Obama Cool

I don't have it. One of the things I really admire about the man his how graceful he is under pressure. I would have snapped long ago. I don't even have the patience these days to gracefully handle the small-time local con artists we have at home, much less assholes on a national scale.

Fri Update: I managed to take down one of our trouble makers at our Neighborhood Board, and did it with a bit of tact, but she is rich and bored & is unlikely to stay down for long. I had less luck controlling an unruly applicant at this morning's Land Board hearings. All he had to do was sit still and not say anything and let me do the work; he'd have gotten his permit and saved his house. As it is ... he spoke ... and now might lose it all.

NOB5: Battle for the Minutes

I wonder a lot about what the point of being elected to the Neighborhood Board is. In terms of political or social influence we fall somewhere between "condo association" and "dogcatcher." There is potential here; if we spoke clearly and rationally we can make an impact.

So far Neighborhood Board No. 5 has only had an impact on parking. Specifically, they saved one parking lot from being developed as a store - and that took a year of protests. Luckily I had to excuse myself from the issue as I work for the State and there was a potential conflict of interest.

So we have potential. But instead, we spend our time dealing with nonsense side issues. I thought becoming an Executive Member (i.e. Secretary) would at least let me influence things a touch. Instead, I am fighting to accomplish simple things like getting the minutes approved.

This will bore most of you. The political junkies will enjoy it. Maybe. I don't care. I am hereby unilaterally applying the sunshine law to my webmail and liberating these executive emails for public consumption and review. For background, a representative from the Neighborhood Commission provides meeting notes for us. The secretary reviews them, and then every other Board on the island votes to approve them. Not us. We go half a year at a time without getting minutes approved.

This is the shit we deal with each month, and this is why we never get shit done.

From: Michael Cain
To: 4 board members, Chair, and Michelle S. Matson   
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2008 11:34 AM
Subject: Fw: Draft minutes for October

Aloha all,

Here are the draft minutes from October. Monday should
give everyone enough time to go over them.

If you have suggestions for corrections, I'd like to
ask one favor: keep them brief and substantive.

 Thanks
 Michael

From: Michelle S. Matson
Sent: Nov 7, 2008 9:54 AM
To: Chairman Bert Narita NB#5, Michael Cain
Cc: (4 Board Members, and 1 Commission Official who has
blocked our emails)
Subject: Re: Draft minutes for October

The NB meeting is Thursday, November 13.
See attached Reso provided at the October meeting.
Apparently this was not reviewed by the regular NA
to have any initial effect.

What is the proposed status of the previous two
months' minutes,(August -deferred in September and
October- and September - deferred in October)and
their substantive and formatting corrections as 
previously provided for the record?

From: Michael Cain
To: Michelle S. Matson ; Chairman Bert Narita
Cc: (4 Board Members, and 1 Commission Official
who has blocked our emails)
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 11:05 AM
Subject: Re: Draft minutes for October

1. The resolution was introduced but not, to my
knowledge, voted on or approved by the Board.

2. I will be moving to accept the August and
September minutes at the upcoming meeting. Members
are free to object or vote against approval.I did not 
incorporate the nine pages of edits you sent. If you
need an explanation I will do it publicly and on the
record at next week's meeting.

 - Michael

 
From:  Michelle S. Matson  
Sent: Nov 7, 2008 8:46 PM
To: Michael Cain , Chairman Bert Narita NB#5
Cc: (4 Board Members, and 1 Commission Official who has
blocked our emails)
Subject: Re: Draft minutes for October

Michael:

1.  The Resolution was received by the Board and deferred
to the November meeting since there was no time for approval
of this or the corrected minutes at the end of the October
meeting.  As in previous months it was also suggested that
the regular NA review the recommendations and try to
work on some of the improvements.

 2.  There were not "9 pages of edits" but specifically
digital tracked changes within the minutes text, which showed
the substantive and grammatical corrections and formatting
improvements as a helpful convenience to assist comparison.
Is simple text without showing the corrections preferred?

