Postcard from Paris
Did you know that France has 7 political parties? And you thought we had it bad…
Add comment July 24th, 2008
Drawing circles.
I caught Sunday’s Meet the Press with Al Gore and thought I should look at what he said up against last season’s draft recommendations on “America’s Energy Future.” While googling the transcript, I found the transcript AND MORE.
Here are three reviews of the interview:
Take 1: “Watching this pompous windbag - who produces CARBON Dioxide - makes me want to poke my eyes out. It would be less painful. What a self-righteous hypocrite!”
Take 2: “Somewhere in the darkest recesses of the RNC (or from Norquist’s or Rove’s office, your pick) the fax machine was working over time making sure that Tom Brokaw had the latest GOP talking points to discredit Al Gore for his appearance on Meet the Press.”
Take 3: “… for a change, we got a TV talk show for grown-ups, where a burning issue of our time was discussed without a single gotcha moment.”
Hard to believe they all watched the same interview.
That got me thinking that the way we human beings choose and process information we use… it’s like drawing circles around the particulars of a situation we choose to assimilate. A conservative who doesn’t believe in man-made climate change picks out the parts of the interview that fall in his circle of concern, the liberal sees a whole different picture in the inkblot.
Of course, that’s simply human. Where the whole mess starts to get buggy is when we refuse to step outside of our circles, when we only listen to people inside our circles, and when we twist facts to shoehorn things into our circles that simply don’t belong there.
So, yeah… draw those circles, but I challenge you to be prepared to step outside of them. Or, better still, I challenge you to enlarge them.
Who knows what you might stumble over in the process.
Add comment July 23rd, 2008
Lea & Liz: Our Day in the Sun, Part 2
We last left Lea at Furman, poised to listen to President Bush speak…
For a moment, I don’t think it mattered whether you supported him or not. We were all Americans there and we supported the fact that we HAVE a president. A person that WE choose to lead us, to guide us, to symbolize what we are as a country, who we are and who we want and need to be. We were a small group representing the whole of America. There were protestors, supporters, students, parents, guests and we were all there together ready to hear what President Bush had to say to the graduates and to us.
Here is a link to the whole text of President Bush’s speech at Furman University.
He spoke of simple things, family, faith, service to a greater cause. The little things that are really the big things in life. At the end of the BIGGEST job he will ever hold in his life, he spoke of the things that truly matter in this life. Things that were much more familiar to me than sitting in a VIP area. He spoke about being a husband, a father, and a dutiful son. He spoke of his past as a recovering alcoholic and the wisdom in avoiding temptations that leave you empty and unfulfilled. He challenged all to be serving citizens, fiscally responsible, and accountable to others.
It made me think more seriously about what I will do in November. Who I will vote for and why I will cast my vote for that person. The President is just a person (fallible and human), but there is so much more than that. There is an idea begun in the hearts and minds of men and women who came here and left all they knew behind for the very freedoms that I live and breathe and take for granted. The President is one person that will represent all of us “we the people”. And whether we vote for that person or not, he/she will be our leader for a time. That idea must be respected, that position is so much more than the many decisions that they make and perhaps the HUGE decisions that get the most press are not really the HUGE decisions that really matter at the end of the day.
I see Sovereignty in that we listened to Victor Hugo’s literary masterpiece Les Miserables on c.d. all the way home from Greenville. It is a story about a man who is so much more than the decisions he has made. A man who can forgive and who is transformed by forgiveness. A man of courage, self sacrifice, but mostly a man who understands Grace and gives it when it is most undeserved.
The novel is set against the background of a time of revolution and war. It is a time of great injustice and great division in a country. However the story shows that the inward war that a person fights is what truly is of the utmost importance. The small acts of courage and grace from one man ARE the whole of the story. It is not the grander scheme of turmoil, poverty, and injustice that touches us. It is when we see how loving others well and extending mercy to your neighbors can be far greater than all the injustices that plaque this world.
Add comment July 21st, 2008
Interfaith dialog sweeping the globe?
Well, maybe not quite.
But you might need to rub your eyes just a bit when you read that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia - which has as its official state religion the anti-western Wahhabi form of Islam - is currently holding an interfaith conference in Madrid.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the conference:
There have been few periods in history when the need for dialogue among world religions has been greater. At a time of increasing divisions along cultural and confessional lines, faith communities have a crucial role to play in fostering mutual understanding and in promoting consensus on common values and aspirations.
Apparently the Saudis aren’t exactly experts in such things, so there is understandably some skepticism:
“If this is a public relations stunt,” said [Rabbi Marc] Schneier [of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding and the World Jewish Congress], “we’re back in the same place, nothing gained and nothing lost. But if there’s a way to help Muslims strengthen the voices of moderation, we need to be joining this fight.”
Clearly worth watching.
Also of interest, watch for this:
Schneier is also at the conference to announce new Jewish-Muslim initiatives to take place later in the year, including a series of television commercials in time for Ramadan and Rosh Hashana in which rabbis and imams are shown together calling for tolerance, and an effort in November to pair synagogues and mosques for dialogue at the grassroots level.
Add comment July 17th, 2008
Lea & Liz: Our Day in the Sun, Part 1
Literally, we sat in the sun for quite a while on saturday afternoon waiting to see someone very special…
But it was worth it.
Early one Friday morning we got an invitation from the WHITE HOUSE to be President Bush’s “special friends” at Furman University on Saturday night. Furman is where my husband and I went to college (in case anyone didn’t know that we are proud purple paladins).
