5/21/12 DREAMS

AFTER THE STORM

LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY

HORSECHESTNUT BLOSSOMS

SWEET WOODRUFF, UNDER THE PINE TREES

Monday, 8:00 AM.  54 degrees, wind NW, light.  The sky is blue and the atmosphere clear, the barometer is high. It rained much of yesterday, and at times it was a downpour.  We must have had an inch and a half of rain over the last few days and evenings.  The vegetation will now grow lushly, and the lawn will need to be mowed as soon as things dry out.
        The lily-of-the valley is blooming, as is the sweet woodruff.  The mountain ash (several species of he genus Sorbus) are just beginning to bloom. The huge old horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastaneum) seen from Eighth street, between Wilson and Mannypeny, is in full bloom and a glorious sight. It is becoming difficult to list all the new blooming plants each day.
        Have you read, or heard, excerpts from Barrack Obama’s  autobiography, “Dreams From My Father”?  I have been struck by some of the similarities between the President’s youth and my own.  The young Barrack constantly sought a father figure, since his was first missing and later died; my own father died suddenly when I was sixteen, and I felt a similar emptiness in my own young life.  The President wasted much of his high school years lost in a beery fog; as did I (but minus the pot and blow).  Seemingly against all odds, the President went on to college and advanced degrees, as did I.  I also flirted with the politics of envy, i.e. socialism and worse, when under the influence to left wing professors early in my college years.  So we have much in common in our young lives.
        But there is a jarring disjunction thereafter.  He received scholarships to the private Occidental College; I paid my own way, every dime, to attend The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, at that time a mostly blue-collar commuter institution.  He went on to scholarships at Harvard and Columbia, and again I paid every dime of my tuition and expenses for two post-graduate degrees.  He continued to be enthralled with leftist ideologies and revolution; I started a business while still an undergraduate, and went into debt for equipment and stock, and paid help.  He became a community organizer, whatever that entails; I eventually  became a manager in scientific and cultural institutions and fought public employee unions every day. He continued his fascination with left wing ideology and personages most of the rest of his adult life. He is now President of the United States of America, the most powerful administrative position in the world.  I am mostly retired (I am a lot older than he is). 
        Now I do not in any  way envy Barrack Obama, as I had neither the talent nor experience to be President.  What I do have, however,  are some questions; why was he accepted at a prestigious private college after spending his high school years in an admitted boozy daze, and how did he get a major scholarship to that institution and subsequent schools; what were his college grades that so attracted the post-graduate scholarships; who paid for the those scholarships? His employment and  political careers are almost as mystifying and opaque as his educational background. Mine are an open book  I could go on but won’t, as evidently no one but himself can answer these questions, and he has not and evidently will not.
        But the reality I keep coming back to in my own mind is, considering all of our similarities and past experiences, if I am not qualified to be President,  then I believe,  neither is he.