 3.  If / when all substantive corrections provided by Board
officers and members have been incorporated into the August
and September minutes,respectively, we would appreciate
receiving your corrected draft minutes prior to the November
meeting so that we know what has been corrected for approval
of the minutes. In turn, for convenience of comparison please
 indicate where the corrections have been made.
 
 Michelle

 
From:  Michael Cain 
To: Michelle S. Matson; "Chairman Bert Narita NB#5
Cc: (4 Board Members, and 1 Commission Official who has
blocked our emails)
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 4:03 PM
Subject: Re: Draft minutes for October

No.

You waste too much of too many people's time with this
silliness. It stops here.

You can take it up at the Board meeting if you have a
problem with this.

From: Michelle S. Matson

To: Chairman Bert Narita

Cc: Michael Cain (& five board members and one commission
official who has blocked our emails)

Subject: Re: Draft minutes for October

Date: Nov 7, 2008 7:02 PM

I believe we are all looking for a democratic approach
to resolving current issues with the ongoing timing,
formatting, grammatical and often substantive deficiencies
in the minutes - deficiencies also acknowledged by 
Board Member Cain in previous emails (attached).

Is it too difficult to provide open disclosure to the Board
of any corrections to the minutes prior to the Board
meeting(s) at which such minutes are anticipated to be
adopted?  One would expect that any revised/corrected
minutes would be mailed/emailed to all Board members prior 
to the meeting date of any noticed anticipated approval.

As a constructive suggestion apart from the apparent
presently-imposed acrimony, an NCO regularly-issued
recorder could provide the NA with needed assistance for
any substantive areas of question.  The bottom line is that 
we would like to see positive and productive outcomes for
the whole in the form of readable and referable substantive
reflections of all Neighborhood Board meetings for the
collective community.

It is interesting to note that for some unknown reason
September's deferred minutes were publicly posted today,
November 7, with the unanimously deferred August minutes.
Both are absent any preliminary approval by the 
Executive Committee or ultimate approval by the Board:

To: Michelle S. Matson, Chairman Bert Narita NB#5

Cc: (five board members and one commission official who
has blocked our emails)

Subject: Re: Draft minutes for October

Date: Nov 7, 2008 11:31 PM

This discussion needs to occur in public and on the record.

Please cease your emails to me on the matter. I do not feel
they are appropriate.

Although I guess it is on the record now. Or at least in public.

A Butler Well Served by This Election

For 34 Years, Eugene Allen Carried White House Trays With Pride. Now There's Even More Reason to Carry Himself That Way.

By Wil Haygood
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 7, 2008; A01

For more than three decades Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land.

He trekked home every night, his wife, Helene, keeping him out of her kitchen.

At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than to the large desk in the Oval Office. Helene didn't care; she just beamed with pride.

President Truman called him Gene.

President Ford liked to talk golf with him.

He saw eight presidential administrations come and go, often working six days a week. "I never missed a day of work," Allen says.

His is a story from the back pages of history. A figure in the tiniest of print. The man in the kitchen.

He was there while America's racial history was being remade: Brown v. Board of Education, the Little Rock school crisis, the 1963 March on Washington, the cities burning, the civil rights bills, the assassinations.

When he started at the White House in 1952, he couldn't even use the public restrooms when he ventured back to his native Virginia. "We had never had anything," Allen, 89, recalls of black America at the time. "I was always hoping things would get better."

In its long history, the White House -- just note the name -- has had a complex and vexing relationship with black Americans.

"The history is not so uneven at the lower level, in the kitchen," says Ted Sorensen, who served as counselor to President Kennedy. "In the kitchen, the folks have always been black. Even the folks at the door -- black."

