I am currently listening to President-elect Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

I know it’s been out a while (Barack wrote it long before he was even a US Senator) but it is a wonderful insight into Obama.  He is our most literate President since Abraham Lincoln.

I’ll have more on the book once I finish it.

But in the “it’s a small word after all department,” I learned that his grandmother who raised him, Madelyn Payne Dunham, was from Augusta, Kansas.  While our paths never crossed because we lived there in greatly different times, I am a 1977 graduate of Augusta High School.

His grandfather, Stanley Dunham, was from El Dorado, Kansas.  Again, our paths never crossed because of when we lived there, but I spent my summers working in El Dorado while I was in college.

Add Barack’s mother, Ann, who was born in Wichita and my wife Donna, who was also born in Wichita.  Again, paths never crossed.

When Barack Obama came to Sioux Falls, SD and we met him at an event in June, my wife Donna told him that like his mom, she too was from Wichita.  To which Barack said, “Well heck, we’re probably cousins!”

I know it’s all reflected glory and all.  But as a Barack Obama supporter, it’s still pretty cool to have that sort of connection, distant as it is, to our next President.