Years ago, when I was in CPS, a woman called into the office and talked to a secretary.
She said, "You can tell that investigator you assigned not to bother any more. She's not doing what I wanted her to."
And we all laughed. Fact of the matter is, people make reports all the time about neglect or abuse of children. Concern for the child is only one of the many reasons they call.
I think we, as voters, have our agendas, too. A lot of us think our representatives aren't doing what we want. Or if they are, then their challengers are going to try to make them look like they aren't. That's politics. I think, however, voters increasingly feel they aren't getting what they asked for, and they can't find any alternatives. color us frustrated.
It adds up to a whole lot of whoppers on the airwaves this fall. Texas doesnt even have contested races in half the positions, but where we do--I don't think I've ever heard such a pack of amazing lies in my life. Not to mention inaccuracies I suspect are grounded in dumb ignorance rather than lies at times. Only a few weeks to go.
I'm gonna be listening to a lot of music for the next couple of weeks. I love it that I can go in early, at my leisure, to vote. And I can root for the Texas Rangers. That's fun to think about.
As I say, I will vote. Always have. Always will. When I was a state employee, I was expected to behave honorably with the families I worked with, to find the services they needed to make a better family for their kids. Some of them made amazing changes in their lives.
Seems to me the people we elect keep saying that's what they want to do, too, to work for their constituents. Then they get in office and it's all about party solidarity and what they can scarf up for themselves....yeah, that's been going on forever. I am just tired, perhaps.
Freedom is still good. I'm still glad to be an American, and I actually know and like several of the county candidates this time around. And the first Tuesday comes extra early this November. Lots of positives.
I can, after all, just go out and sit on the porch. Not so hot now. Lots of sunshine, and tons of butterflies. Can't do anything about all that, either, but it sure is nice to contemplate.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Stopping to Look Around On a Really Nice Day.
The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex now sprawls over at least seven large counties. We have more than seven million people and umpteen area codes, but we also are spread out some. Public transportation has improved to sucky. It used to be more or less nonexistent.
For years, I would pass the lettuce farm on both sides of I35, less than a mile from the downtown skyscrapers. Whole working ranches--some measuring in sections, not acres--are surrounded by new housing and strip malls that have sprung up to support the 300+ people that move in every day.
In short, we have a lot of rural in our cityplex. Acreage of beef cows, and increasingly goats, are scattered about. Some mighty fine horses get raised here. I have three neighbors in one block who raise a few chickens. Just enough for the family and to sell a dozen or five every week.
The late, very wet spring followed by the intense 18 days of above 100-degree heat, made for the poor tomato crop this summer, but the fall crops are coming along.
Okra and black-eyed peas are re-invigorated and producing again.
I've seen 100 degrees in October, but about three weeks ago, an unusually cool wave of air came along and hasn't really left yet. This is the last week of the State Fair in Dallas, which started Sept. 24. The weather has mostly stayed in the 70s and 80s. If attendance is off this year, it's the economy, not the weather. Nigh perfect. Texans loves to fry just about everything at the fair, but I am still a fool for the corny dogs, funnel cake and Belgian waffles with whipped cream and strawberries.
We have a bumper crop of ragweed this fall, which really needs a more useful purpose than spiking antihistimine sales.. The silvery doveweed was plentiful this year, too, and in the early mornings and evenings I've heard the shotguns in the neighboring fields as hunters test themselves against the wily, fast dovebirds in flight. Even in the so-called city, the country intrudes.
I doubt most city dwellers go out to get the morning paper, sniff, and look around to see if the passing skunk is still around like its aroma.
A couple of years ago, drinving to Fort Worth from Denton,I saw a large buck bound across the road foom the thin greenbelt on one side to the greenbelt on the other. Wild turkeys hide out, too.
Life is busy right now, but I try to stop, look around and smile at folks who, like me, are just enjoying an ordinary day in the land of North Texas.
For years, I would pass the lettuce farm on both sides of I35, less than a mile from the downtown skyscrapers. Whole working ranches--some measuring in sections, not acres--are surrounded by new housing and strip malls that have sprung up to support the 300+ people that move in every day.
In short, we have a lot of rural in our cityplex. Acreage of beef cows, and increasingly goats, are scattered about. Some mighty fine horses get raised here. I have three neighbors in one block who raise a few chickens. Just enough for the family and to sell a dozen or five every week.
