It’s bad form to laugh in front of a casket, so I dutifully suppressed the chuckle. The body of my grandfather Raymond Sylvester Lott was in pretty good shape, considering, but his eyebrows were almost completely gone. As with almost every aspect of Gramps’s life, there was a story there. His weekend cabin on the North Fork of the Lewis River was heated by a wood-burning stove. He had tried to get some logs to light, but they were too wet to catch. So of course he added gasoline. The flames exploded everywhere. Gramps was lucky the fire didn’t burn the place to the ground. He escaped to tell the tale, but those patches of hair above his eyes that he had used to punctuate so many jokes and yarns over the years were scorched right off. I have just read dozens of stories from Gramps’s own hand. When he turned 80, my family gave him a notebook decorated in a fishing fly pattern and told him to fill it up with his recollections and cast it back at us. He wrote them up and titled the composition, “The Tales & Yarns of a Life Well Lived.” It traveled with us as we moved from place to place. Finally, this year, I dusted it off and had it transcribed. Now I’m trying to figure out what to do with it all. Maybe you can help me out, dear reader. The memoir does have some historical value, even in its current, highly subjective form. My Great-Grandparents Charles and Anna Lott came from Illinois on a wagon train headed for the California gold rush, but they didn’t make it all the way. Charles got in an argument (“perhaps shaped by alcohol,” Gramps suggests) with the wagon master and he let them off along the way. Their daughter Ida was abducted by Crow Indians in Montana, but they gave her back in trade for some horses. The family eventually settled down in Oregon’s Willamette Valley in Lowell. His mother’s family, the Russells, hailed from Texas. They came to Oregon along with the cattle they drove there, though Grandpa Russell caught tuberculosis and returned to Texas where he was “gathered to his ancestors.” Our author puts it like that because Grandpa Russell was one-quarter Indian. “I have always been proud of my 1/16th,” he explains, “but it does me no good whatsoever. It just makes me want to hunt and fish!” His other passion was electricity. As a child he would tinker with electrical equipment in the basement. When I was young, I asked him for a Transformer toy for my birthday. He misunderstood and gave me an electrical transformer instead. For more than 20 years, he worked for Otis Elevator Company. He believes the company pulled strings to keep him out of World War II. He serviced elevators, but his real job was to find a way to keep problem customers happy. At one point, he bribed a customer with some of Otis’s extra gasoline ration cards to stop bellyaching. An able storyteller, Gramps includes a few family mysteries here. Great-Grandma and Grandpa Lott were “running from something,” but no one knows what. Charles wanted to tell his kids on his deathbed, but Anna said, “No, Pa, don’t tell ‘em; I’ll tell them later.” She then suffered a stroke “and never awakened!” For my part, I’ve always figured Lott was an assumed name. When he was looking to buy his cabin, Gramps had to scrape $2,500 together in a week. “I can’t tell you where I got the money but I borrowed some of it somewhere,” he teases. I’m guessing, loan shark. The manuscript is short — a little more than 20,000 words — and it’s not up to professional standards, because it was never meant to be a professional memoir. In the foreword, Gramps warns, “This book will be full of grammatical errors, lousy spelling, and dangling participles!” I wouldn’t release it to the world in its current form, of course. But I keep wondering: What if I cleaned it up a bit? What if I wrote an intro and notes and released it as an e-book? Would anybody be interested?
