After a too-long absence, I'm headed back to beautiful Salt Lake City weekend for two house concert performances.   When my phenomenal guitar-slinging husband heard I was planning on coming back to Utah, he cleared his calendar to join me for both shows.  We love Utah, and we love house concerts.  Put them together in the SLC, and we're there. 

It's been so long since I've been to SLC, old fans may be wondering "I wonder what the music sounds like now?"  No need to wonder; just listen here on MySpace or visit the "official" site at www.jeansynodinos.com.

Here's the skinny on both shows:

Friday, September 26, 7:30 pm
The Gathering Room House Concerts
$15 suggested donation
For information and reservations,
Email Mike Sheffield: shef_ips@yahoo.com 
Or call Mike at: (801) 518-1352

Saturday, September 27, 7:30 pm
Room with a View House Concerts
$15 suggested donation
For information and reservations,
Visit www.roomwithaviewconcerts.com
Or email rsvp@roomwithaviewconcerts.com

A few thoughts about these marvelous venues and hosts.  This is our second visit to Mike Sheffield's series (but lordy, it's been a while)!  And we're thrilled to be doing our first "Room with a View" show, hosted by Michael and Laurie.  Hosting a house concert is a labor of love, and hosts are among the coolest people in the world.  Every musician knows it. 

House concert audiences are staggeringly smart, and breathtakingly good looking.  Bet you can picture yourself there already, can't you!?   If you've never been to a house concert, they are rare opportunities to see live music in an intimate, unplugged setting. 

For every one in SLC, hope to see you and ten of your closest friends for a show next week.  Just remember... if you're thinking of coming to Friday evening's show, then you might want to set your Tivo to record that evening's (first) presidential debate!  We sure live in interesting times, don't we?

Be well!

--Jean

Having come to the conclusion that our culture fundamentally misunderstands the concept of balance, I say: balance, schmalance.

At some point along the way, we all suspect we need a little balance in our lives. During our crazier times, we may even have a handful of beloved family and friends urge that we strive for a little more of it. This can happen whether we're overachieving, first-born Type A freakazoids or carefree n'er-do-well slackers; either extreme can provoke some well-meaning soul to suggest a little balance might help us find nirvana. We are told that balance equals health. Get yourself some of that "healthy balance."

What they're really saying to the Type A's is, "Slow down or you'll kill yourself and take a few of us with you."  What they're really saying to the slackers is, "Get yourself a job, man, cause we all need to Do Our Part."  Passive aggressive advice, frequently disguised as concern. Culturally, we kind of have a habit of doing that as a rule, unfortunately. But I also digress...

So what happens when, all by our lonesome, we come to the conclusion that we need to achieve this thing called balance?

Two Problems with the Pursuit of Balance As We Know It

Problem 1: Doing vs. Being.
The problem with trying to achieve balance is that we're talking about achieving a state of being by perpetrating some deliberate doing. Need balance? Just read the books. Watch the programming. Seek the Wisdom. Follow the instructions. Just do it.

This studious pursuit frequently results in the construction of a number of meaningful to-do lists which presumably include plenty of personal down-time "balanced" with high-octane action.

Everything is goal oriented, too. We "balance" any number of goals in order to improve our finances, our bodies, our minds, our careers, our marriage, our children, our homes. In fact, we are told by the Occidental Gurus of Balance that the more varied and numbered our goals at any given time, the more we should trust that we are appropriately balancing our lives. All through doing. Not being.

But balance is a lot like porn. We should know balance when we feel it, like we know porn when we see it. And it's been quite a long time since we in the West have trusted our gut. I think I'll schedule some time into my balanced day for meditation to ponder that one.

Problem 2: Time Frames
So. Now our days are scheduled to the quarter-of-an-hour in an absurd attempt to balance work against play, physical against intellectual, chore against hobby—all within the time span of approximately 16 waking hours (assuming we've scheduled ourselves for a balanced 8 hours of sleep each night).

We rise every morning and commit ourselves to the impossibly stressful task of achieving another days' worth of balance. We stress over the probability that we will fail miserably. And we add to that stress by reminding ourselves of those long-term goals, so we recommit doubly and more, until we fall down again, again, again—and finally stay down.

The problem, I believe, is that we seek to find balance in the dreaded 24-hour day.

