My sister and I worked up a plan to get our family voices onto a shuttle that would go back and forth over the pond.  The project is still on, I hope: on this end it’s PJ who has the tape, with voices of what it’s like to have hamburgers and ice-cream at 704 North Webster in Catlin, and to be concerned with hearing problems.  I hope that tape keeps circulating.

Still remember Stephen Vincent Benêt?  The author of “John Brown’s Body” which was later transformed into “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  That what he is most famous for, but there’s lot lot more where that came from.  For instance, this:

Oh yes, I know the faults and the other side, The lyncher’s rope, the bought justice, the wasted land,

The scale on the leaf, the borers in the corn, The finks with thier clubs, the grey sky of relief,

And the long shame of our hearts and the long disunion.  I am merely remarking — as a country, we try.  As a country, I think we try.

Perhaps PJ no longer remembers taking that tape home with him.  In that case, I have only my memory to rely on, which is to say, not all that much any more.  Here’s what stands out, though.  Our dad, who has been a republican for his entire life, and who spent much of his time as a young man with a step-father with rabid go-out-and-kill Roosevelt instincts, starts talking on the tape about Obama.  And you know what he says on that tape.  He says he thinks the boy is trying.  That there is no doubt he is trying.  And that that’s about all you can expect from a man. 

Your soul goes marching on, my dear Dad.