How about just ignoring it as Bush has done with every legitimate request provided to him by decent people around the U.S.?
Peace, Arlene Johnson >From Europe where EVERYONE hates Bush who has a thinking mind http://www.truedemocracy.net -----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Sent: Apr 11, 2006 5:28 PM >To: Cia-drugs@yahoogroups.com >Subject: [cia-drugs] Son Shines Bright From This Old West Texas Home > > >http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nubushhome11apr11,0,2918450.story?coll=la-home-headlines > >Son Shines Bright From This Old West Texas Home > > George W. Bush and his blue-blood family lived in a modest Midland house in >the 1950s. Now, local leaders and family friends have restored it. > > By Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writer >April 11, 2006 > > >MIDLAND, Texas ? Virginia has George Washington's Mount Vernon plantation. >New York has the Hyde Park estate of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Yorba Linda >embraces >the modest farmhouse that was Richard Nixon's childhood home. And >Hodgenville, Ky., has Sinking Spring Farm, where Abraham Lincoln was born. > >Today, this dry, dusty town in the aging heart of the West Texas oil patch is >bidding to join the select list of communities that bask in the glow of >history ? and in the golden tide of tourist dollars that may come with it. >Midland, >after all, was the home of not one but two American presidents: George W. >Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush. > > > Yet the local leaders and Bush family friends behind Midland's bid for the >spotlight are struggling with a problem: Just what, exactly, is the story they >want to tell? > >Most sites associated with the early lives of future presidents have >unmistakable story lines, clear symbolic messages that help visitors >understand the >figures associated with them. The rude log cabin at Lincoln's birthplace ? one >cramped room with a dirt floor ? underscores the humble origins of one of >America's greatest presidents. The classical lines of Mount Vernon suggest the >Roman virtues of the man who became the father of his country. The stateliness >of >Hyde Park bespeaks the noblesse oblige that moved sons of aristocrats to >public service. > >The house at 1412 W. Ohio Ave. in Midland is certainly a landmark. A >half-century ago, it was home to the future 41st president and his wife, >Barbara, the >future first lady; their eldest son, George W. Bush, who became the 43rd >president after serving as governor of Texas; and their second son, Jeb Bush, >now >governor of Florida. > >And the Midland house was modest: 1,400 square feet, three bedrooms, no >garage ? just a shed in back. > >But promoters of the house as a historic landmark acknowledge that defining >its particular story line has not been easy. Although the house itself >suggests >modest beginnings, the young couple that occupied it belonged to one of the >most powerful families in contemporary American history, combining the wealth >and power of Wall Street with a record of high public office. > >George H.W. Bush's father, Prescott Bush, had been a U.S. senator from >Connecticut, for instance, and the family tree included an original partner of >financier J.P. Morgan. In some ways, the family compound on the ocean at >Kennebunkport, Maine, may be a more authentic symbol of who the Bushes are. > >"We've understood throughout the project that we cannot portray them as >coming from a lifting-yourselves-by-the-bootstraps background with no >resources," >said Bill Scott, a Midland real estate broker and one of the organizers of the >Bush home project. "We do not want to portray them as coming from humble >backgrounds." > >Instead, in addition to honoring the family that ? perhaps more than even oil >and high school football ? put Midland on the map, developers suggest that >this is where the Bush family may have learned Heartland values. > >Though he had been educated at Andover and Yale, returned from World War II a >hero and had Wall Street behind him, George H.W. Bush was one of thousands of >young veterans striving to build a family and make his fortune in the booming >oil fields of the Permian Basin. > >And although the elder Bush became vastly more successful than most, his >early years in Texas suggested the kind of 1950s family portrayed in "Leave It >to >Beaver" or "Father Knows Best." His son would tap into that sentiment. > >"It is here where I learned what it means to be a good neighbor," George W. >Bush said during a 2001 stop in Midland on the way to his inauguration. "At >backyard barbecues or just chatting across the fence, it is here in West Texas >where I learned to trust in God. It seems improbable now, but in that little >house on Ohio Street, [sic] right down the road from here, it was hard to >envision then the