"I'll never forget how it felt the first time I took off my corset," my grandmother told me one time, years ago.  I was a young mother at the time and she was still with us, still healthy and vital, filled with vinegar and spice.  "I felt so naked."

My grandmother had been a flapper in the '20's, with filmy short skirts and bobbed hair; a divorcee when it was scandalous to be one, tall and willowy and beautiful with fiery hair and cherry lips.  By the time she adopted my mother in 1931, the Depression was full-on, the Texas Panhandle buried in red sand.  Mother's own mother had wasted away with tuberculosis, leaving three little girls in the care of a drunk.  Grandmother, who'd had a hysterectomy in her 20's, took the baby.

Even though her own (second) husband by that time was also an alcoholic, there was nothing wilting about my grandmother.  She ran a prosperous dry-cleaning business in spite of the withering economy.  Mother says she was such an accomplished seamstress that they would go window-shopping on the streets of Amarillo and Mother would point out the prettiest, most stylish dresses on the mannikins.  Grandmother would go home and reproduce them exactly for her, making her one of the best-dressed girls in school for next to nothing.

It must have been hard, running a business, keeping the books, supporting a family, hiding her husband's "problem," raising my mother with her beautiful clothes.  She was strict and imposing.  Mother was terrified of her.

I adored her.

By the time I knew her, she drank whiskey neat, read trashy detective novels, lived independently in her spotless home, and thought everything I did was perfect, a fact which annoyed my mother no end and therefore, caused me no small amount of delight.

Looking back, I can only imagine now how some of the fine upstanding church-going women of Amarillo must have judged my grandmother back in the day.  Her scandalous past.  The fact that she worked outside the home.  She did not go to church, but she dropped Mother off at Sunday School at the First Christian Church every week of her growing-up life.

Of course, when you are working day and night to put food on the table, you probably need Sunday mornings to sew your daughter's dresses for school.  Or to deal with your husband's hangover.

I use my grandmother as an example of what I think is happening in our society right now, and why I think so many of the pundits and pontificators are so far off the mark on so many things, from why so many of Obama's policies are being resisted to why there is so much rage out there.

In order to fully understand what is taking place historically and culturally right now, we need first to examine what took place at the turn of the LAST century--a time also fraught with great unrest and confusion.

In the early 1900's, much of America was an agrarian, small-town society.  Trains and telegraphs made cross-country communication and travel possible, but for the most part, people remained pretty much close to where they had been born and brought up, and life unfolded in pretty much the same way it always had.

But two or three major changes disrupted the fabric of our entire society: the Industrial Revolution (including Henry Ford's automobile assembly line), the invention of the airplane, and World War I.  Those seminal events changed the course of history suddenly and dramatically not just in a sense of overview, but PERSONALLY, in the lives of people like my grandmother and grandfather.

At about the turn of the century, several natural and not-so-natural events also occurred: droughts similar to the Dust Bowl days destroyed many family farms, and at the same time, bank panics similar to what would occur in the Great Depression caused ripples in the economy--all this colluded to drive people out of their small towns and into urban areas, seeking work in the big factories that were springing up with the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

But World War I really changed everything.  Young men who went off to that war were sent away with Glory-Days stories ringing in their ears that they'd heard from their fathers and grandfathers of things like Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, or great Civil War battles.  They were truly innocents when they went away across the sea.

But the horrific conditions they faced in the trenches--the first truly mechanized war--was like nothing anyone had ever faced.  Airplanes dropping bombs, even!  The wounds they survived, the battle fatigue they returned with, were like nothing anyone had ever encountered, and it ushered in a cynicism to this country that was modern and grim and quite new.

"How do you keep him down on the farm, once he's seen Gay Paree?" was the refrain, and it was true in many ways, because the entire culture was changing after the war.  Women like my grandmother tossed away their corsets, shortened their skirts, bobbed their hair, went to work, experimented with their sexuality and their freedom, and marched for women's suffrage.

Radios came into people's homes, and popular music, and families began to lose control over what their children saw, heard, and read.

Keep in mind that during this time of great social upheaval, while there was progress on many fronts, there was also this terrible dark side as well--Jim Crow and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as Union busting and riots where many people lost their lives, and terrible poverty and bread lines because there WAS no Social Security, there WAS no Medicare or Medicaid or even any veteran's benefits to speak of. 

