The First Marriage [Obama Upset NY Wife Dinner-Date Became Political]

NYTimes ^ | October 28, 2009

[Steelfish]

The First Marriage

JODI KANTOR October 26, 2009

Another Washington dusk, another motorcade, another intimate evening played out in public view. On Oct. 3, just a day after their failed Olympics bid in Copenhagen, Barack and Michelle Obama slipped into a Georgetown restaurant for one of their now-familiar date nights: this time, to toast their 17th wedding anniversary. As with their previous outings, even the dark photographs taken by passers-by and posted on the Web looked glamorous: the president tieless, in a suit; the first lady in a backless sheath.

The Obama date-night tradition stretches back to the days when the president spent half his time in Springfield, Ill., reuniting at week’s close with his wife, who kept a regular Friday manicure and hair appointment for the occasion. But five days before he ventured out for his anniversary dinner, the president lamented what has happened to his nights out with his wife.

“I would say the one time during our stay here in the White House so far that has. . . .” He paused so long in choosing his words that Michelle Obama, sitting alongside him, prompted him. “Has what?”

“Annoyed me,” the president answered.

“Don’t say it!” the first lady mock-warned. “Uh-oh.”

“Was when I took Michelle to New York and people made it into a political issue,” he continued, recalling the evening last spring when they flew to New York for dinner and a show, eliciting Republican gibes for spending federal money on their own entertainment.

[imfrmdixie]

The design on his ring is parang rusak. As you can see from this statement, he saw himself as royalty even in his marriage. Parang rusak is a Javanese batik design and is important in their culture.

“In weddings throughout Central Java, the patterns of sidomukti, sidoluhur, sidoasih, sidomulyo, wirasat and truntum are used to bless newly married couples and their parents.

The rulers of Yogyakarta and Surakarta Palaces always use prescribed patterns like the parang design.”

[imfrmdixie]

Thanks for all your info. I wish I had the skill and ability to really research this man’s past and do a “Glenn Beck” using a storyboard to show his hidden and complicated history.

[STARWISE]

“But neither description begins to capture the unconventional life of Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, the parent who most shaped Mr. Obama.

Kansas was merely a way station in her childhood, wheeling westward in the slipstream of her furniture-salesman father. In Hawaii, she married an African student at age 18. Then she married an Indonesian, moved to Jakarta, became an anthropologist, wrote an 800-page dissertation on peasant blacksmithing in Java, worked for the Ford Foundation, championed women’s work and helped bring microcredit to the world’s poor.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/us/politics/14obama.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ann Dunham: A Personal Reflection

*snip*

Then she got married and her name was Mrs. Barack Hussein Obama until she married her Indonesian husband and became Mrs. Lolo Soetoro, the old Dutch spelling. Everybody in Indonesia knew her as Ann Soetoro. She moved to Indonesia because she married Lolo Soetoro, a Javanese.

But she soon came to love Java and the arts. She was herself a craftsman and weaver. She taught weaving and just loved it. Most of her clothes were Indonesian. Java was as much her home as Honolulu.

Ideally, she moved back and forth. She’d be in Indonesia for a few years and then she’d get home sick for Honolulu and move back here for some months to pursue her studies, see her parents and friends, and then back to Java because she’d get homesick for Java and also need to earn money.

http://www.anthropology.hawaii.edu/News/Announcements/2008/dunham.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Parang Rusak Batik

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~iany/patterns/batik_parang.htm

[STARWISE]

Cut From Obama’s Mother’s Cloth

By Ruth McCann
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 8, 2009

They arrived at the Textile Museum on July 31 in a suitcase, large pieces of Javanese batik-patterned cloth that Ann Dunham purchased in the 1960s. Dunham was then living in Jakarta with her second husband and her young children, Maya Soetoro-Ng and Barack Obama.

And now 16 of these hand-designed swaths of woven cloth are almost ready for display at the museum in Northwest Washington. The exhibit, which opens Sunday and runs through Aug. 23, marks the collection’s sixth and final stop in a national tour, co-organized by the Indonesian Embassy and Soetoro-Ng, who arrived Friday in D.C. After Dunham’s death in 1995, it was Soetoro-Ng who held on to her mother’s batik collection.

*snip*

Much of batik’s symbolic language is centuries-old, inherited from the Indonesian court system. The diagonal parang rusak (broken knife) pattern, Gittinger says, was once worn only by upper-class members of the central Javanese courts.

One batik that boasts the parang rusak pattern shows signs of wear.