Sorensen tried to address the matter of blacks in the White House. But in the end, there was only one black man who stayed on the executive staff at the Kennedy White House past the first year. "There just weren't as many blacks as there should have been," says Sorensen. "Sensitivities weren't what they should have been, or could have been."

In 1866 the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, sensing an opening to advocate for black voting rights, made a White House visit to lobby President Andrew Johnson. Johnson refused to engage in a struggle for black voting rights. Douglass was back at the White House in 1877. But no one wished to discuss his political sentiments: President Rutherford Hayes had engaged the great man -- it was a time of high minstrelsy across the nation -- to serve as a master of ceremonies for an evening of entertainment.

In the fall of 1901, another famous black American came to the door. President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, head of the Tuskegee Institute, to meet with him at the White House. Roosevelt was careful not to announce the invitation, fearing a backlash, especially from Southerners. But news of the visit leaked quickly enough and the uproar was swift and noisy. In an editorial, the Memphis Scimitar would write in the ugly language of the times: "It is only recently that President Roosevelt boasted that his mother was a Southern woman, and that he is half Southern by reason of that fact. By inviting a nigger to his table he pays his mother small duty."

Fifty years later, invitations to the White House were still fraught with racial subtext. When the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow pianist Hazel Scott to perform at Constitution Hall because of her race, many letters poured into the White House decrying the DAR's position. First lady Bess Truman was a member of the organization, but she made no effort to get the DAR to alter its policy. Scott's husband, Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell, subsequently referred to Bess Truman as "the last lady of the land." The words outraged President Truman, who vowed to aides he would find some way to punish Powell and barred the fellow Democrat from setting foot inside the Truman White House.

The first black to hold a policy or political position in the White House was E. Frederick Morrow, a former public relations executive with CBS. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's presidential campaign operatives were so impressed with Morrow's diligent work during the 1952 campaign that they promised him a White House executive job if Ike were elected. Ike won, but Morrow ended up being placed at the Department of Commerce. He felt slighted and appealed to Republican friends in New York to force the White House to make good on its promise.

The phone finally rang in 1955 and Morrow was named administrative officer for special projects. He had hoped the title would give him wide responsibilities inside the White House, but found himself dealing, for the most part, with issues related to the Brown desegregation ruling, the Rosa Parks-led bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., and the 1957 Little Rock school crisis.

"He was a man of great dignity," says Stephen Hess, senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution, who worked as a speechwriter for Eisenhower. Morrow was in a lonely position, but "he did not complain," says Hess. "That wasn't Fred Morrow."

When Morrow left his White House position, he imagined there'd be corporate job offers. There were not. "Only thing he was offered were jobs related to the black community," says Hess. Nonetheless, "after Morrow, it was appropriate to have a black person on the staff of the White House."

'Pantry Man'

Before he landed his job at the White House, Gene Allen worked as a waiter at the Homestead resort in Hot Springs, Va., and then at a country club in Washington.

He and wife Helene, 86, are sitting in the living room of their home off Georgia Avenue NW. A cane rests across her lap. Her voice is musical, in a Lena Horne kind of way. She calls him "honey." They met in Washington at a birthday party in 1942. He was too shy to ask for her number, so she tracked his down. They married a year later.

In 1952, a lady told him of a job opening in the White House. "I wasn't even looking for a job," he says. "I was happy where I was working, but she told me to go on over there and meet with a guy by the name of Alonzo Fields."

Fields was a maitre d', and he immediately liked Allen.

Allen was offered a job as a "pantry man." He washed dishes, stocked cabinets and shined silverware. He started at $2,400 a year.

There was, in time, a promotion to butler. "Shook the hand of all the presidents I ever worked for," he says.

"I was there, honey," Helene reminds. "In the back, maybe. But I shook their hands, too." She's referring to White House holiday parties, Easter egg hunts. They have one son, Charles. He works as an investigator with the State Department.

