Obama’s election foreshadowed in “West Wing” episode
Shonnie gave me Season 4 of West Wing for Christmas, and last night we watched episode 1–”20 Hours in America.” As we viewed the final scene, we were struck by a conversation between Toby and Josh that seemed to foreshadow the election of Barack Obama. Check it out for yourself.
Friday, December 26th, 20082008 in review from JibJab
Baby New Year ‘08 takes you on a tour of all of the good, bad, and worse the past year had to offer, all in just over two minutes. Enjoy!
Happy New Year to all!
Friday, December 26th, 2008The birth of Jesus as told by the Jubilee! teens
The re-enactment of the birth of Jesus by the Jubilee! teens as it might happen today in Asheville. If you take your religion really seriously, you may find this video a bit irreverent. Well, OK, highly irreverent . . . maybe even blasphemous . . . but hilariously entertaining nonetheless.
Filmed and posted on YouTube by Jim Brown.
I was a teenage college football player
Recently my friend Mary sent me a couple of articles from the Knoxville News-Sentinel about University of Tennessee football—a piece about Phillip Fulmer’s final game as head coach and another titled “Faircloth signaled end of era” about UT football in the early ‘60s, the period when I was on the squad.
In 1961 I was a starter at end on the freshman team (at that time freshmen weren’t eligible for the varsity squad), and it seemed that the coaching staff had high hopes for me. One day during practice, my freshman coach came up to me and said, “The General wants to see you.” As it turned out, the legendary athletic director Robert Neyland hadn’t come to the freshman practice field to talk with me, merely to have a look at me in the flesh. And after I’d loped out to display myself, he turned without a word and ambled back up to the varsity practice field.
At the end of spring practice in 1962, as a rising sophomore, I was listed as the #3 tight end on the varsity squad, and since we went both ways (playing offense and defense), that meant I was one of the top 33 players on the team. If things had taken their normal course, I would have been the starter by my junior or senior year.
However, destiny stepped in. I was spending the summer of ’62 lifeguarding and drinking beer when one evening in late July I got a call from UT head coach Bowden Wyatt:
After a minimum of niceties, Wyatt asked, “You been running, Mulkey?”
“Yes, coach, I have,” I replied, trying to sound like I wasn’t under the influence.
“How much do you weigh?”
“220, coach.”
“Hell, you haven’t been running much!” (a pretty fair assessment since I’d put on 15 pounds over the summer)
Coach Wyatt then informed me that he wanted me to report early for fall practice and to get myself to Knoxville within a 
few days.
When I arrived, I found myself among three or four other players who were practicing surreptitiously in the old gym. It seems that a shortage at fullback had developed when one player at that position failed to recover from an injury and another got kicked out of school for stealing and selling textbooks for beer money. So we were being trained to fill in. I also found myself on a salad and steak diet.
Having never played in the backfield, my switch to fullback was unsuccessful. But by the time the coaches had determined that, the regular season was about to begin. So I was redshirted and watched players at my former position move ahead of me.
Though football was more like a tedious slog at UT than a passionate athletic pursuit, life on the redshirt squad was pretty laid back. While the varsity did calisthenics at the beginning of each practice, we disdainfully did wacky warm-ups of our own. Then we spent most of practice simulating the next opponent’s passing attack against the varsity defense, completing most of the passes thrown. To join in the fun, I moved myself back to end. When a play was called on which I was the primary receiver, I inserted myself into the lineup. Otherwise I let a player further down the pecking order run the route.
In addition, we redshirts entertained ourselves by calling plays in the huddle such as “Get Downey” (or whatever other varsity player had fallen into our disfavor). When the ball was snapped, everyone on the redshirt team except the ball carrier threw ourselves at Downey, knocking him down and piling on until the whistle blew. It was a riot (literally and figuratively), though the coaches didn’t seem to be laughing very much. Especially when our target was Pat Canini, the 
starting varsity fullback, whose jaw was broken during a similar escapade.
The fact that the coaching staff would tolerate such tomfoolery was symptomatic of the declining fortunes of the UT football program. General Neyland had died on March 28, 1962, and Coach Wyatt wasn’t hired as athletic director because he lacked a college degree. Wyatt was rumored to have a drinking problem and when he shoved a sportswriter into the swimming pool at an SEC meeting, he almost certainly precipitated his termination as head coach. And a losing season certainly hadn’t helped matters. Running the outdated single wing offense and predictable 6-2-2-1 defense, Tennessee had gone 4-6 that season, beating only weak sisters Chattanooga, Wake Forest, Tulane and Vanderbilt.
