Biden visit

On the day after Stephanie's birthday - what turned out to be the last very hot day of the year (in the low 90s) - I ventured across the Ohio River to Jeffersonville, IN - where I get my hair cut and where I had already volunteered for the campaigns once - for a rally featuring Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden. I had been wary with the Biden selection (see "Central narratives"), and by mid-September other Democrats were also worried that Senator McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had been masterful and Sen. Obama's selection of Biden not so masterful. But earlier that week the financial meltdown began in earnest. Biden later said he was late to Jeffersonville because he was on the phone with Obama, whose campaign had been on the phone with the McCain campaign trying to hammer out some joint principles to apply to any financial bailout. Biden in fact read a joint statement that it later turned out McCain never agreed to - until late that day when a very terse one-paragraph (and pretty content-less) joint statement came out. Both Obama and McCain jockeyed for the claim of who called who first. McCain ultimately suspended his campaign (again) - until late Friday he agreed to go ahead and appear in the first debate. Ultimately, it turned out that this week - with the meltdown and McCain "erratic" response - plus his statement that "the fundamentals of the economy are sound" comment - proved to be the McCain campaign's undoing. But none of this was entirely obvious that sunny Wednesday afternoon in Southern IN.

(Our friend Nancy, a leader in the Clark County Democratic Party, whose e-mails we received every day from the week pictured until Election Day, had been a fan of the Biden selectoin. Biden was a Catholic Democrat, like many Southern IN Democratic elected officials and party leaders - and, although I didn't think Biden would play that well in the South, he still sounded less elite than Senator Kerry had.)

Biden did not attract the 10,000 that Obama had attracted back in May over in Louisville, but several thousand - partly white working class Southern IN folks - people showed up and many appreciated what they heard. There was a reasonably long line (pictured above) - with free bottles of water - waiting to get into the event in front of the Clark County Courthouse - and - you can't see this - a rock concert-style line of people hawking Obama-Biden T-shirts and memorabilia - I bought my colleague Ida's husband a black T-shirt with Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on it. Below is some of the crowd in front of the courthouse before Biden arrived.

Pictured below is one of the two Obama-Biden staffers who the campaign sent to work in the Jeffersonville office (Will). There was also a "Campaign for Change" office in the neighboring (Floyd Co.) office, in New Albany, where Stephanie works. All in all, the campaign opened several dozen IN offices, far outspending and outworking the McCain-Palin campaign, both in the "ground game" and on TV. I stopped by the Jeff office a couple of times, but I volunteered in the IN Democratic Party office, making calls that mentioned Obama, Congressman Baron Hill (for whom I had volunteered two years before), and IN Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jill Long Thompson. One Saturday I also volunteered over in the black middle class Louisville suburb of Newburgh, for Obama but also for our freshman Democratic Congressman, John Yarmuth, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell opponent Bruce Lunsford.

A very effective part of this rally was the use - harkening back to the half an hour before Senator Obama spoke in Mile High Stadium in Denver - when regular people told their stories and why they were supporting Obama (ending with "Washington ought to be paying less attention to Smith Barney and more attention to me, Barney Smith" - from IN no less) - of a regular person to introduce Biden. Juanita told about getting laid off from the Colgate plant across Interstate 65 from the courthouse and how this was happening to too many people (in the economic argument that Obama and Biden seamlessly stole from the Clintons). Juanita (pictured below) was not just a regular person in Jeff - in fact, she had been a leader of the union at Colgate - but she came off as authentic and troubled.

The crowd below braved the hot sun and was reasonably enthusiastic.

Biden came on as Juanita finished, and the two embraced below.

Biden made some relatively off the cuff remarks about the financial meltdown and negotiations betwen the two campaigns (though a couple of times - to get it right - he read somethings), before launching into a well practiced attack on Bush-McCain, the economy, and hope for the future (which nevertheless fit reasonably well with the meltdown discussion).