"President Ford's birthday and my birthday were on the same day," he says. "He'd have a birthday party at the White House. Everybody would be there. And Mrs. Ford would say, 'It's Gene's birthday, too!' "

And so they'd sing a little ditty to the butler. And the butler, who wore a tuxedo to work every day, would blush.

"Jack Kennedy was very nice," he goes on. "And so was Mrs. Kennedy."

"Hmm-mmm," she says, rocking.

He was in the White House kitchen the day JFK was slain. He got a personal invitation to the funeral. But he volunteered for other duty: "Somebody had to be at the White House to serve everyone after they came from the funeral."

The whole family of President Jimmy Carter made her chuckle: "They were country. And I'm talking Lillian and Rosalynn both." It comes out sounding like the highest compliment.

First lady Nancy Reagan came looking for him in the kitchen one day. She wanted to remind him about the upcoming dinner for West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. He told her he was well ahead in the planning and had already picked out the china. But she told him he would not be working that night.

"She said, 'You and Helene are coming to the state dinner as guests of President Reagan and myself.' I'm telling you! I believe I'm the only butler to get invited to a state dinner."

Husbands and wives don't sit together at these events, and Helene was nervous about trying to make small talk with world leaders. "And my son says, 'Mama, just talk about your high school. They won't know the difference.'

"The senators were all talking about the colleges and universities that they went to," she says." I was doing as much talking as they were.

"Had champagne that night," she says, looking over at her husband.

He just grins: He was the man who stacked the champagne at the White House.

Moving Up, but Slowly

President Kennedy, who succeeded Eisenhower, started with two blacks, Frank Reeves and Andrew Hatcher, in executive positions on his White House staff. Only Hatcher, a deputy press secretary, remained after six months. Reeves, who focused on civil rights matters, left in a political reshuffling.

The issue of race bedeviled this White House, even amid good intentions. In February 1963, Kennedy invited 800 blacks to the White House to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Louis Martin, a Democratic operative who helped plan the function, had placed the names of entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. and his wife, May Britt, on the guest list. The White House scratched it off and Martin would put it back on. According to Martin, Kennedy was aghast when he saw the black and white couple stroll into the White House. His face reddened and he instructed photographers that no pictures of the interracial couple would be taken.

But Sammy Davis Jr. was not finished with 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. He got himself invited to the Nixon White House to meet with the president and talk about Vietnam and business opportunities for blacks. He even slept in the Lincoln Bedroom once. When Davis sang at the 1972 Republican convention in Miami, he famously wrapped his arms around Nixon at a youth rally there, becoming forever identified with a White House that many blacks found hostile.

Lyndon Johnson devoted considerable energy and determination to civil rights legislation, even appointing the first black to the Supreme Court. But it did not translate to any appreciable number of blacks working on his staff. Clifford Alexander says he was the sole black in Johnson's White House, serving first as a National Security Council officer, then as associate White House counsel.

"We were fighting for something quite new," says Alexander. "You knew how much your job meant. And you knew President Johnson was fighting on your behalf." As a young man growing up in Harlem, Alexander had heard about Morrow. Mothers and fathers pointed to him as a grand success story. "Fred was a lovely man," says Alexander. "But they did not pay any attention to him in the Eisenhower White House."

Colin Powell would become the highest-ranking black of any White House to that point when he was named President Reagan's national security adviser in 1987. Condoleezza Rice would have that same position under President George W. Bush.

The butler remembers seeing both Powell and Rice in the Oval Office. He was serving refreshments. He couldn't help notice that blacks were moving closer to the center of power, closer than he could ever have dreamed. He'd tell Helene how proud it made him feel.

Time for Change

Gene Allen was promoted to maitre d' in 1980. He left the White House in 1986, after 34 years. President Reagan wrote him a sweet note. Nancy Reagan hugged him, tight.

Interviewed at their home last week, Gene and Helene speculated about what it would mean if a black man were actually elected president.

"Just imagine," she said.

"It'd be really something," he said.

