I see they finally caught up with that scofflaw Ted Stevens for almost running me down in a crosswalk in front of the National Archives in 1973.
Ha!
And there’ll be at least one less vote for Stevens in his reelection bid next Tuesday.
His.
Felons can’t vote in Alaska until they’ve finished serving their sentence.
“What I do know is this, everyone is a genius in a bullmarket. The last 5 years, that wasn’t a stock market. THIS is a stockmarket.”
Barack Obama, March 18, 2008:
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
FiveThirtyEight.com reminded me of this and of two other Ashleys. Click the link and read the context.
But I too am here because of Ashley Baia and her story.
“That’s how we’ve always grown the American economy – from the bottom-up. John McCain calls this socialism. I call it opportunity, and there is nothing more American than that.”
Three of the Sweeties won medals in a regional cross country competition in a pouring rain Saturday.
Second-grader Mack took second in his age group and third overall. His pre-K brother Aidan took second among boy kindergartners.
And Kiley won first place among kindergarten girls in her first-ever competition.
All three ran one mile; 33 kids competed in the K through 2nd age group.
Jill, official older daughter of NewMexiKen and mother of two of the competitors, reports:
It was so cute. They had flags, like little landscaping flags, laid out to mark the course in places where it was indistinct. I watched Mack finish, then ran back over and cheered Kiley up through this muddy, slippery hill. Aidan was about 30 seconds behind her. He was coming towards me and running kind of weird and I was thinking, “Is he struggling? Is he okay?” Then I realized he was running around each flag, in a little slalom, like you do with cones at soccer practice. He did it all the way up the hill and down past me, as everyone around me chuckled and I yelled, “Honey, run straight! You can run straight!”
Probably cost the little guy first place, but he should prove to be a good skier some day.
And an update. The 39-year-old was disqualified from the K-2 group so Mack won his first-ever 5K last week.
… of Ruby Dee. The actress and Kennedy Center Honor recipient is 84.
… of John Cleese. He’s 69, which means he doesn’t have too many more years to undermine his reputation from the Monty Python days with a continuing string of asinine TV commercials.
Theodore Roosevelt was born on this date in 1858. Roosevelt is still the youngest President ever. He was 42 when he succeeded McKinley in 1901.
The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas was born on this date in 1914. (He died in 1953.)
My birthday began with the water –
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Sylvia Plath was born on this date in 1932. She died, from suicide, at age 30 in early 1963.
The cottonwoods are turning and the Rio Grande flows by. No place any prettier in the autumn than a walk along the Rio Grande through the bosque in Albuquerque.
Taken yesterday with my iPhone. Click each image for larger version. If you look closely there’s a horse and rider across the river. We saw a coyote just south of Paseo del Norte, but he wouldn’t pose for a photo.
“It’s really a wonder, when you think about it, that there are still two guys in the race to become U.S. president, pulling out all the stops in these last eight days of campaigning to be chosen as the one to face the nightmare.”