It’s been hard to concentrate. All week. Monday I couldn’t write, so I assuaged some guilt and manned the phones for Obama for six hours. Tuesday I couldn’t write, think or do anything — except vote, then plan for the big evening.

Our dear friends Nick and Tory were coming for dinner plus the big show afterward. Carol was cooking, so I prepared too in my own way. I wrote up a list of the five TV channels I’d be surfing. I went over my state-by-state predictions (Obama 354, McCain 184 — pretty good, Frank!). I set out three bottles of whiskey, just in case.

Now it’s Wednesday, the Big Day + 1, and again, I can’t concentrate. Phone calls. Emails. Visits. Exultations. Condolences with my Republican friends. (Sure I have Republican friends. Every Democrat needs them, or how else will we ever struggle out of the Bushes? My advice to Democrats: Go befriend a Republican or two.)

The emails today have been especially interesting. Because I’m too distracted to compose much of an email myself, I’m sharing two others I received. The first is from my cousin Maura Judkis, a Web producer at U.S. News & World Report and recent George Washington University graduate. The second is from … one of those Republican friends of mine.

In case you didn’t make it out onto the street last night, in case you aren’t 22 any more, in case you don’t have the whole future shimmering before you, well … here’s Maura, to tell you what you missed:

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This is what it’s like to be in D.C. on election night. As I write this, at 4:24 a.m., having just returned home, I can still hear a few car horns blaring. At our neighborhood bar for the first wave of results, and as the fries and pitchers of beer come to our table, we toast nervously to early returns from D.C., Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Illinois. But with each state CNN calls, we grow bolder. “I’m going to cry when he gives his winning speech.” “If he gives his winning speech.” We knock on wood. We clink our glasses. We turn to the TV at the sound of CNN’s dramatic prediction percussion, and yell at it when they show a hologram of will.i.am instead. “CNN is such a tease.”

We care about nothing more than Ohio and Virginia. And they come, with sizeable margins - first one, then the other. At exactly 11 p.m., it’s all over. And that’s when everyone takes to the streets. Bodies stream towards U Street, the most historic black neighborhood in D.C. Someone sets off fireworks about 40 feet away. At the intersection of 14th and U, people young and old dance around a drum circle. Kids climb to the top of traffic lights, trees, anything with a view. Cars, honking at first in frustration, resign to the fact that they aren’t going anywhere, and honk to the beat of “O-BA-MA.” Someone produces a giant American flag out of nowhere, and runs through the crowd with a conga line forming behind. Another guy wears a banana costume. Our president-elect - though at this point, I have not yet thought of him as this - starts his speech, and we can’t get to a TV, because all of the bars are full. Cars park in the middle of the street, open their windows, and turn the radio broadcast of the speech up to full volume for everyone to hear. “Yes we did.” It starts to pour.

We’d left our umbrellas behind in the excitement. Makeup smudges around my eyes, and water drips down my back. A friend and I head down the street to the first bar that has any space to breathe – 3 blocks later, on a street full of bars, we arrive. A drink to dry off. The place start to close. We walk down 16th street to the sound of honking horns. Everyone high-fives everyone. I drop my friend off – she’s tired, and it’s 2:30 a.m., so on my own, I follow the sound of screaming. It leads me back to 16th street, and I enter a parade of hundreds walking down the middle of the street. We join thousands at the White House, screaming and dancing and singing in Lafayette Park. “Na-na-na-na hey-hey-hey, goodbye!” “Pack it up!” “We are the champions!” If I can hear it from my apartment six blocks away, Bush can certainly hear it from within. Did it disrupt his sleep, his peace of mind?

I watch the Secret Service snipers patrol the roof. A stranger inexplicably asks for a picture with me. A hipster on a vintage bike holds up his handmade victory sign, but the marker has started to run in the rain. Colleagues join me, and the mass starts to move. Up 15th, across K, down 13th to Pennsylvania Avenue, and then – yes, we’re walking to the Capitol, drums beating and photographers in everyone’s faces, and drivers still laying on their horns. We meet a British guy who is in D.C. on holiday to the America for the first time. “So we’re going to the White House, then?” “No, this is the Capitol.” “There’s not a bloody bar open this late?” The rain has stopped, and we’ve walked two miles. They climb a statue – the umpteenth thing to have been climbed tonight, and they are starting to run out of chants. The lessening crowd looks behind at the Capitol dome, ahead towards the Washington Monument, and down from the statue, and the phrase on the tip of everyone’s tongue, but that no one has dared to say, is “this is all, at last, ours.”

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And now this, from my Republican friend. She is not merely Republican; she is PASSIONATE — a true member of the “base”. She not only opposed a Democratic victory, the prospect actually seemed to frighten her. Yet read this lovely, gracious message, which I reprint in its entirety:

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To all of you!

I am thinking of you. What a night! There is hope that we will be led by a charismatic, inspirational Commander in Chief. It is wonderful to see so many around the world thrilled at the results, tearful and so very joyful. Joy to the entire world! — Laurie

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If, as I believe, today is the first day of something really really new, then let’s all us … Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites, young and old, gay and straight, Christians and Jews and Muslims and Mormons and Rastafarians and hard-shell Baptists too … paste on a big American smile (whether we mean it or not), and see can we take this thing seriously for once in our lives.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

When I relocated from Chicago to Washington DC in 1969, my first job was as a reporter for National Journal, then three weeks away from publishing its first issue. My beat was consumer affairs and communications. The principal agencies I covered were the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Postal Service. At that point in my life, age 29, I had spent approximately four weeks of my entire life in Washington. I had never covered regulatory affairs. I didn’t know nuttin’ about nuttin’.

So I did what a reporter is supposed to do. I went to the FTC and the Postal Service and walked around. I went to various floors of the headquarters buildings, more or less at random, and knocked on doors. The occupants would welcome me in and invite me to sit down for a chat, which typically began, ‘What do you guys do in here?’