Disillusioned with football at Tennessee, especially under these conditions, I drifted toward fraternity life—dating, drinking and gentlemen’s C’s. But I missed life on the gridiron as I had known it in high school—the joy of playing the game and the team camaraderie, as well as the status it provided. So eventually I transferred to a small men’s liberal arts college where those elements were still present and where we won our conference football championship both years I was there. But that’s a story for another time
* * *
From the Knoxville News Sentinel:
Faircloth signaled end of era
November 29, 2008
By Tom Mattingly
The single-wing offense, a staple of Tennessee football since the ascension of Bob Neyland as head coach in 1926, took its last breath this weekend in 1963, as the Vols beat Vanderbilt 14-0 on a cold, wet Saturday on Shields-Watkins Field. It was the final game of a 5-5 season.
Mallon Faircloth, a senior from Cordele, Ga., earned the plaudits of history as the last single-wing tailback, running for 179 yards, including a 72-yard touchdown run. Sophomore Stan Mitchell got the other score after a fumble recovery by sophomore linebacker Frank Emanuel. It was also the final game as head coach for Jim McDonald, hired in June after Bowden Wyatt was let go.
No one billed the game as “Tribute to the Single Wing Day,” but events leading up to and during that weekend made it clear the times were definitely a-changing football-wise on the Hill. (more…)
Saturday, December 20th, 2008Parker Palmer on the economic crisis
Words of wisdom from Quaker, author and educator Parker Palmer:
Alexis de Tocqueville, the nineteenth century French scholar famous for Democracy in America, wrote a less well-known book titled The Old Regime and the Revolution, arguing that the French Revolution happened long before it happened. The eruption that shattered French society at the end of the
eighteenth century was the result of small seismic shifts that had been accumulating for decades deep underground. If people had paid attention to the tectonic instabilities caused by greed and injustice, and had responded wisely to the nervous needles on their inner seismographs, the “Reign of Terror” might have been avoided.
A parallel point can be made about the economic terrors that now engulf America: at some level, most of us knew they were coming. Who doesn’t know that a society in which the rich get richer while the poor get poorer is a society that will someday have to pay the piper? Who doesn’t know that when a relatively small fraction of the world’s population uses its power to command and consume a disproportionately large fraction of the world’s resources, the chickens will come home to roost? Who doesn’t know that an economic system that encourages us to live beyond our means and refuses to regulate greed is one in which our avarice will come back to bite us? Who doesn’t know that at every level of life, from personal to global to cosmic, what goes around comes around?
The problem is not that we don’t possess a capacity to know these things. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have all the colloquialisms I just used! The problem is that the knowledge we need, like the seismic shifts that create eruptions, originates underground. It comes from a place within us deeper than our intellects, a place the poet William Stafford calls “a remote, important region in all who speak,” a place sometimes called the inner teacher or the soul.
But rarely do we allow ourselves to go to that place. Instead, we fill our lives with noisy distractions, blocking our access to insights that might scare us but could also save us. The purpose of an authentic “inner life” retreat is not to flee from a frightening world, but to give ourselves access to those deeper sources of knowing that can help us find our way through what we fear.
Read “Trusting our Deeper Knowing: On Cataclysms, Contemplation, and Circles of Trust” in its entirety at the Speaking of Faith website or listen to a podcast of the show on which Palmer was interviewed by host Krista Tippett.
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008Obama approval ratings remain high despite Blagojevich indictment
Though some pundits and politicians try to link President-elect Obama to Governor Blagojevich, Americans aren’t buying it. According to a Gallup poll, Mr. Obama currently has 72% approval rating from the citizens of this nation.
From FiveThirtyEight.com:
Obama Approval Ratings Not Dented by Blagojevich Scandal
With Rod Blagojevich facing the triple threats of impeachment, court-ordered removal from office, and a federal indictment, the tribulations of the Illinois Governor may yet prove to have an effect on Barack Obama’s approval ratings — but the early signs are that Blago will have no tangible impact on the public’s perception of the President-elect.
Indeed, with essentially three full days of interviewing having been conducted after Blagojevich’s arrest on on Tuesday morning, Obama’s approval ratings remain pristine. Gallup shows that 72 percent of the public has a favorable view of Obama, and 18 percent an unfavorable view. The 72 percent favorability rating matches the 72 percent score that Obama achieved on November 7th-9th for the highest since the election, whereas the 18 percent disapproval rating is Obama’s lowest yet. Three days ago, before Blagojevich’s arrest, those ratings were 70 percent and 21 percent, respectively.
Almost three out of four Americans are now supportive of our president-elect. Hopefully we’re beginning to recognize that there’s more that connects us than separates us.
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008We’re the Big 3: We don’t need to compete!
