Center for the Study of Art and Community

A Rotary Journal of Creative Community Building

Welcome to CSA&C's Wild Caught Stories.  For the next year this space will serve as a discussion forum for a community of six thoughtful creative community builders who will share their differing perspectives on culture, community and current affairs. Each discussion cycle will begin with a question posed by one of the six, then, each week, one after another, the other members will write in response to both the current question and whatever has emerged in the ongoing discussion. After six weeks, we will start again with a new question.

The Wild Caught authors are: William Cleveland, Maryo Gard, Puanani Burgess, Milenko Matanovic, Erik Takeshita and Alice Lovelace.

You can follow the discussion and add your own comments below. Past posts are listed by Volume number and question in the Categories section on the bottom right.

The question posed by Milenko Matanovic for this cycle, Volume 4 is:

How do you see the future?

Chapter 2: Responding to “How do you see the future?”

I greatly appreciate Milenko Matanovic’s use of the word “see” rather than “imagine” as applied to the future in the question he poses to each of us, “How do you see the future?” (emphasis added) The distinction between “seeing” and “imagining” the future, I believe, is critical.  As a way of understanding the distinction I looked for the definition of “imagination” and “see” in dictionaries for the two languages I think in:  English and ‘Olelo Hawai’i (the Hawaiian Language). 

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, defines “imagination” as, “1:  The act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality.” (emphasis added)  “See” was defined as, “1 a:  to perceive by the eye  b:  to perceive or detect as if by sight  2 a:  to have experience of:  undergo  b:  to come to know:  Discover.”

As described in the Hawaiian Dictionary (1971) by Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbert, the phrase for “imagination,” is:  “no’ono’o ulu wale,” literally, “thought growing by itself.”  I interpret this to mean a thought unrooted in reality.  The word for “see” is “`ike,” and in English its meaning is, “To see, know, feel, greet, recognize, understand; to know sexually (For:4:275); to receive revelations from the gods; knowledge, understanding, recognition, comprehension and hence learning; sense, as of hearing or sight ; vision.”

The difference between imagining the future and seeing the future is huge, especially to my Hawaiian mind.  As a way of concretely showing you how I see the difference, I would like to tell you a story about how the Po’e Hawai`i (the Hawaiian People) re-learned/remembered how to navigate over long distances without using modern navigational instruments, from our cousins from the Satawal Islands in Micronesia.  I will tell you the short version.

In 1976, Mau Pialug, a Master Navigator in the Traditional Way of navigating using the sea, wind, birds, rain, all the natural elements and revelations from the gods and from the na’au, the gut.  For Hawaiians, the na’au is the place where we think; it’s where the brain, the heart, come together below the piko (belly button) with experience and intuition and form our mana’o, our thoughts.  Although Hawaiians had navigated across thousands of miles of ocean for many centuries in the Traditional Way, we had forgotten in these modern times.  But the resolve to relearn was strong and thankfully Mau Pialug was a willing teacher.  As we learned, he taught, so that the art and science of this way of navigating, of seeing, could live, but not just for the Hawaiian People, but for his people as well.  We became the holders of this knowledge for future generations of Hawaiians, Micronesians, and other Native Peoples around the world. 

Mau’s first student was a young Hawaiian man, Nainoa Thompson, for whom the sea was a nest of comfort and learning.  See http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/tops/nainoa.html

One of the first exercises Mau taught him as a navigator involved seeing the island Nainoa was headed to, especially if he had never been there before.  Mau would stand with Nainoa at an ocean lookout and tell him, “Look.  See the island you are going to, especially if you’ve never been there before.  If you cannot see the island, you can never get there.”  Day after day, hour after hour, Nainoa would look beyond the horizon and see Tahiti clearly, ‘ike pono, until he knew where it was, its smell, taste, its nature.  Significantly, Mau never said, “Imagine the island where you are going to.”  Mau always said, “See the island.”  If you apply this lesson to the future, to see the future is to see something rooted in reality – the future as something you can see, taste, feel, describe, touch.  If you can see the future, you can get there. This is different from imaging the future, which is the “act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality.” (emphasis added)

In the process of seeing the future, I am looking all around me for those principles, practices and characteristics of people, economic and social development I want the future to embrace.  I’m taking notes about ordinary kindnesses that I want to be practiced in my future world and am starting to make it real by practicing it now.  For example, there is a young woman who attends many community development meetings and when she walks into the room, she immediately looks around for the kupuna (the elders, of every ethnicity) and goes to kokua (to help them by getting water or food or a comfortable chair up front where they can hear the discussion).  I am following her example. 