For the next 20 years or so, I spent all or much of my time as a working journalist in Washington. I interviewed dozens of regulators, members of Congress and their aides, even White House functionaries now and then. Not once was I denied access. There was no need to keep roaming the halls at random once I started figuring things out, but I only remember one occasion when I had to pass security. That was the time I interviewed Chuck Colson – then a top aide to President Nixon, later convicted and imprisoned in the Watergate scandal – in the Old Executive Office Building next door to the White House.

One of the great things about Washington, I would exult to my journalist friends stuck in the provinces, is the incredible openness here. Washington journalism is the easiest form to practice anywhere. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Everyone talks. You can hardly shut them up.

Starting perhaps in the ’80s, things began tightening up in the wake of scary events such as the assassination attempts against Ford and Reagan and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But only after Sept. 11, 2001, did the world turn upside-down.

In the massive wave of fear following 9/11, every government building rushed to install airline-style security. Police cordoned off every street approaching the Capitol; to drive the two blocks up Constitution Avenue to Capitol Hill, you had to pass through an eyeballing and a license check by the cops.

Few questioned the need for such measures at the time. We were a nation gripped in fear.

But then they closed Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicle traffic in front of the White House. Beautiful Lafayette Square across street, scene of many a peaceful sandwich break as well as historic protests and demonstrations, was sealed by jersey barriers. So was the Capitol itself, that temple of representative government, the people’s building in the nation’s capitol if there ever was one. Tourists were confined to the rotunda and a few other official areas – if, that is, they made it past the metal detectors.

It’s understandable that places like the White House would come in for top security. Defense and intelligence agencies too, as well as monuments like the Lincoln Memorial that are high-value targets for terrorists. The Capitol? Understandable too, sad to say. But … the agency I was involved with at the time, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management – the government’s HR office, for God’s sake – was secured as tightly as the Pentagon. Why any terrorist would even think to bomb OPM is anyone’s guess. But good luck to the terrorist who might try.

Voices began to rise in protest at the erosion of these and other manifestations of our American freedoms and birthrights. These voices were largely drowned out by the voices of the fearful, and so the erosion continued – encouraged, aided and abetted by a deeply cynical leadership that saw political advantage in keeping us jittery, submissive and cowed.

But it truly wasn’t until the tide of favor turned against this political crowd that protesters began to feel safe to climb out of the woodwork, and our supposedly free and independent press – which had lost its nerve after 9/11 along with most of the rest of us – started finding its voice again. Nothing to be proud of.

As you contemplate your choice on Tuesday, you probably didn’t consider this topic as being among the issues. You ought to.

Regardless who is elected, don’t expect the airline-style security to disappear – not overnight, maybe not in our lifetimes. And do expect whichever man is elected, Obama or McCain, to continue the fight against terror and terrorists – effectively, I pray. But neither one, it seems to me, is the sort to keep using fear to club us into submission.

On Tuesday, choose the guy YOU think will be most likely to restore civility and lessen this pernicious climate of fear. Choose the Democrat, choose the Republican, choose a third-party candidate — but choose someone. Turn out, and show the world how much we value our democracy and our freedoms. If you needed yet another reason go to the polls on Tuesday, that’s a good one.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. On Sunday, Nov. 15, 3 p.m., I’m reading my story “Our Lady of the Helicopter” at Constellation Books, 303 Main Street, Reisterstown, Maryland 21136 (410-833-5151). The story is included in NEW LINES FROM THE OLD STATE, an anthology of the best writing by members of the Maryland Writers Assn. (It first appeared in “Scribble,” MWA’s literary magazine.) My fellow authors are reading too. I invite you to attend — it’ll be fun — but if you can’t, order your own copy now at www.marylandwriters.org/publications.html

P.P.S. Schedule an appearance at your organization, library or bookstore! Contact me and I’ll pass the word to the appropriate authorities at MWA.

                     “There are no atheists in foxholes, and no ideologues in financial crises.”

                      — Federal Reserve Chm. Ben Bernanke, quoted in today’s New York Times

As a direct-marketing copywriter (call it junk mail if you must), I’ve spent a good deal of my adult life following first principles: Sell fear, greed or — if possible — both.

It’s cynical but it works. People who feel fear or greed tend to act on those feelings (and, hopefully, buy whatever I’m selling), because fear and greed are bedrock human impulses.

Watching the current financial crisis unfold, I’ve been thinking a lot about greed. Greed got us into this mess. Mortgage lenders were greedy, making loans to people who couldn’t even pay down their credit card balances. Wall Street was greedy, reselling bundles of bad loans to unsuspecting investors, and peddling financial instruments incomprehensible even to those who created them. Not least, homebuyers were greedy, thinking they could get something (a house) for, basically, nothing — little or no money down, ridiculously low introductory interest rates.

But in the immortal words of Gordon Gecko, the savage that Michael Douglas played in the movie WALL STREET, “Greed is good.” Can that also be true? ‘Fraid so, sometimes. Greed is just another word for “incentive,” and incentives have brought about every change that defines our lives, for better and for worse. Without incentives, we wouldn’t have internal-combustion engines, open-heart surgery and AquaFresh Extreme Clean. (Nor Claymore mines, Superfund sites and American Idol.) Without incentives, we’d still be painting antelopes on cave walls.

And greed cannot be curbed. At least I don’t think so. That’s our nature, or so my direct-marketing experience tells me.

Here’s where it gets cute though. When all us greedy people selfishly pursue our own selfish interests, an extraordinary thing is said to happen. Something emerges called The Marketplace, a theoretical entity where everything sorts itself out for the greatest good of the greatest number of us. A lot of people believe in this seemingly magical ability of Mister Market. Heck, even I believe it (with certain caveats), and I call myself a liberal. Most importantly, in recent years a majority of our political leaders have believed it.

At least they did so until some time last week.

Those leaders have elevated The Marketplace to the level where bishops frolic and the Pope presides. If we are left to pursue our various self-interests, those leaders assert, Mister Market will sort it all out. Free markets, they say, make a free people, and anyone who says otherwise must be a Socialist.

