Another poet comments on something like failure

Bill Holm's variations on a theme is titled "Music of Failure," but those variations are not all precisely failure.  He points to death which some might identify as the ultimate failure.  Perhaps loss is a more general category that includes death.  Whether every loss is a sort of failure I"m not certain though I have a hunch that from the most mundane inability to locate my car-keys to the specter of death that lurks in the news of a contemporary's cancer diagnosis there is a confrontation with human limitations.

In this poem, one of my favorites by this fine poet, Mary Oliver writes that on the "other side of the black river of loss" is salvation.  And she counsels the necessity of honest acknowledgement of  mortality, of loving what can not last, and of being able to relinquish what is finished.  Not easy advise to follow, but wise, oh so wise.

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Ethnic identities: sentimental, symbolic, substantive

We're back to ethnicity just as the Advent season summons many (Christian) Americans to combine their religious devotions with some performance of the culture of their pre-USA origins.  This will be breaking out all over the St. Olaf campus soon with a sort of camping up of Norwegian-ness by those claiming 100% Viking descent and those whose claim is admittedly fictive.  Yesterday (Rolf) Henry appeared in my office showing off his new tee-shirt . . . printed as if it were a Norwegian sweater and in the bookstore the latest variation of the official St. Olaf Norwegian sweater is on sale.

Tomorrow in class we tackle Michael Aune's essay, "Both Sides of the Hyphen," and his question about how St. Olaf's Norwegian-American founding might matter today.

Contemporary Norwegian Design

Pick one?
A)  Not at all.

B)  It is a sentimental, nostalgia for the great-great-grandparents.  Let's eat some goodies full of butter and almonds and tell some Ole and Lena jokes.  Perhaps this assumes some sort of familial relationship.

C)  It is symbolic of the old traditions.  No reason not to eat those cookies, wear those sweaters, even take a cruise in the fjords.  Why not celebrate the egalitarian values, remember the obstacles overcome, and greet the King and Queen when they are in town.  Maybe this is open to anyone who admires the heritage.

D)  It is substantive, not something dusted off for special occasions, but a living stream that contributes to our collective life together.  This option, as Aune points out, suggests that ethnic identity is dynamic rather than static, something that requires cultivation more than preservation.  This was the default situation for the immigrant generation who often had a "divided heart," but it is harder to sustain in subsequent generations or to share with others.  Does it require an inherited legacy, or is it possible for individuals to adopt this sort of ethnic identification? living 3422044656342204465

Seeing, sympathy, self (beyond one's own)

Walker Evans, but not Alabama

Bill Holm, in "The Music of Failure," writes about Jame Agee and Walker Evans portrayals of Alabama tenant farmers in the 1930s.    Agee uses "hundreds of pages of thundering prose" while Evans made "simple, direct photographs."  Holm asserts that both men showed that "at the bottom of everything is skin: under that, blood and bone."  That this is true of all human beings.  The difference is only that some are more able to mask this truth with "money earned, suit brand, car model, school degree, powerful army, big bombs, bootstrap rhetoric."

Later in the essay Holm offers his plea for authentic humanity (not his terminology).  Let me link it back to Agee and Evans.  Holm writes that a strong self, the ego, "requires first the power to sympathetically imagine something outside itself."  Wlaker's words and Evans' images help this happen by showing the "lives of other human beings."  Holm continues, the second necessity is "the capacity to love something outside the self."

Again and again this semester we have confronted this reality:  people are different from each other.  We are divided from each other by membership in various sorts of groups, "classes" if you will determined by biology, family, economic resources, social categories, place of residence, and the like.  Some have power and opportunities that others do not.  Again and again we have confronted the dilemma: how are we to bridge those differences?  And asked, is there commonality as well as difference?

Holm's answer: yes there is fundamental commonality and it is grounded in the human potential to see "death in things."  Yes, there are bridges built from recognizing that commonality that moves us beyond our individual-self and beyond our collective-self.  Yes, music, and photographs, and literature do this.

