ALEC was founded in 1975 by a group of mostly junior Midwestern politicians, due to concern among conservative Republicans that there was a trend towards “big government” in Washington. It wasn’t until the far-right ideology of the Republican Party gained prominence in the 1990’s that ALEC began to take root throughout the country.
[Read more]
Archives for January 2013
Pretty in Pink
…isn’t she?
The Oregon Coast is stunning and I finally got to witness a beautiful sunset at Fort Stevens. People tell me all the time that I’m lucky to live in such a beautiful place, and they are right. The Pacific Northwest is gorgeous.
Border Tribute
Some think that Scotland sterts somewhere near Perth
-or close by Edinburgh she at first draws breath.
While speedin’ Heiland –wards tae don a kilt
An’ nod at skirl o’ Bagpipes and the lilt
Descent
Palm fronds shudder in the wind,
shaking off light, like tinsel.
I left the thick, wet state
and descended along the coast
to live in this strange desert
of coyotes in the hills, barbed clubs
growing out of the ground…
Amen
Her baby seems to enjoy the bus ride
The rocking and windows vibrating in the panes
She tells me she’s not going anywhere
Just around the mountain and back
Haggis, Rabbie Burns and related musings
Burns was a man of the soil and a loyal and often visionary populist, disdainful of the upper and especially royalty-fawning classes which he observed caustically in many poems and prose-writings, and the church with it’s ever-shifting double standards of what was holy and what was not and came from peasant stock but was educated by his fairly benign –for the times- landowner factor who took an interest in his precocious intelligence. [Read More]
Surfing Pop Culture: Who Wants the Truth?
Does it even matter anymore that light sabers aren’t real? Or that Lance Armstrong used drugs to win races? Or that Manti Te’o’s dead girlfriend never existed? Or that faith, as the filmed LIFE OF PI suggests, needn’t be based on truth to be valid?
Arming educators is a bad idea
As an educator who teaches in a rural school district, I find the call for arming teachers and administrators following the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut both wrongheaded and counterproductive. Schools are supposed to be places of peaceful learning. I can’t imagine what it would be like to teach knowing that I or my colleague had a loaded pistol in the desk.
[Read More]
Cloud Shaped Indentations
There’s a part of a man
Deep inside, rooted in
Ribs and muscular tissue
Between his heart and soul
That longs for the sky.
The Evolution of a Personal Code of Ethics or What Will You Leave Behind Stevie-Dean?
It seems to me in light of the current culture and politics of America that perhaps it is time for me, and maybe others, to actually examine their own ethics and how we live our lives prior to condemning others for the way they lead theirs. Perhaps if we work harder to become our better selves then our communities and our country can evolve into better versions of themselves as well. [Read More]