Questions, Questions, and More Questions

 

Did I open a can of worms with this interview thing, or what? I have spent many hours of the last three days both answering questions and composing interviews for those that asked me to interview them. That would be Robin, Lisa, Cynthia, Dave, and Gayla. As of this posting, everyone but Gayla has bravely muddled through their questions from the Polish Pundit (well, I’m not really Polish, but my husband is…and "Polish Pundit" has a certain ring to it. Or not.)

I had intended to sneak one or two hideously creative entries in here between the two interviews of me, but I invested so much brainpower into writing questions and answers over the last three days that any previously formulated creative ideas I had were tamped down into the muddy bottom of my brain. Had to get this out before any of the other stuff will have room to float back up to the top.

This interview is from Cynthia. I have been reading "Sorting the Pieces" since, well, since Christ was a corporal. In Cynthia, I found my first soul sister among my online friends. Though we live vastly different lives, and our personalities might be as similar as crawfish and dungeness crab, there is a place inside her that touches what is inside me in a deeply personal way. And she wrote great questions!

Oh...and refer to my previous entry for "the rules..."

1. We know how muchyou love living in the beautiful state of Oregon. If you had to live somewhere else, where would it be and why there?

My first thought was that I would go back to the old homestead—Illinois. I was born there, and I’ve never quite gotten it out of my blood. I’ve had so much fun the times I’ve gone back to visit. But, that’s the thing. It’s a nice place to visit, but I really wouldn’t want to live there, not anymore. I think about the snow, and the traffic, and the mosquitoes, and the flat, and the sales tax, and I think, "Nah!"

So I guess I’ll have to cheat and say that if I absolutely couldn’t live in Oregon, I’d have to live in Washington. Along with having similar topography (could I live without the mountains beaming down on me while I’m driving down the I-5 Corridor, or the ocean just a few hours away?), the State of Washington appeals to me politically. After all, it’s the only state whose governor and both US Senators are women. A decent tradeoff for having to put up with a sales tax…

 

2. What do you think it will take for the Democrats to effectively mount a successful presidential campaign in 2008?

Let me first say that, though I think she’s a smart politician and has a great deal to offer this country, it wouldn’t be Hillary Rodham Clinton. I’m afraid her husband is still too much of a polarizing figure, and will be an albatross around her neck for some time to come. Plus, I just don’t think the country would be ready make the jump from what amounts to a far right-wing Christian administration, to a government headed by the first woman president. Which is a shame, because I think she’d probably do an amazing job.

If the Republicans can’t continue to keep the country in a heightened state of fear and paranoia, I think the pendulum will be swinging away from the right anyway. Power has gone to the heads of the GOP majority, and they are starting to take it for granted, and even misuse and abuse it. The American people are not going to put up with that forever.

Even so, the Democrats have to come up with a decent candidate. John Kerry was not it. He was chosen by party leaders and Democratic voters for the sole reason that they thought his military record could stand up against the (undeserved) reputation of the "War President." While Kerry is a decent senator, he had little else to recommend him. For the last three decades at least, the voting public has demonstrated a deep-seated distrust of people they think of as "Washington insiders." Of the last five presidents,only one—George HW Bush—had held national office before being elected president, and it could be said that he was elected because people were looking for him to simply extend the popular Reagan administration. The last two successful Democratic candidates have been governors of southern states. I suspect we’ll have to come up with another southerner, one who might possibly take a large block of the south back from the Republicans. The South was loyal Democratic territory dating back to the civil war, but it has, over the last few decades, slowly swung over to the Republican party …believing that the GOP better represents their conservative views. So, I’m not really sure if there’s a Democratic southern governor of sufficient charisma and stature to fit the bill. Anyone got any ideas?

3. What would be your perfect evening out?

First of all, I would have to be able to wear a spectacular outfit that would look sensational on me, make me look ten years younger, and would include incredibly sexy shoes that would not hurt my feet. All right, since we’ve already completely left the realm of the possible… You know the night clubs they show in all those old movies? The ones where there were tables for dining, and a band (like Ricky Ricardo’s) or a floor show (featuring an act that looked amazingly like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers), and a huge dance floor where all the patrons could float around in their couture and whisper steamy lines into their partners’ ears? That’s where I want to go. Okay, I’d have to brush up on my ballroom dancing (hey, we took disco lessons back in the seventies, but I’ll admit, I’m a little rusty…) A light meal, just enough champagne, and dance the night away. Wouldn’t that be perfect? Oh…and something chocolate.

