“Fred Urbina (Yaqui/Yoeme) currently serves as an Attorney General of the Pascua Yaqui Nation. Fred has practiced law or worked in the field of Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement for 20 years. Fred was recently appointed to the Veterans Affairs Advisory Committee and Indian Affairs.
Fred recently led successful efforts at the Pascua Yaqui Tribe to implement the Special Domestic Violence Criminal Jurisdiction provisions of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which expanded the tribe’s criminal jurisdiction to prosecute non-Native offenders of domestic violence. The tribe was the first in the Nation to exercise this jurisdiction since 1978. Fred has also testified on the impact of the VAWA and Tribal Courts before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. For recent efforts, Fred was awarded the 2017 Bonnie Heavy Runner Victim Advocacy Award in recognition of his work to increase access to justice for domestic violence victims and members of the Pascua Yaqui community.” 1
References:
National Park Service – Native Peoples of the Sonoran Desert: The Yoeme
Art Fettig’s Monday Morning Memo – December 7, 2009
In This Issue
o The Almost Learning Process o Say Something Good o Points To Ponder o A Little Humor o Quote of the Week
The Almost Learning Process
Penetrating my Brain … right now my brain is still awaiting penetration.
I’ve never been a fast learner but lately I have the feeling that my capacity to learn some things has come to a screeching halt. It has. I am making a valiant effort to learn to talk Southern and for this old Yankee it sometimes seems too much. I feel like Elizabeth Dolittle in My Fair Lady. walking around the room saying “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.” Again and again and again. Aye do! And just learning Southern isn’t enough because Andy Griffith had his own unique brand of Southern. Still, it is kind of exciting making a determined effort to accomplish a new challenge. Each morning as I approach yet another practice session I find that my mind is blank and it is like I am starting all over again. I’m certain that many of you who have worked in training have trained people with heads so thick that you felt you would never penetrate their thinking system, and yet, when you persist you might soon find them at the head of the class. Well, right now my brain is still awaiting penetration.
Say Something Good
I had the honor of speaking at Pearl Harbor for the U.S. Navy some years back and I visited the cemetery and was once again reminded of the horrors of war. We have had and we currently have some mighty fine people in our military. May God bless America and keep our troops out of harms way.
Points To Ponder
It is never too late to be what you might have been. George Eliot
A Little Humor
Almost Andy Sez… we had a bad accident downtown last week. They had a crew resurfacing the road and one of the onlookers, Sarah May, leaned in too close and fell and she was run over by the steam roller. She’s in Duke Hospital and can have visitors in rooms 203, 204 and 205…
Quote of the Week
Children, you must remember something. A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive. – Pearl Bailey,
About 25 years ago when I was just 65 I took a tap dance class from that same teacher who had taught my daughter, Nancy, many years before. Our classes were at the Senior Center there in Battle Creek, Michigan. There were about 20 women in the class and as I recall I was the only man. I remember it as my weekly hour of total humiliation. I just couldn’t keep up with the ladies. I dropped out of the class, bought a 4’x4′ plywood board and began dancing a simple shuffle step I came up with. Greg Brayton and I recorded a song we called The Dancin’ Rag. It started out slow and got faster and faster. And then I went back and danced on my board at Greg’s recording studio and we taped it. The Dancin’ Rag is attached.
At speeches I would close my talk with a story about the fact that no one is too old to learn new skills and I would illustrate my point by closing my presentation with my dance.You might find me dancing for the United States Air Force on Youtube.com Art Fettig.
Well, the other day I was looking at some DVD’s we had recently converted from a big box of VHS’s I’d brought with me twenty years ago in my move here to Hillsborough from Battle Creek.
In that box I found a video tape of a presentation I made for Alabama Power Company years ago and I closed that presentation doing my first ever Dancin’ Rag in public.
Well that stirred me up. Maybe it is the months of isolation most of us have endured lately. Somehow I went straight to Amazon.com and typed in Men’s tap shoes, size 13. To my amazement up popped a wide selection of offers. Reasonable offers and they all claimed to have size 13. I’d been searching for years for such shoes. My wife reluctantly helped me order the shoes online and they arrived today, sure enough, black lightweight tap shoes and they fit me perfectly. I found the song on our Mixed Bag CD. I played it and some good old memories came back to me. I put my new shoes on. I sat in my chair at my computer shuffling my tired old feet. A few toes felt a little bit numb. There is a little arthritis in the ankle joints. Both knees were replaced over twenty years ago and they had 12 year guarantees. Then there is my lower and upper back and my neck. You know, the usual 90 year old stuff. The worn out parts. Still, there is that spark still burning in my imagination, still burning bright. I dug out that 4’x4′ practice board, and there is my big mirror on the wall and if you happen to drive by our home in the woods and hear a rag song blasting out from my music room upstairs I might just be standing in front of the mirror on that practice board dancing the whole one minute and fifty-six seconds of our song The Dancin’ Rag. You can hear it right now by clicking on The Dancing Rag MP3 below. Good luck.
Blog For Arizona, AZ BlueMeanie, June 7, 2021 – Grant Woods: Kyrsten Sinema Doesn’t Belong In The Senate Unless She Abolishes The Filibuster (Updated)
The Hill, Alexander Bolton, October 14, 2021 – GOP rallies around Manchin, Sinema
Salon, Igor Derysh, October 21, 201 – Sinema’s giant flip-flop: She once campaigned on issues she now wants dropped from Biden’s plan – Sinema now pushing to save Trump’s tax cuts, after calling for corporations and the rich to “pay their fair share”
Salon, Igor Derysh, September 23, 2021 – Big Pharma, medical firms donated $750K to Kyrsten Sinema — then she opposed drug bill – Democrats who now oppose the plan to lower prescription drug costs accused of “carrying water for Big Pharma”
