UNAFFORDABLE IN SAN JOSE

You know from my glowing talk about the City of Brotherly Love that I like where I live. But in case there was ever any doubt about whether I would move back to San Jose, where I grew up, in the near future, this listing settles it: 6476 Devonshire Drive. This house, which is smack dab between where I went to junior high and where I went to high school, has half the bedrooms and half the square footage of our Philadelphia home; and, oh by the way, it's listing for a hair under $1 million. $998,000 to be exact, but who's counting when you get that high? Pushing seven digits for a teeny house in my old hood is just not affordable for my family; contrast that to eight years ago, when we paid five digits for our home in University City. Looks like I'll be sniffing San Jose as a visitor, from my parents' house, not as a homeowner.

Update on "Dear Zachary"

My friend Kurt's documentary, "Dear Zachary," is getting a lot, a lot,
A LOT of positive buzz. Here's an update he sent around on what's
what with "Dear Zachary" of late. Check it out if you haven't yet
seen it.

***

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, May 27, 2008 at 6:28 PM
Subject: "Dear Zachary" #3 audience favorite at Hot Docs -- Silverdocs
in D.C. up next

Hello everyone,
It is with great pleasure that I write to you to report the
overwhelming reception "Dear Zachary" received at its Canadian
premiere last month at the Hot Docs International Documentary Film
Festival in Toronto. We were one of the critic's picks of the
festival in the local paper NOW...
http://www.nowtoronto.com/movies/story.cfm?content=162802
...and continued to receive more wonderful notices:
http://www.cinematical.com/2008/04/30/hot-docs-review-dear-zachary-a-letter-to-a-son-about-his-fathe/
When I arrived outside the Bloor Cinema for the 6:30 PM show on
Friday, April 25th, I was surprised to see a line down the block and
around the corner to get in. The packed audience was the most vocal
I've yet heard throughout the film, literally hissing the government
officials who refused to speak to me about what happened to Zachary.
When I accompanied Kate & David Bagby to the stage after the show, the
citizens of Toronto welcomed us with a 2 minute standing ovation, and
applauded yet again when I announced that I had sent letters to every
member of Canadian Parliament requesting the opportunity to screen the
film for them. (I have begun to receive responses and am in the
process of talking with certain helpful folks on Parliament Hill to
work toward making this screening a reality sometime later this year.)
The next screening on Sunday, April 27th was a virtual repeat of the
Friday screening. An article documenting the audience reaction is
here:
http://www.cinematical.com/2008/04/30/hot-docs-2008-a-bunch-of-films-and-sadness-later/
After the festival wrapped that weekend, Hot Docs published the
results of their audience ballots -- out of 172 distinguished
documentaries from around the world, the Toronto audiences voted "Dear
Zachary" the #3 most popular film of the festival:
http://www.hotdocs.ca/index.php/daily/audience_award_winner_and_top_ten_announced_cida_award_presented_to_shock_w/
Numerous audience members have told us they've since written their
Members of Parliament in support of bail reform, and some have even
copied us on their letters. So it has begun. The response truly
couldn't have been better.
We have been invited to several more festivals throughout the rest of
this year, though I can't announce most of them publicly yet, as it's
common courtesy to wait until the festival itself announces its slate.
But the next big one is Silverdocs - the AFI/Discovery Channel
Documentary Film Festival, which runs from June 16-23 in Washington,
D.C. "Dear Zachary" shows June 21st & 22nd and I will be attending;
tickets can be purchased here:
http://silverdocs.com/festival/films/2008/dear-zachary-letter-son-about-his-father/
And at last, we're almost done negotiating our distribution contracts.
I'll let you know details just as soon as I'm allowed. Sorry again
to be so tight-lipped and thanks for your patience...all will be
public soon. :)
I hope this email finds everyone doing well. Happy June!
All the best,
Kurt
www.dearzachary.com

Our House in the City

Amy and I are such workaholics that, 8+ years after we bought our
house in University City, there's still a lot of basic stuff we
haven't yet gotten to. As a result, I find myself often coveting -
more finished rooms, more furnishings, even more electronic "toys."

Shame on me, for three reasons. First, covetousness is a sin, and I
should know better. Second, in its current condition, our house makes
us wealthier than probably one one hundredth of one percent of all the
people who have ever lived.