4. Do you think you'll ever try to have your writing published? And why?

I actually did send one story away, once, back when I was still in high school. It was rejected, of course. I suppose it wasn’t even really very good. I have a hard time with the idea of being published. First of all, I have no idea if there’s a market for what I do, and where that market is, if there is one. And, I guess I’m not really sure what it is I do. I write a fairly decent political commentary…but I don’t think the media are exactly out recruiting morepolitical pundits. That market is kind of saturated, if you know what I mean…

Secondly, I’m not sure I have what it takes to knock on every door, again and again, until I see some piece of mine in print. I’m way too sensitive. At some point, and probably sooner than later, I would become convinced that I’m just not good enough, and give up. And then I would have lost something that is really valuable to me. As long as I don’t have people telling me I’m no good, I can believe I am good. I would hate to think that my self-opinion is that fragile, that it could be destroyed by a little public rejection. But I’m afraid it might be. Which makes me too chicken to put too much effort into getting my work published. But, by golly, I spend so much time writing, and enjoy it so much, I sure wish someone would pay me to do it.

 

5. If you could only accomplish one goal in the coming year, what would it be?

If we’re talking about things I wish I could do, but have a snowball’s chance in hell of happening, that would be opening my own restaurant. I have no money, only a vaguely formed concept of what I want it to be, and husband is not yet entirely on the bandwagon. But, still, I can dream…

Something I might actually be capable of accomplishing? I’d like to complete my journey of independence from my family. By the end of 2005 I’d like to feel that I’ve completely moved on and away from the garbage of the past, and that I have finally, for good or ill, made a life for myself and my husband here in Columbia County. And that’s why I need to have that restaurant…

Lisa Gets The Scoop On Lisa

I came across this "game" at Lisa’s place (Wearin’ My Heart On My Sleeve.) I thought it looked like fun, so I asked Lisa to "Interview Me." I forgot that she is stuck at home recovering from ankle surgery, and has nothing better to do than think up really hard questions. But they’re good ones; I had a lot of fun trying to answer them without writing a tome (brevity has never been my forte…) If anybody else wants to play, we’ll start with the rules. And then my answers to Lisa’s great questions.

So here goes, starting with the rules because every game has got to have them, you know. Leave me a comment saying "interview me." The first five to leave a comment requesting to be participants will be interviewed. I will respond by asking you five questions. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Write your own questions or borrow some) Fun and easy right?

Q. You’ve mentioned to me that you would love to have your own restaurant. Tell us the details of your dream eatery….the location, decor, and of course, what you’d be serving (sample menu) and what daily role you would take in the business itself.

A. The location would be right here in dear old Scappoose; this is an area that is about to become heavily developed as a bedroom community for people who work in Portland. We are going to need decent places to eat.

I have a couple different concepts in mind, but the most developed one is this: One of Scappoose’s biggest industries used to be Steinfeld’s Pickles, until they were bought out by a huge food conglomerate and closed down. So we have an abandoned pickle packing plant in the middle of town…a great location for something like an antique mall and a quirky family restaurant. I was envisioning the décor to be very old fashioned "general store-ish," with antique tables and chairs and the like. The menu would be gourmet comfort food, like pot roast, garlic mashed potatoes, and home-made apple cobbler. A selection of decent wines and microbrews…probably not a full liquor license (too much hassle!) And an in-house bakery will figure prominently in whatever concept I decide upon, since I’m really more of a baker than a gourmet chef… What role would I take? It would be mine, mine, all mine! I’d wear every hat in the place at one time or another, and it might take an act of God to pry me out of there to go on a vacation.

Q. It’s no secret that you’ve had some issues with your family that sometimes seem insurmountable. What would need to happen with each of you, to put the issues to rest? Could that happen?

I don’t like to look at the conflicts I have with my sisters as something that could be resolved if they changed. The only one I can change, or hope to change, is myself. That said, I think what needs to happen with me is that I just need to get over it and move on. I love my sisters, and we’ll always be close…but I need to bring other experiences and people into my life so I can put the problems we’ve had into perspective. Right now, though it’s been six years since all the conflicts that arose after my dad’s death, there has been so little else in my life since, that the problems still look larger than life. Once I put something of substance, and not just time (which obviously hasn’t worked) between myself and those conflicts, they will scale down to a more manageable size. I can see this happening. I’ve been making a concerted effort to move on since the beginning of this year, and I think I’ve made some progress.

