{"id":1547,"date":"2008-11-24T19:06:58","date_gmt":"2008-11-25T00:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/?p=1547"},"modified":"2008-11-24T19:06:58","modified_gmt":"2008-11-25T00:06:58","slug":"hot-tub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/uncategorized\/hot-tub\/","title":{"rendered":"hot tub"},"content":{"rendered":"
today was the first day of kevin’s retirement that i was home for.\u00a0 friday was his first official day, but i was in chicago listening to a guy lecture…and lecture…and lecture.<\/div>\n
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today we did some things, including buying some test strips for the hot tub.\u00a0 there are many things to do to get the hot tub up and running, and kevin did them all while i was gone, but the test strips that my parents left here had gotten wet and were no good.\u00a0 we bought new ones.\u00a0 he tested the water, added some stuff to it, and then it was perfectly chemically balanced.<\/div>\n
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and perfect.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
it may be possible to get through the long cold winter here after all.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
i’m doing my best to not think about politics all the time,\u00a0 but i think this is a really interesting article about valerie jarrett, who has been a friend of the obamas for a very long time, and is not going to be a senior advisor.\n<\/div>\n
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New York TImes –<\/div>\n
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November 24, 2008<\/div>\n

An Old Hometown Mentor, Still at Obama\u2019s Side<\/h1>\n
By JODI KANTOR<\/a><\/div>\n

CHICAGO \u2014 On a dark afternoon last week, the road to Jerusalem and Beijing momentarily veered through the office of a real estate company here.<\/p>\n

Valerie Jarrett<\/a>, the company\u2019s chief executive, had signed her resignation letter an hour earlier, and now she was taking phone calls from potential top diplomatic appointees.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t need to thank me,\u201d she said soothingly to a booming male voice on her cellphone. \u201cI just wanted you to have a chance to make your case.\u201d<\/p>\n

If someone were to rank the long list of people who helped Barack and Michelle Obama<\/a> get where they are today, Ms. Jarrett would be close to the top. Nearly two decades ago, Ms. Jarrett swept the young lawyers under her wing, introduced them to a wealthier and better-connected Chicago than their own, and eventually secured contacts and money essential to Mr. Obama\u2019s long-shot Senate victory.<\/p>\n

In the crush of his presidential campaign, Ms. Jarrett could have fallen by the wayside, as old mentors often do. But the opposite happened: Using her intimacy with the Obamas, two BlackBerrys and a cellphone, Ms. Jarrett, a real estate executive and civic leader with no national campaign experience, became an internal mediator and external diplomat who secured the trust of black leaders, forged peace with Clintonites and helped talk Mr. Obama through major decisions.<\/p>\n

She \u201cautomatically understands your values and your vision,\u201d Michelle Obama said in a telephone interview Friday, and is \u201csomebody never afraid to tell you the truth.\u201d Mrs. Obama added: \u201cShe knows the buttons, the soft spots, the history, the context.\u201d<\/p>\n

In January, Ms. Jarrett will go to the White House as a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, where she will be \u201cone of the four or five people in the room with him when decisions get made,\u201d as Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist close to Mr. Obama, put it. Ms. Jarrett, who is a co-chairwoman of Mr. Obama\u2019s transition effort, will also serve as the White House contact for local and state officials across the nation and the point person for Mr. Obama\u2019s effort to build a channel between his White House and ordinary Americans.<\/p>\n

Less formally, she intends to help Mr. Obama preserve his essential self as he becomes president, even as she becomes the type of person who chats with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger<\/a> of California, mingles with Warren Buffett<\/a> and is now sometimes greeted by strangers. <\/span><\/p>\n

Washingtonians who assess the new White House crew sometimes cast Ms. Jarrett in parochial terms: she is the hometown buddy, they say, or the one who will hear out the concerns of black leaders. They note that presidential friends do not always fare well in the capital, that confidants from Arkansas and Texas have stumbled in the corridors of the West Wing.<\/p>\n

