“He (Obama) has more Hawaii in him than Chicago, he’s laid-back, cool and collected,” said Neil Kent, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who has lived on the islands for three decades. “It’s hard to express anger here. It’s a very small, enclosed environment in which you have to live with other people.”

The other night they had a tribute to Studs Terkel, who recently passed away. It was an exciting hour listening to those who knew Studs well. I decided then I was missing something. One of his books is titled “Race: How blacks and whites think and feel about the American obsession,” and another is “Studs Terkel, Touch and Go,” a memoir. I walked to the library Sunday afternoon to check them out.

Terkel was a listener, and I believe an agnostic and agnostic in the doubter sense. One of the speakers in the special last week identified him as a “free spirited messenger of good will.” In the prologue Terkel says, “I have, after a fashion, been celebrated for having celebrated the lives of the uncelebrated among us; for lending voice to the face in the crowd.” He mentions his moment of ultimate astonishment that occurred about 30 years ago with a young mother, and he doesn’t recall whether she was black or white.

He had taped her and her kids demanded to listen to the tape. They insisted on hearing their mama’s voice. He pressed the button. “They howled with delight. The mother put her hands to her mouth and gasped, “I never knew I felt that way.” He also said he never met a petitioner he didn’t like.

Terkel was pleased that Obama was elected. I think people of both parties are satisfied with the results, and it seems to me he too is a listener and listens to both sides. Further evidence of this appeared in the Star Tribune that read, “Financial uncertainty, even among millionaires, has prompted many of the elite to forgo in-your-face displays of wealth. ‘There’s no need to do that to anyone,’ as one executive put it, ‘the new etiquette demands a more inconspicuous consumption.’”

Then you have to keep in mind that I really never know with any certainty what I am talking about unless it’s about Vaclav Havel. Havel was a voice of the people in the Velvet Revolution, and Terkel listened to the voices of the people just like we are beginning to do with each other in these times, these hard times.

I am pleased to announce I’ve completed the initial text of my book, “You Beau coup Dien Cai Dau,” that translates to “You are much crazy.” This is what the papasan would say to us when we were constructing our hootch on the side of artillery hill. If this actually gets published I would like to go back to Duc Pho again with an interpreter.

On the brighter side I was able to attend, as one of several guests, student(s) presentations of poetry studied in Vinnie White’s poetry class at Riverland where all were impressed with the multiple presentations.

One poet studied was Naomi Shihab Nye, who says, “Poetry is a conversation with the world; poetry is a conversation with the words on the page in which you allow those words to speak back to you; and poetry is a conversation with yourself.” And now if you don’t mind I’d like to share a poem I once wrote on the way to the train station in Chicago.

We’ve been holed up/where the town and country are separated by a fence/a field fence/passing from there to union station/we come through the city/where the fence is invisible but obvious/a definite boundary/where the west side Chicago brick fronts/rub up against one another/garbage bag plastic stretched tight/across the windows/west side Chicago drapes/where the stoops look to me like a stage/with black actors and actresses upon them/spilling off on to center stage street before them/he leans against indoor window/white T-shirt on/looking off center stage/watching busy inter-state traffic pass by/off stage center traffic/or are we the stage passing by/did he see me pass by/what is he wondering confined there/in those homes with character/a neighborhood “unsafe”/could I perform there/a neighborhood where the cars/are always being worked on/they too have been around/far longer that the cars/that surround the new neighborhood/the sterile neighborhood/where life is not close together rubbing/where everything is lifeless where life is not permitted/the sign that does not allow vandalism/worlds apart/minutes away/we pass in seconds—