What?

This morning on the subway, a small, tow-headed boy ran on at Montrose Avenue and took the seat next to mine. He leaned his Justice League backpack into my side, oblivious to the adult constraints on human proximity. His mother followed, carrying another, smaller child on her back- a blond little girl, maybe two years old, sticking out her lower lip and waving her tiny right hand in frantic circles.

The mother wore a short skirt and black stockings, and her straight brown hair looked unwashed. She was young, not over thirty-three, let's say, but had a slightly haggard morning face. Understandable, of course. She began telling her son about the longest train in the world, the Trans-Siberian Railroad. "It runs through Russia, all the way to Japan," she said. "No, not Japan....Korea."

The boy looked on, fascinated. "Does it take seventy days?"

"Probably not that many. Maybe ten or so," she said. "But it doesn't even stop at night."

That fact delighted the boy, who reached into his school backpack and took out a catalogue of Star Wars toys. I noticed then that he wore reddish pajama pants decorated with smudged strawberries and raspberries. Although I admired the mother, on first impression, for her liberal bearing and good humor amid the difficult undertaking, I couldn't forgive this transgression on her son's burgeoning social life. The little girl, now on her mother's lap, said "ba ba ba ba."

"How delightful!" said the mother, using a haughty movie voice. Her son, engrossed in the tiny pictures of Darth Vader and other heroes, ignored both. "Now I sound like Katherine Hepburn," the mother said to no one. I turned and gave a sympathetic smile, even though I don't think I've ever seen a Katherine Hepburn movie.

When the boy closed the catalogue, I tried to glance at the name on the address label, wondering if I could google the mother and read all about her life on a personal website. Her name was Judith, and the last name started with a V, but I couldn't get a clear look at the rest. I lost interest anyway. I put on headphones and tuned out. A few minutes later, the boy crooked his foot behind my leg, and I felt the intense discomfort that comes when a social taboo is on the verge of being violated. I ahem'ed with mild vigor, and the attractive girl standing in front of me laughed at the spectacle, but the mother or son didn't notice.

The decision to stop caring was easily made, and the regions of the brain dealing with matters analogous led me to the memory of how I sought physical contact with my father. It usually took the form of violence- the male comfort zone- crawling like a cat or super-spy along the top of the couch while dad watched the news. I'd poise above with a delirious grin, trying to contain my bursting giggles, dad unsuspecting or pretending at it when my springy weight fell straight down, landing on his wide shoulders to hang like a pet monkey, writhing in ecstatic laughter. My younger brothers all did the same.

It occurred to me that a certain willful ignorance about the lives of others isn't necessarily as arrogant as I once thought. I'd put pressure on myself to notice everything, take a piece of life from everyone. But it's not always meant to be. On the 4-train uptown, an older, round-faced woman with permed hair of the 80s variety, wearing a mid-length pleated black skirt with no stockings- a fact that awkwardly highlighted her bright, white skin and bruised kneecaps- leaned forward with an absent-minded expression that could be misinterpreted as dumb smugness.

Whoever she was, I didn't care, and couldn't. But there isn't anything to feel guilty about- she doesn't care about me either. Each spider's web can only catch so many flies. Others are meant to hit the sides, ricochet outward, breathe a sigh of relief at the close call, and be on their way. And still others are meant to soar miles above or below, unaware of your little web, bound for their own.

Another example: the RDS delivery man, a sullen, heavy, pasty-white man with a face like a fat, cynical child. He comes in every morning in his hunter-green uniform, bearing the packages in both arms like a miserable burden, and turns to give me an exasperated sigh. The short hairs on his head move slightly with the hallway's compressed air current, and he sulks off to the main entrance. "Fuck you," I mouth at him after he's turned away. Next door, I can hear him transferring the packages and asking for a signature. "You know the drill," he mumbles in his low, disaffected moan.

This man probably has a story. He may be an expert on model trains, or maybe he's a champion paintball player. But unless he goes crazy one morning and guns me down where I sit, our paths will only make this daily, superficial crossing.

