Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
This poem New Colossus was written by Emma Lazarus for a fundraiser to complete the construction of the Statue of Liberty on Bedloe Island in New York Harbor in 1886. The people of France gave the copper sculpture to Americans to celebrate the emancipation of…
Finn and Dwight spent Christmas Eve with their families with visions of sugar plums or something equally delightful dancing through their heads – 8-year-old Finn at his home in South Carolina where the moon was a gigantic white ball suspended in space surrounded by bright stars promising magic in the sky; soon to be 8-year-old Dwight at his grandparents’ home in South Dakota waiting for a brilliant white snowfall that would provide a magical playground for him and his two brothers when they woke on Christmas morning. Both boys drifted off to sleep on Christmas Eve in warm beds surrounded by the love and protection of their families.
Meanwhile, another 8-year-old boy named Felipe Gomez Alfonso who walked to the United States seeking asylum from a Central American country known as Guatemala fell asleep in a hospital in Alamogordo, New Mexico where he had been taken a second time on Christmas Eve because his condition had worsened from an earlier afternoon visit to the hospital which had released him with amoxicillin and Ibuprofen according to an article in the New York Times on December 25th by Miriam Jordan. This little boy never woke up.
He is the second child to die in our custody in the past three weeks. The first was a 7-year-old girl.
According to the Times article, the children are placed in overcrowded facilities where they sleep side by side on mats with one mylar blanket. The children refer to their sleeping areas as “hieleras” which is Spanish for ice boxes because they are so cold.
The article went on to say that last week the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Neilsen, was unable to answer a question asked during a report to a congressional committee: how many people have died in our custody?
My question is why couldn’t you answer that question, Madam Secretary?
On the other end of the spectrum, TBS comedian Samantha Bee created her Full Frontal Christmas on I.C.E. special which brought attention to the deficiencies in our immigration and detention policies specifically as they apply to the children caught up in situations not of their own making. As a result of a visit she made to Lumpkin, Georgia which is the home of a small group known as El Refugio that ministers to immigrants, their families and friends held at the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, Samantha and TBS donated a six-bedroom house that they renovated for the project. Check out the El Refugio website as well as another charity Samantha supported: Kids In Need of Defense (KIND).
Finn and Dwight today are happily enjoying the holiday season with their families because they were born in the United States to parents who were able to provide for them. The nameless little boy from Guatemala will be returned to his home in a coffin.*
Regardless of what we believe to be right or wrong about asylum seekers or the world in general at the end of 2018, geography often equals destiny.
Following the shady corruption of power in the Nixon administration, the American people were ready for a newcomer outside the beltway of Washington, D. C. In walked Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from Plains, who was a Sunday School teacher in a Baptist church with a reputation for honesty and integrity. He was just the recipe needed in the 1976 election after the Watergate years.
I had followed and admired Jimmy Carter even before his run for governor in 1970 so I was hopeful for what his administration could accomplish from the White House. Alas, being an outsider must be much more difficult than I thought, and for Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter it was a mountain too high to climb. The many good measures he accomplished including the Camp David Accords were often lost in the rhetoric surrounding the hostages in Iran that were released on the day Ronald Reagan took office at the end of Carter’s one term.
Jimmy Carter was only 56 years old when he left the Oval Office for his home in Plains, Georgia, but he and his wife Rosalyn have continued to be advocates for the poor and disenfranchised since he returned home. In 2002 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his open resistance to the War in Iraq in addition to his countless contributions toward creating and preserving democracy around the world. The Carter Center has been a model for presidential libraries, a thriving institution whose motto is “Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope.”
During the last years President Carter not only wrote a number of books but also found a passion for painting. Pretty and I are always grateful for the Christmas cards we faithfully receive every year from Rosalyn and Jimmy Carter, and we are particularly happy whenever the cards are works of art by the former president.
Enjoy with us.
2018 message: Blessings, love, and peace to you this Christmas
(Cardinals in Winter, original painting by President Jimmy Carter)
2017 message: May the Joy and Peace of Christmas be with you now
and throughout the new year
(Mountain Laurel, original painting by President Jimmy Carter)
(White Dove, original painting by President Jimmy Carter)
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And finally, just for fun, this one designed by Amy Carter who “created this original painting of her with her father carrying a Christmas tree home from the woods.”
Message: May your home be filled with the warmth of family and friends
No, not THAT James Brown – this is my friend of many moons, Jim Brown. I first met Jim in the early 1990s when I was selling life insurance, and he was selling health insurance. He cold called on me in my tiny Jefferson Pilot office one day, and I invited him to come in and tell me about his Golden Rule insurance plans. He folded his tall frame into my one and only office chair designed for very short clients, and we were off and running.
Throughout the years, Jim sent us countless holiday cards that were truly unique and signaled the beginning of the holiday season. Pretty and I loved them all.
2012 – Photo from Sheri Blackshire-Cochrane
2015 – Photo of downtown Greenville, South Carolina
2013 – Photo courtesy of Charlie Register
2014 – Photo taken from downtown Greenville, South Carolina
2016 – Highlands, North Carolina
Each of Jim’s cards carried his best wishes for Pretty and me, and I’ve chosen one of his greetings to send to all our friends in cyberspace:
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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