Newfangled Dad

For those who kept close eyes on the insides of the Democratic Party since a year ago, the battles over the weekend are familiar. A far left, populist wing of liberals tries to subvert the mainstream of the party in a hostile takeover attempt. Last year it was Bernie Sanders allies. Right up into the convention they made noise about the direction of things. Many consider this weekend's leadership struggle to be a proxy-war rematch of the two sides. Again, the Bernie wing lost and now many on the far left are complaining...even threatening to leave the party. In my opinion, it was never really about "how Democrats will win." In 2018 or 2020 or at the local level. Though that's what the battle for party leadership is supposed to be about. No, the question is really about how we govern  when we get our turn again. I'm not going to return to the arguments here about the need to embrace a more radical, hard left agenda. There are plenty of true believers who think Be...

A couple of transportation-related pieces in the Wednesday Journal  this week that I wanted to highlight because I enjoyed them overall. But I have responses and minor corrections to each of them. First, there was this piece by trustee candidate James Taglia: Oak Park's review of parking is much needed Then there's also this "One View" by Jack Crowe: Bike-friendly? Try Chicago, not Oak Park Candidate Taglia's letter focuses on the financial side of parking. I want to just clarify somewhat that, while the Transportation Commission has been working hard and I love seeing us get well-deserved credit for that hard work, it's actually the Village Board itself who is undertaking a year-long study of the overall parking situation in the village. We're happy to take any assignments, of course, and my understanding is that the Board may lean on us for public hearings, etc.. But much of the impetus driving this forward is them, not us. We certainly have aske...

Pretend you're a Trump supporter for a second. Which of these scenarios is more comforting? --Since the last time a Republican was President, the United States has been living under a popular black, Democratic leader. The nation has shifted ever more liberal in just a decade with men now marrying men, women fighting in battle, Christianity declining as the default assumption, and your neighbor is now possibly a foreigner with a very different culture. Despite your inability to put the social genie back in the bottle, your candidate in the election managed to squeak out a few thousand votes in key states to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote by over 3 million. He does not have a mandate for change and your party's backward attitudes are leading the public to think that you're painfully, perhaps antagonistically out of touch with the majority of Americans. The country has, perhaps, been lost forever as a white, conservative Christian nation. --After l...

One thing I've been pondering since the election in November is an offshoot of the "rural-urban divide" debates that have been happening. Democrats may have won the popular vote, but we lost key regional areas dominated by white, rural, less educated demographics. The loss of historically blue states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan allowed the election to tip--just barely--to Republicans. Democrats are growing in areas of the Sun Belt like Texas and Georgia, but we're not quite to the tipping point of controlling state politics there. Our numbers are concentrated in other places that put us at a disadvantage. Perhaps my mind was already headed that direction because our family has previously considered farming--a move that would require us to move to a rural, probably conservative-dominated area--but why not sort Democrats into needed areas rather than focus on winning over rural conservative voters? We're maybe looking at the problem all wrong in thi...

Obama family 2011 It's hard to not view the Presidency of Barack Obama through the lens of parenting. For many Americans, President Obama has been like a father to us. Offering an example, encouraging us to better ourselves and our world, staying cool and calm when the weight of the world has been on his shoulders. For others, he was what inspired us to have children ourselves. 9 months after the celebration and joy of Grant Park in 2008 there was talk of the "Obama babies" who were being born as symbols of the new hope for the nation. Diverse couples, immigrant stories, and embracing America's future majority-minority demographics.  My own two children have never known a time when there was not a black President. While not themselves Obama babies, they certainly were born into and are products of the optimism of the Obama years. On Election Night in 2008, the economy was in turmoil and possibly headed for another Great Depression. The housing market coll...

Happy New Year! 2017 brings with it me officially putting myself back onto the job market. (My daughter will begin kindergarten in the fall and turns 6 shortly after--my days of parenting full-time are drawing to an end.) And as I stared in confusion yesterday while a former White House economist started following me on social media (cool, but why?), I began to wonder if I could use my network of contacts to, well, network. Some of you know me. Some of you do not. Feel free to glance at my About  section to get an idea of what makes me tick. I can roast coffee, shear a sheep, read music, speak a little French, once co-managed a radio station, and help decide where stop signs go in my town. It's a weird little resume that I'm happy to provide by request for any serious possible employers. The bottom line is I'm pretty versatile. I'm not picky about the field. My degree is in psychology with a minor in religion, I spent a year in law school, and I've spent about...

I first heard of University of Illinois Professor Peter Fritzsche's An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitler earlier this fall when a slightly tongue-in-cheek recommendation online pointed out the similarities to our current political situation under President-elect Trump. As with the other history book I discussed recently, you can read several different reviews elsewhere so I won't seek to repeat what they say. What I will say about An Iron Wind  is that Fritzsche's story is tight, well-written, thoughtful, and takes an approach to history that desires to skip the "history." His focus is on the men and women witnessing daily life and leaving behind evidence of their views. You know what happened; he wants to write about what people then were thinking about what happened. And it's what makes the book fascinating. Probably one of my favorite books in years for the deeply psychological study of a major human event. The Germans killed one of every five hundred peop...