-American woman with her rambunctious son. The "contemporary" music was a guy with a guitar and one of those harmonica holders around his neck. During the offering he did a respectable '60s sounding job of the spiritual "Hush" ("Hush, hush, somebody's callin' my name").

After church I changed clothes and headed out for the Lincoln Memorial concert at the National Mall. The Metro pass that the Washington Center had given me expired the day before, so at the Rockville station I got in line to purchase enough day passes to get me through the rest of my stay. I heard a voice behind me say, "You're not a local, are you?" I turned around and saw my friend Linda. She wanted to go the concert, but her family wasn't into it. Just so happened that we arrived at the station at the same time. Hanging out with an old friend made the afternoon go better.

We rode the Metro to DuPont Circle and got off there to walk to the Mall. I hadn't had lunch yet, so we stopped in a place called Baja Fresh, a Mexican-style fast food joint. Afterwards, we made our way toward the concert, but obviously we didn't push to get there early. We stood in line here and there before we decided to work our way to the back, where we got in easily. But we missed seeing the Denzel Washington / Bruce Springsteen opening. Yes, I missed Springsteen. But we stopped on the sidewalk and shared my headphones to listen.

While Tom Hanks was talking about Abraham Lincoln, Linda and I took up a place between the Washington and World War II Memorials. Just above the WWII were three jumbotrons, each with its own set of speakers. I suppose we were nearly a mile away from the scene of the action, so those on the stage were just dark little dots against the white stone of the Lincoln. Lots of folks were at the concert, both in the audience and on the stage, so I won't go into all that. My favorite moment? Well, "seeing" Stevie Wonder and John Mellancamp was cool. Even seeing Garth Brooks was cool. And Beyoncé, always beautiful, was surprisingly good. Somebody was talking—I don't remember who—when the first high chord from the Edge's guitar rang out to begin U2's "Pride (In the Name of Love)." That was my favorite moment.

Saturday the 17th

The Seminar—The last "organized" event of the week was a Saturday morning trip to the Newseum, which is a new museum focused on the media. An amazing place. I met my group there—most of them, at least—and spent a couple of hours walking around. I saw maybe 10% of what the Newseum has to offer, if that much.

I spent a long time in the area where they have on display the Pulitzer Prize-winning photos from all the years that the Pulitzer has been given for photography. The shots were intense, often horrifying, and for the entire time I was on the verge of tears. I'll not put any of the recognizable but brutal shots here. This one won the year of my birth—1958.

I then went to the 4-D film: "I-Witness: A 4-D Time Travel Adventure." You're all aware of the capabilities of 3-D film. Well, the fourth dimension involved here is the physical. The chairs vibrate and move with the action, which was kind of cool. My favorite part of the 4-D experience, however, was more subtle. In one scene shown at the beginning of the video below, two men from colonial Boston are on a dock at night. When this is playing in the Newseum's theater, a slight breeze is blowing in the face of the audience, making it easier for the viewer to place himself in the scene.

I made one more stop at the "G-men and Journalists" exhibit. Again, very cool.

http://www.newseum.org/news/newseum_videos/video.aspx?item=nv_IWIT080721&style=f

http://www.newseum.org/exhibits_th/fbi/video.aspx?item=fbi_exhibit&style=f

Personal time—I let the students wander off in whatever direction they chose, and I slipped past the "Arrest Bush" demonstration outside the Newseum and went to meet Linda (and Tino) and Lynne for a late lunch in Baltimore. Linda and Lynne are friends from the student tour I took through Europe in the summer of 1979.

Linda and her husband Tino picked me up at the Rockville station on the Red Line. We then drove to Lynne's place and got her. Lunch was at the Grill Art Café in the Hampden village. The food was good. I had a rather silly-looking version of huevos rancheros, but it tasted good. The company was great, and we told stories and laughed until they ran us out of the place. I'm glad that I've been able to share life with these friends for 30 years now. And I'm glad that Tino has become part of our group.

The evening was largely taken up with grading student journals and essays. I was excited about the concert at the Lincoln Memorial the next day and, of course, the Inauguration coming up on Tuesday. But by this time I'd been away from my family for a full week, and I ached to be home.

