Talking America

Fast food nation

• Jon Kelly
• 13 Oct 08, 02:19 AM GMT

AKRON, OH:Is there a symbol any more American than the hamburger? I don't think cowboys, the Statue of Liberty or even the Stars and Stripes come close. If you're looking for an icon of gung-ho enterprise and king-sized consumer demand, stick a disc of beef between two buns and smother it with relish.

I don't want to sound like I'm down on burgers. Quite the opposite; I've been enjoying US cuisine all too much during my travels across the country. It's easy to pontificate about obesity and diet, but it's even simpler to succumb to fatty, salty, high-cholesterol temptation.

Whenever foreigners want to vent their displeasure at the American Way, they tend to take it out on burger chains - whether it's French farmer-activist José Bové wrecking the site of a planned McDonalds, or Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me being feted internationally.

But however much it complains about US fast food, it seems the rest of the world can't get enough. Profits generated in Europe alone are worth $1.2bn (£600m) to the Golden Arches.

If anything encapsulates the contradictory nature of so much anti-American sentiment, it must be the hamburger, too.

Well, I've been here long enough now to realise that there's more to this country than any stereotype could ever suggest. But what did Americans themselves think of the way they were perceived abroad?

To find out, I visited Menches Brothers restaurant in Akron. Owner John Menches has long insisted that his great-grandfather, Charles, co-invented the hamburger in 1885 - though the claim has been disputed.

I'd arranged to meet a group of five teenagers from the city's PeaceMakers programme - a community group aimed at keeping young people away from crime.

They were smart, engaged kids who were all interested in the views of people from beyond their borders. Each one quickly dispelled any suggestion that Americans wouldn't be interested in the rest of the world.

Ariel Davis, 17, ordered a chicken burger. She didn't have a problem with fast food, she said. But she thought it was a shame that it was used to symbolise her country.

"It makes it seem like we all just want to have fun," she added. "But we're not just about having fun."

There were, she'd noticed, three recurring themes the overseas media would employ to characterise America.

"One is the hamburger, the second is that we're the land of opportunity, and the third is the war," she said.

"I'd like it to be not so much about hamburgers, not so much the war. We're a bunch of people who want peace."

Her friend, 16-year-old Dominique Council, agreed that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan had distorted many foreigners' views of the US. Her family had hosted a Spanish exchange student who, Dominique noted sadly, had written off the nation before she even arrived.

"She was really upset about the war," Dominique remembered. "She thought everyone agreed with the president.

"She couldn't see that people here might believe the war is wrong, but they still respect the troops."

Cory Jarvis, 15, saw the role of the American military differently. He said he was frustrated that attempts to spread democracy had been misinterpreted as bids to grab power.

"They think we're a bunch of violent people," Cory added. "But we're over there to help them."

For Dao Letdara, the view from the outside was closest to home. The 15-year-old's parents had moved here as teenagers from war-torn Laos. The steady stream of incomers was testament, she said, to the fact that America was seen as a place rich in possibilities.

"The immigrants are coming here because they want a better job, they want a better life - obviously, they believe they can get all that here," Dao added.

But she worried that the American media was tarnishing this impression.

"I think they're getting their images from music and movies - all the R-rated movies with killing and violence," she frowned.

Travis Carlton, 16, disagreed. To him, the image that America projected of itself was one of wealth and prosperity - far removed from the reality of life in a place like Akron.

"People don't see cities for what they are," he argued. "They don't know that there are people living like they would in Africa.

"I'd like America to be what it's portrayed as: the land of the free. I want it to live up to the name."

I thanked them all. As an outsider trying to understand this country, it had been instructive - and encouraging, too, given that they all seemed to really care what the world though of them

But it was time for me to let them enjoy their lunch.

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Finger pickin' good

• Jon Kelly
• 12 Oct 08, 05:10 PM GMT

My colleague Steve Evans has just alerted me to a rather amazing story. Back in Nashville he met Eddie Alcock, one of the pillars of bluegrass music, whose career looked threatened when he developed a tremor in his banjo-plucking hand.

Surgeons at Nashville's Vanderbilt Medical Center told Eddie they could help him. But they needed his musical assistance.

The doctors hoped to halt the shaking through a process called deep brain stimulation - sending an electrical charge to his brain via wires pushed through a hole in Eddie's skull.

But the only way they could tell when they had hit the 'sweet spot' was to ask Eddie himself. So before he was put under local anaesthetic, he took his banjo into the operating theatre.

As the surgeons adjusted the electrodes, a fully-conscious Eddie began picking at his banjo strings. As the current moved closer, his playing improved. It was, according to Peter Hedera, one of the medical team, 'the ultimate Nashville experience'.

It was left to Eddie to judge when the stimulation was working. As Dr Hedera told Steve: "My ear is not that great, so it was his assessment".

You can watch footage of the incredible procedure here:

A month later, he illustrated the effect for Steve by playing - clumsily and barely discernibly - with the device turned off.

Then he put a remote control to his chest and turned the current on, and his playing suddenly improved - not quite as fluent as it had been, due to lack of practice, but getting there.

