Analysis and Synthesis: Current Affairs and Presidential Legacies

An early ambition was that I might enter politics or academia, or become a diplomat/lawyer/corporate executive with an international career. But my perspective has always been one of multiplicity: it felt more natural to me to see the interrelatedness of humanity than to become an expert specializing in a fragment of the universe. I wanted a personal life and the freedom of my own thoughts and ideas.

Formally, my education includes studies in literature and the liberal arts, aesthetics, theory, production and performance of art and visual works; cultural analysis, expressive arts and symbolism, identity, social groups and institutions, power and politics, law; historical and intellectual analysis, cognitive psychology and behavioral analysis, sociology; management, organizational behavior, micro-and macro-economics, statistics; earth science; communications, print journalism, foreign reporting, interactive multimedia, and electronic news production.

Despite my reputation for scholarship, leadership, and organizational abilities, I viewed myself as an artist. But not just any kind of artist: I work with what is intangible, non-verbalized, and emergent. My purpose is to see and to experience the future before it manifests, to reveal the soul, to create what has not been seen before, and still to make a difference in the world. There is no conventional training for this unique vocation, so I set out to collect the memories and the portfolio of life and work experiences that would enable me to fulfill my destiny. You cannot consider yourself to be a true artist unless you have experienced complete joy and serenity, catharsis, intense feelings, bittersweet memories, and sorrow—the awakening of the kundalini life force.

Given this filter, here is my analysis of the current state of affairs:

I like Barack Obama and sense that he is a person of destiny. The present conservative agenda, which first gained a stronghold during the ascent of Reaganomics, is now a thing of the past. It is about time that the shrill and divisive practitioners of media yip-yap will soon be subordinated—along with outmoded management styles and corporate/consumer excesses.

The nature of American society and corporatism tends to mirror the personality and policies of the commander-in-chief. In Reagan we had a man in his dotage; in Bush I a wealthy elitist who was seriously out-of-touch with how common people lived; in Clinton and Bush II, there was slippage into adolescent behavior. But Obama is something else—a consistently virtuous, mature, sober, and responsible adult. The smart way his presidential campaign was run is a sign of what is to come. What the mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid.” was to the Clinton administration, “good judgment” will be to the Obama administration.

The four C’s—communication, connection, creativity, and collaboration—will rule. Obama brings style and substance, the likes of which the world stage has not seen before. Look for equality, compassion, innovation, ethics, service, and discipline to be the imprints of an Obama administration. Barack Obama ran for president because he wanted to make a difference, to change the world, and as an internal challenge to himself. An only child from a single-parent household with an absent father, there is incredible personal loneliness given this status. From the time he was a child, Obama had to create his own place and make his own way in the world: he had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Obama’s internal motivation was to create something of stability and substance, and to challenge society’s assumptions.

Obama has just over 60 days before he is sworn in as president of the United States. He has collected a coterie of like-minded individuals into his orbit, and he and his team plan to hit the ground running. I respect the fact that Obama will not allow himself to be rushed into doing anything ill considered or unseemly. He will wait until the present administration is out of office before he reveals his true plans. I do not feel Obama will attempt too much at once. To do so would be foolhardy. First, the economy must be placed under control. It was pointless to hand over $700 billion in taxpayer funds without strings attached, so you can expect an Obama administration to address this loophole. The United States did not have a true free market economy in the first place; the system was weighted in favor of the plutocracy. What we will probably see in the future is a hybrid version of free market enterprise and socialism. The bailouts already amount to a form of corporate socialism. As well, you can expect a foreign government to try to take advantage of Obama early in his administration; he will be tested on the international front sooner rather than later. Also, the government must do all it can to keep President Obama and the first family safe.

When the timing is right, President Obama will begin to unfold his administration’s initiatives. If all goes well, Obama’s administration can expect to be in power for eight years; American voters are inclined to give a new president two terms in office. If the country is prosperous, another Democrat will succeed him. As I mentioned earlier in the year, I don’t sense that Hillary will ever become president. She had a chance to become vice-president in 2008, but she and former President Clinton held onto their sense of entitlement too long and had not built a bridge to Obama’s inner circle. And do not discount any lingering feelings of rivalry. Rarely does rivalry fully dissipate, and feelings of rivalry are constructive only when sublimated. Interestingly, Obama and Hillary are very similar in one startling way. They are both strongly motivated by a mission of purpose and public service in their lives: they differ in that Obama is innately collaborative while Hillary has been controlling. That her core staff uses the term “Hillaryland” as a form of self-designation reinforced the impression of imperialist tendencies.

Hillary completely redeemed herself during the general election and has the political capital to become the nominee in 2012, but this would be a denouement. Like John McCain, in four years her time will have passed. I see her more in the mold of a Ted Kennedy. Like Kennedy, whose own presidential ambitions were thwarted, over time, Hillary will follow his lead as an elder stateswoman and national power broker. In the future, Hillary could still become a vice-presidential candidate to balance a ticket, if the position were handed to her on a silver platter. Obama is a tough act to follow. Do not expect another black/bi-racial/minority president to follow in Obama’s footsteps in the foreseeable future. A female or ethnic minority as vice-president would be a likelier scenario: the glass ceiling has been shattered.

While Hillary, John Kerry, and Bill Richardson may all be interested in becoming Secretary of State, there is a pecking order. There are always political debts to be paid with a successful campaign and, in this respect, Obama is no exception. Kerry might have the backing of the Kennedys, but Hillary has more clout. Hillary helped deliver her constituency of women and blue-collar votes during the general election; Kennedy and Kerry combined did not have the traction to deliver Massachusetts to Obama during the Democratic primary. Hillary’s influence and stature will continue to grow. Once Ted Kennedy passes, so too will the vested power and authority of the clan. Right now, there is no one in the generational pipeline with the larger-than-life ambitions of their predecessors. Caroline and her late brother John were raised as Bouviers by their mother, not as Kennedys…they always wanted a private life. Kerry’s visibility at this time is due in large part to his his wife’s inherited wealth; the nation had already rejected him as a presidential candidate. Richardson is a prominent link to the Hispanic constituency, and his loyalty has already been severely tested. The Clintons gave Richardson a national profile and career, but he gave his endorsement to Obama. Theirs is a multicultural bond and, in the future, viable political candidates will want to emphasize a multicultural or bi-racial connection to appeal to the increasingly influential Millennial generation.

Historically, Hillary has carved an independent identity from her husband, the former president. Bill Clinton scored record-high approval ratings and the economy soared under his administration. For years, this was enough to stave off concerns about Clinton’s ethical lapses and the sexual misconduct allegations. Al Gore would have become president if not for the Lewinsky sex scandal and subsequent impeachment proceedings against the president, so it is fair to say that Bill Clinton lost the White House for the Democrats. The combination of inappropriate sexual conduct and impeachment was a national distraction that ushered in the current, failed presidency.

Sarah Palin’s moment has passed. The media leaks about outlandish behavior occurred because Republican stalwarts wanted to discredit any claim she has to an important role or stature in the Republican Party. Palin is trying to prolong her news cycle because she wants a viable career, but she is woefully not ready for prime time. As a voter and taxpayer, I am highly offended that the Republican Party tried to sell her to the American people while Republicans kept harping on Obama’s inexperience to become president. Her selection completely torpedoed that argument. To be fair, I felt the complaints about Palin’s new $150,000 wardrobe were largely irrelevant. Virtually every female network and major market news anchor receives a clothing allowance if she appears on prime time, and a Republican donor or a discretionary budget could have provided the funds. However, what is hypocritical is holding Palin up as a Walmart mom after her wardrobe makeover. You would not find any of the designer fashions from Neiman Marcus at a Walmart. I do not see Palin as a political power player on the national stage; she may instead find herself relegated to Ollie North territory.

Prior to Super Tuesday, I suggested Mitt Romney for the Republican ticket. In the general election, the popular vote differential was 6% and there were five battleground states. Romney has credibility as an executive and for his economic expertise. Wall Street likes Romney, and so does Middle America. It was inane to tap Palin because of concerns about energizing the conservative base. To whom would the fundamentalists and conservatives turn? In a general election, between Obama/Biden and McCain/Romney, passions would have run high and the base would have shown up at the polls.

Romney spent millions of his own money to buy entry into national politics. He is deceptively smart, ambitious, and strategic; if he wants it enough, he will be the Republican nominee in 2012. Romney has a joint J.D./M.B.A. from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School; in addition, he was a Baker Scholar in the top 5% of his HBS class. He was CEO of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, which he used as his political springboard to become the Republican candidate for Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat in 1994. Taking on the patriarch of the Kennedy clan gave Romney immediate standing and visibility. Romney won his bid to become governor of Massachusetts in 2002. In 2007, when his first and only term as governor ended, Romney ran for president and collected political capital as an effective surrogate for John McCain during the 2008 general election.

With Romney on the Republican ticket instead of Palin, Obama still might have eked out a victory. Fortunately, McCain was desperate enough to want to win that he placed his trust in the wrong people and resorted to contrivance. This blatantly political gesture was enough to seal the outcome.

While waiting outside the door of my niece’s classroom at St. Mary’s parochial school, I viewed the pictorial line of U.S. presidents extending from George Washington to Barack Obama, the 44th office-holder. It occurred to me that what made many of these presidents so memorable were the historic events that took place during their tenure or the landmark legislation and seismic changes in society left as a legacy of their administrations. I felt a sense of pride in the accomplishments and resiliency of our republic through the passage of time and its leadership in world events under the stewardship of heads of state democratically elected by a heterogeneous populace. This to me is the essence of America.

