This photo shows the Trusted Solaris group lunch at my place, with AJ and the women who are grilling him about his marriage intentions along with the other men who are glad the spotlight isn't being turned on them.
L to R: Jan Parcel, Hai May Chou, Ashish Joshi, Mark Wedel, Krishna Yenduri, Ric Aleshire, Thuy Fettig.
Yesterday I got the following two answers to my question about How Democrats Were Hunted:
-------- From John Stearns former coworker and manager in the Trusted Solaris group (originally from Auburn, MA) ----------
Hi Roseanne,
. . .
Regarding hunting for Democrats, I believe the story is that the Republicans in the Texas legislature tried to force an early re-districting in Texas. I believe that re-districting is only supposed to take place every ten years. Because the Texas Rs are in the majority, they are able to force a vote on it, but they need a quorum for the vote. In protest and to prevent the vote, the Ds chose not to show up. This has gone on for a while and some of the Ds left the state. The US Attorney John Ashcroft who should be spending scarce dollars on fighting terrorism, put federal agents and planes at the disposal of the Texas Rs. I may not have the story quite right but I believe that's what they were referring to.
Take care,
--John
------------------- From Jerry Johnson from Minneapolis ---------------------
Roseanne,
I'm not 100 % sure about this, but I think the "Democrat hunting" happened last year in Texas (where else?). If I remember correctly, the Republicans were using their majority in the legislature to do a little gerrymandering. To stop the process, the Democrats left town. I think the Texas Rangers were actually called out to look for them. It turned out that the Democrats had fled across the border into Oklahoma, so the Rangers didn't have jurisdiction and couldn't bring them back. Is this a great country or what?
Jerry
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I met Jerry Johnson, whose very name evokes the Minnesota Scandinavian mystique, the oddest way I've met anyone. I was in Minneapolis trying to take care of things for my mother after she had a stroke, I think in 1995, and I was getting a run around by the Social Security Administration. I met Jerry on the phone at SSA,. He took care of whatever bureaucratic SNAFU was holding up my mom's monthly allowance for me. And we started to be phone friends. We only met in person once (I think) when I was visiting Minneapolis a later time. He showed me his very tastefully decorated house in South Minneapolis, with some of his nature photographs from his extensive hikes in wilderness areas around the United States framed on the walls.
As I remember he got the option of early retirement soon after, at about the age of 50, and he has been living frugally but happily unemployed since then. He has a group of friends that met at a coffee shop in St. Paul, and I'm impressed to hear that when a woman in their group got cancer, they helped her out any way they could. Her husband couldn't do it all. They even did yard work. In Minnesota, that's a big deal. In CA almost everyone has a gardener. In Minnesota, almost everyone has a big grass lawn that needs weekly mowing.
This is all very kind of them, I think.
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