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God bless us, every one.

tinselIn a dark moment I would describe many of the peo­ple in Hank Stuever’s won­der­ful new book as awful, and maybe they are and maybe they aren’t, but cer­tainly they’re my oppo­site in every way — George Bush-lovin’, Jesus-worshipin’, Red State-occupyin’, exurbia-residin’ Tex­ans. They say tomayta, I say tom­ahta. And so on. They belong to churches with hor­ri­ble names like Cel­e­bra­tion Covenant, where the ser­mons come with James Bond themes (“Church Royale 2007″). Their par­ties for friends require choco­late foun­tains. Their home dec­o­ra­tions make Clark Gris­wold look Amish. They’ve lost the thread of the Iraq war, and ask what’s going on there now, but lose inter­est in the answer if it can’t be summed up on a bumper sticker. They’re the sort of peo­ple who swal­low a radio station’s schmaltzy “Christ­mas Wish” ser­mon­ettes whole, and repay it with happy tears.

And yet Stuever, a Wash­ing­ton Post reporter with whom I likely have a great deal more in com­mon, embed­ded with these folks for an entire Christ­mas sea­son (2006), return­ing for parts of two more, and some­how came to love them. He is a far bet­ter per­son than me, and cer­tainly a more skill­ful jour­nal­ist, because the book that came out of this expe­ri­ence — “Tin­sel: A Search for America’s Christ­mas Present” — pulls off a neat trick, reveal­ing every detail about the way three sep­a­rate fam­i­lies (and many oth­ers) cel­e­brate the hol­i­day, with­out com­ing off as jeer­ing or judg­men­tal in any way. Stuever climbed every lad­der with Tam­mie Par­nell, an afflu­ent mom with a sea­sonal busi­ness dec­o­rat­ing oth­ers’ McMan­sions; he stood in Black Fri­day queues with Car­oll Cava­sos, a sin­gle mother with too much on her plate but a cer­tain frag­ile opti­mism that Jesus is watch­ing over her; and he served as offi­cial observer to the assem­blage of Jeff and Brid­gette Trykoski’s jaw-dropping, computer-controlled, music-synchronized Christ­mas light dis­play, as well as the birth of Jeff’s con­sult­ing busi­ness as a hol­i­day light­ing engi­neer.

You didn’t know there was such a niche in the work­ing world? You’ve not been to Frisco, Texas, on the far-flung outer ring of Dallas-Fort Worth exur­bia, where every­thing is new and newer and the dis­cov­ery of a cou­ple of incon­ve­nient pio­neer graves in the route of a new high­way can barely slow the work down, let alone stop it. Or maybe you have, because there’s a Frisco every­where, even in down-and-out states like Ohio or Michi­gan, spread­ing like kudzu, high-end malls pop­ping up to serve the res­i­dents of all those 6,000-square-foot houses, along with megachurches and fast-casual taco restau­rants, big-box stores and the usual accou­trements of affluent-white-folks cul­ture.

They keep Christ­mas in their hearts in places like this, or at least a ver­sion of it, simul­ta­ne­ously over-the-top con­sumerist and “Christ-centered,” and if you can’t quite rec­on­cile piles and piles of presents under the tree with the story of a hum­ble woman giv­ing birth in a barn, well, then you’ve never stood in the clear­ing­house for the Angel Tree effort, which seeks to make Christ­mas merry for the down-and-out, only even these down-and-out Christ­mases are oddly upscale, Hefty bags full of gifts bestowed upon peo­ple who say, “It’s too much” and mean it lit­er­ally — one recip­i­ent gets enough excess to regift it to the even more impov­er­ished. Tam­mie Par­nell finds Christ­mas in her heart by dec­o­rat­ing the home of a friend dying of can­cer. Free of charge, of course, although after she’s fin­ished, she never vis­its the friend again, and when the woman dies six weeks or so later, she con­soles her­self by telling a friend who helped, “We totally dec­o­rated her house! We brought her so much joy.”

Totally.

Par­nell was my least favorite Tin­selite, even while it’s clear she and Hank clicked as they dec­o­rated all those houses. That’s another para­dox of upper-middle-class Christ­mas, out­sourc­ing the hall-decking, but never mind that. Par­nell has the eye and her clients don’t have the time, so let’s let her earn a tidy sum knock­ing her­self out two months out of the year. But I can­not tell a lie: There’s a scene deep into the nar­ra­tive, where Par­nell goes search­ing for her “total moment” — that more-perfect-than-perfect hol­i­day snap­shot that chil­dren remem­ber for­ever — and brings in a $150-an-hour fel­low hol­i­day entre­pre­neur named Cookie the Elf. This moment will leave you either help­less with laugh­ter or sneer­ing in con­tempt, and maybe both. It’s like this woman watched “National Lampoon’s Christ­mas Vaca­tion” and came away with the idea the Gris­wold hol­i­day would have been so much bet­ter if Cousin Eddie and his fam­ily had just stayed home.