Truth in advertising from The Beast.
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008Mission Accomplished! My time as an organizer for Barack Obama in Ohio
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
Yep, I’m home from southern Ohio where I served as a field organizer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, probably the most challenging three months of my life. After being back for about four weeks, I’m happy to report that I no longer awaken in the middle of the night with an alarming sense of urgency; I’ve taken some time to decompress physically and emotionally; and I’m now better able to really grasp the significance of what we accomplished. So I guess it’s about time to tell my story.
Prelude
In my youth I truly believed in the aims of the civil rights movement, but though my heart may have been in the right place, my butt remained firmly implanted on the couch. During the peace protests of the late ’60s, I grew my hair long and participated in a few marches 
but was content to drink cheap wine and bitch about old LBJ rather than really work to end the war in Viet Nam. I got “clean for Gene” McCarthy (at least in physical appearance) during the 1968 elections and was inspired by Bobby Kennedy’s soaring speeches but never really committed myself to their campaigns. I habitually talked a good game, but when it came to putting my ass on the line, I hemmed and hawed and made up lots of plausible excuses for inaction.
Upon turning 65 last April, however, something shifted. Perhaps it was the realization that my time on this planet is limited. Perhaps it was the acknowledgment of the mess we humans have made of the planet. Perhaps it was the inspiring vision Barack Obama put forward. Whatever the impetus, I decided that I would take my stand when called to do so, even if that meant leaving the comfort zone of my family and my progressive little city of Asheville, North Carolina. Going forward, by God (or substitute the deity of your choice), I would have the courage of my convictions.
So after successfully working with my wife Shonnie as Obama precinct captains in the North Carolina primary (Asheville Precinct 3 went 74% for Obama!), I decided to continue my efforts on Barack’s behalf. In this time of crisis, I intended to wake up on November 5 satisfied that I’d done everything in my power to elect Barack Obama president of the United States and change the course of our nation before we do further harm to ours
elves.
Toward that end I e-mailed and called around trying to find an Obama campaign insider I could talk with about getting hired, preferably someone who would champion my efforts. But to no avail. I did, however, locate an online job application for the campaign, so I completed it, attached my resume and clicked “submit” believing it highly unlikely I’d ever hear from anyone.
A few weeks later, however, I listened to a voicemail message from an Obama staffer in Ohio who wanted to talk with me about a position with the campaign. We did a telephone interview the next morning; the staff member called my references that afternoon; and then she called back that evening to make an offer. I asked for some time to consider the implications of this opportunity with Shonnie, and the next day, I called back to accept. Though I had no campaign experience and was several decades beyond the average age of the other field organizers, remarkably I was on my way to Ohio.
On the ground in Ohio
Having made the seven-hour drive from my home, I arrived in Chillicothe, Ohio on August 3, a 65-year-old rookie with very good intentions and a near-total lack of knowledge of what this job would entail.
Upon my arrival, my 24-year-old supervisor assigned me two rural counties in southern Ohio, both part of Appalachia—Adams County and Highland County—both of which had gone heavily Republican in presidential elections since 1964. My job in these counties was to recruit, train and empower volunteers to participate in contacting voters via phone banks and door-to-door canvassing and persuade them to vote for Obama. Then, near Election Day, our attention would turn toward getting our supporters to the polls to vote.
I had a handful of names of Obama supporters from earlier spadework by my fellow field organizers, and hoped that the county Democratic parties would help me out. However, with a few notable exceptions, the party ranks were generally comprised of Hillary supporters who resented the fact that Obama had beat out their heir apparent. While the Democrats in Adams and Highland Counties allowed me to work out of their offices (the Obama campaign actually paid a fee for this privilege), most offered little hands-on assistance, at least early on. In fact, some Dems urged me not to organize phone banks or canvassing at all for fear of whipping up a Republican and fundamentalist backlash that might overwhelm Democrats up and down the ballot.
One long-time Democratic activist in Adams County told me that, because Obama was black and had an unusual name, he would be lucky to get 25 percent of the vote there (Kerry had received 35 percent in 2004); he thought it more likely that Obama’s percentage would be closer to 22 percent. I was also warned of overt racism in the area and of possible intimidation by local hooligans. Needless to say, I was a bit wary of putting my Obama flag on the little blue Kia I’d borrowed from my friend in Asheville. But after a couple of weeks, I threw caution to the wind and unfurled my banner for all to see.
