Tag Archives: raoul wallenberg

Days

In a former life I was asked to create days off (with pay for state workers) and that didn’t really work except for Martin Luther King Day, and we all were off for that and we took a station wagon to D.C. and did events all day and heard Coretta Scott King speak at the AME church. Amazing!

My role at work was to stop these things from happening and no new days off were approved on my watch but three days of commemoration were to be celebrated. Raul Wallenberg, (NAZI  prisoner and Swedish freer of thousands of Hungarian Jews from Hitler). Tadeusz Kosciousko (Polish hero 1700’s) who has a bridge nearby and Saul Wollenberg who helped finance our Revolutionary War in the late 1700’s.

Of course I did 1,000 other things but as I look back these are more important at this point in my life. See, I always let other people steer my life from parents to college to bosses. Believing in myself, walking an old dog and cooking breakfast and dinner for husband and dog every day for years is comforting. Writing is a joy. Having challenging conversations with a really smart person makes me want to get up every morning. The dog, Zoe, doesn’t talk so much as make her essential needs painfully known, no matter day or night.

Cheers and have a wonderful day! Dee

Names

Years ago I was staff to a committee with myriad responsibilities. It included everything from legislative ethics (an oxymoron) to veterans, cable television, Native American land claims, pre-ADA, fire codes, sexual orientation et al.

It was a huge committee and I was glad they brought in a Vietnam vet to create his own committee and take that off my back. No, not to take it off me but give veterans more due than I could with my work load. Thank you for your service to our country.

I was also responsible for flag law (raise the flag briskly and lower it ceremoniously) and for naming days of commemoration. We did not try to make these days into holidays, except for Martin Luther King Day when friends from the office drove to DC overnight and we heard Coretta Scott King speak and we all sang “Freedom” in the AME church.

Perusing that law this evening, it shows no bounds. I remember that over six of my years there we designated three: Haym Solomon for funding our Revolutionary War and gaining the USA independence; Raoul Wallenberg for his extraordinary efforts against Hitler’s world domination; and Taddeus Kosckiuzsko who made his mark in Poland and Belarus and came to us to save us during the Revolutionary war.

Many names save me every day, mentor me, try to hurt me or just make me strive to be better, but these names I had engraved in legislative whatever, so that they’re in the books but no one will know them. You can even look them up online now. Imagine that. Back in the day I had to write everything on paper and have it typed.

I hasten to say that during my years there were no women mentioned. Now there seem to be a few, including Susan B. Anthony, go girls! Dee