George Washington (1789-1797) – the American Revolution, the Constitution, the birth of the nation

Thomas Jefferson (1801-09) – the Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase

Abraham Lincoln (1861-65) – the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the abolition of slavery

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09) – the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Panama Canal, the conservation movement

Woodrow Wilson (1913-21) – World War I, the League of Nations, the Treaty of Versailles, creation of the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Reserve System, and a federal income tax; I attended Woodrow Wilson Elementary School

Herbert Hoover (1929-33) – the Great Depression, Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, prohibition

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-45) – the Great Depression, the New Deal, Social Security, Pearl Harbor, World War II, the Good Neighbor Policy, the United Nations, the Yalta Conference, creation of the Securities Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Japanese internment camps

Harry Truman (1945-53) – the Fair Deal program, the United Nations, the U.N. General Assembly, World War II, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Potsdam Conference, the Berlin Airlift, the Cold War, NATO, the National Security Act, the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency and the national Security Council, the Korean War, the Republic of China (Taiwan), McCarthyism

Dwight Eisenhower (1953-61) – the Cold War, the Korean De-Militarized Zone, the interstate highway system, nuclear weapons, the Eisenhower Doctrine, creation of HEW, Brown v. Board of Education

John F. Kennedy (1961-63) – the youngest president elected to office, the first and only Roman Catholic president, first televised presidential debates, 1,000 days in office, Pulitzer Prize winner in history, the New Frontier, civil rights, the modern feminist movement, the Vietnam War, the Peace Corps, the Space Race, the Arms Race, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crises, the Berlin Wall, the Immigration and Nationality Act

Lyndon Johnson (1963-69) – the Vietnam War, the Great Society, the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, the “War on Poverty,” appointment of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court, urban renewal and beautification programs, creation of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Public Broadcasting Act, the Higher Education Act, the Bilingual Education Act, urban mass transportation, fair housing, the Gun Control Act, won presidency with 61% of vote and widest popular vote margin in history

Richard Nixon (1969-74) – end of the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, the first man on the moon, rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China, détente with the Soviet Union, SALT talks, creation of EPA, DEA, OSHA, Skylab, federal affirmative action plan

Jimmy Carter (1977-81) – Iran hostage crises, energy crises, stagflation, Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, Arab-Israeli peace treaty, Camp David Accords, return of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama, SALT, creation of Department of Energy and Department of Education, airline and communications industry deregulation, civil service reform, record number of minority appointees, human rights, gay rights, Voyager 1, amnesty for Vietnam War draft evaders, 1980 Moscow Olympics boycott

Ronald Reagan (1981-89) – Reaganomics, deregulation and income tax overhaul, peacetime prosperity, end of the Cold War, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev, the Iran-Contra affair, the bombing of Libya, the invasion of Grenada, “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative, the War on Drugs, “Just Say No” anti-drug advertising campaign, the Challenger disaster, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, the oldest president in office

George H.W. Bush (1989-93) – the Persian Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, the end of the Cold War, the collapse of Communism and the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., the fall of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. invasion of Panama, high deficit spending, “No New Taxes” broken pledge, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Clean Air Act, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the North American Free Trade Agreement

William J. Clinton (1993-2001) – the longest period of peace-time economic expansion in American history, record low unemployment and inflation, balanced budget and budget surplus, triangulation policy, North American Free Trade Agreement, United Nations peace keeping forces in Bosnia, Operation Desert Fox, the Battle of Mogadishu, the Oslo accords, welfare reform, Family and Medical leave Act, failure of health care reform, worldwide campaign against drug trafficking, highest rate of home ownership, children’s health insurance, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" gays in the military policy, placing the White House and federal agencies on the internet, sexual misconduct allegations, the Lewinsky scandal, impeachment, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Brady Bill, Travelgate, Whitewater, Troopergate

George W. Bush (2001-09) – 9-11 terrorist attacks, the worst financial crises since the Great Depression, the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, $700 billion bailout of U.S. financial system, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, Hurricane Katrina, Operation Desert Shield, global financial crises, sub prime mortgage crises, federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the War on Terror, Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, Guantanamo Bay detainment, the No Child Left Behind Act, illegal immigration, temporary guest-worker program, opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, global warming, stem cell research, Terrorist Surveillance Program, Hurricane Katrina, midterm dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy, Plamegate, hanging chads, highest disapproval ratings in polling history; historians view this Bush presidency as a failure

Barack Obama (2009 - ) – first African-American/bi-racial/non-white president in American history, first president born outside of the continental United States, U.S. financial crises (TBD: signature, landmark legislation in race, financial reform, environment, homeland security, international affairs, energy, education, universal health care, ethics?)

Obama 2008: An Intuitive Campaign

If I were president and a highly ambitious, driven individual with my iron fist inside the velvet glove, how would I choose my staff and cabinet?

I would first turn to friends with whom I have a high comfort level, to smart and capable people who have proven themselves over the years and have remained personally and professionally loyal. Then, I would look outside, to a mix of new blood and veterans. I would want diversity in my administration, because I would feel that the different backgrounds, expertise, personalities, and voices would keep me grounded in reality: the mix would keep the dialogue fresh and intellectually stimulating. Working in concert, we would all be able to come up with innovative ways to deal with the challenges the country faces, to govern efficiently and effectively, and to move the nation forward with a progressive agenda.

This is precisely what Obama has done with his selection of Rahm Emanuel to become his chief of staff. It is something of a good cop-bad cop partnership, an extremely smart and pragmatic choice. As president, Obama should strive to remain above the fray and to continue the discipline and discretion that was the hallmark of his victorious campaign. He needs his enforcer, and Emanuel has worked with him in the trenches of Chicago politics, is a seasoned Washington veteran from the Clinton administration, a straight-talker, and is intensely loyal to Obama.

Obama’s election, in large part, is the handiwork of Chicago’s vaunted political machine, no longer just a machine but now a talented network of politicos and supporters that have made their mark in the Windy City. Obama’s Chicago-based team includes David Axelrod, the chief campaign strategist, a University of Chicago graduate and former journalist from the Chicago Tribune with a background in television advertising, David Plouffe, the campaign’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and the queen of all media herself, Oprah Winfrey.

Axelrod and Obama are a perfect pairing. Axelrod crafted the soaring message and tone of Obama’s campaign. According to his website, “David Axelrod is one of the pre-eminent political media consultants in the United States, having produced winning media and messages for over 150 campaigns at the local, state, and national levels. Since opening the firm twenty years ago, Axelrod has been attracted to candidates and causes that offer more humane policies and progressive change.”

The Obama campaign was something the world had not seen before: this is the first time the public has seen a presidential campaign waged using poetry and psychologically intuitive methods. The Camelot comparison during the Kennedy era and the Reagan presidency had parallels, but neither achieved this artful, insinuating level of conquest. Everything was pitch perfect—from the innovative use of the internet to reach a global audience, to the sub-text, the prose, the symbolism, the images—in a way that conventional writing and logic cannot inspire. Obama and his team won the election because the campaign transmitted emotional nuances and chords that touched and resonated at a deeply profound, human level...perhaps a long-forgotten memory. The language of symbols, images, and memory is timeless, with no worldly boundaries. As the audience, we all became part of something larger than ourselves, a global community, the human family. President-elect Obama has engendered copious goodwill because of this emotional buy-in, which he can wisely use to establish his historic presidency.

Certainly, my own world and experiences have been populated by direct and personal contact with people of vision, creativity, and imagination: educators, poets, MacArthur fellows, and Nobel laureates. What Obama has done at a political level, I have practiced for over a decade in my literary writing. I recognized early on that there was a more direct way to touch the soul and the spirit than through plot and characterization. Perhaps because my creative writing professor was also a poet and essayist, my literary output was nonlinear, compact, dense, and encoded; my first literary novella was just over 100 pages long. It may be that my writing style and the ascendance of the Obama era merged at some point: if this is so, then perhaps the world may see for the first time a new form of literary writing to coincide with the rise of this historic, new world order.

Obama, Race, and Identity

The crowds present at Barack Obama's victory speech last night was the first time I have witnessed the most powerful manifestation of America's collective subconscious. Bush and his cronies seriously underestimated the damage their policies have done to the population at large, so in psychic terms, yesterday's election results represented a cleansing—the passing of the old guard and a step into the future.

Obama brought together a powerful coalition of voters that is coming into its own and supplanting the old order: ethnic minorities, youth, independents, and netizens. I didn't have time in my 2,250 word essay that I wrote in under four hours to do more than touch on the significance of what will be the most important legacy of the Obama era: race. In the coming years, I hope to write more extensively on this premise.

In the year 2000, at the dawn of the new millennium, I was there as part of Census 2000—the nation's first multicultural and multilingual census. I served on the regional media team on the staff of regional director Arthur Dukakis and as a press advance for the national director of the Census Bureau. For the first time in history, respondents to the census questionnaire were given an opportunity to self-identify their ethnicity. In the past, there were only a few boxes to check off: for example, bi-racial people had to choose between being black or white. In many ways, it was like choosing between one of your parents in a divorce case. In terms of identity politics, the decision was simplistic: if you were dark-skinned, you were black, and if you were light-skinned, you passed for white.