I had to get back to work and on to Children's Fellowship before it was all over, but I saw few others leaving, as Biden continued to warm up - on this hot down - Southern IN to the Obama-Biden. We now know that a Democratic presidential-vice presidential ticket won IN for the first time since 1964 and Obama-Biden carried Clark County (a county that President Bush won easily in 2004 - contributing to Baron Hill's Congressoinal loss that year - and one of the reasons why Hill is rated the third most conservative Democrat in the U.S. House right now).

-- Perry

An odd tragedy

There were a couple of odd things about an event that happened over the weekend. A Presbyterian Center colleague whom I don't know - but he works with several Center journalists we do know - died at age 42 - apparently of complications from meningitis - including pneumonia. Although he grew up in Louisville and has family in Louisville, he was found dead over the weekend next to his laptop at his home. We remember Vincent's Sunday school teacher, Paula, who became blind and deaf from meningitis, before she died, in Tallahassee.

There are Presbyterians, Catholics, Baptists, Unitarians, and even atheists working at the Center, but not too many non-Christians. I started checking on this when I thought of including non-Christians in a cultural proficiency program I helped put together two years ago (I ended up only including Christians of different denominations). In addition to there being one woman I think is Hindu, Evan Silverstein was the only Jewish person working at the Center. This was a far cry from my grad school days, when the New School was culturally secular Jewish and we had the September Jewish holy days off from school.

I went to the chapel service this afternoon for Evan. Interestingly, all of the scriptures were from the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible). I don't know if Evan was a secular or religious Jewish person. Plenty of Presbyterians are somewhat universalistic in their thinking (all the world's religions can be equally good ways of finding ultimate truth) (or don't believe in Hell) but others are not and certainly plenty of Baptists are not universalists. So I had to look around at the 60 or so people who were there and wonder who believed that Evan was going to Hell. It's this sort of thinking (perfectly logical from an orthodox Christian perspective) that helped make my Mother - at age 16 - start to wonder about the evangelical Protestant theology she grew up with - when her boss when she was in her last year at Columbus, OH's East High School, a Jewish man who had narrowly escaped the Holocaust (standing on one foot for hours on the last train out of some European country - maybe Poland), died suddenly, and she found it hard to believe that he was going to Hell.

-- Perry

Stephanie's birthday

Stephanie's birthday falls on September 23, the first (depending on who you ask) day of fall and the same day as my father's birthday. In the aftermath of all of this turmoil (and - as it turns out - descending grades), the three of us celebrated Stephanie's 35th birthday. I started out by delivering at lunch time to Stephanie's school - instead of a flower arrangement - an edible fruit arrangement with apple slices, grapes, strawberry slices, and some chocolate covering thrown in for good measure. (Astute readers will recall that the box later shows up in "Odd maladies.") Stephanie's colleagues and students enjoyed it at school (I don't think I've ever sent Stephanie flowers.) (Pictured above is the fruit - by the end of the night or even the next day - when not much fruit was left.)

That night - a weeknight - Stephanie picked a pan-Asian - Mongolian barbeque-Korean restaurant - we'd never been to - not too many miles from where the balloon glow had been the previous weekend. We nodded little to Stephanie's Mongolian students, since we focused on the Korean food. The proprietress/hostess - warming up to us as she realized we appreciated Korean food - eventually brought us Korean condiments (pictured below) - kimchi, fish cakes, and all (even if Vincent wouldn't cooperate with picture-taking). S tephanie and Vincent were also demonstrating their aptitude with chop sticks.

The hostess stopped by to personally finish preparing/stirring by dulset bee-bim-bop. Stephanie had chop chae and Vincent bul-ko-gi (though fixed in an unusual manner) - it was still all good.

Below - I believe - is Stephanie's chop chae (the first time we took Vincent for Korean food - near campus in Columbus - we sold him on shrimp chop chae - though it took him a while to master chop sticks use).

Pictured below is my bee-bim-pop - a rice dish with chili sauce cooked in an iron pot - with the rice sticking to the pot! I got sold on this dish on my first night out to eat with Taejeon - in South Korea - when I visited Penny and Serge there for two weeks in November 1995 (right before I met Stephanie and Vincent).