The late, very wet spring followed by the intense 18 days of above 100-degree heat, made for the poor tomato crop this summer, but the fall crops are coming along.
Okra and black-eyed peas are re-invigorated and producing again.
I've seen 100 degrees in October, but about three weeks ago, an unusually cool wave of air came along and hasn't really left yet. This is the last week of the State Fair in Dallas, which started Sept. 24. The weather has mostly stayed in the 70s and 80s. If attendance is off this year, it's the economy, not the weather. Nigh perfect. Texans loves to fry just about everything at the fair, but I am still a fool for the corny dogs, funnel cake and Belgian waffles with whipped cream and strawberries.
We have a bumper crop of ragweed this fall, which really needs a more useful purpose than spiking antihistimine sales.. The silvery doveweed was plentiful this year, too, and in the early mornings and evenings I've heard the shotguns in the neighboring fields as hunters test themselves against the wily, fast dovebirds in flight. Even in the so-called city, the country intrudes.
I doubt most city dwellers go out to get the morning paper, sniff, and look around to see if the passing skunk is still around like its aroma.
A couple of years ago, drinving to Fort Worth from Denton,I saw a large buck bound across the road foom the thin greenbelt on one side to the greenbelt on the other. Wild turkeys hide out, too.
Life is busy right now, but I try to stop, look around and smile at folks who, like me, are just enjoying an ordinary day in the land of North Texas.
Friday, October 1, 2010
When we choose to go easy into the night--or not
When my mother's autonomic system began to fail from advanced Alzheimer's in 1978, she was hospitalized, and I was given a form to fill out. It asked, specifically, if I would approve any of the listed "extraordinary measures" to save her life.
I remember being so very thankful Mother and I had discussed this in depth when she was still reasoning and lucid. It was hard to check "no", but I did so. (By this time, I was also her legal guardian, but still.)
Today, the patient must have a signed, notarized document on file, as I understand it. When my friend recently died of lung cancer, things got dicey when her lungs started failing and no DNR was in the orders. She was one day away from being put on a ventilator when a 24-hour hospice service finally accepted her and took her home. She died within 48 hours. If she had been on a ventilator, it would have been the end of any real life as she knew it, but she might have lasted days or even weeks at great expense. Nobody wanted that. The staff was upset. The family was upset. My friend would have been upset, but her oxygen level by then was so low she slept most of the time.
She died easily, family with her, in her own bedoom, nurse attending.
That's an institutional DNR. It seems such a simple thing, but in an emergency, it is hard to know when to utilize it.
Another friend's mother has just died. She was 88. She had never had surgery. She never took any medications, although she knew her blood pressure was high. She donated her body to the medical school, an aging, unsullied, hopefully interesting specimen for some aspiring doctor to learn from. She was so adamant about no extreme measures that she had a DNR document posted at the house. She was up for a stroke, and she knew it.
And she had it. When a daughter found her, it had probably been 12-18 hours since the first massive seizure. The ambulance transported only to the hospital. And there, not knowing the severity, not knowing enough about what was going on, her family agreed to treatment. And she survived. Half her brain gone, part of the other gone, but she survived. She shouldn't have been able to move her arm, and possibly not been able to talk, but she could. Memory and reasoning nowhere near who she had been, but there. She was in the hospital awhile. Assuming she was going to survive another few months or even a year, family submitted to having a feeding tube put in, as partial paralysis made it hard for her to swallow. The doctor expected this to rectify in a few weeks. But this extraordinary woman was apparently lucid enough, herself enough, to make her wishes known. Her three children conferred,and the tube was removed. They all understood the consequences. They brought her home on hospice. They rearranged their schedules, because hospice for them, until the last few days, involved a daily visit only. It was scary for the family, these responsible, loving, middle-aged children who nonetheless had no knowledge of caring for a dying mother. They learned. They turned her, talked with her, bathed her, changed her, yes, that, too.
My friend said her mother would have been appalled at the cost of the medical treatment. She commented herself that with the Baby Boomers aging, our nation cannot survive the cost to Medicare if everyone chooses to go this way. Her mother, she said, would have said the money would better have been spent on well baby visits, vaccinations, on those who can recover from their body's blows, on those who have others to care for.
