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A full pew
By DALE GOOD
What kind of car you drive, how big a house you live
in, where you buy your clothing, what restaurants you eat at, how much
money you make, or where you take your vacations.
There are more ways to count happiness and success than I could ever
list here. It’s really your choice.
This Sunday, Mother’s Day 2008, the Good family will fill the
pew at church on Sunday morning.
Now this may not be a big deal to some of you, but, it took a lot of
hard work on the part of a lot of people to put three generations of
Goods in that pew, just like it did and does for all of your families.
There were the droves of teachers like Heather Martin, our daughter
Mackenzie’s first grade teacher. There were doctors and dentists,
too numerous to mention. There was Pastor Vogelsang of Community Lutheran
Church who confirmed and married our kids.
There was Bob Wisecarver the local pharmacist, who filled the prescriptions
when they were sick, and Jack Bose of A-1 Irrigation, who helped dad
find just the right whatchmageggies and doodads that kept our grass
green over all those years, so our young children, and later our grandchildren,
could play on it.
There was the endless list of volunteer soccer, softball, Little League,
and tennis coaches who unselfishly gave up their Saturdays and evenings.
There were the school bus drivers and piano teachers and friends, friends,
and more friends and neighbors. This may start sounding a lot like Hillary
Clinton’s book, It Takes A Village, but you know what, she’s
right, it does take a village, and in the case of the Good family, that
village has been and continues to be this village of Valley Center.
Jackie Kennedy Onassis once said, “If you bungle raising your
children, I am not sure that whatever else you do matters that much.”
So who’s at the epicenter of all this pew building? Why of course
it’s a good mom. A mother who not only gives life to her children
and loves them, but also teaches and yes sometimes preaches.
A mom listens, hugs, smiles and laughs, directs traffic, does the laundry
and prepares the meals. She forgives, agonizes at her children’s
missteps and never ever abandons high hopes, aspirations, and prayers
for them.
Mothers are like bank vaults where other family members deposit all
their troubles and problems. As Geneva Jordan said, “Moms are
the person who seeing only FOUR pieces of pie for five people promptly
announces that she didn’t like pie anyway.”
So on this Mother’s Day of 2008 as the Good family, now all ten
of us, moms, dads, sons and daughters and grandchildren fill that Sunday
church pew, even if it’s not the same pew, at the same church,
in the same town, it seems to me like a pretty good measure of happiness.
And as all of us prepare to take mom out for Sunday brunch or are looking
for just the right Mother’s Day boutique, remember that moms hold
their children’s hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.
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Sacramento does
as it pleases— Part II
By DANA CHISHOLM
In the first of this series, Chisholm talked about
the budget crisis in Sacramento, mostly created by the politicians who
inhabit it. This second part will talk about what you can do to influence
this debate.
First, realize that your views as an individual—such as wanting
to help the poor, better education, peace in times of war, freedom of
speech—are NOT views held by the radically liberal Democratic
party in Sacramento.
We as a people must STOP sending these idiots to office! They are not
even passing legislation that I think most REAL Democrats support. In
fact, what legislation that you support has been passed lately? Money
for our schools? Specialty plates for our non-profits?
Yet over 2,000 bills were introduced for 2008. There were over 2,800
introduced in 2007 and some of them are still winding their way through
the legislature as two-year bills; about 1,000 of those introduced in
2007 were sent to the governor.
The legislature sent him nearly 1,200 in 2006. Have you familiarized
yourself with those? Or are you waiting for the crisis battle cry?
Second, call and tell your Assembly and Senate representative that you
will NOT be sending them back to office next go around unless they start
valuing our definition of freedom. But, when you talk to your Representative,
you need to know the language of double-speak. They will tell you what
you want to hear so you think they agree with you, but their meaning
is completely different from what you THINK you heard.
If you call and say you want them to support a bill for specialty license
plates for any non-profit organization that can raise 7,500 supporters,
your Rep has lackeys to tell you, “We support such a measure and
would never vote against it.” What that actually means is “The
Senator doesn’t sit on any committees that such a bill will be
presented, so he/she won’t have to vote against it.”
If they tell you, “We will vote for any measure that comes before
us to get that passed,” what it actually means is, “I have
a friend on the Transportation Committee that assures me it will be
killed before it ever makes it to a full vote of the Senate so that
vote will never have to be made.”
If they tell you, “We would like to help, but the deadline for
that has already passed,” what that really means is, “I
know we could gut another piece of legislation at any time and get a
bill passed if we really wanted to, but we aren’t going to do
that.”
Our Republican representatives Will tell you they can’t carry
a bill because it is a “non-starter.” That means that if
they propose legislation, the liberal majority will never let it out
of Committee anyway, so proposing it will waste their time. What that
tells me is that by default, even our Republicans have become liberal
because they are only proposing legislation they think can get by the
majority.
What you have to do is read between the lines in the most conniving
way, as if you just caught a cheating husband who tells you, “I
never slept with that woman.” What he says is technically true,
they were never asleep. That is the kind of truth politicians will tell
you. What you need to know is that mysteriously the measures that they
do want passed, get passed every day by the thousands.
Whatever their word play to pacify you, the proof of their honesty to
you is in getting it done. And do we have any proof? Well, so far we
do not have a specialty license plate program that does not require
government-sponsored messages.
We are in an educational budget crisis, yet we refuse millions from
the federal government. Whose fault is it for sending these idiots back
to office every year and not even knowing how the 1,000 new laws each
year affect our schools and budget until it becomes a crisis? Let’s
resolve to make some changes in California beyond this current crisis.
Don’t just get informed and active, stay informed and active.
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