Read the rest here:
Oregon Tale
So this morning the Washington Post runs a story detailing what kind of a jerk Mitt Romney was in high school. This is a surprise, right? A high school kid being a jerk. This has never ever happened before. Why, you might well ask, would the Washington Post devote valuable time and space to writing about this event? And why, you might well follow up, is this worth posting about when everyone should be talking about the environment? The answer is easy. It builds a meme and it translates Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage from a liability into a perceived strength. If you missed this is the graf that has the left exercised: BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it. “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled. A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors. Of course the story gets much sadder with Romney presumably responsible for the guy’s failed life and death from cancer. He came out as gay to his family and close friends and led a vagabond life, taking dressage lessons in England and touring with the Royal Lipizzaner Stallion riders. After an extreme fit of temper in front of his mother and sister at home in South Bend, he checked into the Menninger Clinic psychiatric hospital in Topeka, Kan. Later he received his embalmer’s license, worked as a chef aboard big freighters and fishing trawlers, and cooked for civilian contractors during the war in Bosnia and then, a decade later, in Iraq. His hair thinned as he aged, and in the winter of 2004 he returned to Seattle, the closest thing he had to a base. He died there of liver cancer that December. He kept his hair blond until he died, said his sister Chris. “He never stopped bleaching it.” There are unanswered questions here, like what this has to do with anything, how a high school dropout bummed around Europe taking dressage lessons and, my favorite, how getting an “embalmer’s license” led to a culinary career? But the Post doesn’t address them. The main source for this vignette is a former classmate of Romney’s named Stu White. According to the Washington Post: “I always enjoyed his pranks,” said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney’s who went on to a career as a public school teacher and has long been bothered by the Lauber incident.” But ABC News reports “White was not present for the prank, in which Romney is said to have forcefully cut a student’s long hair and was not aware of it until this year when he was contacted by the Washington Post.” From this it is pretty clear that the Lauber incident did not unfold in the way the Washington Post describes, if, indeed, it happened at all. ( h/t to the Daily Caller ) Why this and why now? As we’ve mentioned before this is all part of a process to brand Romney as a vicious, thoughtless, out-of-touch rich guy. It is really Obama’s only hope as he can’t possibly win if he runs on his objective accomplishments. This story has obviously been in the works for a while but the news value of it is questionable. It is the basic oppo dump material that the Washington Post obediently churns out on Republicans. As Major Garrett reports in National Journal , the whole Biden-evolving postion idea was a scam to allow Obama to support gay marriage: Did Obama sacrifice huge swaths of swing voters? Probably not. The polls have shifted to net favorable on the question of same-sex marriage and independents are unlikely to punish Obama for a policy position consistent with everything else he’s done on gay issues. Social conservatives will, of course, be aggrieved. But they were already. Also, consider this on the gay-marriage pronouncements: Biden was first, Obama second. That the two happily reversed the common order of things ought to tell you something about their relationship (solid), their understanding of tactics (advanced), and how they can play Washington’s chattering class for fools (easily). But suddenly, the nothingburger story developed by the Post had a hook. In fact it had a hook that could effectively frame the entire story to fit into the overarching Obama campaign. Obama was against gay marriage, but then he met parents of friends of his daughters who were gay and the subject was discussed at family dinners and he changed his mind. Another “gutsy call” in which he took an unpopular position after carefully weighing everything, and, of course, consulting his deeply held Christian faith. Romney, on the other hand, when he went to an elite private school for elite rich kids relentlessly bullied a kid who was gay and continues his bullying and homophobia to this day by not supporting homosexual marriage. It all fit. And the Post was able to make good on its investment. The ABC story makes it clear that there are other Romney classmates lining up to dish on him, presumably after they sign with a literary agent: One former classmate and old friend of Romney’s – who refused to be identified by name – said there are “a lot of guys” who went to Cranbrook who have “really negative memories” of Romney’s behavior in the dorms, behavior this classmate describes as “evil” and “like Lord of the Flies.” The classmate believes Romney is lying when he claims to not remember it. “It makes these fellows [who have owned up to it] very remorseful. For [Romney] not to remember it? It doesn’t ring true. How could the fellow with the scissors forget it?” the former classmate said.
It was December of 1992. And the New York Times was furious. In the November election that had occurred a month earlier, while most Americans were fixated on the presidential race between President George H.W. Bush, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and businessman Ross Perot, in Colorado something else was going on. That something else was known as Amendment 2. On election day, by a margin of 100,000 votes, Coloradans, in the words of the Chicago Tribune : “amended their constitution to outlaw ordinances in Denver, Boulder and Aspen that banned discrimination in hiring and housing on the basis of sexual orientation.” Gay rights groups were apoplectic. Barbra Streisand vowed a celebrity boycott — no small threat in Colorado ski havens like Aspen where stars like Cher, Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas, and other Hollywood power names vacationed. The Times was frothing. So there was a decision to strike back at Colorado. Fumed the Times in a December 21st editorial titled “The Case for the Colorado Boycott”: Deciding where to go for a skiing vacation ordinarily poses no moral dilemma. But this winter it surely does. Colorado, site of some of the finest ski areas in the nation, adopted a bigoted anti-gay initiative last month, shattering the state’s reputation for tolerance. Gay groups and others are urging a boycott; their call deserves to be heeded. Duly noted. So the obvious question. On Tuesday North Carolina voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage.
