[{"id":71393,"date":"2026-09-24T19:11:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T00:11:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/?p=71393"},"modified":"2026-09-25T10:45:01","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T15:45:01","slug":"no-name-chorale-brings-common-touch-to-singing-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/no-name-chorale-brings-common-touch-to-singing-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"No-Name Chorale Brings Common Touch to Singing Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No-Name Chorale opened its 2026-2027 season on Sunday afternoon by lending voices and piano to Walt Whitman\u2019s self-perpetuating poetry machine. Composer Jake Runestad<\/a> scored for piano and chorale a poem where Whitman celebrates the inspiration to write poetry. \u201cProud Music of the Storm\u201d<\/a> ends with the vow \u201clet us go forth in the bold day and write,\u201d thus ending the poem with the promise of more poetry.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What a clever way to begin a program of poetry scored for song and instruments\u2014and a season ahead of similar creative thrills. You have heard of a vicious circle? This was the exact opposite. Call it a virtuous<\/em> circle: Good ideas evolve into each other and multiply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though he can sound quaint and corny nearly 150 years later, Whitman prided himself in being a vernacular poet, a poet of the people. Andy Jensen<\/a>, artistic director of No-Name Chorale, takes his own down-home, vernacular approach to choral singing and repertoire. I am old friends with Adam Long, the chorale\u2019s Grammy-nominated volunteer sound man, who hears how Jensen leads the chorale at rehearsals. He said Jensen tells them: \u201cI want you to sound human.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whereas much art song exalts the human voice beyond recognizable phrasing or emotion, No-Name Chorale savors language recognizably as spoken by actual people. The composer Runestad\u00a0gives Whitman the common touch, writing humming and even oooing more often heard in pop music. Runestad also left collaborative pianist Melissa Ray an at times rollicking, at times hypnotic accompanying part to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a long program with no intermission, it made sense for the longest and most ambitious piece to follow the opener. Jensen invited the Perseid String Quartet to anchor Runestad\u2019s six-movement setting of Sufi mystic poetry. At this point, the venue for this concert must be taken into account. No-Name Chorale is in residence at Cathedral of Saint Peter<\/a>, a profoundly beautiful and reverent space in downtown Belleville. Hearing and seeing Sufi mystic poetry set to music by an ace string quartet and a chorale with the human touch in this otherworldly space was a profound experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My ear favors strings over even the most vernacular of chorale voices. The players in the Perseid String Quartet\u2014Hanna Frey and Manuela Topalbegovic (violins), McKayla Talasek (viola), and Ken Kulosa (cello)\u2014blended gracefully with one another, the chorale, a series of vocal soloists, and ultimately the vast and echoey spaces of the cathedral. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also\u00a0rocked<\/em>. I am a rock musician gradually falling deeper in love with classical music traditions, always alert for precursors of punk rock in the classical canon. Runestad composed \u201cThe Hope of Loving\u201d in 2015 with more than a half-century of rock music to draw upon. There were moments in this piece when the Perseid String Quartet could have stood up and thrown down in any rock club or dive bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melissa Ray came back out to lead the chorale on piano for \u201cEl Aire Baila,\u201d Runestad\u2019s tuneful setting of a poem by Humberto Ak\u2019Abal<\/a>, a K\u2019iche\u2019 Maya poet from Guatemala. The piano slinked and writhed along the lines of what must be local folk dances known to Ak\u2019Abal. Jensen was dancing as he conducted the chorale, escaping dull decorum without quite going native on the conductor\u2019s stand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For \u201cPlease Stay,\u201d Runestad plumbed the vernacular 21st-century medium of Twitter, setting to songs hashtagged #IKeptLiving as witness to struggles against suicide. This is purely a pop song. There should be celebrity cameo vocals on a recording of \u201cPlease Stay\u201d that raises awareness of the struggle and money for organizations trying to help people stay here. \u201cIt was hard as hell,\u201d someone tweeted and the chorale sang to Runestad\u2019s melody, \u201cbut I decided to keep on living.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Runestad returned to Guatemala for \u201cSuave,\u201d<\/a> a song by his singer-songwriter buddy Jeffrey Ortega. This poetic homage to having a soft touch \u2013 \u201cI don’t think I need to force it\u201d\u2014has an accessible melody, presumably Ortega\u2019s original, delivered in vocal tonalities closest to folk and pop music. I felt the warm welcome of a successful theme song for a pleasing mass-market television show. Not in melody, but in effortless comfort I would compare \u201cSuave\u201d to \u201cWelcome Back,\u201d<\/a> John Sebastian\u2019s lovable theme song for\u00a0Welcome Back, Kotter<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chorale closed with \u201cNer Ner,\u201d a nonsense song sung in the boisterous, polyphonic styles of Zap Mama<\/a>. This was art song as mouth noise. You know that unmistakable kind of snaky mouth music you make to simulate the sound of the air guitar you\u2019re playing with your empty hands? Runestad wrote that solo mouth music for full chorus, and No-Name Chorale had a blast singing it in the inexpressibly beautiful cathedral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jensen thanked from the stage Cathedral of Saint Peter\u2019s organist\/choirmaster Richard W. Thompson for sharing his performance space. On the way out of the cathedral, I saw a likable photograph of its rector, Father Godfrey Mullen, a monk of Saint Meinrad Archabbey. Father Mullen hung his portrait, I would like to think proudly, beside that of Pope Leo XIV<\/a>. That noble human pontiff\u2014one of the best public reasons in this terrifying 2026 to stay here\u2014was a welcome sight to see walking out of this sublime performance into a sunny Sunday afternoon in downtown Belleville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No-Name Chorale posts Adam Long\u2019s recording of their concerts on <\/em>their YouTube channel<\/em><\/a>. It takes couple of weeks for a new recording to appear.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a clever way to begin a program of poetry scored for song and instruments\u2014and a season ahead of similar creative thrills. You have heard of a vicious circle? 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An hour or so in, it seems as tangible as the dust in the early morning sunlight. A restlessness comes over me, a need to prove I am still alive even with no one bearing witness. I begin to jabber, telling the air what I plan to do next and why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This feels a little silly in a public building, but I do it at home quite naturally, exclaiming about what I forgot upstairs when I trooped down to the basement or confiding my latest idea to the dog, who does not speak English. Some would find this a worrisome sign, encroaching dementia perhaps. But a nonstop narrative has streamed through my consciousness as long as I can remember, and there are, as yet, no padded walls around me. I just need company, and the company of my own thoughts, aired aloud, does nicely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Self-talk, the practice is called, and after decades of research, shrinks now admit it can be quite healthy. We learn to speak, after all, by jabbering away in our crib, speaking to no one in particular, catching the rhythm and intonation before we have the vocabulary. Child psychologists call this \u201cjargoning.\u201d And once the words make sense, they are even more useful. Who knows better than you how to calm your anxieties or kick you into action? And practically speaking, you can guide yourself through a task\u2019s many steps at exactly the right pace, no rush or lag. Sometimes I even speak as someone else, a wise old peasant woman mocking my trifling, bourgeois worries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Danger only comes if you are hallucinating, which will lose you street cred, or criticizing yourself relentlessly, which is corrosive. I am gentle with my ego, considerate of its frailty. All my talking-out-loud does is give voice to the thoughts already batting around my skull\u2014the observations, ideas, reminders, exasperations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As the late, wonderfully wise Eva Brann <a href=\"https:\/\/renovatio.zaytuna.edu\/article\/self-addressed-speech\">wrote<\/a> in <em>Renovatio, <\/em>\u201cSelf-address is not always silently interior.\u201d Nor is it always aimed at oneself. She once watched as, \u201cbent forward as if in urgent escape, this man strode along, talking. To himself ? I doubt it; he was probably addressing a deaf world or its divinity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like me, Brann kept up a running commentary. She tried addressing herself worldlessly and exclaimed, \u201cI can\u2019t do it: I literally can\u2019t hear myself; I seem to have a virtual inner ear that must be addressed by vocalization.\u201d Speech, she concluded, is thought made physical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And thought is, by default, dialogue. The philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin points out that language is, at its core, social. The back-and-forth of ideas is what makes our sophisticated symbols possible. The selfish impulse to own our own ideas, to lock our thoughts inside our cerebellum, is only ego. In truth, a single, lonely human would not advance far at all. We need collections of minds, and as technology historian David Mattin notes, \u201cmind itself is best understood as a phenomenon that emerges between us, rather than inside any one of us individually.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We have not always known what to make of our thought-dialogues. Chinese Buddhists called intense internal debates \u201cdeluded thought,\u201d notes Ethan Kross in <em>Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It. <\/em>\u201cEarly Christian mystics were thoroughly annoyed by the voice in their head always intruding on their silent contemplation. Some even considered these voices demonic.\u201d Most traditions have made room for both: inner voices as demonic and divine, sources of temptation or wisdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mine is just good company. And demons do not scare me. Besides, soon I may not have anyone else to talk to. Human conversation is waning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We chat with LLMs now, not with cashiers or receptionists or neighbors. But note how carefully tech preserved the \u201cchat\u201d dialogue our brains like best. \u201cIt\u2019s as though we\u2019ve created a human hivemind and given it a voice,\u201d Mattin writes, \u201csuch that we\u2019re now able to talk to it\u201d\u2014or rather, to our collective self\u2014\u201cat will.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thanks to such innovations\u2014and before that, to all our shiny screens\u2014we are losing our ability to talk out loud to one another. The average number of words we speak each day <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/10.1177\/17456916261425131\">dropped<\/a> by about 28 percent between 2005 and 2019, and one can only imagine what the past seven years added to that slide. We were already speaking about 338 fewer words per day, more than 120,000 words fewer each year<em>. <\/em>And those twenty-five or younger are losing words much faster than those of us who grew up with Princess phones on squiggly cords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The advantage of talking to yourself is instant comprehension and sympathy, not to mention the permission to chatter away, ruminate, or repeat yourself without apology. I thoroughly understand why old people mutter to themselves on park benches, now that the rest of us have stopped listening to them. But solitude does make us solipsistic, and sometimes intolerant. The ancient, the excluded, and the reclusive all become rigid because they have no one to contradict or challenge them, no one who can force a little flexibility, risk, or rethinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We really do need somebody else to talk to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Self-talk, the practice is called, and after decades of research, shrinks now admit it can be quite healthy. We learn to speak, after all, by jabbering away in our crib, speaking to no one in particular, catching the rhythm and intonation before we have the vocabulary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":71326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11667],"tags":[],"toc":[11664],"class_list":["post-71324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-and-culture","toc-dispatches"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Talking to Yourself - Common Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Self-talk, the practice is called, and after decades of research, shrinks now admit it can be quite healthy. 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Learning to Pay Attention"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Raj and I were friends in college. He and I and a big guy who knew Raj used to hang out in the rooming house where I was the manager and janitor in exchange for reduced rent. Other residents gathered with us in the communal kitchen: Abbas, an Iranian engineer who had a cat named Little Goldie, his only companion in the world; Lucky, an ex-con in a Chicago Police leather jacket, who had worked the captive-bolt gun at a slaughterhouse and <em>loved<\/em> his job; his girlfriend and another young woman in bonnets and flip-flops, talking only between themselves; a Chinese national who insisted angrily we call him Isaac, his confirmation name, after he understood the joke in the big guy\u2019s pronunciation of his surname.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Raj was a good-looking, funny, smart kid majoring in business. He said he felt a lot of pressure from his family to be successful, and they were already disappointed he was not at Northwestern. He gassed himself in a Mercedes in his parents\u2019 garage, over Thanksgiving break as I remember. Part of the shock of it to me was, <em>I have not paid close enough attention<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The root of that was not just grief, guilt, or frustration, but fear. This starts in childhood, when grownups suddenly begin whispering about some person or event, and even a child can see that there is <em>more<\/em> going on than they have been told, and that that <em>more <\/em>will make a lie of stories they have trusted to be true. My family and town kept their small powers in secrets, like bonds. Once when I was a kid, a neighbor\u2019s son, who had been in Vietnam, was also <em>found in the garage<\/em>, as the euphemism goes. For a few seconds I did not understand the puzzling innuendo of loss or transgression. Had he gone somewhere he was not meant to go? Later I heard \u201cwith a belt,\u201d but had to ask to be sure it meant what I thought it did. When I look up the incident online now, I see the young man was only 24, was married, and had children. I had no idea then, so I think: <em>I have not remembered well enough.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Long after I left the army myself, I met a former officer named Jeff at a reunion. We were the same age and had been in the same field but had never served together. We had a lively few hours with friends and went to our homes across the country. Later, to my surprise, he started calling me to talk, often when I was trying to do something else, such as watch my son\u2019s Little League games. He did all the talking, compulsively, at great length. In the war he had been put in charge of a group of Iraqi soldiers. They got wiped out, and he blamed himself, though others said he bore no responsibility. Eventually he stopped calling, then he died by his own hand, as they say. (Having survived the war and become a recluse on an isolated farm, who else\u2019s hand would it be?) For a time the voice said: <em>I could have been a better friend by being more present.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think more, now that I am older, about what else in my social life I should see, ask, remember, and do, while there is time, even when I can do little. Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald: <em>Relationships are the brutality<\/em> <em>that sustains<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think more about what else in my social life I should see, ask, remember, and do, even when I can do little. Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald: Relationships are the brutality that sustains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":71332,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11669],"tags":[],"toc":[11664],"class_list":["post-71330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people-and-places","toc-dispatches"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Of Learning to Pay Attention - Common Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I think more about what else in my social life I should see, ask, remember, and do, even when I can do little. 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(courtesy Mus\u00e9um de Toulouse, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/of-learning-to-pay-attention\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Of Learning to Pay Attention"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/#website","url":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/","name":"Common Reader","description":"A journal of the essay","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/#organization","name":"The Common Reader","url":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/commonreader.washu.edu\/app\/uploads\/2021\/09\/TCRSocialMast.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/commonreader.washu.edu\/app\/uploads\/2021\/09\/TCRSocialMast.jpg","width":500,"height":250,"caption":"The Common Reader"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TheCommonReader","https:\/\/x.com\/TCRWUSTL","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/commonreaderjournal\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/#\/schema\/person\/f11dca72d5c3ab94094cbafc8e1aa0a9","name":"Ben","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/100c21d03ef36896ddaf5412e6bcd2df14e51cd0ee668ee25b51fdf22ee10c05?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/100c21d03ef36896ddaf5412e6bcd2df14e51cd0ee668ee25b51fdf22ee10c05?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/100c21d03ef36896ddaf5412e6bcd2df14e51cd0ee668ee25b51fdf22ee10c05?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Ben"},"description":"Fulton manages all aspects of The Common Reader for Editor Gerald Early. A reporter and editor with 20 years' experience, Fulton worked as an education and features reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune, covering all aspects of arts and education for Utah's major daily newspaper. Before that he worked as editor of Salt Lake City Weekly, Utah's alternative newsweekly, leading an award-winning team of staff writers and section editors. A Salt Lake City native, his work has been published in New York's Newsday, and garnered national awards, including Best of the West and Top of the Rockies.","url":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/author\/befulton\/"}]}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Parnassius_mnemosyne_MHNT_CUT_2013_3_5_Le_Mont_Dore_Femelle_ventre.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71330"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71338,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71330\/revisions\/71338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71330"},{"taxonomy":"toc","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/toc?post=71330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":71320,"date":"2026-09-20T07:14:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T12:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/?p=71320"},"modified":"2026-09-21T21:42:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T02:42:38","slug":"theyll-pass-you-by-glory-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/theyll-pass-you-by-glory-days\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThey\u2019ll Pass You By, Glory Days\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/nostalgia.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSorry to sound nostalgic,\u201d a friend apologized, about to mention something that had changed for the worse. I shrugged. After hearing MAGA devotees long unabashedly for a time when half this country was either drugged on Valium or barred from polite society, I, too, was wary of nostalgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At least, I thought I was. Then, for an unrelated reason, I had to scroll through past columns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAn Elegy for the Literary Lunch.\u201d \u201cKodachrome.\u201d \u201cJammed Keys\u201d (typewriter, of course). Pieces about why clothes are less elegant <em>and <\/em>less comfortable now, why food is less healthy, why swing rhythms were so danceable, why the <em>New Yorker <\/em>cartoons used to be funnier, why shopping was delightful when you could touch the fabric, try on ten dresses, and recover over lunch. Some of the losses I had categorized were harmless, just sweet memories to savor. Others had stolen a bit of peace or health or connection from all of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Clearly, MAGA does not have a lock on nostalgia. I especially miss the energy and idealism of the civil rights era, even though I was a clueless child at the time. I miss the days when strangers struck up quick conversations instead of passing each other plugged up with earbuds. I miss hardware stores where an old guy took an hour to give you solid advice. So, sure, I act jaded, but how can you live six decades and <em>not<\/em> understand nostalgia?