I know this is a growing dilemma. When I went in for my physical, I asked my doctor about an out-of-hospital DNR form. She was startled and said she didn't have them in her office but she supposed I could get one online. But, she asked, what if resuscitation could bring me back to a productive life? It often does.
My medical DNR, dutifully notarized, has been in the folder with my will, my power of attorney, my medical power of attorney and my living will, for five years, at least. I don't know if a conditional DNR is possible. I guess I will have to check back with my attorney.
I heard on the news last week that it has been 50 years since CPR was introduced to the world. This procedure, in so much time, has undoubtedly saved thousands, maybe millions, of lives. But 50 years ago, CPR could carry a patient only so far. The medical support available today didn't exist.
I see older people all the time who want to survive at any cost, literally and figuratively. I see the poor souls like my mother who had no choice, but have been treated longterm with tenderness and care.
I have seen grieving parents let their dying child go peacefully. Most of us know at least one person whose family just couldn't let go until they went through hell.
CPR. Such a simple thing. Even I have taken lessons. Hard to imagine Before.
But After involves complications that those who developed CPR never anticipated.
Before, they really couldn't.
I remember being so very thankful Mother and I had discussed this in depth when she was still reasoning and lucid. It was hard to check "no", but I did so. (By this time, I was also her legal guardian, but still.)
Today, the patient must have a signed, notarized document on file, as I understand it. When my friend recently died of lung cancer, things got dicey when her lungs started failing and no DNR was in the orders. She was one day away from being put on a ventilator when a 24-hour hospice service finally accepted her and took her home. She died within 48 hours. If she had been on a ventilator, it would have been the end of any real life as she knew it, but she might have lasted days or even weeks at great expense. Nobody wanted that. The staff was upset. The family was upset. My friend would have been upset, but her oxygen level by then was so low she slept most of the time.
She died easily, family with her, in her own bedoom, nurse attending.
That's an institutional DNR. It seems such a simple thing, but in an emergency, it is hard to know when to utilize it.
Another friend's mother has just died. She was 88. She had never had surgery. She never took any medications, although she knew her blood pressure was high. She donated her body to the medical school, an aging, unsullied, hopefully interesting specimen for some aspiring doctor to learn from. She was so adamant about no extreme measures that she had a DNR document posted at the house. She was up for a stroke, and she knew it.
And she had it. When a daughter found her, it had probably been 12-18 hours since the first massive seizure. The ambulance transported only to the hospital. And there, not knowing the severity, not knowing enough about what was going on, her family agreed to treatment. And she survived. Half her brain gone, part of the other gone, but she survived. She shouldn't have been able to move her arm, and possibly not been able to talk, but she could. Memory and reasoning nowhere near who she had been, but there. She was in the hospital awhile. Assuming she was going to survive another few months or even a year, family submitted to having a feeding tube put in, as partial paralysis made it hard for her to swallow. The doctor expected this to rectify in a few weeks. But this extraordinary woman was apparently lucid enough, herself enough, to make her wishes known. Her three children conferred,and the tube was removed. They all understood the consequences. They brought her home on hospice. They rearranged their schedules, because hospice for them, until the last few days, involved a daily visit only. It was scary for the family, these responsible, loving, middle-aged children who nonetheless had no knowledge of caring for a dying mother. They learned. They turned her, talked with her, bathed her, changed her, yes, that, too.
My friend said her mother would have been appalled at the cost of the medical treatment. She commented herself that with the Baby Boomers aging, our nation cannot survive the cost to Medicare if everyone chooses to go this way. Her mother, she said, would have said the money would better have been spent on well baby visits, vaccinations, on those who can recover from their body's blows, on those who have others to care for.
I know this is a growing dilemma. When I went in for my physical, I asked my doctor about an out-of-hospital DNR form. She was startled and said she didn't have them in her office but she supposed I could get one online. But, she asked, what if resuscitation could bring me back to a productive life? It often does.
My medical DNR, dutifully notarized, has been in the folder with my will, my power of attorney, my medical power of attorney and my living will, for five years, at least. I don't know if a conditional DNR is possible. I guess I will have to check back with my attorney.
