On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I began to reflect and realize that 1968 was a pivotal year in my life.

It was the year Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, the Kent State massacre occurred, Nixon was elected president, and the Vietnam war was raging. Before Kennedy was shot, I had signed up to work on his campaign in Georgia once he was nominated. That, of course, never happened. His assassination took the wind out of my sails and politics wasn’t fun anymore. A Louisville Courier Journal cartoonist had the best cartoon that showed how I felt – a campaigner in with all his buttons and signs was crestfallen.

We began to think about moving to another country. We did not want our sons going to war and were very uncomfortable living in a country that had such hate in it. We began to look to see what English-speaking countries would accept us and what countries were least likely to go to war. (we moved to Canada in 1972)

In my personal life, my mother-in-law was very sick with intestinal cancer and would die in 1969. I had a miscarriage – a pregnancy that didn’t go anywhere. I saw the sac that was connected with the placenta, and nothing was there.

My husband and I went to the Presbyterian Church near Emory U in Atlanta and were active in the Sunday School. After King’s death the church began to have exchanges with black churches. In the fall we began having a series on different religions with a teen group. When we brought in a black man and his white wife to tell the group about the Baha’i religion, my husband was called on the carpet before the Deacons of the church. How dare Paul bring a black person to talk to the teens, and then bring him to the church service without permission. We surmised that the interracial marriage was probably the bigger unspoken catalyst for their wrath, but the hypocrisy of all the interracial exchanges during the year were amplified greatly. We made plans to leave the church.

That was the beginning of my rejection of Christianity. We started going to the Atlanta Unitarian Universalist Congregation in northwest Atlanta, near to where we lived. When we walked in it felt like a breath of fresh air - integrated and dogma free. wow, we found our spiritual home.

1968 was a very pivotal year.

The Unvarnished Floor

A teacher was giving the lesson when he noticed that one of the little girls in his grade five class was crying. He went over to her and saw that she had peed all over herself, down her legs to a puddle on the floor. He said it was okay and got another student to go with her to the washroom. As she walked away her shoes squished with the pee and her footsteps left tracks. The pee was cleaned up but the pee had dissolved the varnish on the wooden floor so that one could see where the pee had been – under the desk and the footsteps to the hall.

There has to be an analogy for this story. Certainly for the rest of her time in the class she was reminded of her embarrassment all the time – the unvarnished areas of the wooden floor.

You can’t erase the things you have done. You can clean up your act, but the damage has been done.

Raisin in the Sun

I just saw the play, Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959, and made into a movie in 1961 starring Sydney Poitier. It is a story about a struggling black family in Chicago. The author was way ahead of her time. One of the characters is a female college student who questions the existence of god (to the horror of her mother). But she is mainly trying to find her African identity with her new friend, Joseph, a fellow student from Nigeria. I couldn't help thinking - what would Ms. Hansberry have thought if she knew that around the time she wrote the play, a young man from Kenya arrived in Hawaii to go to college. That young man married an American and their son was Barack Obama, who ended up living in Chicago and becoming a US Senator representing Illinois.

The title of the play is from "Harlem," a poem by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" Deferred dreams is a main theme in the play, and I couldn't help but think that almost 50 years later, a dream of a person like Barack Obama becoming President was actually within reach.

"That One"

My opinion of McCain keeps falling. I thought he was an honourable man who would run an honourable campaign. All the lies that the campaign is saying about Obama is horrendous. But, the straw that broke the camel's back was when McCain referred to Obama as "that one" in the October 7th debate. As a little white girl, I grew up in the southern part of the US in the 1950s. Negroes (as they were then called) were usually referred to as sub-human, not really up to the intellect and wisdom of white people. They were 2nd class citizens. McCain referring to Obama as "that one" was an attempt to dehumanize him. McCain's anger at a person like "that one" was palatable. It was Freudian, and showed his white superiority feelings, and that totally disgusts me. Women used to be 2nd class citizens. Can you imagine the uproar if Biden referred to Palin as "that one"? The mind boggles.

Family Values

Maybe a Republican can explain what 'family values' mean to them. I am confused.

Standing on the stage is a woman who eloped with her boyfriend, had a baby less than 8 months later, and now has a 17-year old daughter that is unmarried and pregnant. To the Republicans that is being upheld as a wonderful depiction of family values.

Hmmmm, now if Obama and Michelle were standing there with their unmarried and pregnant 17-year old daughter, would they be saying what a wonderful depiction of family life that was?

I thought Republican family values were all about abstinence and getting married before consumating a relationship and certainly before getting pregnant.

The hypocrisy of the Republicans drives me nuts!