And third, God has been very good to us in the past 8+ years. When we
bought in 2000, some people wondered if we had lost our minds, while
others assumed we were making some great "sacrifice" to "endure" urban
living.

Fast forward 8+ years and, even with a significant dip in the local
market, our house has quadrupled in value. I walk to work, church,
and our kids' school, and this independence from the car will begin to
get priced even more into the value of our house as gas prices and
environmental concerns continue to rise. A new public school has been
built two blocks from our house, and the big park and the high speed
transit stop in our neighborhood have both been significantly
renovated.

In other words, we were very fortunate to buy where we did, when we
did. Remind me of this the next time you hear me complaining about
our house.

EARTHQUAKE ORPHANS

One of the more heartrending and yet heartwarming angles to the Sichuan disaster is the way many families in China have stepped forward to express their interest in adopting an "earthquake orphan": "Chinese Eager to Adopt Quake Orphans." As a parent who has adopted two kids from Asia, I think often of the intricate circumstances that brought each of our precious children into this world and then into our world. And so I pray for each of the babies that became orphaned by the earthquake, that God might shepherd them through this unthinkable tragedy and into a family that will love them as much as we love our two.

VIRTUES TO LEAD BY

I was too busy yesterday to play hooky from work to go see Michael Bloomberg, but thanks to the marvels of YouTube, I was able to watch his speech here and here. I appreciated his Franklinsian list of "virtues to lead by," as well as his calls to be engaged politically, take chances, and open our borders. Again, demure on his personal involvement in national politics. C'mon, Bloomy, how 'bout an independent run?

HOW TO MAKE MORE AFFORDABLE HOUSING

If you know me, you know I'm aware that government's best intentions don't always go the right way. And so it is with affordable housing mandates like the one being proposed in City Council. My firm wrote a report on behalf of the Building Industry Association of Philadelphia analyzing the bill in its present form. You can find it here.

Builders and affordable housing advocates don't always have to be on opposite sides of the table. On the other side of the river, they were often found on the same side, advocating for offsetting incentives so that stuff got built - market rate and affordable units - and people in need got the units they needed, and the cost was spread out over the entire taxpaying populace, as it should be if you believe that the provision of affordable housing is a public interest that should be paid for broadly and not borne by a small subset of the whole.

Far from being a threat to the local building industry, in the midst of an already bleak season, this discussion could lead to some really revolutionary changes. After all, Philadelphia has suffered under decades of structural impediments to a healthy real estate market. This stormy time could mark the beginning of a new day, if we use the opportunity to fix some things and make it right for everyone. Let's hope so.

A PAINFUL BUT NECESSARY SHIFT FROM OUR CAR CULTURE

A nice piece in today's Inky about the need to make the painful but necessary shift from our current car-dominated culture: "The American Car Culture is Running Out of Gas." Driving a car is not evil; but it is artificially cheap, to the extent that we are doing more of it than is economically, socially, and environmentally optimal.

Market forces have corrected some but not all of that under-pricedness, and hopefully social pressure and public policy will do the rest. Unless we in the general public care more about immediate comfort and our elected officials about their current jobs than the quality of life of our kids and grandkids, in terms of roads and bridges that aren't crumbling, air and water we don't get sick from, and communities that are rich with the human contact that humans need. Time will tell if we get this right; I sure we hope we do.

THE BIKES WIN

I had to do a triple take when I read this article this morning: ”In Rush Hour Battle, The Bike Rolls On” Great concept, plus it’s a calculation I’ve actually done in my own head (see below), plus the starting line of this “race” was less than a block from my house. Strange, indeed.

Anyway, before I started walking my kids to and from day care, I was mostly biking, not so much for the fresh air and exercise (although on good days, those are nice perks), but really because it was the fastest way to get from Point A to Point B. Even going half as fast as the biker in the article, I was door to door in eight to ten minutes, versus twenty by foot and probably 12 to 15 by bus (plus or minus, given how long you have to wait). And don’t get me started on the hassle of firing up my own car, fighting through traffic, and finding a parking place.

I haven’t biked in a while, and of course Ride Your Bike to Work Day later this week is the one time in months I actually have to drive. But I’m glad to hear the virtues of biking are being told. As oil becomes dearer and dearer, we’d do better – nationally and locally – to do things to encourage more bike commutes and less car commutes.