A few years' ago, I recall hearing Teri Gross of Fresh Air interview the actor Annette Benning. Ms. Gross asked Ms. Benning how she balanced her life. As wife to Warren Beatty, as mother to their children, as Oscar-worthy star—how on earthy did she do it all? Ms. Benning's answer really was a bit of fresh air, and here it is, paraphrased.

She pretty much rejected the notion of daily and regular balance as we understand it. I think she said that balance was "overrated." She preferred to immerse herself thoroughly in one area of her life at a time, thank you very much, and live it quite fully until it became time to move on to the next thing. When working on a film, the role was her priority and received her focused devotion. In between films, her children and husband were first and foremost. She acknowledged loving every aspect of her life, but also acknowledged that attempting to balance them simultaneously would probably result in doing nothing particularly well or passionately.

Finally, an answer that made complete sense to my gut.

I recently raised this notion to a new friend, a great bass player here in Austin, right before a show we did together a few weeks ago. Michael strikes me as a pretty balanced guy, and I mentioned my distaste for our general notions of balance and Ms. Benning's wisdom.

Michael most rightly observed that those general notions about balance were all connected to the 24-day, and all Ms. Benning had done was extended the length of one day into several months at a time.

My husband, Charles, was in on the conversation, too, and one of them (can't recall which), invoked the metaphor of the sound wave. The 24 hour day is a high frequency wave – you can fit a bunch of 'em on the page jumping up and down. It's very active. It looks like the kind of amusement park ride that's bound to end in disaster. But take that wave and stretch it out into a nice, calm, low-frequency wave, and you've got a much more sustainable experience.

I swear to God, the image alone makes me feel calmer. So thanks to Michael and Charles for the visual metaphor and great discussion. I'll remember it as much as I remember the Fresh Air interview.

More on this topic at some point, I think, since I ponder it regularly. I am open to any and all wisdom as I seek that low-frequency vision of balance, but I plan to trust my gut on this one.

Need an x-files moment in your life?  Listen/download "Waiting for the Light to Change"... just added to the profile.

Enjoy.

Jean

I’m incredibly honored to be going to the Texas State Democratic Convention in June as an Obama-pledged delegate from Precinct 463 in Travis County, Texas.

Along with thousands of other Texas Dems, I’ve been learning about our state’s sincerely bizarre "prima-caucus" process of choosing delegates and deciding platform.

One of the skills that appears most valuable to understanding how delegates are chosen is math.  The formulas—almost algorithmic in their complexity—for determining the number of delegates (with an excellent commitment to diversity that includes sex, race, sexual orientation and disability) is extraordinary.

I am a babe in these woods, but the woods are SO BEAUTIFUL! 

Looking forward to posting more as I learn…

I admit it – I, too, was shaken by the revolving clips of Pastor Jeremiah Wright.  So I listened very closely to Obama’s speech in Philly last week, as well hours’ worth of punditry analyzing it to death on cable news programming.  A lot of voices declared that because he didn’t throw his pastor under the bus and denounce him as a human being, Obama can’t be trusted.  A lot of voices argued that he ended up throwing his white grandmother under the bus by mentioning that she’d expressed racist sentiments to him.  And a lot of people believed it was the most thoughtful, adult analysis of race in America in forty years.

Count me among the last group.  And here’s where I’m truly baffled by many of the other responses I’ve heard.

I’ve heard a number of pundits – from the left and the right – say that Obama can no longer possibly hold the mantle of a "unity candidate" without having renounced his pastor.  I confess that I am shocked by what I perceive as a complete misunderstanding of his speech and his actions, especially since we presumably live in such a deeply Christian nation.   (In full disclosure, I’m not a Christian, nor do I affiliate with any specific faith.  I was raised in the Greek Orthodox church, however, and come at this with full appreciation of my understanding of Christian values, as well my knowledge that the majority of voters in our country self-identify as Christians.)

So based on my understanding of Christianity, Obama’s speech was the epitome of Christian values and wholly unifying in its primary message. 

Is not a core principle of Christianity to "love the sinner – not the sin?"  Isn’t that how he was eloquently describing all of us, explaining how he could no more discard his preacher than he could his black community or his white grandmother?  He does not love their sins; he loves them as people. 

