In response to a bit of snark, State House candidate Amy Rose provides the Pulp a rather involved response to my suggestion that we keep the eye on her. Why? She's running for the District 95 seat against Jim Waldman at the same time she's working for Commissioner Sue Gunzburger on the county payroll. Here's what she wrote:
As for the mention of whether I'm campaigning on the taxpayers dime, I can appreciate that one might question if I were doing so, but for what it's worth, I'm not. I'm not terribly upset that you might wonder, since it's understandable to think that a county commissioner might allow something that's less than ethically sound. However, until my maternity leave last fall, virtually every hour of my vacation time over the past 5 years had been used for volunteer work on various campaigns or for organizing Young Democratic functions. A few of my favorite examples: In 2004, I took an unpaid leave to work full time on the Kerry campaign for the final 6 weeks leading up to the election. When the Kerry campaign (not surprisingly) failed to pay me, I ended up using a substantial portion of my annual leave to help myself partially cover the shortfall. As badly as Sue felt about the situation, there was not even a moments consideration of altering the county paperwork to let me get paid for part of the time I was out. Similarly, in 2002, when I spent most of the exceedingly long primary election day (the election Miriam managed to screw up so badly the polls stayed open late) at a polling place in Lauderdale West volunteering for Ron Gunzburger's Circuit Ct. judicial campaign, I still took vacation time for the day.
See, all she did was use her annual leave time from the county to cover some of the losses after that skunk John Kerry stiffed her. And neither she nor Commissioner Gunzburger thought about altering county records to pay her more. Not even for a moment. How reassuring.
He's In The Army Now
When the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 rocked the nation, Jim Greenhill was still finishing his book on the Lords of Chaos and trying to find a publisher. He was also working for the Durango Herald in Colorado. But he still found time to undertake another massive mission:
He enlisted in the Army National Guard.
In 2002, at the age of 37, Jim began basic training at Fort Knox. He believed in the Afghanistan War (as did I) and later, when the disastrous Iraq venture began, he believed in that, too (as I didn't). We had some e-mail debates about it during which I argued the new war was a criminal act and he compared it to WWII (and Bush to FDR). Jim served at Gitmo in the public affairs division.
I was surprised by the decision, as were a lot of us who knew him, but hey, he's a grateful immigrant and his father was an old hand in British intelligence. He was entrenched in imperialism, as it were. And he proudly became an American citizen in 2004.
He's heading to Afghanistan for an active-duty stint in April where we'll all be thinking of him and hoping he remains safe. Once again, he's going all the way.
And that is what marks Jim. For all the madness and demons and pathos, he does extraordinary things. That's what I came to love about him, this magnetic pull he had to action, even if he had little idea why he had to go or what absolutely batshit happenings would go down once he arrived. I think it's part of the reason he became an addict and every bit the reason he wound up writing an extraordinary book about the Lords of Chaos.
Oh, yes, the book. The reason I started writing this insane tale in the first place. Jim's book, Someone Has To Die Tonight, was picked up by Pinnacle and was released a few weeks ago. It's about 450 pages long, which means it's definitely complete. And it manages to be compelling as well. Written mostly in a staccato style, it accumulates force as it rolls along and winds up flooring you with the sheer power of Greenhill's reporting. This book has ten years of blood and bruises (literally), psychological discovery and torment, endless days of work, and incredible perseverance behind it. It's Pulp, baby, Pulp all the way. And as a mass market paperback, it's selling for $6.99, so cheap as to be somehow criminal.
But it is missing something. Jim's Death Row dance with Kevin Foster. He chose not to go there -- which is why I did.