My Kryptonite

I can take a lot of suffering.  I keep a punishing schedule, I'll exert myself mentally and physically to the breaking point, and can even take severe emotional strain without losing much of my gusto or my faith.  But my Kryptonite is being sick.  I am an absolute sissy when it comes to catching a cold.  I will mope - my wife loves that - and drag and whine and otherwise be miserable, and be miserable to be around. 

Pain, in God's hand, is a refiner.  If we're made of gold, it can burn away the impurity of having a conditional faith: I'll happily trust God, unless.  Pain breaks us of that conditional faith and teaches us to trust God even amidst the "unless." 

But if we're made of less, all pain does is burn us and leave us the weaker.  Our faith shrivels until it is no faith at all, and the enemy of our souls and the enemy of our God no longer really needs to worry about us doing any dissonance to him. 

By the grace of God, more and more of me each day is made of gold.  He still has much to refine away, but I am learning to genuinely praise Him in spite of, in the midst of, and even because of hardship He leads me through, because I see in the trial the sovereign and steady and wise and loving hand of my God. 
Alas, sickness I cannot yet deal with.  Sickness derails me from faith; I go from a steely trust to an embittered despondency.  My attitude stinks, I curse God, and I am of no good to Him or anyone around me. 

Each time I get sick, I get a little better at dealing.  I may not do well, and I may not even have the desire to do well; but I am starting to want to have the desire to do well, if that makes any sense at all. 

Last week, I was sick.  And I did not do a little better than before.  In fact, I did far worse.  I was far grumpier, far more despairing, far less caring.  (You can ask my wife, especially.) 

Here's what I learned, though.  First, God still loves me, even when I'm sick and feeling out of it: I experienced that love through my wife and kids and friends, and in times of silence and solitude.  Second, God still utilizes me, even when I'm sick and feeling out of it: a couple of people whose opinions I deeply respect told me how much they appreciated something I had said or done, and I could do nothing but thank God for making it possible at all for me to say and do that amidst my crabbiness and fogginess. 

Sickness may be my personal Kryptonite, and I may have many more things besides even that that God needs to refine away.  But I am learning that for all my imperfections, God is bullet-proof, His hold on me as sure as sure can be, and His power all the more evident to work in spite of and even through my weakness.  In sickness and in health, in adversity and in comfort, thanks be to Him.

GAS IS STILL TOO CHEAP

Two of my bosses wrote a sterling editorial in yesterday's Daily News: "We Need a Gas-Tax Hike, Not a Tax Holiday." So Hillary, here are two of the legions of economists who disagree with the idea.

The fact of the matter is that we have built much of our economy on the cheap gas secured for us by almost three decades of presidential deals with Saudi Arabia. But geopolitics and climate change have woken us up to the reality that gas is far more precious and costly than we have priced it.

It will be a painful transition for many, and more thought needs to be given to figuring out how to help the most vulnerable among us to make that transition. But make no mistake: a transition needs to be made; SUVs that seat one and far-flung suburbs and a society in which you have to fire up a two-ton steel box just to go five minutes to pick up a gallon of milk are just not sustainable, economically or environmentally.

A federal gas tax hike, on the other hand, gets us to a better price, at which consumers will start to make more rational decisions, about what car they buy and how they plan their trips and even where they live. Businesses will respond with more efficient packaging and shipping strategies, and car manufacturers will offer more fuel economy because of market demand and not federal legislation.

A generation from now, will it be said of us that we did the hard work to get ourselves transitioned from an economic and social system that didn't work to one that did? Or will our kids be in a world of pain in terms of air quality, scarce resources, and crumbling infrastructure? When I hear people complain about high gas prices, I fear that the latter is a more likely scenario.