He is bringing us to the correct question:  How on earth can we possibly unify as a nation if we do not embrace everyone – both the angry old black man and the fear-based old white woman?  Had he denounced either one of them, he would have betrayed the very quality of unity to which he has spoken.  It strikes me that it would have been the equivalent of Peter’s denial of Christ. 

So I’m baffled by those responses.  Obama’s speech, for all its intellect, was far more Christian in its humility, far-sightedness and potential for change than any speech I’ve ever heard a politician make. 

Which is why it was also so politically risky. 

Politics—feeding frenzy that it is, now—demands its candidates and elected officials to give the public and pundits what it "wants to hear" in easily-digested sound bytes.  The rhetoric of politics has become fear-based in recent years, and it’s the presumed duty of candidates to calm our fears—fast, too.  Politicians are no longer permitted to speak at length about complex issues in adult language.  Oratory has been overturned for the focus-group-tested turn of phrase. 

Which is why his campaign both works and fails.  It’s manna to the minds and hearts of many Americans who have thoroughly had it with the politics of the last 40 years, and it terrifies those who are not ready to be challenged by it. 

Had Senator Obama thoroughly rejected his preacher as so many have—and still—call for, I would have determined it an act of hypocrisy, and my disappointment would have been enormous.

As self-confessed "political junkies," my husband Charles and I have watched thousands of hours of coverage over the last year and more around this November’s presidential elections.  It’s one of our common denominators – seems we were both reared this way and consumption of political news is in our blood.  

While my greatest TV crush as a kid was certainly David Cassidy, my first was on Garrick Utley, the NBC floor correspondent at the 1972 conventions.  Remember that one kids?  That’s the one where McGovern’s pick for V.P., Senator Thomas Eagleton, had to withdraw after it was revealed he’d undergone electroshock therapy as part of mental health treatment?  I remember going to bed the night I heard that news and thinking two things: 1) poor Senator Eagleton – no one deserves to be treated that way; and, 2) the Dems have blown it and Nixon’s gonna win again.  Rats.

I’ve been hooked ever since.

This is an Obama household.  While never a knee-jerk reaction to support his candidacy, sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t inevitable after being so radically moved by his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. 

The rest of the women in my family don’t appear so certain, though they’re all sure where I stand. I’m pretty sure mom and my aunt are going for Hillary, though conversations with mom have had a sort of "don’t ask, don’t tell" quality to them.  I’ve had the pleasure of some great email correspondence with my sister and my niece (who is thrilled to be voting in her first election this year).  No matter how these women vote in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary, I’m glad to come from generations of committed Democrats who have always reveled in our collective right to vote.

Those emails with my sister and niece generated the following list of Top 10 Reasons to vote for Senator Obama.  Here they are, just as I wrote to my amazing niece this week.  Other than the first one, they were written in no particular order:

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1.       I’ve decided to vote my hopes and not my fears.  This was my original reason, and can probably be traced back to the remarkable speech he delivered at the Democratic Convention in 2004 (find it on YouTube—it’s beautiful!).  I’ve waited my entire life for a candidate to inspire people to action—I’ve never seen anything like this before.  It’s more than special, it’s potentially transformative.  Obama calls people to action.  In the same way that Kennedy said "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," Obama reminds us that "we are the change we’ve been waiting for."  I believe that’s the only way we’ll truly get out of the mess that this country is in.  On the other hand, Hillary’s message has been "let me lead" (until, of course, she co-opted his "Yes We Can" to "Yes We Will").  To me, there’s a world of difference. 

2.       Hillary and her husband are deeply polarizing political figures, and I don’t believe she can win a general election.  That’s why hard core right wing talk show hosts are aching to see her get the nomination.  Need proof?  Here’s what happened in Ohio and Texas (and I understand it’s happening in Pennsylvania right now).  Right wing talk radio convinced a number of their listeners to switch parties and vote for Hillary in the primary.  CNN reported that more than 113,000 Republicans did just that in Texas, perhaps giving her the edge in the popular vote (though there’s not enough evidence to suggest it was due to the right wing radio hosts alone).  Apparently, the tactic might have had greater impact in the Ohio vote: (http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/did_10_percent_of_hillarys_votes_come.html)

3. His candidacy has proven good for our democracy.  After two generations of dwindling numbers at the polls, Obama’s candidacy is bringing record numbers of people -- and youth in particular -- into the process. It used to be cool to be disaffected and not vote.  The opposite is true now.  And I fear that if Hillary gets the nomination (especially if it comes through Super Delegates), all those once-disaffected voters will disappear back into the woodwork come general election time.