But prob­a­bly you would end up lik­ing her, because Stuever likes her, and Stuever makes her lik­able. She’s not a bad per­son, just one who has swal­lowed Christ­mas hook, line and tin­sel. I think I chose her to chan­nel my dis­plea­sure with a cul­ture that never met a moral dilemma or conun­drum that couldn’t be explained by an uplift­ing movie or self-help book (you want to know who buys Mitch Albom’s books? Umm…), that ulti­mately deals with the uncom­fort­able or painful by turn­ing away. My heart did soften late in the nar­ra­tive, when Car­oll Cava­sos suf­fers a per­sonal tragedy and keeps her heart open and lov­ing through­out. And it’s hard not to like the Trykoskis, cheer­fully child­less and still will­ing to turn their home into an exper­i­ment in how much a home elec­tri­cal grid can bear, mainly for the intel­lec­tual chal­lenge of its design.

But it’s very easy to like “Tin­sel,” and on behalf of the poor news­pa­per reporter who could use a fall­back for the com­ing newspoca­lypse, I beseech you: Buy! You can always give it away for Christ­mas.

Full dis­clo­sure: Hank and I are friends-who-have-never-met, he com­ments here on occa­sion, and yours truly is men­tioned favor­ably on page 181. Not that such shame­less flat­tery would ever sway my crit­i­cal opin­ion, of course. Oh, and to the FTC: I got an advance reader’s copy free of charge.

Extras:

Buy the book via my Ama­zon store, mak­ing the cycle of kick­backs and cor­rup­tion com­plete.

Hank talks a lit­tle about the project:

The Trykoski house in (I believe) 2005:

Posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 1:14 am in Popculch. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


44 responses to
“God bless us, every one.”

  1. Hattie said on October 19th, 2009 at 1:34 am

    (Shud­der)

  2. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 19th, 2009 at 6:43 am

    Eh, we pas­tors keep preach­ing against Christ­mas excess, and the result is like the par­son on the Andy Grif­fith show telling the con­gre­ga­tion to “slow down.”

    I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing Hank’s book. Sort of!

  3. Connie said on October 19th, 2009 at 8:03 am

    Brian, I will be hang­ing at the con­ven­tion cen­ter and library most of today, and may not have inter­net access again once I leave the hotel. Though if you walk into the con­ven­tion cen­ter and start ask­ing peo­ple for Con­nie O some­one could prob­a­bly find me.

    Or noon­ish by the reg desk in the con­ven­tion cen­ter, I’ll check for you just in case.

  4. brian stouder said on October 19th, 2009 at 8:51 am

    Con­nie – I will roll down there at lunchtime and see what’s what! If you’re at the Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, then you have a great view of the rapidly ris­ing hotel across the street (I always find it more than a lit­tle unset­tling to see con­struc­tion work­ers scur­ry­ing about in the open air, atop gird­ers).

    Say – this sesqui­cen­ten­nial tid­bit snuck up on me in Spring­field (in Jeop­ardy terms): 150 years ago last Fri­day, this astound­ing act of domes­tic ter­ror­ism occurred, and although the per­pe­tra­tor lies a-mouldering in the grave, his soul keeps march­ing on

  5. alex said on October 19th, 2009 at 8:58 am

    Ah, the raid at Harper’s Ferry.

    Brian, did you know that John Brown’s first cousins were abo­li­tion­ists in LaGrange County? Laura Brown was a teacher at the LaGrange Col­le­giate Insti­tute and her brother was a physi­cian.

  6. Peter said on October 19th, 2009 at 9:09 am

    I need that eye exam stat. I thought they were the Trot­skyites, not the Trykoskis.

    Imag­ine that manger scene!

  7. coozledad said on October 19th, 2009 at 9:19 am

    My sis­ter col­lects Santa Claus stuff. I have a vacu­formed plas­tic Santa Claus lamp that she would kill for. I’m not gonna let her have it. Now there’s a damn Christ­mas story.