Nylons

When Jackie Kennedy was the 'First Lady' (she hated that term - said it sounded like the name of a horse), I was in university. I grew up in Florida and went to school in Kentucky. I did not like wearing hose/stockings/nylons. A picture appeared in the news of Jackie wearing a summer dress and sandals, and no nylons. It was scandalous! I just loved it that she would do that. I so admired her sense of herself and independent streak. In the early 1960s this was rare for a woman, especially a 'First Lady.'

Now it is 45 or so years later, and the nylon issue has hit the news again. Barbara Walters on The View talked about how she didn't like wearing pantyhose. The day Michelle Obama was a guest on the show (June 2008), Barbara said that she wore pantyhose that day to be sure she was properly dressed for the guest, only to discover that Michelle wasn't wearing pantyhose, and in fact didn't like wearing them either.

I was very excited about John Kennedy running for President and got up early one morning to stand in front of a stage waiting for him to arrive to speak. His campaign is what turned me on to politics. I actually took a university course where the main book was The Making of a President 1960 -- fascinating. I think someone must be writing The Making of a President 2008 because Obamas campaign is just as groundbreaking.

So, to have Michelle Obama be a kindred spirit about pantyhose is serendipity or something like that. She has the style and flare of a Jackie Kennedy and I'm sure will also be a model for other women to follow and admire.

Took many years, but for the first time in a very long time I don't feel like I have to hide the fact that I was born an American. With Obama, the country has a chance to make a comeback in the world and live up to the potential that the world expects of it.

US Politics June 3-7

June 3, 2008: Barack Obama received the delegate votes necessary to become the Democratic nominee for President of the US. I am thrilled, political junkie that I am.

June 4, 2008: I am impressed with how fast Obama has taken charge of the Democratic Party, ensuring registered lobbyist cannot give money to the campaign. Now the news is all about Hillary becoming the VP candidate and why hasn’t she endorse Obama yet. I don’t think she should be the VP candidate because what would her husband Bill do? He’d be mucking around getting in the way. He has a fabulous foundation doing such wonderful work. I’d like to see him get more involved with that. I’d like to see Hillary as Secretary of State or Leader of the Senate. I always said that she was like a fish out of water when the wife of a governor; a whale out of water as the wife of a President; and swimming with the dolphins as a Senator.

June 5, 2008, I received an email with a so called ‘joke’ in it. Its punch line was that Obama had died 20 minutes after being sworn in as President. Coming 40 years to the day that Bobby Kennedy was shot, that email showed that not much has changed in 40 years – hate still exists. In 1968, I was a Bobby Kennedy supporter, energized by his campaign; so much so that I put my name down to work on his campaign in Georgia when he got the nomination. The morning of June 6^th I got up and turned on the TV to see how Bobby was doing, hoping he was still alive. He wasn’t. I cried. Not only had we lost a great leader and inspirational politician, but the fun was wiped right out of politics. The Louisville-Courier newspaper cartoonist drew that feeling and I have a copy of it somewhere. It shows a gung-ho campaigner absolutely deflated.

His brother John was killed in 1963, Martin Luther King in April 1968, and now Bobby. I didn’t want to stay in the US anymore. I wanted to live in a country where the odds of my 2 sons having to go to war were minimal and there was less hate. By 1972 we had moved to Toronto, Canada. Pierre Trudeau was quite a guy and I really enjoyed his time in office. Canadian politics is pretty boring compared to US politics, and I really like that. One doesn’t feel hate here, just good ole politics, and fairly calm.

In 2004 at the Democratic convention I heard a speech by Barack Obama. I thought wow, this guy could be going places. I never dreamed that by 2008 he would be running for President. I began to follow his campaign, read his books, and found out as much about him as I could. His speeches were electrifying and so inspirational. I began to feel like I did in 1968. I became an Obamamama! He is so positive, not wanting to get into bashing his opponents with lies and innuendos. He tries to keep his campaign on a higher level. All his life he has worked to help people and to bridge the gap between black and white.

June 7, 2008: Hillary Clinton endorsed Obama as the nominee for President. She was supposed to be the winner. I liked her well enough and liked the idea of a woman being President. She ran her campaign with the idea of having the delegates needed by the February primaries. She had tons of money but spent it leading up to February, thinking she wouldn’t need it past then. Obama had to start from scratch and had little money. He raised money over the internet; most of his money coming from small donations of $100 or less. By February he was beating Hillary. By June 3, Hillary had run out of money and actually is in debt. Obama has millions to continue his campaign. I liked her saying that the glass ceiling for women now had 18 million cracks in it. The 18 million was the number of votes she got in the primaries. She’s a very savvy woman and I think that if she hadn’t married Bill she would have been able to have a much better career.