<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Jaime,<div>I assume you still want some maps for your classes. I have a bunch that I am putting in the mail tomorrow to the address in Hawaii that you gave us. They come from quite an extensive map collection that I have. Glad they can be put to use.</div><div>Priscilla Wilson</div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Nov 7, 2012, at 7:57 PM, Jaime R Vergara wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><font color="black" size="3" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><br>
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<div style="clear:both">j'aime la vie
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<div><i style="background-color: white; "><font color="#000080"><b>Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate!</b></font></i></div>
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<div style="font-family:helvetica,arial;font-size:10pt;color:black">-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Jaime R Vergara <<a href="mailto:jrvergarajr2031@aol.com">jrvergarajr2031@aol.com</a>><br>
To: jayvee_vallejera <<a href="mailto:jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com">jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com</a>>; mark_rabago <<a href="mailto:mark_rabago@saipantribune.com">mark_rabago@saipantribune.com</a>>; editor <<a href="mailto:editor@saipantribune.com">editor@saipantribune.com</a>><br>
Sent: Thu, Nov 8, 2012 9:36 am<br>
Subject: OpEd Friday<br>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">BELIEVE IN AMERICA</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">Our title was the slogan of Romney's </span><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">attempted trip
to the White House. He did not make it
out of Boston, but the slogan turned out to be the theme we p</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">icked up</font><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"> from
Obama's victory speech in Chicago.</font></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">One of my English classes is off campus in a </span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">C</font><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">ollege
connected to our University, scheduled on a Wednesday</span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">,</font><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; "> but the English
department had in the last month two occasions when they asked me to perform an
extra task so we ended moving the class to Thursday. The last time we met last week, we asked the
class to make the change permanent.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">So this Wednesday, we had a day off in time to watch
Singapore's NewsAsia and China's CCTV, State-owned media stations, broadcast
the returns of the US Presidential election.
Since China time at midday is EST's 11 p.m., we were wide awake to what
was billed as a long night of a close and expected drawn</span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">-</font><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">out contest, perhaps,
to the last ballot </span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">tally</font><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; "> in Ohio, Florida, and Virginia. By midnight EST, Obama secured his second
term in office.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">Wednesday morning, I had laid out the corn chowder that was going to be my lunch if Romney somehow managed to squeak
through, while I had a quarter of a chicken breaded <i>ala</i> Chicago Southside for Obama and the city's stockyards. Of course, I had gone along with NYTimes Nate
Silver early on in the week to project an Obama landslide inspite of the
nail-biting projections of the Atlantic seaboard pundits, so I already had a
taste for the chicken.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">Mitt Romney's concession speech was pleasantly subdued
and conciliatory. We decided to have the
soap and the chicken together while we waited for the man of the hour to take
the podium in Chicago. He bounded into
the stage with the confidence Obama exhibited during his first campaign, and
essentially doing a reprise of the "this is your victory" theme he
flung to supporters at Grant Park, though this time, he picked up on the GOP
theme, affirmed his belief in America, and gave the message the twist it needed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">A context from my side.
"Belief" as an operational word had long been dropped from my
vocabulary since we discarded the medieval theological metaphors of
metaphysics. "Belief" became
what one obstinately hangs on to when contrary evidence is presented to refute
a closely held truth. Thus, if and when
I say, "I still believe so-and-so," I do so against the wind. We tend to use the word "faith" to
say what is felt deeply in the guts with conviction.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">Our Hawaii-born Chicago Southside community organizer turned the Tuesday midnight event into a
Midwest revival meeting. He was, of
course, preaching to the choir. The
audience highly energized, already singing the hallelujah chorus, they rip
roared to the rafters to hear the gospel of their familiar. Obama did not disappoint. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">He told his 'congregation' that in this election</span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4">,</font><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; "> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">they reaffirmed the spirit that has triumphed over war
and depression, the spirit that has lifted the country from the depths of
despair to the great heights of hope, the belief that while each will pursue their
own individual dreams, we are an American family, and we rise or fall together
as one nation and as one people.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">(Editor's note: The full text of
Obama's speech is on page _____.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">Heady stuff. I reflexively opened my desk drawer and
started thumbing through my blue book out of its passport holder. I remember the day in '84, after twelve years
of green carding it through INS, I took on US citizenship, making our family's
international diversity (2 US, 1 Canada, 1 Pea Eye) into an American family
affair. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">It was from a black ghetto on the
Westside of Chicago 1967 where I first heard from a Methodist brother the
No-Messiah-Messiah articulation. I had
never been comfortable with the traditional Christian piety's mythology of a
second coming and the millennial reign of the <i>Christos. </i>So the story
resonated in its emancipating force.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">The story was plucked out of John in
the Christian New Testament. Jesus was
passing through one of Jerusalem's pool when he came upon a 38-year old
paraplegic lying on his bed. He asked
the man, the story tells, "Do you want to get well?" The man gives his lifelong excuse of not being
able to get to the <i>hocus-pocus </i>when
the angel of the Lord comes to stir the waters.
The man from Galilee tells him, "Well, why don't you pick up your
bed, and walk?" He did, and he
walked. We did, too, and we walked!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">Some characterized Obama as a
Miss-yeah, or a Mess-ayah<i>,</i> having
made promises that he reportedly did not deliver. I included his Grant Park acceptance speech
in my Oral English class expanded notebook for practice reading, so I know the
message is different and unmistakable.
Yes, WE can! Many Americans
wanted the "We" to be an Obama "I".</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">This second term, Obama was not going
to make the same mistake. As the
crescendo of his preaching intensified, he boomed: <i>"... America's never been
about what can be done for us; it's about what can be done by us together,
through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government... What makes America exceptional are the bonds
that hold together the most diverse nation on Earth, the belief that our destiny
is shared...”</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">By then, misty eyes visited this crusty
old coot. We straightened our back,
dipped the spoon into the corn</span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4"> </font><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; ">chowder, and relished our chicken for the
day.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; "> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; "><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">Yes, WE can!</span></div>
<br>
<div style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; clear: both; "><a style="font:lighter 10px Verdana, Arial;color:#000000;"><img align="absmiddle" border="0" src="http://presence.mail.aol.com/mailsig/?sn=jrvergarajr2031"></a> <font color="black" size="2" face="arial">j'aime la vie
<div><br>
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<div><i><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#ff0000"><b>Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, </b></font></i></div>
<div><i><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#ff0000"><b>Celebrate!</b></font></i></div>
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</font>_______________________________________________<br>OE mailing list<br><a href="mailto:OE@lists.wedgeblade.net">OE@lists.wedgeblade.net</a><br>http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net<br></blockquote></div><br><div apple-content-edited="true">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Priscilla H Wilson</div><div><a href="mailto:Pris@TeamTechPress.com">Pris@TeamTechPress.com</a></div><div>913-432-2107</div><div><a href="http://www.teamtechpress.com">www.teamtechpress.com</a></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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