President-elect Obama

I recently read Barack Obama's 'Dreams from My Father'.



His inter-racial background has clearly been an important, if not the most important, aspect of his development. His father was a remote human factor, but he was clearly a man of great intelligence, who gained a ph.d at Harvard, and the Senator has, in adulthood, embraced his African roots. Immediate influences were his Kansas-born mother, and her parents, as well as his mother's second husband; and his environment, growing up mostly in Hawaii, but also in Indonesia.

The Senator does not dwell on his years at college in California and New York, rather skipping to the immediate post-graduate period of several years he spent working with the deprived population in south Chicago. He starts from the humblest of beginnings: there is nothing of privilege, neither in his attitudes, his background, nor his accessible resources. It is perhaps for these very reasons, that the concerns he develops for the forgotten white and black poor are bedrock, and I suspect that they are so strong that they may underlie all of his thinking. I suggest that the Senator has no problem in seeing the continuity between the poverty of south Chicago, and that which exists in Kenya, Indonesia, and every other place where privilege consigns the poor, at the very least, to oblivion.

I have, perhaps, only once read any biographical material which so frankly displays the development, thinking, and conclusions of the author. It is all the more extraordinary to have such honesty from a major political force.

Our Father's Children

Every day I am confronted with new challenges: there are too many people,we must limit population growth: we are going to run out of food, because there are too many people to feed: we are going to run out of oil: the polar icecap is melting, and within tens of years ports will be flooded, and islands will be submerged.

I think about all these things, and then I think of our heavenly Father, and the way he constructed our universe. The multitude of his creations is beyond our ability to count, and yet they interact, and have done, for billions of years. We grow up believing our fathers can do anything they choose, but here we have a father who really can do whatever he chooses. Is it not a little ridiculous to suggest that he has not anticipated our needs?

I do not know the answer. I respect the concept that we should do what we can to husband our resources; that we should work to reverse man-made climate change; that we should divide the available resources equitably. I do not believe that birth-control is part of the solution.

I think our Father knows exactly how many children he wants, and that he has made provision for everything that they require.

More Company

Desi and Maura went out to Charleston airport yesterday evening to welcome Joan and Jean arriving from Bellingham. Joan is staying through the 7th of January, while Jean will be here for ten days. Such a treat for us to be able to spend time together.

Television and 'Boston Legal'

I am not an undiscriminating fan of television, and generally find that the greater part of my interest is satisfied by channel 1 of Telefis Eireann. I was surprised, therefore, when I stumbled on 'Boston Legal' recently.



My attention was first caught by William Shattner, and the change that time had made on the captain of the Starship Enterprise. In quick succession I concluded that he was constantly thinking of how he might satisfy his sexual urges, and seemed inclined to reach for the Chivas Regal, both being unusual, in my experience, for the head of a successful Boston legal practice. It quickly became clear that the majority of the partners, and staff, shared his sexual needs.

The other principal, James Spader, intrigued me for another reason. He is so brilliant that he only has to be asked to step into a case, no matter how late in the process it may be, in order to make a closing statement which is always sufficient to sway the jury, no matter how contrary their prior opinions may have been.

The gold lies in what Spader manages, in the process, to tell us about American society: that sixty per cent of American married men have had extra-marital sex, that forty per cent of all married people in America have been divorced at least once, that America insists on overseas recipients of its aid forswearing abortion, although abortion is legal, in certain circumstances, in America.