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Change, by its very nature, destroys what came before. Admitting that you miss it honors what was lost. Or it reminds us to reintroduce something good that vanished unnecessarily, slipping through efficiency\u2019s cracks because no one took the trouble to reintegrate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Portuguese have a word, <em>saudade, <\/em>for the melancholy that steals over us when we are longing for someone or something that has been lost. They did take our Kodachrome away. And our turntables, and our brass-belled wind-up alarm clocks. It feels healthy to be specific, and honest, about these yearnings. That makes sure the nostalgia is not really a lie\u2014or a condition that was only possible if someone else suffered. We are still in danger, though, of making a collage of all our beloved objects and customs and forgetting why they mattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNostalgia is <em>in,\u201d <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2026\/09\/14\">announces<\/a> the <em>New Yorker, <\/em>\u201cbut not for any one decade in particular; it\u2019s more of a hodgepodge of twentieth-century fads all heaped on top of one another, creating a messy smashburger of historical reference.\u201d Why such a jumble? Because they are all available to us, cut free of their decade and floating on the internet. \u201cWe are living, as the critic George W.S. Trow once wrote, within \u2018the context of no-context,\u2019 where everything we consume is so mediated and remixed that it has been flattened into a vague pancake of yearning for a bygone time.\u201d Vague, in that the yearning is wildly uninformed. \u201cFew consumers know <em>why <\/em>they want to wear ballet flats again, or even the origins of ballet flats in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is what happens when you feel wistful for a time that, in retrospect, looks calmer, more orderly, more confident, more affluent. A time in which you are sure you would have \u201cdone\u201d better, had a higher social footing and a happier life, one in which everyone around you had goddamned better obey the same norms. Even I, appalled by the desire to flip the calendar back seven decades, watch midcentury movies and envy that time\u2019s simplicity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I forget it was the <em>aesthetic<\/em> that was simple; directors had not yet figured out, technically or artistically, how to complicate the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so, whenever that sickly-sweet yearning comes over us, it needs to be tested with the acid of truth. Was White supremacy really that great, even for White people? Were we more deeply communitarian when we all laughed at the same shows? Do I really want to use carbon paper and Wite-out again, or trudge around a mall?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pleasures that used to be a given now require hard work, but that does not mean they are gone. You just have to get more creative, if you want to find elegance on a shoestring budget or healthy food that does not require a mortgage. There are so many choices, it feels as though you have to search harder for cartoons you find funny, books and films you adore. But maybe the bar is higher <em>because<\/em> you have more choices?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nostalgia can delude us, narrow our thinking, crowd out hope. A friend less than half my age recently announced that he refuses to \u201cwallow in other people\u2019s nostalgia,\u201d because he is bent on becoming a journalist even in a time increasingly indifferent to well-wrought sentences of human origin. He does not need to hear how gratifying it was to break news, back when people read a daily paper cover to cover, or how \u201cgetting clicks\u201d and \u201cgoing viral\u201d are somehow not the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Except, maybe he does need to hear it. Maybe we all need to understand what others long for, and why. I am sure that for many people, making America great again does not need to hinge on White supremacy or heterosexual norms. Those were just ways to feel comfortable in the world, secure, sure that you were following the right rules and that doors would open to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are other ways to reach comfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last evening, I walked the dog past our town\u2019s old, still working but never used pay phone. It rang! A thrill lit my nerves, and I reached inside for the clunky handset and said, almost breathlessly, \u201cHello?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No one replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why the past chose that moment to ring, I have no idea. But answering took me to nostalgia\u2019s inevitable finish. These objects are no longer in general use; the times and moments we long for are over. And that is fine. Maybe what I really want when I long for a pay phone is a way to be cozily private in public. Maybe my nostalgia is really a longing for the sense of possibility that marked my younger years. Or for a predictable, understandable world. Or for more social connection; more attention paid to beauty and elegance and kindness; more respect for difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In \u201cThe Weight of Glory,\u201d C.S. Lewis writes about nostalgia as a \u201cdesire for our own far off country.\u201d We want to live in a world of our own choosing, want this so badly it hurts. So we take revenge on that secret desire by tagging our yearnings \u201cnostalgia\u201d or \u201cromanticism.\u201d But often we are taking our own wistfulness too literally. We have been seduced by \u201ca desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wordsworth longed for beauty and found a way \u201cto identify it with certain moments in his own past,\u201d continues Lewis. \u201cBut all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When we reach for something in the past, we are really reaching for ourselves. For the life we want <em>now. <\/em>If I mistake chatting about the same sitcom for camaraderie, or confuse my dust-caked old Royal typewriter with the ability to bang out gorgeous sentences, then I have lost touch with reality. Because the qualities I miss are in fact timeless, perfectly capable of enduring change. As long as we realize that, we can find ways to keep them alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We want to live in a world of our own choosing, want this so badly it hurts. So we take revenge on that secret desire by tagging our yearnings \u201cnostalgia\u201d or \u201cromanticism.\u201d But often we are taking our own wistfulness too literally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":71340,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11667],"tags":[],"toc":[11664],"class_list":["post-71320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-and-culture","toc-dispatches"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>\u201cThey\u2019ll Pass You By, Glory Days\u201d - Common Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We want to live in a world of our own choosing, want this so badly it hurts. So we take revenge on that secret desire by tagging our yearnings \u201cnostalgia\u201d or \u201cromanticism.\u201d But often we are taking our own wistfulness too literally.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/theyll-pass-you-by-glory-days\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cThey\u2019ll Pass You By, Glory Days\u201d - Common Reader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We want to live in a world of our own choosing, want this so badly it hurts. 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Truth Dissolved"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cEvery medium \u2014 print, TV, social media \u2014 has its own contract with the truth,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/bigthink.com\/history-society\/as-print-literacy-fades-our-perception-of-truth-is-warping\/\">writes<\/a> media ecologist Andrey Mir. He goes on to explain how our media gradually shattered the very notion that there <em>is <\/em>truth\u2014singular, shared, floating above us all, letting us aspire to reach it together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mir\u2019s summary is so concise and lucid, you forget he is leading us by the hand through long centuries. Then the speed of change ratchets up, and you hang on tight and peer at the blur of the past couple generations, the ones in which assertions of truth were deconstructed; pronounced fake, truthy at best; or canceled by a different truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Imagine how easy it would have been in prehistory to be married, when there were no words to get in the way, get misunderstood, get carved into hurt memory and wielded years later as weapons. Truth came from gesture, a shared vocabulary of response to parts of reality you could point at. It was immediate and concrete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those early grunts were refined into syllables, though. And once you had words, you had stories. You listened to them again and again, at night around a fire, and they became your truth. Your children might grow up to be storytellers themselves\u2014and they would bend the old stories to new purposes, embellishing or subtracting to make their own point. Truth was now situational. It did not have to follow a pointing finger; it could venture beyond trees and lions to name invisible ideas and feelings. It was not as unchanging, stable, and eternal as the stories made it sound. It relied on context, and it could be negotiated or adjusted, because nobody was keeping a permanent record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Next came writing. People attempted to author truth, and what they wrote separated that truth from them. It had its own life now, and it could outlast them. Later generations might reinterpret, but they could no longer renegotiate the terms or adjust their assertions. (Put a few biblical scholars in a room and you will see what happens as they try to extract the truth they are hoping for; others will jump to their feet and wave the text in the air as a corrective. However many times it is rewritten, the original text will continue to exist.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Writing culture was dense with abstraction, distant from lived experience. This is why we need poets and novelists: to bring us back to our bodies, our senses. But however vivid and precise, written symbols cooled what they conveyed, spreading it over miles and generations. With the birth of the printing press, language was standardized, and ideas and impressions, facts and hunches, could be made available to millions of people at once. They could be debated and disputed, and their authors could be held accountable. Truth was generalized from different contexts, abstracted, cut away from the writer and now existing on its own, a set of symbolic squiggles that would endure in the same form for centuries. This was truth you could count on, absolute and eternal. It could be used to govern, to create policy, to establish ethical guidelines, to point up lies and contradictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ah, but it lost us paradise. Until the printing press, maps, hand drawn, nearly always included the Garden of Eden. Printing sped up the circulation of identical copies, allowing more people to spot errors or discrepancies. Accuracy was now attainable. Given the uncertain location of the Garden, publishers no longer wanted to put Paradise on their maps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Once knowledge spread and standardized, education itself could be standardized. No wonder there were such lively conversations in the eighteenth-century literary salons. Guests shared the same foundation, made the same assumptions, knew the same facts and stories, respected the same conventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The intimacy of those softly lit salons was shattered, though, by the electricity that sent information zapping across oceans. Freed from any physical carrier, information flowed fast, flooding people with ideas and trends and choices. \u201cMedia producers had to work hard to market their products,\u201d Mir writes, so they began to pay attention to their audiences, targeting products or content at specific groups of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNewspapers had long spoken to particular readerships,\u201d Mir concedes. \u201cThe partisan press chose its audience by politics. What electronic media added was measurement: targeting became continuous, quantified, and instant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pay attention here, because you are about to lose your soul. What you are told, from this point forward, will largely depend on what someone who hopes to profit from you has decided you want to hear. Truth will change for each audience, each social context. Content will be tweaked and distributed accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This shift began in 1937, when two guys at Columbia University designed a \u201cprogram analyzer.\u201d Listeners could push a button to indicate whether they liked or disliked the radio show they had just heard. There could be ratings. And radio stations could make their programming decisions accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Seventy years later, social media\u2019s \u201clikes\u201d intensified audience measurement, giving it an almost unbearable weight. The commercial focus on group identities carried over into politics, where the ground had been paved by various civil rights struggles and academic theories. We now saw ourselves first as a demographic or social category. This made inequity and injustice far more apparent\u2014but eroded the sense of collective belonging. Groups vied with one another for respect and resources. Cooperation, collaboration, and compromise fell by the wayside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With the internet and social media, we are all our own publisher and our own brand. The elite gatekeepers are out of a job. Authority can easily be questioned, mocked, mistrusted. Digital media does not encourage careful thought backed by evidence, so reactions can be emotional and impulsive\u2014just as they were when we drew our truth from firelit storytellers. But we did not simply regress to an earlier stage, Mir notes. We brought our crazy speed and global scale with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIn traditional tribes, people would usually settle into stable hierarchies after brief periods of adjustment,\u201d he writes. \u201cDigital super-tribes are constantly exposed to triggers and novelty, with algorithms further agitating users for better engagement.\u201d Pissing us off, in other words, so we will remain in our online trance for hours at a stretch. \u201cThe entire ecosystem is a constant brawl.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDigital orality\u201d has the humanities types over in the corner weeping that no one reads books anymore. But \u201corality vs. literacy is not just about listening vs. reading but rather about immersion vs. detachment,\u201d Mir explains. \u201cPeople become immersed in impulsive, instant digital interactions with their environment, now digital, and with each other.\u201d Truth is whatever goes viral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So where are we? Reaching backward, many of us, trying to find something we can hang on to. But that comforting reliance on absolute truth and common, systematized knowledge is less and less possible. We value the truth of lived experience again\u2014just look at a young couple\u2019s wedding registration, all those trips to Nepal in lieu of dinnerware. But most of our lived experience is mediated by screens. Truth is again situational, relative, negotiated\u2014but now it is also fragmented. Each of us has our own, and we demand the right to voice it and be heard. This plays out in strident ways, with attendant backlash. But deep down, we all know that we are like a blind man fumbling around with, at best, the tassel on the tail of the elephant. Loud in compensation, we insist that an elephant is a tassel, and that any suggestion of a larger truth is both wrong and dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2016, Mir reminds us, the Oxford Dictionary made \u201cpost-truth\u201d the word of the year. It referred to \u201ccircumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.\u201d The following year, the Collins Dictionary chose \u201cfake news\u201d as its word of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was fakery in the print era, too. \u201cWhat changed with digital media was the mechanism of verification itself\u201dwhich was now only virality. \u201cIf print culture distributed what was significant, digital culture treats as significant whatever is [widely] distributed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A quease roils my stomach. Sure, I share especially fine analyses of politics or culture. But I also share cute stuff about dogs. I subscribe to aggregator newsletters that curate for depth\u2014then click on the link at the bottom that offers me quick, cheap, and easy dinner recipes. No one should decide what to show me by looking at what I choose when left to my own devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Print culture, in which notions of objective truth peaked, lasted only 500 years. It is now called the \u201cGutenberg Parenthesis.\u201d We moved on to the exclamation point. And now AI is making a change so dramatic, I cannot find a punctuation mark that would be adequate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cFor AI,\u201d Mir writes, \u201cthe only reality is us.\u201d Humans have supplied our language to AI, our knowledge, our intuitions and wisdom. \u201cAI will keep talking to us no matter what, largely indifferent to truth and reality checks, because it has no reality besides the one in which we engage with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is not a simple extension of digital media\u2019s hunger for engagement, Mir notes. For AI, \u201ctruth as an intellectual or ethical imperative arguably does not exist.\u201d That would be chilling enough\u2014but what happens when AI stops needing our input? As it becomes able to generate its own words and images, it will begin cannibalizing its own slop, taking us ever further from reality as we have known it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">LLMs do not point to the concrete; they merely rearrange words. All significance is abstract, fully disembodied. And unlike the Gutenberg years, when we automatically looked for evidence to verify our conclusions, we have reached a time when inaccuracy is just shrugged off and amended, if caught at all. The phrase \u201creality check\u201d may vanish from our vocabulary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cPost-literacy is not just about reading fewer books,\u201d Mir concludes. \u201cBy opting out of print literacy\u2014first through electronic and digital media, and now through AI\u2014we are opting out of the notion of objective, absolute, uniform truth.\u201d I can already feel this happening, as I read something, learn it was written by AI, and decide it hit on something beautiful, so who cares. But when authorship is irrelevant, who will be accountable for the lies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He ends with the two obvious remedies: anchoring yourself in physical and social reality (hugs, grass, sweat) and reading deeply. But if you are busy making a living, odds are good that you spend a lot of time in front of a screen and have little energy left to read deeply. Will the ancient\u2014the nostalgic retirees or old-money rich\u2014be the only keepers of what we used to consider truth?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pay attention here, because you are about to lose your soul. What you are told, from this point forward, will largely depend on what someone who hopes to profit from you has decided you want to hear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":71194,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11665],"tags":[],"toc":[11664],"class_list":["post-71193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-letters","toc-dispatches"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How Truth Dissolved - Common Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pay attention here, because you are about to lose your soul. 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Pictures in an Exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A visit to a museum on the Fourth of July is not surprising, certainly to be expected, and perhaps an obvious choice or even the right thing to do and place to be to commemorate a historical day of independence. And so, when my good friend and brother, Nana Prempeh, asked me to join him on his tour of the famous Saint Louis Art Museum, it seemed not just convenient but also exciting. So, with a resounding nod and gusto, I joined my brother as we took a Lyft to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slam.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">SLAM<\/a> to spend the day in the comfort of its holdings of historical paintings, art, carvings, and various artistic movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was not until what I would consider the second phase of our tour that I chanced upon what would be the subject of my present musing: two images of women who had posed in front of the American flag for a portrait. The description of the images for both women read as \u201cUntitled (Woman and Flag), c. 1940s gelatin and silver print\u201d and \u201cUntitled (Woman in Sailor Uniform in Front of American Flag), 1940s gelatin silver print,\u201d respectively. These two images, perhaps in my view, might have constituted the two most minute images amongst the myriad displayed archives that I saw; they were those that left the most remarkable and profound impression. Their posture with the flag at once is a reminder of patriotism and their service to their nation, in whatever form and manner, which, while captured in the 1940s, has been preserved by the indelible bridge of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But what is more intriguing, largely in part for me as a budding postcolonial studies scholar who works with archives and texts of culture and memory, is the naming of these images as \u201cuntitled.