Repentance

They said to me, "The remnant there in the province who survived the captivity are in great distress and reproach, and the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are burned with fire."  When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.  I said, "I beseech You, O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who preserves the covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, let Your ear now be attentive and Your eyes open to hear the prayer of Your servant which I am praying before You now, day and night, on behalf of the sons of Israel Your servants, confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which we have sinned against You; I and my father's house have sinned.  We have acted very corruptly against You and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses." - Nehemiah 1:3-7

I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed and said, "Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, we have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, even turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances.  Moreover, we have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers and all the people of the land.  Righteousness belongs to You, O Lord, but to usopen shame, as it is this day--to the men of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, those who are nearby and those who are far away in all the countries to which You have driven them, because of their unfaithful deeds which they have committed against You.  Open shame belongs to us, O Lord, to our kings, our princes and our fathers, because we have sinned against You." - Daniel 9:4-8

In the Bible, I can hardly think of two more righteous people than Nehemiah and Daniel.  Both did great things for God, and not only so but lived lives of the utmost integrity.  And yet, in the passages above, both come reverently and repentantly before their God.  They take full ownership of the sin of the people on whose behalf they are coming before God.  They appeal not to their own righteousness but to God's, and accept that that righteousness means that they require great mercy from God, in light of the sins of His people. 

I believe it is time for our church to come before God in a similar way.  If you don't know, our church has sinned greatly and been sinned against greatly in the recent past.  And, as diverse as we are as a congregation in many ways, so are we diverse in how we have responded to all of that sin.  But officially and as a church leadership team, I do not believe we have adequately made our peace with God; I do not believe we have yet acknowledged before God and man that we have been wrong and that we have been wronged, that He alone is righteousness, that we fall vastly short, and that we cry out to Him for mercy.

Poignantly, as I have shared our church's travails with pastor friends of mine, they express a sort of envy.  In their minds, our church has sinned and has been sinned against; it needs to forgive and it needs to be forgiven.  And that makes us incredibly relevant to a culture and a world that is in the same situation and that needs the same healing and the same God. 

Instead, we have at times tried to paper over our messiness, wishing instead that we were further along or wondering if all it takes is just a change here or a change there and we'll be on our way.  But I submit that we need not be ashamed - at least before man, and in one sense before God either - of our messiness.  For if there is one place that acknowledges the depravity and vulnerability of humankind, it would be the church.  And if there is one religion that acknowledges that God's power is made perfect through - not in spite of, but through - man's weakness, it is the Christianity of the Bible. 

So maybe we're not far from being the church God would want us to be.  For in a few weeks, we will host a repentance service.  And we will repent of specific sins we have been guilty of, either directly or implicitly through our inaction or indirectly through our forefathers: sexual immorality, deception, racism, and materialism being some key ones we'll need to lay before our God.  And we will invite others who need to forgive or be forgiven to also get right with God and with their fellow brother or sister.  But whether or not anyone else steps up, we as a church, through the action of us leaders, needs to step up and say what it needs to say before God, to confess and repent and mourn and grieve and lament and "man up."

In short, we will do and be exactly what church ought to do or be: not a country club or a civic group or even a service organization, but one that deals with the real problem in this world, which is that we all have sinned and fall desperately and irreparably short of God's standard of righteousness.  And, in our case, we as a church consist solely of sinners, and we as a church have corporately sinned, and we need to get right with God.  And that makes us exactly what God can and does use in the midst of a dying world: a place where we need no longer put up the facade that "I'm OK, you're OK," and we can unravel ourselves and come before God in our "I'm not OK"-ness, and receive the forgiveness our souls ache for as well as the strength to forgive that will lift that bitterness from our shoulders. 

WORLDS COLLIDE

My two alma maters are hooking up on a sweet leadership training initiative: "The Wharton School and Fels Institute of Government of the University of Pennsylvania Provide Leadership Training to Philadelphia Government Leaders." It's nice to see the Felsonian and Whartonian influence on the local government, nicer still to see how amenable Mayor Nutter (a Wharton alum and this year's Fels graduation speaker) is to the influence.

NO, BUT I HAVE A BLOG

As someone who works through thoughts by blogging, and who seeks to be as transparent as is appropriate in the process, I got a kick out of this article: "Your Blog Can Be Group Therapy." Indeed, it can be therapeutic to vent, muse, and puzzle in the blogosphere. Would that more people to do so, so that their jottings can be of service to other like-minded pilgrims. (And would that people chill out about digging up old writings from political candidates - we're musing here, not decidering.)

Don't get me wrong: there's no substitute for human contact. Some topics are best suited for non-public venues. And therapy can be a very necessary resource for all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. Still, I'd like to say that I'm a little bit healthier in the head for keeping a blog.

A Dollar with Opportunity Goes A Long Way

Ten dollars for a family in poverty here in the US might be enough to buy them a meager dinner at Boston Market.  Overseas, via Opportunity International, it can lift that family out of poverty.