All well and good.  Two questions lurk:
1) We still wonder about some photos as intrusive and exploitative.
2)  I wonder about the photos we take of our selves and post for all to see.  Notice how seldom those reveal that we are "skin: under that blood and bone."
Evidently there is music, literature, and photography that obscures rather than showing the truth.

a different sort of company town

Thanks to an Ole connection at NPR: a story about Holden Village.   (With links to slide show and you-tube)

Of interest to us, why?

First because the facilities (buildings, road, etc.) were constructed as a company town by Howe Sound Mining so there is a bit of a tie in with our consideration of Pullman, IL.   This little town was isolated in a way that Pullman was not.   Many miles up-lake from Chelan, Washington, it is located in Railroad Creek Valley, but there is no train.  About 11 miles down the road, on the lake shore, there was another little settlement not owned by the company and a much shorter walk toward the wilderness a 'sub-division' of houses built by married workers.  The single miners all lived in dormitories provided by the company and the management families lived in houses also provided by the company.  There was a bowling alley, a gym, a pool-hall, a short-order restaurant, a school, a hospital.  At miners' reunions, the folks who were kids there report mostly pleasant memories.  The company seems to have had a more modest social agenda than Mr. Pullman.  It closed the town when the price of copper fell.

Second because the retreat community that occupies the site, while not a company town, does shape its members' values and practices thereby accomplishing the sort of goals Pullman had, though not precisely the same values and practices that he promoted.  Indeed, he might have found the Holden sort of community unnerving.  It is hardly a utopia, but its scale allows attention to the infrastructure of water, electricity, sewer, and human relations that we seldom have time for or access to in our ordinary lives. 

Third because this article describes how the on-going efforts to clean up the mining residue from the first community is effecting the current community.

thankful for consumer pressures

Here is a peculiar gratitude: Thanksgiving, unlike many other holidays, has not been moved to Monday.  It stays on Thursday and makes a four day holiday with most of the days after the big event, so those three days are not available for preparations.  I suspect that this timing is preserved by the pressures of consumers who want to buy stuff on Friday and merchants who hope to go into the black that day.  I have never hit those sales and it is easy for me to disdain the impulse to shop at mid-night, but I'm grateful for the sales as I enjoy a day ordinary tasks (housecleaning, bread baking, even school work) without dashing back to work.

Not a cheerful Thanksgiving poem

THIS poem by Sherman Alexie will not conjure up hallmark images of a happy, first Thanksgiving eaten by friendly neighbors dressed in Puritan somberness and equally stereotyped native costumes.  Or, if it does, the conjuring will be by way of remembering that those images are less than the true story of that first year and the years that followed.

Alexie gives us an eschatological vision of a banquet marked by forgiveness and joy, but it is not a story Jesus told nor is the location a city on a hill.  Nonetheless, the culminating meal does celebrate restoration and plenty for which many Christians would give thanks.  Merely changing our menu from turkey to salmon would not achieve the vision, but the perhaps holding the image of the meal in our imagination as we eat our turkey will allow us to season our thanksgiving with repentance and resolve.

 

The Powwow at the End of the World

By Sherman Alexie
 

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall   

after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam   

and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive   

and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive dam   

downriver from the Grand Coulee. I am told by many of you   

that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters find   

their way to the mouth of the Columbia River as it enters the Pacific   

and causes all of it to rise. I am told by many of you that I must forgive   

and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon   

waiting in the Pacific. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall   

after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia   

and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors   

of Hanford. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall   

after that salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River   

as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives   

in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone.   

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after   

that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws   

a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire   

which will lead all of the lost Indians home. I am told   

by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall   

after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon   

who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us   

how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours;   

the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many   

of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing   

with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.

Sherman Alexie, “The Powwow at the End of the World” from The Summer of Black Widows. Copyright © 1996 by Sherman Alexie. Used by permission of Hanging Loose Press.