The Wee'uns

I don't know who Petrova Elementary School was named for. It's one of the most common Russian surnames, and Saranac Lake must have had a doctor or other wealthy person in residence and willing to endow when the school was constructed in 1924. For a school, it's fairly typical; red brick exterior, wide, bright hallways, high windows in the classrooms, and filthy gum-stained carpet everywhere. I attended Petrova until third grade, when my mother thought I needed a stiffer academic challenge and enrolled me in St. Bernard's Catholic School, where I learned how to fist-fight. At Petrova I learned how to swear. Down a hill past the cafeteria wing, huge athletic greens, including the high school's baseball and football fields, stretched along LaPan Highway. When I played modified football in seventh and eighth grade, a handicapped student named Matt sat in a wheelchair near the highway, with his aide at his back, watching us stretch. Our coach had us yell "Hi, Matt!" in unison at the beginning of every practice. These fields are where we had recess for an hour every day. They'd make us sit patiently in the cafeteria until our time was up, and then, though it sounds cliche, we'd charge out the doors, screaming, run or fall down the hill, and burst onto the fields. The girls stayed on the tarmac or on the sandy playground, where they talked in groups or jump-roped or drew hopscotch with chalk. On the fields, there were early minutes of frenzy and chaos before the athletes among us organized into sides for that day's game. In the fall and winter, tackle football was the sport of choice, and aside from brief spring forays into kickball and softball, it ruled year-round. A soccer game also went on concurrently, and a mild rivalry sprung up between the two sides. Football players were "jocks," soccer players were "fags." My best friend at the time was Pat, a chubby, ruddy boy with a megaphone voice. He marched around with his chest out, maintaining order and barking at digressors. He spent a lot of time at my house, and one day after school when I felt terrible about everyone saying I had a big head, he consoled me. "I know what it's like," he said. "Everyone calls me Fat Pat." Along with being one of the best athletes in our grade, Pat was world-class at swearing. "Dave, what the fuck?!" he'd yell at someone who'd dropped a pass or thrown an interception, with special red-faced fury booming out on the last syllable. The word was usually accompanied by an incredulous expression, both hands raised in exasperation. "Fuck you," came the timid response, and Pat would only shake his thick head. Most of us on the field would copy the way Pat swore, with varying levels of success. The exception were the kids from Bloomingdale, the rough-around-the-edges outskirt of our town, where swearing was learned from birth and done with a hard stare, slowly, brimming with violence. They cursed for something other than fun. The rest of us just loved the way it sounded, the brief image of toughness we felt, especially after spitting out "fuck," a word so harsh and beautiful it seemed to sum up a thousand emotions and contain as many meanings. I resisted at first, because my mom taught me not to swear and I felt guilty. But it didn't take long to succumb to the appeal, and I remember the thrill at my first tentative foray. I was playing quarterback and threw an out-pattern to Pat, who looked upfield too early and dropped the ball. He stopped on the spot, grimaced and looked at his hands. As he ran back to the offensive side, I summoned all my courage, stared him down, and said "what was that shit?" It came out awkwardly, with the beginning swearer's over-emphasis and timidity. "Fuck you," he said, and shoved me. "I'm quarterback." Pat moved after fifth grade. His mother had family in Maine, and finally got enough money to get a place near them. They lived on an island with no electricity, and I didn't stay in touch with Pat for very long. The next and last time I saw him was at a varsity football game my freshman year. A group of us in the bleachers noticed him leaning against the rope at the sideline. He looked mostly the same, a little thinner, but with the same ruddy complexion and trademark scowl. "That's Pat," someone said. I didn't know what I could say to him, forgetting that it could be anything, so I stayed glued to the seat. Pat stood hunched on the sideline, hat pulled low, enduring his lonely homecoming. All of us knew him, but nobody said hello. But under his tutelage, swearing became second nature, something I could do efficiently and selectively, never slipping in front of a parent or authority figure. By fourth grade, I was a prodigy. When my mother put me in St. Bernard's, my friend Johnny and I fancied ourselves the toughest guys in school. I had a swagger in my step that beat anything I could have gotten away with at Petrova, where the Bloomingdale kids would have wasted little time burying me for that kind of attitude. But St. Bernard's was home to a lighter breed of person, and we ruled the roost for more than a year, starting and winning fistfights at will. That all ended in fifth grade. On a warm day in March, we were playing Pickle on the tarmac, and I accidentally knocked Joe Nickastrini's glasses off his face when I swipe tagged him. A massive, strong, quiet Italian kid, Joe was know more for his humor than anything else, and as his glasses hit the ground, I said "you're out." Joe exploded. "Don't touch my glasses!" he shouted in his deep bass, face quivering with rage. He punched me unexpectedly on the mouth, and I fell to the ground as he charged, trying to cover myself up while he kicked with his tree-trunk legs. I saw blood on my hand and panicked, rolled away, and yelled "help!" Johnny came and tried to stop Joe's progress, but he got tossed aside for his trouble, and it took two aides to restrain the fuming Italian. After that, my reputation as a tough-guy was tarnished, and I decided fighting wasn't my style. In sixth grade, I was back at Petrova for Middle School, and back to playing football. One lunch hour, a scrawny, quiet, spectacled kid named Ronald Rykker said he wanted to play. Everyone's instinct was to say no, and the word "nerd" was thrown around, but I was feeling like a samaritan and vouched for him. On our first drive, he stood open in the endzone and I threw him the ball. By a miracle, he caught it and held on, and our whole team erupted at the surprising success. I remember the glow on his face, and his strange words: "I'm gonna do it again!" And he did, near the end of recess, setting off a flurry of celebration and infuriating the other team. I felt high on myself after that, but Ronald didn't play with us again. Later that year, Ronald somehow burnt his face on a waffle iron. I gave him the nickname "paper," because he was thin, white, and had lines. It stuck.

