Tag Archives: Erik Paulsen
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This past week I’ve received two pieces of mail from Erik Paulsen, my congressman for Minnesota’s 3rd District. The first reads: “Protecting Our Children Fighting Meningitis B” The second reads: “Getting Results for Minnesota Seniors”. In an effort to help Congressman Paulsen be honest with us and himself, I’m checking out these two affirmations by checking out his voting record. I’m looking at Vote Smart (https://votesmart.org/, a site generally considered a valuable and unbiased tool for scrutinizing our senators and congress people. Bill Moyers calls it “a bright light in an often desultory civic culture. Granted, Mr. Moyers is a Democrat but he’s also a deeply ethical man. Check out Vote Smart yourselves. You might be surprised at what is in some of these bills your elected officials spend so much time piddling on. Let’s begin with Paulsen’s assertion that he is protecting our children’s health care, specifically in the fight […]
I would very likely bite anyone who tries snatching this book from my hands. Yesterday morning, 6AM, I’m grumbling, “Don’t bother me; I’m reading!” The other evening, 5PM, I’m whining, “I hope someone’s on top of supper because I’m getting hungry.” This has been going on for days, now. I was awake at 3 o’clock this morning. The house was cold so I curled into a capsule beneath the blankets. I was also under cover so the dogs wouldn’t twig that I was awake and demand a pee and then, as morning follows evening, kibble follows pee, tug follows kibble, and so on. Forgive my awkward segue, but reality isn’t always smooth. The book I am reading is Explaining Hitler by Ron Rosenbaum. It’s not new, originally published in 1998, with an updated edition released in 2014. It isn’t that big, topping out at 630 pages (and I probably won’t […]
Playwright, Lauren Gunderson, currently the most popular playwright in the U.S., was quoted in The Guardian, saying, “I think it’ll be hard to write this moment until this moment is a little more processed. I think we’ll have great Trump era plays in about 10 years.” I understand her thinking. She may be right but all I could think was: In ten years we may be ten years too late. In the Preface to Hate Unleashed: America’s Cataclysmic Change, Edward Dunbar, author and professor of psychology at UCLA whose specialty is hate, says, “I had been running out this line in the first few days after November 8, 2016, when Donald Trump became the president-elect of the United States: ‘Be close to those you are close to, and become active in some cause you care deeply about.’ To the writers, film professionals, and artists, I knew, I said, ‘Consider how […]