Q. Describe your mother’s personality and what you admire about her the most.

Wow. This is a tough one. My mom’s personality is, in many ways, exactly opposite of mine. She is dependent where I’ve always been fiercely self-reliant. She is a social animal, and I am a loner. She deferred to my dad in every major decision they ever faced in their married life. Boy, is that not me! There are so many things she does that just drive me crazy… If she has a problem with someone, she will make it known to everyone except the person with whom she has the bone to pick. We always laugh among ourselves that Mom’s least favorite daughter is whichever one of us is not in her immediate presence at the time.

But Mom hangs in there. She has experienced so much loss in her life. Everyone in her immediate family died young. My grandmother made the oldest bones of any of Mom’s family, and she was only 63 when she died of cancer. By the time Mom was just a few years older than I am now, she was the last living member of her family. I can’t even imagine how horrible that must have been. And she has since lost a daughter, a granddaughter, and her husband of 54 years. She has the great gift of knowing you have to just continue to put one foot in front of the other, no matter how much pain you have to walk through. That is what I admire about her.

Q. You’ve been given an unlimited budget to create the perfect backyard and garden. Describe it, down to the perfect flowers and plants!

Geez, I could write a bloody book about this! First, I’d empty the entire yard, scrape off the top twelve inches of what passes for "soil" on this property, and throw it far, far away. Then I’d get as many truckloads of wonderful, rich topsoil as it would take to make a three-foot layer of decent growth medium from property line to property line, except for where we would have a nice deck off the family room, and a beautiful flagstone patio outside husband’s dining room door. THEN, I would buy some really big trees (mature trees can be had; they are expensive as hell, but, hey, I have an unlimited budget!) to place along the back fence line to replace the defunct poplar screen that my charming neighbor cut down last fall. I would have a proper brick fence erected between me and my dead neighbors (in the cemetery.) And I would have a real front entry built onto the house, with a covered porch, where right now there is a decaying deck with utterly scary steps leading down to the yard from either side.

The gardens would be planted with an eye toward attracting birds and beasts. With as little lawn as I could possibly get away with. I can’t even begin to list the plants I would use…for the last four years, I’ve had to limit my scope to what the cursed soil of this property could not kill. I love hydrangeas, camellias, flowering dogwoods, rhododendrons and azaleas, Japanese maples, a jillion different varieties of shrubs and trees; baskets and containers filled with begonias, pelargoniums (especially scented ones), fuchsias, sages, and trailing accents like lobelia, bacopa, and ivy. An herb garden, and a small salad garden (if I could figure out how to keep the bugs out of my produce!) Perhaps a fountain or two, but NO crappy artificial ponds.

In short, I would fix the yard so that the things I planted might actually grow, and then just have at it.

Q. Undeniably, you are a very creative person, whether it be in your writing, photography, home decorating or crafts. Tell us how you use your creative talents to make your home decor special.

When I was in high school, I took about as many art classes as I could pack into my schedule and leave enough time slots for the requirements like math, science, and English. I found that I basically sucked at drawing and painting. Luckily, I discovered that drawing ability was not all there was to being an artist. I discovered that I have an innate sense of color, design, and composition that translates into that creativity you alluded to.

I can’t say that, until recently, I’ve really made much use of it in my home décor, however. Creativity costs money, and we haven’t had a great deal of disposable income to spend on transforming the very vanilla personality of this house into something more my style. I did, however, redo my living room, which included re-covering an old sofa, creating "art projects" for the walls (with old photographs, my scanner, and my greeting card program) and refinishing a bunch of old furniture. Managed to make it happen for probably less than $1000 (sounds like a good idea for a television show!) and it turned out quite nice, if I do say so myself. However, I do have kind of a problem picking a theme for my home décor… Living room is a kind of British Raj/modern fusion, dining room is country French goes to the vineyard, family room is rustic/lodgey with Native American accents, and my bedroom is…well, mostly an eclectic mix (read "mish-mosh") of all the furniture that wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the house. If "What Not To Wear" merged with "Trading Spaces" into a show called "How Not to Decorate," they’d probably have a field day with my house!

I'm a Hopeless Pimp...

