Profile: Ann Nixon Cooper, 106, singled out for praise by Barack Obama - Times Online

Profile: Ann Nixon Cooper, 106, singled out for praise by Barack Obama - Times Online

Yes

Maybe it was hearing Barack Obama saying "Yes we can" in his victory speech on Tuesday evening in Chicago, but this week I've begun listening to the Progressive Rock band "Yes" on my iPod.
My dear friends Dillon and Carol will be delighted, as a few years ago I tried them briefly, and really didn't like what I heard, for whatever reason.
However, I happened to have "Close to the Edge" on my iPod and had never listened, so gave it a go, whilst travelling towards Liverpool Street on the Chingford line this week.
I must say, thrilling stuff! What I particularly admire is the discipline of the music, and its perpetual restlessness...They seem to be good at working through a theme and then really developing it and moving on to other stuff. The lyrics are not the best bit in my opinion: well, when I say that, I experience them as glamorous-poetic: it's a particularly story-telling in song style that doesn't grab me particularly. But, one could say, at least these guys are trying to tell some kind of a story in the song! Give them credit for that.

However, the core of it for me is their music, which certainly feels like, and sounds like, real music...Thought through, following lines...Constantly experimenting with different traditions and feels. Their deployment of jazz-funk at times is thrilling stuff.

The track that particularly grabs me is "Siberian Khatru". The guitar intro to this is most gripping, "electric", rhythmically forceful, nearly strident but not quite, carrying the potential for wild dance with it...A delicate balance between the freedom of dance and a driving, really quite hard, forward momentum which then underpins the rest of the song, as it drives forwards, stating its themes.

I also like their mood changes: symphonic feel to it. Maybe this is what Dillon and Carol mean by "progressive rock"??

If so, I like it!

Republicans...
Time for a rethink of what they stand for methinks?
Last night it struck me with some vigour that Republicanism is rooted in tradition, solidity, conservatism, family values, in a sense values that we can all make sense of, and mean something to us all in one way or another...

The Republican values are not necessarily that painful to absorb in themselves. But, here's the problem...They are in danger of seeming fossilized, unhelpful, unchanging in a really, really fast-moving world, where flexibility and responsiveness, the ability not to get caught on the back foot are going to be needed.

Actually, the world has become less comfortable since 9/11...I speak of the Western world, the globalised, Americentric world we live in now has become less comfortable since 9/11, less easy to live in...

And in-fact traditional Republicanism appeared, fatally ( for itself that is), to be at first offering all the "Right" responses to that very discomfort, that de-centred discomfort. "Going at them" with full-frontal, visible acts of war, announcing a "War on terror" seemed the very thing to do for "dealing with" this terrifying de-stabilising discomfort, the enemy in all our midsts, in all our mists.

Yup, Republicanism, with all its rigid, fixed, problem-solving, solution-providing, securities seemed exactly the "Right" way to go to so many Americans.

Those values seemed ever more unassailable as troop after troop of men and women surged in to the deserts and the cities of the Arabian diaspora.

But then it didn't take long for the cracks to emerge in this very proactive "Philosophy" of certainty and "doing the right thing". The problem was that bodies began to come home, bodies of young men and women, rather than the men and women themselves. And their bodies seemed to be detached from their souls, and the "reason" seemed to be missing too. The reaons for all this doing seemed to be getting lost too.

So, bodies without souls, actions without reasons...And, hey, what about the ending?
Don't wars on terror have an end?
Doesn't remorseless Republican logic lead to a Happy Ending in the end?
Isn't it the way it has to go?
The way things have to be?
Doesn't Right have to be proved Right in the end?

How to deal with the ever widening and deepening gaps...? How to deal with it?
Put up a war hero and a glamorous pit bull?
Totems of the age old certainties...
But in the end, the questions remained, and actually loomed like storm clouds over the dreams...
And the credit crunched too...

And the old certainties and truths really did seem to more like old rigidities and less-than-truths...

And the old stories with heroic endings seemed more and more like that...old stories with happy endings...More and more divorced from the times that people were actually being forced to live through...

When souls are divorced from bodies, and only the bodies come home, then you are going to have problems getting people to stay in your dream. They will drift away in droves.

Republicanism actually needs to move with the times now, the times people live in now, if it has a hope of surviving as the other side of the coin.

"the centre of Chicago is absolutely heaving tonight": from BBC reporter, Adam Brooks, Live, Chicago.

Obama too mentioned the 106 year old lady, Ann Nixon Cooper, in his victory speech in Chicago.

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Ann Nixon Cooper, 106 years old, has seen presidents come and go in her lifetime and has outlived most of them. On a sunny fall morning, she left her weathered but well-kept Tudor home in Atlanta, Georgia, to vote early -- this time for Barack Obama.

The African-American centenarian remembers a time not long ago when she was barred from voting because of her race. Now she hopes to see the day that Obama is elected as the nation's first black president.

"I ain't got time to die," Cooper said with a smile.

"Even if he didn't win, I was happy for him just to be nominated," said the former socialite. "The first black president -- isn't that something, at 106 years old?"

At the Fulton County government center, Cooper was greeted by Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin.

Obama wins historic US election

Democratic Senator Barack Obama says "change has come to America", after being elected the first black president of the United States.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/us_elections_2008/7710040.stm

4:50 AM - happened to wake up. Absolutely incredible. The BBC panel are now talking about "not just a Democratic tide, but a tidal wave"...They are talking about the possibility of Obama winning NORTH CAROLINA...Which Bush won TWICE...The BBC tally is now saying Obama 338 McCain 155. Wow. Wow. Wow.

Time for bed...(!)...Wonder what I'm going to wake up to?

"First time since the 1950s that a Bush or a Dole has not been in Washington"...US commentator on BBC panel. Neat comment. They are now in kind of obit mode on McCain campaign.

Elizabeth Dole has lost in N. Carolina - actually the BBC just said she's "toast".

Had a great talk with John. On other news: he reports a return of his wise-ass sense of humour and wonderful sparkling wit! Great news brother John! Congratulations!

Florida projections continued: J. Vine projecting a 60% vote for Obama in Orange County, McCain on 40%

Some hints that early numbers for Barack in Florida are good, just hints.

BBC election night panel - Christopher Hitchens - saying very quietly, very firmly, "it's over".

0100 on November 4th: Pennsylvania projected Obama, New Hampshire projected Obama - BBC are reminding us that both states were McCain targets. He spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania. And Illinois "a state of wide lawns and narrow minds" (Hemingway quoted Dimbleby) projected Obama. Also Delaware projeted Obama. Tenessee projected McCain. Maryland Projected Obama.

First bit of news: Kentucky projected McCain. Virginia projected Obama.

Now about to phone my friend John Hightower in Fort Worth Texas.
We will hopefully catch up on the midnight GMT exit polls.
Also about the put the kettle on for a cup of tea.

Six Minutes to midnight on November 3rd 2008.
Exit polls due out in 10 minutes time from the US Presidential election.
Baited breath.
Flicking between Sky TV and BBC 1...About to watch some stuff on Fox.
An interview on BBC1 recorded a senator's encounter in Chicago with a 106-year old woman who had never voted her whole life...But today she was going out to vote for the first time for "that boy", that boy Obama.