In fact, there was one incident in which veterans of World War I, the so-called "Bonus Army," marched on Washington, D.C. demanding benefits that were rightfully theirs, and President Hoover called out the Cavalry and tanks on them.

So there was great violence and upheaval along with social progress, and general anxiety among the population because a way of life that they had thought would never change was not only changing, but changing very quickly.  My grandmother lived to see another world war; she lived to see men walk on the moon; she lived to see women run for political office; she lived to see air travel become commonplace; and polio to be virtually wiped out.

The ladies she knew all shortened their skirts eventually, most even took to wearing pants, as she did.  They all voted.  Many worked outside the home.

Times changed.  Most changed with them.

Now, here we are, at another new century.

The Industrial Revolution, once so cutting-edge, is now rusting out.  Factories are closing, and the towns that sprang up around them and once bustled with life and energy are now boarded up.  People whose families worked in those factories for several generations are now lost, trying to sell houses in empty towns nobody's buying, scared, wondering what to do next.  Wives are working whether they want to or not because they HAVE to.

Change? they scream.  I'll SHOW you change!!!

Meanwhile, another revolution is indeed taking place, as we all know, and that is the Technological Revolution, and it is occurring with lightning speed.  It's one of those things where, if you don't take part in it, you will indeed be left behind, and that can be very scary to many people.

I have a friend, for example, who is in her mid-fifties, very pretty, hard-working, with two great, smart, beautiful grown kids.  But she "doesn't do" e-mail.  She and her husband have cell phones but they "don't do texting," or online social networking.

Recently, her daughter got married, and my friend and her husband often heard ongoing details of things from friends who'd seen them on the wedding website before her busy daughter had had a chance to call home!

How sad for them.  They run a successful business--don't get me wrong.  They do the bookkeeping and things necessary to run their business, but they just refuse to do any of the social networking that young people LIVE on today, and consequently, they are left out of so much of their grown children's lives.

This Technological Revolution is happening--lickety-split--in every area of our lives.  More and more businesses want us to pay bills online.  More and more stores encourage us to either shop online, or use debit or credit cards at the check-out.  Kodak is discontinuing certain types of film; most people use digital cameras now.  Writers send manuscripts by e-mail.

Print newspapers are dying.  More and more people are getting their news not just online, but at their fingertips on their ipods or Blackberrys.

And if that's not fast enough for ya, check out this ABC news report I saw just the other night.

It seems that textbooks and school libraries are disappearing, too.

For the schools who have experiemented with it, lo and behold, they discovered that you can actually give each kid an ipod and a laptop and STILL SAVE MONEY if you don't have to buy textbooks.

Why?

Because, first of all, textbooks are notoriously expensive, and updates cost even more, and second of all, there is so much free information available online.

By blocking social networking sites, they can have some measure of control over what the kids are doing in the classroom, and consequently, the kids are actually more comfortable in the New Century that they have already been inhabiting since grade school anyway.

But in the video version of the story, I must admit that this old English major-slash-writer's heart took a bit of a jumpabump when they walked into the library.

It was barren.

I mean, EMPTY.

No shelves.  No nothin'.  They'd sold the books, cleared out the shelves, and are going to use the space for something else.

By using Kindles and other types of devices, the kids can still read what books they need to read for reports. 

Don't need no steenkin' libraries no more.

Now, see, this is the kind of jolt that is hard on people going into a new century.  This is the kind of change that they fear.  They don't WANT to read a Kindle!

Remember Captain Jean Luc Picard on Star Trek Enterprise?  How terribly quaint he was because he insisted on reading actual BOOKS?

Of course there are plenty of books around.  I'm not writing about the loss of newspapers and books.  Or even folding roadmaps, what with all those GPS's out there.

What I'm saying is that cataclysmic changes are taking place right now.

By mid-century, whites will no longer be the predominent race in this society anymore. 

America will truly be an ethnic blend.

About time, I say.

The American family will look different.  There'll be more of two moms or two dads or single moms or single dads or no kids at all or whatevers.  Cool.

But these (mostly-white, mostly born way back in the last century) people yelling that they want to "bring back my country" are really wanting to bring back a fantasy-TV Mayberry world they remember in their dreamland, a world where there was no molestation of children or spousal abuse or separate-but-not-equal or whatever their gated-community private-Christian white-world fantasy IS--but that is the world they are speaking of.

And it's not coming back.