\u201d The naming as \u201cuntitled\u201d at once signals and registers an unknown, a blind spot about these images and the figures captured in them. The audience can just behold them from a distance, but that is all there is to them. This is not to say they are not unknown, for unknown would suggest that these are obscured individuals, forever curated and made. Rather, they are \u201cuntitled\u201d images, images that, while named, refuse and suspend the totality and finality of such a naming. Whether the images had titles but the donor forgot to give them to the museum, or the photographer or donors just refused to name the images, remains a mystery, but it is that mystery which gives these images their effervescence. And it is this idea of \u201cuntitled\u201d not as lost, not as the absence of proper naming, but as a suspension and an opening of possibilities for the existence of a title that was lost or not, which I find quite intriguing about these two figures who sat with me in the museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>Whether the images had titles but the donor forgot to give them to the museum, or the photographer or donors just refused to name the images, remains a mystery, but it is that mystery which gives these images their effervescence.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These two definitions do not supersede the other. Both make meaning and are suggestive of the name \u201cuntitled,\u201d both as a refusal and as a loss. These two possible definitions, therefore, are what make up the image, the dialectic of the photographic memory which these two images exude, and can only be understood when we appreciate them from such a perspective as an audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The subject of the image which remains \u201cuntitled\u201d reminds me of a similar conversation the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben had about photographs. In his collection of short essays, which he titled <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zonebooks.org\/books\/90-profanations\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Profanations<\/a><\/em>, Agamben wrote  that \u201cthe photograph is always more than an image: it is a site of a gap, a sublime breach between the sensible and the intelligible, between copy and reality, between a memory and hope.\u201d While I understand the philosopher\u2019s sentiments about photographs, as my personal musings above have shown, the power of photography might not lie only in what it cannot show but in what it invites us to see, acknowledge, and appreciate in what it equally shows and does not show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thus, the photograph does not simply produce distance; rather, it furnishes the very conditions by which that distance becomes a form of intimacy, and it is precisely because the image withholds itself that we continue to approach it. In other words, it not only creates a gap, but it also gives us the opportunity, the ladder, to come into it by virtue of such a distance being simultaneously that which bridges us to it. And so, the untitled photograph is not merely a breach between memory and hope, but rather an invitation to inhabit that breach from a distance. And perhaps only by sitting with such a contradiction can images like these make sense, knowing that their memory and the secrets they hold are made accessible from a respectful distance that will forever hold us in their awe and continuous reverence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps this notion of \u201crespectful distance\u201d that the photograph exudes can be a generative ethical mode of reading archives and, for me, a way of thinking about America itself. As a young scholar of colonial histories, I enter into America\u2014the United States of America, with its histories and enmeshed stories of individuals, monuments, effigies, and memories of past events, traumatic or otherwise, which, while I can admire, should be careful not to presume full knowledge of, despite their full reach from the past into the present, one that undoubtedly structures its own people, mine, and the world at large. And yet, it is this partial inaccessibility, the knowledge and awareness that such a country holds the weight and bears the brunt of millions of stories that demand our respectful distance is one which also invites us to collaborate and share in these memories, knowing that such an invitation is one to sit with the multi-faced nature of these many stories: the traumatic ones of struggle and pain, and slavery and runaway, and also the ones of laughter, of joy, of hope, of romance and song. In all this, I partake, knowing that I must do so from the vantage point that it allows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>The naming as \u201cuntitled\u201d at once signals and registers an unknown, a blind spot about these images and the figures captured in them. The audience can just behold them from a distance, but that is all there is to them.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And with this newfound insight I leave my readers, as I left the museum, knowing that this place and space, with individuals and stories that fill its belly, will forever continue to demand my and our respectful distance. This America, their America, holds its subjects in time in ways that not only preserve them but also continue to keep them in the nation\u2019s temporal imagination. Likewise, they demand of us, children of the present who visit their walls to linger between the threshold of knowledge and humility, where (their) history remains open without becoming ours to possess, and it is in this respectful distance that memory finds both its dignity and endurance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a id=\"_msocom_1\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The untitled photograph is not merely a breach between memory and hope, but rather an invitation to inhabit that breach from a distance. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":71308,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11665],"tags":[],"toc":[5797],"class_list":["post-71171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-letters","toc-essays"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - 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I love buses. They are democratic\u2014no snobbish sorting into comfy elite seats and seats for the rest of us\u2014and they feel chummy, not sterile and airless. They also give you plenty of time to let your brain empty out and open to other people\u2019s worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So here I am, feeling expansive and fond of humanity, my thoughts turning to Walt Whitman and then to Obama himself, with his expansive hope for all of us\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThere\u2019s only one thing a snitch deserves and that\u2019s lead between the eyeballs,\u201d somebody behind me announces. An older woman gets on, scrutinizes the passengers, and carefully chooses an isolated seat. \u201cWhat\u2019s fucked up is why I\u2019m going back to Cleveland,\u201d blurts a guy in the back, outrage raising his voice. \u201cMy little brother\u2014they smashed both his kneecaps and then they rolled over him with one of those trash compactors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">America\u2019s small talk, spattered with hate and fear and violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I forget that the next morning, though, as the crowd pours into the Obama Presidential Center. At the gala opening ceremony the day before, \u201cit just felt like peace was floating over the area,\u201d says a woman who went to the public watch party. Today is looser and lively, the guest list wide open, flooded with people who have traveled miles, huge family reunions in matching T-shirts, gay couples, biracial couples, veterans using motorized wheelchairs, kids in even more complicated wheelchairs. One staffer wears a sari; several women wear hijabs. The crowd is what used to be sought and is now condemned: diverse, with everybody made welcome. People relax into smiles as they walk, light at heart for a change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The weather is glorious, seventies with bright sun and a soft breeze. The longest line is in front of the statue of the Obamas\u2014everybody wants a selfie. People high-five Michelle, lean against Barack. \u201cThey got into people\u2019s souls,\u201d a man murmurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The line moves easily, everyone offering to take the photo for whoever is in front of them. When an Asian family scurries away too quickly, the Black woman holding their camera calls, \u201cWait, let me get another one. Get closer together!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today is Juneteenth, the end of slavery in the United States, and like many others, that woman wears the pan-African black, gold, red, and green. Could this country ever change enough, I wonder, to make them\u2014or me\u2014comfortable in red, white, and blue? We were headed there, back in 2008. We have come here to remember that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>The longest line is in front of the statue of the Obamas\u2014everybody wants a selfie. People high-five Michelle, lean against Barack. \u201cThey got into people\u2019s souls,\u201d a man murmurs.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just as I am starting to feel glum, a sudden delight ripples through the crowd. Dancers in the Black Hawk Performance Company are streaming onto the plaza, coloring it bright. An older Black woman asks for a selfie with a woman her age in an exquisitely beaded and fringed dress, and afterward they give each other a big hug, crushing a few feathers. Younger dancers swish their hips to \u201cAll Night Long\u201d as they wait for the performance to begin. Then the company invites OPC staffers into their circle, as a thank you. Some shuffle along with embarrassed good grace, but others put hands on hips and manage to catch the drummers\u2019 beat. All music belongs to all of us, I think. We need <em>more <\/em>cultural appropriation, as long as it is appreciative and respectful. The push for identity should have stopped there. Instead, it grew so shrill it broke us apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After the performance, hip-hop and pop music fill the John Lewis Plaza. Now anybody can dance, and people do, so freely it is irresistible. OPC staffers join in for a minute as they scurry by. As I pass a woman, we bend our heads toward each other and sing it loud: \u201c<em>Easy<\/em> as 1-2-3, a-b-c\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But it is not easy at all. Not anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Can this controversial, privately funded $850 million center\u2014dismissed by many as a vanity project, architectural folly, and dangerous precedent\u2014really shore up democracy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Obama-Ctr-museum-and-arc-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x768.jpeg\" alt=\"Obama Presidential Center museum and arc (Photo by Patti Gabriel)\" class=\"wp-image-71240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Obama-Ctr-museum-and-arc-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Obama-Ctr-museum-and-arc-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Obama-Ctr-museum-and-arc-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-768x576.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Obama-Ctr-museum-and-arc-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Obama-Ctr-museum-and-arc-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Photo by Patti Gabriel) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:75px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>\u201cThat\u2019s the true genius of America. That America can change.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2014Barack Obama<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hope has been the through-line of Barack Obama\u2019s life. A refuge, a strength, a promise\u2014and sometimes, too, his blind spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When he was a kid with a single mother off doing research in another country, he needed hope. As he grew older, he chose it. Weary of his Midwestern grandparents\u2019 can-do optimism and his mother\u2019s exhortations to get up at dawn to study, he was <a href=\"https:\/\/barackobamabooks.com\/dreams-from-my-father\">tempted<\/a> toward his father\u2019s intellectual cynicism. Then he realized that would mean \u201cwithdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead, he kept the hope. Used it to organize communities. Studied the trajectory of this nation through its filter. Without hope, Barack Obama would never have dished out pretzels in a Ramada Inn on the South Side of Chicago to announce a state senate campaign, let alone run for president twelve years later. He resorted to hope every time he was stonewalled, vilified, dismissed as un-American, caricatured as an ape. \u201cWe have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord,\u201d he said in his first Inaugural address\u2014words that sound quaint and faraway now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"786\" src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/selfie-in-front-of-portrait-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x786.jpg\" alt=\"Obama Presidential Center\" class=\"wp-image-71242\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/selfie-in-front-of-portrait-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x786.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/selfie-in-front-of-portrait-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-300x230.jpg 300w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/selfie-in-front-of-portrait-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-768x589.jpg 768w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/selfie-in-front-of-portrait-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1536x1179.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/selfie-in-front-of-portrait-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel.jpg 1985w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Photo by Patti Gabriel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Barack left office eight years later, he took some time off\u2014Michelle was owed\u2014and floated above the political fray. \u201cJust tone it down with the kitesurfing pictures,\u201d John Oliver snapped. \u201cI\u2019m glad he\u2019s having a nice time. America is on fire.\u201d Exasperated by our demands to fix messes, Obama asked dryly if we had forgotten he was out of office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He had a plan, though. Create a friendly green campus, a place of art, learning, and action that would restore the hope he had always urged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Aquinas pronounced hope a virtue, a disciplined channeling of the will toward \u201ca future good, difficult but possible to obtain.\u201d Obama echoed that when he spoke of hope\u2019s audacity, dogged in the face of any obstacle. But hope can also be a defense, summoned to preserve a favorite worldview or protect us from despair. It has held Obama\u2019s life together and driven him forward. It has also led him astray more than once, proving him either na\u00efve or too trapped by his fine intellect to understand acts driven by rapaciousness and stubborn hate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe the Obama Presidential Center is na\u00efve, too. Maybe we have sprawled too big, too suspicious of difference, and the great American experiment is exploding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Or maybe a place can make a difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:75px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>\u201cThe best we can do is to try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grace and nerve play at each moment the hand that we\u2019re dealt.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2014Barack Obama in <em>A Promised Land<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One visitor to the OPC, a Chicagoan all her seventy years, talks about all the hate you hear nowadays: \u201cIt makes my soul cringe.\u201d Then she brightens. \u201cThis is our first African-American president. You tell your children, \u2018You can do anything and be anybody\u2019\u2014and he\u2019s a classic example.\u201d Overhearing, a young father adds firmly, \u201cDamage can be repaired.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Michelle Obama is sure of it. In her opening-day speech, she insisted that the truth of this country lay \u201cnot in grabbing as much as we can get for ourselves, or knocking folks down to prop ourselves up, but in the overwhelming goodness, the relentless striving, the quiet dignity that is inside all of us.\u201d Her hope is for the OPC to \u201creflect back just a fraction of that light.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Michelle was the one who made sure there was a sledding hill, a fruit and veggie garden, a teaching kitchen, and picnic tables. She brings the joy, Barack the gravitas. They both knew they wanted a public library on site, a basketball court, an auditorium for talks and concerts, and recording studios where anybody with talent can test it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How do you build a place where people can hope? You build a place where they can act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>Michelle brings the joy, Barack the gravitas. They both knew they wanted a public library on site, a basketball court, an auditorium for talks and concerts, and recording studios where anybody with talent can test it.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are no commercial logos or big donor names at the OPC, just stories. Not only the Obamas\u2019 story, though it tells that well, but stories of overcoming hardship and fighting for human dignity. You climb to the Nelson Mandela Sky Room, visit the Eleanor Roosevelt vegetable garden, stand in the auditorium named for Elie Wiesel or the atrium for fifteen-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, killed by a stray bullet just days after spinning a baton in Obama\u2019s second inauguration parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Already on opening day, the 19.3 acres buzz with life: dragonflies flitting through the native grasses that border Michelle\u2019s lush garden; baby rabbits scampering across the soft, springy surface of the playground. The energy is clean and 100 percent renewable, with solar panels and thermal wells. Wide, shallow basins absorb any deluge of rainwater, and a walking trail cuts through wetlands preserved as habitat. Which is what the entire center is: a sheltering, nurturing habitat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every detail is executed with care, and together, they show us how we could live thoughtfully, creatively, cleanly, doing no harm to the earth or each other. There are wheelchairs, assistive-listening devices, on-screen American Sign Language interpretations, Braille signs, tactile replicas, recorded audio descriptions, and a tactile wayfinding map on each museum floor. The word \u201cinclusive\u201d has fallen out of favor, but this place deliberately makes room for difference. It aims to remind us of the power we each still possess, and the superpowers we have when we work together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I need to believe that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/love-this-one-father-and-son-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x683.jpeg\" alt=\"Obama Presidential Center\" class=\"wp-image-71241\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/love-this-one-father-and-son-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/love-this-one-father-and-son-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/love-this-one-father-and-son-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/love-this-one-father-and-son-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/love-this-one-father-and-son-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-2048x1365.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Photo by Patti Gabriel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:75px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>\u201cIt\u2019s about creating buildings and spaces that inspire us\u2026works of art that we can move through and live in.  And in the end, that\u2019s why architecture can be considered the most democratic of art forms.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2014Barack Obama in 2011<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A wannabe architect, Obama drove the OPC\u2019s designers, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, a little crazy, pushing them to make the museum taller, more sculptural, more like art. I imagine him caught up in his old idealism, envisioning a beacon to light our way. A monument not to himself but to the progress we are fast erasing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The critics did not buy it. The architecture is brutalist and ugly, many said, \u201ccold and forbidding.\u201d In <em>The New York Times, <\/em>architecture critic Michael Kimmelman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/06\/02\/arts\/design\/obama-presidential-center-library-chicago.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">wrote<\/a> that the building was supposed to suggest four hands joining to hold a lantern, but all <em>he<\/em> saw was \u201ca boulder in a park.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now that I am here, I decide he is wrong. In person, you can see the soft veins in the blond New Hampshire granite, the textured details, the sculptural facets that photographs flatten. Those angles <em>would <\/em>let four hands join. The vertical band of colored glass glows, and air and sunlight flow through the five-foot letters cut out at the top. You have to move a few steps to the right, then a few to the left, but if you squint and concentrate, you can read the entire wraparound quote. Taken from Obama\u2019s speech at the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma-Montgomery civil rights march, it assures us: \u201cYou are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, and ready to seize what ought to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe first thing we saw when we got to the campus was those words,\u201d a visitor named Sonya Hankerson says softly. I tell her that Kimmelman pronounced them \u201cillegible, the lettering bunched together like Cheerios in a box.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Obama-Ctr-27-family-selfie-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x682.jpeg\" alt=\"A family selfie at the lettering of the Obama Presidential Center. (Photo by Patti Gabriel)\" class=\"wp-image-71238\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Obama-Ctr-27-family-selfie-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x682.