When we got home, Stephanie opened some presents - from us and Grandma Martha and her Mother Nancy, and cards - we had some edible fruit and carrot cake - plus Vincent made a model of a brain - with celery as the cerebellum - for the physiological psychology chapter of his Advanced Placement psychology class. The model worked in a way - his classmates helped eat it - and he remembered the parts of the brain he represented in the cake - and frogt the parts he left out (later on a test).

I gave Stephanie some Spanish phrase books for her possible upcoming mission network meeting trip to Guatemala and her Mom (?) gave her a shawl, among other things.

Pictured below is Vincent working on his brain cake - from a model to his left that he had drawn.

There's the model and the cake and then Vincent lighting the candles on Stephanie's birthday carrot cake.

We had a late night but we got some good Korean food, Vincent completed a school project, and we got to share some gifts and some good times.

Click on play, however to check out Vincent's odd "Happy birthday" rendition towards the end of the evening.

-- Perry

Stephanie in Guatemala etc.

This week Stephanie is in Guatemala for a Presybterian Guatemala Mission Network meeting partly with two pastors from eastern Guatemala churches that we visited in 2007 and with which we're considering forming a partnership. She and I talked briefly by phone at dinnertime yesterday.

She sounded OK- In fact, she said the biggest challenge she's faced is trying to decide whether to leave in the middle of worship services when she has go to the bathroom. She said it wasn't raining - that it was pretty - though our Guatemalan student minister thought a tropical depression was headed that way. We got her a rain jacket (and a new camera) before she went.

Stephanie wore the shirt jacket her mother Nancy made her out of material from Guatemala on the plane at 6 a.m. Monday. I don't know whether she'll be able to get any more material. She took $50 worth of Guatemalan quetzales - she's basically been at a church camp on Lake Amatitlan (lake pictured above) so far and I see she hasn't made any ATM withdrawals.

To see a video about the church camp, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dVrK7vcXgY

The meeting finishes up after lunch today and she and former missionary Ellen Dozier will stay in a Guatemala City hotel tonight (in a city notoriously dangerous, especially for women). Ellen - who's been worshiping with our church since she returned from Guatemala this summer - and Stephanie may try to connect with a Honduran missionary (currently in Guatemala) who was in the U.S. and worshiped as part of our church in 2004.

Stephanie is slated to return at 10 p.m. Friday. If something goes wrong with her connecting flight in Houston, she can always stay with my Mother, who is at a meeting in Houston.

Vincent and I are both going to the doctor's this afternoon. After another (4-day - in this case) fall break, he has now missed two days of school.

Monday evening Vincent and I went to the memorial service for his great grandmother, Granny Love, in downtown Reynoldsburg (OH). His father and most of his aunts and uncles were not there. After that, I visited with my aunts and cousin at nearby Mt. Carmel West Hospital (a squad car - it turns out - was taking Aunt June to the ER with very high blood pressure readings while Vincent and I were leaving the funeral home) while Vincent went to the Pickerington Barnes and Noble. We got home to St. Matthews at 1:15 a.m., which didn't help our colds.

With his cold, Vincent predicted a Senator McCain win Tuesday night and was surprised to wake up Wednesday afternoon and find we have a President Elect Obama. Most Children's Fellowship kids Wednesday night seemed happy about the outcome.