I heard on the news last week that it has been 50 years since CPR was introduced to the world. This procedure, in so much time, has undoubtedly saved thousands, maybe millions, of lives. But 50 years ago, CPR could carry a patient only so far. The medical support available today didn't exist.
I see older people all the time who want to survive at any cost, literally and figuratively. I see the poor souls like my mother who had no choice, but have been treated longterm with tenderness and care.
I have seen grieving parents let their dying child go peacefully. Most of us know at least one person whose family just couldn't let go until they went through hell.
CPR. Such a simple thing. Even I have taken lessons. Hard to imagine Before.
But After involves complications that those who developed CPR never anticipated.
Before, they really couldn't.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Ordinary people and their extraordinary pets
I've been reading the want ads lately for a bargain on a good dog. I've got the house, and a big, fenced yard. Time to get another dog. And stingily, I hope. I've been thinking about it.
My younger son has a Welsh Corgi I love to death. He is smart, beautiful, and just about the perfect middle-size dog I want. But he sheds incredibly, and I am not a woman given to mopping the wood floors every day (now there's an understatement). So probably not a Corgi. I still get all excited when I see Scotties, but I haven't seen ads for any. They aren't very smart, but they are fiesty, and you can't hurt their feelings and they are affectionate and very, very cute. But. Not another dachsund--I've got stairs. I'm looking. I'm looking.
Today I ran across another pet choice. To quote, "Hand tamed fancy rats. $8 adoption fee.3mos. old. Black/grey. For pets only, not snake food,pls. Very sweet/great pets.(Number followed.)"
I snickered. With all the universities around, a proscription on using them for lab testing might also be wise.
When I was a sophomore, I took an introductory psychology class, and we were required to do a lab experiment using rats. The professor brought in his daughter's brown rat named Friar Tuck. Friar Tuck was indeed a calm, nice-mannered rat, who ran up my professor's arm and kind of cuddled next to his neck. He insisted we all come up and practice lifting the amazingly patient rat up by the tail and set him on our hands, then lift him back. This was to prepare us for doing the same thing with much less attractive, much less socialized lab rats we would be using in a maze experiment that semester.
Desensitization, I think we call it.
I had no trouble performing the chore, setting him or her in the maze and recording the results. The problem was, to me one grey lab rat looked like another. Halfway through the experiment, I somehow started using the wrong rat. My error wasn't discovered until the testing period ended. To say my professor was not pleased would be to state the patently obvious. He didn't rip me to shreds, but for a few minutes he looked like he wanted to. My mistake had basically flawed the entire experiment for everyone. I had made all my lab sessions. I had written up my results. I had done well on all my tests. So with extreme restraint, he gave me a C for the semester instead of the F he probably wanted to award.
The next semester I took abnormal psychology. I really enjoyed it. No rats.
I have played with someone else's rat on a few occasions. I have never wanted to own one.
So I wish this rat owner well in providing happy homes for the rat babies. At least they smell better than ferrets. (Do pet snakes --isn't that an oxymoron?--eat ferrets, too? I thought folks mostly bought crickets and mice.)
I look for biases in my makeup and realize I am highly skewed as a pet owner towards dogs, then fish, then cats. I knew a family with an adorable pet chicken once, and the folks across the street have bunnies, and my niece once owned a corn snake for awhile. I've seen enough ferrets to know I wouldn't want one. Gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs? We had the guinea pig when my sons were young, and I'm still convinced I killed it by feeding it some banana. Pot bellied pigs? Parrots?
So. Did I say I was getting a dog? I'll stick with that.
My younger son has a Welsh Corgi I love to death. He is smart, beautiful, and just about the perfect middle-size dog I want. But he sheds incredibly, and I am not a woman given to mopping the wood floors every day (now there's an understatement). So probably not a Corgi. I still get all excited when I see Scotties, but I haven't seen ads for any. They aren't very smart, but they are fiesty, and you can't hurt their feelings and they are affectionate and very, very cute. But. Not another dachsund--I've got stairs. I'm looking. I'm looking.
Today I ran across another pet choice. To quote, "Hand tamed fancy rats. $8 adoption fee.3mos. old. Black/grey. For pets only, not snake food,pls. Very sweet/great pets.(Number followed.)"
I snickered. With all the universities around, a proscription on using them for lab testing might also be wise.
