the inner ring

As a Christian and as a Minnesotan, I feel the need to apologize for recent comments from members of my faith and my home state. All I can truly offer is to say that not all Christians and not all Minnesotans are this small-minded.

Christians, as all U.S. citizens, are free to vote for the candidate they feel will best serve as President, whether this be Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain; Minnesotans, as all U.S. citizens, are free to vote for the candidate they feel will best serve as President, whether this be Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain. But, please, do not assume that all Christians vote Republican or that all Minnesotans think Barack Obama is anything other than a U.S. citizen, a member of Congress, and a candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America.

The shuffle on my entire iTunes library decided to take a break from giving me one Christmas song after another and play this beauty of a song, reminding me once again of the power of these lyrics.

No real introduction is necessary.

Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
Well, there’s a reason for the things that I have on.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he’s a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you’d think He’s talking straight to you and me.

Well, we’re doin’ mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin’ cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we’re reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there ought ‘a be a Man In Black.

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
I wear the black in mournin’ for the lives that could have been,
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,
Believin’ that the Lord was on their side,
I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,
Believin’ that we all were on their side.

Well, there’s things that never will be right I know,
And things need changin’ everywhere you go,
But ’til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You’ll never see me wear a suit of white.

Ah, I’d love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything’s OK,
But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
‘Til things are brighter, I’m the Man In Black.

-Johnny Cash

The increasingly cool weather combined with the earlier setting sun has definitely put me in the autumnal mood. Even though these signposts most surely mark the end of summer, I confess that I look forward to them every year. They bring to mind good memories of school, especially those final years at North Park; they make me look forward to the comfort of fleece and boots and sitting by a late night fire; they even make me look forward to the crisp, damp air of early morning.

For me, autumn also has its own soundtrack; and, yes, I am fully aware of how odd that fact is. Not surprisingly the main score is that of George Winston’s Autumn: the clean, melodic accompaniment to numerous hours of reading and schoolwork. (One close friend still has the Pavlovian response to crack the textbooks whenever he hears George Winston’s piano playing.) But another album that holds an equally strong association with autumn is the Greatest Hits of James Taylor. I am not entirely sure what in this record—especially those first six songs—represents autumn with such power. It may be because the first time I heard it was the fall of my freshman year at college. Or it could be that the contemplative, sad nature of the lyrics in “Fire and Rain” and “Sweet Baby James” invoke a feeling of slowing down after the crazy summer rush. I don’t know; and I probably never will know. All I am certain of is the ability for these songs to simultaneously send me to the past while firmly rooting me in the present; not many things can perform such a feat.

Reading through an article about Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” I came to this passage:

“We have done our part to expose Obama through our support of ‘Operation Chaos,’ effectively using the Clinton campaign as our foil, and Obama and the Democrat Party are the weaker for it,” he said. “Every objective has been met and surpassed.”

Maybe it was his use of the word “foil” but I immediately had a picture in my mind of Rush as Iago. Of course, the association entirely breaks down because I don’t think either Obama or Clinton would acknowledge Limbaugh as a best friend and advisor, but for a moment I had a good chuckle.

I always enjoy it when a particular confluence of events results in a few of my favorite things all appearing within the same vicinity of one another. That happened this evening while reading Michael Chabon’s most recent column in Details magazine (the sole reason for my paid subscription).

In the first paragraph of his column about why we should stop mocking the seventies, Michael Chabon (one of my favorite authors), mentions a particular episode of WNYC’s Radio Lab “devoted to contemplating the romance and the grim realities of space travel.” Radio Lab, thanks to the introduction by Mr. Anderson, has become one of my favorite NPR programs. Then, a page later, Chabon references a recent issue of The Believer, one of my favorite eclectic literary ‘zines.

This all resulted in a smile on my face, which continued when one of Chabon’s insights reminded me not to take myself so seriously:

Each of us serves, if we are conducting our lives in the usual fashion, as a constant source of embarrassment to his or her future self, and by the same formula all “eras” can be made to look ridiculous in retrospect.

So… I’ll approach tomorrow with the attitude that I’m simply providing my future 50-year-old self with some good material for humor or, at the very least, embarrassment.