Young Obama statue to be inaugurated in his Indonesian former neighborhood

Cue inappropriate Muslim bashing in Ben Smith's comments.

JAKARTA, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- A statue depicting young figure of the United States President Barrack Obama would be inaugurated in Obama's former neighborhood in Indonesia's capital city of Jakarta, the group called "Friends of Obama" said on Tuesday.

The construction of the statue was initiated by "Friends of Obama", a non-government organization. The statue is erected at a corner of a playground at Menteng Dalam, a suburb area in Jakarta.

The group said in a statement that the 2-meter high statue depicts Obama when he was at the age of 10 years old. At that age Obama studied in an elementary school in the neighborhood when he was under the custody of his mother, Ann-Dunham, who married to an Indonesian, Lolo Soetoro.

President Obama's sister signs book deal

By GottaLaff

Candlewick Press tells us that Prez O's sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, a teacher in Hawaii, has a book deal:

Ladder to the Moon, Maya Soetoro-Ng’s first book, is inspired by Maya and Barack’s mother as well as by Maya’s four-year-old daughter. What lessons, the author wonders, might her daughter have learned from her grandmother had the two ever met? In Ladder to the Moon, Maya Soetoro-Ng pays homage to her mother’s tradition of storytelling — and celebrates her mother’s enduring legacy of service — with an unforgettable story of love and compassion being passed along generations. Brimming with the beauty and magic of the night, Ladder to the Moon is a modern-day fable that will charm readers of any generation with its lush prose and timeless message about discovering one's own strength. Illustrator and publication date are to be determined.

Watch for Boss Limbaugh to make this into a bad thing.

Toot: 'Oh my ... with all of this hullabaloo, it's going to be embarrassing if I DON'T die.'

By GottaLaff

My forever friend who lives in Hawaii linked me to this touching story about an e-mail sent by P.E. Obama's sister to her friends, and willingly shared with a local Hawaiian paper:

Maya Soetoro-Ng could have accepted her brother's invitation to be at his side on Election Night in Chicago. But Barack Obama's sister knew where she belonged.

As she had for much of the past eight years, Soetoro-Ng stayed in the two-bedroom apartment on Beretania Street where she had taken care of their maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. [...]

Soetoro-Ng returned to her teaching job on Monday at La Pietra — Hawai'i School for Girls but has not spoken to the media since the death of their grandmother and her brother's Election Day electoral college landslide.

But in a post-election e-mail sent to friends last week, Soetoro-Ng wrote of the whirlpool of emotions surrounding both her grandmother's death and her brother's success — and of the need to then unplug for a while with her husband, Konrad, and their 4-year-old daughter, Suhaila, on O'ahu's North Shore.

I posted a personal story about Suhaila here .

In the subject line of the e-mail, Soetoro-Ng wrote, "love!"

She said she had been flooded with e-mail messages "of both congratulation and condolence. ... There's a wide swatch of emotion cutting through me, sometimes swirling, never simple ... a briny mixture of elation, sadness, determination, regret, pride, hope, fatigue. You can imagine ..."

Dunham, whom Obama called "Toot" after the Hawaiian word for grandparent, tutu, never showed self-pity or fear as she faced the end of her life, Soetoro-Ng wrote.

But Dunham could be wickedly funny.

"When she saw the number of flowers that had been sent to her," Soetoro-Ng wrote, "she said, 'Oh my ... with all of this hullabaloo, it's going to be embarrassing if I DON'T die.' I gave her a chuckle and of course told her that I wouldn't at all mind such an embarrassment, and then I invited her to stay and dance with me into the new year. She couldn't stay, but she certainly tried, and defied expectations again and again."

Soetoro-Ng then quickly turned to her brother's election as the nation's 44th president.

The "relief I feel has everything to do with the profound faith I have in Barack's leadership and vision for this country," she wrote. "I wept tears of joy for all of us on Tuesday. He may not be a perfect man. Certainly, he has often said that he'll likely be an imperfect president, but he is a good man, a smart man, a disciplined soul who balances temperance with determination and courage. We've made a great choice, I assure you."

She goes on to celebrate the victories of local politicians and thank supporters.

"Of course, part of me wanted to go, thank and celebrate with the many, many local folks who supported and contributed so much to this campaign, but the other part of me needed to go underground for a bit," Soetoro-Ng wrote.

She wrote of her plans last weekend to stay at a friend's beach house on the North Shore with Konrad and their daughter.

"In addition to wrapping my tutu's life, I need to prepare to teach my pumpkins, as I resume work next week," she wrote. "... I am going (to) read through dozens of potentially useful new resources to use with the kids, while I look up at the too-seldom seen canopy of stars, and snuggle with my husband and daughter."

The more I learn about this family, the more I admire them. I want to hug them all. Now.

And even though I didn't know her, I miss Toot.