-- Perry

Star power

The one way Kentucky is political Ground Zero this fall is in the struggle for control of Congress. As the economy imploded and President Bush's popularity and Senator McCain's popularity sagged, so did that of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (24-year Senate veteran but former county executive in Louisville), who had helped round up votes for Bush for years in the Senate and who also rounded up votes for the controversial - in KY, at least - $700 billion bailout. (McConnell's spouse, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, is also the only person to serve all eight years as a Bush Administration Cabinet official.) For the Democrats to win the 60 Senate votes necessary for them to get around a filibuster, they'd have to take some Republican seats that the folks had taken for granted until late in October. Knocking off incumbent Republicans in MN (where SNL alumnus Al Franken is running neck and neck with former St. Paul Mayor (and former Democrat) Norm Coleman (this is the late Senator ' old seat) and even in GA , Alaska, and KY now seems possible. McConnell has pulled ahead a little in the polls - and he's a master politician who helped make the KY Republican Party what it was at its height a couple of years ago. Late this past week we got a robo-call from actress Ashley Judd (who remember way back from "Ruby in Paradise"), a KY native (and sister and daughter of the singing Judds) representing Obama, who helped headline a Democratic get-out-the-vote rally, also featuring Governor Steve Beshear (pictured above) (who deposed McConnell ally Ernie Fletcher last year), partly to boost turnout for businessman Bruce Lunsford (pictured below to Judd's right), the Democratic candidate against McConnell (who some Dems still don't trust because he ended up endorsing Fletcher five years ago). We didn't make it to this outdoor rally in a park on the south side of town. Apparently she knocked McCain for his wealth, which seemed a little odd (given how wealthy Lunsford is).

Two days later at a union hall in the SW side of the county, the KY primary victor Hillary Clinton, whose campaign we helped support in May (we also got an e-mail and call about this event though we missed it) appeared at a pro-Lunsford rally. KY's former Miss America Heather French Henry MCed and a host of other KY Democrats joined them. Over the weekend President Bill Clinton (who we also saw in May) stumped other parts of the state for Lunsford.

In terms of the Democrats' margin in the House, KY's two incumbent House members - including our own John Yarmuth - seem OK. But a seat vacated by a Republican may go to a Democrat. In Bullitt County - south of Louisville - not too far from where Judd and Hillary Clinton had appeared - a popular Republican linked to an unpopular Republican (President Bush) made one of the very few campaign appearances made by any Bush this fall. First Lady Laura Bush - who didn't show up for a Lincoln birthday bicentennial event nearby when that snowstorm canceled it - did show up to stump for Brett Guthrie, the Republican Congressional candidate (to Bush's right and behind).

Democrats picked up three seats in the greater Kentuckiana area in 2006. And, despite Bush's appearance, they may pick up a fourth south of Louisville, as Kentuckiana continues to go from red to blue - thanks in part to - or perhaps in spite of - the visits by stars. Whether this transition includes the Democrats taking one of two KY U.S. Senate seats and sending the Democrats over the top to 60 votes remains to be seen.

-- Perry

Ground zero

Before 9/11, "Ground Zero" met the most contested, most critical voting areas in the country - In the 2000 election, this was along Florida's I-4 corridor, near where I was living (Sarasota). Hence, Vice President Gore started out Election Day 2000 - almost a year before 9/11 - at the Ground Zero spot of the Hillsborough County (Tampa) Democratic Party offices (near where I'd seen him a month before with Jimmy Buffett) - at 6 a.m.

This year there is no single Ground zero. But we have connections with many of them. Above is a picture from last week, where President Clinton and Senator Obama engaged in their only joint campaign appearance - not far from I-4, in Kissisimmee, near Disney World, which I took a Greyound bus through during spring break 2004 - on the way to picking up our car in downtown Orlando.

Below is Obama in Harrisonburg, VA, last week, speaking to the overflow outdoor crowd (before heading inside), that included my sister Penny and nephew Jacob, in the Shenandoah, at the James Madison University campus (where a friend once went to school), less than an hour from their Crozet, VA home.

I don't think they actually got to shake hands with Obama (though Stephanie apparently didi in Illinois).

Here's Senator Obama, before an appearance last week in the Cincinnati Reds' spring training stadium outside of Sarasota, FL, where I lived in fall 2000, near downtown Sarasota, which Stephanie, Vincent, and I visited regularly that year (and just about 8 miles from where Stephanie, Vincent, and Frisco lived for two years) - picking out a pumpkin in front of the First United Methodist Church in Sarasota.

