What Mitt Romney Left Behind: The People Who Bought His House Tell Their Story

Buying a house is usually an impersonal transaction. The buyer sees a scrubbed version of the home, artfully “staged,” possibly with a fresh coat of paint and flowers on the table. Once a purchase price has been negotiated, the buyer and the seller sign legal papers in triplicate, and the new owner gets a set of keys and – if lucky – an extra garage door opener. So, when Hal and Corinne Prewitt decided to buy Mitt and Ann Romney’s Park City, Utah home in spring of 2009, they figured they were in for another paperwork hassle. What they got, however, was a great house, interesting interactions with the man who’d just lost a bid to be the previous election’s GOP nominee, and some insight into the character of the possible next President. In fact, their interaction with Romney was so different than what the Prewitts expected, Hal decided to write down his experience in a Google document which has since been downloaded over 100,000 times.

First of all, the Prewitts were impressed – and a little shocked — when Mitt Romney met them at the property on moving day. There were no brokers or anyone there at the house – just the former governor walking around the house to make sure the new owners were comfortable and familiar with their purchase. “He spent as much time as we needed showing us around, answering our questions and explaining how to use and service the home’s equipment,” Hal wrote. “And when he was done, he gave us his direct contact information should we have problems.

Secondly, the Prewitts were fascinated by the way Governor Romney – worth, by some calculations, hundreds of millions of dollars – decided to move his things. Some people hire professional movers to pack their things, others hire them to transport them, and others prefer a do-it-yourself approach. Governor Romney fit into the last category. He went to Home Depot, bought wood, and built the necessary containers to transport his possession from the house. Then, he asked a friend and some family to help him pack his family photos, mementos, and grandchildren’s toys. Then, they carried his things into a U-Haul, which he drove to his new home in California.

The home, according to the Prewitts, was built with a focus on their family, even though it had “no swimming pool, tennis court or movie theater. There are no maid, butler or nanny quarters. Clearly Ann and Mitt raised their kids. No gold faucets, no fancy silverware. The kitchen was simple and typical of an average three bedroom home, very much like those in which we were raised.” Because the Prewitts bought much of the home’s contents, they also got to see the way the family really lived in their home: the linens didn’t have the highest thread count, the master bedroom pillows had tags from a discount store, and almost everything — the art, furniture and drapes — were American made.

Plus, there were lots of toys for the grandchildren. Also, in the Romney’s former mud room, Hal and Corinne found the former governor’s ski gloves with holes in the fingers. Apparently, one of Mitt’s sons had suggested he replace the gloves, but Gov. Romney, whom his sons have described as “frugal” and even “cheap,” thought he could salvage them. When Hal and Corinne found the gloves, they’d been altered.

“Mitt had gone to the garage tool box and wrapped them with duct tape. Thrifty? Yes, and the repair provided an immediate practical solution rather than traveling to the store to buy a new pair,” Hal wrote. “His indifference to appearance demonstrated his confidence, true character and priorities. Good qualities, but easily misunderstood because they are quite different from those displayed by many famous people and certainly politicians, who highly protect and prize their appearance.”

In the Romney’s master bedroom, was a prominent painting of Jesus Christ. “Most Americans know little about Mormonism and we didn’t either,” Hal wrote. “But Mitt Romney clearly had a home of faith and family just like the rest of us.”

“One of the most interesting questions many have asked is, ‘as president will he impose his beliefs on others?’” Hal wrote. “Many claim that a President Romney would take away rights and impose his beliefs on all Americans.” However, possibly the most surprising discovery was a small stash of alcohol in the house, which – the Prewitts were told – was for guests only. Mormonism prohibits drinking alcohol, of course, and the Romneys are teetotalers. However, they kept a few drinks on hand to be good hosts and make sure their guests felt comfortable. Hal believes this stash shows the Romneys wouldn’t impose their beliefs on others from the White House, because they didn’t even impose their beliefs on others in their own house.

The Prewitts didn’t support Romney in the 2008 election. Neither Republicans nor Democrats, they knew very little about Romney, Utah, or his former Presidential bid when they looked for a winter home. However, they felt they needed to speak out, because the caricature of Romney on television is such a far cry from the real man who showed him around the house and packed his own boxes that day.

“Mitt Romney… is not aloof or out of touch. He is a man of faith, family and American values. A guy who is well-grounded. It is not beneath him to roll up his shirt-sleeves and get the job done,” Hal wrote. “The fact that he has allowed this to be kept so very private is a true testament to his character and shows how different he is from many other politicians.”

If Romney wins in November, he’ll be faced with yet another move. Will the new President show up at the White House in a U-Haul? With $16 trillion of national debt, it just might be a move in the right direction.

h/t to Patheos.com

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If you think you still need to know more about Mitt Romney here are a few reading suggestions: The Real Romney, No Apology, Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games, The Mormon Way of Doing Business: How Nine Western Boys Reached the Top of Corporate America And check out his detailed plan at: http://www.mittromney.com/

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Trust… Inflation… And Ice Cream - When Will You Have Your Ah Ha Moment

The problem we have in this country is trust, integrity, honor… or rather lack of!  And if we don’t have trust, we have nothing!!!

