A Bipartisan Moment

We've put this photo up for deeply sentimental reasons. As some of our cafe regulars know, I have a tendency to call one of the candidates for the Democratic nomination for president "Barry." Some have gotten a bit bent out of shape over it, but that was the name he was known by when we all lived in Hawaii and graduating from high school in 1979. One of my best friends in junior and senior high school was his lab partner at Punahou and it was her parents who originally told me that it was Barry who was running for president, a big surprise.

Here's a photo taken just a few weeks ago in Baltimore during the primaries where Senator Obama and my old friend had a short reunion in the crowd after nearly three decades (they both went to Occidental College after high school as well) and this photograph was taken at the moment he recognized her and remembered her, calling her by her first name in a flood of memories. Today she is an assistant principle at a ethnic diverse elementary school in the Baltimore area where she lives with her family, a long way from Hawaii. We must give him big-time points for remembering his old friend. Aloha ke akua. And to all you kids out there, do your chemistry and science labs. You just never know.

So we send out this long-distance dedication, yes, to Senator Obama, to my old friend now in Baltimore training up the next generation, and to all who take the risk to do something more than anyone ever expected.