I'm back

Tonight. Chance of rain. Mariners in town. Wang dealing, Yankees needing a win.

I'm going to the Stadium hip hip hooray.

Tomorrow. Chance of rain. Berko in town. Me straight banging from 3, people ready for hoops.

I'm going to the Prospect Courts hip hip hooray.

Sunday. Chance of rain. Cherry trees in bloom. Two kids jonesin' for some tree-spottin'.

I'm going to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens for a Tree-Walk hip hip hoorah.

What a few days.

Whiteface

In 1932 and 1980, Lake Placid, New York played host to the Winter Olympics. The "Miracle on Ice," America's hockey victory against the Russians, remains the most memorable triumph of those two fortnights, but Whiteface Mountain, home of 1980's Alpine Skiing events, shouldn't be forgotten.

Nor should the resort bearing its name, The Whiteface Club, on whose golf course I worked as part of the maintenance crew for three summers in high school. My stepfather belonged to the club and golfed every summer morning, struggling to break 80. Through some pathway of tenuous connections, he managed to secure me a job under Ron, the crew supervisor.

As the youngest member of the maintenance staff, at 16, I was legally (and intrinsically) unfit to drive the various mowing machines. This left me the responsibility of tending to all the grass they couldn't reach. With a push-mower, I would struggle up the small hillocks on the sides of greens, tees, and bunkers, averting my face to avoid the spray of rocks shooting from the blades, and keeping an eye out for golfers, a species notoriously intolerant of noise distraction. My partner, Corey, the boss' son and one of the town's star athletes, was an easygoing 18-year old who had a habit of chasing squirrels in our Workman (a miniature pick-up truck with only 4 gears and no cover on the cab) and showing up to work hung over.

Corey had the bearing and accent of a local, but he was intelligent in the cynical, almost cruel way of someone who exceeds their surroundings but will never leave. We sped along the course, my hands braced against the metal dash, Corey hunched over the wheel, seemingly asleep, from hole to hole. The course stretched out in long, difficult sprawls of green hilly terrain, tainted by brown splotches of dying grass, carved amid a forest of pine, oak, and maple. When we needed a break, Corey drove through the woods on unmarked paths, searching for small glades where we'd rest. He already had a hacking cough from smoking, and he'd often seek these sanctuaries in order to vomit what remained of last night's alcohol. His retches mixed with birdsong and the crackle of dead leaves, a strange cacophony in the shafts of sunlight penetrating the tree cover.