Such is the power of the multiplier effect of microlending: Opportunity makes a small loan, usually to a woman, and that woman is able to get a business going that makes enough money over time to pay back the loan and sustain the family. 

Two representatives from Opportunity, one from locally and one from headquarters in Chicago, visited me this morning to tell me that they figured out how many families they'd gotten out of poverty over a ten-year period, and divided it by the amount of donations they'd received from people like me (I've been giving since the mid-1990's), and determined that it took ten dollars to get one family out of poverty.  At that rate, they told me, I had helped over 1500 families out of poverty in Uganda, where I've directed my giving: literally an entire village.

Fortunately, others are getting hip to the power of microlending and the competency of Opportunity in administering such programs effectively.  None other than Bill Gates had his foundation vet them rigorously, and, after they passed snuff, has begun giving them millions of dollars to lift the rural poor in Africa out of their economic plight.  Not surprisingly, other foundations and individuals are stepping up now, too: "if Opportunity is good enough for Bill Gates, they're good enough for us."

I'm glad to have been a regular donor all these years, even gladder than Opportunity is getting to grow to scale as more people step up to donate.   After all, a dollar with them goes a long way, and while millions of people have been helped, so many more need it. 

Brown Again

I'm two-thirds of the way through a massive book by David Halberstam on the 1950's called "The Fifties."  It's a decade that I wasn't alive for, but because it continues to shape our nation today, and, on a not unrelated note, has lessons for today, I figured it was worth the read.

I have particularly enjoyed the emphasis Halberstam puts on the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954) case, in which, in a unanimous 9-0 vote, segregated schools were deemed inherently unequal, refuting the equally significant Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).  All of you should know about this if you stayed awake in your high school history classes.  Not surprisingly, a number of white people and white politicians, particularly in the South, vigorously fought against allowing blacks into their schools and districts.

These are the sort of accounts that remind us that we were once so backwards in our thinking; "I can't believe people were like this barely 50 years ago," is something you might say.  Except that many of us have not yet gotten over harboring those kinds of discriminating thoughts.  So unfortunately, however primitive this sort of racism might seem, it persists to the present day.

Many people believe (and studies we've done at work seem to bear this out **) that blacks moving into their neighborhoods and schools lowers property values.  And so while we may not take a fire hose to people anymore, our techniques in response are for the same end, whether it is passing large lot zoning ordinances or opposing multi-family developments or other exclusionary sentiments that keep "those people" out of "our" places. 


In short, in too many of our neighborhoods, schools, and churches, we remain separate and unequal.  Brown came 50+ years after Plessy.  Another 50+ years after Brown, is another landmark court case on the horizon to further break our nation's subtle and seething discriminatory attitudes?  Keep your eyes out.

** I am referring in particular to an analysis we did of residential property values in four big cities.  We found that neighborhoods that were mostly black in the early 90's enjoyed the highest price appreciations, but it wasn't blacks themselves who were enjoying this wealth increase.  Rather, non-blacks were moving in, and then prices rose; conversely, when blacks moved into neighborhoods, prices dropped. 

God and a Broken Church

The elders and staff of our church had a retreat yesterday afternoon, to discuss among other things ways that we can communicate better, within our respective groups and across groups and to the congregation at large.  Session/Staff miscommunications are to be expected; having worked for a non-profit for ten years and then joining its board, I can't tell you how many times I heard (and I'm embarrassed to tell you how many times I said) things like, "The board doesn't get where we're coming from" or "the staff doesn't get where we're coming from."  Plus we as a church have been blessed with some real pillars over the years, you know those people that just do everything and hold stuff together; so we're only now realizing that formal and intentional policies and infrastructure are necessary for a healthy and communicative organization. 

All well and good, and as one who has seen a lot and read a lot in the realm of organizational issues, I can certainly say we have a ways to go; I was glad people could call out our weaknesses, and appreciated when people had good ideas to fix them.  But I have to say that much of the conversation was difficult; I couldn't help but consider ways in which I have participated in the problem.  I have poorly communicated, I have not listened well, I have not considered the needs and perspectives of others when going about my business.  And our retreat brought to light the consequences of my errors and the errors of others: dysfunction, hurt, mistrust, and less than what we could be as a force for God in our community.