When Will You Have Your Ah Ha Moment

Video:  Inflation and Rising Prices are Here… When Will You Have Your Ah Ha Moment?

 

If you missed it check out: the Financial News Wrap Up from 01.02.11… A very long list of worrisome financial news, updates and predictions!!

Cotton Shortage Coming, Could Drive Up Clothing Prices

Uncovered:  New Calls for the Updated Cloward-Piven Strategy to Overwhelm America’s Financial System From Frances Fox Piven With SEIU and Bertha Lewis Coordination

Funny how official reports keep coming out on unemployment that jobs are added and we are holding between 9.4 and 9.8 % unemployment when all of us know more and more people out of work, under-employed or more and more who have just dropped off the grid and are no longer counted.  The official unemployment figures came out today at 9.4% and California’s will show a bit higher.  The official real unemployment in California is closer to 23%… think about it!  Who can you trust? Jobless Rate Drops to 9.4 Percent, but Hiring Falls Short of Expectations (and mind you this is for the period where extra temporary Christmas help was hired… who will mostly be let go again.)

The U.S. Constitution

(The Constitution was read by our New Congress Today… and They Edited the Reading Because Obviously the Readers… Members or Our Congress Did Not (DO NOT) Understand It… Think About It)

They left out the 3/5’s clause out of consideration for Political Correctness. For those who understand history and the 3/5’s clause, they understand that it was a measure by which the Founding Father’s ensured that slavery would eventually be defeated; it made it an anti-slavery document, as Frederick Douglass learned when he set out to prove the opposite. If you are not familiar with the 3/5’s clause please read: Giants and Original Intent… and then explain it to your Congressman and Senator. The Congress also did not read the 18^th Amendment about prohibition, but read the 21st Amendment reinstating drinking… why? The two need to be read together as well as the 3/5’s Clause to understand the process, the thought process as well as see the scars of our nation’s journey. The same sanitation is going on with our classics. Books like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer teach lessons that our children now cannot read. (Read it with your children and make sure you read an original version or at least an annotated version: The Annotated Huckleberry Finn which leaves room for discussions).

Upcoming NewSouth ‘Huck Finn’ Eliminates the ‘N’ Word
By Marc Schultz
Jan 03, 2011

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Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a classic by most any measure—T.S. Eliot called it a masterpiece, and Ernest Hemingway pronounced it the source of “all modern American literature.” Yet, for decades, it has been disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned outright, appearing again and again on lists of the nation’s most challenged books, and all for its repeated use of a single, singularly offensive word: “nigger.”

Twain himself defined a “classic” as “a book which people praise and don’t read.” Rather than see Twain’s most important work succumb to that fate, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the “n” word (as well as the “in” word, “Injun”) by replacing it with the word “slave.”

“This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind,” said Gribben, speaking from his office at Auburn University at Montgomery, where he’s spent most of the past 20 years heading the English department. “Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.”

The idea of a more politically correct Finn came to the 69-year-old English professor over years of teaching and outreach, during which he habitually replaced the word with “slave” when reading aloud. Gribben grew up without ever hearing the “n” word (“My mother said it’s only useful to identify [those who use it as] the wrong kind of people”) and became increasingly aware of its jarring effect as he moved South and started a family. “My daughter went to a magnet school and one of her best friends was an African-American girl. She loathed the book, could barely read it.”

Including the table of contents, the slur appears 219 times in Finn. What finally convinced Gribben to turn his back on grad school training and academic tradition, in which allegiance to the author’s intent is sacrosanct, was his involvement with the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read Alabama.

Tom Sawyer was selected for 2009′s Big Read Alabama, and the NEA tapped NewSouth, in Montgomery, to produce an edition for the project. NewSouth contracted Gribben to write the introduction, which led him to reading and speaking engagements at libraries across the state. Each reading brought groups of 80 to 100 people “eager to read, eager to talk,” but “a different kind of audience than a professor usually encounters; what we always called ‘the general reader.’

“After a number of talks, I was sought out by local teachers, and to a person they said we would love to teach this novel, and Huckleberry Finn, but we feel we can’t do it anymore. In the new classroom, it’s really not acceptable.” Gribben became determined to offer an alternative for grade school classrooms and “general readers” that would allow them to appreciate and enjoy all the book has to offer. “For a single word to form a barrier, it seems such an unnecessary state of affairs,” he said.

Gribben has no illusions about the new edition’s potential for controversy. “I’m hoping that people will welcome this new option, but I suspect that textual purists will be horrified,” he said. “Already, one professor told me that he is very disappointed that I was involved in this.” Indeed, Twain scholar Thomas Wortham, at UCLA, compared Gribben to Thomas Bowdler (who published expurgated versions of Shakespeare for family reading), telling PW that “a book like Professor Gribben has imagined doesn’t challenge children [and their teachers] to ask, ‘Why would a child like Huck use such reprehensible language?’ ”

Of course, others have been much more enthusiastic—including the cofounders of NewSouth, publisher Suzanne La Rosa and editor-in-chief Randall Williams. In addition to the mutual success of their Tom Sawyer collaboration, Gribben thought NewSouth’s reputation for publishing challenging books on Southern culture made them the ideal—perhaps the only—house he could approach with his radical idea.