Once again, my friend Jackie has trumped me on a political rant.  Read what she has to say about Tom DeLay. 

Year of the Eagle

Finished taking all the beach-at-sunset pictures we could manage, husband, dog, and I turned and retraced our footprints back toward camp. A huge dark bird hove into sight ahead of us. The eagle soared right over us, its bright head and tail feathers tea-stained by the failing light. A second bird, the same size and silhouette, but lacking the coloring, soared several yards behind it. And that one was trailed by some yards by another adult bird. An eagle family returning to its evening roost, even as we were heading back to ours?

This year, the year I will be marking the passage of my first half-century on the planet, eagles seem to have become my guardian spirits. Normally I could count an entire year’s eagle sightings on one hand, and half of those I would have to go out looking for. But this year….walking the dog through the neighborhood, driving back from town along the Multnomah Channel, strolling on the beach scanning the sky for seabirds, I have encountered the great birds at least a dozen times just in these first few months of 2005. And not so high above my head that I could barely make out their signature coloring against a bright sky. But close by, just skimming the treetops…or sitting on a branch tossing nervous glances over a feathered shoulder as I stood below and gushed, like the hopeless seventies hippie I am, about its beauty and…major coolness.

It appears that the Great Spirit has chosen to send the escort I could not have hoped to ask for, to guide me into the second half of my life. Some naturalists disparage bald eagles as nothing but thieving fish hawks; Benjamin Franklin thought them so lowly that he preferred exalting the turkey over the bald eagle as the national bird. What do they know? I’ll take John Denver’s opinion over theirs any day. Eagles have always meant wildness and freedom and nature’s majesty to me. I will never cease to feel a thrill of discovery, the sense that I have witnessed something rare and untamed, when I spot an eagle wheeling overhead or sitting sentinel on a towering snag. I don’t know what I’ve done, nor what it means, that I have, at least for the moment, such a noble guide. I’m sure it means something. Something beyond my poor, nearsighted dreams. I’m so looking forward to discovering what that may be.

Rain

Sometimes living in Oregon is just...interesting. This morning, I arose to a clear blue sky, sun, a perfect spring morning. Decided that I would chuck my plans of going on a buying trip for the business, and stay home and work in the garden. "Rainy days are indoor work days. Nice days are for yard work," I emailed the DH. So, I jumped in the shower, all prepared to rush outside, grab my tools, and go dig in the dirt.

Of course by the time I got out of the shower, the clouds had blown in from nowhere...and I knew where the day was going. Right now, the rain is pouring down in horizontal sheets, the wind is blowing...and I'm finishing up my shopping list. I don't much like driving or shopping in a deluge, either; but yard work is definitely out of the question.

Here is a picture of where I'd rather be...and what I'd rather the weather was like. Took this on Saturday when we made a spur-of-the-moment camping trip to the beach (because DH HAD TO pull a trailer somewhere with the new truck, or die...) We SO lucked out with the weather...

  

Just another one of Oregon's endless beaches... 

Poor Tom DeLay

Today’s quote from Tom DeLay, in reference to the publicity surrounding his myriad "alleged" ethics violations:

"It's nothing but a bunch of leftist organizations that have a public strategy to demonize me..."

This, from a leader of the party whose National Committee publicly declared their intent to "Daschle-ize" new Senate minority leader Harry Reid. You remember how the RNC handled Tom Daschle, don’t you? With a series of well-orchestrated attacks and smears, they mercilessly pummeled him into becoming the first Senate leader in 52 years to lose his reelection bid.

I must admit, I’m a little muddled about the ethics violations of which DeLay is accused. Allegations of gift-taking, influence-buying, sharing a bed with big corporate and foreign interests…while these things are illegal, and should be, they smack to me of political business-as-usual. I remember being a young voter in the state of Illinois, where everyone took it for granted that most of the politicians were corrupt, and it didn’t really matter. Under the assumption that corrupt politics were the only way anything ever got done. The behind the scenes machinations of the Chicago Democrats were given blanket pardon under the slogan that Chicago was "The City That Works."

So I think the powers who are out to "get" Tom DeLay are barking up the wrong tree when they start checking off a list of his political no-nos. The American people are just going to yawn and say, "So what?" It doesn’t matter that the things he does are clearly unethical and clearly against the law. They are clearly boring. They are NOT a nice juicy sex scandal that the public can really sink their teeth into. If it doesn’t constitute hiding under beds and exploiting intimate details of private lives with a hypocritical cry of moral indignation, the electorate is not interested. While the democrats were shouting into the wind about Tom DeLay’s political corruption, DeLay was making political hay by jumping into the middle of the Terry Shiavo battle. Which strategy netted more on-camera time for the cause?

