"Once Upon a Time in America",

THE MONTHLY ESSAYS
"In a crude sort of way, politically speaking, as Zanesville goes so goes the country. Like Ohio itself, roughly equal numbers reside either side of the political divide. Mayor Butch Zwelling is a Democrat, and in New Concord, a few miles east, the ace pilot, astronaut and 1984 Democratic presidential candidate and former senator John Glenn has lived most of his life. Drive the suburban streets and the Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin signs populate lawns in about equal proportion, sharing the turf as they must with prospective senators, sheriffs, judges and the like, and various ‘propositions', all to be determined on the same day as the vote for president takes place."
In "Once Upon a Time in America", Don Watson reports on the last days of the American election campaign from Zanesville, a swing city in the all-important swing state of Ohio. Talking with locals and attending rallies, he captures the heightened mood of a country on the brink of change, and offers an eloquent analysis of Obama's success and McCain's struggle to engage the populace.
"‘I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views,' Obama wrote. Not entirely blank, surely: change; hope; belief; cool, single-minded resolve - for his followers, Obama projects half a dozen qualities that add up to ‘Yes, we can.' But the big message is unity, binding a divided nation with a sense of common purpose. A blank screen he may wish to be, but there is no denying that he is also a saviour, not a preacher; a figure to believe in and around whom the sad and angry can congregate. People talk about how his campaign has revitalised not only democracy in America, but communities as well. You also get the feeling that, for the duration of the campaign at least, he is revitalising lives, souls."
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From slave cabin to White House, a family rooted in black America
Michelle Obama’s ancestors suffered slavery, segregation and humiliation. Her heritage embodies a dark past many would rather forget

Slave cabins still stand at the Friendfield Plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina. The whitewashed, wooden structures in Slave Street, a sandy track at the back of the plantation owner’s house, were once crammed with captive African labourers. No more than sheds really, the cabins have no heating, no glass and no indoor plumbing, and are propped up on brick pillars to keep out flood water and visiting snakes.
The Withers family relied on more than 300 Africans to bring in the rice crop from their fields along the Sampit River. Among their slaves in the mid-19th century was a tall, hardworking, God-fearing man named Jim Robinson. His remains probably lie in the slave graveyard in the swampy land down by the river’s edge and his fate might well have been to disappear from history, like so many other slaves, except he is the great-great-grandfather of America’s new First Lady.
Michelle Obama’s family embodies the tragic yet triumphant journey of African-Americans. Slavery is a bitter history that many would prefer to forget, but it continues to cast a dark shadow over a nation that was founded on the promise that “all men are created equal” and endowed with the “unalienable rights” to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Though it may seem like a phenomenon of an impossibly distant past, slavery is only just outside living memory. The last slave cabin at Friendfield was vacated in the Sixties and one of Robinson’s granddaughters, who heard stories about him from her father, still lives in a whitewashed, breeze-block bungalow on the edge of the Friendfield lands.