'My life has re-entered my body," Eddie said. "I felt like I was dead when I felt like I couldn't play any more'.

Eddie had played with bluegrass legend Bill Monroe before setting up his own bands. Martha, his wife and musical partner, told Steve what a huge difference the surgeons had made.

'You can imagine that it was just a gift to us," she said. "One does what one must do. If there's a mountain to climb, one climbs it or goes around the side or tunnels through. I would do it for him and he does it for me. We're partners in life.'

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Road rage

• Jon Kelly
• 12 Oct 08, 03:43 AM GMT

AKRON, OH: Rows of shiny, all-American automobiles glimmered in the sun. I marvelled as their owners diligently polished all these lovingly-preserved Chevys, Fords and Plymouths.

They'd picked a glorious October morning for this classic car fair. But I couldn't help thinking there was something poignant about celebrating America's industrial past here, right in the heart of the rust belt.

Now, I'm no petrolhead. It took me three attempts to pass my driving test. I couldn't tell you the difference between a crankshaft and a fender. But even I could appreciate that these were beautiful vehicles - all gleaming chrome and rolling contours.

Back when most of them were built, Akron was known as the rubber capital of the world. The bulk America's tyres were manufactured here by firms like Goodyear and Firestone, and the city's blue-collar workers enjoyed a boomtime of high wages and steady employment.

But by the 1980s, production had started shifting elsewhere. The city experienced the same hardships of post-industrial decline as other Midwest cities like Detroit and Cleveland - soaring unemployment, rising crime, urban decay.

Akron's chamber of commerce can boast, with some justification, that the city has since bounced back by diversifying its economy. But the empty warehouses I passed on the outskirts were testament to the hardships local people have experienced.

It would be easy to feel forgotten in a place like this, but winning the support of Akron will be absolutely crucial to America's presidential candidates. Ohio is, of course, a vital state, credited with securing George Bush's presidency in 2004.

And although Akron itself has traditionally been a Democratic stronghold, Barack Obama may have to work harder than usual to win over its voters. Hillary Clinton trounced him in the state primary back in March, and questions have been raised about whether he can keep her white, working-class supporters onside.

Hence my decision to visit the car show. I knew I'd find some Hillary fans here, and I wanted to ask whether they would stay loyal to the Democrats come November.

Sure enough, I got talking to Pam Mazzola, 54, as she waxed her 1970 Plymouth Hemi Barracuda. Pam and her husband Joe had bought the automobile 35 years ago before driving off to get married.

Now, however, she was nervous; on the verge of retirement, she wondered what the chaos on Wall Street would mean for a place like Akron.

Pam had enthusiastically backed Hillary in the primaries - both out of admiraton for the New York senator's common touch, and respect for her husband's achievements as president. She had no hesitation, however, in backing Obama for president.

"I like Hillary a lot," Pam said. "She understands what things are like for people round here.

"But we need change. I think McCain is too close to Bush. I don't agree with his policies. I'm going for Obama."

Sitting in front of a 1920s Ford Roadster, however, was 72-year-old retired engineer Ed Bogovich. He'd come through from Pennsylvania - another blue-collar swing state - to attend the show.

Ed had backed Hillary, too. But there was no way he would support Obama; no way he would support any black man for the presidency.

"I don't want him to be my leader," Ed barked. "I am a staunch Democrat, but I will not vote for a negro.

"If his grandfather is a Muslim, wouldn't be one too?"

It was shocking to listen to all this. But it was no use correcting Ed that Senator Obama was, in fact, a Christian.

"Come on, don't tell me that," he replied. "It's in his heritage."

I shook my head as I walked away. I've met enough Americans these past few weeks to know that views like his are in the minority. I'm sure most former Democrats who've gone over to McCain reject them, too.

But it was depressing, all the same.

I remembered what I'd been told earlier by Akron's mayor, Don Plusquellic. He had also backed Hillary in March, but was now voting for Obama.

Jennifer spoke to him too:

He told me that race was no longer an issue for the majority of his compatriots, Republican and Democrat alike.

"There are always going to be people who have a problem," he frowned. "But most of us - we've got over that."

Mayor Plusquellic said he was confident that most Democrats in Ohio would vote the same way as him. There was genuine anger here at the Republican White House, he added.

November will tell us if he was right. But whoever wins, I'm sure most Americans will hope attitudes like Ed's belong to a dying era.

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Surface tension

• Jon Kelly
• 11 Oct 08, 03:52 AM GMT

MADISON, WV: Driving along West Virginia's roads, you wouldn't have noticed anything was out of place. Bright woodland and foliage rose up on either side of the traffic; the ramshackle trailer homes notwithstanding, it looked as close to a rural idyll as anywhere I'd seen in America.

Once I climbed up into the hills, however, it was a very different story. From up here, out of view from the freeway, it was all too clear that thousands of acres of Appalachia's most spectacular mountain ranges had been reduced to rubble.

Blame King Coal for decapitating the landscape. Mining has always been a major industry here, but traditionally it took place out of sight, below ground. Now, however, a modern technique known as mountaintop removal has dramatically reshaped West Virginia.