I would argue that Obama's historic achievement would not have been possible but for the rise of multiculturalism in this country and its celebration among America's immigrants and its youth. Assimilation is no longer preferable to acculturation for ethnic minorities as it was in the decades I was growing up. Yes, Obama is a light-skinned black and considers himself an African-American; his base is in the African-American community. However, he was raised and strongly influenced by his mother and maternal grandparents—all of them white. Culturally, his formative experiences took place among Asians and in Southeast Asia: his vaunted cool and serenity is extraordinarily Asian in temperament...very disciplined, very Zen (am I the only one who has made this connection?). Obama doesn't have the hell fire and political resume of a Jesse Jackson and would not have succeeded had his image and campaign been seen in the same light. Psychologically, as a blank slate, voters could project something of themselves onto the candidate. This is the first time in my lifetime that I can say we will have a president who truly represents the diversity that is America.

Millennials, multiculturals, intellectuals, independents, intuitives, and netizens understand this and, as voters, viewed Obama as someone who transcends race: a planetary citizen. When people see me for the first time, they see a woman who looks like a college student despite her age, a person of Asian descent; some might guess that I am a Filipina. Sometimes I am underestimated because I am stereotyped as a young and submissive Asian female. This is convenient and laughable essentializing. The reality is that I have for all my life identified myself as a global citizen, an evangelistic warrior and precursor of a future where there are no barriers of gender, race, or ethnicity: this is why I have easily mingled in many ethnic, social, cultural, and artistic milieus. In similar fashion, President-elect Obama has a thin line to walk given the huge and sobering task of governing a heterogeneous United States.

Of course, the Obama administration will deal with race, giving the issue the depth it has long deserved. But if he is to govern effectively and to deliver on the promise for a bright and inclusive future for all Americans, a President Obama must remain a bridge: an eloquent and transcendent figure.

As for the question: "What were you doing when Obama was elected president?" My husband, our Shih-Tzu, and I settled on the sofa in front of the television and watched split-screen election coverage from 4pm on. I had made buttermilk-soaked fried chicken and baby greens salad for dinner in front of the tv; we had snacks and drinks well-stocked. We're not political professionals or pundits, just deeply engaged and highly informed netizens (my husband started his high tech career with Lotus Development, and I used to work in television news…as an intern, I saw Peter Jennings—my tv news idol—in person every day; Peter would have loved this 2008 campaign). We predicted the election would be determined early, by 10pm the election would be called in Obama's favor and McCain would concede shortly afterwards. I also predicted the win would be a landslide, but that the election would be closer than expected: I was right on both counts. It was an electoral landslide, but the popular vote was much closer, only by 6% of total votes cast. At 10pm CST, as polls closed on the West Coast, all the major networks broke the news of Obama's projected win. Everything played out as predicted, and I stayed awake practically the entire night and well into morning watching and reading news updates.

My Life in an Obama Administration, Part II

I’m declaring for Obama in a landslide.

We knew the election results would either be a blowout or closer than expected. Nothing about the 2008 election season was ever middle ground or middle of the road. The 2008 election is nothing less than a battle for the hearts and minds of the American voter, a referendum on the future.

At 8:45 a.m. this morning, I arrived at Holy Family Catholic Church, in the 62nd district of Oklahoma, to cast my vote for Barack Obama. As I approached the church, the parking lot was filled to near capacity, as though a Sunday church service was already in session. But walking through the doors, the sight astounded me. There were about 200 people in line ahead of me, and it would be another 75 minutes until I was inside the auditorium to vote. I would learn that early risers who arrived to vote at 7:00 a.m. would have an even longer wait, an hour and a half. Early voting took place at the courthouse in our city on the previous Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday—the line at the courthouse snaked even longer, with voters waiting an hour and a half to vote. My elderly father showed up at 7:00 a.m. at the Episcopalian church near his home and finished voting in no time flat.

I saw my congressman standing in line, presumably to vote for his own re-election. I was tempted to ask T.W. Shannon—an African-American man, a Republican, and a neighbor—if he would vote the party line or with history. Of the voters I saw, most were middle age or older and white. Fewer than 25% were people of color or college age or younger, and maybe 10 were soldiers in uniform. The time passed more quickly than expected as people engaged in friendly banter and an air of civic-mindedness prevailed. The retiree next to me complained that he hated it when news organizations projected the winner ahead of time; he felt it was a disincentive for people to come out and vote. Most voters arrived singly…there were retirees, farmers, older Asian women, college students, and African-American couples in line. Young families came out together to vote. Mothers with toddlers in tow waited their turn, as did elderly citizens in wheelchairs. Neighbors chatted with neighbors. My neighbor, Linda, who’s married to a psychiatrist, saw me and told me she was looking forward to my next opinion piece. Friends and acquaintances caught up with each other. Here’s a sampling of the conversation I caught:

Middle-age man: “I know you…you used to be the postman who delivered my mail in Chattanooga. I always used to see you at square dancing.”
Retired postal worker: “I never delivered mail in Chattanooga, I did in Faxon.”
Middle-age man: “Well, I saw you at square dancing all the time. I don’t square dance any more…too old. I was the 17th person in line to vote in Faxon at 6:30 a.m. this morning. ”
Me: “Don’t the polls open at 7:00 a.m.? So didn’t you end up waiting about 45 minutes to vote?”
Middle-age man: “Yes, but people who showed up at 7:00 a.m. would have to wait about an hour.”

At 9:57 a.m. I finished voting. Oklahoma’s election ballot is an oversized sheet of paper printed on both sides. Voters draw a straight line in the middle with a felt-tip pen to connect the point of an arrow to the tail end. I felt good as I left the polling place…it was heartening to see so many people who made an effort to vote before their shift at work, spent their lunch time waiting in line, brought their young children with them. Regardless of who was their candidate of choice, voters understood that this was an historical election.

I lived for several years in New Hampshire, with its first-in-the-nation primary. The New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch traditionally tallies the first presidential votes cast in the nation. Obama won in a landslide, which came as something of a surprise. I now live in Oklahoma, which the national media views as the heartland of the new millennium. In 2006—the year my husband and I relocated from New Hampshire to return to the state where my family has lived for more than 40 years—Oprah, The New York Times, Design Star and The Contender featured Oklahoma and Oklahomans; in 2007, Lauren Nelson, a resident of our town was crowned Miss America 2007, and a local family had their dream house built and broadcasted on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. In 2005, Oklahoma native Carrie Underwood won American Idol and went on to become one of the franchise’s most celebrated alumni.

So what does Barack Obama represent to me, and what would his administration mean to the country? Well, as I have just described, he has brought with him an earnest sense of engagement and civic participation in the political process. To have inspired the fervor that he has means that the electorate would have made an effort to be better informed about the candidates’ position on issues. After what amounts to years and even decades of voter apathy, all these changes can only be for the better.

Certainly, Obama was the beneficiary of acts of god and nature that kept his candidacy afloat, the most compelling being the public’s furor over the sinking economy and the bailout of Wall Street. For too long, under a Republican administration, the heavy-hitting oligarchy was allowed to play fast and loose with the economic system without the necessary and responsible government oversight. When Wall Street failed, the bailout was necessary…virtually everyone was impacted, including Middle Americans with their pensions tied up in retirement plans. Anger over the economy, coupled with the disenchantment with the war in Iraq, proved too much to ignore. Sarah Palin became a drag on the Republican ticket. Has a vice presidential candidate’s qualifications to be commander-in-chief been so derided since George H.W. Bush hand-picked a little-known Indiana congressman to be his running mate? It’s a toss-up between Palin and Dan Quayle. Even voters who might have seemed suspicious of the change that Obama represented came to recognize that change was not a mantra for the sake of change but, rather, a referendum and a recognition that the system could not go on as in the past. John McCain is certainly a maverick, but this quality is most pronounced in his personal conduct rather than in his voting record, which shows a 90%-95% accord with President Bush. McCain is not the systemic change agent needed to overhaul a superannuated bureaucracy.

Obama impressed us all with his riveting speech at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston. Two years later, he began the long campaign to endear himself to the American public. Along the two-year slog through the Democratic primary season and the general campaign, Obama has made few mistakes. What potential minefields he encountered were the result of questionable associations, from which he quickly distanced himself. In those instances where he did not, notably, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama demonstrated an initial willingness to support his friends and mentors until it was unsustainable to do so.

What I admire most about Barack Obama is that he took a dream—a vision of what American has been and could yet become—so that we could see the potential in buying into his long-range thinking. He brought a fresh perspective to how we could approach the challenges that face our country. He did so through the power of words, his innate ability to articulate and to communicate what other presidents and candidates could not. Yet, his interpersonal and communication skills were honed because he himself spent much of his life at the margins of society. In his background, Obama was as far away from the profile of recent American presidents except for, perhaps, Bill Clinton.

Technically, Barack Obama is not black. He is bi-racial—an important distinction in an increasingly multicultural society—the product of a white mother from the Midwest and a black father from Africa. He grew up without his birth father in his life, raised by a single parent and then later by his white grandparents. His early environment was Hawaii, easily the most diverse state in the country where people of color hold influential roles and positions in all aspects of public life. Obama spent his formative years in Hawaii and in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian republic republic with a Muslim majority; the country is itself at the crossroads of the Pacific Rim.

Once on the mainland, Obama first attended a small, liberal arts college in Los Angeles before transferring to Columbia University in New York City. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he made his way to Chicago where he began to build the base for his political career. By all accounts, Obama's trajectory onto the national stage was meteoric.

I am a foreign-born Asian-American woman. As a person of color, many of my mentors have been African-American. Politically, this is because at the time I first became an activist in the 1970’s and 1980’s, African-Americans were better organized as a result of the Civil Rights movement than was the Asian-American community.