So while there are no snapshots of baby Obama at the Textile Museum, one can at least take pleasure in imagining his mother, an adventurous woman in a new city, swathing herself in the robes of power, the formerly forbidden patterns.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080703192.html

[imfrmdixie]

How interesting!! Thanks!

[imfrmdixie]

I noticed that she was in Bali in the 1990s...when Obama also went to Bali to “write” his book. Wonder if that is why he chose to go there...to talk to her about his history?
This was most interesting. Thanks for sending it!

[STARWISE]

Welcome .. yes, they were both in Bali in 1990.

[Candor7]

Any sources?

[imfrmdixie]

Sorry, Candor....sources for which subject?

[Candor7]

Your conclusion that Obamas ring is Indonesian. I think it is African. I gave my sources.

[Fresh Wind]

I’m upset that Obama is living large on my dime.

FUBO, mmmm, mmmm, mmmm.

[STARWISE]

This parang rusak batik design can apparently look similar to the serpent-like design in the ring.

~~~~~~~~~~

Parang DesignParang was once used exclusively by the royal courts of Central Java. It has several suggested meanings such as 'rugged rock', 'knife pattern' or 'broken blade'.

The Parang design consists of slanting rows of thick knife-like segments running in parallel diagonal bands. Parang usually alternated with narrower bands in a darker contrasting color. These darker bands contain another design element, a line of lozenge-shaped motifs call mlinjon. There are many variations of this basic striped pattern with its elegant sweeping lines, with over forty parangdesigns recorded.

The most famous is the 'Parang Rusak' which in its most classical form consisting of rows of softly folded parang. This motif also appears in media other than batik, including woodcarving and as ornamentation on gamelan musical instruments.

[Candor7]

I have searched for Indonesian jewelry which incorporates the “similar to serpent design” on Obamas ring. I found nothing. Indonesian jewelery is nature oriented, based on flowers and other natural shapes.

The nearest one can come to jewelry with the serpent like design as posited can be found in Bedouin perfume holders and other pieces.Indonesian jewelery does not have it , I could find none.

There is no serpent pattern on Obama’s ring, it is, IMHO, a gold reproduction of an elephant hair ring or bracelet.

These small details are important in Obama’s carefully crafted public image. He closets his national socialist black power ideology , learned in the church of Rev. Wright over a 20 year period, of Afro American superiority, and historic justice for the allegedly exploited.
That kind of jewelery would be the emulation of the elephant hair piece, which Obama’s ring does.

The elephant hair bracelet is prevalent among black power advocates in the USA.

The pattern is easily recognizable here:

http://www.furnituresourceelpaso.com/ProductsBKPJ/BKPJproducts.htm

[Fred Nerks]

You are spot on...

The meaning of the symbol can be seen here:

http://www.africancraftsmarket.com/elephanthairrings_details.htm

[Bellflower]

It is a powerful talisman from Obama;s “African” heritage, much the same as a ring of red celtic gold would be to an Irishman or Scot.

If so it shows forth his loyalty to another heritage other than ours. Usurper!

[Bellflower]

why does his head look photoshopped in the pic with michele? just looks weird. oh well.

You are right! Also black and white wasn't common at that time. Is his earlier history with Michele also part of his made up past??? Who is this guy?

[imfrmdixie]

I went back and read over your notes and this is the first line of first entry I found from you.

“My best guess on the ring is that it is a styized representation of an elephant hair bracelet worn by Chiefs of African clans in certain parts of africa.The tied pattern on the bracelets indicate rank in some African tribes.”

The only link I could find was your link to how to make an elephant hair bracelet.

http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/archive/200508/msg00549.htm

Did I miss the source of why you believe this to be a replica of an elephant hair bracelet? I’m not saying you aren’t correct. I am suggesting there are other options for the design. Do you know the tribes that used this bracelet as rank? I could only find that it was used to show a good hunter or as a good luck “charm”.

[imfrmdixie]

You know...I went back and looked at that ring again and it actually looks like a combination of the knot of an elephant hair bracelet and the pattern of Parang Rusak which
makes perfect sense...combination of Africa and Indonesia.
I find this whole subject interesting in that it has given me information to keep my Alzheimers at bay.

[Bellflower]

Calling on all Christians who believe that we can. Break in The Holy Name Of Jesus the power of this amulet. Any power from any amulet comes from Satan and cannot stand. In Jesus Name I break the power of the ring amulet on the man who calls himself Barack Obama.

[April Lexington]

Let me think about this for a bit. Probably Michelle’s taste in Jewelry. But, I’m not sure... Serpentine...