STRANGE REACTION TO A BOOK ABOUT AMERICAN HOMES!

When I was selected as one of 60 out of thousands to be included in a book about homes of Americans during their youth, it never occurred to me that the senator and his wife, and their assembled crew on this project, would be the focus.

I thought the homes of people from all socioeconomic, political, ethnic, cultural, religion, occupational, regional, and name identity, from famous to unknown, would be the focus. I was wrong. People think it is a hagiography to the senator and his kind.

You can't get much lower in the food chain than I am, the son of an Irish Roman Catholic brakeman on the railroad from a small river town called Clinton, Iowa.

I have heard such comments: "I'm a Republican," with a smile, meaning, I couldn't touch this book. Another person looked at me, "Are you one of them," meaning am I a Democrat. Another person said, "I don't like John Edwards and his politics." I made no attempt to explain the book was not about politics but about American homes of, ah, forget it. And these are just the polite comments.

For those of interests, I was raised in a very devote Catholic home, whereas I am now very much still a Catholic, but a secular catholic at that. My home was one in which my parents voted the straight Democratic ticket and voted in virtually every election at whatever level it was, and I've followed that tradition. I am a registered Republican that votes Democratic as much as Republican, and so I guess I am somewhat of an independent. I have enjoyed a certain affluence, but grew up in a home that failed to make it from paycheck to paycheck. I have never forgotten that I am a lower class kid from a blue collar family. Never. I have lived a life that is like that Forest Gump character in the movie, seemingly always somewhere in the world that the serendipity of circumstances puts me where the action and the names of my times are showing up. Just a for instance, when I was a young chemist with Standard Brands, and the company sent me to a Food Technology Convention in Chicago, I was standing beside Adlai Stevenson waiting for the elevator to take me up to my room in the Palmer House in Chicago, when the television cameras blinded me, a secret service guy pushed me aside, and not gently, and Democratic presidential hopeful Stevenson was given a private elevator. And that is only the tip of the iceberg about such experiences.

So, I don't put people higher than I am or lower than I am, and I don't judge them by whether they are red or blue (politically), or white or black, red or yellow (ethnically), Catholic, Protestant, Hindus, Islam, Buddha, or any other persuasion.

So, if you think I have some difficulty with people judging a book about homes in terms of politics, you've got it right. Nor do I lead with the idea I am an American. I am a man who happens to be an American and I respect other men and women that happen to be of other national connections by the accident of their birth.

For me it is not an "either/or" world, but a world of you "and" me. It is not big you and little me, or big me and little you, but of you and I trying to do the best we can with what we've got and the chances we have had and what we have done with them.

I cannot at this late stage in my life understand sectarianism, violence or otherwise, local or international, and yet I know it keeps the pot boiling. I will not change this. Certainly, Senator John Edwards won't change this. I don't know him, will most likely never meet him, but if you read the book you'll see that he and the other 59 entries have paid their dues, and didn't have the time to wonder about much of anything else but making the most of their circumstances.

Be always well,

Jim

Reference: The book is HOME: THE BLUEPRINT OF OUR LIVES, HarperCollins Publishers, 2006. I have a four-page article with a picture of the home of my youth along with a picture of the courthouse. My piece was taken from my book IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE: MEMOIR OF THE 1940s WRITTEN AS A NOVEL (AuthorHouse 2003).