4. Dynasties are bad for democracy, and I’m fairly sure our Founding Fathers would agree – since it’s pretty much one of the core concepts they were leaving behind in England.  You and your sister have never known anyone other than a Bush or Clinton in the White House.  That’s messed up.  Elect Hillary, and you could be in your mid-20s before that changes (unless Jeb Bush got elected then...).  That’s REALLY messed up.  That’s England during the House of York and the House of Lancaster.  That’s not the U.S.   Moreover, Bill Clinton has shown himself to be an uncontrollable, narcissistic guy who is more than a little likely to throw his weight around and make this a "dual presidency" (also, not exactly in the Constitution).  In fact, I’d bet my whole life savings on it.  I know he was a good president in many, many ways, but his time is over, and the fact that they had to muzzle him on the campaign trail after South Carolina won’t mean a thing after she takes the oath of office.  I believe that the Constitution was a brilliant piece of work, as were the men who crafted it.  I believe they’d be horrified by the concept of these two dynasties holding the most important office for a potential 28 years (36 if we get Jeb… I’m joking a little there).

5. The Clintons have been the first and most aggressive mudslingers in this campaign.  If you’ve watched CNN or MSNBC or PBS or Fox or network news, you’ve certainly heard about their "kitchen sink strategy."  Two examples:

o         
                       1.  Bill Clinton threw down the race card and behaved very, very poorly as a human being on the campaign prior to the South Carolina primary (which is when I made my final decision not to vote for Hillary).  See the muzzle thing above.

o         
                       2.  Florida and Michigan primaries.  All Dem candidates agreed not to campaign in either state because both states broke party rules and held their primaries early.  Per party instruction, each state understood that their delegates would not be able to be seated at the convention.  In Michigan , where it was possible, all candidates except Hillary removed their names from the ballot (and she STILL didn’t get a majority of the vote).  Only Hillary campaigned in those states, even though she was quoted as saying about Michigan that it "didn’t count for anything."  Now, she presses to change the rules under the guise of acting on behalf of the voters?  Please.  Let’s call this one what it is: bullshit.

o         
                       Even after the polarizing issues Obama has confronted recently, Hillary rates much lower in polls around the issue of trustworthiness.  Check it out here: (http://www.gallup.com/poll/105097/Perceived-Honesty-Gap-Clinton-Versus-Obama-McCain.aspx)

6. VERY important:  We should watch the flow of money in this campaign.  Hillary has taken money from every political action committee under the sun -- including pharmaceutical companies, the insurance industry, and military contractors.  That money never comes without strings attached.  Obama hasn’t taken any PAC money, and while I’m not naive enough to believe he isn’t a political creature at heart, I can trust, from the start that he’s a whole lot less beholden to "special interests."  See that Gallup poll around trustworthiness, above.

7. Transparency in government.  Obama is asserting a belief that citizens have a right to know what’s going on with the government -- no more deals made behind closed doors.  No more secret testimonies.  This has become an issue over their discussion of health care reform, in particular.  He wants hearings with insurance companies to be aired on C-SPAN.  Hillary won’t make that pledge; and, of course she won’t -- they’ve funded her campaign.  And have you wondered why the Clintons haven’t released their tax return (and say they won’t until AFTER the PA primary)?  I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I’m gonna bet it’s got something to do with how Bill Clinton’s foundation is getting funded by some less-than-scrupulous overseas investors looking to make profits in, of all places, Africa and Dubai.  I may not be totally on the mark here, but I’ll be when we see it, it won’t be too far off the mark (the NY Times has been investigating this for a while now… we shall see).  BTW, they also won’t release a list of donors to the Clinton library, or her list of congressional earmarks for her home state.  Who the hell is getting all that earmark money?  What favors will have to be returned there?