Another example, often at meetings, some one, will come to the meeting later than others and there is an older man who will go to that person and “make room” for him or her by telling her what has happened so far in the meeting. 

In the community I am part of, Wai`anae, on the western side of the Island of O’ahu, there are many groups of people re-establishing the growing and sharing of healthy food, children and families:  Ka’ala Cultural Learning Center, Hoa’Aina O Makaha, MA`O Farm . . . The future is all around us, I can see it.  What are you seeing?

I am very grateful to Milenko for asking the question and giving me the opportunity to reflect on this important question. 

 Aloha (Love and Respect)

 Puanani burgess

 

Chapter 1: How do you see the future?

Imagination is powerful. It guides our thoughts which in turn guide our actions. Imagination is the soil in which our ideas grow. Imagination is what allows our actions to change.

Images of the future crafted by people of the past are now our reality, just as current images of the future will shape tomorrow’s reality.  If we believe that to be true, we have an obligation to articulate and examine our images of the future.

Dutch futurist Fred Polak studied the importance of the image of the future.  His conclusion: 

The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures.  As long as the society’s image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom.  Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive.

My interpretation of Polak’s words: Truly creative thinking about the future requires tension–the tension of holding both the real and the possible in our awareness at the same time. 

I believe our images of the future must be more than incremental improvements on the present; they must be daring and far-reaching. Polak called such a view the “other” future -- heretical in its newness, with the ability to broaden our thinking so that our lives are not limited by what is apparent and evident. If we can be so daring, we can willingly and eagerly participate in cultural change-making, rather than kick and scream when faced with the unfamiliar.

With disciplined imagination, an informed vision of what we, the people, want to be and do, change can be a joyful process. The American cultural philosopher William Irwin Thompson said that, like fly-fishers, “we cast images in front of ourselves and then slowly reel ourselves into them, turning them into reality.” To accomplish this, we need to examine and inform our imaginations, and share what we imagine with others. 

Our time is ripe for a thorough re-imagination of what the world will be when it grows up.  This is demanding and audacious work.  It takes courage to unpack one’s inner constructs and peer into assumptions and impulses that make us who we are. Seeing without distortion takes courage.  Every day, media and pop culture pound us with messages of who we should be and what we should do.  If we don’t contest these messages, we accept them – and consign ourselves to a lifeless repetition of the familiar.

What is my image of the future?  Here is how I described it in my recent book Multiple Victories:  

Future cities will be compacted into clearly defined neighborhoods that will be smaller and more densely populated than our sprawling suburbs and ex-urbs today.  These new cities and towns will combine the best of traditional urban design with modern mass transit and communication technologies . . . Offices, stores and restaurants, housing, parks and open spaces will all be within walking distance for the people who live there. Tentacles of restored land with healthy watersheds, river banks, ravines and hills will reach into the heart of the city, while clear boundaries will honor spaces in which farms and wild lands flourish and nurture the new metropolis.

As our resurgent cityscapes mature, architecture, cuisine and the arts will re-develop regional styles and celebrate local choices, resources and sensibilities.  

In this future, the differences between our cities become apparent and delightful. The joy of walking and the convenience of alternative transportation will diminish the need for the single-passenger automobile, reduce its infrastructure and restore a human scale to the cityscape.   

An increasingly ”walkable” environment will allow us to cluster our important civic institutions, such as, the city hall, library, and museums, shopping and work. As a result, more and more people will find themselves drawn to the middle of our new town where they will also find a beautiful, intentional space where they feel welcome to put up their feet, play games or discuss the matters of the day. This space, the community’s gathering place, is the heart for communal identity, welcome, and social rejuvenation.  Every neighborhood will build such a space where people create together something that captures their collective talents, their aspirations and their appreciation of the many community connections.