More concerning to me is DeLay’s virtual declaration of war on "an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president." What exactly makes them out of control…the fact that they demonstrated they had not yet been stocked with sufficient Bush Administration appointees to come to heel on a "right to life" case with which Congress and the President had absolutely no business, or legal right, to interfere?  Apparently, the GOP wants the courts completely under their control. Democrats approved over 200 of the administration’s first-term nominees, while blocking only ten of the worst. Why has the blocking of ten judicial nominees by the minority party become such an issue that it has caused unprecedented action by the majority party? A vendetta against the Senate Minority Leader that cost him his job; the majority leader of the House making not-so-veiled threats against the judiciary; and Senate Republicans considering the "nuclear option" of taking away the minority party’s right to exert last-ditch control on a runaway senate with the filibuster.

One has to wonder, to what degree is the Republican Party at large invested in targeting the judicial system for a wholesale takeover by conservative interests? And why? Are we expected to believe that the GOP has become so drunk with power that they would fly into such a large-scale rage at such a small-scale defeat? Some of us may swallow that…but the rest of us are left to wonder what is really at stake here. What is so important about these last ten judicial nominations that the party would go to such lengths to assure their confirmation? And why are the American people NOT asking these questions?

If Tom DeLay goes down, it shouldn’t be for some amorphous political double-dealings for which the general population is too apathetic to hold him accountable. It should be for his "arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable" attitude toward a constitutionally ordained branch of our government, which was created as part of the checks and balances built into our system by our wise founding fathers; not to be at the beck and call of the Executive and Legislative branches, but to serve as a balance against that power, real or assumed. And if DeLay's attitude is shared by the bulk of the Republican party, they should all go down with him.

Bloglines Alert

You may notice that I replaced my coveted journal award graphic with a "subscribe with bloglines" sticker.  It is a hyperlink.  Click on it, and you will be transported to the wonderful world of "Bloglines," where you can create a list of all the blogs you read, and be notified when those blogs are updated.  Rather than relying upon the maddening uncertainty of the AOL Alerts system.  Which, by the way, did not send out an alert for my most recent entry, pulled mere moments ago out of my sleepless brain.  Read the entry, if you've a mind, and then go to "Bloglines."

New Wheels

Good Lord…I’m experiencing one of those times when I’m so tired I can’t sleep. Husband and I decided tonight would be the night to jump back on the water aerobics bandwagon. I haven’t been to the pool in almost a year. I’m here to tell you that, at my age, you don’t just drop an exercise program for eleven months, and try to pick it up again exactly where you left off. I will be lucky if I can hoist myself out of bed at all in the morning. Which I am being called upon to do at 5:00 am tomorrow, as I am slated to drive husband to work, so that I can pick him up from work, so that we can then drive up the gorge and pick up our new (to us) means of transportation.

Oh, boy, a new vehicle! I’d be lying if I said that my dream car is NOT a BMW Z4. Or at the very least, a classic 1955 T-bird…the one with the spare tire stuck on the back of the trunk. The ecology-conscious side of me covets a Toyota Prius. So, what is my "new" ride going to be? A Dodge Ram 3500 dually, with a big, herkin’, noisy diesel engine. Not exactly the car of my dreams…

Before you go getting all green-house gassed at me, let me just remind you that my chosen livelihood demands that I tow a 10,000 lb. trailer up and down the highways and byways of northwest Oregon. Which I have been doing with a one-ton van with a gasoline engine; getting, if I’m lucky, five miles to the gallon. Eleven at the most without the trailer. This sadly plain-looking pick-up truck we are purchasing (it’s white, for God’s sake L ) will get double the gas mileage empty, and at least triple the mileage—18 mpg—towing the trailer. So this is one of those times when the purchase of something that appears to be a gas-guzzling monster, is really the ecologically (and economically, with the price of gas swiftly approaching the per-ounce price of gold) responsible choice.