Asked what was her biggest worry about the job, which is a major leap from anything she has undertaken before, Ms. Jarrett said she sometimes feared she did not know enough. \u201cI will try to do my homework,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ms. Jarrett, 52, has often been underestimated: perhaps because she is often the only black woman at the boardroom tables where she sits, or perhaps because she can seem girlish, with a pixie haircut, singsong voice and suits that earned her a recent profile in Vogue.<\/p>\n

A prot\u00e9g\u00e9e of Mayor Richard M. Daley<\/a> of Chicago, Ms. Jarrett served as his planning commissioner, ran a real estate company, the Habitat Company \u2014 whose management of public housing projects has come under scrutiny with Ms. Jarrett\u2019s rise \u2014 and sits on too many boards to count. She is an expert in urban affairs, particularly housing and transportation, in an administration expected to lavish more money and attention on cities than its predecessors.<\/p>\n

And she has something no other adviser in the Obama White House ever will: ties to the president-elect and future first lady that go deeper than a political alliance. Ms. Jarrett is only a few years older than the Obamas, but her relationship with them can seem almost maternal. \u201cI can count on someone like Valerie to take my hand and say, You need to think about these three things,\u201d Mrs. Obama said. \u201cLike a mom, a big sister, I trust her implicitly.\u201d<\/p>\n

During big speeches, Ms. Jarrett watched Mr. Obama with a gaze of such intensity that he and their other friends laugh about it. \u201cBarack always jokes, You can\u2019t look Valerie in the eye, she\u2019s going to make you cry,\u201d said Martin Nesbitt, the treasurer of the campaign.<\/p>\n

Early Lessons on Race<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Jarrett plans to arrive at the White House with her list of \u201clife lessons,\u201d 21 aphorisms she ticks off in speeches and keeps on her computer hard drive. (\u201cAll leaders are passionate about their beliefs, even the ones you don\u2019t like.\u201d \u201cPut yourself in the path of lightning.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The life lessons started in Shiraz, Iran, where Valerie Bowman Jarrett was born in 1956. Her parents moved there after her father, a physician, was offered less pay in Chicago than his white peers. When the Bowmans tried to teach their young daughter about race, the lessons made no sense to her: Valerie, who has light skin, would protest that the Iranians around her had darker skin, so why was she the black one?<\/p>\n

When her family returned to Chicago via England, she showed up in public school speaking Farsi, French and English with a British accent. \u201cIt was a rude awakening,\u201d she said. Decades later, at the dinner that started their friendship, Ms. Jarrett and Mr. Obama bonded over their far-flung childhoods and initial confusion about race. \u201cI wasn\u2019t burdened by a personal history of prejudice,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s part of why I thought Barack could win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Jarrett, a lawyer with degrees from Stanford and the University of Michigan<\/a>, first met Mr. Obama during her successful courtship of his fianc\u00e9e, Michelle Robinson, for a job at City Hall, and from that night onward, she was someone with whom the young lawyers could discuss their ambitions. \u201cThey could talk openly about desires, wishes, dreams,\u201d said Desiree Rogers, a friend.<\/p>\n

The Obamas were from modest backgrounds, and Ms. Jarrett represented the sophistication and intellectual polish of Hyde Park, the Chicago neighborhood they shared. Her mother, Barbara Bowman, is a child psychologist, and through the generations her family had consistently broken barriers: her great-grandfather was the first black graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology<\/a>, her father the first black tenured professor in his department at the University of Chicago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Obamas were not her only prot\u00e9g\u00e9s \u2014 Ms. Jarrett kept a database of them, in case a prospective employer called \u2014 but she drew them deep into her world, taking them to Sunday dinners at her parents\u2019 house, where Hyde Park\u2019s leading lights gathered over green beans and tomatoes from the garden. Eventually, she even invited the Obamas to vacation with her in the elite black enclaves of Martha\u2019s Vineyard, introducing them to others in her high-achieving family, including a cousin, Ann Jordan, the wife of the Washington lawyer Vernon Jordan, to whom Ms. Jarrett has frequently turned for advice.<\/p>\n