It is, literally, a scorched-earth process. First the hill is stripped of all its trees. Then explosives are brought in to blast through the rocks. The rubble is taken away and dumped in nearby valleys. Diggers can then gouge coal from the exposed surface.

I stood on ground that had already been emptied of its black gold. Grass was growing where the excavation had taken place, but the surface's harsh, angular contours made it clear what had occurred.

According to some estimates, mountaintop removal has been responsible for the destruction of as much as 150,000 hectares of forest, and 2,000km of valley streams have been affected by waste.

All this posed a dilemma for West Virginians. All around them their heritage was being despoiled. But here, in the second-poorest state in the union, any prospect of skilled employment was desperately needed.

I stopped in Madison, a decaying town which had seen better days. There I met Carolyn Kuhn, 58, at the Coal Heritage Mining Museum, where she was working as a volunteer.

The industry had been crucial to every aspect of Carolyn's life; her husband, Rodney, had worked underground for 35 years, and the pit had been the focal point of the community.

She showed me round artefacts of coalfield life: pith helmets and shovels, pick-axes and union banners. At the back of the building was a darkened corridor designed to resemble a tunnel. I fumbled way through, conscious that this sanitised visitor attraction couldn't do justice to the hard reality of working at the coalface.

To someone like Carolyn, mining had always been something that went on deep below the surface of the earth. I asked her what she thought about this new wave of excavations going on in the mountains above her.

"I know it's a shame what they're doing to the landscape," she said.

"But I'm selfish. I want my grandkids to stay here.

"Several years ago, I thought our town was folding. It was all second hand shops and thrift stores."

But not everyone who was steeped in these traditions wanted to preserve coal jobs at all costs.

Julian Martin, 72, was an eight-generation West Virginian. His father had lost an eye working underground; his grandfather had taken part in the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, when striking miners took part in America's largest insurrection since the civil war.

He wanted to keep the pits open. But Julian was passionately opposed to mountaintop excavations, horrified at the prospect of this landscape being permanently disfigured.

He also disputed the idea any economic benefits would trickle down to miners and their families.

"In my father's day, there were 125,000 mining jobs in West Virginia," he said. "Now there are only 17,000.

"There's no way they'll ever repair the damage they've done to the environment. This habitat took thousands of years to grow."

I didn't envy Julian and Carolyn for the dilemma they confronted. As the economic climate worsens, however, I suspect that those who love West Virginia's scenery will face tougher choices yet.

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Take me home, country roads

• Jon Kelly
• 10 Oct 08, 05:04 AM GMT

CHARLESTON, WV: I picked the right time to come to West Virginia. With autumn well underway, the leafy hillsides were exploding with reds, browns and yellows. It reminded me so much of Scotland - my parents' native Perthshire in particular - that I felt a sudden, oddly reassuring, lurch of homesickness.

The Mountain State might have looked beautiful, but I'd heard what a tough place it could be in which to live. Poverty here has long been well above the national average, and median incomes well below. The scarred landscape bore testament to the legacy of coal mining which has provided hard and dangerous employment to generations.

You'd think blue-collar terrain like this would be happy hunting ground for a Democratic candidate in November, but you'd be wrong. West Virginia voted for George W Bush at the last two presidential elections, and Barack Obama was utterly crushed by Hillary Clinton in the primary here.

But this state was once reliably blue. Some commentators have even suggested that Senator Obama has an Appalachian problem on his hands - a worrying inability to connect with white, working-class, rural voters.

These were exactly the people with whom I wanted to spend some time. So I hooked up with Bob and Debbie Schultz - a couple who seemed to encapsulate the political dilemmas faced by West Virginians.

On the one hand, both were on the left when it came to the pocketbook issues. Bob, 55, had been a miner and loyal member of the United Mine Workers of America until he retired with black lung disease earlier this year.

Debbie, 52, spoke proudly of West Virginia's mine wars, when workers battled with employers and the authorities for the right to organise. Like her husband, she was deeply unhappy with the Bush administration's handling of the economy.

But on the other hand, they were firmly conservative when it came to social matters. Bob had served as a pastor until his retirement, while Debbie was an accomplished gospel singer who performed in churches across the country. Both described themselves as pro-life and patriotic.

Neither of the main parties quite represented them. Despite the similarity of their views, Bob was registered as a Democrat, Debbie as a Republican. They'd both voted for George Bush in 2004, but were unhappy with the choices before them this time.

I asked Bob which way he intended to cast his ballot. For Obama, he replied, but reluctantly so. He was quite clear, though, that West Virginia's scepticism about the Illinois senator had nothing to do with racial prejudice, despite what some commentators had written.

"In a mine, we're all black after the first hour," he insisted. "People are preoccupied with colour. But it seems to be working for Obama, and not against him."

However, he had been deeply unsettled by the "God Damn America" speech by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former church minister.

"He went to that church all those years, but he says he didn't know the pastor was saying those things?" Bob shook his head.

Debbie was equally disillusioned with her party. She would have voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries, she told me, had she not been a registered Republican; instead she went for Mike Huckabee.

