Children Outside a Jakarta Slum, June 12

49% of Indonesia's population lives on less than $2 a day.

We Now Worship Debt

Obama, Clinton

Quote of the day:
“It’s easy to be generous with other people’s money.”
--Preston Creston

There’s now a 99.9% chance that Barack Obama will win the Democratic nomination. Until last night there was a chance for Clinton to wind up ahead in the overall popular vote (including Florida), which may have persuaded enough super delegates her way to swing the nomination.

But that’s not possible anymore. The electability question won’t overshadow the clear lead Obama will have at the end of the primaries.

Hillary Clinton may be on the ticket as vice president. Everyone has strong but mixed feelings about this--especially her supporters and Obama’s. But it’s an intriguing prospect, as even Andrew Sullivan admits. (I’d provide the link to his popular blog, except it seems to have degenerated into an obsession with his half-hourly neuronal twitches.)

There was a politically poignant moment this morning as former Senator George McGovern switched his endorsement from Clinton to Obama. Working on his 1972 presidential campaign was Clinton’s entry into politics, and Bill was active in that campaign. I’m sure it was a hard conversation that McGovern had with Bill and Hillary.

I responded to this because that was the first election in which I voted, and I also worked in the McGovern campaign.

My mind also wanders into thinking how much better off the country would have been had McGovern won in 1972, thus sparing us of the scandal and constitutional crisis of Nixon’s second term.

It’s a long time ago now, and yet many of the issues of that 1972 campaign--especially peace and economic security--are still with us in 2008.

And we still look ahead with hope that we can find answers.

Barack Obama on Race

Quote of the day:
“Voters of all stripes have warmed to talk of a ‘new kind of politics,’ regardless of which candidate is promising it. But can such a thing ever exist without a new kind of media?”
--John Mercurio at nationaljournal.com

There’s been quite a bit of discussion about Barack Obama’s speech about race.

Y’think?

But get this. The New York Times reports that more people have read the transcript of the speech on its site than any of its reporting about it. And almost two million people have watched it on YouTube.

An awful lot of people just don’t care much about the analysis and punditry. They want the real thing.

It’s just as well, because most of what has been said and written is not insightful but rather reductive. According to virtually all the reports I’ve seen and read, the whole speech comes down to two questions. Did it reverse damage done by Jeremiah Wright’s comments? And, did it change the course of racial discussion in America?

The first question is about passing politics, and is of just a little bit of interest. The second question is general and grandiose and sets expectations impossibly high.

I will put aside my usual annoyance at the stunning lack of courage and thoughtfulness among reporters and talking heads. They continue to endlessly parrot phrases they are fed. Polly wanna cracker.

It took me a moment, but I have put aside my annoyance. Really.

Obama’s speech was important to me because he brought into the open the dirty little secret that all of us have attitudes about race that we talk about only in private. These attitudes are shaped by our generation and by what we learned as we grew up.

What we learned as we grew up was affected by our social class and our environment. A comfortable upper-middle class family with college-educated parents will talk about race (and many other things) differently than a struggling lower-class family with parents who did not complete high school.

Merrie and I have a 92-year-old neighbor who in passing will sometimes make a derogatory reference about race or ethnicity. He grew up in a very different time and culture than we did.

My very sweet grandmother once used the “n” word in the rhyme “Eenie, meenie, minie, mo.” Being seven and having been taught that the word is a no-no, I was shocked. She could tell something was wrong. I still remember the look on her face as she tried to explain.

She was born in the 1890s, a very different time than the 1960s. Which was a very different time from the 2000s.

And in the 2000s, it’s getting to be time for us to come clean with each other about what our attitudes are and where they come from.

That’s what Barack Obama said. He’s right. Kudos to him.

What All of Us Eat

Quote of the day:
“People living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’--that is, to pull in like a turtle.”
--Robert Putnam, who has conducted a massive new study on the relationship between diversity and civic engagement.