Corey, a pitcher, could throw a stone with uncanny accuracy. The majority of his targets were birds. He never threw hard- just enough to scare it from its branch. Once, spotting a blue jay high up in the branches, he bet me I couldn't make it fly away with one throw. Normally I didn't like to bother the birds. I remembered once, as a child at my grandmother's yard, shooting at a red plastic cup with a cheap slingshot I'd bought at a county fair. At a distance of fifteen feet, I hit the cup one out of ten times if I was lucky. Later, on her porch, I spotted a bird sitting on an electric wire forty yards away. I loaded the slingshot with my last stone, and sent it arcing without taking close aim. It described a perfect parabola and hit the target in a flutter of wings. The bird flapped and propelled itself in obscene, crippled motions, and gravity took it downward in a spiral. It hit the ground and died. For a week, guilt lingered.

But this time, I couldn't resist the challenge and a flash of ingenuity. I took the bet and filled my hand with as many stones as I could hold. Proud of my clever strategy, I pegged them to the heights. One of the scattering rocks hit the jay, and it crashed to a lower branch and then to our feet, close enough for us to spot the crimson spot on its breast. The bird limped away and crawled up a tree. Corey shook his head. "Better finish what you started." Watching the bird, I looked for signs that the wound was temporary. But it couldn't fly, and only struggled to hop from branch to branch. Though it was pure mockery on his part, I realized Corey was right. I chased the bird through the woods, attempting to put it out of its misery and spare a slow death.

Unfortunately, the bird climbed higher and made itself a difficult target. Only by the pure, glaring blue could I track its progress. It took a half hour and several ineffectual hits, along with severe terror on the bird's part, before I gave up the pursuit. In the Workman, Corey waxed philosophical. "It'll die eventually," he said. I braced myself against the dash and didn't say anything.

The second summer at Whiteface there was a severe drought in upstate New York. I spent three months wearing a rubber rain coat, standing on greens, spraying them down with a hose. When golfers came by, I'd stand politely to the side, a yellow oddity in the oppressive heat. At the end of the day, my wrist and thumb ached from holding the nozzle, and my hands were swollen and pruny from the water. After a few weeks, I began securing the nozzle with wire, which spared some pain. But despite the constant attentions of the maintenance staff, the greens died slowly over July and August.

Austin, the oldest member of the crew, was deaf. He drank all day from a filthy coke bottle, and responded to every query with a loud "EH?" He wore a faded blue painter's cap and odd, pink slacks- some combination of pajamas and windpants. The other crew members accused him of selective hearing, as his deafness would worsen when he was asked for a favor. At lunch breaks, sitting in the large, oil-stained shed, he bore the brunt of the aggressive humor circulating through the room. At every insult, I'd watch his face as he sat next to the boss in cheap blue folding chair, and it was impossible to tell among his twitches and silence if he could hear at all.

Mark had a red drinker's face and a burly, thick body. The constant snarl on his face reflected the unabating meanness of his character. He picked me as his target early, accusing me of slacking, arrogance, and a variety of other offenses. Twenty years his junior, I ignored him in a manner which was no doubt interpreted as further arrogance. It came to a head one day as we shoveled stones into the Workman, preparing to fill in parts of the cart paths that had been washed away in the previous night's rain. "Hey," he said, turning to me with sweat pouring down his forehead. "Can you pick up the fucking pace?" I told him to go fuck himself. He raised the shovel and threatened me. Corey, nearby, ran over. He got in Mark's face. "He's just a kid!" he yelled. "He's just a fucking kid." Although Corey was only two years older, I realized, watching the respect he commanded and the weary drop of his shoulders after the confrontation, that he was right.