Over at NRO, Mark Krikorian is decidedly not neutral about Michele Bachmann’s decision to take out Swiss citizenship along with her family: People obviously have multiple connections — church memberships, community groups, fraternities, ethnic associations, professional societies, etc. But one’s chief political allegiance is expressed through citizenship, through being a member of We the People — and claiming membership in two national communities is like belonging to two different religions, which means neither is accorded the respect due it. Nonsense. Krikorian readily acknowledges that Bachmann is a patriot – twice. The fact that she has taken out Swiss citizenship makes her no less a patriot than she was yesterday. Bachmann also finds herself in pretty good company. Albert Einstein was also a dual U.S. and Swiss citizen . Krikorian goes on to write: And there is no justification for such a thing when we demand that foreigners seeking to become Americans take an oath that reads, in part: “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.” But this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the oath of allegiance. A person who is sworn in as a U.S. citizen does not lose the citizenship of their land of birth . While the United States does not encourage Americans to become dual nationals it does not prohibit it either . On
From the diaries. Two years ago, I was a regular citizen, a physician serving the people of my community, and raising my family in Northern Michigan. Suddenly, I found myself answering the call to become a citizen-legislator. It occurred at a time when many of us recognized how seriously at risk our country was after the liberals had taken control of all three branches of government after the November ‘08 election. Under the new administration, this nation was flooded with czars, executive orders, regulations, and then there was the Stimulus package. I could no longer stand-by and watch our children’s future be mortgaged. So, I sought and won the Republican primary and then went on to be chosen by the people of MI-01 to represent them in Congress. Many others across the nation heeded the same call. MI-01 sent me to Washington, entrusted with the mission of stopping out-of-control spending, stopping Congress from passing laws against the peoples’ will, stopping the over-regulation of our small businesses and stopping the intrusion of government into our personal lives. In other words, reform Washington. I’ve been in DC a little over a year and a half and I must tell you it has been an enormous challenge. While many of us thought we could undo the damage overnight, the reality is starker. The same goals were there, but without control of the Senate and presidency, we’ve had to use stopgap measures instead of immediately restoring the principles of our Founding Fathers and the Constitution. The presidency of Barack Obama has brought this country further economic hardship and massive debt that poses an incredible risk to the overall economy. The Democrats promised job creation, but we’ve had failure after failure of Stimulus-funded companies. The enormous debt taken on by the U.S. government currently works out to over $48,000 for every man, woman and child in America. Despite our efforts to stop the out-of-control spending and to initiate reforms, we’ve been blocked at almost every turn. Currently the new healthcare law is before the Supreme Court. I, as many others, hope and pray it is overturned – not only is it unconstitutional, it was passed against the peoples’ will. We can reform healthcare with a patient centered system, tort reform and allowing portability of health insurance across state lines. The current administration is regulating America to death. Small business owners are defeated even before they can get started. They can’t afford the costs of trying to comply with government regulations, and they can’t afford to gamble on uncertainty when it comes to what to expect from the government. For businesses that have managed to survive the Obama economy, they can’t afford to hire new employees. Businesses cannot stay solvent when weighted down by government regulations. On May 1st, I launched my “100 in 100” tour. I am visiting 100 small businesses in a 100 days across Michigan’s First District in order to speak directly to our entrepreneurs – we must hear their concerns and address them in Washington. Our message to Washington hasn’t changed, neither have our goals. In fact, the need is greater than ever to take a stand. This remains my pledge and vow to the people of MI-1; I will continue to work to restore and defend the American Dream as it was meant to be, one where all have the opportunity for achievement. Not one dependent on government, but on their own self-reliant and capable selves. I will continue to work to end the political sense of entitlement in Washington that has brought weakness to America, not strength. When we restore our core principles, our sense of optimism and our “can do” spirit will return. We will have growing employment numbers, not growing unemployment numbers. Once businesses are free to grow and hire, MI-01 will once again be master of her own destiny. This November, we can do this. We can do this with your support and belief in America. To find out more about my campaign or to donate please visit Benishek2012.com Thank you, Rep. Dr. Dan Benishek