Traditionally, the South Side of Chicago is the nation’s bedrock of Black Power. Politically active and connected, the African-American community here is an influential network that raised and supported Barack Obama like many black politicians before him. While much about Obama’s delivery may come across as elitist and coolly intellectual, his rhythmic intonations and stylings are a product of the old-time sermons, a form of traditional storytelling by black preachers who were looked upon as the paternal head of the community. This is one reason why Obama was unwilling to turn his back on Jeremiah Wright until the former pastor disowned him.

Obama grew up without ever really knowing his father. His lost his mother too soon, when he thought there was still time. The recent death of his grandmother, for all purposes, is the last link to Obama’s former life. But he has reinvented himself. He now has a family of his own and had grafted himself onto a social, cultural, and political context of Black empowerment. The vision was Obama’s own, and he found a way to, methodically, realize his dreams. There are many success stories told by first generation immigrants and racial minorities in America, but this may be the greatest of them all: the audacity of a bi-racial boy raised by a single mother on an island halfway between the American mainland and Asia is on the verge of becoming the first non-white president of the United States. And who can say that Obama is not prepared? By virtue of his excellent education, his political apprenticeship and superlative mentors, his empathy with people on the margins of American life, his own hard work and effort, he has brought us all along for the ride and, in so doing, is guiding us gently and resolutely towards the challenges we face in the future. Ever the collaborator, Obama aims to create a unified country and an inclusive society. In his background and personal narrative is woven the tapestry of America's multi-cultural history. This is why his story resonates...why his time is now...why the outcome is inevitable.

In closing, what does Obama’s election as president, personally, mean to me? More than 13 million Americans are Asian-American, and Filipino-Americans are second only to the Chinese in numbers. I was born in the Philippines, raised in Oklahoma, have lived in California, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Washington, D.C., Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky, and Georgia, and have an Ivy League education. As an intellectual, writer, artist, and observer who, by virtue of my own experiences, can crawl inside Obama’s brain—does this now mean that I, too, can have a significant global platform? For someone who has remained true to her own voice and artistic vision, does the elevation of a kindred spirit who has shown the entire world the power of prose over conventional plot and characterization now mean that I can get published? Obama’s ascendance means to me that complexity is no longer verboten, and that unique ideas, authenticity, and originality are to be cultivated and celebrated. If all this is true, then—for the first time in my life, in an Obama administration—I can feel as though I were a part of the American mainstream.

Bereaved

Today I vacuumed my mother's floors, did four loads of laundry, emptied the trash, fed Seraphin the cat his last meal on earth, then ended the day by burying him.

There have been times in my past when people I cared about were taken from me because of unexpected circumstances. Simply, they disappeared from my life one day... An awful misunderstanding between two very close friends. A cutthroat power play in the workplace with collateral damage. But there was a reprieve: in the first case, I surreptitiously spotted the former associate—looking lonely and withdrawn—on board a subway train eight years after our acrimonious parting; and in the latter, a budding friendship continued long after the job had already ended.

Just like that. He was gone. I will never again see his furry face or feel him rub against my leg at my parents' doorway. My heart is bleeding, like the liquid redness oozing from his mouth.

What does it say about the value we ascribe to life in a civilization that is on the verge of deterioration? The careless and unnecessary loss of life diminishes us all. The hit-and-run driver didn't even stop. When I lived in pastoral New Hampshire, following a rainfall the country roads would team with wildlife…I always swerved to avoid hitting a stray animal—whether chipmunk or tiny frog. Why was this unwelcome stranger using our street as a thoroughfare? It is common enough to see dead mammals alongside the highways, but not in an established family neighborhood populated with children and pets.

The last time I saw Seraphin alive, he was enjoying a tendon I had placed in his food bowl from the stewed meat I braised for three hours just that morning. “Look at our baby,” I exclaimed to my mother who had walked me to the door. “Seraphin really enjoys his food.”

“Yes,” my mother slowly replied. “that cat always likes to eat.”

I headed out to complete my errands and when I returned less than an hour later before 3:30 p.m. he was gone. As I pulled into the driveway, I saw my husband by the fence, chatting on the phone about the family cat and whether or not anyone had seen him. “He was eating a while ago,” I answered. “All I have to do is call him and he’ll come running.” Ludicrously, in the surrealistic scene across the street, a ginger colored cat lay prostrate, its pink and neon green tags visible from the fur. My sister, brother-in-law and their children had driven past my parents’ home and saw a lifeless cat in front of our neighbor’s house. They called my husband to be sure Seraphin was safe. My rational mind had initially refused to make the connection that my intuition had instantly realized. I ran inside the house in my uncontrollable grief screaming. I couldn't return outside, even as my husband pleaded with me to keep my emotions in check. He kept asking for a shovel and a box, before another car could hit and disfigure our Seraphin’s body. How could he comprehend my grief? To him Seraphin was a stray cat that appeared one day and never left. He did not know that I was…Seraphin’s mother.

If I hadn't stopped by Kmart to look at the Martha Stewart turkey baster, I might have arrived home a little sooner and perhaps this slight alteration in the wrinkle of time would have saved Seraphin from fate. My mother had already set aside the leftovers for his evening meal. While I was away, Seraphin had finished the tidbit I lovingly fed him. One minute Seraphin was enjoying the sunlight as he bounced across the yard. An instant later, he was dead. If death had come elsewhere, in some alley or on another street, if he had never returned, we might have continued in ignorant bliss, thinking he had left home, found love, and started a family. But the reality is that blunt trauma had hit him on one side of his face, leaving a gash from which blood spurted in his head and bloodying his teeth and mouth. On the other side from where he landed, there were no such signs, he could have been sleeping in the middle of that busy street, rerouted that day through a family neighborhood because of the eminent domain taking of family homes to convert to commercial real estate less than two blocks away.

Whoever had done this deed had to have known that Seraphin had a family. He was too well-cared for, glossy, and was wearing pink and neon green tags that gave a contact telephone number and showed that his annual immunizations were current—proof that he was beloved, that he mattered to someone. He was snatched from an elderly couple, their small grandchildren, other family members, and me.

“Killing a cat is nine years bad luck," my mother whispered. Consumed with commingled rage and a bottomless sorrow, I was motivated to run into the street and scrawl graffiti on the spattered pavement, “Who killed our cat?" I grieved for some hours, then I composed myself and decided instead to commemorate Seraphin’s life in the only way I knew how, by crafting in my masterful, visceral, gift for words an homage to a beloved family member and the love he inspired in a family that took him in, cared for him, and loved him as one of their own. In this way, I hope to bring Seraphin back to life.

A pet. A being. A life.

I was the one who found Seraphin. Following one of my regular visits to my parents’ house, I was preparing to leave when I heard a plaintive sound, like a terrified infant crying. It was the voice of a disembodied kitten, but we couldn’t see him in the shrubs and bushes of the foundation plantings. Eventually, we localized the pitch as coming from the engine of my parents’ seldom used car, a capacious Cadillac. The kitten had to have been small enough to pass through the tubing and compartments of the engine. I tried to tempt the animal to make an appearance by leaving food and fresh water next to the wheel well. He was either frightened—or once he scampered up he didn’t know how to climb back down—because the leftovers remained untouched. There was no way something that new could have made its way to our yard and sought shelter in a car engine. Someone had to have brought him here. Left him to the vagaries of fate. Why couldn’t his owner have rang our doorbell and asked us to take him in instead of abandoning him and fleeing like a thief? We wouldn’t have turned them away…that is not our custom.

Several weeks passed before the frail and skinny creature came to trust humans once again and was comfortable enough to venture near me. We knew he was still alive because the plates of food were completely eaten and we could often hear a rustling as he darted unseen among the shrubbery. In time, he showed himself—a beautiful and graceful kitten, slight in build, with golden fur touched by clear pinkness around the nose, mouth, and ears. Having quietly gained his trust, the kitten now lingered by the tire on the driver’s side and scampered up to eat from my hand.

My niece named him Serafin, after her best friend in school, Sera, or Serafina, who moved when her father was reassigned to another military posting. This told me that she missed Sera terribly, in a way she couldn’t yet articulate, and was trying to keep her friend in her life by giving the foundling her friend’s name. I changed the spelling to Seraphin, because of its approximation to “seraphim,” a member of the highest order of angels with a pink cherub’s head and wings in Renaissance paintings. Somehow, the spelling seemed right to me.

As the months passed, Seraphin imperceptibly grew from a foundling to a handsome and lusty cat. When my mother was exercising by doing yard work, he would stay by her side until she finished for the day. When unoccupied, he would sit in the driveway, a muscular watch cat. His first home was in a car engine, so Seraphin had no fear of cars. This observation filled me with dread. Often, I would see him underneath one of the numerous cars parked in the driveway to shade himself from the hot sun. I would start my car engine then peer underneath to be certain Seraphin was out of harm’s way. There seemed to be no need for this, however, since Seraphin would dart to safety as soon as he heard an engine start up.

In the winter, faced with below freezing temperatures, my husband constructed a new home for Seraphin. Recycling a medium size-moving box, Joseph cleverly constructed an insulated igloo using foam and an old blanket, with a small hole cut just large enough for Seraphin to crawl inside. My fondest memory of Seraphin is how he would stand outside my parents’ door, eagerly anticipating whatever leftovers I brought for him as a treat, aside from his daily fare of household leftovers and premium, shredded canned cat food, of which we had just purchased another month's supply. I lavished him with grilled sardines and steamed shrimp—he would expertly gulp down the head, bones, and shells like a snake. There was also mesquite smoked barbecue, shredded meat from a chicken carcass, the trimmings from gourmet dishes I regularly made from scratch. Now, each time I have entered my parents’ home, I experience a wave of sadness. I miss his expectant presence that always brought a smile to my heart. Although I wanted to touch him, as an outdoor cat, Seraphin harbored fleas and parasites that could spread through my garments to our indoor pets and the children. Instead, I would often bring my face to his level and make kissing sounds and gestures while I admonished him to wait until I unwrapped his treat, or I would rub his head with my toe.