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Obama-Ctr-27-family-selfie-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Obama-Ctr-27-family-selfie-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Obama-Ctr-27-family-selfie-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Obama-Ctr-27-family-selfie-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel.jpeg 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A family selfie at the lettering of the Obama Presidential Center. (Photo by Patti Gabriel) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She grins. \u201cYou know how many people eat Cheerios? You know how many people look <em>forward<\/em> to seeing Cheerios?\u201d Then she turns serious. \u201cWhat we have seen in this climate is, throw enough lies out and somebody will believe you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kimmelman also pronounced the OPC \u201cthe tallest monument yet to presidential self-glorification.\u201d <em>Is <\/em>it? Campaigning, Obama regularly insisted that winning was not about him. But he knows the OPC needs to be. His presidency broke ground; it let a lot of people dream. Name a tower for one of the teachers and nurses he knows glue our society together? No one would show up. We need the drama of celebrity, the story of a triumph, to capture our attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kimmelman is a respected critic, but the animus in that critique burns in a familiar way. Eight years as president, and Obama did not have one clear win. He was too conservative for the left and too leftist for the right; too Black for some Whites and not Black enough for others. Now that he is out of office, people are angry with him for failing to save us, and now that he has built us a center with private funds, we say he did it wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>The architecture is brutalist and ugly, many said, \u201ccold and forbidding.\u201d In <em>The New York Times, <\/em>architecture critic Michael Kimmelman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/06\/02\/arts\/design\/obama-presidential-center-library-chicago.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">wrote<\/a> that the building was supposed to suggest four hands joining to hold a lantern, but all <em>he<\/em> saw was \u201ca boulder in a park.\u201d<br>Now that I am here, I decide he is wrong.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The OPC architects responded publicly to Kimmelman, explaining that the museum could not <em>have <\/em>windows piercing every floor: it is a museum, and the exhibits needed to be protected. Meanwhile, other critics were comparing the museum to the Death Star, a prison, or a trash can. In <em>New York Magazine, <\/em>Justin Davidson complained that the exhibits present recent U.S. history \u201cas if the whole trajectory of the civil rights movement pointed to [Obama\u2019s] election.\u201d Apparently, he added, \u201cmegalomania flourishes just as well in blue America as in red.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Seriously? Sure, there is a statue and a portrait of the Obamas, and Michelle\u2019s dresses are here, and Barack\u2019s favorite stuff. It would be disingenuous to say that the OPC was not a celebration of Obama\u2019s presidency, or a celebration of the national trajectory that allowed us to elect him. But he is too fundamentally serious to let the celebration end with him. He wants a working center for citizenship, a place to workshop democracy. He wants to keep hoping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:75px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>\u201cFor all our differences, we are one people, stronger together than we could ever be alone.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><strong><em><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u2014<\/em>Barack Obama<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The euphoria I felt at the opening lasts a few days, until the news splashes enough acid to erode it. I return in August\u2014the earliest possible museum ticket. I want to see the campus without all the hoopla and measure its power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The crowd has thinned; there is no music, no dancing. The day is gray, and I gaze up at the museum and second-guess my appraisal. It does look a little bleak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat do you think of it?\u201d I ask Hettie Collins as we gaze up from the Women\u2019s Garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen you go inside, you get it,\u201d she assures me.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I step in\u2014and look up. Two stories, three stories, four, through a column of air, words and images scroll on a digital canvas, and you crane your neck and watch history unfold. Women in white demand the right to vote. Viet Nam vets protest from wheelchairs. Black men hold signs that had to read \u201cI am a man,\u201d because somehow White people keep forgetting. Amazingly, the people in these images are not angry or sad. They are laughing, singing, flashing the peace sign. Moving forward, not back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen they go low\u201d\u2014the video scrolls up\u2014\u201cwe go high.\u201d That has been <em>my <\/em>anchor: the possibility of moral courage and sustained compassion. But I can feel my own weakening. I am done making excuses for people who applaud cruelty. The harshness of my disgust frightens me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Floor by floor, I look for hope. If you are Black, the very fact of the Obama presidency is a sign of hope. I see grandparents murmuring the story to four-year-olds; women standing rapt in front of Michelle\u2019s gowns. I envy them, because what I cannot stop seeing are the contrasts. None of those gowns had \u201cI really don\u2019t care\u201d emblazoned on the back. The displays documenting Obama\u2019s historic campaign show United Farm Workers holding signs: \u201c<em>Si, se puede<\/em>!\u201d Yes, we can! He spoke of \u201cthe irreducible worth of every person,\u201d and how \u201cevery life is precious.\u201d Compare that to the ICE killings, the roundups to horrific overseas mega-prisons, the barrage of insults streaming from the Oval Office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"691\" src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/people-looking-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x691.jpg\" alt=\"Obama Presidential Center\" class=\"wp-image-71246\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/people-looking-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x691.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/people-looking-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-300x202.jpg 300w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/people-looking-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-768x518.jpg 768w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/people-looking-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1536x1036.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/people-looking-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel.jpg 1932w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Photo by Patti Gabriel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Obama worried hard about health care. Now we eat diarrhea lettuce and die of measles, and public health has stopped even tracking many parasites and diseases. Obama yanked us back from economic catastrophe. Now half the country is having trouble affording groceries, gas, and housing. He addressed global warming head-on. We have decided to ignore it and go gung-ho for fossil fuels again. He said, \u201cWe will always be a nation of immigrants from all over the world.\u201d The current Administration caters only to White Christians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Heterosexual <\/em>White Christians. I look at photos of the first legal gay wedding and think of all the couples now leaving the country because they do not feel safe here. So much that felt like real progress, at least to some of us, has been trampled, erased, or smashed to bits. Obama listened to critics and made changes; the current president just takes revenge on the critics. Photos of life in the Obama White House are full of joy and warmth, because however worried Obama was about the nation, he adored his wife, their daughters, their dogs. How full of life the People\u2019s House was then. How trashed and gilded it is now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, in the people showing up at the OPC\u2014teachers, social workers, activists, teenagers, visitors from all over the world\u2014there is hope incarnate. In the learning taking place all over campus\u2014the library storytelling sessions, the healthy cooking classes, the young artists recording music or podcasts, the young people coming for leadership programs, the public discussions of democracy\u2014there is hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:75px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>\u201cNo matter who you are, where you live, or how much money you\u2019ve got, you should be able to access the world\u2019s knowledge and information just like anyone else.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><strong><em><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2014Obama in 2015<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Critics have bemoaned Obama\u2019s choice to digitize his presidential records, making them available online rather than in a building under federal control. But when you look at what has come from federal control lately, scrubbing well-documented facts from the nation\u2019s museums and displays, you understand the desire to veer away.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You also remember that we live in a digital age. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/30\/books\/review\/Heilbrunn-t.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Back in 2010<\/a>, Obama\u2014whose campaign was the first to use social media to galvanize young supporters, and who has been dubbed our first digital president\u2014was already speculating about putting his records online. Many are already in digital form, and The Obama Foundation is paying to digitize about 30 million pieces of paper so their content can be read by all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sure, it would have been cool to have a research library at the OPC. It is a shame for scholars to lose the chance to confer with curators and other scholars. But realistically, how many people are going to cross an ocean\u2014or even take a bus from Des Moines\u2014to put on white gloves and use a stubby little pencil, when they can research comfortably from home?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>It would be disingenuous to say that the OPC was not a celebration of Obama\u2019s presidency, or a celebration of the national trajectory that allowed us to elect him. But he is too fundamentally serious to let the celebration end with him. He wants a working center for citizenship, a place to workshop democracy. He wants to keep hoping.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The world has changed. The National Archives is already struggling to digitize 12.5 billion documents from previous presidents. By policy, it does not give researchers access to paper originals when electronic versions are available. This switch starts to feel inevitable. Critics still worry that it sets a lousy precedent, though: a president\u2019s various bits of paper could end up scattered, and the electronic records could be a massive data dump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Or, they could be trashed, and the National Archives would have no say in that anyway. Donald Trump\u2019s Department of Justice has announced that he \u201cneed not further comply\u201d with the law requiring a president to hand over his presidential records. His library plans include a luxury hotel and his famous golden escalator.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:75px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"684\" src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/City-of-the-Big-Shoulders-by-Mark-Bradford-2-photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x684.jpg\" alt=\"\u201cCity of Big Shoulders\u201d by Mark Bradford (Photo by Patti Gabriel)\" class=\"wp-image-71223\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/City-of-the-Big-Shoulders-by-Mark-Bradford-2-photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/City-of-the-Big-Shoulders-by-Mark-Bradford-2-photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/City-of-the-Big-Shoulders-by-Mark-Bradford-2-photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-768x513.jpg 768w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/City-of-the-Big-Shoulders-by-Mark-Bradford-2-photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/City-of-the-Big-Shoulders-by-Mark-Bradford-2-photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-2048x1367.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u201cCity of Big Shoulders\u201d by Mark Bradford (Photo by Patti Gabriel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>\u201cI\u2019m from Chicago. I don\u2019t break.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2014Barack Obama<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHere on the South Side of Chicago,\u201d Obama announced in March, \u201chope is getting a permanent home.\u201d Visitors would see all of Chicago in Mark Bradford\u2019s 38-foot-tall <em>City of the Big Shoulders<\/em>, which maps the city thick and bright on a giant canvas of billboard and poster fragments, rope, caulk, twisted and torn salon hair wrappers, the old redlining maps, a yellow stitch of railroads, the lake\u2019s deep blue. \u201cMaps. Land. Power,\u201d says Bradford. \u201cIt\u2019s all here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Obamas\u2019 history, though, is on the South Side. Michelle grew up here; the Baskin-Robbins where she and Barack first kissed is near the OPC; their wedding reception was within walking distance; they bought their first house just blocks away; his office was down the street; their daughters were born while they lived here. Locating the center here was an obvious choice and a public thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not everyone said \u201cYou\u2019re welcome.\u201d A few community groups went so far as to sue, upset about parkland being taken and gentrification jacking up the surrounding rents. Obama conceded that risk, but controls have been put in place, and meanwhile the OPC has removed an ugly six-way road, planted 950 trees, boosted revenue for surrounding businesses, and created jobs and programs for kids in sore need of them. As an outsider, I brushed aside the local grumbling. But I did find the OPC\u2019s drumbeat of emphasis on the South Side a little parochial for a place of national import.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then I remembered how much place matters in this vast country. How a place can shape a life\u2014then two lives\u2014then four. How its influence can wind up shaping an entire nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBarack was the first person I\u2019d met at Sidley who had spent time in the barbershops, barbecue joints, and Bible-thumping Black parishes of the Far South Side,\u201d Michelle <a href=\"https:\/\/michelleobamabooks.com\/becoming\">wrote<\/a>. Those experiences changed him. He talks about seeing people\u2019s struggles, their courage, their hope. But I suspect community organizing also brought <em>him <\/em>into community, made him feel a part of something in a way his unusual early life had not. And that connectedness made it easier to fight for change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Which is exactly what he wants to happen at the OPC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/obama-hope-photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"Obama Presidential Center\" class=\"wp-image-71249\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/obama-hope-photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/obama-hope-photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/obama-hope-photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/obama-hope-photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/obama-hope-photo-by-Patti-Gabriel.jpg 1924w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Photo by Patti Gabriel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:75px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>\u201cThe absence of hope can rot a society from within.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><strong><em><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2014Obama, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Having breakfast at Daley\u2019s on the South Side, I meet a tall, pleasant Black man who introduces himself as Q. Davis. I say why I am here. He is curious why I miss the Obama Administration. \u201cBarack Obama is refreshing as a person,\u201d he concedes. \u201cI miss having people in government who reflect those qualities. But government is a system that no human being can really revise. When you get on a train, the track is <em>going <\/em>that way, regardless where you want to go. When a person gets in office, it\u2019s a system that\u2019s already built, and it\u2019s built on human greed. His hands were tied, and I knew they would be. For me, government can only accomplish the minimum. I\u2019m an advocate for <em>God\u2019s<\/em> kingdom. So I don\u2019t vote for <em>any<\/em>body.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As I walk to the OPC, I wonder just how many people have distanced themselves from voting\u2014and the pain and disappointment that often follow\u2014and fallen back on God. Who I thought was supposed to help us when we helped ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the campus\u2019s edge is a Register to Vote booth. I mention Q. Davis\u2019s stance to the volunteers. \u201cYeah,\u201d one says, \u201cwe gotta keep pushing.\u201d Dave Chappelle, interviewed after the grand opening ceremony, used the same verb: \u201cYou just gotta push through it.\u201d Chatting with visitors, I mention Q. Davis. \u201cYou <em>gotta<\/em> participate,\u201d a woman named Kelley Townsend shoots back. \u201cYou gotta show up and keep pushin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe know the system is broken,\u201d adds someone else, \u201cbut as long as good men stay silent, it\u2019s going to stay broken.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For all their talk about pushing, Black visitors seem far more serene than I am. In a fit of frustration, I rattle off reasons for despair to a woman who points out calmly, \u201cYeah, but now people are quacking back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>Not everyone said \u201cYou\u2019re welcome.\u201d A few community groups went so far as to sue, upset about parkland being taken and gentrification jacking up the surrounding rents.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Which is true, and her phrase delights me, lightening the morass of politics into a barnyard squabble. Black Americans have grown up with injustice as a constant, taunting companion. They have formed defenses\u2014laughter, love, and often religion, feeding their faith with need and gratitude. My own experience of religion soothed and exhorted, but it did not fortify me against hatred. There was no need; a large-scale, irrational hatred had never menaced me. White middle-class Christianity is more likely to make you feel smug than strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Later, on Threads, I will read: \u201cHopeless white people don\u2019t move me\u2026. You better feel hopeless and still find something to do! You can\u2019t imagine a future? Don\u2019t have hope for society? Well our folks have never been able to envision a future that didn\u2019t include fear. And yet they imagined, and did, and tried, and loved, and fought.\u201d Another post boils it down: \u201cHope is ancestral.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have no idea what it means to endure for generations, to hold a grim reality in your mind without giving up or lying to yourself. \u201cAnd it\u2019s no easy way out,\u201d the plaque on the Fannie Lou Hamer Walkway reads. \u201cWe just got to wake up and face it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I pull out my phone and look her up. American voting and women\u2019s rights activist, community organizer, and leader in the civil rights movement. I never even knew her name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cPeople wore down their shoes so we could be here today,\u201d another visitor, Brenda Graham, says softly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:75px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"678\" src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/This-Land-Shared-Sky-collaboration-of-Nick-Cave-and-Marie-Watt-photo-by-patti-gabriel-1024x678.jpg\" alt=\"\u201cThis Land, Shared Sky,\u201d collaboration of Nick Cave and Marie Watt (Photo by Patti Gabriel)\" class=\"wp-image-71230\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/This-Land-Shared-Sky-collaboration-of-Nick-Cave-and-Marie-Watt-photo-by-patti-gabriel-1024x678.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/This-Land-Shared-Sky-collaboration-of-Nick-Cave-and-Marie-Watt-photo-by-patti-gabriel-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/This-Land-Shared-Sky-collaboration-of-Nick-Cave-and-Marie-Watt-photo-by-patti-gabriel-768x509.jpg 768w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/This-Land-Shared-Sky-collaboration-of-Nick-Cave-and-Marie-Watt-photo-by-patti-gabriel-1536x1017.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/This-Land-Shared-Sky-collaboration-of-Nick-Cave-and-Marie-Watt-photo-by-patti-gabriel-2048x1356.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u201cThis Land, Shared Sky,\u201d a collaboration of Nick Cave and Marie Watt (Photo by Patti Gabriel) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>\u201cThe arts have always been central to the American experience. They provoke thought, challenge our assumptions, and shape how we define our narrative as a country.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><strong><em><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2014Barack Obama in 2018<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Juneteenth, the plaza pulsed with African dance and native American dance\u2014including the jingle dance, created to heal a young woman who was too sick to stand or speak. Inside the museum float clouds of these tin-cone jingles, thousands of them, created by Marie Watt and set against the rainbow of Nick Cave\u2019s beaded nets. <em>This Land, Shared Sky <\/em>is a seamless collaboration several stories high, capturing the vastness of this land and the indigenous and African patterns and rhythms woven into it<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cave\u2019s work is often about adornment: \u201cWe do it to empower, to celebrate, to connect with our spirit,\u201d he tells me. \u201cAnd we do it for protection.