(Yeah, they say that. I have Republican friends who use the S word. Some even sling around the M word. Pardon me, but I don’t think there’s been a practicing, believing Marxist in America since Joe McCarthy rooted the last one out of the State Department in 1954. A heartfelt thanks from all of us, Joe, wherever you are.)

So OK: Freedom is good. Got that. If some freedom is good, more freedom must be better, right? Check. If more freedom is better, than total freedom must be best of all. Why, of course it must. Let’s all carry Smith & Wessons for personal protection. No, make that AK-47s. No, make that Claymore mines.

This is where we are now. When things to get to the Claymore mine stage, this is where we always wind up. In moments of national crisis, governments usually do what our government is doing right now. When they fail to do so, we get a Great Depression or a decade-long stagnation like Japan in the ’90s. Most times though — this time, thank heaven — government jumps in with both feet, doing whatever it must to save and protect us. That always, always involves intervention, regulation, and the tossing-out-the-window of free-market fundamentalism.

Sure, Gordon, greed can do good in the world. Sure, Mister Market, in the long run, I have total confidence that you will sort things out for the greatest good. However, to quote another famous economist, John Maynard Keynes, “In the long run, we are all dead.”

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. My short story “Our Lady of the Helicopter” has been chosen for inclusion in the anthology NEW LINES FROM THE OLD LINE STATE, published by the Maryland Writers Assn. (The story first appeared in SCRIBBLE, the MWA literary magazine.) The anthology will be introduced at the Baltimore Book Festival this Sunday at 5:30 p.m. and I’ll be among the authors reading.

Earlier that same Sunday afternoon, I’ll be signing copies of my novel TO LOVE MERCY at the AuthorsBookshop.com tent.

The Baltimore Book Festival takes place Friday-Sunday in Mt. Vernon Square and it’s always lots of fun. Hope you’ll make it! Here’s the link: www.baltimorebookfestival.com/index.cfm?page=schedules

P.P.S. And don’t forget to visit the “Fall for the Book” festival at George Mason University in Fairfax VA this coming Thursday at 1:30 p.m., I’ll be reading from TO LOVE MERCY and signing books in the Provident Bank tent, along with fellow authors Solveig Eggerz, Peter Brown and Elaina Loveland. Here’s the link: www.fallforthebook.org/events.html

I’m typing this with nine fingers. Let’s see how far I get before the anesthetic wears off.

I just returned from Suburban Hospital in Bethesda MD, where kindly Dr. Bieber removed a cyst from under the nail cuticle of my long finger. I had not encountered the term “long finger” previously, but it’s the term of art — it’s on the chart. (The long one, in case you’re wondering, is the one with which Redskins fans offer the Dallas Cowboys salute.)

You’d think he could do such a simple procedure in his office, but no. Medicine is weird, and I’m not talking merely about terminology.

The doctor wrote something on my finger with a Sharpie to make sure he targeted the right digit. They laid me on a gurney, strapped a tourniquet on my left arm (the one where the surgery was taking place) and a blood-pressure cuff on the other arm. They swabbed the business arm with sticky yellow Betadine antiseptic from fingertip to elbow, then fitted an elastic sock over the hand. Then they punched a hole in a big blue tarp, ran my upraised arm through the hole, and tethered the other end of the tarp above my head. This is a sterile tent, they said. Tent indeed. Where, I asked a nurse, are the marshmallows?

Dr. Bieber stuck needles in two spots at the base of the finger, which hurt, but not for long, since they were full of Lidocaine. Then he clamped a teeny tourniquet around my finger. The nurse had said the arm tourniquet was just for backup — he’d probably use the finger tourniquet only. I didn’t see the surgery and I’m glad, but I’d've liked a gander at that baby tourniquet.

By now my finger is as numb as a block of wood. I can feel the doctor doing something to it but can’t tell what because of the tent overhead. The radio is playing a Shania Twain song.

Pull. Scrape. “Isn’t she the one whose husband just ran off?” Dr. Bieber asks. “Yeah,” one of the nurses replies, “and I hear the woman wasn’t half as good-looking as Shania.”

Scrape. Pull. Shania goes away and Journey starts to sing.

Pull. Scrape. A country song comes on. “You like country music?” the doctor asks. “Her sister really likes it,” one of the nurses answers. “She’s from Texas.”

Scrape. Pull. The doctor is putting in the stitches now, to soul music. The two rotator cuffs he did earlier today went fast and he’s ahead of schedule. After he finishes me up, it’s off to the beach for the weekend. A nurse notes there’s rain in the forecast. The doctor makes a noise that might be a laugh, and says he’ll be playing Monopoly with his mother-in-law.

“But first, paperwork,” he says. “I’d rather do paperwork than almost anything.” He picks the phone off the wall, hits a button and begins dictating my case, speaking in medicalese at about 250 words a minute. Every few sentences, he slows down a bit to say: ” … end paragraph.” He hangs up the phone and looks at me. “Did you get all that?” he asks. “Most of it,” I answer. He tells a nurse to put in the last two stitches, we shake hands, and he’s off to the beach. Total elapsed time: Five songs on WASH-FM.

The weirdest moment came after Dr. Bieber took off and the nurses were bandaging me. The finger, still totally numb, felt like it was missing, gone, disappeared — like there was a blank spot in the middle of my hand where I once had a finger. I had a vision of those poor mopes coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, missing much bigger limbs, and wondered whether this is what that felt like.

Now I’m looking down at a bandaged finger half the size of a banana. I’ve typed this far to discover that it’s actually not nine-finger but six-finger typing — touch on the right, hunt-and-peck on the left. There’s no pain yet, three hours after the surgery, but I have Tylenol + codeine in case it comes along. It could be an interesting week ahead for novel-writing.

This is nothing. One of my high-school buddies just had his prostate out. Another is fighting cancer with one hand tied behind his back, because they can’t give him chemo. I made a list the other day of my aging contemporaries. The majority have some heinous crap or other that’ll either kill them or just, if they’re lucky, make their lives miserable. All I have is sleep apnea, a bad back, several orthopedic nuisances, and a finger that could start hurting any minute now. The feeling is just starting to come back.