This image flows from my own imagination, shaped by an increasingly urgent imperative: Stop waste! We must stop wasting our time, creativity, learning opportunities. We must stop wasting our health, community, local democracy, our useful differences, character and identity. We must stop wasting the innocence of the young and wisdom of the elders. We must end planned obsolescence and stop wasting our natural gifts of air, water, soil and the creatures that live around us. If we can muster the strength to do this, we can bring about a speedy transformation of our urban, social and natural landscapes. With courage and commitment, we can develop solutions that address these issues coherently and solve multiple problems at once. If we can come together to create such solutions, we can reverse the current trend of multiplying problems and bring about, ultimately, a world that will not need constant remediation.

I have my own library of mental images that inform my imagination and shape this vision. What do you see? What sorts of patterns or themes? What images of the future spring from your own imagination? 

Milenko Matanovic

January 14, 2010

Issaquah, WA

 

Chapter 3: Standing at Places Where Worlds Meet

  By Maryo Ewell

To a good Midwestern protestant, this question prompts the kneejerk response, “Aw, I don’t have any special gifts.”  But a couple of years ago, I had the fortune to be in a group which was given this assignment: “Starting from age 5, and going in five-year increments from then till now, write down moments in each period where your joy was so great that time stood still. (In some periods, there might not be any such moments; in other periods, there might be many.)”  Then, we had to tell a partner our autobiography based only on these moments, and our partner had to identify the themes she heard.

 My partner noticed how many edges and intersections there were in my story.  “When I was 11, our apartment building was at the place where the woods met the open field.”  “I’m a Wisconsin girl even though I live in Colorado.” “I’m neither completely of the state arts agency field nor of the local arts agency field.”  “I have been the token arts conservative on a radical board, and the token arts radical on a conservative board.”   She suggested that perhaps this was a theme that I needed to consider as I reflected on my life: the theme of standing in two worlds at once, at places where worlds meet. Funny, I hadn’t noticed that. 

When I mentioned this to my husband, who taught in an environmental studies department, he said, “Well, in ecology it seems that the richest crucibles for life and evolving life are in the places where two ecosystems overlap.”

I got to thinking that this might be the role, the gift, of the community arts developer. 

I was part of a study team recently that looked back at 50 years of community arts in Wisconsin, assessing what makes an effective community arts developer.  One woman, who had interviewed thirty people, said something like this: “I am noticing that the really effective community arts activists are simultaneously insiders and outsiders.  They accept this even if it makes them uncomfortable. Some outsiders have lived in their community for years and years. Some insiders may not have lived there very long. The question is not one of longevity so much as of perspective. The effective arts developers I heard about cultivated – sometimes unconsciously - both roles. And they understood the importance of putting aside a little loneliness, a longing to play just one role, because they were at their most effective when they played both.”

 Makes sense to me!  Insiders know how things work and who makes things work, and they are reputable and broadly trusted and have good networks of people from many divergent walks of life in the community. Outsiders can compare their community to others more objectively, less parochially. Maybe they are more alert to what is happening culturally in the state or the nation and think about how to bring new ideas home, find resources no one had thought about, see unrealized possibilities. Outsiders can sometimes pose questions that insiders cannot. They can bring in new language. They may be more likely to notice the stories that a community tells about itself. Are they stories of successfully overcoming odds?  Or are they about being worn down by outside forces?  These stories may give the leader clues about developing a plan for the role the arts can play.

It resonates for me, living in the overlaps. What about you?

 

 

Chapter 2: The Gift of the Partnership Path

This is a personal story about a precious gift.

At one time I had the privilege of running one the largest arts colonies in the world.  Actually it was a franchise.  We started small but ultimately we had 38 sites operating under the auspices of California Department of Corrections.

Here’s the story: In the late 70’s, I worked with a woman named Eloise Smith, from Santa Cruz. Eloise was a battler and inveterate seeker of truth and justice.  One of her great quests was to insinuate the arts into  community life as a force for healing and self expression.  After a lot of research and musing she came to the conslusion that that the best way to make the case for the doing this was go through societies back door-- with the prisons. 

When we made our first prison visit, to the California Medical Facility, in Vacaville, the first prisoner she talked to was a guy named Verne McKee. Verne was president of the both the visual arts and musicians guilds. He told Eloise straight out that a small investment in the Vacaville prison arts community would save lives.  Verne was a con with the gift of gab and Eloise was a hard sell, but, after a lot of back and forth, she decided he had it right.  As a result of their work together, a lot of other folks came to that same conclusion. 