Friday the 16th

The Seminar—Our first speaker was Sam Donaldson, who was immediately different from his TV-News persona. He's animated, growling, dramatic (vocal), expressive (physical), funny. He did a respectable impression of Ronald Reagan at one point. My roommates said later they thought he was high on something.

Donaldson's experience with the White House and its presidents drove his talk. White House reporters exist, he said, to challenge the president on behalf of the American public. He liked George W. Bush, personally, but his "I'm-not-talking-to-you" foreign policy was stupid. We have to integrate with the world, he said, knitting his fingers together in front of him, and be a different kind of world leader, different from the kind promoted by the troglodytes in their caves who think the world must do what we say because we say so. In this, his talk meshed well with that we'd heard the day before from Ambassador Hussain Haqqani.

Donaldson, like Koppel, never allows "um" and "uh" and other vocal tics into his speech. Must be the training. He spoke truths, I think, when he said the times sometimes confound the smartest people and life is too short to waste time with dull people.

In the afternoon, my small group met with two journalists and an editor in the offices of the Congressional Quarterly.

Personal time—I retreated to the apartment that evening and did little but relax after the long week.

Thursday the 15th

[I'm behind on this and will try to catch it up over the next week or so.]

Today was the actual birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. He would have been 80 years old.

The Seminar—By this time, we were all getting tired. The mornings were filled with such a large amount of information, and the afternoons were spent on the run trying to fit in lunch, a small-group discussion and a site visit. What might have been draining us as well was the cold. Temperatures stayed low, below freezing, and the wind added a good chill.

Our first speaker of the morning was Dr. Ross Baker from Rutgers University. He was easily, I think, the most academic of our speakers this week (except, perhaps, for Marc Pachter on Monday). Dr. Baker discussed "The First 100 Days – Challenges and Predictions." I learned what a "Blue Dog" is—a conservative Democrat in Congress. He discussed the way Congress works and why overly restrictive term limits wouldn't be good. He also referred to a "Post-Polarization Era," which is the idea of our representatives finding common ground instead of holding on to partisan strife that leads to polarization. Of course, he didn't know that we'd already been visited by the guys who wrote the Common Ground book and that this was old news to us.

When asked why a visit to the Senate chamber often reveals one speaker holding forth before a room of empty chairs, Dr. Baker explained that Senators spend most of their time in committee instead of full gatherings.

Dr. Baker's most interesting question for exploration was this: How does political polarization develop? Is it a polarized American electorate sending polarizing officials to Washington via our elections? Are our elected officials polarized by Washington, DC, and the business of governing is carried on here? Are they polarized by 3^rd parties—their "party" (apart from the people), lobbyists or special interest groups? It's a good question.

We then had more on presidential power from Dr. Michael Genovese, who spoke in detail about different kinds of presidents and presidencies—weak and strong, imperiled or imperial, heroic or plebiscitary (common, I think).

In the midst of these, I read this little sidebar in one of the morning train papers (short, headline news ideal for reading during the train commute): "A Pennsylvania couple are in jail after police say they failed to call the band when a glitch put an extra $175,000 in their account. Authorities say the couple instead withdrew the money, quit their jobs and moved to Florida."

Genovese was followed by the man who became my favorite speaker of the week: His Excellency Hussain Haqqani, Ambassador of The Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The man was brilliant. Briefly, he talked about what he called the Greater Middle East, which stretches from Morocco to the Islamic states bordering Russia. He said that Pakistan is a place in the midst of transformation: from dictatorship to democracy, at the crossroads between conflict and opportunity, between militancy and entrepreneurship. These contribute to its perceived instability. To curb the rise of terrorism in the world, especially among the young and disenfranchised, we must realize that people with no future are more likely to become terrorists. To be provided with hope of a future is a fine thing, but "hope is not a method." As for America, he said, "the world is not the subject of American foreign policy"—we might think of "subject" here as "one that is placed under authority or control" (as the subject of the Queen). The phrase might also mean that the world exists in itself, not just as it relates to the United States of America. One other powerful quote from Ambassador Haqqani regarding America's often clumsy foreign policies: "The world is not a problem to be solved but a partner to be engaged."