In her years at City Hall, Ms. Jarrett absorbed several Daley leadership precepts: tough negotiation, pragmatism and block-by-block attention to the city\u2019s fabric. She developed a specialty in dealing with extremely angry people. After a flood swept through the basements of downtown offices in 1992, Ms. Jarrett had the unenviable task of talking to the building owners. A few years later, as chairwoman of the Chicago Transit Authority, Ms. Jarrett had to defend service cuts before irate residents.<\/p>\n

Her rule became, Never argue back. \u201cShe almost refuses to react,\u201d said MarySue Barrett, a former colleague, adding that Ms. Jarrett often surprises opponents by agreeing with them and then suggesting concrete measures to help.<\/p>\n

Ms. Jarrett, who was briefly married to a physician who died a few years after their divorce, is a single mother of a daughter, Laura, a Harvard<\/a> Law student. She jokes about how hard it is for a successful black woman in her 50s to find a suitable date. For years, she has thrown herself into work, civic commitments and supporting Mr. Obama\u2019s career. She held a book party in 1995 for the publication of his memoir, \u201cDreams From My Father.\u201d (Twenty people came, her mother recalled.) From then she never stopped introducing him, eventually signing on as the finance chairwoman of his Senate campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer approach would be, I have somebody I think is really fantastic, and he\u2019s a dear friend, and would you take the time to meet him?\u201d said Linda Johnson Rice, the head of the publishing company that owns Ebony and Jet magazines.<\/p>\n

A Campaign Ombudsman<\/span><\/p>\n

In July 2007, Mr. Obama gathered his top campaign advisers around Ms. Jarrett\u2019s dining table, where the group ticked off their problems. Mrs. Clinton, then the front-runner in the Democratic primary, had far more extensive relationships with local officials and ethnic leaders across the country, and David Plouffe<\/a>, Mr. Obama\u2019s campaign manager, did not have the time or chatty temperament to create them. \u201cWe had gone though this arid summer in which our national poll numbers were dropping,\u201d said David Axelrod<\/a>, the chief strategist.<\/p>\n

Soon the Obamas visited Ms. Jarrett on Martha\u2019s Vineyard. \u201cI need all hands on deck, and that\u2019s you,\u201d Mr. Obama told Ms. Jarrett as the three sat on a deck, staring at the waves, she recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe brought a perspective that was slightly removed from the maelstrom,\u201d Mr. Axelrod said. During the campaign\u2019s many tricky discussions about race and strategy, Ms. Jarrett was often the only black person at the table. And while her lack of campaign experience sometimes frustrated political operatives, they dared not protest, because of her relationship with the Obamas.<\/p>\n

Ms. Jarrett took on two roles, one internal and the other external. The Obama campaign has often been described as so harmonious that, as one blogger joked, its members e-mailed hug-o-grams to one another all day. In fact, the campaign had the usual share of conflict, but also the ability to resolve the tensions before they became public or disabling. Ms. Jarrett served as a kind of ombudsman.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who had an issue could raise it with somebody at the highest level in a safe way,\u201d said Michael Strautmanis, who will be one of Ms. Jarrett\u2019s White House deputies. \u201cThey\u2019re able to move on and do their job.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the outside world, Ms. Jarrett became an all-purpose ambassador. Before the Iowa caucuses, Ms. Jarrett tried to persuade black leaders that Mr. Obama could prevail; afterwards, she had to deal with their jitters. At one nerve-racking meeting last summer, Ms. Jarrett met in New York with black leaders, including the hip-hop moguls Sean Combs<\/a> and Russell Simmons<\/a>; Mr. Simmons grew so anxious that he had to leave the room, Ms. Jarrett said. They were worried that Mr. Obama was failing to fight back against attempts to stereotype him in racial terms.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe could have told the room, You\u2019re right, I will talk to Senator Obama,\u201d said the Rev. Al Sharpton<\/a>. Instead, Ms. Jarrett was blunt. \u201cThere are those who are going to fight the race gap, but that\u2019s not our role,\u201d she said, telling the leaders to channel their energy into concrete tasks like voter registration.<\/p>\n