She wasn't sure how she would vote in November. Distrustful of Obama for the same reason as her husband, Debbie identified with Sarah Palin. But she had also grown cynical about Republican rhetoric.

"At every election, they talk about abortion. But nothing ever changes," she complained. "It's just a way to win votes."

It looked to me as though the GOP were losing their grip on people like Bob and Debbie. Whether the Democrats will win back what was once the bedrock of their support was a lot less clear, however.

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First past the post

• Jon Kelly
• 10 Oct 08, 04:05 AM GMT

The bus stopped for a spot of nosebag at Keeneland race course in Kentucky. Jennifer took the opportunity to sound out some punters:

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I walk the line

• Jon Kelly
• 9 Oct 08, 03:54 AM GMT

NASHVILLE, TN: The strains of Rhinestone Cowboy twanged around Tootsies bar. An aging covers band were working through their repertoire of country classics. Tourists in plaid shirts and Stetsons murmured appreciatively.

I stared into my drink. I've enjoyed a bit of steel guitar as much as the next man ever since one night when I was left alone in the house with a bottle of single malt and a Johnny Cash CD. But this wasn't exactly the Man In Black at San Quentin.

If the music of Memphis had given me an insight into how black culture was integrated into the American mainstream, I was hoping Nashville might tell me something similar about the recent history of southern whites.

This was, after all, a sound with its roots in the folk music of poor Scots-Irish settlers. Country was defined by mavericks and outlaws like Cash and Hank Williams. Songs about working-class men and women struggling to get by were articulated by outspoken left-wingers like Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Steve Earle.

But as the south and Appalachia moved into the Republican column, so too did country music. The genre became so associated with the conservative right that the Dixie Chicks were inundated with death threats and subjected to to boycotts after they said they were ashamed that George W Bush hailed from Texas.

But I wondered if this most self-effacing of idioms really could be the property of any political faction. I went to see a pair of Nashville musicians whose friendship spanned the red-blue divide.

Buzz Cason, 68, and Ed Pettersen, 46, had been writing songs together for the past five years. Buzz, the co-author of Robert Knight's hit Everlasting Love, had been a Republican for the past four decades; Ed was a staunch Democrat and organiser of a pro-Obama group, Music City for Change.

Both bemoaned the atmosphere of partisan hostility that, they said, made partnerships like theirs increasingly rare.

It wasn't as if they found it difficult to see things from the other's perspective. Buzz told me he'd been raised in a true-blue Democratic household, but had, like so many southerners of his generation, moved rightwards.

"Growing up, we were Roosevelt Democrats," Buzz said. "My father was a factory worker - he wouldn't have dreamed of voting GOP.

"But after I had my first hit back in '68, I was hit with a tax bill of 72%. I immediately became a Republican."

Conversely, Ed acknowledged that his politics put him in a minority among Nashville artists. But he said country's preoccupation with the mundane reality of everyday life made it a natural vehicle for those motivated by a concern for social justice.

"Back in the '60s, country music was targeted at the working man," he argued. "It was all about themes everyone could relate to - love, hard work, the economy.

"Today, there are country singers who are Democrats. Some are willing to put their reputations on the line. But most keep their heads down - their managers tell them it won't be good for sales."

Buzz shook his head. Even as a conservative, he didn't want to see his political rivals ostacised from the Nashville scene - that wasn't what America was about, he said. But, he insisted, country music wasn't to blame for this hardening of partisanship: it was a problem with US society.

"I think it's a cultural thing - we're living in a combative society. All these TV shows with people shouting at each other.

"It don't need to be like that. You can see that Ed and I get along pretty well, huh?"

I could. But the current partisan climate doesn't exactly lend itself to partnerships like theirs.

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A gloomy forecast

• Jon Kelly
• 8 Oct 08, 06:32 AM GMT

NASHVILLE, TN: The weather here was dramatic all evening - cloying heat, grey-black storm clouds, pounding rain. It was shame, then, that the presidential debate failed to light up the sky tonight.

It seemed to me at the time that the previous encounter between Senators McCain and Obama had generated more heat than illumination: partisan supporters were enthused, but no-one I met in Oxford had been won over to one side or another.

It was a different story in Nashville. Wavering voters were starting to make up their minds. But the deeply committed seemed disappointed by what, to me, also seemed a largely inconclusive stand-off.

Cynthai Doney, a 44-year-old professional counsellor, already knew which way her ballot would be cast. Stronly pro-life, she was right behind McCain.

But the debate itself left her feeling subdued. Neither nominee, she felt, had succeeded in energising the audience.

"At first McCain seemed a little nervous, a little stiff - although he became more relaxed by the end," she told me. "Obama's a great speaker, but I don't think he gave a great speech tonight.

"I wouldn't have been able to pick a winner if I were undecided."

Shawanda Clay, 35, felt much the same. The nurse practitioner was as passionate in her support of Obama as Cynthia was in her enthusiasm for his Republican rival.

But Shawanda felt that the evening had been an anti-climax, too.

"It wasn't as exciting as everyone thought it was going to be," she admitted. "It was very low-key.