\u201d The OPC will be, he thinks, \u201can important place for moments of distress. It is flexible and will be able to adapt to any given moment when we all need to come together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat the Obamas represent to me is possibility,\u201d he adds. \u201cThat we all are <em>here, <\/em>and we all belong <em>here. <\/em>We have a purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"668\" src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Uprising-of-the-Sun-by-Julie-Mehretu-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x668.jpeg\" alt=\"\u201cUprising of the Sun\u201c by Julie Mehretu (Photo by Patti Gabriel)\" class=\"wp-image-71235\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Uprising-of-the-Sun-by-Julie-Mehretu-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x668.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Uprising-of-the-Sun-by-Julie-Mehretu-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-300x196.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Uprising-of-the-Sun-by-Julie-Mehretu-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-768x501.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Uprising-of-the-Sun-by-Julie-Mehretu-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1536x1002.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Uprising-of-the-Sun-by-Julie-Mehretu-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-2048x1336.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u201cUprising of the Sun\u201c by Julie Mehretu (Photo by Patti Gabriel) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why was art so important in communicating that? Julie Mehretu gives us a clue. Her 83-foot-high, glorious hand-painted \u201crose window,\u201d a glass installation titled <em>Uprising of the Sun<\/em>, stole its colors from politically resonant American and Ethiopian paintings and made them holy. \u201cBeauty and poetics carry weight,\u201d she said in this year\u2019s commencement speech at the Rhode Island School of Design. \u201cThey are how human beings have always processed what is unbearable, imagined what is not yet possible, and kept alive the sense that something else could exist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mehretu\u2019s family fled here from Ethiopia as refugees when she was seven. Her work for the OPC was inspired by Obama\u2019s Montgomery civil rights speech\u2014as was the quote at the top of the museum\u2014as was Idris Khan\u2019s <em>Sky of Hope. <\/em>All of Obama\u2019s fine turns of phrase over the years, yet three works based on a single speech? A message, maybe, to a nation that never healed. Khan took thousands of words from the speech and let them tumble from the museum\u2019s pyramidal ceiling, stamped in blue and overlapping. A beautiful effect that, like the quote on the building, requires a little effort to be legible. Is that the second part of the message, that ideals require struggle?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Sky-of-Hope-by-Idris-Kahn-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x683.jpeg\" alt=\"\u201cSky of Hope\u201d by Idris Kahn (Photo by Patti Gabriel)\" class=\"wp-image-71234\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Sky-of-Hope-by-Idris-Kahn-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Sky-of-Hope-by-Idris-Kahn-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Sky-of-Hope-by-Idris-Kahn-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Sky-of-Hope-by-Idris-Kahn-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Sky-of-Hope-by-Idris-Kahn-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-2048x1365.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u201cSky of Hope\u201d by Idris Kahn (Photo by Patti Gabriel) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is solace in Jenny Holzer\u2019s <em>Freedom Riders, <\/em>a text-based painting, shimmering with platinum leaf, that uses declassified FBI files to remind us that activism expanded Blacks\u2019 ability to travel through the country freely and legitimized the use of nonviolent direct action. Before you leave, you can rest in the Democracy in Action lounge, contemplating Tyanna Buie\u2019s <em>Be the Change! <\/em>As a teenager, she did step routines in Chicago\u2019s Bud Billiken Parade with Obama\u2019s Senate campaign group. \u201cLong parade, and it\u2019s exhausting,\u201d she recalls, laughing. \u201c\u2018Who <em>is <\/em>this,\u2019 we said, \u2018and what kind of name is \u2018Obama\u2019? Toward the end, he came up to us while we were goofing around, and we had to look up at him. Immediately we were quiet. We hadn\u2019t thought about the <em>person.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She has thought a lot about the person since then, especially after she received this commission and began screen-printing and inking images of people voting, speaking up, fired up for change. \u201cThey had me get rid of some of the images of Barack,\u201d she adds. \u201cThey said, \u2018It\u2019s not about him.\u2019\u201d Instead, her work is huge, \u201cwall to wall, so it\u2019s embedded in the architecture. It\u2019s not the biggest piece I have made, but it felt\u2026epic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Out on the plaza, you see the arc that sculptor Martin Puryear carved from wood, not wanting the lie of engineered perfection. Cast in gleaming stainless steel, it frames views of the museum from John Lewis Plaza, named for the U.S. Congressman and civil rights activist. He quoted Martin Luther King Jr., who was quoting abolitionist preacher Theodore Parker\u2019s promise back in 1853 that \u201cthe arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.\u201d Not automatically, Puryear believes. Only when it is moved by men and women of good will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe I am just used to the Gateway Arch, but the arc bending toward justice looks a little skinny and uncertain. As I think this, a little boy runs up and wraps his arms around the base. Over time, enough arms will steady its trajectory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:75px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>\u201cWe f—ed it up. Barack never took Putin seriously.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2014Joe Biden<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My own criticism of the OPC is that Obama does not let the frustration and pain show. The exhibits document others\u2019 struggles, his amazing campaign and victory, his earnest efforts as president, and his hope for that work to continue. But there is nothing to hint at the bitter opposition, the way he was thwarted and stymied and caricatured, the double standard by which he was judged. A tan suit was a catastrophe in international diplomacy, while a White president can alienate longstanding allies and wage capricious wars and punish vindictively and slide on by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Exhibits acknowledge \u201cthe work that remained\u201d: family leave, fuller healthcare access, banning nuclear weapons, resolving the fate of the \u201cDreamers\u201d brought here by illegal immigrants. Obama has been frank about his own failure to plan for the aftermath of the 2011 intervention in Libya, which spiraled into chaos. He wishes he had been able to persuade Congress to enact stricter gun-safety laws. He wishes he had closed Guantanamo Bay on his first day in office. And as he admitted in his final <a href=\"https:\/\/obamawhitehouse.archives.gov\/the-press-office\/2016\/01\/12\/remarks-president-barack-obama-_-prepared-delivery-state-union-address\">State of the Union address<\/a>, he found no way to heal the political divide that has since fomented hate and rage and tugged this country away from its own laws. Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, a little abashed at not having earned it, he noted that globalization had caused people everywhere to \u201cfear the loss of what they cherish in their particular identities\u2014their race, their tribe, and perhaps most powerfully their religion.\u201d Still, he did not foresee that fear tearing this nation apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDemocracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn\u2019t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest,\u201d he says now. \u201cToo many Americans feel that way right now. It\u2019s one of the few regrets of my presidency\u200a\u2014\u200athat the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There\u2019s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>The exhibits document others\u2019 struggles, his amazing campaign and victory, his earnest efforts as president, and his hope for that work to continue. But there is nothing to hint at the bitter opposition, the way he was thwarted and stymied and caricatured, the double standard by which he was judged.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Could they, though? In a time when, paralyzed by the blur of change, many U.S. Americans think the answer lies in a segregated, patriarchal past?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Political scientists have written of failures Obama does not mention\u2014chiefly his underestimation of Vladimir Putin. \u201cThis breezy attitude prevailed even as Russia occupied Crimea, invaded eastern Ukraine, intervened in Syria, and hacked the Clinton campaign and the DNC,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/articles\/dont-rehabilitate-obama-on-russia\/\">note<\/a> scholars at the Brookings Institute. \u201cObama had a \u2018long view\u2019 of historical trends which in his view inexorably \u2018bent\u2019 toward liberalism\u2026. [And] this timid realpolitik was mixed up with a healthy dose of disdain. Obama dismissed Russia as a \u2018regional power\u2019 that was acting out of weakness in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The same thing happened with Trump. Obama now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2026\/05\/11\/barack-obama-in-the-age-of-trump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">admits<\/a> \u201che no longer harbors illusions about the nature of the Trump Presidency. His early prediction that Trump was capable of rolling back only a modest percentage of Obama\u2019s achievements, and that political norms would prevail, has not remotely proved to be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Confident, idealistic, temperamentally unsuited to anger or cynicism, Obama consistently chooses a cautious optimism. This can blind him to the capacity of those who do not. He reads the U.S. as a nation that fought again and again for freedom and civil rights. \u201cThere is a genius in this narrative,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.persuasion.community\/p\/long-live-obama-ism\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">writes<\/a> Oboo Patel, his advisor on faith. \u201cIt recognizes the ugly parts of American history without getting mired in them.\u201d Those on the left who emphasized the structural evil of racism did get mired, Patel believes, and the blowback from the right was severe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However you evaluate his politics, Obama brought the nation a thoughtful intelligence, a moral compass, warmth, steadiness, resolve, easy humor, and grace. He saved us from an ominous depression and gave us the Affordable Care Act. He was loved wholeheartedly and hated with the same passion, because everything he did became a flashpoint for arguments about what the United States should be. The OPC is just the latest flashpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:75px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/French-digital-artist-Jules-Julien-spent-two-years-meticulously-placing-the-million-dots-in-All-Together-his-digital-mural-about-democracy.-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x683.jpeg\" alt=\"French digital artist Jules Julien spent two years meticulously placing the million dots in \u201cAll Together,\u201d his digital mural about democracy. (Photo by Patti Gabriel)\" class=\"wp-image-71227\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/French-digital-artist-Jules-Julien-spent-two-years-meticulously-placing-the-million-dots-in-All-Together-his-digital-mural-about-democracy.-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/French-digital-artist-Jules-Julien-spent-two-years-meticulously-placing-the-million-dots-in-All-Together-his-digital-mural-about-democracy.-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/French-digital-artist-Jules-Julien-spent-two-years-meticulously-placing-the-million-dots-in-All-Together-his-digital-mural-about-democracy.-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/French-digital-artist-Jules-Julien-spent-two-years-meticulously-placing-the-million-dots-in-All-Together-his-digital-mural-about-democracy.-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/French-digital-artist-Jules-Julien-spent-two-years-meticulously-placing-the-million-dots-in-All-Together-his-digital-mural-about-democracy.-Photo-by-Patti-Gabriel-2048x1365.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">French digital artist Jules Julien spent two years meticulously placing the million dots in \u201cAll Together,\u201d his digital mural about democracy. (Photo by Patti Gabriel) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>\u201cOur collective future depends on your willingness to uphold your obligations as a citizen. To vote. To speak out. To stand up for others, especially the weak, especially the vulnerable, knowing that each of us is only here because somebody, somewhere, stood up for us.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2014Obama in his final State of the Union address<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">People\u2019s faces are warm and engaged as they key in their first name, then watch it float for a minute in the sky of Jules Julien\u2019s million-point digital mural. They are spending much of their precious museum time taking selfies. This is now normal: history is separated from us by the devices we think are connecting us. Here, though, it troubles me especially, because here, the point is to be moved to resist, to fight for justice. It is not enough for visitors to say, \u201cLook how cool, and I was there!\u201d Nor is it enough to set up a little station that asks what <em>they <\/em>will now do to make change happen. Or a light-up poll that asks their opinion of the health of American democracy (a loaded but fair question).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The OPC has been constructed, but it still needs to be built. Its programs need to take hold, and the young people it trains need to become leaders. I wanted too much, too fast. I wanted Obama, or if not him singlehandedly, this place, to give us a way to fix the whole damned country. Erase the hate that stonewalled him so often. Bring us together for real this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We have to do that ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/obama-perfect-union-photo-by-patti-gabriel-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Obama Presidential Center\" class=\"wp-image-71245\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/obama-perfect-union-photo-by-patti-gabriel-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/obama-perfect-union-photo-by-patti-gabriel-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/obama-perfect-union-photo-by-patti-gabriel-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/obama-perfect-union-photo-by-patti-gabriel-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/obama-perfect-union-photo-by-patti-gabriel-2048x1365.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Photo by Patti Gabriel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2008, people yelled back to Barack, loud and happy, \u201cYes we can!\u201d Now we would all have to pack our pajamas and come to live in this idyllic place, built high above the hatred, before we could even begin to muster that response. The safeguards that for Obama define this nation\u2014\u201ca belief in checks and balances in our government and an accountability that comes with an independent judiciary and a robust, free press\u201d\u2014can no longer be taken for granted. The current challenges are huge and complex, well beyond the scope of community activism. How can any group of citizens break the stranglehold of concentrated power and broker solutions in a nation this divided?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I can feel myself sliding into the cynicism Obama refused to embrace, that devil\u2019s kiss that makes us impotent. What harm do selfies do? Is it so bad to want to be part of this place, to let its values define you? The hope expressed at the OPC is not saccharine or placating. It agrees with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.haymarketbooks.org\/books\/791-hope-in-the-dark\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Rebecca Solnit<\/a>: \u201cHope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This would qualify as an emergency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>I can feel myself sliding into the cynicism Obama refused to embrace, that devil\u2019s kiss that makes us impotent. What harm do selfies do? Is it so bad to want to be part of this place, to let its values define you? The hope expressed at the OPC is not saccharine or placating.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If we give up on democracy and civility, Obama warned at the OPC opening, \u201cwe open the door to the most ruthless, or the most careless, or the most fearful among us, who see some groups and some people as more equal than others, and see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies and keep those who are different in their place.\u201d He paused. \u201cI do not believe that is the story of America that prevails in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He remains hopeful. But the naivete has burned away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can this controversial, privately funded $850 million center\u2014dismissed by many as a vanity project, architectural folly, and dangerous precedent\u2014really shore up democracy?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":71243,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11669],"tags":[],"toc":[5797],"class_list":["post-71219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people-and-places","toc-essays"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Journey to the Crossroads of America and the Hope of Obama Land - 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He had been fired on April 11, 1951, by President Truman as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers and head of the United Nations Command in the Korean War over their vehement disagreement about how to conduct that conflict, the dynamics of which had changed since the early autumn of 1950 with the entry of China on the side of the North Koreans against United Nations (mostly United States) forces on the side of the South Koreans. MacArthur wanted an aggressive war against the Chinese, even the possible use of nuclear weapons; Truman, understanding that he could no longer hope to unify Korea through military means, simply wanted a way out, not a bigger war. MacArthur could not accept the idea of a limited war, and Truman could not accept MacArthur\u2019s criticism and dismissed him. MacArthur\u2019s address to Congress was part of his retirement\/licking his wounds\/saving face\/presidential hopeful exploratory national tour. MacArthur was at the height of his popularity when he addressed Congress. Truman was so unpopular that MacArthur might have become president by acclamation on April 19, if that were possible. But crowds diminished, and enthusiasm waned as MacArthur\u2019s self-justifying, Truman-bashing tour continued. He was not chosen as the Republican presidential nominee in 1952. Another World War II general, Dwight Eisenhower, was. MacArthur discovered that there is no substitute for victory in politics, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In baseball, as in all sports, the axiom about victory may be just as rigid. Major league baseball of the early 1950s (1950\u20131953), the Korean War era, consisted of two eight-team leagues, National and American. There were no divisions. There were no rounds of playoff games. If your team finished the 154-game regular season with the best record in your league, your team won your league\u2019s pennant and went to the World Series. What your team accomplished during the season was everything, not a prelude to what we now call \u201cthe post-season.\u201d Simpler procedure for supposedly simpler times. There is no substitute for victory here either. In <em>Warm Summers and Cold Winters<\/em>, Steven P. Gietschier tells the story of Charley and Bill DeWitt, owners of the perennial American League losers, the St. Louis Browns, who, in 1950, decided to hire a psychologist and hypnotist named Dr. David Tracy to help some of the players get over their \u201cinferiority complex.\u201d (27) Losing causes trauma, an overused word today, that needs a cure. Tracy was gone by the end of May, when the Browns were 8-25. If winning is a state of mind, the hapless Browns needed the staff of a mental hospital, not just a single doctor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The objective in baseball always is to win the World Series. Win or fail. Win or live in the unsatisfying expectancy of unfulfilled hope. Win or be forgotten. Perhaps MacArthur was right: The absence of victory is why the Korean conflict is this country\u2019s forgotten war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:70px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">2. \u201cIt\u2019s the only thing.