So many things have been happening so fast that is so scary to so many--scientific discoveries in genetics, biotechnology, biochemestry, quantum physics, astronomy, nanotechnology, and on and on--ever since Dolly got cloned these people have been scared of what is going to happen next.

The great disaster of the Bush presidency was that he was a man of absolutely NO imagination who surrounded himself with graybeards locked into Cold War thinking and McCarthy mindset, who thought nothing of cynically kowtowing to the ignorance and fears of the fantasists (see above) for cash and votes, to the overpowering damage of this nation.

Consequently, they responded to 21st Century problems with 20th Century solutions, with cataclysmic consequences.

The reason so many people seem to fear Barack Obama (fear, remember, is the flip-side of rage), I believe, is that he is a visionary.  He sees several decades ahead, into the future.  He has been thinking in 21st Century terms for at least the past decade; indeed, most likely, he was thinking that way throughout the 90's.

When he campaigned on "change," it's because he understood that THE CHANGE HAD ALREADY COME. 

Obama has always loved to body-surf.  He knew that when the wave of change hits us, we could do one of two things.  If we resisted that wave, fought it, or tried to sleep through it, we would be tossed and tumbled, slammed into the sand, choked--maybe drowned or swept out to sea.

But if we ANTICIPATED that wave, if we positioned ourselves JUST SO...then we could RIDE it.

The problem is...a significant percentage of the population is fighting that wave.  Some of them are good people, like my friends whose daughter just got married.  They cheerfully fail to see the reason to care.  They just do not understand what they are missing, or why it is important.

Some of them are confused, overwhelmed.  They would like to make the change but they don't know how so they refuse to try.

Others fear change of any kind and cling furiously to What They Know.

Others are suspicious, paranoid, angry at any kind of change and will fight it to their dying day, thinking they are doing the right thing.  They're misguided and sometimes dangerous.

Some, like those in Congress, are just opportunistic.  Even if they know he is right, they don't care if it will bring them more cash and/or votes to fight him.

There are a great many of us who see exactly what Obama sees and will work ourselves half to death to try and get the fence-sitters to see it too, because the truth is that there are a great many people out there who are a little bit nervous about all this stuff they see happening, now and in the future, but the truth is that they don't want to be left behind.

It bothers them, too, for instance, that the libraries are emptying out.  But their friend had a Kindle and, they didn't think they would like it, but they had to admit...it was kinda cool.

Maybe they don't agree with EVERYTHING Obama is trying to do, but for the most part, they believe he has the best interests of the country at heart.

Those of us here, those of us who do try to do the convincing...we have to remember what my grandmother said, that first time she tossed away her corset.

She felt so NAKED.

Any time we make a change in our personal lives, it does feel naked, doesn't it?

Any time this country undergoes some sort of change in direction from what we are familiar with, we are all going to feel a little bit nervous, even if it's something we WANT.

I've been fighting for years to put an end to the Iraq war, and I'm glad we're in the process of doing it, but I confess I am nervous about the repercussions of that.  Everything we do, as individuals and as a nation, has consequences that we have to live with.

Obama understands that going without a corset--so to speak--feels naked.  He understands that empty libraries seem sad and upsetting to some--again, hypothetically speaking.

He knows that change of any kind is going to frighten some people and exhilerate others. 

Attacking people for being afraid is beside the point and counterproductive.

The world is changing, and our country is changing too fast for some people to deal with; it's that simple. 

There have been reprehensible reptiles who take advantage of their vulnerabilities and fears in every generation, from Father Coughlin to Joe McCarthy to Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh.  It is a waste of time for us to react and over-react to every little squeak and squawk that comes out of their mouths--what are we, a ping-pong match?

Every time we squawk back at them we give them legitimacy.

In the meantime, we've got this visionary 21st Century president working himself half to death out there, day and night, fighting for health care, for a comprehensive energy policy, for education, to get the economy back on track, and what are we doing?  Fretting about what some red-faced little pissant spewed out last night on TV?

We've got work to do.  Let's git 'er done.

(It's true that we don't all agree on the details; that's okay.  We are all going to have to sacrifice SOMETHING and compromise SOMEWHERE.  That is what a true democracy DOES if it wants to govern.  If you refuse to do that, then you are an idealogue and there is no place for you in a nuts-and-bolts process.)

This world is going to change; this country is going to change; it IS changing, right now, WITH OR WITHOUT US.

Like the president said, We can fear the future or we can shape the future.

What's it going to be?