"I would have liked them to talk more about health care - that's an issue that really drives me. But I guess that's a problem with the format rather than the speakers themselves."

You didn't have to be a cynic, though, to appreciate that the views of people like Shawanda and Cynthia - whose votes were already in the bag - were less important to the rival campaigns than those of the hitherto uncommitted.

And it was the latter category that seemed to respond better to the debate, at least according to my entirely unscientific straw poll.

Bobby Foglia, 21, was just the kind of first-time voter that both candidates were desperate to reach. Having grown up in marginal Pennsylvania with a Republican mother and a Democratic father, he had been undecided before the encounter began.

By the time it was over, however, he had been won over by McCain.

"I thought that McCain performed very well compared to Obama," Bobby said. "He was better at relating to people. The way kept saying, 'My friends, my friends': I liked that.

"Obama was very professional, but to me he didn't reach out so well."

On the other hand, though, you had 18-year-old Isaac Gonzalez. He'd also been unsure who to support before the contest, leaning only slightly towards the Democratic candidate.

After watching what he saw as a more assured performance from the Illinois senator, however, he had moved decisively into the blue camp.

"He was much more concise and presidential. I'd say that I've now got a substantial amount of confidence in my vote for Obama.

"I thought McCain came over as passive-aggressive in his arguments and phrasing - he'd begin every answer by talking about what Obama thought. It didn't leave him time to explain what he would do."

In the days to come, polls may show a drift of independent voters to one candidate or another. I wonder, though, how much that will owe to the debate. Americans now don't have long to make up their minds, after all.

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McCain country

• Jon Kelly
• 8 Oct 08, 01:24 AM GMT

Jennifer has been out and about sampling Nashville's delights. At the Douglas Corner Cafe she found customers enjoying music with a Republican flavour:

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Bill of health

• Jon Kelly
• 7 Oct 08, 06:27 AM GMT

NASHVILLE, TN: Beware when life imitates art. In 2007, Molly Secours was a successful film-maker who had just completed a documentary about Americans impoverished for want of health insurance.

Then doctors told her she had uterine cancer: now she too faced financial ruin.

"The financial stress was almost as bad as the diagnosis and the treatment," Molly, 45, grimaced.

"All the time I was thinking: how am I going to pay for this?"

Having spoken to so many patients left destitute by illness, Molly had made sure she was insured. But her policy - the best she could afford - had only covered 80% of her treatment costs. She was still faced with a bill of more than $40,000.

Unable to work as she underwent chemotherapy, Molly watched her credit card debts spiral upwards. She assumed she would lose her home, her car - all her material possessions.

But her friends came to the rescue. They organised a fundraising concert in her adopted home city of Nashville which, together with an internet appeal, raised some $30,000 - enough to keep the creditors at bay.

When I met her, Molly was back at work having just received an all-clear from her latest check-up. But she was on her way to a rally in support of healthcare reform: she desperately wanted Barack Obama to win the election and introduce a universal safety net.

Back in New Mexico, I encountered a story very similar to Molly's. After I blogged, I was struck by the polarization among readers' comments: back home in Britain, people often find it difficult to understand why Americans run their health service as they do. The fact that 47 million of them have no coverage seemed shocking to a country reared on the NHS.

Nashville seemed an ideal location to explore why Americans might feel otherwise. The city might be best known for its country music, but it can also claim to be the healthcare industry capital of the US.

Paul Wright offered a perspective on why so many support the system here. The 60-year-old could point to the fact that the United States spends far more per capita on health than any other country in the developed world.

Paul didn't want to see the system radically changed. The company he worked for, a commercial tyre firm, contributed to his insurance as part of his overall employment package. And here in America, he said, people had a duty to look out for themselves.

"I agree with John McCain on this one," he said.

"Here in the US, you can get treatment almost immediately if you need it. I've heard stories about people in Canada having to wait.

"At the end of the day, I think there does have to be personal responsibility."

It was a tough, uncompromising view of the world - but one in keeping with the American virtue of self-reliance.

Liberals and conservatives could argue about whether Molly or Paul's outlook best expressed the national ethos. But I wanted to hear the story from the sharp end of the health care system.

Reginald Coopwood met me outside the Nashville's Metropolitian General Hospital, where he served as chief executive.

His was a difficult job, he told me. Here in Davidson County, he added, some 56,000 people - 10% of the population - had no health insurance. He expected the figure to rise as turmoil on the financial markets started trickling down.

"We're going to have more with people losing their jobs," he said.

"It's going to make the issue real for a lot of people."

He could be right. But whether either US presidential candidate will be able to overcome cultural hostility to universal healthcare isn't something I'd want to predict.

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The whole tooth

• Jon Kelly
• 6 Oct 08, 01:12 AM GMT

CLARKESVILLE, TN: Dusty Flynn still vividly recalls the worst day of her life. Early one morning in August 2007, two soldiers appeared at her door. They didn't have to tell her that her ex-husband, Josh, who had been serving in Iraq, was dead.

"They don't come to your house just to let you know that he's injured," the 27-year-old said evenly.

"I made them tell me outside, right there."

