Special Needs Families: chance to be heard in Sioux Falls

An announcement rec'd by email, followed by a few personal comments:

There is a 9:00 am meeting being set up for this Saturday, Feb 5, at the SF Holiday Inn City Center in the Burgundy Room for our local legislators to talk with area providers and families of people with disabilities (or developmental disabilities). It would be good to arrive between 8:30 and 8:45.

It would be great if parents, family members or self-advocates could come and be a part of this discussion/show support to show how much a 10% cut would affect us and our families.

We need to be a strong presence in the legislators minds this year more than most or we will have consequences beyond repair.
We need to tell our stories and we NEED to be HEARD in Pierre!

11 provider agencies will be addressing the legislators. I also believe Parent-Connection is involved.
I believe Districts 9, 11 and 12 will be the main panel, but in the previous Cracker-Barrels, other legislators attended as spectators.

Personal comments: Services that help special needs kids, adults and their families are more precious than I can say. I know we are in a tough budget time, and self-reliance is the watchword, but if I might try to open just a bit of a window on our lives:

We are not lazy or irresponsible people. We are often exhausted people and our looks show it.

Self-reliance means coming up with the income to support our loved ones, then coming home and trying to run what amounts to a clinic. Few if any people have the mix of high paying job and high medical/therapeutic skill to pull that off without help.

Moralizing about our efforts can sound like a curse. Most of us, when our kids first began to act "different," heard comments like, "You just need to get that kid in line. I would have fixed that with a swat across the butt." Believe me, if something that easy would fix our lives, we would have been swattin' years ago.

We truly, truly appreciate the sacrificial generosity of others, given privately or through public programs. None of it "solves" our struggle, but it sure makes it easier to pull off.

So anything, absolutely anything that can be preserved in the way of special needs funding in this state will be a blessing to many hard working, responsible families.

"Accepted, respectable and legitimate" are not all they seem

Theological Theology: Theses for a new reformation in the Anglican Communion

"A longstanding temptation facing the churches has been a longing for acceptance, a sense of respectability, and an acknowledgement by those with power or influence that they have a legitimate place in contemporary society. Such a temptation has often led to an accommodation to elements of the contemporary secular agenda. In all of this the words of Jesus are easily forgotten: '... because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you' (Jn 15:19; 17:14). The church will always be a despised minority in a world arraigned against God. Nevertheless, despite such opposition, even the power of death will not prevail against the church that Christ is building (Mtt. 16:18). Though we ought not to seek the animosity of the world, or indeed provoke it by our own arrogance or folly, we need to remember that vindication and legitimization will only come on the day we are invited to 'enter the joy of our master' (Mtt. 25:21, 23)."

Costly Grace: "and the answer is Epiphany"

Costly Grace: Newsletter Article

I really liked this, especially

"As with any time Christ appears in the Gospels, people and situations are changed and sometimes even inconvenienced."

A real Plains rancher comments on Groundhog Day

Too good, too funny and too regional to not share.

South Dakota Payday Lender Bills heading for Committee; Iowans seek action as well

HB 1223, which helps the strained state budget via a registration fee on those who impose excessive loan interest on the people, and HB 1224 which seeks to temper excessive interest, have received first readings in the House and are now referred to the House Commerce and Energy Committee.

Please contact legislators on that Committee and let them know that you are concerned about predatory lending gimmicks in South Dakota. In these tough financial times, we don't need our neighbors with short term needs trapped in long term debt. Track the bills - those who protect the predatory lending business generally try to kill such legislation in community, before it can get to wider public debate.

Iowans are mobilizing against predatory lending, too:

Groups join to push Iowa Legislature to approve limits on payday loan interest