Later, parked in the woods, feeling young and weak, I told him he didn't have to step in for me, that I could have handled it myself. Instead of responding, he talked about Mark. "A few years ago, he went to his dad's place after work. The old man was dead in his recliner, blood on his shirt, shotgun on the floor." He lit up a cigarette. "Mark's been different since." Then he turned the key, the engine sputtered to life, and we drove off.

My last summer at Whiteface, I worked with Jason. I'd turned eighteen over the winter, and he was fifteen. Jason hated his stepfather and wanted to race cars. He had dark hair and an impish smile, and wore a large Yankees hat pulled low. His arms were scrawny and long. As a partner he didn't compare to Corey, because he was scared of being fired and forced me to work harder, but I liked him anyway. One afternoon, we devised a brilliant plan to get back at a lone golfer who'd screamed at us for starting the Workman when he teed off on the third hole.

The sixth hole at Whiteface is a long, dogleg left par 5. After the first shot- downhill, around the trees, into a gulley- you're faced with an uphill second and third. The green rests on a slight downslope past the top of the hill, and is therefore invisible from below. In order to access the putting surface, carts have to travel a curved path through the woods, during which journey the course is obscured from view by thick pines.

When the angry golfer hit his third shot, I watched the ball land on the green, thirty feet from the hole. I couldn't see him below, but Jason signalled with a loud burst of the Workman's horn when he was safely on the cart path. I raced onto the green, pocketed the ball, and sprinted back into the forest with plenty of time to spare. Slipping through the trees, I ran until I came to the road. Jason drove back to the sixth tee, to avoid overtaking the golfer and arousing suspicion, and from there to the road, where he picked me up. We sped to the seventh tee and waited, pretending to fill our mowers from the pink gas containers. When the golfer emerged from the woods above the sixth green, still puzzled, he paused and scrawled an illegitimate number in his scorecard.

The next day, we repeated the act with a slight variation. Watching a foursome's iron shots land in various positions around the green, I hunched in the woods and awaited the Workman's horn. This time, instead of stealing the ball, I placed one of the Titleists directly in the hole. Again, we waited for the golfers to emerge, and when they did, one wore a dazed smile. His friends shook their heads. A couple days later, we put two balls from a single foursome in the hole, and the following day, brimming with confidence, we put three in the hole and stole the fourth. This last maneuver aroused suspicion, and a general warning came down from the Club Pro that anyone caught tampering with golf balls would be immediately fired.

Some time in June, word got around that I would be attending Duke in the fall, a secret I'd vigorously tried to guard. Small-town resentment flared, as I knew it would, and my isolation was complete. I spent lunchtimes reading by myself, and attempting to catch a frequent chipmunk (named Chippy by the staff) beneath a trash can. I devised a trap consisting of peanut butter, crackers, a rake, and thin rope, and secured his trust over three weeks. When I finally nabbed him, I earned the very brief admiration of my fellow workers for the first and only time. I let Chippy go, and watched with envy as he dashed over the shed's concrete floor.

In late July, I discovered that Jason, in his first year, out-earned me by three dollars per hour. I attempted to rectify the situation, and was told by the big boss that Jason worked harder and deserved the pay. In fact, because he lacked the strength to push the heavy mowers up the steep hills, I had to do all the difficult jobs and exert twice the effort. But instead of arguing, I quit and became a dishwasher and prep cook at a restaurant called Tail O' The Pup.

Bushwick Basketball, Installment 2

Went to courts at 5:30, weather satisfactory, nobody around. Only handball courts full.

Small Hispanic kid and his sister/girlfriend followed me to court. Shot with me for twenty minutes. I asked their names but now forget. We played one on one. He won 5-4 on my generosity.

They left and for an hour nobody came. Shot hoops in waning sun.

Came home, could not watch game 7 of Bruins-Canadiens. Do not get the Versus channel. Very upsetting.

Improv show tonight. Expect it to reflect class.

