A confession (before I head out to the used-vinyl store).

The Melancholy Music Man... but filled with Joy.

Let there be light!

A generic response

Dear friend,

I received your email with the attachment about Sarah Palin. While this report might be scary and threatening to some, to me it sounds like the same the kind of trash written about Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama. However, since the Clintons are no longer in the race we can leave them out. But what I wonder is why it’s okay to say that Palin is a fundamentalist Christian but not okay to ask why Obama spent twenty years in the pews of Jeremiah Wright’s intolerant church? And why is it okay to allege that Palin wants to destroy Alaska’s wildlife but not okay to ask if Obama plans to support Hamas instead of Israel? And people can accuse Palin of racism based on rumor and hearsay but not hold Obama accountable for playing the race card, quoting Malcolm X and accusing good people, particularly the Clintons, of racism.

While I may not agree with Palin’s politics, I am unmoved by the smear campaign launched against her. Please do not send me any more political emails. While this e-mail goes to great lengths to appear to be politically correct and to be doing me a favor, it’s actually savaging someone’s reputation based on shoddy evidence or outright lies. After forty years of voting for the Democratic candidate for president, I want you to know that these sexist and hateful lies against Sarah Palin you forwarded go against the reason I am a Democrat. Therefore, under no circumstance will I be voting for Obama.

Best Regards,

Proud Pop.

Twenty years ago, I told my oldest daughter, Anna, she couldn't ride her bike unless she wore a helmet. I had given her a girl's Raleigh Capri drop-bar bike, and had set her loose on the neighborhood (she already knew how to ride). But the helmet edict came from me sometime later. I believed what I was reading without investigating the claims, that death lurked, waiting to pounce on America's children (why would researchers lie about safety? not for "grants", surely?).

Faced with my edict, she chose to quit riding. I won. My will triumphed.

Twenty years later, now living in a small town south of Austin, with a house and a husband, and two small boys, she is in school again at Texas State University in San Marcos (the university formerly known as Southwest Texas State University). She lives 13 miles from campus, and wants to start riding her bike to school, and to town for grocery items. She asked me to keep an eye open for a good used drop-bar bike for under $150 (Austin's not a good place to look for such).

I found, and bought for her ("Happy Birthday!"), a nice aluminum Trek 1220 from about 1998... with Bar-Cons! I ride an old Trek 1500 (1996? time flies), using the same geometry and cast lugs (carbon fibre main tubes), back from when Trek was an American-made Bicycle Company. We'll get a good rack, a lock, some other small items (maybe a crash hat), and away she goes.

I hope she'll take LAB's Road 1 course, but I'm not pushing it, or her. And not a word about you know what.


(This has been cross-posted from CycleDallas.org. The power of pride... in your kids.)

iFamily 3G

Three generations of girls I love.

Catherine (daughter), June Anne (granddaughter), Linden (wife).