Sixty-six Days Later...

I'm Not Religious, But...

Since moving to Barrow I've started listening to the radio show Democracy Now, which I used to love and hate. I loved it because almost every single time I listen to it, I feel a little bit more enlightened. I hated it because Amy Goodman's voice grates on me so much, almost to the point of wanting to turn the radio off (in fact, I'm quite certain I have turned it off before when I started to hear her voice). Today though, and after today, I just love it. She's done an excellent job on today's show, an Inauguration Special, which I'm listening to right now.

Today's episode has compelled me to go to their website right away, and this is the transcript I wanted to find --

AMY GOODMAN: It's January 20th, 2009. We're broadcasting from Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, on this historic day. We're just across from the Capitol, where Barack Hussein Obama will take his oath of office today at noon to become the forty-fourth president of the United States and the first African American president in US
history.

A record number of people are expected to turn out on the National Mall to watch Obama's inaugural address. D.C. police have projected crowds of around two million. Thousands of charter buses have been arriving over the past few days, bringing people from around the country. People are coming in from around the world. Subway trains are packed. There are lines for hours. Traffic is bumper-to-bumper. Dozens of balls and events have been held across the city in the lead-up to the inauguration of Barack Obama.

The biggest event so far was a free inauguration celebration and concert at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday. It came on the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King Day, the federal holiday. Half a million people turned out on the National Mall for the two-hour event that featured celebrities including Jamie Foxx and Marisa Tomei, Denzel Washington, Queen Latifah, Tom Hanks, Stevie Wonder, Shakira and many, many more. There were special performances by Stevie Wonder, Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, Bono of U2, and, well, Bishop Gene Robinson led the invocation at the event.

Robinson is the first openly gay Episcopal bishop. He had been given the slot after gay advocates protested Obama's selection of Rick Warren, a leading evangelical opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage, to give the invocation at today's inauguration. While the hundreds of thousands on the National Mall watched and heard Robinson's opening prayer on Sunday, millions around the country missed it, because HBO did not release his remarks. HBO was broadcasting the event. Obama's inaugural committee is apologizing, saying they had intended for Robinson's remarks to be included in the televised portion of the program. They said they "regretted the error."

Well, today, we'll broadcast Gene Robinson's invocation. It was captured by someone in the crowd and put on YouTube. This is Bishop Gene Robinson.

BISHOP EUGENE ROBINSON: O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will bless us with tears, tears for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women in many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless this nation with anger, anger at discrimination at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort, at the easy, simplistic answers we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth about ourselves and our world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be fixed any time soon and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility, open to understanding that our own needs as a nation must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance, replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences.

And bless us with compassion and generosity, remembering that every religion's god judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States. Give him wisdom beyond his years. Inspire him with President Lincoln's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts and Dr. King's dream of a nation for all people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our ship of state needs a steady, calm captain.

Give him stirring words. We will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him colorblind, reminding him of his own words, that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him strength to find family time and privacy. And help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we are asking far too much of this one. We implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand, that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.


AMY GOODMAN: Bishop V. Gene Robinson, giving the invocation at Sunday's "We Are One" inaugural event—again, not seen on HBO, though they broadcast the event for the country and for the world. The Obama team has apologized.

Christmas Games

For decades upon decades, people in Barrow have celebrated the Christmas holiday with Christmas Games, which kick off Christmas Day. There are children's games during the day and adult games at night. The adult games start at 7 pm and usually end around 2 in the morning. The games last until New Year's Eve into New Years. Since I was in NY for Christmas, I didn't get to go to the Christmas Games until the night of December 30. I wasn't really in the mood to go, but I forced myself, knowing this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Middle Finger Pull

I arrived at the Ipalook Elementary School 7:30 pm and there was already quite a crowd. When I walked into the gym, there were ladies seated in chairs up front. I went to the bleachers and sat in front of a woman, who I later found out was named Flossie. As soon as I sat down, she nudged me and said I should participate in the scavenger hunt. That's what the women seated in front were about to do – scavenger hunt musical chairs.

As the women search for an item, one or two chairs are removed. So there's an element of speed involved. The women start out sitting, the announcer names the item for scavenging, the women run out of their chairs to find the item, and have to return to a seat with the item in hand. When the next item gets announced, the women have to return the item from before, find the new item, and again return to their seats with the new item in hand. It goes on and on until there is only one chair and one winner. First place gets $20, second place $15, and third place $10. What's amazing about this particular Christmas Game is that it involves the audience as they are the ones that are supplying the scavenger hunt items.

Items for scavenging for the women's hunt and the men's hunt included DC sneakers, a penny from the 1960s, a lady wearing nail polish, a key chain with five or more keys, baby mukluks, and a pair of knee-high nylons. At first, as an audience member, I wasn't really participating. I didn't want to relinquish anything I had. But as the game progressed, I did want to contribute. When the item was an old $20 bill, I looked through my wallet. When the item was an Alaska Airlines boarding pass, I pulled one out of my pocket and waved it in the air, but mine wasn't needed.

The women who were playing were ruthless. I saw a younger women slide into the last chair available as an older woman was bending down to sit. The participants would run up and down the bleachers, scramble for the seats, but no one got hurt.

Other games included middle finger pull, foot races, one foot high kick. Participants competed within age groups and then "Married vs. Single." While all of this was going on, people were constantly pouring in and out of the gym, kids were running around the bleachers spilling their artificially colored shaved ice. Out in the hallway, rows and rows of tables were selling all kinds of food – hot dogs, pizza, meat on a stick, pretzels, as well as Native food. For the first time, I tried aluuttagaaq, a dish that consists of pieces of caribou meat in a thick gravy poured over rice. Throughout the evening, various people were calling out selling raffle tickets for an iPod Touch, 50/50, or the cake raffle.


I stayed for a few hours taking everything in, talking to Flossie and her family members who sat by her. I left well before 2 am. For New Year's Eve, the games started after the fireworks display, around 1 am and lasted until 5 pm on New Year's Day. For that night, they were giving away raffle tickets for cash prizes. Every half hour, they did a drawing for either $100 or $200. In order to get a raffle ticket, one had to be over the age of 18 and sober.

To me, what was pretty amazing about the whole thing was the fact that everyone just seemed to enjoy being in a big room together for hours and hours at a time. There was all this commotion and craziness, and at the heart of it was this simple desire to be together during the cold, dark holidays.