Josh's Black Hawk helicopter had crashed following a mechanical failure, they informed her. It had been his first tour of Iraq.

The news was devastating for Dusty. She had begun dating Josh when she was 16. Although the couple had divorced, she still considered him her best friend.

But hardest part of all was breaking the news to their son Morgan, who was then six. The little boy had adored his father. "He found it really hard that he couldn't reach out and touch his dad any more," Dusty recalled. He would ask her if Josh was safe in heaven.

After Josh's funeral - which was attended by hundreds of mourners - Dusty felt numb. But she found a way to channel her grief a few weeks later when Morgan lost his first tooth.

It had been a long-standing tradition in her family to make their children tooth-shaped pillows, with a pouch to tuck in the denture for the tooth fairy. Dusty asked her sister Amy to sew one for Morgan.

Amy agreed. When she presented it, though, Dusty felt as though she had been knocked sideways. Amy had made it from one of Josh's military uniforms. It carried his name tape across the front.

"I just felt all this emotion," Dusty remembered. "It was as though now Morgan could feel Josh, he could smell him."

Morgan joined us in the living room. He was clutching the pillow under his arm. I asked him why he treasured it so much.

"It reminds me of my dad," he smiled. "It makes me feel close to him."

Dusty resolved to help other bereaved children feel the same. She and her family set up a project called Operation: Snaggletooth, making tooth pillows from the uniforms of deceased personnel for those they had left behind.

The response was overwhelming. She was inundated with offers of help and supplies. So far, Dusty estimates that she has shipped 200 pillows.

She told me that it helped her cope, poring through lists of military casualties and their families. Sometimes, she said, she would spend hours talking to their loved ones on the phone.

"I don't want any of them to just be names," she added. "I know what they're going through."

After hearing her story, it seemed almost trite to start talking about party politics and elections.

Both of the main candidates for the presidency have very different ideas about how the American military should be deployed, I said. Which one was Dusty most likely to vote for?

"You know, I think that they're both strong leaders," she answered. "I'll leave that one up to God. I believe that he'll take care of us."

I looked over at Morgan, and hoped that she was right.

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An unconventional Church

• Jon Kelly
• 5 Oct 08, 07:24 AM GMT

ST LOUIS, MO: So there I was in a downtown bar, discussing indie bands over my pint with a crowd of studenty-looking twentysomethings.

The talk turned to the election. Religion and party politics shouldn't mix, someone said. Church leaders who urged their congregations to back conservative candidates were abusing their position, another drinker agreed.

And then I remembered. These people were Southern Baptist evangelicals - supposedly the most partisan and right-wing of all American religious groups. What was going on?

The Journey isn't your typical church, to be fair. Its website proclaims a mission to reach out to "punk rockers, grandmothers, [and] construction workers" alike. And as part of its strategy to persuade young people that a love of alt-rock and alcohol is compatible with Christianity, it holds regular informal meetings in this ale house I visited.

Well, any trip to the pub is a religious experience for me. And at a time when most Americans are demanding that politicians listen to them, I was keen to meet one group who were anxious to step back from the megaphone.

With his scruffy-smart demeanour and fashionable horn-rimmed glasses, Darrin Patrick looked more like a Hoxton web designer than a Southern Baptist pastor.

He told me how much he loved Radiohead and Arcade Fire. Earlier in the week, he said, he'd been to an "awesome" Foo Fighters gig.

In Britain, we tend to be cynical about anyone who tries to marry popular culture with faith. I come from a country where "trendy vicar" is a term of derision (and one which was regularly lobbed at guitar-strumming Roman Catholic convert Tony Blair).

But Darrin genuinely seemed equally at ease in both worlds. And in a county where religious belief is so widespread, it's hardly surprising that young Americans might look for a connection between the secular and the sacred.

He told me how he had found his faith as a teenager when, during one week, he was suspended from high school for fighting, kicked off his football team for drinking, and led to believe that he might have got his girlfriend pregnant.

He'd set up the Journey appeal to people like his younger self. Six years on, over 2,000 people were now attending regularly.

An equal proportion of them were Republicans and Democrats, Darrin said. Some were motivated by concern for the poor, others by individual responsibility. It wasn't his job to tell them how to vote, he said; in fact, to do would be a breach of responsibility.

Instead, he told me that his priorities were social justice and community action. Journey members worked in St Louis's inner-city schools as well as with immigrants, people with HIV and single mothers. Putting Christian principles into practice was what evangelicals should be doing, he insisted, not getting mixed up in party politics.

"If you sell out to the right or the left, you sell out Jesus," he said.

"Go to certain evangelical churches and they're all conservatives. But I think the church needs to follow Jesus and stay right in the centre."

Richie Cook, a 22-year-old Bright Eyes fan, agreed wholeheartedly. He had felt alienated from conventional churches when he studied for a theology degree at university.

"I met people living Christian lives who were secretive and hypocritical and..." he searched for the right word. "Mean, to be blunt.

"I didn't want anything to do with Christianity. But I couldn't get away from the fact that I believed in God."