A few years later, after we started the Arts in Corrections Program the bean counters at the Department came and told us that when prisoners made art, their incident rates went down inside, and they committed fewer crimes when they got out.  By 1986, there were art programs in all of California’s prisons. And, as the system grew, so did our franchise.

Chapter 1: What is your gift? Why is knowing your gift important?

In the past fifteen years I have developed exercises which are part of a community-building and conflict transformation process I call, “Building the Beloved Community.”  In one of the anchor exercises I call, “Guts on the Table,” I ask people to tell three stories.  The name of the exercise,“Guts on the Table,” comes from the Hawaiian understanding that your na’au, your gut is the deepest place from which you think:  it’s the place where your mind, heart, intuition and experience come together.  It is the place where mana, your spiritual core lives.  The Hawaiian  word for thought is mana`o.

This is a formal process, a ritual.  The methodology is simple:  create a safe space and help people to find their stories and to tell them.  This exercise was designed to help people get deeper, faster.  People sit in a circle, on chairs or on the floor, and each person will tell their stories, one-by-one.  In this exercise, I usually begin [one of the core principles of doing this work is that you should never ask someone to do something that you haven’t done or aren’t willing to do first].  So, I as the facilitator will tell my stories first, and then the circle moves to my left and continues until it circles back to me.  Within the past 15 years, I have been part of over 1,008 circles.  Here are the stories people will tell:

1.  Tell the story of your names, all of your names.  Usually, we just introduce ourselves with our first names and leave out all of their other names which contain much of our personal histories.  People tell the story of how they were named or who named them; the meaning of their names or how they feel about their names.  When you tell the story of your names you tell the story of your people, your family, and what you feel about your name(s).

2.  Tell the story of your community, however, each participant defines “community.”  When people tell the story of community, they tell the story of how they live as part of a group. 

3.  Tell the story of your gift(s).  This is usually, the most difficult story for people to tell.  The belief is that if you talk about your gifts, then you will be “bragging on yourself,” which in many cultures is not appropriate behavior.  The emphasis is for people to tell what their gift(s) is/are,  rather than their skills.  The importance of this story is to enable them to wonder what their family, organization or community would be like if it were gift-based and not just skill-based.  (Most of us, when applying for a job, have only been asked to detail our skills and experiences, not our gifts.  My theory is that gift-based organizations do work that is more spiritual and satisfying and long-term.)

Chapter 4: The Story, "Story" and the Ides of Iraq

Stories can be fun, or frolic or amuse.
But, they are also nimble, tricky, malevolent, and …
well, you fill in the blank… 

Some say, “If you own the story
then you hold the power.” 
Others say, “Defining the story” is defining the future 
and that subjugation is story killing.

What we do know is that every
individual, every family, every community
is defined by their stories.

And, If we don’t tell our stories

we lose our dignity,
our humanity,
our souls,
as in South Africa, under Apartheid;
as in the Yugolslavia, with Milosivic;
as in Cambodia, during the Khmer Rouge times

as in Iran

These particular stories teach us that
tyranny is story subjugation driven by fear. 
Here’s how it works:
1.    Keep them from telling the story.
2.    Ignore the story.
3.    Control the story by altering or editing it.
4.    Romanticize the story
5.    Simplify the story,
6.    Trivialize the story
7.    Buy, then sell the story
8.    Kill the story

9.    Kill the story teller

But, you know, these stories do not die.
They morph and mutate
like love, like friendship,
like the blackberry canes and kudzu
that swarm the land and climb our fences

And you all know that story about friends and fences.
Good fences do make good neighbors …and…
good stories too.
And, of course, when those good stories migrate and join
at the intersection of self interest and common ground
no matter how stifled, those tall tale siblings
become democracy zygotes

Yes, Democracy is the art of collective story making.
Democracy says:
“Here is the story to this point—Let’s decide together what’s next.” 

What we call “the arts” are the tools humans use to craft stories. 

Words, music, movement, symbols, color, metaphors,
they all get into the act.