Source: The Summer of Black Widows (Story Line Press, 1996)

report on my absence: social capital, embodied ideas, precision of expression

While Mary lead the class I was off to San Francisco to attend the annual, national meetings of the American Academy of Religion along with thousands (yes thousands) of other scholars of religion.  Even in a great city like San Francisco, where the sessions are spread over blocks rather than all in one convention center and one does go outside, the event has odd effects on one's sense of reality.  Sitting in a sub-divided ballroom listening to papers for hours on end is punctuated with odd glimpses of people one has not spoken to or thought of for years among the vast book displays as well as by shared meals with dear friends seldom seen.  There is a bit of the junior high/middle school dynamic in each encounter: quickly one must discern the appropriate status scale and calibrate one's response appropriately.

When a former classmate hailed me to put in a good word for a job applicant I thought of the ways in which social capital is not only generated by such organizations and "old school" ties, but also about how it is spent.  Perhaps I thought of that because I'd been to a session about Robert Putnam's new book, the very well received American Grace, co-authored by David Campbell.  It was not so much about social capital, but our old friend Alexis de Tocqueville did come up in the discussion several times.  Here I'm not going to rehearse the argument of the book, which is fascinating and largely regarded as solid; neither am I going to summarize the interesting, appreciative, yet challenging responses by a political theorist, a sociologist, and a theologian.  Rather two points:

1) I was reminded how much more engaging it is to merely listen in on conversations between real people in person than to read even a finely written article.  In part this is simply the energy produced by incarnate human beings in a room; and even more it is the interactive, responsiveness which demonstrates that knowledge and understanding are socially produced.  Frankly, it was remarkable to watch Robert Putnam listen to comments on his work and then stand up to respond with some passion and autobiographical references. 

2) I was wishing that those real live people would not resort to short-hand phrases.  "Nones" as short-hand for persons who declare no formal affiliation with a religious group.  At least that is where the term originated.  It did not mean that those persons had no religious ideas or spiritual practices or moral standards.  But, when we use the word "nones" without the original context, the meaning expands and becomes less useful.  Similarly when we speak of tolerance without an object, a fine characteristic is made vague.  It seemed to me, a listener in the audience, that more precise use of language would have given the conversation greater clarity.

Vaudeville photo stills

 

Look at those remarkable performers!  It was a fantastic show. 

magic (with audience participation). . .slap stick comedy. . . ethnic humor. . . tap dancing . . . musical production . . . an animal act . . . and serious music.

What inequality?

flock of wealth in Montana

LINK  to David Brooks' slightly tongue-in-cheek comment on the sorts of inequalities currently regarded as acceptable in American society and those that are not.  His description strikes me as largely correct.  So too his conclusion:

"Dear visitor, we are a democratic, egalitarian people who spend our days desperately trying to climb over each other. Have a nice stay."

 What I'd have liked to have read is his analysis of why one sort of inequality is acceptable and another is not and his interpretation of what this tells us about ourselves. 

As I've been thinking about this piece, Enich has been thinking about our discussion on Friday.  What he wrote could be in conversation with Brooks, so I re-post his recent comment.

Enich's Amcon Thoughts: Social Class, Value Systems and Space: I was thinking a lot since Friday about value systems and what input they have on mobility in various societies. We mentioned how in an agri...

who can know?

storm cloud near Red Cloud

From the introduction to My Antonia, an exchange between Jim Burden and the unidentified author of the introduction: "We agreed that no one who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it." 

And there is the dilemma, succinctly stated.  Is it possible for anyone to know about anything that we have not experienced directly for ourselves?  And if it is not possible, then how will we develop bonds of relationship and compassion for each other?

Surely there is a role for imagination that bridges what I have not experienced in a way that fosters empathy, not only for those 'less fortunate' than me, but for anyone who is not me.  And isn't that one of the functions of art and scholarship, to build such a bridge that we can cross?  Reading Cather's work we are offered an opportunity to learn something about growing up in a little prairie town, not every thing, but something worth knowing.  We need not take her novel as the only source; in fact, we ought to come to it with both sympathy and eyes wide open.  But, if we don't read it and engage our imagination and our evaluative capacities, we will know less.

Private Property and citizenship: Emancipation, Homestead, and Dawes

Friday's con-versation about ideals of American life at the turn into the twentieth century yielded some insights for me beyond my delight in the vigor of the conversation.  These derive from the chronological coincidence of the Homestead Act and the Emancipation Proclamation as well as from the later (1887) Dawes Act.