\u201d<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In <em>Warm Summers and Cold Winters<\/em>, Gietschier uses the dated term \u201cOrganized Baseball\u201d to describe the sports business structure that includes both major and minor baseball. It is totally appropriate, as that was the term that was used during the early 1950s, the time period the book covers. It was how White baseball distinguished itself from Negro League Baseball. Black baseball was not organized. This is not untrue. The story of Black baseball is about the aspiration to be organized as White baseball was. But the claim of being \u201corganized\u201d made White baseball superior. But that is another story for another time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the narrative threads of Gietschier\u2019s book on baseball during the Korean War is the tenuous nature of this \u201corganized\u201d business model. Minor league owners were unhappy about how the major leagues were using the new mass medium of television, which was highly dependent on sports to fill its broadcasting hours. (Boxing was the number one televised sport in the, but baseball was equally important as the national pastime.) Major league owners were careless about whether their televised games were shown in minor league team markets, something which minor league owners said adversely affected attendance at their games: \u201c. . . the minor leagues as a whole became alarmed when major league games were shown in minor league cities.\u201d (17) Part of the problem here is branding: dividing professional baseball into \u201cmajor\u201d and \u201cminor\u201d immediately signaled to fans that one branch of the game was inferior to another. How do you sell an inferior product? Gietschier notes that the minor leagues expanded at a robust pace immediately after WWII but experienced considerable contraction in the 1950s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>The objective in baseball always is to win the World Series. Win or fail. Win or live in the unsatisfying expectancy of unfulfilled hope. Win or be forgotten. Perhaps MacArthur was right: The absence of victory is why the Korean conflict is this country\u2019s forgotten war.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Major league teams also squabbled with one another about broadcasts bleeding into another team\u2019s region. Turf wars were about revenue, and major league baseball was still unsure if television increased attendance and interest in the game or diminished it. As Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith put it, echoing MacArthur, \u201cThere is no substitute for fans in the park,\u201d when he chose to cut the number of Senators televised home games from seventy-seven to twenty-one. (76) The fact that teams made their own individual television deals made the situation more chaotic than it needed to be. Here was an instance where Organized Baseball was not so organized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was also concern about the entire farm system structure, where minor league teams were directly tied to major league clubs as supply lines for players. Many minor league owners did not feel this system helped the minor leagues\u2014it emphasized their subsidiary status\u2014and some major league owners felt it was inefficient. The bidding wars for amateur players, \u201cbonus babies,\u201d as they were called, were another inefficiency that Organized Baseball tried to solve during the Korean War years. \u201cClub owners found self-restraint nearly impossible,\u201d writes Gietschier, a complaint nearly identical to today\u2019s cry by major league owners for a salary cap because they cannot restrain themselves in bidding for free agents. Many of these bonus babies turned out to be busts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gietschier offers a useful account of the Korean War, neither an entirely military nor diplomatic history but comprehensive. He concentrates, naturally, on how the war created personnel problems for Organized Baseball, though not as severe as World War II. The minors felt it more intensely than the majors, but as there was no full-blown mobilization, the leagues coped. He provides vignettes of ballplayers who served during the Korean War, with particularly detailed accounts of Bobby Brown, a medical doctor who played second base for the New York Yankees; superstar Boston outfielder and Hall of Famer Ted Williams, a pilot; and Jerry Coleman, another Yankee, who was also a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some of the concerns of baseball owners and writers in the early 1950s echo those of today: the number of home runs in the 1950s, which made some think the ball was juiced (43-44); legal challenges to the reserve clause which bound a player to his team for life (91); the game\u2019s slow pace (97); the challenge to interest youngsters in the game (131); the use of cameras to \u201ccheck on some umpires\u2019 decisions\u201d (159).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>One of the narrative threads of Gietschier\u2019s book on baseball during the Korean War is the tenuous nature of this \u201corganized\u201d business model.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gietschier gives a good account of baseball integration but a bit more about the Negro Leagues in the Korean War era, though they were on life support, would have been appreciated, as they did do something revolutionary by having a woman play with the male players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the whole, <em>Warm Summers and Cold Winters<\/em> does not necessarily offer a lot of new information, as there are other books dealing either with individual teams or players of this era that are rich accounts of aspects of this period. But Gietschier\u2019s book does offer a fresh, tightly focused, and intelligent perspective of the era itself, which is commendable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The New York Yankees won every World Series between 1950 and 1953. Where you lived determined whether you were elated or depressed about that achievement, whether it was good or bad for baseball, whether juggernaut teams (think the Los Angeles Dodgers today) are good or bad for our enjoyment of the sport. The one lesson we know for sure is that dreadnoughts are built for winning and they exist because there is no substitute for victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a id=\"_msocom_1\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In \u201cWarm Summers and Cold Winters,\u201d Steven P. Gietschier tells the story of Charley and Bill DeWitt, owners of the perennial American League losers, the St. Louis Browns, who, in 1950, decided to hire a psychologist and hypnotist named Dr. David Tracy to help some of the players get over their \u201cinferiority complex.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":71207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11665],"tags":[],"toc":[4],"class_list":["post-71213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-letters","toc-reviews"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Baseball, Battlefields, and the Beginnings of Cold War America - Common Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In \u201cWarm Summers and Cold Winters,\u201d Steven P. Gietschier tells the story of Charley and Bill DeWitt, owners of the perennial American League losers, the St. Louis Browns, who, in 1950, decided to hire a psychologist and hypnotist named Dr. David Tracy to help some of the players get over their \u201cinferiority complex.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/baseball-battlefields-and-the-beginnings-of-cold-war-america\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Baseball, Battlefields, and the Beginnings of Cold War America - Common Reader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In \u201cWarm Summers and Cold Winters,\u201d Steven P. Gietschier tells the story of Charley and Bill DeWitt, owners of the perennial American League losers, the St. Louis Browns, who, in 1950, decided to hire a psychologist and hypnotist named Dr. David Tracy to help some of the players get over their \u201cinferiority complex.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/baseball-battlefields-and-the-beginnings-of-cold-war-america\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Common Reader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TheCommonReader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-16T00:22:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-09-16T23:24:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/WarmSummers.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"852\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1356\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ben\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@TCRWUSTL\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@TCRWUSTL\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ben\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/baseball-battlefields-and-the-beginnings-of-cold-war-america\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/baseball-battlefields-and-the-beginnings-of-cold-war-america\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Ben\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/f11dca72d5c3ab94094cbafc8e1aa0a9\"},\"headline\":\"Baseball, Battlefields, and the Beginnings of Cold War America\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-16T00:22:04+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-09-16T23:24:36+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/baseball-battlefields-and-the-beginnings-of-cold-war-america\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1455,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/baseball-battlefields-and-the-beginnings-of-cold-war-america\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/app\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/WarmSummers.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Letters\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/baseball-battlefields-and-the-beginnings-of-cold-war-america\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/baseball-battlefields-and-the-beginnings-of-cold-war-america\\\/\",\"name\":\"Baseball, Battlefields, and the Beginnings of Cold War America - Common Reader\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/baseball-battlefields-and-the-beginnings-of-cold-war-america\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/baseball-battlefields-and-the-beginnings-of-cold-war-america\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commonreader.wustl.edu\\\/app\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/WarmSummers.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-16T00:22:04+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-09-16T23:24:36+00:00\",\"description\":\"In \u201cWarm Summers and Cold Winters,\u201d Steven P. 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A reporter and editor with 20 years' experience, Fulton worked as an education and features reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune, covering all aspects of arts and education for Utah's major daily newspaper. Before that he worked as editor of Salt Lake City Weekly, Utah's alternative newsweekly, leading an award-winning team of staff writers and section editors. A Salt Lake City native, his work has been published in New York's Newsday, and garnered national awards, including Best of the West and Top of the Rockies.","url":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/author\/befulton\/"}]}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/WarmSummers.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71213"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71289,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71213\/revisions\/71289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71213"},{"taxonomy":"toc","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/toc?post=71213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":71273,"date":"2026-09-15T19:21:39","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T00:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/?p=71273"},"modified":"2026-09-15T19:21:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T00:21:40","slug":"remembering-richard-wright-outsider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/remembering-richard-wright-outsider\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Richard Wright, Outsider"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Richard Wright (1908\u201360) left behind seventeen book-length works of fiction and nonfiction, two of which, the novel <em>Native Son<\/em> (1940) and the memoir <em>Black Boy<\/em> (1945), stand as essential works of American literature, and all of which have a great deal to tell us about American society and the world as they function today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Black Boy<\/em> is the story of Wright\u2019s growing up poor and constantly hungry in the South\u2014Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas\u2014in a family whose religious strictures paralleled the absurd, inescapable racial strictures of that time and region, leaving the young man doubly isolated from mainstream society. Isolated and yet, even as he was often dazed from lack of food, oddly free: his outsider status allowed him to see the world around him more objectively than most, and combined with his intelligence, rebelliousness, and inner strength, it made him fiercely independent. Sent by his grandmother to spend time alone in prayer, he wrote his very first short story instead; advised by his peers to be obsequious in every encounter with Whites so as to avoid arousing their anger, he was unable, he wrote, to \u201cmake subservience an automatic part of my behavior\u201d; selected as his class valedictorian in ninth grade\u2014his last year of formal schooling\u2014he insisted on giving the speech he had written rather than the one that had been written for him. Finally, determined to escape his suffocating environment, as a young adult Wright made his way eventually to Chicago, where\u2014despite initially failing to make the weight requirement due to malnutrition\u2014he found work in the post office and spent his free time writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Chicago is the setting of <em>Native Son<\/em>, the story of Wright\u2019s most famous fictional creation, Bigger Thomas, and the first best-selling novel by a Black American. That book was Wright\u2019s second book-length work of fiction. His first, the story collection <em>Uncle Tom\u2019s Children<\/em> (1938), focused on the kinds of hardships among Blacks that Wright had witnessed and experienced his whole life; Wright recalled in his essay \u201cHow \u2018Bigger\u2019 Was Born\u201d that upon reading reviews of <em>Uncle Tom\u2019s Children<\/em>, \u201cI realized that I had made an awfully na\u00efve mistake. I found that I had written a book which even bankers\u2019 daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>From a young age, Wright read widely and voraciously, even in the days when he had to persuade White co-workers to obtain books for him from southern libraries that would not lend them to Blacks. He was a true intellectual, one concerned particularly with the issue of color not only in the United States but around the world, the subject of his full-length works of nonfiction.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wright made good on that promise. Bigger, twenty years old and Black, lives with his mother and two younger siblings in a vermin-infested one-room apartment where, in the novel\u2019s first scene, he must kill a rat, a trapped, doomed creature that fills others with fear and disgust\u2014and thus a stand-in for Bigger himself. Bigger is in effect two people, both driven by the same emotion: he bullies his Black peers as a way of masking his own fear, the same fear that makes him subservient and monosyllabic around Whites. Pressured by his mother to get a job to help support the family, he becomes the chauffeur to a family of wealthy White philanthropists, the very people who own the slum in which he lives. One night, having helped the family\u2019s drunk daughter\u2014a young woman of about his age\u2014to her room, Bigger fears his presence there will be misinterpreted and tries to quiet her, killing her instead. Though her death was accidental, and though Bigger tries to escape blame, inwardly he embraces the killing, which, in his world of severely limited opportunity, is the first thing in his life he can call his own. Having killed once, he finds it in him to do so again, purposefully. <em>Native Son<\/em> powerfully captures the tension and pressures that were the lived experience among Blacks of that time and place, and its title is an indictment of American racism: the murderous, unrepentant Bigger grew from our very soil. As he tells another character at the end of the novel, \u201cWhat I killed for, I <em>am!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The esteem in which <em>Native Son<\/em> was held\u2014and, to an extent, Wright\u2019s own reputation\u2014took a hit when James Baldwin published, in the <em>Partisan Review<\/em>, the essays \u201cEverybody\u2019s Protest Novel\u201d (June 1949) and \u201cMany Thousands Gone\u201d (November\u2013December 1951), both collected in Baldwin\u2019s celebrated 1955 book <em>Notes of a Native Son<\/em>. The two essays were highly critical of <em>Native Son<\/em>. (This, apparently, was Baldwin\u2019s way of repaying Wright\u2019s having taken him under his wing and supporting his career.) Baldwin asserted that Wright had given us, in Bigger Thomas, a portrait of a Black man who was not fully human; Bigger\u2019s \u201ctragedy,\u201d Baldwin wrote in \u201cEverybody\u2019s Protest Novel,\u201d is \u201cthat he has accepted a theology that denies him life, that he admits the possibility of his being sub-human and feels constrained, therefore, to battle for his humanity according to those brutal criteria bequeathed him at his birth.\u201d Baldwin\u2019s assessment, however, seems to dismiss the passages in <em>Native Son<\/em>, written in close third person, in which Bigger\u2019s humanity\u2014his desire to connect with other people\u2014is revealed, as in:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">. . .if he reached out with his hands and touched other people, reached out through these stone walls and felt other hands connected with other hearts\u2014if he did that, would there be a reply, a shock? Not that he wanted those hearts to turn their warmth to him; he was not wanting that much. But just to know that they were there and warm! Just that, and no more; and it would have been enough, more than enough. And in that touch, response of recognition, there would be union, identity; there would be a supporting oneness, a wholeness which had been denied him all his life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While none of Wright\u2019s books published after the 1940s reached the level of acclaim accorded <em>Native Son<\/em> and <em>Black Boy<\/em>, he wrote works of fiction and nonfiction for the rest of his life. The tone of his fiction owed much to the circumstances of his childhood, of course, but they also, perhaps, owed something to his early reading material. His first exposure to fiction, thanks to a teacher who boarded with Wright\u2019s grandmother, was the grim story of Bluebeard; his grandmother strongly objected to such tales\u2014which she called \u201cDevil stuff\u201d\u2014but the seed, the fascination with stories of worlds beyond his own, had been planted in Wright. Later in his boyhood he read detective stories and what he called \u201ccheap pulps.\u201d Meanwhile, his mother endured a long-term illness, one that made for \u201cmeaningless pain\u201d and \u201cendless suffering,\u201d as he wrote in <em>Black Boy<\/em>, adding, \u201cA somberness of spirit that I was never to lose settled over me during the slow years of my mother\u2019s unrelieved suffering.\u201d That somberness, the grimness of his surroundings, and the violent nature of much of his early reading material perhaps help to account for the darkness of his themes as a novelist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>Wright recalled in his essay \u201cHow \u2018Bigger\u2019 Was Born\u201d that upon reading reviews of <em>Uncle Tom\u2019s Children<\/em>, \u201cI realized that I had made an awfully na\u00efve mistake. I found that I had written a book which even bankers\u2019 daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wright has in common with Thomas Hardy that the plots in his fiction are sometimes intricate to the point of distraction, and the events he depicts are often sensational, sometimes to a fault. Nonetheless, his novels published after <em>Native Son<\/em> have much to recommend them. <em>The Outsider<\/em> (1953)\u2014whose title could well have applied to either <em>Native Son<\/em> or <em>Black Boy<\/em>\u2014has as its existentialist protagonist Cross Damon, who could be described as an intellectual version of Bigger Thomas; <em>Savage Holiday<\/em> (1954) is a strange, compelling tale of killings\u2014accidental and purposeful\u2014and accountability; and the father of the main character in <em>The Long Dream<\/em> (1958), a Black man who carves out his own sphere of power in the segregated South, is nearly Shakespearean in his complexity. Several of the writer\u2019s novels were published posthumously. Wright could sometimes seem disparaging of Black culture, yet <em>Lawd Today!<\/em> (1963), the story of a postal worker, contains hilarious scenes of \u201cplaying the dozens\u201d that amount to a celebration of Black humor and wit. <em>Rite of Passage<\/em> (1994) is a heartbreaking story of boyhood, and in <em>The Man Who Lived Underground<\/em> (2021), Wright offers still another portrait of an outsider; a portion of that novel, published in 1944, revealed the influence of Dostoevsky while also prefiguring\u2014with its story of a Black man who literally lives beneath the street\u2014Ralph Ellison\u2019s highly influential 1952 novel <em>Invisible Man<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From a young age, Wright read widely and voraciously, even in the days when he had to persuade White co-workers to obtain books for him from southern libraries that would not lend them to Blacks. He was a true intellectual, one concerned particularly with the issue of color not only in the United States but around the world, the subject of his full-length works of nonfiction. <em>12 Million Black Voices<\/em> (1941) is Wright\u2019s portrait of Black life in America, complete with powerful images from photographers including Walker Evans. <em>Black Power<\/em> (1954) is the writer\u2019s work of reportage from Africa\u2019s Gold Coast, as it was emerging from colonialism to become the nation of Ghana. Wright also put on his reporter\u2019s hat for <em>The Color Curtain<\/em> (1956), his chronicle of the historic meeting in Bandung, Indonesia, of representatives of formerly colonized nations including, in addition to Indonesia, India, Burma, Ethiopia, Liberia, Sudan, Yemen, and the Philippines\u2014\u201cthe underdogs of the human race,\u201d as Wright put it. <em>Pagan Spain<\/em> (1957) is the writer\u2019s nonfiction account of life under a dictatorship in the country of the title. <em>White Man, Listen!