When I was a sophomore, I took an introductory psychology class, and we were required to do a lab experiment using rats. The professor brought in his daughter's brown rat named Friar Tuck. Friar Tuck was indeed a calm, nice-mannered rat, who ran up my professor's arm and kind of cuddled next to his neck. He insisted we all come up and practice lifting the amazingly patient rat up by the tail and set him on our hands, then lift him back. This was to prepare us for doing the same thing with much less attractive, much less socialized lab rats we would be using in a maze experiment that semester.
Desensitization, I think we call it.
I had no trouble performing the chore, setting him or her in the maze and recording the results. The problem was, to me one grey lab rat looked like another. Halfway through the experiment, I somehow started using the wrong rat. My error wasn't discovered until the testing period ended. To say my professor was not pleased would be to state the patently obvious. He didn't rip me to shreds, but for a few minutes he looked like he wanted to. My mistake had basically flawed the entire experiment for everyone. I had made all my lab sessions. I had written up my results. I had done well on all my tests. So with extreme restraint, he gave me a C for the semester instead of the F he probably wanted to award.
The next semester I took abnormal psychology. I really enjoyed it. No rats.
I have played with someone else's rat on a few occasions. I have never wanted to own one.
So I wish this rat owner well in providing happy homes for the rat babies. At least they smell better than ferrets. (Do pet snakes --isn't that an oxymoron?--eat ferrets, too? I thought folks mostly bought crickets and mice.)
I look for biases in my makeup and realize I am highly skewed as a pet owner towards dogs, then fish, then cats. I knew a family with an adorable pet chicken once, and the folks across the street have bunnies, and my niece once owned a corn snake for awhile. I've seen enough ferrets to know I wouldn't want one. Gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs? We had the guinea pig when my sons were young, and I'm still convinced I killed it by feeding it some banana. Pot bellied pigs? Parrots?
So. Did I say I was getting a dog? I'll stick with that.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The Cover Doesn't Begin to Explain the Book
This is a transaction thought from a conversation from my third grader:
She was telling me how you can't judge a friend by looks(ugly or good-looking) or dress(shabby or smart). And that is a good lesson. And I thought.
Earlier, she and I had gone to Lowe's for some construction stakes for posters I want to put up for my church chocolate festival. I was told to go to aisle 13, where I met a salesman who told me I wanted aisle 16, and walked along with us to find them. They were fairly bulky, not unmanageable, but he insisted on getting a cart and walking with us to checkout. Then he offered to carry them out. I told him no, I could manage. We left. Just as we reached the trunk of my car, a well-built, 20-something man appeared and asked, "Ma'am, do you need help?"
I laughed. I told him no I didn't, but since he was there I relished the assistance. I opened the trunk, he deposited the stakes, then told me he would crate the cart since "it's on my way anyway." And he did.
When we got in the car, I told my granddaughter, "You have just witnessed three blessings. One was the man helping us in the store. The second was the man who showed up to help me at the trunk. And the third is I recognized the first two as blessings."
Earlier in the day I had been fuming to a friend because of my bad knees and arthritis, I limp. And because I lost weight after age 60, I have wrinkles. And my hair is greying. And I feel sometimes as if people spring to help because of the old lady with the limp, and I'm stronger than that and I hate it. All of which is true when I am feeling negative. BUT. All of this happened later, and wasn't it nice? Human beings are still kind to one another. Of course I smiled.
I have been thinking when to bring another interchange up. It was in the shop where my damaged car was being repaired. A woman came in, carrying a couple of Walmart bags. She was picking up her own repaired car. She was wearing a navy blue shirt and khaki pants. As she and I waited, I asked her,"Do Walmart employees get a discount?"
I was genuinely curious. I have had nothing but intelligent, good service there. And I know the pay is minimal, so I wondered if there were perks.
She huffed,"I do not work at Walmart", and sailed out the door. Almost immediately, she came back in. She said, "Why do you think I work at Walmart? I am a professor at _______." She seemed flustered.
I answered truthfully, "You are wearing a navy shirt and khaki pants, the uniform for Walmart employees, and you are carrying Walmart bags."
She blurted,"I will never wear this outfit again." And she left.
I thought at the time she was oversensitive.
