I voted this morning in downtown DC. The place was packed with people, a long line coiling around the lobby of the Judiciary Building, hundreds of people wanting to vote early in this most important of elections. When I stood before the ballot and saw "Barack Obama" on the top line I sort of stood there a few seconds and exhaled as I checked the box. I've been pushing for Obama for over a year. I think I posted something in this very blog about Obama's Rooseveltian gifts and my belief that those gifts would be needed in the near future. So to stand there and vote, to take my small part in having this come to pass, was very moving. Later I was at the
grocery store and as I passed a number of small children dressed up as super heros and princes, I found myself breaking down a little, felt weepy at the edges of my eyes thinking about the possibilities for these kids with a good president in the office.
Now I discover that Studs Terkel has died. That gravelly voiced giant, that angel of America is gone. His voice is silenced and I am left with a deep sense of thanksgiving for all the voices and all the lives that he recorded on his radio show and in his books. Working was an epiphany to me in college as was "The Good War." He was a shining Lefty Angel of America and paid the price for it. He was blacklisted by the fascist McCarthyites in the 1950s and stud firm in his convictions for working people. His books will be necessary reading for years to come. I am sad he didn't live long enough to see Obama's election. It would've been the culmination of so much of his life's work. If you don't know Terkel's work, I recommend it highly. Look up an interview with him on Fresh Air or NPR and give it a listen. Any one of them. Feed yourself with his wry humor and deep knowledge of the things that are important to us as human beings. I leave you with some wisdom from the sage.
"I was born in the year the Titanic sank. The Titanic went down, and I came up. That tells you a little about the fairness of life."
Explaining how was blacklisted in 1953:
"A man comes from New York. He says, "These petitions, your name is on all of them: anti-poll tax, anti-lynching, friendship with the Soviet Union.... don't you know the communists were behind them?" And he said, "Look, you can get out of this pretty easy. All you got to do is say the communists duped you. You were dumb. You didn't mean it." I said, "But I did mean it!" To this day people say, "Oh, Studs, you were so heroic." Heroic? I was scared shitless! But my ego was at stake. My vanity. "Whaddya mean, I'm dumb?"
"I hope for peace and sanity - it's the same thing."
"I think it's realistic to have hope. One can be a perverse idealist and say the easiest thing: 'I despair. The world's no good.' That's a perverse idealist. It's practical to hope, because the hope is for us to survive as a human species. That's very realistic."
"I want a language that speaks the truth."
"I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work fr it."
I've always felt, in all my books, that there's a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence - providing they have the facts, providing they have the information."
That's what we're missing. We're missing argument. We're missing debate. We're missing colloquy. We're missing all sorts of things. Instead, we're accepting."
"We are the most powerful nation in the world, but we're not the only nation in the world. We are not the only people in the world. We are an important people, the wealthiest, the most powerful and, to a great extent, generous. But we are part of the world."
""When you become part of something, in some way you count. It could be a march; it could be a rally, even a brief one. You're part of something, and you suddenly realize you count. To count is very important."
"Why are we born? We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live. One is a realist if one hopes."
"With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, 'Studs, you're an optimist.' I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what's the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven."
"You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist. "