After discovering the Journey, he said he'd finally found a home in the church. "I do care more about social justice and issues that deal with how it affects people," he said. "That's what motivates me."

He wasn't the only one. Kristin Guilliams, 28, a paediatric neurologist was still making up her mind about how to vote.

But she said that issues like the economy were more important to her than the kind of topics that were meant to excite evangelicals.

"I think that morality is something that shouldn't be legislated for," she told me.

"Abortion and marriage are things that are better left to individuals' conscience."

Religion and politics might seem inextricably linked in the US for now. But if Darrin gets his way, one of the great certainties of American elections could be undermined.

(1) www.journeyon.net

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Spirit of St Louis

• Jon Kelly
• 4 Oct 08, 06:40 PM GMT

ST LOUIS, MO: Here's some more reaction to the VP debate, courtesy of Jennifer:

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Ice queens

• Jon Kelly
• 3 Oct 08, 08:10 AM GMT

ST LOUIS, MO: You can keep your pundits and politics professors. I had some real experts to guide me through the Vice Presidential debate: a pair of all-American hockey moms.

I hadn't realised such a subculture existed before Sarah Palin burst onto the world's consciousness like a burly hockey-player - a defenseman bodychecking a rival.

But with commentators turning on the Alaska governor ahead of her encounter with Democratic rival Joe Biden, I wondered if the kind of American moms to whom she was tailoring her message would see things differently.

I invited Lynne Schutz, 41, and Lauren Anderson, 38, onto the bus to talk me through the contest. Neither reminded me of pitbulls, although both were wearing lipstick.

Lynne's 13-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter both played hockey, she told me. Supporting their children's sporting ambitions was a big financial commitment while she and her husband were trying to keep their haulage firm running

"It's about 0500 starts and travelling out of town," she said. "It's about discipline and making sacrifices for your family.

"I wouldn't vote for Sarah Palin just because she's a woman. But I do think that she understands how things are for people like me."

Lynne was open-minded before the debate started. In the past she'd tended to choose Republican in presidential elections, but had also voted for Democratic senators and representatives.

Lauren - a full-time mom accustomed to ferrying three children aged 11, eight and five to hockey practice - was already leaning towards Palin, thanks to her commitment to family values. But she knew her own mind.

It was clear as the evening wore on, however, that both women were moving further into the Republican camp. Palin's folksy turn of phrase (Say it ain't so, Joe! Doggone it!) might have played its part.

But both women said they liked the way she related her own experience of juggling family and career to the post-credit crunch anxieties faced by households like theirs.

It also helped that neither were won over by Joe Biden.

"He's speaking way above what the average person would understand," Lauren remarked. "Everything he says has a negative purpose about it."

"On the other hand, Sarah Palin is holding her own. She's talking about education and how she wants things to change."

Neither Lauren nor Lynne had liked the way in which Palin had been attacked by the media in the run-up to the debate - the Saturday Night Live parodies, the mockery that followed her interviews with Katie Couric.

I couldn't help but wonder if they'd taken this backlash personally - so soon, too, after Hillary Clinton lost her bruising primary battle. Lynne acknowledged that she was riled by the double standards she saw applied to female politicians.

"You'll never see Joe Biden asked how he's going to look after his kids if he becomes Vice President," she frowned.

"But she speaks to me. I don't know if she speaks to everyone, but she definitely speaks to me."

You can argue whether Palin won or lost her bout with Biden. Certainly, I could just as easily have found two women who disliked her with equal passion.

But I don't think the merits or otherwise of her views on abortion, Iraq or offshore drilling were the point tonight. What mattered most was that, in difficult times, Americans wanted leaders who understood them.

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In the red

• Jon Kelly
• 2 Oct 08, 04:40 AM GMT

ST LOUIS, MO: In the last few days, the world's media - this blog included - has invited the American public to vent its anger against Wall Street.

But as the US Senate voted on the hugely unpopular $700bn bailout, I wanted to hear the other side. Bankers are real people, too. It can't be nice when everyone's ganging up on you.

I didn't even have to travel to Manhattan to find any. St Louis, Missouri, is one of the major US financial services centres, with the industry employing some 81,700 people locally. And as luck would have it, a business expo was under way.

So I thought I'd wander along. Conference centres always make me feel uneasy - it might be their soulless air of functional anonymity, or something to do with the air conditioning - but the mood inside this one was especially subdued. It wasn't, after all, exactly a great time to be closing deals.

Still, it didn't take me long to find a banker keen to make his case. Joshua Lewis, 29, wasn't the flash New York yuppie of popular imagination.

A banker with Frontanec, a locally based finance house, he shared the same concerns with most working Americans I've encountered. With daughters aged two-and-a-half years and two months, he was anxious about the effect of the crisis on his family and his job.

For Joshua, though, the division of America into Main Street and Wall Street was a false one. You couldn't have one without the other, he believed.

"After being confronted with terrorism, natural disasters and the economic situation, Americans are feeling vulnerable for the first time," he told me.

"Wall Street and Main Street have always been intertwined. It just becomes more visible when a local bank can't finance your business because of what's happening on the markets."

