Becoming

I just finished reading Michelle Obama's recent bestseller, Becoming. It's an overview of her life, divided into three parts: growing up and establishing herself as a Harvard-educated lawyer; getting together with Barack and the early years of his political career and their dedication to social change work; and finally, their eight years in the White House.

In no particular order, here is what touched me especially:

Feminism and Politics
I followed closely her account of the anguish she went through juggling three different personas: as the mother of Malia and Sasha, as an accomplished nonprofit administrator, and as the wife of a successful national politician. While Michelle enjoyed some unusual opportunities by virtue of her position as FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States), she also set aside her own career to support that of her husband, and to pick up the parenting slack necessarily resulting from how little Barack could be present as Dad given all the demands on the President's time.

Michelle not only did this with grace, but she did it at a time when women continue to struggle to be accepted as coequals on the world stage. Reading about all the balls she was keeping in the air, I was reminded of the first cover of Ms. magazine:



While this image (and this topic) was in Gloria Steinem's spotlight 47 years ago—and progress has been made—the struggle continues.

Administration and Implementation
As an experienced nonprofit administrator I have a personal relationship to the dance between program development and effective organizational guidance and oversight. While I readily acknowledge that this doesn't tend to be a very sexy topic (there aren't many who aspire to a career in nonprofit administration), it caught my attention that before Barack pushed all of his chips into the center of the table in 2007, both he and Michelle were sitting on a number of nonprofit boards in the Chicago area—and this on top of their having two young daughters and full-time jobs. I could hardly imagine how they did it. 

I recently turned down a request to consider serving on a nonprofit board because I didn't think I had the time to do it justice. I was already serving on one, and didn't think I had the bandwidth to stretch to two. What a wimp I am!

In my experience there is a tendency for nonprofit boards to be little more than a rubber stamp for a dynamic executive director, and that's not a good model. For the one board I'm on, I'm actively trying to strengthen the organization's understanding of what a strong and engaged board looks like, and that's about all of that that I can handle.

Hope Versus Nihilism
Becoming brought out the ache attendant to contrasting the optimism and decency of the Obamas with the self-serving boorishness of Trump. I had forgotten how good it felt when Barack won in 2008, and was saddened to realize how much I have become inured to the steady outflow of soul-diluting sewerage generated by our current President.

It did my heart good to be reminded that power and venality are not always conjoined.

The Ascendency of Social Media
Michelle points out that the iPhone first burst on the scene in June 2007, just three months after Barack had announced his candidacy for President. As we all know, the smart phone was an instant success, and Apple sold 3 million in 90 days. By the time the Obamas left the White House, Apple had sold three billion.

Social media exploded exponentially on their watch—to the point where today we have foreign policy being dictated via Trump's pre-dawn twittering thumbs. Scary, but that's the way of the world.