I’m looking forward to next Tuesday when they take the stitches out. I feel terrible for my friends but a little relieved on my own account. I think I ought to try living a little more fully and being a little more grateful. Who knows? Next time things could be more complicated.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I invite you to attend “Fall for the Book,” a delightful festival that takes place every year at George Mason University in Fairfax VA, outside Washington DC. This year’s festival takes place Sept. 21-26 on the GMU campus. Headliners include Sue Miller, Ethan Canin, Chinua Achebe, Michael Cunningham, Charles Baxter and … me. I’m participating in a presentation by the Writers Center of Bethesda MD Thursday, Sept. 25, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. It’s in the Provident Bank Tent. Hope you can make it!

The Bobs, as anyone knows who has read my first novel TO LOVE MERCY, was a legendary roller-coaster at the old Riverview Amusement Park on Chicago’s Northwest Side. Riverview, once the “World’s Largest Amusement Park,” was torn down in 1967, leaving not a trace except in the memories of millions of people Of a Certain Age.

What we remember is a wooden roller-coaster of such fierce and fearsome twists, turns and plunges as to yank the guts of the hardiest park-goer. Funny story: My mom and dad always told me to put my glasses in my pocket when riding The Bobs and other rides of its ilk, so I did; but one time I was alone in the two-person car. After being thrown violently from side side, oh, about a dozen times, I got off and fished my shattered glasses out of my pocket.

Since those glorious days of yesteryear, I have ridden a roller-coaster or two. When my son Sam graduated from eighth grade, we took a congratulatory trip with two buddies to New York City and found ourselves at Coney Island on the famous Cyclone. I rode the Cyclone three times (Sam rode it five times) and it is great no doubt … but it ain’t The Bobs. No, The Bobs was and remained the gold standard of roller-coasters until I encountered …

… The Ghostrider.

We were at Knott’s Berry Farm in the Los Angeles area. I was with my grandson, my friend Davida and her two granddaughters. Saving the best for last, we boarded The Ghostrider at the end of a long day.

Folks, this was a roller-coaster to reckon with.

First off, it ascends higher than any park ride I’ve ever been on, then drops at a near-vertical in a screaming plunge toward death that, of course, ends not in death but a neck-snapping swing back toward the heavens.

We whipped, we snapped, we plummeted. Some of us may have puked. No would have blamed us.

I staggered off this hell-ride and plunked down next to Davida, moaning. Davida, who had chosen not to ride, laughed in what might have been the sound of kindly sympathy, or a snicker, or both. “Are you OK?” she asked.

I shook my head, then stopped because it ached. “That roller-coaster,” I said in a froggy whisper, “is better than The Bobs.”

Davida, who has logged her own time on The Bobs, was impressed. “Wow, no kidding,” she said. “Was it fun?”

I shook my head, carefully. “Not exactly,” I said.

“Are you going to ride again?”

“Once was enough.”

By this time we were both laughing and making jokes about getting old, and surely getting old has a lot to do with why one trip on The Ghostrider was plenty. As I wrote this, a day later, the headache still was with me.

But I find myself marveling that, in the era of upside-down twisty thrill rides, Knott’s Berry Farm has gone to the trouble and expense of designing and building a new roller-coaster made out of that beloved old material, wood; and that the damn thing is so demonstrably, objectively, dastardly and dangerously better than my old beloved Bobs.

We had a wonderful day at the park, my grandson and I, the culmination of a six-day adventure that included riding Amtrak’s Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles. I’m planning to collect my thoughts and write a follow-up blog about the experience. But the Ghostrider part leaves me a little sad. A treasured memory has been diminished. I feel like I’ve lost something. I guess I have.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. My novel-in-progress TO WALK HUMBLY, the first of two sequels to TO LOVE MERCY, is coming along. I’m in the home stretch.

My recent posting about my 50th high school reunion drew a response I’d like to share.

Barbara Douglas Paulus was graduated from Rich Twp. High School, Park Forest IL, one year ahead of me. She organized her own class’s 50th reunion. Her class was small though and, unfortunately, so was the turnout — so we invited her class to our reunion too. Four of them attended.

Barbara was among those who wanted to come but couldn’t. After I posted my thoughts and feelings (scroll down to “Jealousy and hatred: A high school story”), Barbara responded with the following. I’ve cleaned up the punctuation a little, but otherwise it’s pretty much as she wrote it.

Notes: “Paco” was my name in Spanish class. (I still answer to it. Son Sam calls me “Paco.” So do a few others.) Chicago Heights is the next town over from Park Forest; in the earliest days, “PF” kids had to attend school in Chicago Heights.

Here’s what Barbara wrote. It moved me, and maybe it will move you too.

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Wow! Eye-opening for me. I never thought of you as a nerd, just a very adept person that I shared a brand new school with, and “Paco”, I was in awe of your mind.

I too came from a primarily Jewish neighborhood in Uptown district of Chicago, also with a lot of other backgrounds and success stories mixed in, i.e. …

… Bongiovanni’s of Bongi Trucking (Deep Tunnel, Winston Park and other housing projects), who only had a small taxi business at the time but had the first television set I’d ever seen in 1949 … Jonathon and Betty Hole, who were local actors in Chicago and went out to Hollywood, and who owned a car and dragged me all over with my beloved friend Jennifer, most especially to the Wrigley Building where Jonathon played Hot Shot Charlie on Terry and the Pirates on WBBM … The Friedlanders, who owned our grocery store that lent my Dad money many times, which we repaid, so he could raise his family in our more-than-modest two-room basement apartment, where he and mom slept in an in-a-door bed, and I shared the tiny kitchen quarters with my sister in a single Hollywood bed, and my brother in the 6-year crib, and the baby in a bassinet …

I could go on and on but the point is, when we moved to PF [Park Forest] I really missed the [Chicago] neighborhood. And yes, it was a shock, especially since we were the one of the first residents on Ash Street [in Park Forest], so we went from that cozy [city neighborhood] atmosphere to feeling unattached.