8.  Hillary’s exaggerated a number of claims about her "vetted experience"—and perhaps have lied about others—which became clearer this week after the National Archives released 11,000 pages of her calendar.  Here are a few examples:

o         
                      1.  NAFTA:  Don’t believe the hype that she was opposed to it from the start.  Her newly-released calendar indicates she appeared publicly on behalf of the administration to plead its case at least four times.  I personally think it’s galling that she’s lied about this to Ohioans and is now going to try to do it again in Pennsylvania – two of the states hit hardest by this dismal failure of a policy.

o         
                       2. FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act).  She’s claimed on the campaign trail to have been a leading force behind this legislation, but you sure don’t see anything on her calendar to suggest she was taking all those meetings.  There’s also major debate as to her actual role in promoting the SCHIP program which provides critical health insurance coverage to children of the working poor who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance.  In the years I worked at the Children’s Hospital Association of Texas, CHIP was a pretty hot topic, and I don’t ever recall her name once being mentioned in connection to this legislation.

o         
                       3. She wants us to believe she has the same level of foreign policy experience as, say, John McCain, right?  OK, she certainly does have more experience than Obama, but she has also seriously inflated the role she played in all those trips to other countries as First Lady, based on her calendar.  Additionally, I’m stunned that no one on TV has pointed out the obvious problem with this "experience" argument, which is this: She wants us to acknowledge that Bill was a foreign policy whiz (and he was pretty good) – but Bill have even less experience than Obama when he took the oath of office!  For an analysis of her foreign policy claims, visit the nonpartisan Annenberg Center ’s FactCheck.org here: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/hillarys_adventures_abroad.html

o         
                       4. Hillary is forever mentioning her "35 years of public service," but how about noting that 15 of those years was as a corporate lawyer with the Rose Law Firm, during which time she served on corporate boards that included, among others, WalMart.  WALMART !!  She also speaks with affection of her first job working at the Children’s Defense Fund – which is great – but you probably didn’t realize that she held the job for less than a year.  It was also the only job she ever held in the non-profit sector, so it personally strikes me that her claims here are fairly exaggerated.

9. When I was still on the fence and undecided, I decided to check myself to see if I was leaning one way or the other because of sex or race.  So I pretended they were both white guys.  On policy issues, they’re pretty much a draw.  Their core beliefs on how to deal with health care, the war, etc., are actually quite comparable.  But here we have two ground-breaking candidacies in terms of gender and race.  So I looked at it this way:  If Hillary was a white guy, I’d be listening to a fairly caustic and uninspiring candidate who talks to me like every other politician has ever talked to me (which is to say, doling out whatever she thinks I want to hear).  If Obama was a white guy, he’d still be inspiring – he talks to us like we are actually adults.  Imagine that.  And it feels fundamentally wrong to vote for Hillary just because she’s a woman, if I don’t believe she’s the best leader.  I was on the fence with this one, but I’m not any more.

10. Having said that... they DO differ on their take on diplomacy in foreign policy, and I think this is critical to our rebuilding our image across the globe.  He’s willing to talk to our enemies, right off the bat.  She’s indicated that she believes a president should only let our emissaries (like Sec. of State) talk to hostile governments "at least for the first year" (how arbitrary!).  To me, Hillary’s perspective is more of the same grand-standing bellicose U.S. behavior that got us into this mess in the first place.  She’s a war hawk -- as much as McCain from her voting record -- and I want a president who is more committed to diplomacy and peace.  Both of them promise to get us out of Iraq in similar ways and turn appropriate attention to the front in Afghanistan, but when it comes to dealing with North Korea or Iran, I strongly prefer Obama’s policy.  Personally, I’m also not happy about the fact that when she cast her vote to authorize war in Iraq she voted against the Levin Amendment which would have required the President to try more diplomacy -- and report back to Congress on the results -- before force could be authorized.  You’ve probably heard her say on the campaign trail that she cast her vote for the "Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq Resolution of 2002" because she thought Bush would try more diplomacy first, right?  Well, please know that on the floor of the Senate, when she cast that vote, she said she was casting a vote "that might lead to war" and doing it "with conviction."

There it is.  One through ten.  The way I see it, anybody who wants to be president has got to have an ego the size of Montana .  I also know that no one gets into a campaign to lose, and politicians of all political stripes will do and say a lot of things to get themselves elected.  But when I look at the totality of the candidates, I continue to believe that Barack Obama has far greater leadership potential for us right now, and Hillary Clinton is far more untrustworthy and polarizing.