I would take Seraphin to the veterinarian and feed him his daily meals, but he was considered to be my mother’s cat. That is, until this past summer when a startling incident created an emotional bond between us. In his young life, Seraphin had experienced much pain and discomfort. Perhaps as a precursor to his eventual fate, someone had taken a BB gun and left what looked like a large and bloody shotgun hole in his right hindquarter. He never cried or complained, and calmly tried to lick clean the area around the wound, so no one in our family thought to bring him to the clinic. In fact, the veterinarian herself thought Seraphin had scratched an abscess underneath his fur. She retracted her diagnosis weeks later when she noticed the perfectly round scar—undeniable evidence of the damage left by a BB pellet.

But horrified, I had taken it upon myself to find a box large enough to fit Seraphin inside, even as he tried to claw his way out. For two weeks, I drove to my parents’ house like clockwork twice a day, eight hours apart, to administer antibiotics by mouth to Seraphin. To make the medicine palatable, I would choose a savory morsel and stick the small pill inside, then hand feed it to Seraphin to be sure it was completely swallowed. Along the way, I took to refreshing his water bowl and sweeping any leaves or debris near his insulated igloo. We tried to create a nest for Seraphin by the back door, inside a shed, or elsewhere around the property, but he had made his home in the space between the Cadillac and the den, right alongside the sheltered doorway entrance beyond the carport. As a sign of his affection, I would sometimes find half-pawed, small birds and mice near the gated door.

After the BB gun incident, we wanted to contain Seraphin. I wanted to train him to stay within the confines of our fenced yard. If he would only stay inside this charmed circle, he would remain forever safe. Everything he needed was within its boundaries—food, shelter, comfort, and love. We thought about constructing a 6x8 cage at the back of the house. We also considered boarding him with family friends. They were landlords who rescued the cats their tenants left behind by building a small addition at the back of their house. Up to a dozen cats would laze in comfort. There was no room to scamper, they could only sit and became very fat cats. There was a heater to keep them warm in the winter, and they were given fresh food and water. In the morning, Uncle Arturo would sit inside the cat condo, with his cup of coffee and newspaper, surrounded by his beloved cats while his long-suffering wife, who loved him very much even as she was allergic to cats, would empty out the litter box each day. Neither option seemed viable, or would make Seraphin happy, so we instead had him neutered, assured by the vet that the procedure would somewhat diminish his wanderlust.

Two months ago, Seraphin’s death had been foretold to me in a lucid dream. In the dream, a man, my father, was speaking to me, telling me that Seraphin had been hit by a car, and that it was a painful death. At the time, I wondered whether to dismiss this knowledge as a manifestation of my fear: that this fate was inevitable for a cat that felt comfortable around vehicles. But perhaps it was my sixth sense preparing me for what was to come. I was terrified enough to revisit the options for keeping Seraphin contained, but I understood that, at heart, Seraphin was an alley cat. I was resigned to the probability, and the expectation, that he would be a part of my life for no more than 3, 4, or 5 years, and hopefully many more. But the average lifespan of a feral cat, if he makes it past kitten hood, is less than two years. Alley cats are likely to remain feral, unless a bond is established when the kitten is still a few weeks old. We were able to socialize Seraphin while he was still young, so that he learned to trust humans. He was about 18 months old at the time of his death.

I have no photographs of Seraphin. Now, he exists only in my mind and in my heart. I try to forget how I emptied an ornate document box, decorated in red and gold trim, with a golden palm tree on the cover. How I gently lifted Seraphin’s cold remains with rigor mortis setting in and placed him in a familiar curled position with his forepaws tucked under his chin. I try to forget the dried blood that my mother told me was not necessary to wash away, and the prayer I composed in my mind through my tears, for his soul and in gratitude for the gift of Seraphin’s presence in our lives, as my husband, a high tech guru, and my brother-in-law, a physician, mixed concrete with water for a slab. They placed the casket on top of the hardened slab, and then covered the hole made in the ground with more concrete. In my handwriting, I wrote a love note to our beloved cat, and when the surface was fixed, they placed fresh dirt and grass to level with the walkway.

You might ask yourself: “What kind of person sees the meaning of existence in the shortened life cycle of an outdoor cat?” I will give you the answer: I am someone who transfigures daily or overlooked rituals and details to give transcendence and permanence to the stream of life. All of life is, to me, art—that elusive, emotional or sensory connection that allows us to appreciate beauty as a portal to the harmony, balance, and rhythm in the universe, and our own relation to this eternal mystery.

When we hand-pick people and other living beings to let into our lives, it is a vulnerable act. You are exchanging a part of yourself that you can never get back. To lose the beloved is to forfeit a piece of your soul. There are those who, after episodes in their lives—sometimes precious and memorable, other times damaging—move on without a thought about a past connection. The chapters of life, to people like these, are expendable, throwaway. Then there are others, like myself, for whom this mindset is incomprehensible: the very gift of life is to be honored, commemorated, no matter how seemingly insignificant. This to me is the ultimate litmus test of the kind of world we choose to live in. Seraphin was taken from us too soon, but in the all too short time he was mine, this abandoned kitten who grew into a magnificent cat inspired me with his loyalty, his fortitude, and his full, sensory, appreciation for the simple comforts of a well-lived life.

My Life In an Obama Administration, Part I

The political momentum has shifted back and forth in the seven weeks leading to November 4. The bump following the convention brought a sense of renewal to the Republican party—and suggested a promising conservative talk show career for Sarah Palin post-election. The deepening financial and housing crises, which reared its head for much of the past two years, finally exploded into a full-scale, global, economic meltdown. Independents and disaffected voters began to make up their minds.

And this week’s coup de grâce: former Secretary of State and army general Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama—which effectively undermined his long-time friend John McCain even as it boosted Obama’s foreign policy credentials and qualifications for becoming commander-in-chief. My husband and I were watching Powell’s interview on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday when we suddenly had an inkling that an important endorsement was about to be announced. "He has both style and substance. I think he is a transformational figure," summed up Powell’s influential blessing.

I suppose that now seems a good time to begin to speculate about my life and role at the dawn of the Obama era, but it’s still two weeks to go until the presidential election, and much can still go wrong. All I need do is recall what appeared to be a slam-dunk outcome a mere eight years ago when the winner of the popular vote by almost a half million votes lost the election by 5 electoral votes, with 1 abstention.

Al Gore obsessed about his loss at the 2005 Webby Awards. His pithy, 5-word haiku, acceptance speech? “Please don’t recount this vote.” Two years later, Gore’s winning of both the Nobel Peace Prize and an Academy Award as an eloquent voice on the dangers of global warming might have seemed compensation enough for his eked-out election loss (I truly empathize...I once lost an election for high school student body president by 1 vote and, like the good citizen I was and continue to be, I actually returned the extra ballot I was given! A few years later, I was elected in a landslide to the Board of Trustees of the largest university in the Ivy League and became a finalist for Glamour magazine’s Top Ten College Women in the country).

If a Republican were destined for the White House in 2000, that president should have been John McCain instead of George W. Bush. But McCain’s time has passed, and his series of questionable decisions and actions—from the improperly vetted elevation of Sarah Palin as his running mate, to his showcasing of “everyman” Joe the Plumber (an unlicensed plumber who owes back taxes)—to the puzzling photograph of him at the end of the last presidential debate (in a decidedly un-presidential caricature of the Hunchback of Notre Dame lumbering behind Barack Obama) simply washed away any benefit of the doubt that I and many other leftist-leaning, pro-military friends in Oklahoma may have extended to a war hero and former prisoner of war in Viet Nam.

What concerns me in 2008 is that the fate of the nation rests on 5 battleground states—Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Colorado, and Nevada and their 76 electoral votes. The western states, Nevada and Colorado, have 5 and 9 electoral votes, respectively. A candidate could win 99% of the popular vote in Nevada, but in the winner-take-all electoral college only 5 votes would count toward electing the president. There has got to be a better formula for electing our president, which I will leave to policy wonks, elected officials, and high school debaters to sort out. In 1974-75, the national high school debate topic of the National Forensic League was the resolution, “Resolved: That the United States should significantly change the method of selecting presidential and vice-presidential candidates.” 34 years and 6 presidents later, no changes have been made.

You’d think a candidate with a 3-generation, family tradition of exceptional military service to the country would go down fighting and, indeed, McCain has refused to concede. But Barack Obama has shown himself to be a master of political warfare. His success in the 2008 campaign owes much to his lawyerly mindset that meticulously and thoroughly combs the margins—the fringes—for every possible advantage. If Obama had been a high school debater in 1974, he might have looked for ways to exploit the present system and optimize its loopholes. Who would have thought that the aggregate impact of caucuses and states with small electoral counts would make such a difference? This ingenious strategy explains how he won the Democratic Party nomination over an historic female candidate who was widely viewed as the inevitable Democratic nominee, and it is a strategy that has carried over to the general election.

This psychology of taking nothing for granted is the reason why Obama has remained steady and centered and why he will do nothing foolish in the remaining two weeks of the campaign. In his long-range planning, Obama has shown that he has been focused on the end game all along. Obama opted out of public funding so that he could continually renew his coffers by returning to small contributors. By tapping both traditional, major donors and small contributors reached in part through the internet, Obama has amassed a sizeable war chest, a record-shattering $150 million raised in September alone. Unlike John Kerry, who foolishly had $13 million left from his campaign 2004 and lost the election, Obama will raise and spend what he must to win the presidency.