1. Freeing slaves and offering free land: two expansions of citizenship.
2. Free land was offered to freed slaves who have not been counted as citizen previously, to immigrants asserting their intention to become citizens, and to native-born citizens willing to move west and do the work, but not to citizens who served in the Confederacy's military forces.
3. Also note that this was offered to adult men and unmarried adult women, the former who could vote and the later could not.
4. Also excluded the Chinese who were not allowed into the nation and thus could neither get 160 acres or become citizens.
5. The Dawes Act offered Native Americans (not immigrants precisely, but still aliens of a sort) a traded: take up the notion of private ownership of property and gain citizenship.  

So we have the familiar notion that land ownership is the foundation of the independence necessary for exercising the responsibilities of citizenship to vote.  However these were mixed with notions of loyalty to the nation (which the Confederates had violated), and with notions about gender roles that allowed un-married women to own land and pay taxes, but not to vote, and with notions about racial identity that anticipated that African-Americans and Native Americans could become loyal, responsible citizens, but Chinese could not. 

I'm still thinking about the interaction of these several assumptions even as I have just read a rather intriguing essay about Dakota and Norwegian female land ownership near Devil's Lake, North Dakota. The author points out the oddity that recent immigrants, many of whom barely spoke English, were expected to somehow contribute to the government's project of bring the Sioux into American culture. (Karen V. Hanson, "Land Taking at Spirit Lake: The Competing and Converging Logics of Norwegian and Dakota Women, 1900-1930."  Norwegian American Women: Migration, Communities, and Identities.)

a long way from camping it up

Coming to school early this morning I encountered the expected grey squirrels dashing across the lawn.  What I had not expected, but was delighted to see, was a pair of cardinals...on the ground.

The female cardinal is my favorite visitor to our winter bird feeder so I was especially delighted to spy one today. (The one in the photo is not the one that I saw.)

Contemplating her in the context of the semester's conversations I was struck by the subtlety of her coloring.  It seemed, to me on the morning of the first frost or few snow flakes, that she was attired in the very opposite of a camped up, dramatic costume.  I read her grey with accents of red as confident and stylish.

Vaudville 2011 @ St. Olaf by AmCon Students!

I'm astonished by all the hidden talents that were revealed!

• Isaac's Italian accent
• Athena's kick
• Katie's animal instincts
• that tap-dancing
• that production number
• that clarinet music
• that old, flying carpet magic
• all that murder and camping
• more, and more, and more

Perhaps there will be photos.  Certainly there was laughter and appreciation for one another.

Constraints: bodily and social

I'm still thinking about Solnit on technology and bodily existence as burdensome, but now I'm also thinking about it with some additional bits and pieces.  In particular, I'm thinking about the interaction of bodies and social constraints.

One is to also consider what sort of social constraints might be regarded as some how analogous.  Yesterday we returned to models for negotiating ethnic variety and national identity in the USA and recalled the limits of an assimilationist model based on "Anglo conformity" or even the melting pot.  These are effected by visible, bodily markers of difference which can inhibit the possibility of an individual "melting" or conforming.  Of course movements like Black Nationalism rejected the goal of finding a way to join and the alternate models of an ethnic federation or cultural pluralism do not necessarily regard those visible, bodily markers as barriers.  Nonetheless, in the past a person's membership in a racial or ethnic group could in fact result in constraints upon individual's opportunities.

Similarly, in our previous discussion of Gay New York we considered the phenomenon of "policing" which imposed constraints on public behaviors, learned that the degree social of openness varied from one ethnic, racial, or class group to another, and noted that certain employments allowed more or less public acknowledgement of gay men's sexuality.   While individual men made decisions about how to live, most did so with those community standards in place even as the standards changed over time in response to various factors such as the wavering legal status of prohibition.

A third, somewhat different, line of thought was sparked by stories about space exploration: the special fuel needed to travel really, really far and a test run in which the potential travelers were confined for many months to simulate the boredom of a multi-year space journey.  These are efforts to get way beyond the boundaries of our earthly life!  And as I listened I wondered if our considerable human innovation and creativity might not be better directed to improving the basic life conditions of human beings whose earthly life is sustained on less than a dollar a day in India or the increasing number of Americans living below the poverty life.  Certainly those are conditions that constrain their options and their contributions to common life.