So, tomorrow evening I will be rumbling home in my new pick-up with the engine that is loud enough….well, I was going to say loud enough to wake the dead, but since my neighbors ARE dead, I won’t go there. No naked lady mud flaps or pissing Calvins for this beast, though. I will make it a point to find two or three examples of vehicular poetry comparable to the "I’m Straight But Not Narrow" and "Regime Change Begins At Home" stickers I have on the van. It amuses me to personalize my ride into cognitive dissonance on wheels. Cruisin’ down the freeway with my liberal bumper stickers and Secret Garden reverberating from my killer sound system… This jalopy just begs to be called "The Hot Flash," doesn’t it?

Hold the Goodbyes

The ranks of old AOL journalers, the ones who have been with it from the early days, are continuing to dwindle. In the last two weeks, two of the very few journals I read were abruptly mothballed by their authors. Many of the most prominent people on the original scene are long gone…moved on…ran out of things to write about…decided they were too invested in journaling and went back to their "real" lives. Played with the toy, tired of it, and tossed it aside.

My own journal experience has been one of ups and downs. The up of realizing that for the first time I was writing stuff that other people were actually going to read. The down of feeling I’d lost my voice in an attempt to lure and/or please those readers. The high of discovering the unimagined benefit of becoming part of a community. The low of realizing that the community was as inconsistent as the ether it was built upon.

But through it all, blogging, journaling, call it what you will, has been a tremendous rebirth for me. It rekindled my ardor for the written word. Though I had never really stopped writing since scribbling my first independent (non-school-assignment) story when I was about thirteen, my writing had degenerated to a form of self-psychiatric-treatment. During the hardest times of my life, writing was simply a form of venting; penning the circular answers to the unanswerable questions with which the act of living had filled my head to the point of bursting. Written by me, for me. Though a spark of desire to once again put the written word back to the work for which it was intended—communication with other human beings outside myself—always remained alive deep inside my soul.

Posting my first several journal entries, the ones that nobody but me ever read, I despaired that I had lost "It." The gift, the zeal, even the language…all buried under decades of selfish, inward prose that did not have meaning to anyone but me. But as I immersed myself in the blogging experience, I swept away those layers of mold, rot, dust, and cobwebs. Reading and thinking about the other voices out there, I rehabilitated my own long-disused tongue. As the weeks and months went by, I polished my skills. Remembered how much I loved to write. Remembered that I actually do have a talent for it. Wondered how I ever could have let myself get so far away from it.

I’m left to believe that we who remain here on the journal scene after the eighteen-month "honeymoon" period, are those of us who, on some level, are serious writers. Some published, some not, some whose writings will never see print beyond the world of the blog. But all of us are people who have something to say and feel most drawn, most fulfilled, putting our thoughts on paper, even if only virtual paper. I don’t see myself giving that up any time soon. And I hope there are at least a few more die-hards out there that are going to stay here with me.

On Pope John Paul II

Last week, a quiet suburban girl, who without her knowledge or consent, had become a flash point for opposing sides in an epic battle of right-to-life vs. right-to-die, passed from this life. Two days later, a very public figure for whom the moral imperative was always crystal clear—that human life is sacred and must be valued, maintained, and encouraged at any cost—also ended his earthly sojourn. It was an interesting twist of history that these two lives ended in such quick succession.

Far along on the journey down his own final road, Pope John Paul II pronounced his condemnation of the progress of the Shiavo case. Sick, failing, too weak to breathe on his own or consume enough nourishment to keep himself alive, did he take to his bed and attend to the business of his own death? No. He knew that, until he drew his last breath, he was charged with interpreting to his followers, and to the world, what he believed to be the mandate of his God. Not with saying what was politically expedient. Not with framing an opinion that would be most acceptable to the increasingly strident progressives of his flock, or the world at large. Among all the accusing, sanctimonious, condescending, screaming, angry, anguished voices swirling around Terri Shiavo’s drama, John Paul’s was the one with the purest moral intent. Agree or disagree with any stance he took. But it was always consistent, never hypocritical, never formed with the intent to curry favor with any person or faction. Always based on what he held to be the value the Lord Himself put on human life, or the code that he believed God had set forth for human beings to follow.

How many prominent figures in the world today, political or spiritual, could approach his purity of motive and singleness of purpose? How many twentieth century leaders have shown the humble devotion to their followers, the overriding concern for all people, the pure love for humanity that drew the poor and the powerful to sit at his feet? A truly holy man died yesterday. The world was greatly blessed by his life, and is severely diminished by his death.