  8. brian stouder said on October 19th, 2009 at 9:32 am

    Alex – that is amaz­ing. Speak­ing of abo­li­tion­ism, it is inter­est­ing that for as much as Amer­ica loves con­spir­a­cies and con­spir­acy the­o­ries, schol­ars have only recently begun expend­ing ink on the web of con­nec­tions – mostly finan­cial, but also con­cep­tu­ally and oper­a­tionally – between John Brown (who really was a vio­lent lunatic) and first-rank abo­li­tion­ists such as Fred­er­ick Dou­glass and “Beecher Bibles” in Kansas.

    I’ve only read a few things about the UGRR – just enough to get an idea that the term refers more to an ill-defined cul­tural impulse, rather than a uni­fied, tan­gi­ble thing.

    Sim­i­larly, it seems that the word “abo­li­tion­ist” was mostly a scorn­ful term at the time, and seems to gain a lit­tle more glit­ter with each pass­ing gen­er­a­tion, until now many peo­ple would like to think they’d have been a real-live “abo­li­tion­ist” when in fact they would never have been any such thing.

    The inter­est­ing thing about the UGRR is that cow­ardly lit­tle peo­ple like me could lend a hand here or there, when the oppor­tu­nity arose – or turn their heads away, as if noth­ing was hap­pen­ing.

    BTW – I vis­ited the Illi­nois State Museum for the first time this past week­end, and was thun­der­struck by a very sim­ple, beau­ti­ful dis­play. They have a very nice, infor­ma­tive selec­tion of arti­facts and infor­ma­tion about Eljah Love­joy, the truly coura­geous abo­li­tion­ist news­pa­per edi­tor who was con­tin­u­ally attacked by angry mobs. Repeated attacks by drunken angry mobs in Alton, Illi­nois, had cost him 3 print­ing presses, until he was mur­dered defend­ing a fourth one.

    The museum has a large piece (a yoke?) from that 4th press dis­played under glass. It was recov­ered from the mud of the Mis­sis­sippi River, and it really bespeaks a courage that is alto­gether admirable, and rare

  9. coozledad said on October 19th, 2009 at 9:37 am

    Didn’t Alton host one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates?

  10. brian stouder said on October 19th, 2009 at 10:07 am

    Now THERE’s a great ques­tion, and one I would miss! I know Gales­burg was a site, because we were there last year; sim­i­larly, Ottawa, Quincy and Freeport come to mind. I was ready to guess that Alton was not a site, but it was

    http://​www​.illi​nois​civil​war​.org/​d​e​b​a​t​e​s.html

    I should have guessed it was, since the debates went where the rail­roads went, and Alton was busily com­pet­ing with St Louis to be the lead­ing mid­west­ern Mis­sis­sippi river ter­mi­nal (as the dis­play at the mueum pointed out)

    Another fairly amaz­ing dis­play was about the Mor­mons in Illi­nois, and the huge tem­ple they built (I wanna say Navoo – but I’ll leave google to you!), and which was even­tu­ally destroyed

  11. Connie said on October 19th, 2009 at 10:14 am

    Brian, I am wear­ing a turquoise jacket, and will hang out in the con­ven­tion cen­ter reg­is­tra­tion area around noon. Look­ing for­ward to it.

  12. brian stouder said on October 19th, 2009 at 10:28 am

    Con­nie – Roger!

  13. LAMary said on October 19th, 2009 at 11:05 am

    There was one house in my home town that went com­pletly nuts with Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions. The whole roof was cov­ered in lights includ­ing a por­trait of JFK and pos­si­bly Pope John ren­dered in bulbs. Music came out of some­where and things revolved and blinked. You could find this house from any slightly higher ground within five miles by the glow it gen­er­ated.

  14. Peter said on October 19th, 2009 at 11:14 am

    Brian, it’s Nau­voo, and the Mor­mons are rebuild­ing the tem­ple there, and it’s not all­to­gether wel­come.

    LAMary, the sub­urb just north of me goes crazy with Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions – peo­ple rent buses and curise the place to check them out. One multi story house that faces a park has a christ­mas tree that starts in the liv­ing room and ends in the upper bed­room. The pre­vi­ous own­ers sold the house under the con­di­tion that the new own­ers had to put that tree up each year, and so far, they have.

  15. brian stouder said on October 19th, 2009 at 11:38 am

    Their home dec­o­ra­tions make Clark Gris­wold look Amish.

    I bet that’s the real key as to why the author likes the per­son who the pro­pri­etress liked the least. If a per­son is as guile­less as Clark Gris­wold, then she can score points for sen­ti­men­tal silli­ness, even if one shud­ders at the con­se­quences of sev­eral mil­lion oth­ers act­ing on the same out­look.

