Did She Really Say That?

I am not sure what can be said about the character of a person who willfully misquotes another person in order to mislead an audience. Is he at heart simply dishonest? A liar? A politician? But I repeat myself. I refer to President Obama paraphrasing the statements of Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) at a speech before college students in Colorado.


He said, “I want to read a quote. This is from a Republican congresswoman. I didn’t really understand this. I’m quoting her. She said that she has ‘very little tolerance for people who tell me they graduate with debt because there’s no reason for that.’ She said students who rack up student loan debt are just sitting on their butts, having opportunity ‘dumped in your lap.’”

Did Rep. Virginia Foxx actually say that? The president said he was quoting her, actually said he was reading a quote. Did he think that no one would check out the facts?  Here is what she really said with the words the president chose to edit out or rearrange in italics:

“I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that. We live in an opportunity society and people are forgetting that. I remind folks all the time that the Declaration of Independence says ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ You don’t sit on your butt and have it dumped in your lap.”

So, what she really said was that she has little tolerance for people who accrue outrageous amounts of school loan debt. Now, I had some school loan debts when I received my bachelor’s degree in 1973, but most of my college was paid for, not by student loans, but by hard work and sacrifice. It took me a little longer to finish, but I made it. I had no school debt in 1980, when I finished my M.Ed. My daughters had more debt when they graduated than I did. Since graduation, they have almost paid off their loans by hard work and sacrifice. Evenso, none of our student loan debts were anywhere near what Rep. Foxx was talking about, and the president neglected to enumerate in his “quote.”*

Jean Rostand said, “A lie may be less false than a carefully chosen truth.” The only truth in the president’s rendering of Rep. Foxx’s statement is that she said something about student debt; the rest is a lie. The real tragedy here is that most of the college students who cheered the president and booed Rep. Foxx will accept his words as Gospel truth.

*Just a note from National Review Online:
“According to a recent study by the New York Fed, 94 percent of student-loan debtors owe $75,000 or less. (Forty-three percent owe $10,000 or less.) So, Foxx was talking about a very small percentage — 6 percent! — of the student-loan debtor population, not all students. But by omitting that crucial phrase — and Obama did not acknowledge he had omitted any of the quote — the president made Foxx appear to be lambasting all students who graduate with debt, not the small percentage who graduate with $80,000 or more.”     Katrina Trinko

Artist's Books Class

Well, the semester is winding down and the final projects were turned in last Thursday. I went to class to turn in my book, but I didn't stay for the critique because my grandson was in Primary Children's Hospital following scoliosis surgery. He was not doing well, and we were spending as much time at the hospital as possible. He did improve enough to go home Saturday evening, but he is still in great pain and not eating because he is miserable with all the medications that make him throw up. Here is grandma and grandpa visiting the poor kid last week.

Anyway, I didn't mind missing the critique on Thursday. My book is what it is, and I don't think I need to defend it. The viewer will like it or not. I would probably have some criticism on the materials and the printing process: zerox copies on manila drawing paper. I like the way the prints look on the creamy yellow paper, so I used it. The concept was another use of an Eadweard Muybridge series of action photos but in a form that allows the sequence to be altered and viewed in non-sequential patterns. I titled the opus: LOCO-MOTION:

More Post Cards from Around the World

When I returned home from school today, I found three new postcards waiting for me among the political broadsides, ads, and other junk mail. A pleasant surprise on a cold, blustery spring day. I need to send some more cards to brighten someone else's trip to the mailbox. The cards came from Lithuania, Russia, and Indonesia. Here they are for my few readers to enjoy with me:

This one from Indonesia shows the Sea of Sand at Ijen crater in East Java.

This card is from Birzai, Lithuania.

