I haven’t paid attention to this Colorado race much – but I know Romanoff was likely asked not to run by the Democrat Party machine. I also know after this letter he sent to supporters today that I like him. Dana Milbank I generally do like, but he’s got several agendas he pursues regularly that can get too inside the deskjockeystrap and just too political, without enlightening anything,.
Romanoff’s letter to supporters starts: “Dana Milbank got my name right — but that’s about it. Mr. Milbank’s attempt to malign my character consumed 13 paragraphs in Sunday’s Washington Post and Monday’s Denver Post. Nearly every paragraph is false or misleading. The newspapers’ decision to publish this work of fiction is disappointing enough. What makes matters worse is Mr. Milbank’s decision to discard the evidence he made a pretense of seeking.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Funny, someone just asked about joining a social media team for Terry Goddard. And I believe this is the second or third column I’ve printed at my site. This one is about an industry I have mixed feelings about. It does make you pay extraordinary high interest rates – but on the other hand, it’s not like they hide or try and slip in hidden fees. It’s all up front.
Obviously people in Arizona voted the industry out. My feelings are still mixed and I voted for the industry to say. It’s just another option another tool, people have to stay afloat. If used wisely – and sparingly.
Note – at some point media should stop giving Goddard “My Turn” columns since he’s running for governor and most of his columns are feel good “This is what I’m doing” turns. And he has done a lot of good – and well, my feelings are somewhat mixed here, leaning more positively. So essentially free ad space and more importantly, not giving the same space to opponents.
Making Sure Payday Lenders Don’t Evade Law’s Sunset
(Phoenix, June 14, 2010) Attorney General Terry Goddard has written the following “My Turn” column about his efforts to ensure that the payday loan industry complies with the expiration of the state’s payday lending law on June 30.
Read the rest of this entry »
Let him (the White Man) be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless.
Please remind me to write about Chief Seattle, a celebrated environmentalist, whose words we never heeded. A speech I read solidified my desire and effort and mindset to care for the land, even without the religious baggage of having “dominion over all.”
I have a booklet I bought or was given when I lived in Seattle and I think this was the speech it contained. Sadly the account here makes it seem that some of it might have been rhetorical floursh added decades after the occurrence, much like accounts of Jesus that have warped and shaped the Western world and the Manifest Destiny destruction of so many of the the Native American peoples, and some of their ways of living with and as a part of nature.
Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them. … Ever part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch.
My mother died of breast cancer when I was six. I remember a few things about her. Her voice, her red hair, and the way she raised one eyebrow when she laughed. I sometimes wish she’d died when I was younger so I wouldn’t remember her at all. I remember her green eyes.”
– pg 5, “Flight” by Sherman Alexie
In turn, though this quote happens to be about a dead mother, I completely read it through as a quote about a dead father and had to do a double-take after getting about three or four paragraphs past it. I just started the book today. My first exposure to Alexie was through the film Smoke Signals. It was a story and film packed with reflections of a missing father, a failed search and breath-taking takes on the impact he had on the main character’s life. And the final reflection with the shot panning over a river, sticks in my head, though out of context it needs context:
How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream. Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often, or forever, when we were little? Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage, or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all? Do we forgive our fathers for marrying, or not marrying, our mothers? Or divorcing, or not divorcing, our mothers? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing, or leaning? For shutting doors or speaking through walls? For never speaking, or never being silent? Do we forgive our fathers in our age, or in theirs? Or in their deaths, saying it to them or not saying it. If we forgive our fathers, what is left?
Having lost my own father, having occasionally thought how life might have been different with any father figure early on in my life (none after about three to about 10) – who died when I was older but I never met again, it was devastating when I watched Smoke Signals and completely snatched my breath and ripped down tears. It will be again when I watch it again – and I need to read the book, as well. Now, when I do it will have new, painful layers of meaning because of new people in my life who I love dearly and deeply, whose father passed away. The film’s father is flawed, violent absent, as mine undoubtedly was. Still, father, right? And I’m stepping into that role with purpose and an awareness of the awesome responsibility it entails.