Stuck in L train for 40 minutes this morning. Saw person with tattoo of person on neck. Asked who it was. Name forgotten. Buckminster Phillet? Something like that. Person had other tattoos, wore rasta hat, red marijuana eyes.

Four rednecks are fishing. One of them, called Jones, dies of a heart attack. The other three rednecks consider.

"Well Elijah," says one redneck to another, "you oughter be the one to tell the widow Jones. You're the one's good with words."

"I ain't even know the widow Jones," says Elijah.

"Even so," says the other, "he's right. You're keen of speech."

"Alright," says Elijah with a sigh.

Elijah goes alone to Jones' house. He rings the doorbell. A woman answers.

Elijah clears his throat. "You the widow Jones?"

"My name's Jones," says the woman, "but I'm no widow."

"The fuck you ain't."

blush

....

Bushwick Basketball: The Blog

This blog is now about basketball in Bushwick. Specifically, the brand of Bushwick basketball played at Gilbert Ramirez Park on McKibben Street.

The court sits between a children's playground and a chain-link fence, shadowed by old warehouses in a neighborhood at the edge of gentrification. The playground features a mock-subway system complete with signs for the P Train, and on the other side of the fence Hispanic kids play handball against a massive cement wall. A sprawling junkyard stretches across the one-way street, and young plane trees are scattered inside the park. Project housing is about six blocks away, and Bed-Stuy isn't much further, but an organic grocery store is closer still, and signs in the large windows of converted lofts nearby advertise cheap studio space for artists. The west side of the park has a narrow community garden filled with weeds, wheelbarrows, planter's soil, and clay pots. A ten-foot wrought iron fence, black and spiked, encloses the whole space.

Today's feature: Player Profile.


NICK

Nick is a white male in his mid-to-late thirties. He lives in my building a block from the park, and I've played with him about five times to date. When I first met Nick, I was shooting for teams with a group of black and hispanic kids who played high school ball together and are now in their first year of college. Before Nick came through the gate, they spotted him jogging down from Bogart Street, dribbling his ball. Nick was wearing the same outfit he's worn every time I've seen him play since- a gray sweat suit and a white do-rag. "Ohhhh shit," said Nelson, one of the college kids. He pointed. "Here's our boy."

Nick is short and thin, and moves with a sort of spastic quickness. He has a perpetual five-o'clock shadow, and sullen eyes. His posture is somewhat hunched. When he jogged through the gate and onto the court, he looked up quickly and shouted, "yo, what's game?" Without stopping to listen, he took two hard dribbles toward the basket and pulled up abruptly. His jumpshot sailed well past the rim.

Nick plays point guard, and he's more or less competent while handling the ball. When he finds himself with an open lay-up, he usually propels the ball with far too much gusto, and rarely converts. His jumpshot is erratic, at best, and his technique is odd to behold. Jumping in the air and kicking his legs forward, he holds the ball at the top of his head for an illogically long time, releasing the shot only milliseconds before landing. This results in a shot that is completely without arc, and follows a flat path that typically ends with a hard collision against the front rim.

He often finds himself in arguments in the middle of a game, and is a favorite target of locals. That first day we played, he often referred to the ball as a "rock," and Lewis, a black kid who spends his time between points doing a wobbly-knee dance, kept saying he'd prefer to play with a ball. "Yeah bro," said Nick, "I'm really droppin' mad slang with 'rock.'"

On our way back to the building, after our team lost by a considerable margin, Nick told me he was a keyboard player. Kanye West had asked him to play on his latest album, and offered him millions, but Nick had to decline. He explained to me that he was in the process of trying to build his own empire, and playing with Kanye would put that dream in jeopardy. "It was a heart decision, you know, brother?"

When I played with Nick Monday, and he'd missed most of the shots he'd taken in the course of a game, he told me this was just the beginning. "It's only March," he said, "by the time August comes around you'll think Ray Allen's out here. Every shot drops."