\u201cMiss Reality herself,\u201d Mr. Sharpton now calls Ms. Jarrett. \u201cThere are unrealistic expectations of African-Americans about Barack Obama<\/a>,\u201d he said. \u201cThe one person who I think could come to the White House and say to African-Americans, Now get real, is Valerie Jarrett.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Jarrett also led the Obama campaign\u2019s diplomatic missions to disappointed supporters of Mrs. Clinton. Like any skillful envoy, she alternated between speaking for the candidate, giving her audience assurances about how he would treat Mrs. Clinton, and refusing to speak for him, declining to make specific promises because she was not the candidate and could make no guarantees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Valerie developed is the art of telling people to go to hell and making them look forward to the trip,\u201d said Mr. Jordan, who advised his wife\u2019s cousin throughout the campaign.<\/p>\n

A Transition of Her Own<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Jarrett\u2019s life now is a strange amalgam of Chicago and Washington: she is shutting down business at home, dining with Bush administration officials who quietly offer advice, and wondering where to live and eat and shop in the capital. (Her personal shopper at Nordstrom in Chicago, Ms. Jarrett says, \u201csends the store\u201d to her.)<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, she has been helping Mr. Obama choose his cabinet in long meetings at his transition office<\/a>, a process she likens to putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Some candidates call her before and after they see the president-elect, seeking a sense of what to expect and, afterward, a clue as to how the session went.<\/p>\n

She has not yet figured out how to accomplish her new role as emissary in the White House, somehow making sure that state and local officials, interest groups and individual citizens \u201chave a place to go.\u201d \u201cYou can\u2019t just leave it to meetings and telephone calls, because the base is so broad,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Already, she trades calls with leaders across the country: Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa<\/a> of Los Angeles, whom she befriended on the campaign trail; Mr. Schwarzenegger offered an update on the wildfires and an idea for an energy conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scale of it will be bracing,\u201d Mr. Axelrod said of the requests and demands Ms. Jarrett will hear.<\/p>\n

The potentially precarious thing about Ms. Jarrett\u2019s role, said some Washington veterans, is that it is based on a friendship that will be transformed when Mr. Obama becomes the president and Ms. Jarrett his employee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing you have to be careful about,\u201d said Steven A. Elmendorf, a Democratic strategist, \u201cis moving from having a friendship with someone to working for them, in a structure where there are other people between you and the president.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Ms. Jarrett can no longer talk idly, cautioned Kenneth M. Duberstein, chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan<\/a>, because no one will interpret her words as her own.<\/p>\n

When hometown friends accompany the president to the White House, they \u201cknow the president, his habits, his likes and dislikes, and when they talk, people hear the president\u2019s voice,\u201d Mr. Duberstein said.<\/p>\n

But Ms. Jarrett seems to have little desire or need to stand apart from Mr. Obama. During the campaign, Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, spent hours speaking with her but barely heard her mention herself or her own views. \u201cIt was all about Barack and Michelle, Barack and Michelle,\u201d Mr. Clyburn said.<\/p>\n

After the election, speculation that Ms. Jarrett might seek Mr. Obama\u2019s Senate seat coursed through Chicago. After a career of helping formidable men, she could finally \u201cbe the sun,\u201d as Marilyn Katz, a friend, put it. But the Obamas saw her place in Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told her,\u201d Mrs. Obama said, \u201cthat I wanted her there, in that position, that it would give me a sense of comfort to know that he had somebody like her there by his side.\u201d<\/p>\n

After several long conversations with Mr. Obama, Ms. Jarrett took herself out of the running for the Senate seat. Or, rather, Mr. Obama did: she let him make the call.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe knows the Senate, he knows me, and he knows what he was looking for in the White House,\u201d she said. \u201cI trusted him to make the decision.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

today was the first day of kevin’s retirement that i was home for.\u00a0 friday was his first official day, but i was in chicago listening to a guy lecture…and lecture…and lecture. today we did some things, including buying some test strips for the hot tub.\u00a0 there are many things to do to get the hot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6JLYy-oX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}