What makes me hopeful about America’s future and the outcome of the election is the paradigm shift in younger voters who view Obama as an inspirational figure and transformative candidate. One of the students I mentor is an 18-year-old senior at a prep school near Boston voting in his first presidential election. Among many other accomplishments, Jerome Tse is the co-president of the Multicultural Students Association at the Noble & Greenough School. He and his classmates shared their thoughts on what this historic 2008 election means to them. The respondents of this Quick Poll are primarily, like myself, independent voters who may be affiliated with a political party; the lone Republican respondent plans to vote for Obama.

I’m posting Jerome’s reply in its entirety.

Jerome Tse, Senior at the Noble and Greenough High School:

1) Is this the first presidential election in which you will vote? Yes

2) Which candidate do you plan for vote for, and why? I plan to vote for Barack Obama for several reasons. I highly respect John McCain, but in my opinion, he has poor judgment and is too old. His policies are close to 95% the same as those of the Bush Administration, and everyone knows, this country is need of political and economic change. Barack Obama, despite not having as much experience as John McCain, has sound judgment, which will be especially important when it comes to making foreign policy decisions on America's situation in Iraq/Afghanistan and future threat, Iran. We need a leader whose first priority is negotiating peace with the enemy, but who is not afraid to take military action if needed. This is especially important regarding the Georgia/Russia conflict, which if handled over-aggressively, could lead to a third world war.

3) How do you plan to make your decision about whom to vote? What has made the difference in my selection for president were the candidates' motives for foreign policy. I like Barack Obama's opinion that we need to get out of Iraq and shift our focus on Afghanistan, the true center of terrorism, and negotiate with Pakistan, where bin Ladin is supposedly hiding. This kind of direct answer of what he is going to do attracted me, especially because his opinions are the same as mine in terms of foreign policy.

4) What concerns you most about the future? Barack Obama's inexperience. He has the right judgment, and I trust him for that. However, it is true that good leaders, especially presidents, need experience before they take over arguably the most powerful position in the world.

5) What is your political affiliation? Class year? Age? Republican, Senior, 18

6) Anything on which you care to elaborate or vent? John McCain could run into health problems in the near future, and if that were to be the case, Sarah Palin would take over as president. As a Republican, I respect Palin for what she has done as governor of Alaska, but she simply does not have the experience and has not proven to me yet that she has the right judgment when it comes to making economic, political, and military decisions for the United States.”

God Sent Us an Angel

God sent us an angel. That's what the preacher's wife told me when I saw her today. Yesterday, she had been sitting at a makeshift table wondering how she was going to get the zip codes to mail business announcements to the hospital at Ft. Sill. I overheard her and volunteered to deliver her menus to a contact at the military base.

She was grateful for my offer and seemed eager to hear more, so I found myself making suggestions that ranged from ambience, to color palette, to lessons in product consistency, gleaned from my avocation as an East Coast foodie who is passionate about flavors, tables, and presentations. This new business run by a preacher and his wife has some of the best pit barbecue in Texoma—the southwest Oklahoma-north Texas region—that I had ever tasted. During family get-togethers, the mesquite-smoked meats—beef, pork, chicken, and seafood—had been perfected, and now the entire clan was working together to try to make a success of it.

I placed a second take-out order, and then went home to spread the word about my new find. I e-mailed 50 friends and neighbors affiliated with the media, hospitals, schools, major car dealerships, real estate, and construction, including the owner and anchor of the ABC television affiliate. I hand-delivered a dozen menus. Even then I couldn't stop; I wrote a testimonial the Atkinsons could copy to place in their restaurant and use when soliciting catering jobs.

Today, I returned and saw how quickly the family had implemented my suggestions. Annette informed me that new faces had shown up during lunchtime. At a family powwow a few nights previously, they had discussed buying a television for customers to watch while waiting for their food; so it had surprised them when I presented the idea of making the small restaurant a place where customers could linger, by putting up a television and adding a family portrait of their clan at home enjoying barbecue. I told them not to slather the meat in sauce, but to offer sauce on the side, or to cover only the bottom half of the meat. "Customers want to taste the mesquite smoke, not cover its pungency."

"When you see young soldiers start to come in, that's a sign that you need to have more chicken wings on the menu." I told them. "People like chicken wings, and young soldiers either don't like to or can't cook. They'll come back if your place feels like home."

I was acquainted with young adults like these who had already been sent to Iraq and were being shipped out for their second tour. They were barely out of their teens and many were away from home for the first time in their lives, so cooking is the last thing on their collective minds.

It made me angry to hear of John Kerry's botched comments directed at George Bush, "Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq." Despite their youth, these soldiers impressed me with their precocious maturity, their sense of responsibility and discipline. One veteran was a young woman, sent to Iraq as a nurse; she looked like she could have been a student in high school or college. High school students playing dress up as soldiers. Only, this is their reality.

I heard her voice continue, "You are an angel. We were talking about how God sent us an angel to help when you began giving us all this advice." I smiled. I, too, had felt an unseen hand in this affair. There I was waiting for my food order, when the sight of a motherly black woman worrying out loud in these tough economic times touched my heart.

"My husband Richard, he told me just be patient...God will provide. Then you appeared." I had sensed her distress. Otherwise, I might have just picked up my food and gone on my way. But God gives each and every one of us a gift of humanity, and mine is empathy. I couldn't turn away.

I gave the preacher's wife my personal e-mail address and told her she could contact me if needed. For sure, my family will hire them to cater our next function. Last week, my sister and her husband hosted a dinner for my brother-in-law, himself a veteran of the war in Iraq. If I had known of the Atkinsons' bbq business beforehand, we would have hired them and promoted their food to all in attendance. That was a missed opportunity. But something tells me the family won't need my help much longer...their work ethic and the quality of their food are already there. The word-of-mouth groundswell I set in motion has begun and now, customers just need to find them.

Artist and Muse

To answer your questions about the strange tango that informs the primary relationship/love story in the work:

Artist and Muse. I feel that people who are creative, receptive, are open to inspiration from various dimensions and influences. The artist is a channel, a conduit, a seer/mystic/psychic, if you will…who sees the future, reads souls, intuits the heart of a situation through her dreams and daydreams. Her points of reference are unusually eclectic, yet cohesive. Her portal to a meaningful life is through her muse.

Any time you deal with the notion of soul mates and polar opposites, you leave open the door to duality. The artist seems torn between the fierce expressiveness of her transfigurative art and a strong spiritual aspect that causes her to take to heart the imitation of Christ. She’s always trying to do the right thing, at great cost to her emotional psyche…she’s thoughtful and vulnerable, she already knows the ending to the story but understands that—for her personal and artistic growth—this complicated, strange tango is a crucible she must undergo…she tolerates abuse from female relatives because she refuses to turn her back on her marriage…in the end, she releases her muse, but leaves him with a sustaining dream (was the artist, in fact, a muse to her own muse?).

In the end, it's questionable that the artist needs the muse more than the muse needs the artist. He's too pedestrian...he can’t deal with the gift of faith and inspiration conferred by the irrational…he isn’t a creative problem-solver. She lets him down gently, but maybe it is, in fact, a curse…she’ll always have her imagination, but to the end of his days, she will be an ephemeral dream that he will remember with love and longing in his heart.

(Can you almost see an Obama-Clinton representational, generational, clash in this?)

Manifesto

I had sent out a Quick Poll asking for feedback about the characteristics of my audience and writing style, and after many vibrant exchanges I can definitively articulate these qualities:

Audience: people who are intuitive (direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension), instinctive (visceral, spontaneous, unpremeditated), and/or aspirational (yearning; ambitious, desirous of success)

Writing Style: (note that these adjectives describe the writing, and not necessarily my personality...)
intelligent (a capacity and taste for the higher forms of knowledge; astute, clever, alert, bright, apt, discerning, shrewd, smart), illuminating (informative, insightful, enlightening), articulate (using language easily and fluently; expressed, formulated, or presented with clarity and effectiveness), holistic (emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts), charming (pleasing, delightful, winning), intriguing (arousing the curiosity or interest of by unusual, new, or otherwise fascinating or compelling qualities), eclectic (not following any one system, but selecting and using what are considered the best elements of all systems)

What started four years ago as musings from a private blog, distributed via email in-box to serendipitously counteract the humorlessness found in the workplace, is going global. Here is just a small but representative sampling of people who read and share my posts:

- an African-American VP in corporate philanthropy who leads a major political action women's group supporting Barack Obama, co-chair of the host committee that brought the 2004 Democratic national convention to Boston
- a Korean-American arts and culture television producer and former White House intern in Al Gore's office
- a Native American model-actress-dramatist from Montana who is a director of education and outreach at Harvard
- a former software executive turned entrepreneur
- a high tech guru and former architecture student who repairs his own cars and renovates his own real estate properties
- an international transportation consultant in San Diego and former business professor in El Salvador
- a physician and former military officer in Hawaii
- an up-and-coming author and Ph.D. candidate in history who does field research in the Netherlands and Curacao
- an influential talent agent in NYC
- an information officer at the World Bank in Hong Kong who covers the entire Asia region and is an extreme sports enthusiast
- a high school senior who is a "triple threat": top scholar-multicultural student leader-varsity athlete who trains with a former Olympian in crew
- a cryptologist/engineer in Texas with more than 5 U.S. patents
- an intellectual property attorney who has lived on a sailboat in a Boston marina for more than 16 years and leaves a very small footprint

Addendum, August 2009:
- highly engaged print, broadcast, and online journalists across the country


(photo: room with a view from the Miyako Hotel, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto)

Political Predictions from America’s Heartland

I always had my eyes on the end game. Political events have borne me out.