It all began because I had emailed a friend of mine a little note about how George W. (I can call him that now because I am his “special friend”) was speaking at Furman’s graduation and how some of the faculty was protesting and would NOT attend the graduation ceremony and how incredibly PROUD we were that he was coming to present the graduation speech. And next thing you know she has emailed that to her friend Jeb (Bush) and then the little email it is going on to the White House and then I received an email from the White House asking us if we wanted to attend graduation as “the President’s special friends”.
And to that I sent an email saying “HELL YEAH!”, just kidding, it said “hell, yeah (in all lower case), just kidding some more. But we did accept the kind offer.
So we packed up friday afternoon right after the kids came home from their last day of school and headed up to Greenville, S.C.
The WHITE HOUSE contact guy had told us to be there no later than 5 p.m. (so they could “manage our comfort level” which I think means in political speak, “so we can have the bomb dog sniff you all over”.)
We arrived at 4:30 (we are early birds when the president is involved) and they found our names on the V.I.P. list (which was a short list with the Governor and all the state Congress people, Mayor, and other political figures in South Carolina…. and our family)…
We were seated in a little section with chairs with names on them… Mayor, Senator, Representative, Chairman, Governor, and Adam, Lea, Millie, Maxx, Rosalea. Everyone was very nice to us and greeted us warmly. Though after we would introduce ourselves the inevitable “Ummm and you are…..?” would be forthcoming from them shortly. I answered, “we are Furman grads, we live in Florida, and I wrote an email to a friend that was sent to the White House and now we are here as special guests.”
I know I should have mentioned The Village Square.
There were 14 faculty members who were allowed to stand in protest durning his speech wearing white t-shirts that said “WE OBJECT” in large black letters. It was very Furman, conservative with a bit of deviation, all in a nice friendly font on a t-shirt.
Click here to see a really great you-tube video of the motocade of cars through Greenville narrated in a lovely South Carolina accent… I especially like it in the you tube video when the kids says, “ITS THE PRESIDENT” when one limo goes by and then shouts out “ANOTHER PRESIDENT” when another limo goes by. Oh, I do miss South Carolina…
Anyway, the whole event was GREAT. We had been sitting in the HOT South Carolina sun for about almost two hours when suddenly everyone saw the motorcade coming down the mall through the middle of the Furman campus. The whole stadium became united as one group. There were gasps, claps, cheers, and shouts coming from all around. My children sat up straighter (and so did i). The President of the United States, the head of OUR country, the foremost of THE finest country in the world, the leader of the FREEST country in the world was coming to us.
For a moment, I don’t think it mattered whether you supported him or not. We were all Americans there and we supported the fact that we HAVE a president. A person that WE choose to lead us, to guide us, to symbolize what we are as a country, who we are and who we want and need to be. We were a small group representing the whole of America. There were protestors, supporters, students, parents, guests and we were all there together ready to hear what President Bush had to say to the graduates and to us.
To be continued…
–Lea
1 comment July 15th, 2008
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
Since the Village Square is all about building bridges, and because I just happen to be in France visiting my sister…
I hadn’t thought in a while about some of the parallels between their revolution and ours.
Just a thought as you gaze upon the Arc de Triomphe.
9 comments July 11th, 2008
A cause worth risking being hung
Bob Schieffer’s special comment on today’s Face the Nation:
Some thoughts on this July 4th weekend …
In his wonderful book, “Founding Brothers,” historian Joe Ellis says of the American Revolution that “no event in American history, which was so improbable at the time, has seemed so inevitable in retrospect.”
As we think back on the rightness of America’s cause, we find it hard to believe that it could have come out any other way.
Yet, as Ellis writes, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, the signers had no idea how the revolution would end. The most likely outcome was failure.
No matter the rightness of the cause, the signers were defying the most powerful nation in the world, and no colony had ever successfully broken away from a mother country.
Revolution after revolution against imperialist powers followed ours, but until ours, none had succeeded.
All the signers of our declaration knew for certain was that if it failed, they would hang. Somehow, they won.
On the Fourth of July, we celebrate (as we should) the wisdom and the vision of the founders and the way, in one document, that Thomas Jefferson summarized the aspirations of all people: the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But let us never forget the one thing that made all the rest of it and what came after it possible: courage - the courage of those who bet their very lives on a project that all signs suggested would fail.
There was nothing inevitable about the American Revolution.
Add comment July 6th, 2008
All GEOpolitics is Local
Tell us if you have thoughts from tonight’s dinner. Anything in our draft recommendations you think needs to be added? Deleted? Fact-checked?
If you get a chance read the Shell 50 year energy forecast referred to tonight. Find it here.
1 comment July 1st, 2008
Drilling, speculation & gas prices, OH MY!
Anyone else annoyed and confused with the partisan yap-fest about what we can - and should - do about the high gas prices? Will drilling solve the problem or is there really nothing there? Are speculators raising the price of gas or is that a red herring?
I’m rolling up my sleeves and trying to delve into FACT beyond partisanship on the mucho dinero YOU have to pay for a tank of gas. Give me a few days and I’ll let you know what I’ve found out…
Feel free to let me know what you know.
Add comment June 25th, 2008
History.
“History at its best is about telling stories. Stories about people who lived before, about events in the past that create the contours of the present. By studying the lives of others, we hope that we - the living - can learn from their struggles and their triumphs… We have lost the art of letter writing, the discipline of keeping a diary, but as Tim showed, we have not lost the capacity for talking; for sitting around a simple table and conversing - in a civil and illuminating fashion about the most important issues of the day… ”
–Doris Kearns Goodwin, Historian, author of Team of Rivals, as delivered at the memorial service for Tim Russert
Add comment June 18th, 2008