To say I had serious self doubts about what I’d gotten myself into would be a gross understatement. I was working 14 to 16 hour days almost every day, and all my assigned tasks still didn’t get done. I made daily reports on campaign
goals that seemed unattainable—number of calls to voters, number of doors knocked, number of volunteers recruited, etc. And with my focus split between two counties, it was even more challenging. What’s more I was eating on the run and living out of the trunk of my car, relying on the generosity of local supporters for a bed and an occasional meal. More than once, my inner dialogue would sound something like: “What the hell was I thinking?”
To keep going, I sought out the support of my fellow staff members and, of course, Shonnie, who visited me three times during the first two months and sent care packages in between. And despite the challenges I was confronting, I kept telling myself that I was in the right place doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. One day at a time. One day at a time. One day at a time.
I spent a great deal of my time calling and meeting prospective volunteers with varying degrees of success. Many begged off because of family and work responsibilities. But one or two at a time, Obama supporters stepped forward to call their neighbors and knock on their doors. And in a region where very few people of color lived, these “early adopters” served as the first white validators for the African-American candidate for president. Through their efforts and their visibility, they made it more acceptable for others to join in supporting his candidacy.
Things begin to shift
By mid-September, I began to get a better handle on my role in the campaign, and as the pieces of the strategy began to make more sense to me, my self-confidence grew. To further the reach of our efforts, I asked a core group of volunteers to take on leadership roles, and before long, the phone banks grew from three or four volunteers calling on weekday evenings to six, then eight and finally ten or twelve folks contacting hundreds of undecided voters every week. In addition, our weekend canvassing efforts began to take shape, and we knocked on the doors of voters who had probably never been approached like this by a presidential campaign.
Nevertheless, skepticism and uncertainty were still prevalent among many volunteers. Some of the voters they contacted would hang up when the name of Obama was even mentioned. Others were extraordinarily rude, some even bellowing some variant of, “I’ll never vote for that n#&&@*.” Plus there were lots of Hillary supporters who remained adamantly undecided. Thus it was easy for volunteers to get discouraged, and a few never returned after their first shift. But I reminded them that every single vote counted. “If you only persuade one person to move toward voting for Obama tonight, that is a win,” I declared. “We want to do well in this county. And when we do well in Adams, Highland and surrounding counties, we’ll win Ohio. And when we win Ohio, we’ll win the election. And when we win the election, we’ll change the course of our nation.”
Gradually I witnessed the doubt and hesitation of folks in my counties shifting to excitement and enthusiasm. Obama yard signs popped up around the region and bumper stickers adorned Ford pickups as well as Priuses. People from all walks of life—farmers, union members, teachers, students, homemakers, retirees and others—joined in the voter contact activities, and these volunteers enrolled family members and friends into volunteering themselves. Many of the volunteers gave two to three hours of their time every week for months. Others gave 10, 20, 30 hours on a weekly basis. And these were people with jobs, families and other responsibilities. Most had never worked in a political campaign, yet here they were, week after week, giving generously of themselves and their resources to a movement that was obviously more to them than just a presidential campaign.
After a measured start in southern Ohio, things seemed to break our way in October. Governor Ted Strickland, a native of the area, toured our region in support of Senator Obama, as did Senator Hillary Clinton. And finally, our extraordinary candidate spoke at two well-attended rallies nearby—one in Portsmouth and one in Chillicothe. Sarah Palin’s star rose and, 
just as abruptly, fell. The U.S. economy was in turmoil. McCain stuttered and stumbled. And it seemed to me that, barring further unforeseen events, Obama was going to win and win big. But I was brought down to earth by the candidate himself on a mid-October conference call with staff members. Obama reminded us that the campaign had been confident of success before, only to see it slip away. “For all of you who are feeling giddy or cocky or think this is all set,” he said, “I have just two words for you: New Hampshire.”
GOTV
Some pundits and politicians have questioned President-elect Obama’s ability to lead our nation, wondering if he has sufficient experience to do so. Having been a part of his campaign for president, I have no doubt that he will be a powerful, effective and inspiring leader. For a demonstration of his capacity to lead, you have to look no further than the planning, preparation for and execution of the campaign’s get-out-the-vote (GOTV) strategy.
There are many reasons for our GOTV success in southern Ohio, and two of them were my deputy field organizers—Shonnie Lavender and Carolyn Baehr. My wife Shonnie came to Ohio to visit and to work for three long weekends before arriving for the entire final week of the campaign. Carolyn Baehr, devoted family friend, came to volunteer for a week, got hired by the Ohio Democratic Party in early October and was with me for the duration. Carolyn’s support during the weeks leading up to the election and Shonnie’s during the week before November 4, proved invaluable. Each brought their unique ability to connect with the volunteers, to organize and to deal with whatever issues arose.