Worse yet, for my Mother at 36 years old, she was the oldest mother, and my Dad was an over-the-road trucker so neither fit the image. Dad was gone 6 days a week so Mom had to turn to PTA and her printed by-line columns in the PF Reporter and the Press [local newspapers] as she was left out of “couple” socializing. Mom was an English major at the University of Chicago before turning to nursing at Cook County Hospital.

However, I watched while our new neighbors’ townhouses were built over mud- and lizard-filled ponds between the newly poured sidewalks, and I absolutely fell in love with Park Forest. I think of our life there as the best of times and so, when I went back to reunions, I went with a heart filled with love and gratitude. I missed the city but learned to love the “country.” When we moved [to Park Forest], not one building — other than the old farmhouse where the Police and Fire Dept were housed on Western Avenue — were in sight.

The hard part for me, personally, was going to Chicago Heights to Jefferson Grammar School and then Washington Jr. High, since [in Chicago] I had walked to school along Sheridan Road and got to come home for lunch. All of a sudden I was on the bus and going to a school where the racial mixture was extreme. I was in a cultural shock as well, but made close friends of all races by 7th grade.

Our Mother didn’t allow us into the city on dates or even shopping. Very rarely was I allowed an after-school activity as my responsibilties were numerous with an absent Dad all week. PF was our world. When I go back to the reunions, I am often astounded at how many of our classmates have never left those small confines. I’m glad I’ve lived around the country (FL, CA twice now!, NV), and even more glad to call PF my “hometown”.

I was always just on the outside of the inner circle of the movers and shakers so, like you, I was shocked when I began attending reunions to learn that I was so well thought of. I never had the right body, the right clothes - my family didn’t own a car. This was a huge hardship on my Mother with groceries to be bought for 5 kids. She pulled them home in a wagon from the Jewel [supermarket] ’til they had delivery, and then she could ride home on the nickel bus that went around town.

I feel badly for the “kids” that don’t attend reunions. As we face the September of our years, those wonderful days of our youth shared in our combined memories bring much joy to my soul, even if I only muse on them once in a while. I tell my two daughters that if I “talk out of my head and heart” in my waning years, not to feel sorry for me; I am reliving my youth and will be relishing every memory.

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Thanks, Barbara.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. This Saturday, come visit the Local Author Festival hosted by Barnes & Noble at the Rio Center, Gaithersburg MD. I’ll be among Montgomery County MD authors signing books and chatting. The bookstore is in the Washingtonian Center (at “the Rio”), 21 Grand Corner Ave., Gaithersburg, Maryland, Tel: (301) 721-0860.

I thought I was a nerd in high school, but I was mistaken. This is a story of jealousy, hatred, and how I discovered my error.

My high school, Rich Township (now Rich East), is in Park Forest IL, a suburb 35 miles south of downtown Chicago. “PF” was carved out of clay and mud in the late ‘40s to provide affordable housing for returning veterans and their families. The developer was called American Community Builders and that is precisely what they did – created an entire town from scratch, 500 homes at a time.

PF was more too – a magnet for people we’d now call mind workers, as well as those who came to be called organization men. In fact, “The Organization Man,” the famous pop-sociology work of the ‘50s, was a study of PF.

Families streamed to PF from all around the country, not just Chicago, because it was so affordable. It was also, in adspeak, “a great place to raise kids” – which, to prospective homebuyers, means (1) Your kids will have lots of playmates, and (2) the schools are great.

But PF was not necessarily a great place to raise a kid like me nor my sister Judy. We’d relocated from Hyde Park, then a heavily Jewish, intellectually fizzy, racially changing, scary-exciting neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago that is home to the University of Chicago. (Note: Barack Obama lives in Hyde Park. Even though I support Obama, I think he’s definitely going to be dogged by the accusation that he’s a pointy-headed-liberal-who-can’t-park-his-bicycle-straight. I mean, that IS Hyde Park.)

Being uprooted from Hyde Park and plunked down in PF was culture shock. For one thing, out of some 25,000 residents in 1954, not a single household was black. Far worse for me though, the high school was the finest flower of the Eisenhower era, dominated by basketball players and the cheerleaders who loved them – types I’d never encountered in my then-young life.

I wasn’t blond, I wasn’t a WASP, and I was overweight. I couldn’t play basketball, baseball or football (too small, too uncoordinated). Such were the social pressures to conform that I did go out for wrestling and track, but neither lasted more than a week or two. I felt like an outcast.

I drew unto me a group of friends who were also outcasts, or so I reasoned under the Groucho Marx theory: ‘I wouldn’t join a club that would have me as a member.’ I did go out with girls but not very successfully, success being defined as sex sex sex. (Did I mention I was awfully horny? Girls aren’t actually drawn to that, as I was to discover later in life. Much later.) Overcome with jealous rage, I fantasized that I’d go to a reunion one day and discover that the high-school heroes had ended up selling shoes at Kinney’s.

Mercifully, high school ended. I went on to have a great life, in which various successes slowly eroded my feelings of nerdiness. Then, six or seven years ago, I attended my first high school reunion and began to discover what high school had really been like.

People were glad to see me – very glad in some cases. Odder still, I was glad to see them. One guy went on and on about a wonderful piece I’d written in the student newspaper, which he could virtually recite from memory. I remembered neither the piece, nor the guy.

That reunion had been for all the classes from ‘54 through ‘65, not my graduating class. My class, ‘58, recently concluded its 50th Reunion in Las Vegas. And guess what? No one was selling shoes in Kinney’s.

The high school heroes and heroines were present, to be sure. After living golden lives in high school, most seem to have gone on to golden lives as adults. But somehow along the way, they’d turned into human beings too. I had deep, soulful conversations with several. Some had suffered misfortune and were surprisingly candid about these experiences. I had no impulse to gloat.

I’d seen only one or two of these classmates since Graduation Day. But seeing them again after 50 years, I felt rushes of feeling as if I were 18 again.