Statistic of the day:
40% of North Korean children are chronically malnourished.

In the wake of Thanksgiving, here’s a website worth a few minutes of your time.

It shows how much families pay for food in a week in nations around the world. It’s not a surprise that there’s big difference from most to least, but seeing it in color brings it home.

The food choices are quite interesting, too. What we eat is strongly related to our culture. No surprise. It may be a surprise how strongly we expect certain foods at certain times of day.

For some of us, eggs in the morning. Or cereal. Or steamed milk and coffee (as in Starbucks). Cheeseburger or turkey sandwich for lunch. Dinner has more variation, but often it is pizza, pasta, roast chicken, burritos or salad.

Sometimes, what we eat is also related to what is grown and easily attainable near us. From the website, some cultures are much more dependent on this than others.

View From Nepal

Quote of the day:
“Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That’s how rich I want to be.”
--Rita Rudner

Today, a first-hand look at life in a hospital in Tansen, Nepal. Two of our friends--a social worker and a physician--are leading a work team there:

“Our experiences here can only be described as intense and vivid. Our white faces are becoming known around the hospital and the staff smile and offer directions.

“Today the toy rounds people gave out small beach balls with globes of the world on them. The families are often here at bedside and they were so pleased. In fact, the balls have become quite precious.

“We used the balls not only as toys but also as part of our introductions when we gave our in-services. We marked the balls with an X on San Diego and another on the area of Tansen, Nepal.

“They were so happy to have a globe of the world! Several of the Nepalese who are auxiillary staff have a friend in the U.S. They each wanted to look up the state where they know someone.

“The chief of social services explained to me that he knew about California--it is right next to Florida. This is not surprising as a lot of folks in the U.S. have only a foggy notion of how to locate Nepal.

“Yesterday was the hand-off of the carpentry and maintenance tools to the staff there. The guys couldn't wait to get their hands on the new tools; they were so excited.

“The workmen are amazingly talented and everything we have seen thus far is pretty much done by hand. They even cut steel rebar with a score mark, a rock placed under the bar, and a sledge hammer. It is a slow process.

“During the last two days we have painted 5 labor bays in the maternity ward. The sanitation is nonexistent but at least the surroundings look more clean (we used a cream color).

“Today we worked in the busy cashier area and we were the best show in town. It was amazing how many people watched. Some of the guys wanted to know how we put the rollers together and the blue tape to keep a line between colors was a great novelty.

“I gave my in-service today on stress to social service-chaplaincy-outreach workers. Their biggest concerns were suicide attempts, alcoholism (among staff), and patients being dumped off at the gate with no money, no family, and no contacts.

“Social service staffers are expected to give the emotional support and do discharge planning with no resources to work with. Sure sounds familiar!

“Today we had an afternoon foray into town and saw the main square that the Maoists destroyed a year ago Jan. The historical 'palace' was a police station and is now a huge pile of rubble. It is being cleaned up by hand and the plan is to rebuild it in the historical mode as it was before. Estimated time of construction is 3 years.

“Tomorrow we will hit the painting hard in the a.m. and take the afternoon off to have a mini-trek to the home of the Guest House Manager where his parents live. He promises to introduce us to the buffalo who is providing our milk.

“I miss hot water and functional showers.”

One Billion Uncounted People

Quote of the day:
“Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.”
--Maya Angelou

Quote of the day no. 2:
“Manners cannot be taught unless the underlying premise exists that the feelings of other people matter.”
--Judith Martin, today’s Miss Manners

Quote of the day no. 3:
“About one billion people in the world live in slums. According to a United Nations document, ‘The urban poor are trapped in an informal and “illegal” world--in slums that are not reflected on maps, where waste is not collected, where taxes are not paid, and where public services are note provided. Officially, they do not exist.’ In the next 20 years the number of slum dwellers is expected to double. The Millenium Development goals are projected to improve the lives of only 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.”
--New Yorker, November 13, 2006.