Just before the flush of Super Tuesday elections, I e-mailed that the race for the Democratic nomination would be extremely close and that there was no guarantee of a Democratic victory in the general election, regardless of President Bush's negative ratings. I wrote: "...a significant percentage of voters will not vote on the issues but will vote according to emotional comfort level." Allowing for the strength of incumbency, my only error was in picking Hillary Clinton to eke out the nomination; however, I also declared that she would not become president.

I am an Ivy League intellectual and internationalist, and Barack Obama is my kind of candidate. Never before have I had the opportunity to vote for a candidate who so closely mirrors me and my beliefs. But Obama is also a generation ahead of his time—according to the U.S. census, twenty years from now, the minority population will achieve majority status in American society. At present, I fear the coalition of liberals / intellectuals / independents / Millennials / minorities /netizens is not large enough to overcome the silent majority represented by middle America without the addition of crossover voters.

My affiliations are frankly elitist (Cornell, Harvard—Office of the Assistant to the President / Harvard Law School / Harvard Business School / Graduate School of Design / Faculty of Arts and Sciences—Boston; U.S. Department of State, U.S. Census Bureau; ABC News, CNN International, Hearst-Argyle) and I have traveled independently all over the world. However, I grew up in America's heartland, and I understand the strength of the heartland's ingrained values.

The election was Barack Obama's to lose until the evangelical base became energized by the presence of Sarah Palin. Evangelicals are not just religious fundamentalists. They are also people like my neighbors and family friends who believe in God, country, and patriotism. They are pro-life, even though they may believe in a woman's reproductive rights. Many of them are multi-millionaires, even if they attended state universities. Others are first-generation immigrants who came to America as physicians and military officers.

Given my environment, I may be an anomaly as a supporter of Barack Obama. I applauded the inclusive society and sense of innovation that his candidacy represents. But Obama's greatest misstep is that he and his advisers assumed that American is a meritocracy, that the people want a well-educated, literary, and eloquent change agent who will bring us into the future and provide equal opportunity for all. They groomed and presented us with one of the best America has to offer: the zenith of what America can represent around the world is, indeed, embodied in a bi-racial man raised in our most diverse state of Hawaii who lived in and imbibed the cultures of Southeast Asia and a classic African-American stronghold in Chicago.

Regardless of what the Republicans threw at them, the Democrats would win hands-down if Hillary Clinton were Obama's running mate. Obama demonstrated his conservatism by selecting Joseph Biden as his running mate. Biden, although an elder statesman, brought nothing of demographic importance to the party. With Clinton, there was a chance to create the irresistible double whammy of a minority-female ticket, but Hillary and Bill played nice too late. Obama and his people did not trust them. The nominating convention was not the time and place for the Clintons to redeem themselves, though they have done so admirably.

If Obama loses in November, he will not have a second chance. The seismic shift of his candidacy was predicated in part on its insurgency. For what is change but insurgency? Hillary Clinton will likely then be the Democratic nominee in 2012; however, if her positioning strategy was to let Obama be the standard bearer with the expectation that he would lose the White House in 2008, her strategy will backfire. Americans are predisposed to give an incumbent president two terms in office, and there is nothing Clinton can do to unseat a sitting president.

Here is my great fear: Sarah Palin will become America's first female president.

John McCain is 72 years old and could conceivably be in office until he is 80. He has already suffered a cancer scare. The probability is very high, given the stress of the job, that McCain could become incapacitated while in office. My family and friends in southwest Oklahoma have a strong tradition of public service, so we like and respect John McCain for his years of service as a Navy officer, a prisoner of war, and a senator: we understand his drive to be of service to his country. However, at some point, this sense of service was supplanted by an ambition to be elected president at all costs. McCain must have been rankled by the idea of an upstart taking precedence over someone who waited his turn. So he made a deal with the devil and master manipulator Karl Rove.

Rove knows the right buttons to push to elicit a visceral reaction, and I see his fingerprints all over the elevation of Sarah Palin. Hers is a Cinderella story come to life because Rove went trolling for someone who could steal Obama's thunder. As such, Palin had not been fully vetted.

Palin is the ying to Obama's yang.

A woman, a working professional and soccer mom: a member of the religious right and of the NRA. She is a natural in front of the camera, and her persona is approachable and salt-of-the-earth. To me, the Republican ticket is a manufactured creation, designed by Karl Rove in the same way that Sean "Diddy" Combs auditions the members of the boy bands and girl groups he matches up.

It is irrelevant, in a larger sense, to speak of someone as not having the experience to become president. Nothing in life really prepares one to be the leader of the free world. In America, anyone can win the presidential lottery. All we voters ask is that we have enough time and opportunity to get to know our candidates—their assets and liabilities—and an abbreviated general election season does not allow a thorough vetting of a relative unknown for a hand-picked spot on a presidential ticket.

Make no mistake:
1) the election will be a litmus test of the culture wars
2) the election will be won through coverage and momentum in the media news cycle
3) the election results will be closer than expected
4) Obama is very much in danger of losing the election
5) if the Republicans win as a result of unethical ploys or controversy, as in 2000, race riots will break out

I have accurately called every election since Ronald Reagan was elected (I knew Al Gore would not win...he seemed to have lost his sense of self during the campaign, which cost him votes, and George W. Bush's identifiable persona was someone you could have a beer with), but this is the first time I am calling the election a toss up.

Political psychology has always fascinated me. I was a dual government major at Cornell University before I switched to English and comparative literature and creative writing. In college, I spent my summers working at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. in competitive, paid internships with the Foreign Service and the Office of Public Affairs. I have run for and won elective office all the way from junior high school through college, and I was chosen for Oklahoma Girls State and 1st alternate to Girls Nation in Washington, D.C. I learned more about the art of leadership and politics at the elbow of Charles Ogletree, Barack Obama's Harvard law professor and trusted adviser, who appeared in the campaign video shown at the Democratic convention.

What can Obama do in the time remaining to win the election? And if he loses, what will it take to elect a minority person to the Presidency? Hopefully, I will have time to mull over these questions before I head to Boston. This is for certain: in twenty years, any minority candidate will have to reach out and make substantial inroads into African-American, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American communities.

Iconic Style

Simplicity—in its heightened form—is a chaste elegance, refinement, and self-knowledge. For an artist in the purest form of the word, everything that defines one is an act of creative self-expression.

To me, the components of a full life heavy with symbolism and meaning include intellectual stimulation and emotional engagement, serenity, constant exposure to beauty, scent, color, design, style, art, architecture, literature, travel, landscapes, and gardens…

Exquisite is the word that best describes my favored style—combining the serenity of the East Asian tradition with the rococo of the Mediterranean and the functionality of the European.

I opt for quality over quantity, so my possessions are rigorously minimal. What qualifies as exquisite is a streamlined culling of what is best in class or breed that innately applies to my image and lifestyle—I rigorously reject what is irrelevant, and I seldom deviate from my favorites.

Al Fresco

I've been very busy redesigning my garden. The landscaping the previous owners had professionally installed was heavy on xeriscaping; it had a very natural, low-maintenance look with out-of-control winter jasmine shrubs, liriope, hawthorne, and fountain grasses.

But my favorite gardens are manicured, with fragrant plants that include roses, orchids, peonies, lily-of-the-valley, lilies, gardenias, irises, plumeria / frangipani, and pikake / jasmine sambac.

I'd guess that considerable sums were spent on landscaping 1/4 of an acre and installing a wall fountain. I'd rather that the money have been spent on a small swimming pool. It's tough to retro-fit for a pool now since one side yard is blocked by a brick wall and the other side yard houses the central air conditioning system which makes the path too narrow for a bulldozer.

Since moving in, I've pretty much pulled up or given away many of the original plantings and replaced them with plants better suited to my color schemes and sculptural forms. The knock-out rose shrubs can triple in size within a year; the leaves remain green and the flowers continuously bloom all year long.

This week, between the Olympics and the Democratic convention, I've put in about 50 hours of work in the yard—between 7am-noon/break for lunch, nap, and errands/back between 5pm-8pm. I've been burning up to 400 calories per hour and my body is sore and tired when I go to sleep. I also had a nasty run-in with some fire ant hills around my ankles...the bites have finally started to scab over.

But now it's all worth it: with everything perfectly in place, the beautiful views remind me of the wonderful al fresco dining experiences I enjoyed in Italy and France.

Here are some of my favorite sources for plants in my garden:

http://www.treepeony.com/
http://www.johnscheepers.com/
http://www.vanengelen.com/
http://www.stokestropicals.com/
http://www.schreinersgardens.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=SIGO
http://www.reneesgarden.com/
www.whiteflowerfarm.com
http://heirloomtomatoplants.com/

Back in the summer of 2005, when I was looking for a house to buy, one of the properties I viewed had a swimming pool and cabana that pretty much filled up the entire back yard. There was also a small lake/canal just outside the pool gate. If the house hadn't been so old, dated, and over-priced, it would have been on my short list.

Instead, our best option was a well-designed home that gives us about 1,500 s.f. less than our home in New Hampshire but makes better use of the space. The builder used to construct homes in Palm Springs, so the house has a vibe that that's very casual / open plan / low-maintenance.

Sometimes, I think about the new construction home with a pool we could have built on a hill overlooking Lake Lawtonka, but waiting 18 months to move in and sharing the mountaintop with the vermin that inhabit the area bring me back to reality. I'm very happy that we opted to scale down.

