Presidential field further contracts

Another horse pulled up lame and is now out of the race. With the departure of JohnEdwards, from the presidential race, the field of 16 has been winnowed down to six (with four having legitimate chances of gaining the crown)—two on the left side of the partisan fence and four on the right (although does Ron Paul really count?).

John Edwards ran a heroic race. It’s not everyday that a candidate, with a wife battling cancer, dons the weighty mantle of presidential candidate. His announcement, back in December of 2006, elicited whispers from many and had the tongues of America’s talk radio magpies clacking, questioning his motives and even his manhood, for having the audacity to run, when his wife was ill.

Obviously, John and Elizabeth Edwards had numerous conversations about this and I have no doubt that it was ultimately Elizabeth that convinced him to take the bold step of running. I also am sure that they talked about what would end up being said about him and her, for their decision. You can’t be married 30 years and do otherwise.

In 2004, when he was forced to be the well-coifed and telegenic waterboy, toting around the message baggage for John Kerry, Edwards was a loyal vice-presidential sidepiece, for the senior senator. He served Kerry ably, paying his dues, but anyone that saw Edwards in person, out on the stump, knew that one day, he’d be out on his own, his own front man, with his own message.

It had to be major blow to Edwards when, on January 10th, two days after enduring another third place finish, this time in New Hampshire, Kerry came out for Edwards’ rival, Barack Obama. It was a blow that Edwards ultimately wouldn’t recover from. I’m sure it was also a deeply personal disappointment to him.

It is always enlightening to see what message a candidate builds their candidacy around. For Edwards, it was a brand of old-fashioned, economic populism. While there were some who questioned his sincerity, after the $400 haircut flap, but I think the message was part and parcel of who John Edwards is and where he comes from.

Edwards epitomizes the Horatio Alger myth. A small town boy, from Robbins, South Carolina, with a father that worked in the local textile factory and a mother that was a postal carrier, he became the first one in his family that went to college. Growing up in a small, close-knit community made an impression on young Edwards. He saw firsthand the struggles of working class people and it deeply affected him. While Edwards has the good looks and social graces to hobnob in the world of John Kerry, I don’t think he was ever entirely comfortable in that world. The John Edwards of 2008, railing against corporate malfeasance and what it has been visiting on the people that he grew up with and many others like them, was a man at home with his message.

When you craft a message for a campaign, there is some calculation involved. In today’s world of sound bite journalism and remote-control channel-surfing, the tendency is towards slickness, simplicity and even, vacuity. Edwards ultimate choice for his campaign theme was an interesting one.

Over the course of nearly 14 months of campaigning, hammering away on the stump, you become your message—at least if you have any measure of sincerity in you. Edwards became a populist preacher, even more fiery and impassioned at the end, than I think he was in the beginning.

During the time he was out on the campaign trail, he was representing the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the people of Robbins and even those of South Carolina with him. Once more, like Kerry’s failure to endorse him, being abandoned by the people of his home state had to be another body blow to him, this one especially personal. He finished third in his home state to a man with no substance behind his message and his other opponent, the Lady MacBeth of 2008, altering her message and inflection of speech to whatever area that she was campaigning in.

Economic populism doesn’t play well anymore. Its truisms are still relevant for today. Just like in the days of Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette and his Progressive contemporaries, corporations ruled the land. Back then, a candidate preaching a populist message got a hearing and certainly got coverage from the newspapers of the day. All too often, Edwards’ message got lost on reporters who lacked historical context, or economic understanding of that message.

For many Americans, they know that something’s not right and economically off-kilter. They are seeing gas prices topping $3/gallon, bread and milk prices going up weekly and their paychecks staying the same. Houses nearby are vacant and the grass is not mowed, meaning another home has been seized by foreclosure. Many others have seen firsthand what the global economy looks like, when they got their pink slip after finding out their firm was moving where they could find cheap labor. A $300 tax rebate check won’t help them.