<\/em> (1957) is his take on the history of racial oppression in the United States and elsewhere. One of its startling insights concerns the eighteenth-century, African-born Black American poet Phillis Wheatley. The poet, who was purchased by a White family but treated by them as an equal and thus \u201cwas at one with her culture,\u201d produced writing that\u2014unlike that of subsequent Black American writers, all of whom were subjected to oppression\u2014\u201c[struck] a universal note.\u201d Wright notes, \u201cSuppose the personalities of many Phyllis [sic] Wheatleys of America had been allowed to develop? What a different nation we might have been!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wright\u2019s later nonfiction works also appear to hold up a mirror to our own time. The people of such nations as Ethiopia, Liberia, Sudan, and Yemen\u2014four of the nations represented at the Bandung conference\u2014are those described in <em>The Color Curtain<\/em> as \u201cmillions of folk-minded masses trapped in the nets of fear, hunger, and impossible dreams\u2014masses at the mercy of irresponsible interpretations of their plight,\u201d people whose fates depend on leadership, policies, and developments over which they have little or no control; and the people of these four nations are among those most severely affected by the elimination of U.S. foreign aid under President Trump and Elon Musk\u2019s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. The cost has been untold numbers of lives of people whose only crime, as in Wright\u2019s era, is the circumstances of their birth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The Color Curtain<\/em> also includes as keen an insight into the unthinking, and therefore hard-to-root-out, nature of racism as I have ever read, an insight brought home to Wright during a seemingly trivial interaction and one that would seem to explain a good deal of what happens today\u2014in hiring practices and in criminal sentencing. The interaction, which took place abroad in the 1950s, has much to tell us about America in the twenty-first century, revealing an aspect of day-to-day encounters that no legislation\u2014including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed after Wright\u2019s death\u2014can reach. At the Ministry of Information in Indonesia, Wright tells us, \u201cI saw a white American newspaperman leaning forward intently and putting up an argument, and the dark Indonesian official to whom he was so urgently talking was obviously not listening and had already made up his mind as to the kind of negative answer that he was going to serve up to the white American. . . . But the moment that the Indonesian official\u2019s dark face turned to me there was another and different attitude. His manner changed at once; I was one of his kind. . . . So, while the white American waited, I got my press card at once. I was a member of the master race! . . . It took no intelligence, no courage; in the situation that obtained, it was the easiest thing to do. It was racism. Well, there it was. . . . I\u2019m not proud of it. . . . The racism I saw that morning had had its origin not in the desire (I think) of the colored man to put the white man in an embarrassing position, to sting and hurt him; it was simply a question of color, which was an easy way of telling friend from foe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>Several of the writer\u2019s novels were published posthumously. Wright could sometimes seem disparaging of Black culture, yet <em>Lawd Today!<\/em> (1963), the story of a postal worker, contains hilarious scenes of \u201cplaying the dozens\u201d that amount to a celebration of Black humor and wit.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, <em>Native Son<\/em> and <em>Black Boy<\/em> stand as Wright\u2019s most enduring achievements, because, I would argue, they capture the isolation from mainstream society that is the reality of many young Black people, in the time of Wright\u2019s youth and in our time. The acts of pure, race-based cruelty that Wright personally experienced as a young worker are shocking\u2014there is no other word\u2014and yet no more shocking than the mass incarceration of our current era (see Michelle Alexander\u2019s invaluable 2015 book <em>The New Jim Crow<\/em>), which sees Blacks comprise thirteen percent of the U.S. population and a third of prison inmates. This jaw-dropping discrepancy makes for generations of young Blacks who are as alienated from the rest of society as those in Wright\u2019s day; and thanks to Wright we have an eloquent expression of the ramifications of that isolation. From <em>Black Boy<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I began to marvel at how smoothly the black boys acted out the roles that the white race had mapped out for them. Most of them were not conscious of living a special, separate, stunted way of life. Yet I knew that in some period of their growing up\u2014a period that they had no doubt forgotten\u2014there had been developed in them a delicate, sensitive controlling mechanism that shut off their minds and emotions from all that the white race had said was taboo. Although they lived in an America where in theory there existed equality of opportunity, they knew unerringly what to aspire to and what not to aspire to.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the decades since the publication of these books, other Black authors have written about Black alienation, in works including Nathan McCall\u2019s memoir <em>Makes Me Wanna Holler<\/em> (1994) and the poems collected in Reginald Dwayne Betts\u2019s <em>Felon<\/em> (2019). But for depictions of the challenges facing the generations of Blacks in the United States since the end of slavery, Wright\u2019s work continues to stand tall\u2014and to tell us about our own times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Wright has in common with Thomas Hardy that the plots in his fiction are sometimes intricate to the point of distraction, and the events he depicts are often sensational, sometimes to a fault. His novels published after \u201cNative Son\u201d have much to recommend them. Still, \u201cNative Son\u201d and \u201cBlack Boy\u201d stand as his most enduring achievements. They capture the isolation from mainstream society that is the reality of many young Black people, in the time of Wright\u2019s youth and in our time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":71291,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11665],"tags":[],"toc":[5797],"class_list":["post-71273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-letters","toc-essays"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Remembering Richard Wright, Outsider - Common Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Richard Wright has in common with Thomas Hardy that the plots in his fiction are sometimes intricate to the point of distraction, and the events he depicts are often sensational, sometimes to a fault. His novels published after \u201cNative Son\u201d have much to recommend them. Still, \u201cNative Son\u201d and \u201cBlack Boy\u201d stand as his most enduring achievements. They capture the isolation from mainstream society that is the reality of many young Black people, in the time of Wright\u2019s youth and in our time.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/remembering-richard-wright-outsider\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Remembering Richard Wright, Outsider - Common Reader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Richard Wright has in common with Thomas Hardy that the plots in his fiction are sometimes intricate to the point of distraction, and the events he depicts are often sensational, sometimes to a fault. His novels published after \u201cNative Son\u201d have much to recommend them. Still, \u201cNative Son\u201d and \u201cBlack Boy\u201d stand as his most enduring achievements. 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I would wake up to an institutional key turning the heavy lock and the solid wood door squealing on its hinges. Light flooded the room from the hall, the door shut loudly, and this guy dropped his gear and settled onto our floor, where he ate snacks and read with a flashlight I could see through my eyelids. It was my first Permanent Duty Station after basic and advanced combat engineer training. The world was new but already tired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mattingly was a small guy who would have liked to be a bully but lacked ambition, so he got by on snide remarks, bossiness, and flipping people the bird. He was older than me, but I noted he deferred to Leon, who was somewhere between our ages. Leon was tall and lean and had a Germanic skull with big cheekbones, like a boxer\u2019s, and ears pinned to his head. He walked on the balls of his feet, and when he performed the role of soldier he thrust out his chest so artificially it looked like mockery of the ceremony. I did not like having to sleep in a confined space with either of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Leon was in no better physical shape than I was, and he could be quiet, even reflective. We started talking. He hung out in our room because he drove in from married housing and did not want to wait in his car for morning PT. He and his wife, a Jersey girl with a big personality and great laugh, had a toddler and soon another baby on the way. He grew up a skater and used to hang out on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights on the Jersey shore. He knew something about books and a lot about music, and before the army he worked in a record shop and had seen Springsteen sitting around at the Stone Pony. To me, a kid in from the lower Midwest, this all seemed impossibly worldly. He turned me on to Rimbaud and Jim Carroll (\u201cThose are people who died, died \/ They were all my friends and they died,\u201d he loved to sing along), to the Ramones, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, and Blondie. It made him oddly happy to sing lines from Warren Zevon songs: \u201cWell, he went down to dinner in his Sunday best \/ \u2018Excitable boy,\u2019 they all said \/ And he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest \/ \u2018Excitable boy,\u2019 they all said.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leon introduced me around, an act of generosity and emotional maturity, and explained what I was seeing in our battalion. He spoke directly, with a wry knowingness and pleasure in weird details. Mattingly, he explained, was not so bad. He should have been at least a buck sergeant by now but had gotten busted down when the military developed its first effective piss-test for weed. Before being forcibly reclassified and sent to our unit, Mattingly had been a man-portable, tactical nuclear weapon carrier. In the final European war that President Reagan had us training for, Mattingly would have humped to a target with his one-kiloton backpack, set the timer, and started running in hopes of clearing the blast radius. Maybe this concept of what duty meant had given him his permanently bad attitude and hatred of authority. Leon and I laughed at the idea of Mattingly flipping off Soviet T-72s rumbling up the Fulda Gap, pursing his lips and making slits of his eyes, which seemed to signify derision wherever he was from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>He grew up a skater and used to hang out on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights on the Jersey shore. He knew something about books and a lot about music, and before the army he worked in a record shop and had seen Springsteen sitting around at the Stone Pony. To me, a kid in from the lower Midwest, this all seemed impossibly worldly.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was not a good era for the US military, and there were many characters like that. But Leon was squared-away, smart, and personable. Our last names were close alphabetically, so we stood next to each other in formations and got conflated like twins. But he was not only two years ahead of me in age, he was the first of the two of us to get nominated for the soldier of the month board and the first to attend Air Assault School, where they taught how to rappel out of choppers. He was chosen to be the personal driver for, I think, the commanding general of the 101<sup>st<\/sup> Airborne Division and Fort Campbell. Higher-ups must have known he was of use and that his intelligence could be a problem if not challenged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our lieutenant, himself a hard-charging graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and Ranger School, started giving the two of us late night, off-duty \u201cmissions\u201d to keep us busy, such as a recon of a civilian rail bridge outside a nearby town to calculate the demolitions needed to drop it in the river. Leon had to add elements: We would work our way to the bridge by topographical map and compass, climb out on it to take precise measurements, jump off into the unknown water, swim downstream, run cross-country back to the car without detection, then go to a Wendy\u2019s drive-thru, filthy and wet, for chocolate Frostys. Our reports impressed or amused the young lieutenant, and he picked us to go to the <a href=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/jungle-warfare-in-the-western-hemisphere-and-big-stick-foreign-policy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Jungle Warfare School<\/a> in Panama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leon believed that adding kinetic energy to any situation made things better. Once on a long field exercise he and I were told to place a few early-warning devices\u2014booby traps fixed to trees, which \u201cenemies\u201d in the war game would trip over and set off warning flares\u2014so he set perhaps hundreds of them in an unretrievable tangle. He was at it a long time. That night, the flares started a fire that spread from the woods to hundreds of acres of prairie. Panicked pilots of an aviation company bivouacking nearby ran to their Blackhawks to escape the approaching flames; choppers jumped off the ground crazily like grasshoppers, their landing lights stabbing down through the smoke. Our entire battalion had to fight the fire, all night, and woke midmorning exhausted and soaked in freezing rain. That was Leon\u2019s idea of <em>classic<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was never enough to be on a winter field exercise; he and I and some guy who had been a trapper in Alaska had to sit up all night under a tree, wrapped only in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Poncho_liner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Woobies<\/a>, for what Leon called a \u201chypothermia contest.\u201d When he drove back with me to my hometown after one such exercise, he chose not to tell his wife, as if he was on a secret mission. She discovered by accident that the company had come in from the field, but no one knew where he was. When I dropped him off at the end of our trip, she punched him in the head, and life went on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leon was an accumulation of anecdotes. Maybe that is one path to forging life stories. He insisted we get pilot\u2019s licenses, so we could ditch a light plane at sea and fake our deaths to get out of the army. He drank whatever he thought made for madness: Wild Turkey, Mad Dog 20\/20 or Night Train Express, multiple bottles of Boone\u2019s Farm wine in a sitting. Forced to pull guard duty in the middle of the night in barracks he did not live in\u2014because someone, possibly my roommate, left human feces around as commentary\u2014 Leon ripped the faucets off all the sinks in the latrine and threw them out the windows. When a kid in the company, fresh from the hills of Pennsylvania, brought out a Gideon\u2019s Bible and pretended to proselytize during a drinking session, Leon roared like Satan stalking the Earth, ripped the book to pieces, turned over furniture, and sent the kid diving for cover in genuine horror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>It was not a good era for the US military, and there were many characters like that. But Leon was squared-away, smart, and personable. Our last names were close alphabetically, so we stood next to each other in formations and got conflated like twins.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My mother would have said, \u201cHe\u2019s a <em>mess<\/em>,\u201d but Leon had a punk attitude, loved performative wildness, and was hugely capable. Is it a surprise what came next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leon went on to serve 33 years in the army and rose to what is arguably its second-highest enlisted position, responsible for 90,000 troops and 40,000 civilian employees. He earned a chest full of medals including the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Legion_of_Merit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Legion of Merit<\/a> and served in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Panama, Honduras, and elsewhere. When he retired, he moved seamlessly into the vice-presidency of a large nonprofit that employs people with disabilities. But that is more anecdote with no ending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/USNavyFormatted-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Chris Lussier\/Released, ID 100722-N-1134I-298"\" class=\"wp-image-71269\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/USNavyFormatted-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/USNavyFormatted-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/USNavyFormatted-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/USNavyFormatted.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Chris Lussier\/Released, ID 100722-N-1134I-298)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">\u2022 \u2022 \u2022 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By the time Leon and I met at Fort Campbell, I had already turned down a path to West Point and to the army linguist program at the Presidio of San Francisco. I was a hardhead. So was he, which is one reason we recognized each other and became close friends. I doubt if either of us knew we were getting something (other than money) from the army that we wanted, or that what we wanted was different and would put us on divergent courses. I wanted to see new places and people, do interesting things, and remember it all. Leon wanted to work imaginatively for a prominent organization, move (only) forward, like a ratchet, and be rewarded in predictable ways, mostly for the well-being of his family. He was conservative in more ways than one; even his injections of wildness were forms of control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The engineer battalion was slow to promote and had problems with morale, discipline, and antiquated equipment and training. It was not just a bore; the common claim was that we would last 15 minutes in the next war. Leon heard that the US Army improbably had deep-sea and scuba divers. He already had his civilian scuba certification and thought it would be a good idea for us to change jobs and become divers. Reclassifying was not all that unusual, but there were fewer than 100 divers in the army then, and the school\u2014actually the Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center (NDSTC), in Panama City, Florida\u2014was known to be one of the toughest in the military services. He would have gone alone, if only to get his family back to a coast, but I was not about to be left behind and intuited the experience would be important to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/as-foreign-as-firmament-to-fin\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">It was<\/a>. We tested (having stolen the diving field manual from the battalion library to study, when it could have been read there), submitted applications (one of us wrote a qualifying blood pressure on the other\u2019s medical chart), and were allowed to attend the prequalification course in Virginia. Then we drove Leon\u2019s family and household goods from Kentucky up through the Appalachians to New Jersey, which he turned into a sleep-deprivation contest. (He hallucinated a coven of witches in a field at the side of highway; I saw tractor-trailers stopped in front of me that were not there.) I got dumped on his mom, a brassy woman, and his dad, whom Leon had fist-fought on his way to the army. The plan had been for Leon to show me how to use scuba, but he was too busy, so he took me to an above-ground pool at his parents\u2019 neighbors, who were gone, put me in the cold water with his battered scuba tank, a mask, and a weight belt to hold me down, and told me, \u201cBreathe out when you come up, or you\u2019ll, like, <em>die<\/em>.\u201d He left, and I lay on the bottom of the four-foot-deep pool like some pale newt, looking around and playing with dead leaves. I had seen the ocean only once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Panama City we got dogged physically for months, were trained in scuba and hardhat rigs, and learned diving physics and medicine. We swam in the blue NDSTC pool, St. Andrews Bay, and the Gulf, ran the roads and beaches of the Emerald Coast, met colorful people, and had a big time at the bars. I fell in love three times. Leon\u2019s inclusion of me in his plan may have changed my life more consequentially than anything else but college education and fatherhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>Leon had to add elements: We would work our way to the bridge by topographical map and compass, climb out on it to take precise measurements, jump off into the unknown water, swim downstream, run cross-country back to the car without detection, then go to a Wendy\u2019s drive-thru, filthy and wet, for chocolate Frostys.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As graduated divers we got stationed at Fort Eustis, Virginia. There was plenty more to be learned, hard work above and below the surface, more new friends. Leon brought his intelligence and usual chaos to the dive detachment\u2014drinking and music parties, suggestions of strip poker with his more-than-agreeable wife (one thing he backed away from, once he thought it out), oyster poaching. During a temporary job in Miami, Leon plotted for us to fly to the Bahamas to gamble all night, without permission. When he and I drove across the country to attend the Seabee Underwater Construction School in Port Hueneme, California, we stopped in a diner in Kansas, somewhere near the setting for <em>In Cold Blood<\/em>. The waitress liked us enough to tell us that the week before, two drifters had come through town and tried to dynamite a grain silo. Leon smiled and leaned in. \u201c<em>We\u2019re those guys<\/em>,\u201d he said, and when she laughed uncertainly, he tried to convince her. That night we lay awake in the cheap motel in town, waiting for the locals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After Port Hueneme I <a href=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/requiem-for-a-young-soldier-who-vanished\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">was sent to the Republic of Panama<\/a> to help open the first dive detachment there, and Leon went elsewhere, maybe Korea, where army divers maintained and inspected offshore pipelines. We did not serve together again, because I got out at four years. I saw Leon in Virginia right after that, and again at Christmas, and a couple of years later in Panama City, Florida, when my college girlfriend and I drove down on spring break and stayed with another diver and his wife. Leon, who was in a more advanced program at the dive school, took us to a strip club on the beach at the request of my girlfriend, who was from a nice family on the North Shore of Chicago. When an unhappy dancer blasted Leon for not tipping her, he loudly praised the beauty of the middle-aged server and gave her a huge tip instead. Things got tense, and we had to leave. At my wedding to that girlfriend, the army guys argued with the hometown guys, and Leon said, as I was trying to concentrate on the nuptials, that if there was a fight it was going to be over in \u201cpoint-two milliseconds.