I shouldn’t have needed reunions to wake up to the reality of my high school experience. Those high-school “outcast” buddies I mentioned above? We’ve stayed in touch over the years and I love them as much as any guys I know. But they say my “outcast” theory is a lot of crap. None of them think of us as outcasts in high school.

The reunion ended in a warm bath of love. More than one participant wants to reunite again. Nineteen (out of some 200) are dead, a few are in wheelchairs or on oxygen, but most of us look pretty good for a bunch of 67- and 68-year-olds. Not just the jocks and the cheerleaders either — the rest of us too.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I haven’t been posting much lately because I’m hard at work whipping TO WALK HUMBLY into shape. Even though “Humbly,” the sequel to my first novel TO LOVE MERCY, isn’t finished, my literary agent Michele Rubin is ready to start showing it around.

P.P.S. If you’re in the Washington DC area, mark your calendar for Saturday, June 7. I’ll be appearing from 1-3 p.m. at the Small Press Book Fair at Barnes & Noble in the Rio Center, Gaithersburg MD.

A month ago, everyone I knew was elated about the presidential campaign. Now everyone I know just wants it to go away.

Barack has acquired a barnacle called Rev. Wright. Rev. Wright reminds me of Billy Carter (anyone remember Billy?), who climbed out of a beer bottle to become a constant embarrassment to Brother Jimmy, the big difference being that Jimmy already had been elected President, and Barack hasn’t. Poor Barack.

Hillary, a product of Yale Law School, wants us to think she chews Red Man and drives a semi.

And Straight-Talking John has flip-flopped like a beached tuna. By now he has succeeded in renouncing every position he ever held, putting even John Kerry to shame.

It is to barf.

But I come to bury these Caesars, not to praise them. Let’s start with the Democratic Party.

Howard Dean sent an email the other day asking me to take a look at his new straight-talking commercial that nails John McCain for saying we’ll stay in Iraq “100 years.” ‘We’ve got him on tape! Look! Look!’ Howard screamed, jumping up and down and puffing out his cheeks. Instead, I went to YouTube and watched the entire 6+-minute town hall meeting.

I saw a McCain who was giving a rather reasoned disquisition on how the U.S. always maintains troops for decades in places where it has fought, like Korea and Bosnia, and say Iraq would be no different. He did say “100 years” (bet HE’s sorry), but he also added a big “if,” which is that we’d be likely to stay in Iraq only as long as U.S. troops weren’t being killed.

So much for honesty on the part of the Democratic Party. Now let’s talk about one of its candidates, Poor Barack.

Poor Barack’s message of hope is being drowned by the guy he once (rather recently) compared to a beloved but crazy old uncle. (All right, Poor Barack didn’t use the word “crazy,” but we got the point.) Rev. Wright is crazy all right — crazy about himself. I was ready to feel some sympathy for a guy whose lifetime reputation gets trashed in about 90 minutes of presidential campaigning, but Rev. Wright has worn out his welcome. In this coming-out tour of his, it’s been all about The Rev.

Before he appeared at the Press Club, I wasn’t convinced Wright was a bad guy. After all, I recently wrote that he was merely expounding liberation theology, and that us whites ought not to be so naive because this stuff has been around a long time. Again though I went to YouTube, this time to view 6+ unedited minutes of one of Wright’s most inflammatory sermons.

I’m big on context and fairness, and I can truly say that in those 6+ minutes of context, Wright discredited himself. He told about a half a dozen lies and at least as many half-truths. He also displayed a most un-Christian demeanor, using the very kind of invective he accuses his enemies of using. Then he went before the Press Club audience and basically took Poor Barack down, saying our boy must say what he says because he’s just a politician. Ouch, Rev.

This couldn’t be worse for Poor Barack. Follow me here. Barack is trying to be the un-Jesse Jackson, the candidate who will transcend race and get us beyond the legacy of the Civil War that still cripples us Americans, black and white alike. But Barack attended The Rev’s church while The Rev was The Rev there, and Barack did so for years. The Rev conducted Barack’s marriage and baptized his kids. Barack says he never heard The Rev on one of his racist stemwinders but, after watching the YouTube video, I’m finding that harder to swallow.

If Barack is telling the truth, then he’s either naive or stupid — and we know he is neither of those things. And if Barack is lying, well … he’s lying — about pretty serious stuff — and looking more like what The Rev says he is: just another politician.

(Full disclosure: I really like Poor Barack. I think his call to cast off our 150-year-old racial millstone is just what America needs, and I’ve said so numerous times in numerous ways, in this space and elsewhere. I don’t think he really is “just another politician.” But if he starts looking like one to enough voters, it doesn’t matter what he “really” is.)

Another guy I really like — or anyway used to like — is Straight-Talking John. I am a sucker for straight talk, for one thing, and this guy sure has delivered it — for example, getting up in front of nativist audiences and talking about opening doors to Mexican immigrants, for God’s sake. He had a devil-may-care insouciance; he almost seemed to embrace self-immolation. For perverse observers of the political scene like myself, that’s very attractive. Sure, as a registered Democrat and proud liberal, I disliked many many of S-T John’s positions, but I thought he had the character and temperament to make a fine president. (Something I also thought, and still think, that Obama has. We’ll get to Hillary in a moment.)

But now John, who once blasted broad-scale tax-cutting as irresponsible, wants to extend the Bush tax cuts into forever. Now fiscally conservative John is now calling for a gas tax holiday this summer. (Great idea, John — that ought to dampen consumption nicely and drive crude prices back below $20 by, oh, Aug. 20, max.) John has a health plan that isn’t a plan at all, and the temerity to go into Appalachia and the Ninth Ward and tell those sad sacks that he doesn’t really think the federal government is the right body to do anything for them. (Unless you count the gas-tax holiday.) John! John! Straight-Talking John! We miss you, man!

