Freedom

Our country is udergoing an extreme makeover. We can't read a paper, listen to a radio or turn on a TV without a reminder that our next president is a black man. He is a black man descendant from a Kenyan - not an American slave - but the symbolism is there for every son or daughter that has learned anything about plantations.

I have always been conflicted about the mechanics of the slave economy. I inherited it from my southern mother. She told me one day that "the war between the states ruined the southern way of life". This perspective seemed to influence her tolerance of people on the subway in New York.

My family was a blend of poor farmers from the south and Irish-German immigrants from the north. Each summer, I was bussed down to Norfolk from New York's Port Authority to visit my grandparents. It was a confusing trek filled with tastes and experiences so foreign I had a hard time recounting them to my playmates on Long Island was impossible. The trip was always a blend of oddities: vacation bible school, collards and okra, 'Sis Laura, High's ice cream and the long drive, further south to Creswell, to visit "Grandaddy".

This is house in Creswell, North Caroline where my great-grandfather lived and died. I remember handing him a banana in the dark surrounded by women in waiting for his passing.

Frank and I found the house this year and we toured a close-by plantation the same day. Slaves were an investment our guide said. He showed us the ledger where a blacksmith was worth $1800.

It could be argued that the plantation owner was an investor in human capital before mechanization but his "investment" was self serving. The investments in people that we need to make today need to serve everyone.

It is a privilege to work for other people and get paid for it. We can do whatever we want with our paycheck. We can do whatever we want with our time.

Brian – my son, graduate student in Portland – summed his impressions of Florida in a gentle way. “I can’t believe how many people come to Florida to stop working.” I don't know if that was a simple observation or a veiled suggestion that I need to keep working.

I am in Florida and I work from our motor home every day. Last Friday, I stepped away from the phone and the computer and drove to Deland to volunteer. I answered the call of Barack Obama to service. I invested four hours of time. I finally figured out I can work to be paid and find time to work to pay back.

That's freedom.