\u201d To celebrate my divorce from that wife, Leon visited me in Chicago. We saw <em>Pulp Fiction<\/em> in a theater, stopped at a roadhouse, then went to my friend\u2019s party, where Leon started smashing glasses in the sink. I went outside to talk to an older divorcee I worked with, and Leon came running out of the party and slammed garbage cans around violently at the curb\u2014because he was happy for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He had recently taken a team to salvage an Army Reserve chopper that crashed in a lake. The pilot, whom local civilian divers had been unable to find, was politically connected, and Leon was told to make sure his body was never seen by the press waiting on shore. Leon rode out to the crash location with sheriff\u2019s deputies in their little boat, dove down, found the body himself, and got it onto the boat. Problem was, it had stiffened with cold and rigor mortis in a crucifixion pose and would not go in the body bag. The deputies tried to make him take it to shore like that. \u201cYou might want to turn your heads,\u201d he said, knelt on the corpse\u2019s chest, and wrenched its arms down. One of the deputies bent to the water and vomited gently. Later, the army divers went to a local bar, where a woman told her cowboy boyfriend the divers looked like trouble. Leon waited until the boyfriend went to the bathroom then bought a rose from the person selling them, took it to where the woman was sitting, ate the rose, and handed her the stem just as her boyfriend returned. During the brawl, the bouncers gave up, and cops had to shut down the bar. The divers were allowed to leave town only after paying something toward damages, and a sergeant major had promised the local prosecutor that the army would punish them severely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the mid-\u201990s, Leon got stationed near St. Louis. I drove down and visited him and his wife a couple of times. He had done well in the army, advanced in rank, gone to more schools, but was at about 15 years\u2019 time-in-service. He said he was thinking about retiring at 20, the earliest possible time, and getting a job driving a county snowplow back in Jersey or looking into high-risk, commercial dive work in narrow dam passages or at nuclear facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We had some drinks and decided to call another former diver across the country, by then a pastor and soon-to-be therapist. While I was talking to him, Leon attacked me from behind and started choking me. I threw us both backward under the kitchen table. Chris hung up on the screaming and laughter, and I got up to walk to the living room but saw Leon pull a big knife from the butcher block on the counter. I took off, and he came after me with darkness on his face, knife overhead. There was nowhere to go, and when he ran at me, roaring, I felt sure he was capable of burying the knife in my chest, even as a joke. I jumped up and kicked him with both feet, and he staggered back against the wall but stabbed downward and stuck me as I fell onto the couch. The blade slipped past my tibia into what meat there is on the shin. It is funny how sober you can get in one second. His wife was aghast at what he had done; Leon was sheepish. The wound seeped blood for 24 hours, but I did not go to the ER, because it might have caused trouble for him. I did not hold it against him then; I do not now. People have done worse to me. But I think we both felt it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After that\u2014I am not suggesting causality\u2014we both got busy doing what previous decades had been leading us toward. Leon made jumps in his career that few achieve and took on huge responsibilities. Someone told me he was being groomed to be the Sergeant Major of the Army, of which there is only one, but that there were whispers he and his wife were too wild for such a public-facing position. I went to grad school, started teaching, remarried, raised two sons, and worked at my writing. If there was any drag on our friendship, it was probably just from geographical distance, available time, and a mutual lack of understanding of what the other did all day, or hoped to do, or the texture of the struggles. We saw each other at a couple of reunions, where there were lively times, and heard about each other from other divers. But in terms of our friendship, time moved right along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>Leon was an accumulation of anecdotes. Maybe that is one path to forging life stories. He insisted we get pilot\u2019s licenses, so we could ditch a light plane at sea and fake our deaths to get out of the army. He drank whatever he thought made for madness. <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Leon was about to retire from the army, in 2015, I started calling him more to catch up or get some background on things I was writing, such as the kinds of decisions made by political appointees versus military staff. He was generous with his time and stressed how good it would be to see me. After the army he moved immediately to the NGO but eventually started talking about retiring from <em>that<\/em> job, since his wife wanted to travel. He told me the NGO kept throwing more money at him to stay, it was ridiculous. Somebody else told me he had slowed down a lot, that he drank beer and watched football every weekend and did not look good. Leon told me he and his wife liked to go to some old-school bar on weekends, have brunch with Bloody Marys, listen to people\u2019s stories, and drink until it was time for a late lunch. He said I could get a book out of the stories, come see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I finally visited their home in Maryland in 2023, during my driving tour of the East Coast to visit other friends, who had signaled ill health. (My mother-in-law, who died of pancreatic cancer, used to tell me when I was still in my 30s, \u201cWell, you are getting to be a certain age.\u201d) Leon and his wife and I did not go out to the storytelling bar. He was heavy and his eyes a bit vacant. After a mostly silent lasagna dinner at their house, he settled into a recliner with a bowl of peanut M&Ms, and we all watched TV. He could not hear well. Later he showed me his trophy room from his long army career and what I think he called his whiskey library, which he seemed prouder of but never thought to offer me a sip from. Characteristically, he did offer to try to help my elder son with his search for an internship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A few months later Leon was diagnosed with Stage III pancreatic cancer. Median survival is eight to 11 months. I stayed in better touch, which we tend to do, even when there is nothing to feel guilty about, really. My kids and I saw him and his wife several times. They told some of the old stories and a few I had never heard, such as how Leon threw his and everyone else\u2019s mattress and bedding out of their room into the water from some GWOT floating barracks, then used a fire extinguisher in the hallway to beat in his own door to make it look like vandalism. He had the surgery to scoop out his insides, then chemo, then the pills that let him digest little bites of food. He lost 100 pounds seemingly overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I hurt him once after that and instantly regretted it. He had become strident about me attending future diver reunions, with the ulterior motive to reunite me with a good friend who had become estranged. That friend did not seem to want to be reconciled, and besides I had no money and little time. Out of the blue, in one conversation, and as a sort of joke, I brought up how I had been trying to write a novel for 25 years about army divers who save a bunch of people at sea. I had intended it to be my thesis novel for the MFA degree. My girlfriend then bought me a silver ring with a wave motif to help keep my subject at hand. She had the inside of the ring engraved, and the micro-burrs scratched my finger and caused an infection that burned like fire coral, so I put the ring in a box. Anyway, I said, my plans for such a book had been around so long that the characters in it, based on all of us, were still young. I said I did not need to go to some reunion where everybody would be decrepit and have it mess with my ability to write the book. Later that day I apologized profusely for \u201cdecrepit\u201d and said I did not mean his illness. He seemed amused and said not to worry about it. I told him that in my mind he had always been like the slim knight wielding a sword on that poster for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival that I had sent him in college because it reminded me of when he started to get crazy. He had no idea what I was talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He finally retired for good in February 2026, some two years after his diagnosis. He told me they planned to buy a house near Greenville, South Carolina\u2014the last big move, he said\u2014and \u201cget to the business of being retirees.\u201d His wife still really wanted to travel abroad. A mutual friend told me, \u201cMy god, he waited too long. What\u2019s she going to do now?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More recently I talked to him about Panama for a piece I was writing, and he said something about how when he was stationed there, the divers trained at tactical drift diving, letting the current and tide sweep them to shore for infiltration. He said they did it at night and tied glow lights on their gear, but the chase boat could not see them in the water, and the men got spread up and down the coast. I was startled; that was not in our diving remit. \u201cWow, your training NCO was a lot more fun than ours,\u201d I said then wondered if he was the training NCO. He called back to add to the story, telling me they also did helocasting\u2014jumping from Blackhawks into Panama Bay for tactical insertion\u2014that also was not part of our mission. They had pushed the 10\/10 rule\u2014no more than 10 feet over the water at 10 knots airspeed or less, for safety\u2014to 30\/30, he said, and someone broke his neck hitting the water badly. \u201cA diver?\u201d I said, shocked. Safety had always been paramount in army diving. Leon seemed perturbed at me that he could not remember the man\u2019s name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>The waitress liked us enough to tell us that the week before, two drifters had come through town and tried to dynamite a grain silo. Leon smiled and leaned in. \u201c<em>We\u2019re those guys<\/em>,\u201d he said, and when she laughed uncertainly, he tried to convince her. That night we lay awake in the cheap motel in town, waiting for the locals.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One day I texted to ask how he was doing, and he called to say they had drained four liters of fluid from his abdomen. His wife was tending him closely. \u201cWe date when we\u2019re young for lust and friendship,\u201d he said. \u201cLate in life, we want people who will take care of us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In May I texted, \u201cHow\u2019s retirement, Old Cock?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHonestly, this cancer has just been kicking my ass,\u201d he said. \u201cI have more medical appointments than I used to have business meetings. The constant pain is the worst part.\u201d The day before, he said, he had been in so much pain he went to the ER for a morphine drip, and they sent him home with Dilaudid. The next day he added, \u201cThe cancer re-occurrence sucks!\u201d He had never officially told me the cancer was back. \u201cThere\u2019s not much that they can do now for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m sorry to hear that,\u201d I replied. \u201cStay in touch and let me know how it\u2019s going, old friend.\u201d There was an echo in that of my dad, who in the last weeks of heart failure told me, \u201cWe\u2019ll just have to see.\u201d Leon did not like to give up either. He died in June. His last words to me had been about my younger son\u2019s happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I picked up my elder son, and we met another former diver, who lives on his yacht in the Chesapeake, for the drive to New Jersey. At the visitation, the crowd leafed through albums of photos of Leon\u2019s life and career, many of which I had shot. There was a lot of cancer among the old divers in attendance, including two inoperable brain cancers, and bypasses, stints, hip and knee replacements, and other issues that had come early to the guys who made a career of it. I did not see any young, active-duty divers. We said hello to Leon\u2019s wife, brother, and grown children, whom I had not seen since they were little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the front of the room, Leon lay in the casket like a weightless pharaoh. My god, his suffering, and strength to endure it. It also looked as if he had been spray-tanned. He <em>loved<\/em> to tan. When it was our turn to approach, the three of us stood and gazed at him in his dress uniform covered in medals. Someone had put a Special Operations Diver Badge in his hands. A hard-to-find <a href=\"https:\/\/navalunderseamuseum.org\/mk-v\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mark V helmet<\/a> sat on a stand nearby. \u201cYou\u2019ve gone and done it this time, Leon,\u201d I said softly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The funeral director asked us to sit and invited remembrances. A few people got up and told stories, how after some respectable event on post he got up on the roof of his housing unit and threw roof tiles until the MPs came, etc. There were more acknowledgements that the real stories\u2014meaning the criminal, ethically indefensible, or plain-old upsetting things he did that many of us knew about\u2014could not be told, because mourners in a funeral parlor do not want to hear it. The dead man in his vital days would have loved them to hear it. He had suggested the engraving I put on the pocket flasks I gave to groomsmen (including him) at my first wedding: <em>\u00c9pater le bourgeois<\/em>, to shock the complacent middle class, from Rimbaud or maybe Baudelaire. At Leon\u2019s wife\u2019s request, the divers in the crowd sang \u201cThe Mouse Song,\u201d a silly ditty we used to be forced to sing while being PT\u2019d to death by dive school cadre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the funeral the next morning, my son and I sat in the back row and were joined by my old friend <a href=\"https:\/\/commonreader.wustl.edu\/yokota-usa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Frenchy<\/a>. I realized some kid in the second row had pinned ears like Leon\u2019s. He wore the new army uniform fashioned on WWII uniforms, and when he turned his head, he had Leon\u2019s cheekbones. Before the service began, the kid stood up and turned to face the back of the large room, where most of the veterans were sitting, some in casual clothes and ball caps. With little more on his uniform than a unit patch and the single ribbon given out for completing basic training, he threw his elbows back and pushed his chest out so artificially it looked as if he intended to fight somebody. I nearly laughed. This was Leon\u2019s grandson, I realized, now a young soldier stationed in Texas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>I took off, and he came after me with darkness on his face, knife overhead. There was nowhere to go, and when he ran at me, roaring, I felt sure he was capable of burying the knife in my chest, even as a joke. I jumped up and kicked him with both feet, and he staggered back against the wall but stabbed downward and stuck me as I fell onto the couch. The blade slipped past my tibia into what meat there is on the shin. It is funny how sober you can get in one second.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The pastor, a woman from United Methodist, spoke in the generic way clergy do when they never knew the dead. She used words thematic to Leon\u2019s life, however, such as \u201csurfaced,\u201d which made me think of Father Mapple in <em>Moby-Dick<\/em>. She said Leon had touched many lives and had been an excellent father. A young woman with long black hair hanging down in front of her face, whom I took for Leon\u2019s sister-in-law, sobbed and wailed so hard, for so long, that an older woman with short dyed-blond hair seated across the room waved her hand \u201cno\u201d to get her attention. This had no effect, and the older woman began to hiss, \u201cGet her out! Get her out of here! Go!\u201d The young woman was a hardhead and stayed right where she was; no one dared intervene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leon\u2019s brother and one of his childhood friends spoke and told stories: Leon in high school helping his friend train for cross-country, running him into some woods, then disappearing. Leon going camping with a group but disappearing to camp on his own. Leon\u2019s lieutenant, a Ranger, telling him at the Jungle Warfare School that if he wanted to be a Ranger too he would eat this live frog; Leon ripped the frog in two and said it would be rude not to share. (I was there.) Leon jumping 65 feet from the Hathaway Bridge into St. Andrews Bay, in Panama City, Florida, just for the self-assigned challenge, while attending First Class dive school. Someone saw the apparent suicide and called police, who searched all night but found no body. The next day, on a hunch and possibly seeing bruises, one of the cadre at the school asked Leon if he knew anything about the incident. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to know the answer to that, Chief,\u201d Leon said. (That could have happened the night we got kicked out of the strip club, which makes me wonder for the first time about my influence on him\u2026.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now the funeral procession would drive 40 minutes to a veterans cemetery north of Fort Dix, where Leon would be buried with military honors. The funeral director stressed that the cemetery said they were very busy and required strict punctuality. We were told to keep our flashers on and drive close to the car in front of us but found there was no chance of the long cortege staying together through traffic, so we were spread out for miles. I had not driven that landscape since 1984, when Leon blew my mind with our trip to the Jersey shore. The cemetery is beautifully manicured, with a columbarium and tens of thousands of \u201cdress right, dress\u201d stones inlaid in the green grass. Leon loved Warren Zevon\u2019s dark sense of humor, how he wrote about mayhem and death even after he learned he had terminal cancer, which killed Zevon at 56. Looking at the quantity of grave markers, I thought of the line from \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=B78arywzMdk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Life\u2019ll Kill Ya<\/a>\u201d: \u201c<em>Requiescat in pace<\/em> \/ That\u2019s all she wrote.\u201d The line of cars drove through the cemetery and parked at a pavilion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The pastor made more remarks in front of Leon\u2019s casket, now closed and sitting on a church truck, with the immediate family on folding chairs to one side. We all flinched at the four-volley salute reserved for high-profile tributes. An honor guard carefully folded the American flag draped on Leon\u2019s casket and presented it to his widow. More sobbing and choking could be heard, and someone in our group standing by the pavilion said, \u201cI\u2019m definitely going to hire that woman to be at my funeral.\u201d Attendees lined up to drop individual red or white carnations on the casket and offer condolences to the family again. Some of the old divers shouted, \u201cHoo-yah, Leon!\u201d or said, \u201cFair winds and following seas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>At the front of the room, Leon lay in the casket like a weightless pharaoh. My god, his suffering, and strength to endure it. It also looked as if he had been spray-tanned. He <em>loved<\/em> to tan.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My son and I added our flowers and waited to get to Leon\u2019s family. I fixed for some reason on the spent shells from the honor guard sitting on the speaker\u2019s podium. I realized I did not know if Leon ever fired a shot in anger. Did he ever have a pet? What was his proudest moment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I managed to hug his widow with only a single gasp of emotion. I hugged their daughter, whom I had known as a toddler, but she sobbed and held me like a child holds her father, and it did me in. I looked over at the final person in the line, the young soldier, and knew I was done. He sat, apparently unable to stand in his grief, and I stepped in front of him, bent down, and took his handshake with both hands and held it. We looked in each other\u2019s eyes, faces hard and tight with breath-hold, and it was too much, but we held the gaze. I had wanted to say, \u201cSon, your grandfather was my brother, and you remind me of him. Please let me know if I can ever help,\u201d but I could only nod, once. Some writers seem to think they are salvors, that by seeing and remembering they can save what has gone missing. I walked blindly through the other mourners, my son in my wake, out to where the cars waited before the regular stones in the dirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">* <em>Leon is a pseudonym<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My mother would have said, \u201cHe\u2019s a mess,\u201d but Leon had a punk attitude, loved performative wildness, and was hugely capable. 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