future of two presidents and a governor of Florida." > >Dealey Herndon, a Bush family friend whose Austin-based project-management >firm coordinated the Midland restoration, said: "I didn't really expect the >simplicity with which they lived when they moved to West Texas, and the purity >of >it. It's a small house on a small lot in a neighborhood of small houses." > >Nor could family wealth and position protect the young family from tragedy. >It was while living in Midland that the Bushes' 3-year-old daughter, Robin, >died of leukemia. > > >As the elder Bush built a fortune and launched his political career, the >family eventually settled in a suitably elegant home in Houston. But something >of >Midland did seem to stick, and it could have contributed to the younger Bush's >ability to communicate to many voters a feeling that ? despite his blue-blood >antecedents ? he was one of them. > >More than any of his political opponents, opinion polls have shown, George W. >Bush was the candidate Americans wanted to have a beer with. And they >appreciated the idea that he was "plain-spoken." > >Barbara Bush, whose memoirs recall in often emotional detail her life on Ohio >Avenue, emphasized this distinction as she guided the historians and interior >designers planning the home's restoration. Over hours of typically frank and >intensive discussions at her Houston home, the former first lady gave specific >guidance in capturing the warmth and down-to-earth comfort of Ohio Avenue. > >"Barbara Bush made it very clear to us, 'We weren't Abraham Lincoln,' " >Herndon recalled, saying that organizers weren't trying to portray the family >as >deprived. "But they lived an amazingly simple life because they were pioneers >and went out on their own. It doesn't matter what their background was; they >went off on their own." > >The project has been five years in the making, a private $2-million effort >spearheaded by family friends and Midland boosters. > By the time the restoration began, nearly 50 years after the Bushes left, >the house had grown dilapidated. > >Now, visitors will find the furnishings restored to the way they were when >the Bushes lived there, from 1951 to 1955. The fixtures on the kitchen >cabinets >are originals. The wallpaper has been restored to resemble the Bushes' choice >at the time. The wood paneling gleams in the small living room. > > > The tiny addition that was Jeb's room feels like a nursery. And in George >W.'s room, complete with the original built-in twin bed, bookshelves are >filled >with baseball pictures, books and scout paraphernalia. > >The master bedroom is devoted to images of Midland in the 1950s, while the >back room is devoted to baseball heroes of the era, including the 43rd >president's favorites, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. A video screen in the >kitchen will >play old ad jingles from the '50s, featuring Ovaltine, Oscar Mayer wieners and >Anacin. > >While many presidential landmarks are operated by the National Park Service, >the Bush home remains a private affair. Organizers expect it will be linked to >the George W. Bush presidential library someday. The home is already on the >National Register of Historic Places, and neighboring properties eventually >will be converted into a visitor center and a literacy and education center >named >for Laura Bush. > >The home is just one piece of a bigger effort to market Midland as a >destination for presidential history buffs. > >The George W. Bush Driving Tour is a 15-mile journey through the city's >mostly middle-class residential neighborhoods, featuring the houses where the >president lived both as a child and, in the 1970s and 1980s, when he returned >as a >young man to run an oil business. > >Friends say Ohio Avenue represents a more innocent time. > >Joe O'Neill met Bush when they were both about 5 years old. They played >Little League baseball, and Bush's father was a coach. Back then, he recalled, >you >could ride a bicycle downtown on your own and go to a 10-cent movie. > >"It was a very safe place, rather idyllic," O'Neill said in an interview >featured on the project website. "It was a really nice, friendly, little >Mayberry >kind of town." > >O'Neill's wife, Jan, grew up nearby and befriended Laura. Years later, the >O'Neill couple introduced the future president and first lady. Now, Jan is one >of the childhood-home organizers. > >And even if other organizers present it differently, to Jan O'Neill there is >still something Lincoln-like about the Bushes' early years in Midland: > >"It's an incredible statement that out of humble beginnings you can do >whatever you want or aspire to do," she said. > > > >Wallsten reported this story while on assignment in Texas. Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cia-drugs/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