I could not stay until the end, so I do not know how we tied up our dialogue; but I know that one thing I feel I need to do is repent and ask for help.  I have sinned and will likely continue to sin; I cannot do it without help, and will continue to need help.  Thankfully, God is still in the business of using sinners to minister to other sinners, and sinful entities to minister to a sinful world.  We have a ways to go before we are a healthy organism; but well before we get there, we can experience God's goodness and manifest it to those around us.  Let's pray so for Woodland Church.

WE'VE LOST ANOTHER ONE

We've lost another police officer in the line of duty. I was in the car with my kids when Mayor Nutter and Commissioner Ramsey held their press conference. Sergeant Liczbinski was responding to a bank robbery when he was fatally shot with an AK-47. "Tell my wife I'll miss her" were his dying words.

My heart goes out to his family, and I lament that we live in a city - in a world - that is so violent. I pray for Sergeant Liczbinski's loved ones, as well as his fellow cops. He was 39, with a wife and two kids, and so I cannot help that he and I are not that different, except that my job does not put me in harm's way on a daily basis.

To the men and women who do accept that kind of danger as part of an honest day's work, I salute you and I support you. And my family and I thank you for your service to us and to our city. And I join you in mourning as you will have to do that job this morning with one less member.

YOU SAID IT

Leave it to Bloomy to express my thoughts exactly on McCain's gas tax holiday idea: “It’s about the dumbest thing I’ve heard in an awful long time from an economic point of view,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters, adding that he did not see “any merit to it whatsoever.” From this morning's article in the Times: "Unlikely Allies Campaign for a Gas-Tax Holiday."

The Fear of God

I've probably been to the zoo or aquarium 30+ times in the past two years, since we got kids and got memberships.  Never once did I fear for my life: otherwise intimidating animals were safely tucked away behind cages or inside tanks.  We have so domesticated creatures that we forget how fearsome they can be in the wild; last year's tiger escape and last month's shark attack offer a reminder.

So have we, through our human knowledge, tamed weather and disease and the cosmos, in a sense.  And in doing so, we have lost a sense of fear.  For some, this is progress; and on one level, it is progress for us to no longer worry about things that generations past had to worry about.

And yet I wonder if we would do better to reclaim some sense of reverence and awe.  King Solomon once wrote, "The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge."  Instead, we have decided that knowledge is the way we no longer need fear anything, even God, and perhaps we don't even need God anymore at all. 

But God is more fearsome than very fearsome things, like tigers and sharks and tsunamis and pestilence and asteroids.  I call this the "Bigger Bully Theorem" - if the bully I'm afraid of is afraid of a bigger bully, that bigger bully must be really fearsome.  A consequence of the Bigger Bully Theorem is that if we lose touch with how fearsome animals, the weather, disease, and the cosmos are, we lose touch with how fearsome God is.  And if that happens to us, no matter how much knowledge we think we've accumulated, individually and as humanity, we haven't even gotten to the beginning of knowledge.

COOL KIDS, HOT CARS

Talk about a good story: inner city kids competing for a $10 million prize, uber fuel efficiency, and very nice looking cars. And it's all happening down the street from where I live: "Top 10 Early Contenders for the Automotive X Prize: 10. West Philly Hybrid EVX." That's my friend Simon on the far left, beaming at how far his students have gotten so far. I'm not a subscriber, but I'm sure Popular Mechanics knows a thing or two about cars, so for them to put our team on the short list to win it all, that's pretty cool. Cali, Canada, Germany, . . . and West Philly?!? Representin'.

Wright and Wrong

It's a shame Barack Obama has had to distance himself from the comments of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright.  This confirms for me that much of America is in denial as to the festering pain - both past and present - that many people of color feel, particularly in our big cities.  Much of America would like to think that while we still have a race issue, it needn't be discussed in such a messy and incendiary way, and it can certainly be gently placed off to the side when we get tired of the topic (and of the discomfort it causes us). 

Except that we're not alright on this issue in America.  I admire Obama's efforts to date: his speech in Philadelphia last month struck an impressive balance between saying that we can sweep race and racism under the rug and allowing it to dominate his campaign.  I don't blame him for wanting to get past all the talk about what his pastor said.  No shame for Obama there; but too bad for the American people, who are so uncomfortable with race and racism that we have to vilify someone in order to placate our own participation in wrong.