Less than a mile from where I saw Senator Biden, across the Ohio River in Jeffersonville, was Governor Palin this past Wednesday, in another ground zero state, Indiana. Hank Williams, Jr. warmed up the crowd.

And Palin appeared with her husband, Todd.

Democrats I tooked with said the crowd was listless, because of the physical arrangement of the indoor facility, but I'm skeptical.

Back in Florida last week, Senator McCain appeared at a foreign policy forum at one of my favorite places in the state, still on the I-4 corridor, in the old Tampa Bay Hotel, which is now part of the University of Tampa. I walked through there last November. My "Florida" book also features the old hotel prominently. Below, after the forum, Larry King of CNN, interviewed McCain.

At Widener University, on the north (white) end of Chester, a largely working-class Philadelphia suburb town 3-4 miles from where I went to college and where I volunteered and worked off and on for several years during and after college, Senator Obama went ahead and spoke last week to a rainy crowd of some 6,000 (below). The same morning Senator McCain canceled a nearby outdoor rally (where the weather was also bad). PA (like IN, VA, and FL) is another Ground zero.

After the weather cleared - and inside - a couple of days later - just one train stop from Swarthmore, my college stop, maybe 4 miles from Chester, and in a high school where a college friend did her teaching internship, Senator McCain made one more pitch in PA.

Later that day, McCain was in Columbus, OH, where my Mother, Stephanie, and Vincent are from and where Stephanie, Vincent, and I met - appearing with California Gov. Arnold Scharznegger, who runs a annual fitness show in Columbus (capital of OH, 2004's Ground Zero, where I volunteered for one of the campaigns on two different weekends in fall 2004).

Yesterday (Sunday) - braving hecklers but not bad weather - Senator Biden and spouse Jill appeared back in FL, in my hometown of FL - outside the FSU football stadium and administration building dubbed the "University Center."

Below on the right horizon is the state capitol building (see "Tallahassee landmarks") where my Mother had her office for many years.

While the Bidens were in Tallahassee - and just hours after Senator McCain had left Columbus - Senator Obama was back in the 2004 Ground zero, at a sunny outdoor rally, on the banks of the river, in downtown Columbus - with the old Lincoln LeVeque tower (built in 1929, just before the last Great Depresssion) - in the background.

-- Perry

Balloon glow

A couple of years ago Stephanie and I chased in a car the Kentucky Derby Festival balloon race. I missed a "balloon glow" in Macomb. We thought a balloon glow might be a nighttime start of a balloon race. Instead, as it gets dark, they use the hot air to blow the balloons up - and they let the baloons shine and make a lot of noise blowing them up - and then the balloons get deflated - there's no balloon race. It's all a kind of an exercise. One of the area suburbs is Jeffersontown which - like Pickerington, where Stephanie's mother lives - is a sprawling suburb - but has an old downtown that many J-town residents probably don't go too. Hurstbourne Parkway - like Pickerington's 256 - in J-town is where our vet's office is. On Friday night - the last night of Ike aftermath for us (we'd get home to find the lights on - see "Ike aftermath" - and another night during the week after Vincent ran away when Vincent was off who knows where - Pablo's house, I believe ) - Stephanie and I drove past our vet's and went - sans Vincent and Frisco - to the balloon glow associated with Jeffersontown's annual fall Gaslight Festival (the parade had been on Thursday). It was quite a scene with lots of kids and families. We were sort of bummed there was no race - but the glowing balloons were kind of cool.

You can't see it well, but below is a balloon that bore the logo of Coca-Cola, the company that Nancy worked for for a couple of decades.

All of balloons bore logos of sponsors, including one for Subway - though you can't make out the logos so well in the dark (although - when we first got there - it was lighter - and also lighter than it appears in these photos).

I've taken a video of later in the relatively short event proper (see below). As the event wound up we talked with a woman there with her child and extended family - She was a medical researcher for the university and was originally from some Eastern European country (like the Ukraine - the first of two such Eastern European American women we talked with events over the subsequent few weeks).

Below is a video I took with my camera from late during the event. Click on the play button to view it.

-- Perry