The first phase of GOTV was comprised of the closing attempts to persuade unconvinced voters to vote for
Barack. For five days prior to Election Day, dozens of volunteers called hundreds of undecided voters and knocked on their doors, frequently with considerable success. It was obvious that many, though not all, of the undecideds were moving our way.
The Monday before the election (Phase 2), volunteers put door hangers on the door of every Obama supporter who had not voted early, urging them to be sure to vote on Tuesday, November 4. Each door hanger had the address of the polling place for that voter along with information about Senators Obama and Biden.
But Election Day, Phase 3, was the pièce de résistance. In every county in Ohio, including the two counties I worked in, there were a number of staging locations run by volunteer leaders from which campaign activities took place.
Canvassers fanned out across their precincts to remind Obama supporters to get to the polls. Phone bankers called supporters in areas too rural to canvass. Volunteers drove to each precinct in the county surveying polling locations and reporting any problems (only minor) and any delays in voting (up to one hour waits at some precincts due to large turnout). Other supporters brought food and drink for their teams. And reports went up the chain of command every three to four hours so that leaders in Columbus and Chicago could see how things were proceeding and if adjustments were needed.
Toward the end of the day, we had reached our supporter-contact goals in three of our four staging locations but were lagging at one. So we shifted some canvassers to that location and ultimately we were on target there as well. We had done everything the campaign had asked us to do . . . and more.
Victory is at hand!
After the polls closed at 7:30 P.M., I drove from my command center in northern Adams County to West Union, the site of the staging location where Shonnie had set up shop, and we began making the rounds of election night gatherings. As states began to go blue early that evening, it was apparent that Barack Obama was going to be the next president of the United States. Shortly after 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, Ohio was called for Obama. Cheers went up. Congratulations were given. And heartfelt goodbyes were shared. I was elated at our win. I was relieved the campaign was finally over. And I was totally exhausted.
The outcome I’d envisioned had come to pass: a win in Ohio (including Barack doing better in my counties than Kerry had done in 2004), an overwhelming victory in the presidential race and the election of six to seven additional Democratic Senators along with 20 to 30 additional Democratic House members.
Tears fell as Carolyn, Shonnie and I watched Obama’s victory speech together late Tuesday night.
I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington—It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.
It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generations’ apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.
On Wednesday Carolyn, Shonnie and I drove to a statewide staff victory party in Columbus. Free drinks and pizza! Woohoo! Plus Shonnie got to demonstrate her latest dance moves. It was good to spend some time celebrating and hanging out with my fellow field organizers, but for me the scene was a bit frenzied and the music too loud to talk. Truth be known, I was ready for some solitude.
Leaving southern Ohio on Thursday to head for home was a bittersweet experience for me. My joy to be home
ward bound was tempered by a sense of sadness at leaving the volunteers I’d connected with and the community we created together.
I will be forever grateful for their willingness, their courage and their spirit. They took a stand for what they believed in, and in the end their efforts paid off in a huge way.
After watching members of the media stand up as he entered his first press conference, the full realization that Barack Obama has actually been elected President of the United States and will take office on January 20 finally began to sink in.
Now the real work begins. As President-elect Obama said in his victory speech on Election Night, this victory, important as it is, merely provides the opportunity for change. Each of us in our daily lives will be called to support our newly-elected President and to work diligently toward a nation and a world of greater compassion, justice and sustainability.
See y’all at the Inauguration!
My deep gratitude to . . .
- Barb and Kathy Finnegan who provided me with a place to stay in Adams County and a hot meal almost every night I was there
- Doug and Susan Seipelt who graciously opened their home in Highland County to me and to campaign activities
- Dave and Judy Lanning who gave me room and board when I arrived in Chillicothe and furniture for my infrequently-used apartment
- Jay Joslin who loaned me his 2004 Kia for the duration of the campaign
- Donna Sue Groves who continued to work for the campaign even under physical and emotional strains
- Carolyn Baehr and Shonnie Lavender for service above and beyond the call of duty
- My fellow Region 3 staff members—Meagan Gardener, Brady Quirk-Garvan, Seth Bannon, Courtney Frogge, Richard Becker, Emma Levine and Graham Vesey—who were there when I most needed them
- All the volunteers in Adams and Highland Counties too numerous to mention who gave so generously of themselves and their resources
- All my friends and family in Asheville and around the nation who supported me during my time in Ohio with their energy, prayers, cards and financial aid, and those who have been so acknowledging . . . during the campaign and since I’ve been back home
Related stories
The New Organizers; What’s really behind Obama’s ground game
My Journey with the Obama Campaign
Obama Camp Relying Heavily on Ground Effort
Photos by: David Fox, Charlie Cameron, Shonnie Lavender and others
Friday, December 5th, 2008