Our afternoon site visit was a scheduled tour of the Capitol. They've spent millions and millions of dollars on a new Visitor's Center, and it looks great. They've created a short historical film, which is now the best part of the tour. As for the tour itself, it's mostly as lame as it was the last time I took it—time in the Rotunda, time in Statuary Hall and a visit down to the old Senate/Supreme Court chamber. That's it. Really.

Thursday evening we attended a performance by the elderly political satirist Mark Russell. His piano playing is still fairly good. The song parodies have lost much of their impact, but the stand-up portion of his act is still sharp. I was concerned that his "old" delivery might not grab the students attending the seminar, but I was surprised.

Personal Time—After the Russell show, it was a cold night in the city. I ate at a mock '50s burger joint called Johnny Rocket's, in the area near George Washington University and then made my way home via the Metro.

Wednesday the 14th

So, every morning I'm up between 6:00 and 6: 30. I shower and dress and get to the train—the Red Line from Rockville. Every day I wear a tie, and Sunday was the first time I've worn one since my older son got married a few years ago. I had to go on YouTube to relearn how to tie one. Oddly enough, I kind of like wearing the ties, and I might end up wearing them more often. We'll see.

The Seminar—We began again with C-SPAN's Washington Journal Live. This morning's guest was Dana Perino, White House Press Secretary. It was a good interview, but she seemed to be too much the Press Secretary and too little herself—at least I hope she has more to her than the naïve and narrow opinions she spouted and touted. A caller rambled on about the Iraq war's being for oil. Eventually Steve Scully cut off the caller and turned to Perino. Initially she simply said the war was not for oil, but she then went on to say it was about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. She also made the claim, somewhere along the way, that President Bush's record was boosted by his being the first to identify the Darfur situation as "genocide."

Let me pause a minute. We heard questions from students and callers, but I want to consider the callers briefly. We have lots and lots of smart and passionate people in the United States. You can hear it in their voices and in their ideas. They're familiar with the issues, and they have definite opinions. But the minds of these callers tend to be unfocused and uncontrolled. They try to get to their questions and have a hell of a time doing so. They ramble. They ramble on and on. One thing a formal education does, if I may, is to organize and discipline a mind. It's certainly not the only means to do this, but when undertaken seriously, it's a clear and effective means.

C-SPAN quickly tore down its setup after WJL and exited, making way for our next speaker—Ted Koppel. This man amazed me in both his formal comments and in his responses to student questions. During formal comments, he told a few stories, but his basic mode was to talk about the way things are in the world. He took Dana Perino to task, for example, saying that for her to sit there and say that the Iraq war has nothing to do with oil was either some kind of "silliness" or just part of her Press Secretary duties extending beyond the White House Press Room. Of course oil was involved, he said. Saddam Hussein had been known as a brutal dictator since 1988 at least. And suddenly in 2003 he's a brutal dictator that must be immediately removed? As for Bush and his "genocide," Koppel said that being first to use that word in relation to Darfur is fine, but it was rhetoric without action. What good is that?

Koppel is brilliant, and his training as a broadcast journalist is apparent. Throughout his comments, he never used "um" or "uh" or any other such vocal space holders.

Next was Clarence Page, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He was entertaining in talking about the transition in our culture that has brought us President Obama. With a lot of good sense and good humor, he traced the evolution of identifying African-Americans from "colored people" to "people of color." Funny and brilliant! In his lifetime, he has been "colored," "negro," "black," "African-American" (he was thrilled to get the hyphen) and a person "of color."

