John Joseph of Denver responded to an invitation to a podcast interview that I posted through the Mile High for Obama group at BarackObama.com. Having just finished The Audacity of Hope, I was looking for someone to discuss the book with me.  John, who is 27 and a programmer, met me at a Starbucks and shared insightful perspectives on the book and what he thinks may be ahead in the long campaign.  I liked the originality and nuance of his opinions.  For example, near the end of the interview he revealed why, even though he is a huge fan of Obama, he might actually prefer another Democrat to win the nomination this time, with Obama as Veep.  Not that he wouldn’t be thrilled to see Obama elected president in 2008.  Anyway, it was great getting to know John through the Obama web site, which is smartly designed to make it easy for Obama supporters to connect and share ideas and activities.

Each year the Brown Palace Hotel in downtown Denver hosts the top steer from the National Western Stock Show.  This year’s top steer was deemed too skittish to make a solo appearance in the ornate hotel, so his runner-up came along for company.  I interviewed the hotel general manager, Miss Colorado Rodeo, the boy who raised Titan, and my friend Michael Drummy and his sister-in-law, among others.  I love this event for combining Denver’s elegance with its cow country history.

Which presidential aspirants are taking the best advantage of podcasting’s potential?  A review of the candidates’ offerings on iTunes shows John McCain and Rudy Giuliani as no-shows.  Hillary’s well-done video chats don’t show up in iTunes, but there is an old podcast in the directory which doesn’t do much to help her, and she should take it down ASAP.  At the head of the presidential podcasting class are Tom Vilsack, John Edwards, and Barack Obama.  Mitt Romney has an effective enthusiast’s site up, MyManMitt.com featuring the MittCast, hosted by Justin Hart.  This episode of the Audio Pod Chronicles, recorded in Denver, contains excerpts from the podcasts and thoughts about what works and what doesn’t in this powerful new medium.

I am working on a presentation to the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs about how we might use Web 2.0 capabilities to advance the arts in Denver.  As part of my cogitations, I spent some time learning about Me.dium, a Boulder-based startup which hopes to transform the way we browse the web.  A more modest Web 2.0 initiative, goodreads, pointed me to possible communities in Denver which could be brought together using these new internet tools. 

My uncle Bert Tighe in 1963 began a new water works supply business, Ti-SALES, in Sudbury, Massachusetts.  He and Aunt Edna this morning talked about the single quality which seems to have led to that company’s current success: the refusal to quit.  We also heard from Peter, my cousin who worked for the family company for 18 years, and Kevin, who is now president. 

I remember when Uncle Bert’s office was in the basement of their house, and we kids had to be quiet around the stairway, because he was working hard down there to get his new venture going.  Now the company employs 29 people and has annual sales of more than $20 million.  It’s a great story of the value of persistence and the wisdom of figuring out new ways to do things when the old ways won’t work.

Music for this episode is "Until Dusk" from "When You’re There" by Frank  LoCrasto, courtesy of the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA) Promonet.

I didn’t think much of a criticism that Gary Hart made about Obama in a recent podcast interview with Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review.  But it roused me to prepare this consideration of Obama in light of John F. Kennedy’s leadership during the Cold War. And  I did agree with most of what Hart had to say in his Times review of Obama’s The Audacity of Hope.

I can’t say enough good things about the three-part podcast from which I excerpted audio on JFK and the Cold War.  I found it on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s "The Best of Ideas Podcast" hosted by Paul Kennedy.  The web site says the links won’t be up permanently, so grab them soon if you’re interested.  Here they are:  Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

"Going to the Sun" by Montana musicians Christine Dickinson, Janet Haarvig and Matthew Lyon is from the Glacier Journey CD.  Used by permission.

Can Hillary overcome the shrillness of her voice?  Can Obama demonstrate  substance worthy of his own charismatic voice? 

I pondered these questions as I spent much of today listening to a speech which Hillary Clinton delivered last October to the Council on Foreign Relations, comparing it with the latest episode of Barack Obama’s weekly podcast.  What I thought would be a simple win for Obama turned out to be a little more complicated.  If all goes as expected, this will be a most interesting contest.

I have deleted the original episode 15, recorded a week ago after my return from Macworld Expo in San Francisco.  What happened is that the person I interviewed ended up feeling very nervous about having his words up on the internet, so he asked me in very strong terms to take it down.  He needn’t have pressed so hard, because I had no intention of making him uncomfortable.  I’m sad, because I loved his story and have listened to it several times for my own pleasure.  But I completely honor his desire for privacy, so I immediately deleted the episode when I received an e-mail from him.  I’m putting this episode in its place, so my numbering isn’t thrown off, and to explain what happened.

Last night I finished reading The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James (at right in photo, with his brother the novelist, Henry James). 

In this book review, I describe how the book inspired my own variety of religious experience, and I offer some musings about what James’s approach implies for the religious landscape in America 100 years after he delivered the 20 lectures on which the book is based.

On a visit to Hartford, I thought I was following in the footsteps of Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), the renowned poet, on the two-mile walk he took each day from work at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company to his home at 118 Westerly Terrace.  In the way of poetry, things didn’t turn out the way I planned, and my walk ended up being as disorienting and oddly satisfying as a difficult Stevens poem.

To listen to Stevens reading "The Idea of Order at Key West," click here, courtesy of the Academy of American Poets.

"In an Instant" from the CD Make or Break by Incognito courtesy of IODA Promonet.