What is Ragtime about?

with thanks to students for their discussion in class and their papers, for my colleague Gary Gisselman who is directing the musical at Park Square in St. Paul:

1. American society on the cusp of the 20th century.
2. the ways in which historical figures interact with "generic" ones and thus shed light on the open questions of their day.
3. Winslow Homer's painting?  It is at the beginning and the end of the novel so I've gotta think it matters, but how?  The sea and the sky as open in contrast to the city?  Younger brother standing there at the water's edge like a fish coming out of the brine: is that something about evolution?
4. Father's diminishment next to Mother's coming into her own and Coalhouse's demise next to Tateh's rise seem to provide some focus for the social forces at work.  And these lead to.....Little Rascals?  A new vision of America?
5. No doubt Houdini could be the key: an escape artist who can't escape.  
6. So....maybe....like so much of American art in various genres, this is an exploration of freedom and not freedom, of the forces and structures that bind people and the ways in which they try to or actually do get free.

Burdensome bodies?

". . . .technology regards the very terms of our bodily existence as burdensome."  Rebecca Solnit in River of Shadows.

I do like this observation, but oddly I had not thought about it in terms of mind (or spirit)-body dualism until Mary asked me about the religious context for the view.  Perhaps that is because those Christians who advocate such a dualism would put the tension in moral terms and I take Solnit to be pointing toward another sort of issue.  Nonetheless, Mary's question was a fair one that I'll keep thinking about for some time.  I suppose that those Christians who hold to a spirit-body dualism do regard bodily existence as burdensome and a barrier to living a pure, spiritual life.  And they may even devise 'technologies' to escape their bodies: ways of fostering mystical experience, for example.   However, as I said in class, there is a wider, more mainstream tradition within Christianity that values bodily existence as part of divine creation and in recognition that in Jesus God took on human flesh.  Indeed Jesus himself displayed the burden of bodily existence and its related awareness of mortality in that he ate, and rested, and wept.

This morning, on Studio 360, I heard a set of STORIES that recalled all of this to me: its topic was genetic engineering and other enhancements of human bodies.  These technologies before birth and after accidents or disease aim to remove the limits of human bodies in ways that are like electric lights and the telephone and so forth.  And here I realize that my reluctance to embrace some of these technologies is theological because they seem to me to be denying the goodness of bodies that are limited.  I'm unwilling to allow that needing to sleep and eat, for example, are so burdensome that we should overcome them rather than tending to them.

technology free breathing space

This from the chaplain's office at Yale University:

The newest space opened by the Chaplain’s Office aims —as its name suggests —to give students juggling hectic schedules a chance to “breathe.”

Breathing Space, an initiative that began on Sept. 4, opens a reading room, bathroom and meditation room in the basement of Welch Hall’s entryway C to students from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday. The goal of the center is to provide undergraduates and graduate students alike with a technology-free zone that offsets the “hustle and bustle of their days,” University Chaplain Sharon Kugler said in a Wednesday email. Though student organizers said publicizing the new spot has been difficult, they said they hope Breathing Space will become a popular hangout once more students learn of its existence.

At Breathing Space, students can read religious texts, talk with friends, grab free snacks, meditate in a room with floor cushions and an indoor waterfall, and take part in various arts and crafts activities. Though the centeroffers weekly religious text studies, Kugler said Breathing Space is not designed to target any specific religious or spiritual traditions but rather offer a spot for students to unwind.The center is staffed by 10 student workers every week, Breathing Space’s coordinator Ivy Onyeador ’11.

In an effort to separate students from constant emails and other daily stresses, Breathing Space does not allow technological devices such as cell phones, laptops and iPods. Kate Stratton DIV ’12, who runs a weekly arts and crafts session called “Time for the Soul” at Breathing Space, said the absence of these personal electronics creates a “no-pressure zone” that gives students a way to “recharge.”

