Mea culpa

I've said many times in many places that I dislike tarring people with the same brush. Before I read Kris' latest posts, I had pretty well written off the State of Utah (along with Kansas). Shame on me.

I found my html cheat sheet. Still takes me at least three tries to get them all correct.

Kris, of St. George, Utah, wrote a post about the Mayor of Salt Lake City, Rocky Anderson. I spent the next little while with google (sorry Kris). I selected one newpaper interview as a link here. Click on the title.

From everything I could read in the short time available, I wanted to move to Salt Lake just long enough to vote. I wonder if he has considered national office.

A knee jerk reaction to political parties, religions, and entire states is probably human nature. That doesn't make it right and I stand corrected. Good people are everywhere. We just don't hear about them. They're not as newsworthy as, for example, "Reverend" Fred Phelps and the Attorney General of Kansas. Thanks, Kris, for the wake-up call.

On a short side note, I told Kris in a comment that I had added him to bloglines. For any of you who don't know, bloglines is a service of blogger. It's free and easy to use. Once you add the blogs you read regularly, it notifies you with a popup on the bottom of the screen when a new post has been added. I used to go back through my blogroll constantly to be sure I hadn't missed anything and even then I didn't get them all. It also has an indicator telling me a new post has been added. It doesn't work for everything but it does for most.

Welcome to action now. I've been over reading her blog and leaving comments. She wishes I would write more. I do over on granny - I inundate people and I write a lot on a "parenting blog" called Blogging Baby which is where I was introduced to the wonderful world of blogging.

And also welcome to my good friend mother damnable from London, England.

Not too many of our "granny group" come over here. Most of us share the same ideals; otherwise, they wouldn't be there. We tend to stay with the blogs of people we like. My opinions aren't any big secret no matter where I'm writing but granny is more of a coffee klatch type of thing. Some politics sneaks in of course but the focus is different. Mother Damnable is one of our regular visitors and I'm one of hers. She post lovely paintings and poetry and is a tireless advocate for peace.

Action Now wishes I would write more. There's an old saying "be careful what you wish for, you may get it". A lot of the problem is time and I think I mentioned this on another post (possibly in the comments). I'm active locally in moveon.org and PFLAG as well as some other local groups that I support. I try to participate in church activities. I'm raising three great-grandchildren with all that entails. Too many "I's" in this post. Many times, the article I link to speaks for itself without embellishment from me so I just stick it on here.

There have been many times I've wanted to write more and then I look at the clock.

You won't hear too much from me about the war. I support Worried American completely and she covers it so well there's no need for me to duplicate her effort. I can do better concentrating on other issues.

Sometimes I post an article from our local paper. Merced is a microcosm. We're a conservative city although that is changing slowly. The issues confronting this city are typical of small cities across the United States. I've watched Merced evolve for almost 13 years now and it's fascinating. Who ever would have thought we'd have a University of California campus where cows once grazed. Of course that brings up the problem of leaving room for the cows which in turn brings up the problem of air pollution (blamed on the poor cows). Urban sprawl is beginning to affect us. Traffic is heavier, housing prices have skyrocketed and we must have three times as many chain stores as we did when I moved here.

I keep saying that all politics is local. It's true and that's where I spend most of my time.

Incidentally moveon.org is sponsoring a vigil on February 22nd. The last time I left this post I almost couldn't get back into blogger so you can check the link. My local group is particpating. Moveon.org is a group anyone can join. We do almost everything by email and in small, local groups. We've created a sub-group here with no official connection to moveon (for legal reasons) that concentrates on local issues. And now we've been instrumental in forming a coalition. There's a lot of work to be done. The link doesn't seem to work - just type in moveon.org. It's not a conspiracy, just a glitch but if I try to remove the link, I'll open up a whole new can of worms.

See why you would rather I just post my little links and go quietly away?