Introduction

“Even in the darkest night, the truth can be a guiding light.”  My father told me that when I was a little girl, whenever things looked bleak through my little-girl eyes.  It always sounded like a line from a poem, but if it was, I never heard the rest.  But like homey rhymes often do, it stayed in my head all the years since. 

Unprecedented events, things none of us could have ever imagined, have shaken our country to the core.  They have left us, I think, in a state of shock. 

So some part of me, the part that needs to do something (if only to keep my sanity) came up with the idea of this journal. 

For years, I'd guess – perhaps decades or even centuries – historians will debate how America got here.  I am not an historian, and I don't wish to debate anyone.  But I can't escape the idea that it wasn't by chance that we got where we are now.  I think we've been on the road that led here for years.  But knowing where the road leads, when you're on it, can sometimes be tricky business; much easier to know where you've been than where you'll end up.  But maybe, in some small way, by documenting this road and where we've ended up, this journal may shed light on… something… that may help others, somewhere, at some time, avoid what America did not avoid.

This, then, is my journal of what is and what has recently been.  I tried to be guided by my sense of what was most pertinent to that journey.  I am not a writer by profession, and while some of it has been transcribed verbatim from audio tapes or cut-and-pasted from the internet, much of it is my “best shot” at reconstructing from memory what was said, with the goal of conveying the meaning and the feelings of the speakers.

Joan Barker
November 8, 2010