“Breathing Space is a no-gain zone —people don’t come to accomplish something,” Stratton said. “But there’s something meaningful about stepping out of your rat-race schedule to stop and just ‘be.’”

Notice the contrast with Moody who adopted the current innovations in marketing and to some extent technology in service of his religious message.

Ford and Jobs changed America

Such lively conversation today.  Such interesting ideas.  Such a joy and privilege to be with these students!

Prompted by the obituaries and accolades given to Steve Jobs earlier this fall, we began with two parallel, nearly identical, sentences:

Henry Ford changed America.

Steve Jobs changed America.

Following Stanley Fish's encouragement, we built on the three "words" to help us think about what was changed (e.g. American values, American experiences of work, American's perception of physical distance and time, etc.) and by what means (e.g. by the moving assembly line, by access to affordable automobiles, by 24 hour access to instant, international communication).  We noted similarities of biography and in the men's self-portrayal and in some of their flaws.  There was lots more that we did not get to, including the simple connection between the automobile and superhighways being alluded to by the connection between computers and other devices and the digital superhighway. 

In the heat of the conversation I did not read aloud this sentence from Johnson about Ford. Seems like the sentence would apply equally as well to Jobs as to Ford.

"He illustrated the power, which all historians learn to recognize, of a good but simple idea pursued singlemindedly by a man of implacable will." p. 606

Freedom to not work . . . .or to work

Lawrence, MA 1912

The comment I wanted to make in response to Andrew that flew out of my brain:

Andrew's remark that workers were freed to work for Pullman and live in his town or not to do so points to the dispute about the nature of freedom that was lively in this period.  While manufacturers asserted the freedom to enter into contracts, labor advocates saw the dangers of being "wage slaves."  Eric Foner's chapter on this period, in his book The Story of American Freedom, is excellent and well worth getting your hands on, especially if you are an economics major or interested in business.

For now, one short quotation:

Most profoundly, labor raised the question whether meaningful freedom would exist in a situation of extreme economic inequality.  On July 4, 1886, the Federated Trades of the Pacific Coast rewrote Jefferson's Declaration adding to the list among mankind's inalienable rights "Life and means of living, Liberty and the conditions essential to liberty."  Freedom required certain kinds of social arrangements, not simply liberty of contract. p. 126

NPR Story on Houdini edited by our own Jason DeRosee

In 202 the big final project will return to an earlier 101 project in form but take it to completion: a radio/pod cast.  The topics will begin with National Parks.  There will be help, including a workshop with St. Olaf Alum Jason DeRose of NPR.  So ...............  this piece he edited on Houdini's descendent makes a sort of connection between what we have been doing (Ragtime, the novel in which HH is a character, Vaudeville, etc.) and what we will do.

THE LINK

Entertainment culture, political culture, and religion

THIS comment by Anthea Butler on Herman Cain's performance at the National Press Club on October 31 suggests something of the way that the rise of entertainment culture we have been considering via Gilbert's study of Chicago has made its way into both religion and politics.  We'll consider the former (the intertwining of religion and entertainment) when we get to the chapter on Moody.  More specifically Butler draws upon the stereotypes of African-Americans in early 20th century popular entertainments such as minstrel shows, vaudeville, and movies, to comment on Cain's defense against charges of sexual harassment.  I'll paste in a paragraph, but urge you to read the whole piece in order to appreciate Butler's nuanced assessment.

Cain, a member of Antioch Baptist church North in Atlanta, Ga, has mentioned his Christian faith on the campaign trail, and has recorded a gospel album. Cain’s singing of “He looked beyond my faults” was, in my opinion, a combination of minstrel show, an Amos and Andy riff without Amos, and a sly admission. By going into entertainment mode with the crowd, Cain tried to both deftly testify to his faith with his Teavangelical base, while at the same time throwing the throngs of reporters off from the trail of the sexual harassment suit. All while confessing that while “others saw his faults, He (Jesus) saw my need.” One wonders what Cain’s faults really are.

All Saints Day

A day to remember and give thanks for the saints who have gone before us, for all who have contributed to the communities in which we live and the people we are.