Jimmy Carter had many virtues, even as president, that affected me deeply.
He reigned over an economy that made my parents solidly middle-class. My dad, a pharmacist, and my mom, a late-career speech therapist, never had a lot of savings until the interest rates that banks were paying skyrocketed to nearly 18 percent. All of a sudden, working people with small retirement funds found their savings accounts swelling to six digits. As a result, my folks were empowered to help me at crucial junctures — helping me put a downpayment on my house, for example. Yes, my mortgage rate was over 7.5 percent, but the savings rate had outstripped that by 100 percent. It definitely made a difference that banks were paying more than the stock market (in which my parents never invested)!
Carter was also the first president to speak about human rights and human dignity and mean it. He pardoned Vietnam War resisters in that spirit; he ended U.S. support for the Somoza in Nicaragua and Pinochet in Chile and Videla in Argentina and Geisel in Brazil — and he returned the Panama Canal to Panama. He arranged peace between Israel and Egypt, and he was the first president to visit sub-Saharan Africa, ever. He was fundamentally a peacemaker.
He was the first public figure to proclaim his Christianity not as an explanation for intolerance, triumphalism, and rightwing bullshit, but as a motivating force for tolerance and compassion. Rather than frightening me, his Christianity moved me. And when he confessed to having committed adultery in his heart many times — which I heard as a shout-out to men to be honest about their sexuality and to cultivate restraint and respect for women — he set a standard for masculinity like no other male politician of his time had the balls to do.
After his presidency, Carter built Habitat for Humanity into a nationwide force (my entire family has hammered nails and painted sheetrock for Habitat); he told it like it is about Israel as state intent on grabbing territory, not cultivating peace; he co-founded the Elders, a small confederation of Nobel Peace Prize laureates and retired political figures, including Nelson Mandela, that sought to be a global force of loving leadership.
Farewell, Jimmy Carter, and blessings on your head.
•
Here are two recent C-Notes (100-word pieces) of mine. You can read more of them at my new website, Babushkin’s Playhouse. Please visit. As John Lennon wrote, “A splendid time is guaranteed for all.”
(for Jimmy Carter)
During my years as a squirrel, two insights became daily prayers. One: that the poorer you are, the sicker, the more starving, the more despised — all of that — the less you have control over time. You can’t plan your day, let alone your life. So it becomes useless to worry — which you can flip to mean that you’re living in the moment. Then your power jumps, one hundred percent!
Two, not so different: that living in the moment, jumping from limb to limb, is an expression of faith — faith that the world will catch you, hide you, feed you.
Maybe.
(for Elsie)
Watching my dog
bounce
on all four pads
her tail held high
her jowls
sweeping in the scents
of the forest
reminds me
of the day
when I broke eight feet
in the standing broad jump
of the day
I couldn’t miss a shot
from anywhere
on the concrete basketball court
of the day
I ran down that blast
in center field
and backhanded the ball
just inches off the ground
of the day
I first slipped into
a woman’s silken body
and we sighed together
O my god
O bliss
Now I whistle to the pooch
and she turns . . .