Cross another state of the list of never-been-to, cause now here I am in Oklahoma. After a long long day of travel in planes that were not open-cockpit biplanes.
First impressions:
1) The Tulsa airport has this crazy bird/monkey sound that plays very loudly in the area outside of baggage claim. It drove me nuts, until I learned that it was to keep birds out of the area so they didnapos;t interfere with the planes. There wasnapos;t any explanation posted, however, so I saw people who, like me, kept looking around for the source and trying to puzzle out where it was coming from. I had this weird speculation that perhaps there were great hornbills (native to East Africa) also in Oklahoma.
2) Out the window of my eighth-floor room, I have a rather nice view of downtown Tulsa and this magnificent (Methodist?) church not far away. I spent the early evening ironing and preparing myself for a week of oh-my-God-crazy-conferenceing (not easy considering that the iron was set to turn off on its own after fifteen minutes, which meant I had to unplug it to fool it into thinking I was turning it on fresh each time. Considering I have five days of conference-clothes that were thrown fairly willy-nilly into my bag last night after an evening watching the Red Sox lose to the Rays (boo hiss) and drinking wine with a friend, this was most inconvenient), so didnapos;t go exploring, but I did watch the sun set over the city and the untold thousands of swallows dancing through the air as the light dimmed over the world.
3) THere is a giant set of Silos that has O B A M A and the logo painted in giant glorious blue on white letters on the way from the airport.
4) The more I come to these conferences the more people I know, which means the more intense the socializing, which makes it more and more exhausting, if generally fun.
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Haba told me at one point that he liked my writing about the political scene, and had noticed that I hadnapos;t been writing about the election much in recent weeks. The reasons for this are that, except for the fact that I am completely obsessed with the election, which I have posted about, I havenapos;t had a lot to say. But here is what I have noticed.
I have a button on my jacket - which I have taken off, now that I am representing a group that has to be impartial and bipartisan and all that - which I finally got from the Obama campaign earlier this week. I have noticed a couple of things.
1) People respond to it and talk about it. I was sent five buttons - one for me and four to give away - all four were given away within an hour of y fetching them from the post office. THey comment on it. They smile and give thumbs up. They start conversations.
2) Someone made the comment that Obama calls us to our higher nature, our best qualities. And while I generally speaking try to behave in a polite, kind, inoffensive way, I find that the button makes me feel like it is making me a representative of Obama and that I need to behave better, in a way that would represent him well. It is completely bizarre and irrational - and I have worn political campaign buttons for campaigns for years and never found that it was enough to make me feel empowered...or to make me feel like an ambassador for the candidate.
McCainapos;s campaign is dwelling on fear and anger and the basest common denominator. Obamaapos;s is based on our best natures. He brings out the best of us and calls on us to be our best. To be kinder, more generous, more accepting. It is, in so many ways, the triumph of optimism and the idealism that we have been told for so long is impractical or naive. This is what is meant, really, by empowerment.
It is knowing that we, together, are able to accomplish anything - beyond profit and business and politics.
Year ago, in working on an exhibit on the space program, I remember hearing about the thousands of individuals involved in the space program, and that each of them - no matter what they did - refused to be the reason why the mission didnapos;t succeed....and so the whole was infinitely greater than the sum of the parts and we accomplished something greater than ourselves.
I think that Obama will win. I am terrified that he wonapos;t. But even if he doesnapos;t, God forbid, I will still be grateful for the feeling that there is something worth fighting for, and that hope is - it really is - a policy. Starting with hope, we can do anything. Because each of us in our own small ways can contribute to a whole that is greater than any of us.
We are the ones. We are the ones. We are the ones weapos;ve been waiting for.
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