Molly Ivins Rules

San Antonio APA Conference - part next

I heard that the conference organizers first had booked Molly Ivins to give the keynote address at the conference but she cancelled after finding out she was ill again.  She suggested Ann Richards and the former Governor had agreed to come but was subsequently diagnosed with cancer also.  So Molly agreed to speak. 

She wasn't well.  She arrived and left in a wheelchair and had a weak voice and a cough.  But her character is so strong as to have made it hardly noticeable. 

She welcomed us to Texas - National Laboratory of Bad Government where land use planning and zoning are commie plots.  "We don't have sunshine laws, we have partly cloudy laws".  She told stories of Texas politics and politicians, including Governor Goodhair Perry.  And she encouraged interest and optimism about the political process and the future of the country, noting that "imagination and beer are the secrets to having fun as a freedom fighter." 

She got two standing ovations from nearly 5000 planners in attendance.

Molly's recent columns in the Star-Telegram are listed here.  Coco

 

Comments

[Maggie]

Wow - amazing. I had no idea she was going to be there. Thanks for this.

[barb]

I was lucky enough to be at a forum about grassroots politics in which she was on the panel at DemocracyFest last summer in Austin, and also a rowdy rally there where she appeared with Howard Dean. She was magificent and hilarious.

She was going much better last summer than it sounds like now. I heard she had a pretty bad relapse. Hope she hangs in there. We need her. And more like her, but Molly's are hard to come by these days...