Last weekend, I played four-on-four with a group of white guys who mostly live in the artist lofts on McKibben Street or in my building. When the guys playing are mostly white, the rules tend to change slightly. The biggest shift is that every ball has to be taken out past the three-point line after a change of possession, regardless of whether it hits the rim. When a newcomer joined the game and mistakenly shot a lay-up after a stolen pass without bringing it out, Nick said, "nah man, we're playing white boy rules."

"You're white, too, dude," said Laurence (or L.B.), a white, 6'6", late-twenties player with a decent post game and a great shot. "I hate to say it, but you're white."

"Yo, I ain't white, bro," Nick shot back. "I'm Arabic."

He caught up with me again for the walk home. "I hope y'all didn't take me wrong when I said 'white boy rules,'" he told me. "I ain't racist, bro. Your white's side your right side, right? Nah, I don't mean it like that, but you know what I'm saying."

"I get you," I said.

Nick and I found ourselves on the same team in a full-court, 5-on-5 game yesterday. We won 22-16.



Personal results, 3/26: Team won 22-16. Miserable shooting performance. Shoelace broke mid-game. Hit winning three-pointer- only made jump shot of the game. On the plus side, several beautiful passes.

I put this up as a favor to a friend, so he could link the picture onto a messageboard. It is not because I'm creepy.

I'm an asshole who is trying to redeem himself

Okay, so a few posts back I wrote that lengthy and sadly misguided piece about why I was supporting Hillary Clinton.

A couple days after, my viewpoint began to change, and today I sit at my desk completely in support of Obama, and terrified that he might not win the nomination, much less the general election. Luckily, the shift has come about in time to influence my hordes of Pennsylvania readers.

But how did it happen?

First, I have to admit that I didn't know all the facts when I pulled the blog-trigger for Hillary. I wasn't aware, for one, that Obama took absolutely no money from lobbies, while she took lots. This leads to a very simple and very obvious conclusion, which is that Obama is more deeply committed to labor and, if elected, will be less indebted to big business and their lobbies.

I call that an obvious conclusion because it's well-known that Bill Clinton has one of the worst labor track records of any democratic president in history, and of course his wife will have the same money connections and the same vested interests.

Jobs, wages, and the prevention of corporate abuse is, to me, the biggest issue on the table. If we're able to resuscitate a dying economy, it will come through forcing big businesses to keep jobs in the country, and to show some financial accountability. It will come from imposing fair taxes on business, too. Hillary won't do that, Obama might.

The other big factor is that I was intensely cynical of his idealism, and his supporters. I wanted someone tried and true, I said. The first and most glaring hole in that argument is that Hillary isn't tried and true. In her time as First Lady, she only proved that she can make enemies. The way she's conducted herself in this campaign, with the litany of cheap shots thrown at Obama, shows that not much has changed. I like her ideas, but not her record. I wildly overestimated her past accomplishments, while wildly underestimating Barack's.

But more importantly, I underestimated the idea of hope. Sure, his campaign is based somewhat on rhetoric and the idea of sweeping change. But why not support that? Why not believe in a guy who, so far, has done everything right? Is it a fear of being hurt, of Obama proving himself insincere and the rest of us feeling tricked? Maybe that's it. But honestly, America is in such dire straits, on the verge of such an ugly future and in the midst of such a decaying present, that it's almost criminal not to throw your support behind the one guy who might have a shot at changing things. I committed that crime with Hillary, who is, at best, a status-quo candidate.

On the subject of fear, here's a great article by Michael Chabon, one of my favorite authors, called "Obama vs. the Phobocracy." Short, editorial, and well worth reading:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/03/AR2008020302526.html

Long story short, Barack is a politcian who finally seems to believe in something other than himself, and who gives America a chance at recovering from eight awful years. I believe in him, I made a mistake with the Hillary nonsense, and I'm fully on board the Obama train.

I think it would be almost tragic if he didn't win, another stalk of hope cut in its infancy by the scythe of skepticism and fear brandished by media, big business, and the power structure in Washington. We need an idealistic outsider with legitimate belief to right the ship. That's Obama, and nobody else. I'm fired up and ready to go.