Our small group site visit this day was to the organization DCVote (http://www.dcvote.org/). The issue they're working on is that the several hundred thousand people in the District of Columbia don't have voting representation in Congress—no representative, no senator. They pay high income taxes and their children serve in the military, but they have no representation for the setting of tax laws or the managing of war. Folks in the Virginia portion of DC have gone back to Virginia for representation. Opponents of DCVote say the Maryland folks should return to Maryland—either physically (as in moving) or by returning the area Maryland gave to form DC to that state. But DCVote folks want to remain as the historic District of Columbia, but they don't want to go unrepresented. At issue? One main factor—political, of course—is that DC is heavily Democratic (Obama received 92.7% of the vote), so any representation granted them will almost certainly strengthen Democratic numbers in Congress. You can see how Republicans would have a problem with this. One possible fix on the table is to create two new positions in the House of Representatives. One would be Democrat, representing DC, and the other would be Republican, representing a growing Republican population in Utah.

Personal time—I got hold of my friend Chuck, and we went to supper at an Afghan restaurant. I had a chicken kabob, something like a cross between Indian and Asian food. This "red" chicken was served on a large piece of tasty flatbread. On the side was a pumpkin dish and a cucumber sauce. I also had "salata"—diced onions, cucumbers, tomatoes and cilantro, dressed with vinegar and olive oil. All this with two Coronas (apparently no Afghan beer is imported). The evening was made pleasant meal and time spent with Chuck.

Tuesday the 13th

The Seminar—This morning we were on C-SPAN. The network set up its studio in our auditorium on the campus of the University of the District of Columbia., and at nine o'clock they broadcast their regular program Washington Journal Live. The host was Steve Scully, and the guests were Juan Williams and Bret Baier. Scully interviewed the two and moderated questions from both telephone callers from around the nation and seminar students. Great stuff!

Next, C-SPAN's Brian Lamb took over and recorded a program that's part of a new interview series. This show featured Tom Wheeler and wife Carol Wheeler, who are part of Obama's transition team at some level or another. They're lobbyists in their real lives. Way back before the primary season that led us to where we are now, Iowa held its caucus, and the Wheelers set aside their work and went to Ames, Iowa, for six weeks to campaign for Obama—making telephone calls, knocking on doors and so on. In small group—and in faculty conversations in my apartment—this event didn't fare well. Why, the question was asked by somebody, should we care about these rich folks who could afford to leave their lives for six weeks and run off to Ames, Iowa, Carol Wheeler's hometown?

The following hour featured C-SPAN's Lamb talking to the students. While it had its good moments, it was mostly dull and sometimes even awkward.

In the afternoon my small group visited the Embassy of Bulgaria, where we met and talked with Ambassador H.E. Latchezar Petkov. This was a neat thing. I didn't have my camera with me, but hopefully the students will send me pictures.

We left the embassy and gathered in the café inside the Phillips art gallery, where we had our best conversation yet.

This evening we walked past the place where President-Elect Obama is currently living with his family. On a building opposite, a large banner read, "Welcome Malia and Sasha!" Very sweet. On the other side of Obama's temporary residence we gathered at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for a reception. Food tables included Asian, Italian, Mexican and desserts and fruit. They offered a free kiddie bar. Boring (when I could have been hanging with my 4 O'clock Club at the Acoustic Coffeehouse)! Our Guest of Honor was Bob Schieffer, CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent and Moderator of Face the Nation. The reception was, unfortunately, a reception and the students rude and chatty. But Schieffer was great.

Personal time—Not much today. Most of my downtime was spent on the Metro riding one way or another and to one place or another.

Monday the 12th

Having begun this adventure on Saturday, my internal weekly calendar is thrown off balance. Monday didn't feel like Monday when it was here. It certainly doesn't feel so now on Wednesday.

The Seminar—We heard from Michael Genovese, the author of this week's text and the seminar's Scholar-in-Residence. The week's text is, unfortunately, a weak text. While it has some merit, I haven't completely trusted it since page 8, where Genovese attributed Plato's famous quote "The unexamined life is not worth living" to Aristotle. This is an understandable mistake for a high school student or maybe even a college freshman to make on a paper, but it's inexcusable in a published book by a Ph.D. who is the Loyola Chair of Leadership and Director of the Institute for Leadership Studies.

Genovese was followed by Special Agent David J. O'Connor, a member of the United States Secret Service. He was entertaining, for sure. But we got the sense that he couldn't talk a lot about what he does—an if-I-told-you-I'd-have-to-kill-you mentality. It was okay. Next was "The History of the Transition of Power" by Marc Pachter, Director Emeritus of Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of American History. He showed and analyzed presidential portraits through the years, discussing how these created images, public images of power, communicate messages to the people. I really liked this portion.