Finally, there’s Hillary. I mean honestly, what’s to like? And voters really don’t like her. She wins Pennsylvania and her negative poll ratings go UP. How does she do that? Actually, I think I know. She lies about sniper fire in Bosnia to make herself look tough; she says illegal aliens (a) should (b) shouldn’t be given driver’s licenses; she claims the votes of two states (Michigan and Florida) that didn’t conduct legitimate primaries; she flip-flops on NAFTA, which could not have happened without the Clinton Administration’s massive support. Why, she even sides on a gas tax holiday with John the Economic Genius.

And then there’s Bill the Ineffable. Bill’s out there undercutting Poor Barack with the seamiest sort of racial manipulation, then pretending butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. These people want us to hand them the Red Phone for four, make that eight, years? It is, as I said, to barf.

It’s working, sorta. They’re tearing down Poor Barack (although failing to build up Big Bad Hil), and her argument gains traction that she deserves the nomination because she wins in the big Democratic states. Meantime John the Forked-Tongued seems to be trying to piss away this windfall, this gift the Democrats are trying to give him, by climbing into bed with W., the most hated president since … lemme see … Andrew Johnson?

And finally … this all may pass. Really, it may. Poor Barack still has the popular majority of primary votes in his pocket. He still occasionally remembers to remind us that all this back-and-forth is B.S., and to keep our eye on the ball — the economy and the war and health care. He probably wins the nomination; I make it 6:5 (any takers?). Hillary probably bites her lip and campaigns for Barack. Bill too, maybe. Then in the actual campaign, maybe John tries to Swift-Boat Barack and maybe it works. (It should be easy. Between Bill and Rev. Wright, the manual already is written.) Or maybe John nominates Cheney for vice president and starts wearing George Bush’s old clothes, and it doesn’t. Except for the Cheney part, John’s almost there already.

I don’t know. After the Democratic convention, my crystal ball grows cloudy. All I do know is, I wish I could stop paying attention. Too bad I can’t.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. This coming weekend, you can support our great Montgomery County MD library system at absolutely no cost, by buying ANYTHING (except memberships and gift cards) at ANY Barnes & Noble, ANYwhere in the world. Really — any THING any WHERE, not just in Montgomery County. Just give the cashier the following “Bookfair ID”: 238774. Write down that Bookfair ID number now. Then hie thee to the nearest Barnes & Noble this Friday-Saturday-Sunday and shop shop shop, hear?

The kids had finally succeeded in pissing me off.

It was the fourth day of my five-day stint as Writer in Residence at Thurgood Marshall Middle School on Chicago’s Northwest Side. Each of my four classes had been wonderful except this one — yet just the day before, these kids had turned wonderful too.

Now on Day 4, though, they were worse than ever — talking to each other, not paying attention. One girl in particular liked to throw me off with a running commentary under her breath; yet I could tell she was excited and motivated. I figured she’d been class clown so long she couldn’t stop now even if she wanted to. But on Day 3 she’d proven me wrong by becoming my most enthusiastic participant … and proven me right about being excited.

Now it’s Day 4 though and Day 3 might as well not have happened. They’re chattering away. I try to discuss the assigned story and they haven’t read it. Oops, there goes 20 minutes and what to do now? “Could we write our final paper instead?” someone asks. I grab as if for a life preserver. “OK, write for 10 minutes.” What do they do? Chatterchatterchatter.

I’ve been had. I’m pissed and I’m afraid I show it. “I’ve been trying to treat you like adults,” I say. “I think that’s a new experience. All your lives you’ve been graded and corrected and told what to do, and now here’s someone trying to treat you like a colleague, a fellow writer. I have no power over you: I can’t give you a grade, I can’t send you to the principal. But if I’m not mistaken, you asked to be in this class. You want to learn what I’m trying to teach. Well, you are only going to get out of this class what you put into it. You can only learn how to analyze the story if you read the story. You can only learn to write by writing.”

They’re quiet during my tirade. Then I ask them to start writing and they pull out their pads and pens, bend their little heads and write in silence for 10 minutes. Wow, I think. So this is what it’s like to be a teacher.

Actually, my inner teacher has been coming out a little more each day. I slow down, explain more, spell out, define words I’d been sure (on Day 1) they’d understand. Around Day 2.5 I begin getting very directive: Get out your pads, put your pads away, start writing, stop writing, stand up, sit down. I’d been warned that kids won’t want to speak, won’t want to volunteer, and I quickly discover how true that is. But …

… around Day 2 or 3, one girl asks to read what she’s written to the class. Then another. Then a third. I have the presence of mind not to utter a word of critique: Instead I lead a round of applause for each reader.

… I’ve prepared about 60 “hooks” — first lines of potential stories. Example: “Sunny said he had to return the U-Haul by six o’clock or pay for another day so there we sat, staring at everything we owned piled up in the middle of the floor …” I cut these up and put the slips into my white straw hat. Every day I pass the Magic Hat and have the kids spend five minutes completing the story. I make the rules tougher each day, and on Day 4 I announce they’ll write for twice as long — 10 minutes, not 5. Afterward, almost all say longer is better. More time to think, more time to get into our stories, they say. So on Day 5, I have them write for 20 minutes … and, glory be, they like that best of all.

… At the end, one of the girls has written 7+ chapters of a novel. Another girl, who asked for critique on Day 3, hands me a complete rewrite on Day 5 that is a far stronger piece.

This was a tough week. On my 30-minute break between Class #2 and Class #3 the first day, I just sat and stared into space, too pooped even to read the newspaper. After Class #4, my armpits were soaked.

The classes were a mix — some kids already writers, some writer wannabes, some with learning disabilities, a few in bilingual education. Something like 90% were Latinos, and 92% were classified as in poverty.

I didn’t learn that 92% statistic until I’d been teaching a day or so, and when I heard it I was stunned. As far as I was concerned, these kids are great — interested, motivated, excited, more than a few with that light shining in their eyes. One or two troublemakers, sure, and several with apparent language or learning problems; but when it came time to write, those heads were bent over their pads too, writing in silent concentration.