Spa Cuisine

One of my dreams has been to write and produce coffee-table books on cooking and entertaining. My preferred entertaining styles are global/authentic/eclectic and Neo-Zen. People have asked me if I own a restaurant and have suggested I apply for The Next Food Network Star.

I've received a request for vegetarian dishes and, being primarily vegetarian myself, happily supply these recipes for vegetarian spa cuisine. Use organic produce when possible, and go ahead and splurge on artisanal salts, vinegars, and oils. A little goes a long way, and I can taste the difference. My supplies primarily come from Williams-Sonoma, Formaggio in Cambridge, and Whole Foods Market.

Spa cuisine emphasizes simplicity and purity of flavors, enhanced in part through the infusion of marinades, dipping sauces, and dressings.

My calorie count is kept low using seafood and white meat poultry as a source of protein and controlling portions to a 2 oz. serving of protein for lunch and dinner. You can lose weight and eat flavorful foods through a judicious and balanced diet. You will lose weight more quickly if you incorporate 90 minutes of exercise each day, aerobic and free weights. I can lose 7-10 lbs in 2 weeks on a strict diet and exercise program.

One of my favorite meals is salad with enough texture and variety that I'm not bored eating the same thing for several days. I usually prepare sufficient quantities for 6 individual servings lasting 2-3 days.

organic mesclun
mache
baby arugula
tomatoes
fennel
carrots
radish
red onion
asparagus
haricots verts
1/4C fresh, thinly minced dill

optional: pomegranate seeds, olives, and/or feta cheese for garnish

Clean, wash, and prep all vegetables. Spin dry the mesclun and mache. If using grape tomatoes, cut in half, otherwise cut a larger tomato into 8 half wedges. I use a small Japanese slicer with ceramic blade to thinly slice the fennel, carrots, radish, and red onion. Blanche the asparagus and haricots verts by plunging into salted boiling water for 3 minutes, then removing and placing in cold water with ice cubes to quickly cool down.

Incorporate the dill into the leafy vegetables. You can store by placing all the vegetables in a large bowl, covering with plastic wrap, and refrigerating. I have a special square, covered glass container for this purpose and store by separately mounding the individually cut vegetables in the container. To serve, simply create a photogenic presentation of the assorted vegetables with garnish, sprinkled sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, and homemade salad dressing.

In all the following recipes, it's important to taste and to correct the seasonings. For this reason, I recommend adding ingredients such as salt and liquids a little at a time rather than all at once. If the recipe seems too salty, cut with water or vinegar or use less salt. If the texture seems too thick, you can thin with liquid. If you don't like too much garlic, then simply use less.

I actually have a staple repertoire of a half dozen varieties of salad dressings. Here are two of the simplest.

Basic Oil and Vinegar Dressing: Drizzle walnut vinegar and first pressing artisanal olive oil to taste, plus sprinkled sea salt and freshly ground black pepper over the entire salad. Gently toss with your fingers so that a little salad dressing goes a long way. You can also substitute fresh lemon juice for the walnut vinegar.

Basic Vinaigrette: 1/4C olive oil, 1/4C balsamic vinegar, few grinds of black pepper, 1/4t sea salt (I use hand harvested fleur de sel from France), 1/2t Dijon mustard, 1 clove crushed garlic. Place in a covered bottle and shake vigorously.

Before he became nationally famous, I once ate at Emeril's restaurant at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. I had ordered an oyster po'boy and noticed that the flavorful greens that accompanied the dish were mixed in a large bowl with a splash of dressing. The cook used a gloved hand to vigorously incorporate the greens with just a sheen of dressing. This avoided the gloppiness that can sometimes weigh down a delicate leaf and, considering that 1 tablespoon of olive oil has 119 calories, also minimized the amount of olive oil used.

Here's an artichoke recipe that can be added to the salad composition or eaten as a separate vegetable dish.

Clean, prep, and quarter 2 large artichokes. Place in a pan and cover with water, 1T salt, juice from 1 lemon, 1 bay leaf, whole peppercorns. Bring to a boil, then gently simmer, partially covered, for 40 minutes or until soft enough to eat. The seasonings enhance the flavor of the artichokes.

I like to dip the leaves and heart in either a garlic aioli or tahini sauce.

Easy Garlic Aioli: To 1/3C mayonnaise, add 1T fresh lemon juice and 2 cloves of garlic squeezed through a garlic press. Mix completely and add sea salt to taste.

Easy Tahini: To 1/3C tahini (I like the tahini made by Tarazi Specialty Foods with no preservatives, no additives, and no salt), add 1T of chilled, filtered water, or enough to mix into a smooth, velvety paste. Add 1T fresh lemon juice, 1 clove of garlic squeezed through a garlic press, and sea salt to taste.

The salad goes well with this simple preparation for flavorful poached salmon.

Place a 4 oz. piece of salmon in a small pan and just cover the fish with water and a splash or two of any kind of white wine lying around the house. Add a pinch or two of sea salt. Bring liquid to a gentle boil, then immediately place on a gentle simmer and cover the pan, leaving a slight opening. Poach for 5-7 minutes, depending on how well done you like your fish.

I'll usually defrost a few pieces of fish in the chiller compartment of the refrigerator and poach individual portions as needed since the fish takes no more than 7 minutes to cook.

Bon appetit!

Julio Iglesias

Does she yearn to discover the secret to Julio Iglesias, Japan, or Jesus?

Here is a link to an intimate hotel in Punta del Este, Uruguay. La Posta del Cangrejo (http://www.lapostadelcangrejo.com/en/galeria.php) is where Julio Iglesias and I both stayed—separately, of course...the staff gave me a tour of the suite where he stays when he's in town.

It's fascinating what the universe sends your way when the time is right...I can honestly say that some of the touchstones in my life were never planned.

Well into my twenties, I was conditioned to uphold traditional standards in comportment. But in my newly adult life, I allowed myself to become receptive to the unknown and emotionally invested in new experiences. I seized and followed to its furthermost limitations whatever the universe threw my way...and yes, my willingness to venture into uncharted territory changed my life. I had long hair down to my hips and my dress size was 0. Dangling earrings and dark red lips were part of my signature dramatic style. There was a certain power I could wield given this ability to infatuate.

In a way, Strange Tango is my commemorative tribute to a fleeting time of youthful exuberance and physical beauty. In my meditative state of writing, I transposed, transferred—magnified—my reality into a heightened form of hyperreality and poured my passion into my work to create art. That is why I say Strange Tango is a literary work of art. By its very process, I could have been creating a piece of sculpture, or a painting...but instead it was a book.

As part of my experimental makeover, I began to indulge in activities that were fairly common for most people, yet for me out of character—such as waiting in line for Julio Iglesias' autograph. Was I obsessed? Yes, never before had I felt such passion welling within me, as though the powerful kundalini were rising (http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/k/kundalini.html).

I was determined to go with the universal flow, to challenge fate...to meet Julio face to face. He was tall, had dark hair, and was very handsome. He was also gentlemanly, suave, and intelligent. I freely admit I became a paying member of the Julio Iglesias East Coast fan club and attended his concerts in Foxborough and Las Vegas. I acquired 15 of Julio's cd recordings and two videos of his concerts, En Espana and Starry Night. I bought one cd at the opening of Coconuts, a music store on Boylston Street, now closed. Julio’s limo arrived late, and I must have stood in line for more than an hour with a long queue of fans that snaked onto the sidewalk. When my turn came, I went to the raised table for Julio’s autograph (photos were not permitted). I remember he took a long look at me and asked where I was from—his first wife is a fellow Filipina...his son, singer Enrique Iglesias, is part-Filipino. The women around me said Julio thought I was very cute with my long flowing hair and white linen dress of Italian design.

Julio insinuated himself into my existence in unexpected ways: the Chanel national make-up artist who did my cosmetic makeovers for several years lived in Miami, where Julio then resided. He would tell me of his Julio sightings at various parties in town.

Another time, Julio was performing at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, so my entire family came along for the trip. They decided to indulge me when I told them I wanted to hear Julio in concert. I was actually in the hotel pool when his entire entourage made a grand entrance. Here I was in my bikini, when Julio entered the water no more than 40 feet away from me and simply stood there facing me. A photographer was taking photos, and I know he would have agreed to my request to have my photo taken with Julio had I gotten out of the pool and asked him with a smile...but I didn't. This was meant to be private time, and my sense of restraint—and abbreviated clothing—kept me from being intrusive. So there went my photo opportunity with my idol...the primary inspiration for the Libra male in Strange Tango.

Yes, Julio is a Libra, born in September. One of his cd's is even titled, Libra. In an interview, Julio once said he didn't like Libra...he had recorded it at a time in his life when he said he felt emotionally exposed and vulnerable. To me, Libra is his best work overall. The best artists are able to connect with their audience, to resonate in their souls. I felt Julio was trying to make a connection with me...and I followed him across the country and to another continent. The songs in Libra are among his most heart achingly poignant.

Listen to Tu Y Yo and more on this sample:
Ni Te Tengo, Ni Te Olvido
Dire
Ni Tu Gato Gris, Ni Tu Perro Fiel
Todo Y Nada
Abril En Portugal
Coracao Apaixonado
http://www.amazon.com/Libra-Julio-Iglesias/dp/B00000265B/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1214453169&sr=8-1 (scroll down)

Then listen to:
De Niña A Mujer
Moonlight Lady
Fragile
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000QKDIPI/ref=dm_sp_adp?ie=UTF8&qid=1214453169&sr=8-1