    Like lov­ing a par­tic­u­lar pet mouse, while hat­ing the thought of dozen of them gnaw­ing within one’s walls!

  16. Pam said on October 19th, 2009 at 11:52 am

    That house is DaBomb!! I’m still LMAO! I didn’t expect that music, thought it would be more sen­ti­men­tal and christ­massy.

  17. basset said on October 19th, 2009 at 11:57 am

    >>Eljah Love­joy, the truly coura­geous abo­li­tion­ist news­pa­per edi­tor who was con­tin­u­ally attacked by angry mobs. Repeated attacks by drunken angry mobs in Alton, Illi­nois, had cost him 3 print­ing presses, until he was mur­dered defend­ing a fourth one.

    any of ‘em named Beck? or Lim­baugh?

    saw an inter­est­ing ad in a gun mag­a­zine this week­end… for a cap with “Infi­del” across the front in large let­ters, both Eng­lish and Ara­bic, and a US flag across the back. Copy was some­thing about not putting up with Islamic ter­ror­ists… will see if I can find & post a link.

  18. beb said on October 19th, 2009 at 12:39 pm

    Speak­ing of Hol­i­day Light­ing Engi­neers, there’s a house “near” Nancy (it’s in one of the Grosse Pointes), on the cor­ner of Jef­fer­son and Moross, that goes all out for Hal­loween and Christ­mas. I’m sure the light­ing bill for their dis­plays dou­bles their elec­tric bill – their sum­mer high elec­tric bill! There’s another house or two along Jef­fer­son where it skirts the Detroit River that also do these huge dis­plays. I imag­ine they have to have a ser­vice come out and do the lights if only because they’re need a cherry-picker truck to string the lights that high in their trees. It’s a fun drive along Jef­fer­son the cou­ple weeks before Christ­mas look­ing at these light dis­plays.

  19. Little Bird said on October 19th, 2009 at 1:45 pm

    Some­where in Grand Junc­tion, Col­orado is “The House That Christ­mas Threw Up On”. At least, that’s what my extended fam­ily calls it. There are enough dec­o­ra­tions for any 5 entire neigh­bor­hoods. I have always won­dered just why peo­ple do that.

  20. Jolene said on October 19th, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    Is the music in the sec­ond video played along w/ the lights in real life? Hard to imag­ine that the neigh­bors would tol­er­ate that.

  21. Jolene said on October 19th, 2009 at 2:50 pm

    Christ­mas is, appar­ently, not the only hol­i­day that leads peo­ple to ridicu­lous excess. Here, it’s a Michi­gan­der rather than a Texan that has gone “all in”.

    Also came across this story about chang­ing land use in Flint. A huge strug­gle, but some peo­ple are work­ing hard to make things bet­ter in small ways.

  22. Sue said on October 19th, 2009 at 3:25 pm

    Jolene: When you visit the pump­kin house, book a room at the Stonewall Inn B&B just down the street and you can sit in on their Civil War Ghost Story evenings, last two week­ends in Octo­ber and first two in Novem­ber. Then head up 22 just out­side of town to visit a super-creepy ceme­tery.
    Frankfort’s a great sum­mer town; sounds like it’s fun in fall, too.

  23. brian stouder said on October 19th, 2009 at 3:42 pm

    Well, the city of Fort Wayne – or maybe just the con­ven­tion cen­ter – has enough Hal­loween stuff hang­ing from the lamp posts that it looks like the Zom­bies are qui­etly tak­ing over the down­town improve­ment dis­trict! (stole that line from Con­nie, with whom I had a very pleas­ant lunch at Taco Bell, today)

  24. Scout said on October 19th, 2009 at 4:18 pm

    I always won­der where in the hell they store all of that crap the other 11 months of the year!

  25. coozledad said on October 19th, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    Scout: I won­der about that too. The inflat­able things espe­cially have to take up a lot of space. There are fam­i­lies around here who have dis­plays for every hol­i­day. I’m par­tic­u­larly fond of the merg­ing of sec­u­lar and reli­gious motifs at Christ­mas, espe­cially the inflat­able Thanks­giv­ing turkey show­ing up for the nativ­ity as a stand in for one of the beasts. There’s one fam­ily who has assem­blages of life size stat­u­ary that must num­ber in the hun­dreds. They’ve even got a Fourth of July dis­play, as well as Memo­r­ial day and Hal­loween. I haven’t dri­ven by the house on Arbor day or President’s day, but some­thing tells me they’ve got that covered,too.

