For a couple of hours this weekend a few democratic blogs spewed the same kind of toxic speculations, assumptions, assertions, and lies that Fox “News” reports as news every single day of the year.
Knock it off. We don’t need to stoop to their level to reclaim America and our freedom and a viable future from the Republicans.
We need to draw some ground rules – what is appropriate? What goes to far?
McCain has repeatedly mentioned that he wants to address the issue of earmarks in Congress. He has also called Palin a “Cost Cutter.” In that light, a close look at Palin’s excessive use of Federal earmarks, both as a Mayor and Governor is appropriate.
Palin has been praised for going after corruption in the Republican Party. I think that is just excellent, but it doesn’t mean she should get a pass on her own abuses of power both as a Mayor and as the Governor of Alaska.
I’m not going to go on and list everything about Palin that concerns me and why they need to be addressed. There are too many, and that’s not the point of this post.
The point is this: there is a line we must not cross.
Sarah Palin’s stand on Abstinence Only reproductive information (even for married couples) has been proven to be not only ineffective in reducing teen pregnancies, but actually places young people at a higher risk for acquiring Sexually Transmitted Diseases. This fact does not give us the right to tear apart her 17 year old daughter. I don’t care whether she’s pregnant or not. She is a minor. She didn’t ask for this attention. She is not running for office. She is none of our business.
Dr. Dobson’s group, “Focus on the Family” has started a prayer campaign to pray for rain at Obama’s acceptance of the Democratic nomination.
This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered “Christian” groups praying for rain to hurt others. When I was a teen, the band Cheap Trick came to play in my little town of Palmer, Alaska. My church started a campaign to pray that the concert would be rained out. I spent most of my youth wondering why “Christians” focus so much of their energy and prayer towards hating and hurting others rather than actually doing good. I still wonder.
By the way the concert was a rare, beautiful 70+ degree day.
Update: the weather was beautiful. The only rain occurred in the Fox “News” booth; it was flooded due to a sprinkler malfunction.
Saturday morning Punk Rock Mommy died from inflammatory breast cancer.
Her husband uploaded her last post and I read it
and cried.
I never met Punk Rock Mommy, I had never read her blog before this morning. But I am struck by the human spirit and how impending death can clarify perspective. Punk Rock Mommy couldn’t be more different from my father, yet they both died from cancer in the past year, and they both, in that last year of their lives, gained a super-human measure of perspective and wisdom. Things that separated my dad from Punk Rock Mommy and Randy Pausch (who wrote The Last Lecture), things like religion, ethnicity, gender, and politics are superficial labels, but underneath – we’re all more alike than different. The messages that they left us with (or are leaving us with, Randy Pausch is still fighting pancreatic cancer) are essentially the same: love one another, choose to be happy, don’t ruin the rest of your life mourning, don’t live your life in “someday,” live right now, don’t waste your time on anger it’ll just ruin your day. This quote from Punk Rock Mommy really leaped out at me: “I am no doormat, but I just let go of all that hard core resentment.”
How can we learn from this? What would you do differently if you had a week, or a month, or a year left to live? What would you write in your last post? What message would you leave for your family, friends, and the world’s prying eyes?
It sounded like a thousand birds, but when I finally roused myself from bed to look out the window, I only counted fifteen lined up along the edge of the roof. They were learning to fly.
One by one they would take the great leap, swoop down low, and flap like mad to make it back up to the roof-line and their siblings. I can’t imagine that leap and the faith that your wings will bear you up.
Eventually they all made the short flight down to the lower roof, and eventually I woke up enough to think of grabbing my camera. From the lower roof, they made the much longer flight to the tree where they have been singing for much of the day.
These pictures are a bit blurry as they were taken through the bug-screen on my window.
When was the last time you took a deep breath and a leap of some kind?
My father passed away in October, so today, I’m facing my first fatherless Father’s Day. I had a hard time figuring out what to write; there is so much that I’m just not quite ready to talk about yet. I decided to come up with a list of things that I learned from my Dad.
1. Be creative. Improvise.
Dad could fix anything with duct tape, although that’s not the only thing he used. He never let the lack of the proper tool slow him down; not having the proper tool is just an excuse. Sometimes he would invent a tool on the spot to do what he needed. And come Halloween, if he didn’t have a good pumpkin, he might just go with a turnip from the garden.
2. Tell your stories.
Family stories are a gift. They help you understand what made your parents the way they are, what made you the way you are. They are the structure that defines the culture of your family. The paragraph below was excerpted from a 30 page autobiography Dad left for us before he died. It paints a picture of family life in 1950s Los Angeles, it also paints a picture of my grandfather, whom I never really got to know but was so instrumental in shaping my father into the man he was to become.
“One of my favorite memories of this time was Wednesday nights. That was payday and Dad would bring home a big load of groceries. He was a deputy for the L.A. County Sheriff and drove a blue 1948 Buick. I remember French bread and celery and we usually had spaghetti because that was Dad’s favorite dish. He would also like to have some red wine with his spaghetti. He would take his first glass and take a sip. He would screw up his face like it tasted worse than castor oil, vinegar, and turpentine all mixed together and as he unscrewed his face he’d say, “Man, that’s good!” About this time he told me he wanted me to sit on his left. He explained (kidding, of course) that it was so he could “come across with this one” making a fist. Mom sat on his right so he could pat her on the shoulder so she would know he had just said something funny and (perhaps apologizing for being so corny) it was time to laugh. It was at this age, perhaps, that I began to appreciate how much my Dad loved my Mom.”
3. Read bedtime stories to your children.
In my earliest years, Dad was a full time college student working two part time jobs. Mom would adjust our bedtime to fit his work schedule and he would come home between shifts to read us a bedtime story and tuck us in. Bed time stories were a sacred tradition in our home. My parents had five kids and we would all pile up on someone’s bed every night for the bedtime story. He didn’t just read Dr. Seuss (although there was plenty of that, and Richard Scarry, and Where the Wild Things Are). As we got older he moved on to the classics like Heidi, The Swiss Family Robinson, Kidnapped, Treasure Island… We learned to love reading and stories. I learned to read by watching him read and following his finger as it dragged across the page. And every night we had that bonding time.
4. Be Happy.
Dad used that phrase a lot. He would often sign off on his letters saying “be happy.” He taught us, and modeled for us, that happiness is a choice and not an accident of circumstance. Choose happiness. Have fun. Laugh. Joke. Be Silly.
Defrosting the freezer can be a chore (remember when we had to do that?) or it can be a blast. The choice is yours.
5. Send Letters.
It didn’t matter if it was Toledo, New Orleans, or another city in our state, whenever Dad went somewhere on a business trip he sent us postcards. Not one card for all of us; each of us got our own postcard. It wasn’t a big expense, and it didn’t take a lot of time, but the payoff for us kids feeling loved and appreciated and remembered and valued – well, you can’t put a price on that. He wrote letters too. Whenever Mom would put together a care package for one of us, Dad would pack it up and include a note. It usually wasn’t very long, a few paragraphs, but I always read the note before I looked to see what else was in the box. Don’t underestimate the value of these letters. They meant enough to me that I still have a box in which I keep all the postcards and letters from Dad. And don’t confuse letters with emails. There’s something about the handwriting that makes it more personal and more meaningful.
This is the last and most precious letter I received from my Dad right after he died.
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