“What he suggested,” said La Rosa, “was that there was a market for a book in which the n-word was switched out for something less hurtful, less controversial. We recognized that some people would say that this was censorship of a kind, but our feeling is that there are plenty of other books out there—all of them, in fact—that faithfully replicate the text, and that this was simply an option for those who were increasingly uncomfortable, as he put it, insisting students read a text which was so incredibly hurtful.”

La Rosa and Williams committed to a short turnaround, looking to get the finished product on shelves by February. Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: The NewSouth Edition will be a $24.95 hardcover, with a 7,500 first printing. In the meantime, Gribben has gone back to the original holographs to craft his edition, which is also unusual in combining the two “boy books,” as he calls them, into a single volume. But the heart of the matter is opening up the novels to a much broader, younger, and less experienced reading audience: “Dr. Gribben recognizes that he’s putting his reputation at stake as a Twain scholar,” said La Rosa. “But he’s so compassionate, and so believes in the value of teaching Twain, that he’s committed to this major departure. I almost don’t want to acknowledge this, but it feels like he’s saving the books. His willingness to take this chance—I was very touched.”

Standing Up for People, Values and Ideals

An all-too-typical issue that comes up on my radio program is cowardice, because someone didn’t stand up for others, for values and/or for ideals. The standard excuses range from not wanting to escalate a situation, being afraid of other people getting mad, fear of being marginalized or left out, being afraid of being “judged,” not “liking” confrontation, not wanting to lose the image as a nice person, and so on.

I disrespect the actions of not standing up for friends, fairness (even when a friend is not involved), and values. Some of my callers are parents whose adult children are behaving recklessly, thoughtlessly, and in total opposition to how they were brought up. Too many of these parents are more concerned with “peace at all costs” instead of continuing their parental leadership by clarifying their position and drawing the line.

I remember a long time ago, there was a talk show host coming on right after my program. We were polar opposites in our political views, and she would use her three hours on the air to critique my program. This, of course, annoyed the heck out of me, but I never spoke about it on the air - not even once - because I don’t use my air time to do anything but help people do and be better in their lives.

Fast forward several years later, and a feminist group went after her with venomous attacks, attempting to destroy her career. Mind you, she was a feminist activist leader herself, but she dared to have her own opinion about something that went against the grain of the activist group’s position. It turns out that I was the first person who called her the next morning - with a call of support. It galled me that there was a concerted effort to unfairly destroy her career. I just don’t like life’s unfair qualities, and I have generally stood up to them no matter what.

Fast forward again years later, and I was being unfairly attacked by a different activist group that she had once been part of. She went into numerous public venues to defend and support me.

We both took hits for doing these things, but we both turned out to like each other very much, and we both still maintained the bulk of our differing opinions. We did, however, agree on one point of ethics, morals, and values: you defend who or what is being attacked unfairly, and consequently, we both defended responsible free speech.

We both lost to the power of the activist groups, however, but we won each other’s respect and support, all while keeping the high ground. We each went on growing in success and the respect of our peers as well.

That’s one very personal experience for me. I hope the next time you see rudeness or cruelty, you will stand up.

Racial comments coming from Don Imus are as ugly and unnecessary (except for ratings) as the joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter getting “knocked up” by a baseball player. It isn’t the term “knocked up” that’s the issue - I use it all the time for out-of-wedlock pregnancies, because they usually end up with the child being aborted or growing up with the chaos of a life with one parent gone. David Letterman wanted to shoot insults at Palin simply because she’s Republican, and he aimed his gun at her child. That’s disgusting. How many of you would stand for that happening to your child?

Imus lost his job…temporarily…and Letterman’s ratings are higher. And I’m left wondering if you’ll stand up for others (or values, morals, ethics and principles) when most others around you will turn their gaze away. –Dr. Laura~

TrackBack URI – Dr. Laura’s Blog

Let us all take a lesson from the inequities of the experiences and occurrences in this post. In the end, it is a question of rights, freedom and values. We each need to stand up for the right of everyone to speak freely as well as all the rights given us, Americans, by the Founding Fathers in the Bill of Rights and we should fight for every shred of every right. Never give up a right for security or anything else and never let the government take your rights away, like what is happening now on a daily basis. Stand for each other. Stand for your rights. And remember, when you defend someone’s right to speak, display, or write you are defending not what they say or believe but rather their right to say or belief it… It is what makes America the land of the free and different from the rest of the world!!!

The fact that NOW (the National Organization for Women) has not stood up for Sarah Palin over the Letterman issue or while she was the Republican Vice Presidential Candidate nullifies the entire value of that organization. NOW should be standing up for the rights of all Women, not just the one’s that agree with their now liberal agenda and beliefs, just as we all should stand up for everyone’s right of free of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press and the list goes one. -Ask Marion~

Remember:

FIRST THEY CAME...

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

Then they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not protest;
I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
I did not protest;
I was a Protestant.

Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.

Source: Marion’s Place

Posted: Daily Thought Pad

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