"We're pretty much past the going-out stage," she said. "But you never know. If he gets in there, it'd sure be nice to go over there again."

They've got pictures of President and Mrs. Reagan in the living room. On a wall in the basement, they've got pictures of every president Gene ever served. There's a painting President Eisenhower gave him and a picture of President Ford opening birthday gifts, Gene hovering nearby.

They talked about praying to help Barack Obama get to the White House. They'd go vote together. She'd lean on her cane with one hand, and on him with the other, while walking down to the precinct. And she'd get supper going afterward. They'd gone over their Election Day plans more than once.

"Imagine," she said.

"That's right," he said.

On Monday Helene had a doctor's appointment. Gene woke and nudged her once, then again. He shuffled around to her side of the bed. He nudged Helene again. He was all alone.

"I woke up and my wife didn't," he said later.

Some friends and family members rushed over. He wanted to make coffee. They had to shoo the butler out of the kitchen.

The lady whom he married 65 years ago will be buried today.

The butler cast his vote for Obama on Tuesday. He so missed telling his Helene about the black man bound for the Oval Office.

Election Day

And I can't sleep. Damn.

This is the first national election where I've voted for the candidate I like rather than against the guy I hated. I really liked Mondale in 1984, but even more so I thought that we had to Stop Reagan. I'm still shocked that Reagan has become a hero in retrospect - as if AIDS, third-world death squads, and the willful destruction of our inner cities never happened. The Democratic Machine picked Dukakis for us in 1988 and Kerry in 2000, and neither thrilled me but whatever. I voted for them if only to stop the Bush's. And though I voted for Gore, of course, I didn't really care - I had no idea how hideously right-wing Bush Jr. would turn out to be.

I was overseas and never got my ballot for Clinton in 1992; we only got the news every two months so I pretty much missed that one. And I left my ballot blank in 1996; I refused to vote for that backstabbing shit who sold gays, blacks, and everyone else down the river rather than take a stand on anything.

So. 2008. I'm 42, and for the first time I really, really like a candidate. Sure I have issues with Obama - I'm not starry eyed and dreamy - but there's something there. He'll smash through the ebony ceiling and that means a lot to me, but it's more than that. It's like this: I could've known this guy. I don't, but I know people like him, intellectual community activists who held faith in an ugly world. And I'm just amazed that someone from this crowd, my ideal crowd, is set to lead the country.

14 or so more hours and we'll know. My country might finally do the right thing.

Training

My brief louche season is over, and I'm back on a training schedule. It's back to healthy eating, limited drinking, plenty of sleep, and hard core training - paddling, capoeira, weights, surfing, and abs abs abs. And though I've been invited to five election parties (which is more than the total number of parties I've been invited to all fall) I'll be good and stay sober.

Three more weeks and I get on a plane. I'll give myself two days of hard-core decadence in Miami en route to Rio (the Vizcaya event is sponsored by an absinthe company, Joe Gauthraux is spinning Saturday after-hours, I've got a white sunga from Alejandro for Muscle Beach with the circuit grandmother and goddess Wendy Hunt, and it's Abel all night on Sunday - it'll be hard-core for real!), and then I buck up again. This race is real - 18 miles, the same as Kona - so I've got to be real about it. The only way I can pull off both White Party and Rio Va`a is to get myself back in peak form in 3 weeks.

Which should be no problem.

Sad Sack Halloween

I got the message from Jake that I need to stop sounding like such a sad-sack in this blog. Which: oops, again. It's so much more fun to write when you're bitchy than when things are going well, and sometimes I'd incriminate too many people if I wrote about the fun times ... so I guess this tilts more negative than I mean it to. 'Cause things are actually going really well - but who wants to hear that?