This shows the main iconostasis of the Cathedral of the Redeemer in Moscow

I have now received eight cards and sent out eight cards. Three of my cards are still "traveling." One of them, sent to Birmingham, Alabama, has been out for 27 days. It must have been chewed up somewhere in the postal machinery. The other two, going to Poland and Russia, have been out for 14 days. Time for me to send out some more cards. I am having a good time with postcrossing.com

Happy Birthday Johnny Crawford

I have been watching the available episodes of The Rifleman on Hulu for awhile. I am into the second season. "Mark McCain," Johnny Crawford, turns 66 today. These days he has an orchestra that plays the great music from the 20s and 30s. I posted a little about this on March 13: Nothing Important/Random Memories

Postcrossing.com 3

I have now received two more post cards, one from London and one from the Netherlands. My daughter Rebekah has also joined postcrossing.com. She said it looks like a lot of fun, and so far it is. Here are the two new cards.

This is the card from the Netherlands. (That is me on top of the pile of books I never seem to have time to read.) The next card is from London and shows one of the murals in the subway system. Don't they call that the "Tube?"

Mike Tuckfield, who teaches at my school, took a picture of the sunrise out his classroom window a couple of weeks ago. I asked him if I could make a post card out of the photo. Here it is:

I also made a copy of an old photo post card that my 2nd great grandfather, John H. Ewing, sent to my grandfather, Hugh Ewing, in 1909. At that time, John was the superintendent of the dairy for the Kansas State Hospital for the Feeble-minded. He wrote on the back, "Which of us looks the best?"

Postcrossing.com 2

Since I joined Postcrossing.com, I have sent out nine post cards and have received three; one each from Japan, Singapore and Australia. The one from Austaralia was a hand made card by a nine-year-old girl from Tasmania. She wrote that she loves libraries, and the card was a drawing of library book shelves.

Nothing Important/Random Memories

It is certainly interesting what memories are triggered, at least to my feeble mind, by a chance discovery of a relic from the past. I was looking through some old slides (yes, once we actually took photos on transparency film) and found some slides of me when I was a TV western movie extra in 1978. The film was Will Rogers: Champion of the People with Robert Hays as Will Rogers, before his big hit in 1980 as Ted Striker in Airplane! The film featured Jack Elam, Walker Edmiston, and Gene Evans. Who in the heck were they, you ask? Well, they were in a lot of movies and TV shows from the '40s through the '90s. Edmiston was famous for his voice characterizations in scores of animated movies, and Elam for his crusty and comical characters.

I was especially interested in talking to Gene Evans who had played the father on My Friend Flicka, one of my favorite TV westerns as a kid. The show was in syndication when I saw it in the late 50s early 60s. I was able to bother him for about 15 minutes and, of course, tell him how I liked him in the show. He became reflective and talked a bit about Anita Louise, another of my favorites, who played the mother on the show. He had nothing but high praise for her acting and off-screen life. I remember his words clearly, "She was a lovely, beautiful woman." Johnny Washbrook, his TV son, Ken, was a good kid he said. That "good kid" is 67 years old today.

Here I am with Gene Evans on set. Why didn't I smile?

Walker Edmiston, me and Jack Elam.

Along with My Friend Flicka, my other favorite TV westerns were Fury, The Rifleman and The Roy Rogers Show. As a tween, I loved to imagine myself being a character on the shows as either a brother or best friend of the juvenile leads on the shows: Johnny Washbrook (67), Bobby Diamond (68), and Johnny Crawford (66 on Mar. 26). I waisted many a happy hour in those pursuits. Whenever I saw children on television shows or in movies, I would want to be a child actor or at least one of the Mouseketeers. At age ten, I wrote a letter to Roy Rogers telling him all the great things I could do and what a good actor I would make and asking if he could put me on his show. My mother never mailed the letter. I thought Roy had snubbed me. My fantasy acting was as close as I came to my childhood career dream.

I have collected a few of Johnny Crawford's songs from his early recording career in the age of the "Golden Oldies." This is one of the best. I probably sang this song to myself after Susan Josephs turned me down when I asked her out on a movie date in 1963. I didn't ask another girl out again until senior prom in '65.



Of course, I was always a sap for the old teenie-bopper ballads. And I took the message of the following song to heart and did just that.



He is still singing with his orchestra: The Johnny Crawford Dance Orchestra.

My 2012 goal, lose 65 pounds by age 65, report: I have lost 18 pounds since January 1st. Seven months and 47 pounds to go!