  26. Rana said on October 19th, 2009 at 4:58 pm

    Scout, they prob­a­bly have a stor­age unit just for the hol­i­day dec­o­ra­tions.

    (A cou­ple my par­ents know like to have dif­fer­ent indoor dec­o­ra­tions depend­ing on the hol­i­day, and that’s what they do.)

  27. Sue said on October 19th, 2009 at 5:14 pm

    My humor­less ex-pastor used to get incensed at hav­ing to stare at the huge inflat­able Homer Simp­son Santa Clause across the street from his house, Novem­ber til Jan­u­ary. Every year my neigh­bors put an inflat­able mov­ing holiday-character Merry-go-round on their postage-stamp-sized lawn. It lasts about two weeks before wind or ice takes it out. Two years ago we didn’t see it until spring because of the freaky snow year. They keep try­ing, though, bless their cheer­ful opti­mistic hearts.

  28. alex said on October 19th, 2009 at 5:23 pm

    I’ve only read a few things about the UGRR — just enough to get an idea that the term refers more to an ill-defined cul­tural impulse, rather than a uni­fied, tan­gi­ble thing.

    Brian, I’ve been research­ing the UGRR heav­ily for years and it actu­ally was tan­gi­ble and uni­fied — though very well hid­den. I highly rec­om­mend the mem­oirs of Levi Cof­fin, if you want some idea of the mag­ni­tude of the effort. The Soci­ety of Friends didn’t have a Meet­ing in this cor­ner of the state, but they had mem­bers dis­persed around the area work­ing in cahoots with Wes­leyans, Uni­ver­sal­ists, Covenan­ter Pres­by­te­ri­ans and cer­tain other reli­gious sects and orga­ni­za­tions.

    John Brown may have been con­sid­ered a dan­ger­ous sociopath by some, but he was a hero to oth­ers.

  29. paddyo' said on October 19th, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    Late to the Xmas party today (many, many Mon­day meet­ings) but thor­oughly enjoy­ing your take on “Tin­sel,” Nance . . .

    So it’s not, then, a book like “Clos­ing Time,” huh?!

    Your litany of XmasX­cess reminded me of that other trea­cly stan­dard of hol­i­day fizzi­ness:

    The video “Christ­mas Card from our house to yours” (oops, sorry, “Hol­i­day card”) that local TV sta­tions put together and air dur­ing sea­sonal sta­tion breaks . . . you know, the one with the staff, from sweater-clad on-air tal­ent to behind-the-scenes cubi­cle peons, mug­ging for the can­did KXYZ-TV cam­eras as The Ronettes’ ver­sion of “Frosty the Snow­man” echoes and reverbs in the back­ground . . .

    I can smell the mistle­toe and rein­deer already . . .

  30. moe99 said on October 19th, 2009 at 6:49 pm

    Rein­deer, paddy o? That’s a pretty ran­cid smell if the minia­ture rein­deer, that the xmas tree com­pany dis­plays next to our church every year is any indi­ca­tion. I always feel sorry for the lit­tle guy.

    Last year I dec­o­rated my fig tree when my xmas tree bit this dust. This year I may start from that.

  31. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 19th, 2009 at 8:38 pm

    Alex, have you been down to the Rankin House on the Ohio? That was just a truly inspir­ing expe­ri­ence for me. The table and the lamp in the win­dow look­ing over the val­ley, and the stair­way down the bluff . . . his­tory was quite tan­gi­ble there.

  32. Holly said on October 19th, 2009 at 9:06 pm

    I could never under­stand why peo­ple put so much crap out dur­ing the hol­i­days. It usu­ally looks like they bought K-Mart out of every­thing they had. And remem­ber. It all has to come back down. These peo­ple are nuts.

    Sue, Your neigh­bors are nice. At least you don’t have what I have had. You are lucky. I remem­ber that Merry-go-round. That thing was awful.

  33. beb said on October 19th, 2009 at 9:17 pm

    We must not for­get the annual War on Christ­mas waged by Rush Lim­baugh, Glenn Beck and the like. God for­bid that any­one try to be inclu­sive and wish some­one a “Happy hol­i­days!”

  34. Connie said on October 19th, 2009 at 10:15 pm

    Had a great lunch with Brian,so nice to get to meet one of you in per­son! Per­haps it will be Dorothy at a quilt shop next! Or maybe some­one was at Troyer’s Meat in Ship­she last Sat­ur­day and our paths crossed with­out even real­iz­ing.