I think the most thought-provoking presentation this Monday morning was "Common Ground" with USA Today columnists Cal Thomas and Bob Bechel. Thomas is a conservative and Bechel a liberal. They advocated what is good for the country over what is good for—or thought good by—the political parties. They base their dialogs on personal levels of love and friendship and mutual respect rather than on ideology and identifying right or wrong—moving out of gridlock and forward on common ground.

We didn't have a small group site visit that afternoon. So we had our small group discussion meeting and went our separate ways for the evening.

Personal Time—I tentatively scheduled to meet my friend Chuck for supper. (He lives in Alexandria.) I couldn't reach him by telephone at six o'clock in the evening, so I hopped the Metro to head south toward his place. Wehn the train emerged from the underground and I was only two or three stops from my destination, I received a voicemail from Chuck telling me that he'd gotten hung up at work. So I got off the train at King Street and walked several blocks into Old Town Alexandria, looking for a place to eat. Eventually I settled on the first place I'd seen, an Italian restaurant called the Pines of Florence.

Besides the wait staff, only three other people were in the restaurant when I went in—two women, one in her 60s and one my age, sat and talked; a young African-American man sat a few tables away and talked on his cell phone. I ate my chicken marsala and drank my Peroni. The women talked mostly quietly, but I did hear the word "Asheville." The young man talked rather loudly and excitedly, and I quickly realized that he was a student participant in the inauguration seminar. When he finished his telephone call, the two women engaged him in a cross-room conversation and eventually invited him to join them, which he did.

I sat with my back to them and listened as they talked about race and politics. Just before I was going to get up and leave, I heard the older woman say something like this: "He must be a liberal because he has an earring and a ponytail." To make a long story short, I joined them for a few minutes, and we had a delightful time. When the Italians changed the lighting to indicate that they were ready to go home, we all said goodbye and the young man, John, and I walked together back to King Street Station. We continued to talk about race and politics and his work as a graduate student in sociology at a school in Ohio. All in all an unexpectedly pleasant evening.

One more image from my ride home on the Red Line, a simple image that seems characteristic of our major cities. At one stop three young folks got on the train and shifted around as seats came open until they were all sitting together talking and smiling—one Asian-American woman, one African-American woman, one European-American man. Although I was listening to music on my mp3 player, I found it comforting and hopeful to sit near these three and watch them be together.

The Inaugural Seminar

In 1793, George Washington gave the shortest Inauguration speech ever: 135 words.

In 1801, Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated at an indoor ceremony and then walked to the boarding house where he was staying and stood in line for supper.

In 1841, William Henry Harrison gave the longest Inauguration speech ever: 8,444 words. He stood in the rain and wet of an early March day without hat or overcoat. A month later he died of pneumonia.

Don's Johns (http://www.donsjohns.com/) has the sanitation contract for the upcoming Obama Inauguration. In the area between the Capitol building and the Lincoln Memorial, the first suggestion was that they have 1 potty for every 1,000 people. Then they thought about 1 for every 5,000 people. With the high estimate being up to 4.3 million people, how many potties might that be? (I'm not interested in doing the math right now.)


We took a bus tour of DC sites in the afternoon--the Iwo Jima Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial (with the Vietnam Memorial and Korean Memorial), the World War II Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial and the FDR Memorial. I got off the bus at the Lincoln, the Jefferson and the FDR, the last two of which I hadn't seen.


All are beautiful and moving. The FDR is amazing. Check out these quotes that are inscribed in the stone throughout this impressive structure: http://www.nps.gov/fdrm/memorial/inscript.htm


Read these words. I can't help but wonder if any of our presidents in the last 40 years have had these kinds of thoughts.

Presidential Inauguration Seminar

I'm not sure if I want to call this "Day One" or "Prologue." I woke up on Johnson City this morning, packed quickly, picked up a couple of ETSU students participating in the seminar and drove to Washington, DC. Well, to Rockville, Maryland, actually--that's where I'm staying, at least.