Joshua was relieved that the Senate bill had passed: doing nothing, he said, would be "catastrophic". But not every financial professional I spoke to agreed

Larry Fousie, 38, was a financial adviser who specialised in building up investment portfolios. He was worried, too: customers were edgy at the moment, he said.

He understood as well as anyone that the country was entering a bear market. But he was bullish at the suggestion that only bankers were to blame.

"The blame does lie with the government for relaxing regulation, and with the banks for pushing sub-prime mortgages," he admitted.

"But it also lies with consumers who took out these loans because they wanted to keep up with the Joneses and ended up in houses they couldn't afford. People do have to take personal responsibility."

He wasn't happy with the bail-out. It was just be a sticking-plaster, he said, which failed to tackle the problems which caused the credit crunch in the first place.

All Larry knew was that he wouldn't be voting for Barack Obama. "He just doesn't have the experience. That's what we need right now."

An air of pessimism clung to the room like gel to a stockbroker's hair. But I did meet someone who was quietly confident she emerge unscathed.

Amanda Kerley, 27, worked for Community South - a modest Tennessee-based bank that specialised in loans to small businesses. It had so far avoided the turmoil faced by its grander rivals, she said.

Ultimately, she believed, Wall Street had been burned because it had been too remote from the reality of life in the heartlands.

"Of course I'm concerned - the same as everyone else," she said.

"But I think banks like this one understand what's going on in our communities better than those Wall Street do. And that's why we haven't been so badly hit."

For her sake, at least, I hoped she was right. If so, perhaps America's banking giants will return to small-town values after all.

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Class warfare

• Jon Kelly
• 1 Oct 08, 04:37 AM GMT

Eleven-year-old Kayla Hager has been watching this election closely. After her teacher asked her class to study the presidential candidates, she quickly became fascinated by the race.

"I wasn't all that interested before," she told me. "But now we've had this assignment, I'm really following it."

Looks like I was onto something about young people being more politically engaged over here. At 11, I barely could have told you what an election was.

In her music classroom at Poplar Bluff Fifth and Sixth Grade Center, Missouri, Kayla told me she wanted Barack Obama to win - she liked his policies on education and the environment. But most of the adults I spoke to here weren't so enthusiastic about either nominee.

On the surface, this small-town Midwestern school seemed a million miles from the turmoil engulfing Wall Street and Washington.

But it's closer than you might think. Missouri's education budget is funded by a property tax. If the housing market continues to contract, so too will the funds available for the state's classrooms.

The human costs of the economic turmoil were all too visible here to fifth grade teacher Joan Lack, 32. She has already heard some heartbreaking stories from her pupils.

"We had a student saying that her family couldn't pay its electric bill," she said. "When I was 10 years old, I didn't know what an electric bill was.

"I fear that they're going to leave school growing up in a depression."

As I've already noted, Missouri is a bellwether state when it comes to elections. I wasn't surprised to hear that the economy was a huge issue here. But it appears that education is a big deal, too.

Kayla's mother, Brandy, 34, hadn't decided which way to vote. Working in a home furnishings store, she'd noticed a slump in sales as shoppers grew jittery.

But the issue that really concerned her was her daughters' schooling. In particular, she wasn't at all happy with the recent education reforms.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 introduced mandatory testing for students. Results were published, and schools which did not improve were subject to heavy sanctions.

But Brandy wasn't impressed. Ambitious for Kayla, she was frustrated that better-performing children were being ignored because the onus was on teachers to raise attainment at the bottom of the class.

"In my experience, I've not felt that it has met the needs of my children," she complained.

"They're high achievers. But No Child Left Behind doesn't do anything for them."

But not everyone agreed. The principal, Patty Robertson, was proud that the school had made steady progress in the league tables. She led me through its corridors, and I saw lines of cheerful 10-to12-year-olds queuing patiently for class. It did seem a good place to learn.

Patty didn't believe that the education reforms had been perfect. The target of making sure every student was proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 was unattainable, she argued, and didn't take account of children with special needs.

But a few tweaks were all that she felt were needed to make the policy work. And with the election looming, she was concerned that she faced a choice between one candidate who would drastically transform it, and another who would let it stagnate.

"I'm worried about both. I'm afraid there will be no change at all if John McCain gets in.

"But with Barack Obama - well, I don't want everything totally altered. So I guess I'm still making up my mind."

So is Missouri. And history suggests that the rest of the country will take notice.

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For whom the bell tolls

• Jon Kelly
• 1 Oct 08, 03:25 AM GMT

I'm in the Midwest: Missouri, to be precise. Voters in this bellwether state have picked the winner in every presidential election in the past 100 years except 1956. Maybe I can get them to choose my lottery numbers, too.

At first glance, it looks like they keep a beady eye on their politicians around here. When I picked up The Daily American Republic of Poplar Bluff, its front page solemnly itemised how each member of the state's nine-strong delegation to the House of Representatives cast their ballots on the Wall Street bail-out.

For the record, five rejected the proposals: three Republicans and two Democrats. Two from each party supported the bill.

As Jennifer found out, the latter group might have a task ahead explaining themselves to their constituents:

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