@ehBeth,
Hey this post just got longer and longer - sorry about that. Feel free to ignore me- got a bit carried away
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ehBeth, I think you are a Studs Terkel fan?
Have you read his piece on Dennis Kucinich that appeared in The Nation April 18, 2002
I read it recently - it was the first time i came across the word 'discombobulated' - and i was hooked...
Here's a little snippet
Quote:At the arrival gate of the Chicago-to-Cleveland flight, a skinny kid who appeared no more than 19 or 20 reached out for my torn duffel bag. I thought he was one of those Horatio Alger heroes, whose opening line is usually "Smash your baggage, mister?" This one said, "Did you have a good flight, Studs?" I'll be damned, he was the person I had come to visit, Dennis Kucinich, the Boy Mayor of Cleveland.
He was 32 then, though he could pass as anybody's office boy. As he carried my bag through the corridors of the airport, passers-by called out, "Hello, Mr. Mayor." I was slightly discombobulated, turning around several times to make sure whom they were addressing.
Quote:Imagine him in a televised, coast-to-coast debate with Dubya. Blood wouldn't flow, but it would be a knockout in the first round, and we'd have an honest-to-God working-class President for the first time in our history. It's a crazy thought, of course, but it's quite possible, considering the roller-coaster nature of our times.
Since plagiarism is à la mode these days, let me steal the closing passage from the Rev. William Sloane Coffin's invocation at a Yale commencement during the Vietnam War: "Oh God, take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire." I'll add a brief benediction: Kucinich is the man to light the fire. Amen.
It's 5 pages long if you haven't already read it - worth saving for a rainy day
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020506/terkel
Studs Terkel's writing (for me) is an education in it'self, but I'm drawn to Kucinich regardless, because despite growing up in Britain there are similarities in our child-hoods (apart from the family thing) that i recognise
Here's a passage from the article, from DK
Quote:I spent all my time as a youngster coming to understand the experience of the ghetto. It was growing up tough and growing up absurd. I spent a lot of time out on the streets. That's where I got my education. I made friends with all kinds of people, black and white.
My dad's been a truck driver ever since he got out of the service as a Marine. He's gung-ho. His dream was to have all his boys in the Marines. My brother Frank served four years, two and a half in Vietnam. My brother Gary served five years, most of it in Hawaii. My father never questioned authority. His authority was the guy who ran the trucking company.
I've always been taught to respect authority, although I was more independent than the other kids my age. I was constantly getting into squabbles with teachers. I was the first person in my family, on both sides, who ever graduated from college. I love literature. My mother taught me to read when I was 3.
In the late sixties, I didn't go right from high school to college. I worked for two and a half years. When I was 17, I moved on my own and rented an apartment above the steel mills. In the same neighborhood where The Deer Hunter was filmed. The frame house I lived in overlooked the steel mills.
Taking nothing away from Mr Obama, I realise how much i want to see Dennis Kucinich given the chance - the opportunity to see what he can do. Not necessarily just for America. I mean, that he could be the right guy to lead the
world towards peace. I feel it, somewhere in my gut.
I admit I also have a minor, and utterly respectful 'crush' on his wife, (but keep it to yourself).
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