All of these things are real and Edwards stayed on message, trying to pull the working class over to his side. Sadly, many of these folks, about to be run over by the corporate bus, opted for one of the two candidates that represent the interests driving the bus. Like the consumer that philosophically supports the local hardware store, but drive past it on the way to Wal-Mart, to get that length of kitchen pipe he needs to fix the sink, voters bypassed the one candidate in John Edwards, that cared about their plight.

I admire John Edwards. Visibly fatigued and clad in blue jeans, he stood with Elizabeth and his children on Wednesday and said he was dropping out of the race. I was pleased that he withheld endorsing any candidate, before he spoke with them. My hope is that he’ll forego an endorsement, but he’s earned the right to endorse whoever he sees fit.

Sadly for me and any other voter who cares about the issues that Edwards campaigned vigorously on, we no longer have a candidate that we can wholeheartedly support.

Be all you can be

War is hell—at least what I’m told, in books and Hollywood films. I’m one of the lucky ones in that I’ve never had to face combat. While I’ve offered my opinions about war and how I’m personally opposed to all the horrors that accompany it, once again, I’ve viewed them from safety.

Most of the men I’ve known who’ve faced battle, whether during WWII, Korea, Vietnam and now, Gulf Wars I & II, are reticent to talk about it. It’s something that they did and most prefer to leave it at that. I can respect that.

This morning, while readying to head out the door to go to work, I caught a strange story on NPR’s Morning Edition. Ari Shapiro’s feature highlighted the Army’s attempts at preventing disabled American veterans from receiving help from the Department of Veterans Affairs, with their disability paperwork. I thought, why would the U.S. Army not want to make sure that men that wore the uniform and were injured in battle, receive the proper follow-up for their injuries?

It was sad to hear a former soldier say that his treatment made him feel like “a worn-out pair of boots.” Disabled from injuries received serving his country and honoring its flag, this ex-GI was forced to speak on the condition of anonymity, because he “feared retaliation.” You can read the full story here.

I’m glad I’ve never had to serve my country, as there’s no telling what I might be going through, if like the men in this story, I had suffered serious injuries and needed my country to take care of me.

So, if you wonder why I'm a bit tired of all the flag-waving and chest-thumping about our troops, this story will clue you in. If you really want to support the troops, support the fair treatment of them after they've been shot at, blown up by roadside bombs and left to wonder where all the crowds that saw them off to battle, went.

4 hours difference

[Mike's City Diner-Boston-]
[-The famous Citgo sign-]
[-Madison, Maine and the Madison Mill in the background-]
[-Madison's Carnegie Library-]

I had an interesting week and travelled to Boston, Wednesday, to celebrate my birthday.

I was able to spend the day with Mr. Everyday Yeah and we checked out some of The Hub's varied sites, including a classic diner, special screening of the new Rambo movie and Kenmore Square.

On Thursday, I was in Madison, Maine, where I had a tour of an intriguing indoor greenhouse, owned by Backyard Farms.

I didn't have a chance to visit the library in Madison, but it's on my list of things to do, should I make it back, in the near future.

Additional thoughts; BTK

I just wanted to tie up a few thoughts I have related to Billy the Kid, the documentary I saw on Saturday night.

I’ve been doing some reading and research about how Jennifer Venditti came to make the movie and how she “discovered” Billy Page, the star of the movie. Interestingly, there has been some criticism of Venditti, for supposedly “staging” aspects of the filming. She alluded to his on Saturday night, during her Q & A session.

As a filmmaker, it’s easy to arrive on location and film something that isn’t true to the culture of the place. As I’ve stated before, you can have all your facts straight and still miss the story, because you miss the culture of the place. That seems to be a common theme when urban journalists and other chroniclers of events, arrive in rural parts of the country and try to tell a story that they don’t really understand.

To Venditti’s credit, she was very respectful, in my opinion, of the local culture. Since the filming took place in Lisbon Falls, I was paying particularly attention to how she represented the people she was filming. I think she was sympathetic, both as a fellow human being and as a filmmaker, to Billy and his family.