I did come close to baggin' on Halloween, though. I'd been up late on Thursday helping Scott and Katherine move. Francisco was there also, and one beer let to another & soon it was way past my bedtime. I was hurting on Friday. I knew that Tom would be downtown at the Loft, but I didn't realize tickets were $30 ... and I'm being cheap these days (translation: an iphone, 2 new car tires, Rio fees, White Party tickets, and an overhaul on my bike have pretty much ko'd my bank account). I was going to head downtown anyway, but my group faded out one by one. Luckily I called Jake (and his crew had also bailed, one by one), and we hit Waikiki Friday night.

I was Ninja, and got no attention. Jake was Harry Potter, and got lots of attention, and not just 'cause he was passing out candy to kids! We did a pub crawl from his place on Ala Moana to Lulu's on the other end of Waikiki. It was fun, and kind of trashy, and kind of a perfect night. All the obvious places had lines (Senor Frogs, Yardhouse) or covers (Red Lion) or both (Hulas), so we hit the second rate places - both Cheeseburgers in Paradise, Coconut Willy's, and Lulus. And it was completely tragi-fabulous.

I haven't opened his pics yet, but I'll post when I do.

Lingle Watch

How many personalities does our governor have? Here's an article from Salon this morning about a McCain rally:

The rally got its cocky swagger back with Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle, who managed to work the crowd into an anti-Obama lather with her heavily emphasized assertion that "people are looking for a person they can trust to lead America. They want to elect a president who is proud of their nation." Everyone able to crack the code on what Linda Lingle is saying here? She then turned to an argument that has mostly been heard on the Democratic side of the political spectrum for many months, imagining what supporters would say to their children and grandchildren down the road, when the little whippersnappers ask them, "What did you do when you had a chance to make a difference? What role did you play in that crucial election?" Surely, Lingle concluded, they would want to be able to say that they "worked every hour in those last few days to do everything [they] could to make sure this election turns out the way we know it should for the people of America."

Cocky swagger? Our own right-wing pandering closeted-lesbian governor is cocky on the road? This is not a face she ever shows in Hawai`i.

But this lady has many faces. For years I've been confused about why a Jewish governor would so closely ally herself with the Christian fundamentalists here. I forgot about the whole strange relationship between fundamentalists, Revelations, and Zionism. This letter from Lingle to The Jewish Press (Palin Looks to Queen Esther as Role Model) shows us another face ...

If there were any doubt that Sen. John McCain will shake up Washington and institute real change, the selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican vice-presidential nominee has put that question to rest. Few people can match McCain's maverick spirit and bipartisan nature like Gov. Palin.

I've known Sarah Palin since her election as governor in 2006. I am confident she will be a great friend of the Jewish community and Israel, as well as a terrific leader and great vice president.

...

Finally on Iran - an issue of critical importance to readers of this publication - Gov. Palin gets it. She recognizes the importance of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons while advocating for strengthening the strategic U.S.-Israel relationship.

It is also clear that Gov. Palin is a woman of deep personal faith. She has established a good relationship with the Jewish communities of Alaska, supported the residents' desire to create the Alaska Jewish Historical Museum and was present at the reading of Alaska's resolution commemorating Israel's 60th anniversary.

In her office in Juneau, Gov. Palin has hung an Israeli flag. She displays the flag because Israel is in her heart.

...

Shortly after coming into office, Gov. Palin asked her former pastor for examples of biblical people who were great leaders and for the secret of their leadership. The pastor suggested she re-read the story of Queen Esther, the Jewish woman who rose to help her people and become queen of Persia.

Like Queen Esther, Gov. Palin has faced tremendous adversity, and time and again she has risen to overcome obstacles. This is the sign of a true leader.

...

Linda Lingle is the governor of Hawaii and a Jewish Republican.

I guess it doesn't matter. Lingle is pretty much out of options in this State, and pimping herself out to Palin's (I mean, McCain's) trainwreck of a campaign isn't going to help her nationally. She can join Harris, Fasi, and Cayetano in whatever club faded Hawai`i pols hang out in when their day is over.