Chapter 3: Art is a temporary condition

The traditional Balinese had no word for art because doing something poorly was not an option: every task was completed with the care and excellence we demand from our art.  As we explore the role of the arts, cultural policies and funding, we often leave out this very basic notion: all things deserve to be done well.  Whatever else art may mean to different people, at its core is the notion that human acts can be elegant in their expression, beautiful in form, resonant in relationship to people, materials, and community, and magical in their capacity to connect the part to the whole, whether that part is a brushstroke in a painting, a word in a poem, a piece of stone in a wall, or a single note in a concert. In art, small, attentive steps combine to make an excellent whole.  The process and end result are inseparable; integrity in each step leads to good work.

Because it is simpler to do this work in small doses rather than throughout our entire lives, we humans invented art to remind us how our lives should be.  And soon afterwards, we started to forget that art is about everything and made it into something separate and special.  We pointed at something and called it art, and in the same moment, without saying it, we relegated the rest to not-art.  What was originally meant to roam free, to be a part of everything, was now set apart.  We accepted the notion that while art is exceptional; the rest of the world is not and can therefore become polluted and ugly, violent and wasteful.  So, slowly, art has become a collective counterpoint to the madness of a modern world that glorifies planned obsolescence.  The uglier our doings, the more we repent by putting up another art museum or pubic art project.  (“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” “Build a small museum and three public artworks.  Do public art every year. Repeat the museum bit every twenty years. Your sins shall be forgiven.”)  Museums—our artistic zoos—will preserve valuable artifacts done with utmost care, but they will not replace what we are destroying through our careless everyday activities.

These were the thoughts that were running through my mind in the late 60’s and early 70’s, when I was a young avant-garde artist in my native Slovenia, a member of a now quite famous (in Slovenia, at least) group OHO.  We involved many non-artists in our works, asking them to contribute their own creativity.  Our projects were often enacted in public places and in natural landscapes.  Documentations of the events were exhibited in galleries and museums, at first throughout Yugoslavia (Slovenia was then a republic), and later on in other countries.  In 1970, I was one of two members of our group to travel to the USA on the invitation of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where we presented in the international Information Show.  I had a chance to meet well known American artists and inquired about their work and success. That experience both inspired and vaccinated me from following the established artist’s path to success.   I was inspired by the grand schemes of artists like Christo who was planning monumental installations and selling numerous drawings and sketches to finance the plan.  I made friends with Walter de Maria who filled a valley in the Southwest with hundreds of metal rods to attract lightning.  The sheer audacity of their projects was impressive, as was their business savvy.  I liked them very much and was initially inclined to follow their path.  What vaccinated me, however, was a growing suspicion that that path would take me away from my deeper desire to push art into life. 

Chapter 2: Seizing the Reins

I agree with Maryo Gard (3/14/09), there is a false distinction between mainstream nonprofit arts organizations and informal groups that operate for profit or an artist collective that comes together to explore a shared interest or cause. While money is one distinction that separates them, I believe the second is service.  If they don’t deliver on their mission and provide needed services they cannot continue to operate since running on a deficit, spending money they don’t have, isn’t an option.  
The bottom-line is constantly informed by what their public wants and needs.  They have to listen to their audiences to survive.

Even in the best of times artists and arts organizations face challenges with funding and attracting audiences.  In the face of massive cuts during the 80’s that started at the National Endowment for the Arts and resonated through every state and local arts council conservatism swept through the arts and support for the individual artists dried up completely. Today the struggle continues as organizations attempt to balance budgets that refuse to balance. 

But this isn’t a competition, right.  Everyone is having a difficult time surviving this economic down turn that hasn’t hit bottom yet. Like Maryo said “we need to embrace the chaos and take a new look at ourselves”.  That said I want to champion the cause of the individual artists, who doesn’t have to embrace the chaos because they live it. I want to argue for a return to providing artists-initiated grants, money in the pockets of individual artists so they can make art that serves their community, however they define them.  For me the core of the ”Arts” is the individual artist.

As a collective community, we cannot know what is ahead, but we do know that a society without art is a truly bankrupt society.  We know that it is art that makes us human and in these times we need art even more than ever.  But, just as we used the arts to help students make new discoveries in learning, I want to advocate for art that lays bear our social relations to each other, to history and to the possibility of change. 

Chapter 1: Does The Lightbulb Want To Be Changed?