    I have thought from the begin­ning of the web back in 95 or so, so that the truly amaz­ing thing it does is makes com­mu­ni­ties hap­pen in a new way. And here we are!

  35. crazycatlady said on October 20th, 2009 at 12:34 am

    Christ­mas makes me want to hurl into Santa’s toy sack. Because my heart it three sizes too small….

  36. Danny said on October 20th, 2009 at 1:44 am

    You guys are all mak­ing baby Jesus cry. There, happy now?!

    A buddy of mine at work likes to drive his teenage sons and their friends around to par­tic­u­larly osten­ta­tious hol­i­day dis­plays. He stands look­out while the boys put Santa and Mrs Santa and the rein­deer into com­pro­mis­ing sex­ual posi­tions.

  37. alex said on October 20th, 2009 at 7:28 am

    Jtmmo—

    Regard­ing the Rankin House, I’ve yet to get there, but it’s on my short list of must-do road­trips. His brother’s house in Fort Wayne was dis­cov­ered only a few years ago. It had been cov­ered in crappy sid­ing and hemmed in by moder­nity and no one fig­ured out what it was until some­body thought it needed to be torn down.

    Any­way, what’s remark­able about Alexan­der Rankin’s house is that it’s archi­tec­turally iden­ti­cal to his brother John’s in Ohio, although the set­ting isn’t as lovely. No one has fig­ured out why the Rank­ins built brick homes with one side open and a wooden edi­fice attached.

    Con­nie—

    Did you go home already or are you hang­ing around for Day Two? That’s my park­ing garage where the con­ven­tion­eers are all stash­ing their vehi­cles and I work in the vicin­ity. I might have tried to meet up with you yes­ter­day but I was under the gun to get a project done. Also blew off a pre­paid lun­cheon I was sup­posed to attend. But if you’re around today, I’d be delighted to meet you.

  38. John said on October 20th, 2009 at 8:03 am

    Alex, John Brown may have had good inten­tions but his meth­ods were mur­der­ous. His Decem­ber 1858 raid into Ver­non County, MO (in which he and his men lib­er­ated slaves, sup­plies, and gold) left bod­ies on the ground. I’m cer­tainly not try­ing to defend slav­ery nor re-fight the war here, just point­ing out John Brown was more than an ora­tor.

  39. Pam said on October 20th, 2009 at 8:19 am

    Nancy – FYI, Bull­win­kle went to the Good­will yes­ter­day. Very sad. His antlers are all droopy and he looked pathetic. But one good mem­ory of him – when Joey jumped out of his skin one night, walk­ing through the dark house and thought he was a per­son stand­ing in the entry hall.

  40. alex said on October 20th, 2009 at 8:22 am

    John, no deny­ing what you’re say­ing is true, but if you’re orga­niz­ing an insur­rec­tion some casu­al­ties are to be antic­i­pated. John didn’t live to see the north sub­due the south, nor did he antic­i­pate that such a thing would ever hap­pen. His meth­ods cer­tainly strike those of us sit­ting here in our house slip­pers sip­ping cof­fee as bru­tal and mad, but in the con­text of the times, when life was pretty dog­gone cheap, and he was will­ing to put his own on the line, it’s also pos­si­ble to admire his courage.

    There’s also a ten­dency to praise MLK while chan­nel­ing moral out­rage at Mal­colm X and Huey New­ton, but I can’t blame the lat­ter for not trust­ing that rain­bows and but­ter­flies were going to save the day.

  41. Connie said on October 20th, 2009 at 8:22 am

    Alex, I am park­ing in that garage as well. I have a lun­cheon that is sup­posed to end around 12:30, I think it is in a Hilton ball­room right on the sky­way level. You could catch me there, or go down the esca­la­tor and out the doors on your left and find me smok­ing out­side imme­di­ately after. Today I am mostly turquoise and pur­ple. Here’s hop­ing.

  42. alex said on October 20th, 2009 at 9:16 am

    Con­nie, let’s meet for a smoke in front of the Hilton at 12:30, maybe cup o’ joe. I’m yel­low on top of pale green cor­duroy, black coat if it hasn’t warmed up by then.

  43. Connie said on October 20th, 2009 at 9:32 am

    works for me Alex, Hilton front at 12:30.

  44. Joe Kobiela said on October 20th, 2009 at 10:25 am

    Con­nie and Alex,
    Pic­tures if you have the time.
    Pilot Joe

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