I found a few comments on Venditti’s blog about her being exploitive of her subject, Billy, in order to promote the film.

That’s always going to be a dilemma for documentary filmmakers, doing films like this one. You get close to your subject and how do you make the process as “natural” as possible? When does the camera “go away,” or does it at all?

I’m not a filmmaker, so I really appreciated having Venditti at the screening in Brunswick to talk to us about the process.

This film is special on so many levels and Billy is truly a unique and compelling figure and Venditti, to her credit, allowed him to have a voice for the first time in his life, as well as an audience to speak to.

Thank you, Jennifer.

Billy the Kid

The high school years, even for the most popular students, are filled with social awkwardness and rarely prepare you for life afterwards. For those students who lack certain undefined skills, look or act differently and find themselves on the outside of the bubble, looking in, this four year period takes on a hellish quality.

Director, Jennifer Venditti’s documentary, Billy the Kidd takes us inside the life of 15-year-old Billy, a high school “outsider,” growing up in a small Maine town. We witness what it’s like for someone like Billy, navigating high school’s many social landmines and diffiicult encounters, trying to keep it all together and intact.

Venditti, who discovered the main character, while conducting casting calls for another film she was working on in Maine, becomes captivated by Billy and decides to devote eight days of filming and following the young man around. The end result is a masterful, human portrait of a teenager, struggling to cope with a myriad of issues and someone we can all draw inspiration from.

What I think are the strongest qualities of the film are the questions it forces us to ask ourselves about the Billys we know, or meet, in our own lives. In a society that operates on mass conformity, what does Billy teach us about those who won’t, or more importantly, can't conform to standard cultural mores?

The film had an additional attraction for me, as it was shot in the town where I grew up and continue to be attracted to, Lisbon Falls. Much of the filming takes place in the town’s small downtown and centers on a local eatery, the former Mario’s Restaurant. It’s a rare person in town who hasn’t had at least one meal, or takeout dinner, from this local landmark.

During the filming of Billy the Kid, the unexpected happens. Billy meets a 16-year-old girl, Heather, who works as a waitress at the eatery, now called, Little Lisa’s. This chance happening builds an extra dimension of first love into an already compelling story and thoroughly pulls at the audience’s heartstrings.

Venditti’s film has been screened at numerous festivals around the world and was voted Best Documentary at the 2007, SXSW Film Festival and won Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The Melbourne Film Festival resulted in the Audience Award and an additional Best Documentary Award came courtesy of the Edinburgh Film Festival.

Currently being screened in major cities around the country, Brunswick was fortunate to be one of the stops. Frontier Cafe/Cinema, at Fort Andross was the venue for two sold out showings on Friday and four packed screenings on Saturday. The film moves on to Washington, DC and Boston, next.

What was great about the Saturday screenings of the film, was Vendetti’s presence and post-film Q & A with the audience. Vendetti spoke warmly and eloquently about the filming, her process and some of the underlying themes of the film, during the supper showing that my wife and I attended.

One particular exchange with the audience was informing and helped put the character of Billy and the film, into context, for me. When Venditti was asked how she came to choose Billy as her character study, she talked about working in the local high school (Mt. Ararat, where Billy attends school) and talking with students in the lunch room. She was struck by the cliquishness of the school and the daily experience during the lunch hour (saying it hadn't seemed to have changed much in 20 years, since she was in school). Asking students if they always ate with the same people, the students said "yeah." The one time someone tried to break down some of the walls, they all told about an event that happened with a kid who "freaked out;" the student's name was Billy.

Venditti said she found Billy, sitting alone. After speaking with him, finding him to be an intelligent, uniquely insightful young man, she couldn't understand why everyone wasn't sitting at his table. After watching the film, I was left with similar sentiments.

Frontier continues its quest to become a cultural hub, combining food, film and art, reclaiming the former mill space and a real destination for something unique and uncommon for our area.

With events like Saturday's and other food related endeavors, it is succeeding.