Forty years later

Last night's enduring image will be the scene at Chicago's Grant Park awaiting Obama's arrival as president-elect. Quite the antithesis to Grant Park 40 years earlier (a moment in history caught audibly on the Chicago Transit Authority's first album*.)

And in my relatively brief lifespan, Election '08 will join these other retrospections:

'68 c'mon, I was 8
'72 huge McGovern poster hanging on my bedroom wall
'76 almost shook Carter's hand when he visited my hometown
'80 a newsroom colleague asking me if I knew Spanish because the new president would send me to Nicaragua
'84 the native son (I was in St. Paul then) loses in a landslide
'88 writing letters to editor about the environment and vigorously debating my neighbor across the yard
'92 the shroud of iraq
'96 wow -- a two-term democrat
'00 staying up til 6 a.m. watching a blur of blue and red on TV
'04 the shroud of iraq

(* Prologue, August 29 1968, is the actual recording of the Democratic Convention in Chicago: black militants exhorting demonstrators: "God Give Us the Blood to Keep Going"; march begins; police attempt to disperse marchers; chant: "The Whole World's Watching.")

The wonder of small books, part II

Knowledge for those with short attention spans (or busy lives):

Oxford University Press, eminent among the estimable houses, publishes a series of volumes called "Very Short Introductions."

The title list reads like a college catalog, without the tuition freight.

Another cudgel against illiteracy.

OUP has a great blog, too.

(See The wonder of small books, part I.)

Reaganomics runs its course

A fascinating piece on the historic meaning of yesterday's election, by Steve Berg at MinnPost.com. (He wrote a great lede, which I won't spoil here but is well worth reading here.)

Elsewhere, he writes:

"Between 1979 and 2005, the incomes of households in the bottom fifth of the population rose only 6 percent in real terms, while the incomes of those in the middle three-fifths rose by 17 to 21 percent, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

"But incomes in the upper fifth soared by 69 percent, and in the top 1 percent by a whopping 176 percent. ... Not since the 1920s had so much of the nation's income been held by such a narrow slice of its people. The trickle-down never trickled."

The morning after

The American economy looks like the morning after an expensive dinner party. Empty glasses everywhere, stains on the tablecloth, dirty plates stacked high, and the vapor of stale wine and beer as thick as fog.

It's not a pretty picture. Does anyone think a federal economic bailout is like bringing in more liquor at 8 a.m. to re-start the party?

Given our current economic hangover, our friend Robb says this might be just the right time for another Great Awakening.

"You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, neither 18 percent profit margins, nor mutual funds, nor stock options. You shall not bow down to them or worship them. You shall not covet your neighbor's boat, summer home or investment portfolio." [A slight paraphrase of Exodus 20]

The momentous challenge of another Great Awakening will be to dispel us of our belief in lesser gods.

"You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied ... and my people shall never again be put to shame. You shall know that I am in the midst of (you), and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other." [Joel 2:26-27]

October baseball

Thirty teams begin on Opening Day. Only eight get to play into October. The Cubs have been wallflowers at this party for too many seasons to count. But tomorrow, it's Dodgers-Cubs at Wrigley Field, as the National League playoffs begin. Here's to all the Cubs teams who've played in the postseason:

1906 * 1907 * 1908 * 1910 * 1918 * 1929 * 1932 * 1935 * 1938 1945 * 1984 * 1989 * 1998 * 2003 * 2007 * 2008

Here's a vote against endorsements

Nearly three dozen pastors on Sunday took a stand against IRS rules that bar churches from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit. The pastors want to change federal laws that strip churches (and other nonprofits) of their tax-exempt status if they endorse particular candidates.

The pastors believe the restrictions put a muzzle on people of faith and hinder their influence in American politics. Their argument: Christians need to be told which candidates hold a "biblical worldview."

That assumes that one candidate or one party has a monopoly on such a worldview. (Seeing as how the Gospel was used to support slavery in the 1860s and oppose it in the 1960s, that worldview might be up for some interpretation.)

People of faith are called to live out their faith in the political arena (along with the workplace, the home, the church, etc.) They do so by reflecting upon Scripture, appealing to reason, evaluating human experience, and relying on the broad tradition of the Christian church. Not to mention by praying: for discernment about how to live faithfully in the modern world.

That's not easy to do. But if clergy believe they need to endorse a particular candidate, is it that parishioners can't be trusted to figure it out on their own?

As the church, wouldn't it be better to help our congregations learn how to openly and faithfully discuss and pray over complex issues, rather than adding to the spin of partisan oversimplification?

Another view on the economy

Looking for a great article to explain what's happened, is happening and might happen?

See today's column by the Chicago Tribune's Gail Marks-Jarvis (a former St. Paul Pioneer Press business writer, by the way).

The first and the last

Jesus said, on more than one occasion, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. I first saw that painted on the back of my church youth group's sputtering blue school bus (emphasis on "the last shall be first" -- the bus topped out at 50 mph, when it worked at all).

"The first shall be last and the last shall be first" is an eye-opener in today's economy. As someone wrote recently, if that means CEOs are a 10 and the poorest of the poor are a 1, we should pray to be a 5. Then when the first become last and vice versa, we'll stay right where we are.

There's some truth in that, I suppose. God never intended for anyone to be poor. (You can look it up.) God also never intended anyone to be rich at the expense of the poor.

As a colleague said yesterday, maybe things are shaking out the way they have to in order for us to remember what prosperity really means, to rediscover the difference between our rights and our privileges, and to revive our understanding of what it means to live in the kingdom of God (not just the kingdom of captitalism and consumption).

That said, a lot of people are getting smacked by the short end of an economic stick and are suffering the sting. Like the man who told me over the weekend his savings had lost eight months' worth of nursing home care for his wife in the span of five days.

What do we do about that?

Hey, Chicago

With five games left in baseball's regular schedule, it's been a sweet season on Chicago's North Side. Here are the most wins in a season by the Cubs during my lifetime (that's 48 seasons):

96 -- 1984
95* -- 2008
93 -- 1989
92 -- 1969
90 -- 1998

* With five games remaining

I've been meaning to write about procrastination

Things I should be doing:
Weeding, to assuage a summer of regretfulness at not tending the garden, lest the thicket rears its shaming head next spring.
Reading "Learning While Leading" or "The Witness of Preaching."
Replacing the worn-out battery in the Honda scooter.
Seeing an allergist.
Working out.
Catching up on back issues of The Economist.
Making an appointment with my financial adviser.
Transcribing notes from interviews still trapped in illegibly scrawled notebooks.
Getting bifocals.