A couple of days ago, the New York Times said that unemployment has now passed 8%, and that many of the now-vacant jobs won't be back, as the nature of jobs will have changed by the time this recession is over.

I wonder what this means for the existing non-profit arts and culture groups. Certainly I've seen the same predictions that everyone has, predictions ranging from 10% to 30% of today's non-profits closing their doors. I've been talking to people who are saying, “the nonprofit groups in trouble are those who think that if they just try harder and work more efficiently, everything will be OK.” (Puts me in mind of Boxer, the strong and loyal draft horse in Orwell's “Animal Farm.”) Then they mention “the new paradigm.”

I wonder about the elements of that new paradigm. I know what I hope it will include...

... things like eliminating the often-false distinctions between today's non-profits, for-profits, and “unincorporated” groups ... seems to me there's gotta be a way to focus on what groups are trying to do, rather than on how they are organized.

... things like eliminating the moribund distinctions among “high/fine” arts, “community” arts, “pop” arts, “folk” arts ... some of the most exciting work is being made at the intersections, or when one form simply helps itself to the morés of another form.

...things like maybe – dare I breathe it? - getting rid of a number of arts facilities, with their insatiable appetite for maintenance and overhead money, that may, who knows, actually be holding back arts participation, rather than furthering it. (I'm remembering that in Wisconsin during the Depression and the '30's, community arts activity exploded: there was a surge of locally-written “home talent” plays presented at county fairs, a surge of county-level music festivals, an artist-in-residence in the College of Agriculture, participatory art and music on the educational radio station - “Let's Draw!” and “Let's Sing!”. Just doing it, not buying it. So... success would be the number of people participating, and the meaning in their lives, not the number of organizations surviving, right?

Still, these hopes are pretty vague. And I phrased them in terms of what things won't be, rather than what they will be, didn't I? I'll recognize changes when I see 'em, but what does “a new paradigm” mean in planning terms?

I do see instances where these murky “hopes” of mine are already the reality. There are a lot of exciting artists' collectives and youth activities and small, entrepreneurial for-profits whose participants may have never experienced the “old way of doing business” so they aren't held back by the past. Most of us staff and board of arts organizations know that we need to embrace the chaos and take a new look at ourselves, but - what does that mean in terms of the day-to-day? So we tend to do what we know, and “work harder, work more efficiently.” I see foundations deciding that they won't fund arts and culture in favor of funding in life-and-death arenas, and I think, these foundations are even more behind-the-times than some of their constituents.

I'm remembering Ruby Lerner talking about diversity at a conference, years ago, and she said something like, “For a lot of groups, getting diversity on the board means attracting people who may dress differently or who may look different from us, but who think the same way that we do, so that the basic nature of the organization can remain the same. “

Put another way, “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?” “Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to be changed.”

“To be changed” is passive, of course, and we must be active. We say we embrace change. That's a fine first step. 

But what in the name of heaven does that mean?  And what do we do next?

Chapter 5: It's a new day...or, so the choir sung

“It’s a new day.”  Or, so the choir sung.

It was just after midnight, in the early morning hours of January 20^th, 2009 and I stood in the grand hall of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.  The 2009 Green Inaugural Ball had been underway for several hours with thousands of swirling guests clinking glasses of wine, chomping on little bits of food on toast, and trying not to step on the long flowing ball gowns.  Celebrities were lining up outside to walk in on the “Green Carpet” where a flock of paparazzi were assembled to ask them why they cared about the environment, and what sort of plug-in hybrid they drove.  To say the least, it was a quite a scene.

Now when I said earlier that the choir sang, I really meant it.  Members of the Agape Choir had flown from California to D.C. and were singing backup for will.i.am, a dynamic, and politically charged lyricist and frontman for the Black Eyed Peas.  As they sang “it’s a new day, a new day,” I found myself thinking deeply about those words, and about all of the passion and hope that was behind them.  The choir on stage was not the only group talking about how the world would change after the presidential inauguration.  For weeks, I had been hearing about how things were about to be very different.  As we move into the first few weeks of the new presidency, countless articles have attempted to quantify the differences between President Obama and past leaders, many of the articles bringing bold distinctions to light.  But even with all of the talk about the “new day” that was dawning in America, I couldn’t help but think back to some of the comments in the previous threads of this online dialogue.