Barack Obama now has enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination. I salute him for beating Hillary Clinton. I do predict Obama will choose her as his vice-presidential running-mate. She has said that she’s interested in the post, which surprised me, and now that she has gone public with her willingness it would be a slap in the face not to offer it to her. Despite the hostilities of the primary season, the Democrats will now unify.

I’m not sure if Obama is going to be easy for John McCain to beat, or impossible for him to beat. My thoughts go back and forth on this.

Whatever happens, we will have either a centrist president or a liberal president. The era of conservative domination appears to be over, at least for now. We will have change, for better or for worse (or for both).

What do you think the future holds for America with either of these two as president?

As I was kicking myself for not going to hear Bo Diddley when he played in my own home town, my thoughts turned to the performers I HAVE seen and heard in person. Looking back, I realize that I’ve attended some notable concerts in my day. Let me attempt a list: Eric Burden and the Animals (my first rock concert); the Monkees (hey, I had to take my little sister, all right?); Janis Joplin (by now I’d gone off to college); the Jefferson Airplane; the Byrds; Jimi Hendrix; the Box Tops; Three Dog Night; Leon Russell; B. B. King; Bob Dylan (half a dozen times); Waylon Jennings (my tastes begin to change); Johnny Cash (sort of; I was at the Washington Mall on the bicentennial; I could hear Johnny singing from the stage but I was so far away that I couldn’t see him; still, I’m going to count it); the Everly Brothers; Alan Jackson; George Strait; the Dixie Chicks (before they went unpatriotic); LeAnn Rimes (when she was a prodigy singing “Blue”); Travis Tritt; Marty Stuart; BR-549 (numerous times); Junior Brown; Wayne Hancock; Alison Krauss (more than once); that “Down from the Mountain” tour from “O, Brother, Where Art Thou”; Merle Haggard; Chuck Berry (at Blueberry Hill in St. Louis).

The best concert? That would probably be the Grand Ole Opry session (I think I’ve been there three times) at which I heard four legends: Hank Snow, Porter Waggoner; Charlie Louvin; and (the high point) Bill Monroe (just shortly before his death).

Do you have any notable concerts as milestones in your life?

Bethany gets the Flannery O’Connor prize in yesterday’s virtual contest. O’Connor writes about the grotesque–often involving the clash between a fierce religion and a clueless secularism–and this case is certainly grotesque. I’m sure she would have a field day with presenting a child with a weird religion, being futilely plied with childish trinkets from a sentimental modernity, who totally thwarts his kind-hearted but soft-headed foster parents by excommunicating his 5 year old brother.

Tickletext was close to the other answer in guessing some Romantic poet. Indeed, it was William Wordsworth. He thought England needed another MILTON! And they sure did, and we sure do now. It’s interesting how the Romantics, so sick of the Enlightenment sensibility, put that Puritan Christian on such a pedestal. I offer the poem, Wordsworth’s sonnet entitled “England, 1802,” for your pleasure and edification:

MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
O raise us up, return to us again,
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power!
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.