I started out my week with only one real goal: To silence their inner critic, to drive a stake through the heart of the little demon who sits on every writer’s shoulder and whispers, “You suck.” I told the kids that rules matter, spelling matters, grammar matters, and they’d go to English class and learn and get graded on that stuff, but that in my class that stuff didn’t matter — just write. I told them all first drafts are crappy and it’s OK, that’s why God made second drafts. I read them Anne Lamott and Elmore Leonard and a lot more besides, all to get them to that point on Day 5 where they’d write for 20 minutes and not want to stop.

And now it’s over. The second school had a last-minute conflict and canceled my gig with apologies. Frankly, I’m not losing sleep over it. The Chicago weather has been beastly, I have to get up at 5:15, I miss my wife and family, and, frankly, Week Two would be drudgery as much as discovery.

I am left wondering how professional teachers do what they do — “on” five days a week, doing five or six “shows” a day, toughest audiences anywhere, one false move and you’re a goner. Not only that — you have to improvise, respond to what the kids give you, be ready to turn on a dime. As my “handler” Dan August put it, it’s like playing jazz. Angelina Jolie probably works one-fiftieth as hard and as much, and doesn’t worry about live audiences.

Meantime, teachers probably earn about the same as Angelina’s gardener. Most teachers surely have the brains, skills and stage presence to earn more, yet they put in 40-year careers, slogging away each day in the face of cutbacks, parental indifference, crappy facilities, budget cuts and now No Child, hoping to see that light in a few eyes. I doff the Magic Hat to them.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Good news: My novel TO LOVE MERCY has been honored by selection for the Open Book Program of the Institute for Positive Living — one of only three books selected each year. The Institute, a nonprofit group dedicated to instilling a love of reading in underprivileged kids, was to buy books for 250 kids and fly me back to Chicago to address them but …

P.P.S. Bad news: They serve kids down to 3rd grade, and TO LOVE MERCY is not appropriate for that age group. With embarrassment and regret, they backed out. But they love the novel and have offered a …

P.P.P.S. Consolation prize: Someone in their organization — a board member maybe — works for Oprah. They’re going to try getting a book to The Big O via that individual. Boy, do I hope they succeed.

I have white friends, people who ought to know better, who are shocked, shocked that a minister of the cloth would say the things Rev. Jeremiah Wright has said.

Rev. Wright, in case you’ve been sleeping under a rock, is the retired pastor of Barack Obama’s church in Chicago. He has been caught on YouTube saying highly critical things about the U.S. government and its alleged mistreatment of African-Americans over the years. Probably the most incendiary quote was this one, from Wikipedia:

“‘The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color’, referring to AIDS origins theories, and ‘The government gives them the drugs [referring to the Iran-Contra Affair], builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing “God Bless America.” No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people…God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.’”

I have to ask those white friends of mine and others like them: How could you not know this was going on? How could you be unaware that many black Americans believe HIV is a government plot against them? That their government has been foisting addictive street drugs on them with malice aforethought? That they’ve been treated by that same government as less than human since, oh, slavery?

[I said “many.” Certainly not all black Americans believe such stuff. But as Senator Obama said in his big speech on race a few days ago, a “legacy of defeat” still flourishes in many corners of black America — mostly within the underclass, but also in the upper strata — that leads some African-Americans to believe the worst, including even paranoia about HIV plots. In light of syphilis experiments on uneducated, unsuspecting black men at Tuskegee, maybe such paranoia, though ridiculous, becomes understandable.]

I am not here to defend Rev. Wright, but to ask again: Why the heck are we whites so surprised? Aren’t we listening?

Guess not.

A lot of us whites seem to think race isn’t much of a problem these days, and things certainly have changed for the better. We see black faces in the White House (Rice, Powell), on the screen (Rock, Berry), on the courts (Magic) and the links (Tiger), even in some boardrooms (Richard Parsons of AOL, Bob Johnson of BET). We see black faces in our workplaces too and some are doing well; some have become our friends, or anyway workplace buddies. And now one African-American has a good shot at becoming President. But as that individual correctly stated in his speech:

“For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table.”

And, I would add, in the pulpit. My white friend Richard says, “I cannot imagine any Catholic priest saying, in public, ‘God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.’” But actually the Catholic priests of the liberation theology movement have made many similar denunciations of repressive governments in Latin America and the Caribbean.

So did our secular saint, Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr. King is currently being held up as the anti-Jeremiah Wright, but here’s what he said in a 1968 sermon at his Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta [quoted by E.J. Dionne in today’s Washington Post]:

“God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place.”

So what is it with us whites? How can we so quickly forget Dr. King’s truly radical critique of America, and the even more radical critique of Malcolm X who many of us now profess to revere? Folks, I even listen to Louis Farrakhan. I detest him as an anti-Semite and worse, but I know he speaks for a segment of black American society, so I pay attention when he speaks and try to understand where he’s coming from.

I try to listen to the conversations of ordinary black Americans too, and participate in them when I can. It isn’t so hard, even if you don’t have black friends. Here in the Washington area, just tune in to the call-in shows on WPFW-FM, 89.3. In Chicago, where I’ve been spending a lot of time lately, tune in WVON-AM, 1690. Heck, on a good day you can even get a semi-earfull on C-SPAN.

Since slavery ended 143 years ago, our society has been stuck on this question of race. We can’t get past it because we won’t talk about it — not in an honest, open and forthright way, anyhow. We’re all of us, white and black, walking on eggs, afraid we’ll come to blows (or worse) if we say what we really think. And not only do we fail to talk; we also fail to listen, to creep out of our comfort zone and try to hear what the other guy is saying, even if it makes us squirm.

But change might be at hand at last. This presidential race has handed us a golden opportunity. Mr. Obama, responding to political pressure, has shown the leadership to take the question seriously. He is inviting us all, white and black, to start saying what’s on our minds, and thereby perhaps start to push the 800-pound gorilla out of our living rooms forever. I for one hope we accept the challenge.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I’ll be in the Chicago area from March 28 through April 12. I am “Writer in Residence” at Thurgood Marshall Middle School (3/28-4/5) and Albany Park Multicultural Academy (4/6-12), teaching 7th and 8th graders to write narrative. How cool is that?