The Presidential Inauguration Seminar--This is offered through a group called The Washington Center (www.twc.edu). The schedule goes roughly as follows--from 8:30 to around noon, all faculty leaders--some 60 of us--and all seminar students--some 700 of them--attend large lecture-hall presentations and Q&A sessions near the seats of power in DC. After that, we break for lunch, meet with our small groups--a number of students and a faculty leader--and visit various predetermined sites around the city and the system. We have some special events and some rather famous presenters.

The Students--I have 10 students in my small group. Four of them are from ETSU (although one of these is a foreign exchange student from Sweden). Three more are from other schools in Tennessee--two from Martin Methodist College in Pulaski, one from Belmont University in Nashville. Then I have two students from Micronesia (look it up--I did) and one from Guam.

Faculty Leader--I accompany the students around town to the site visits, lead discussions of our textbook (Michael Genovese's Memo to the New President), large group experiences and site visits.

Rockville, Maryland--I'm staying in the Fenestra Apartments in Rockville's new Town Centre. Nice place, but a little noisy at night. Four of us--all faculty leaders--are sharing a two-bedroom-two-bath apartment. We've had one hour of sitting around together watching Arizona beat Carolina. They seem like good fellows.

Tomorrow we're off to the races. Although I'd rather be in church, I'll be getting into the seminar all morning, followed by small group meetings and a bus tour of DC.

More tomorrow night, I hope.

An Old "Old" Photograph

The young man in the bottom left-hand corner of this photograph sent this to me recently. The portrait was taken at Opryland in Nashville back in the last year or so of the 1970s or the first year or so of the 1980s. Now that I look at all the outfits, I wonder how I ended up dressed as the bandito. I'm guessing that I was 19 or 20 here. At far right in the back row is the late great Mike Tweed. All in all, it's seems a fairly believable picture except for the gym rat stylings on the lower halves of those notorious Tweed boys.

Random Firings in the Brain

They woke me up some three hours ago, just before 3:00 a.m. I've been up ever since, doing this and that--goofing around online, doing some research, reading Matthew's story of the Magi and so on. It's almost time to take a shower, gather up the guitars and the flute and head to church for pre-service band practice, but I thought I'd publish a few brief thoughts and announcements.

• Throughout this Advent and Christmas season, my Sunday School class--Tapestry--has been exploring such things as our individual and collective traditions for these celebrations, the meaning of "the Christmas spirit" and so on. This morning we'll discuss Epiphany.


• In researching Epiphany, I was riding Google through the interconnected tubes of the Internet and discovered the blog of a Methodist minister in Bideford, Devon, United Kingdom. He preached a 2006 sermon on Epiphany, which I'll refer to as Tapestry explores the topic. This Rev. Martin had what promised to be a fine new Epiphany sermon planned for today as well, but he's having a kidney stone problem and didn't lead worship today. I've sent him well wishes, but I'm a complete stranger to him. And yet it's odd and interesting to have found his blog. He and I seem to have several things in common--we're about the same age; we've been married about the same length of time, we have sons about the same age; and so on.


• I've been reading a good bit over this Christmas break. This evening I just finished The Toughest Indian in the World, a great collection of short stories by Sherman Alexie. Every year I try to read one of two Christmas stories: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens or "The Dead" (from Dubliners) by James Joyce. This year I read both.


• On Saturday the 10th, I leave for Washington, DC, where I'll be one of the faculty leaders of the Washington Center's Presidential Inauguration Seminar (http://www.twc.edu/). I'll be in the city for 10 or 11 days, returning home on the 21st, the day after the Inauguration. It should be an interesting time, and I hope to be blogging regularly as it's happening.

It's now 6: 18 a.m. Shower time!

The Year That Was

A 19th-century poem from Walt Whitman. I don't know what year he was writing about, but I imagine it could be most any year. I think it fits 2008 quite well:

Year that trembled and reel'd beneath me!
Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me,
A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken'd me,
Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself,
Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?
And sullen hymns of defeat?


http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/logr/log_158.html

One year in 40+ seconds