Today, I examined that in view of my 8-year-old getting lessons in not picking a book by its cover, so to speak, and in my own almost terminal prickliness when good people try to help an independent, aging, limping woman. Today I had the sense not to be prickly. I hope later, the prickly professor laughed.
But all of us, my 8-year-old, myself, the middle-aged professor, are always striving to read and be read, as a book without our cover.
We aren't. Most of the time. What I personally have to learn is to bless the goodness of people when they mean well, and only whop them in the chops when they try to escort me across a street I didn't intend to cross.
She was telling me how you can't judge a friend by looks(ugly or good-looking) or dress(shabby or smart). And that is a good lesson. And I thought.
Earlier, she and I had gone to Lowe's for some construction stakes for posters I want to put up for my church chocolate festival. I was told to go to aisle 13, where I met a salesman who told me I wanted aisle 16, and walked along with us to find them. They were fairly bulky, not unmanageable, but he insisted on getting a cart and walking with us to checkout. Then he offered to carry them out. I told him no, I could manage. We left. Just as we reached the trunk of my car, a well-built, 20-something man appeared and asked, "Ma'am, do you need help?"
I laughed. I told him no I didn't, but since he was there I relished the assistance. I opened the trunk, he deposited the stakes, then told me he would crate the cart since "it's on my way anyway." And he did.
When we got in the car, I told my granddaughter, "You have just witnessed three blessings. One was the man helping us in the store. The second was the man who showed up to help me at the trunk. And the third is I recognized the first two as blessings."
Earlier in the day I had been fuming to a friend because of my bad knees and arthritis, I limp. And because I lost weight after age 60, I have wrinkles. And my hair is greying. And I feel sometimes as if people spring to help because of the old lady with the limp, and I'm stronger than that and I hate it. All of which is true when I am feeling negative. BUT. All of this happened later, and wasn't it nice? Human beings are still kind to one another. Of course I smiled.
I have been thinking when to bring another interchange up. It was in the shop where my damaged car was being repaired. A woman came in, carrying a couple of Walmart bags. She was picking up her own repaired car. She was wearing a navy blue shirt and khaki pants. As she and I waited, I asked her,"Do Walmart employees get a discount?"
I was genuinely curious. I have had nothing but intelligent, good service there. And I know the pay is minimal, so I wondered if there were perks.
She huffed,"I do not work at Walmart", and sailed out the door. Almost immediately, she came back in. She said, "Why do you think I work at Walmart? I am a professor at _______." She seemed flustered.
I answered truthfully, "You are wearing a navy shirt and khaki pants, the uniform for Walmart employees, and you are carrying Walmart bags."
She blurted,"I will never wear this outfit again." And she left.
I thought at the time she was oversensitive.
Today, I examined that in view of my 8-year-old getting lessons in not picking a book by its cover, so to speak, and in my own almost terminal prickliness when good people try to help an independent, aging, limping woman. Today I had the sense not to be prickly. I hope later, the prickly professor laughed.
But all of us, my 8-year-old, myself, the middle-aged professor, are always striving to read and be read, as a book without our cover.
We aren't. Most of the time. What I personally have to learn is to bless the goodness of people when they mean well, and only whop them in the chops when they try to escort me across a street I didn't intend to cross.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
When I can't prevent evil but deplore it
I am sorry. I am a dilettente, and perhaps a sponge. I remember reading that when FDR said "We have nothing to fear but fear itself", he was quoting. Which means it had happened before.
And it is happening again.
It has happened many times. We fear, we strike, we kill, we fight....
Doesn't mean there are are not reasons to fight. Doesn't mean we don't have enemies that imperil us. But in fear, we often include innocent people.
My fear is that it is happening again. It has happened over and over. A lot of times, it is the little guy that loses--life, liberty, possessions.
There's the mosque or community center several blocks from ground zero, where by the way, several Moslem (even American) victims fell.
Then there's the bookburner who plans to burn the Koran on Sept.11. A bookburner in particular is repugnant to me. That he chooses to burn religious books, of whatever faith, makes me want to vomit. He has the right. But he is evil.
I don't use that word lightly. Evil. I've seen it. I know it exists. It is horrible when directed towards children or neighbors or supposed friends. Evil. It is a total disruption of the peaceful,loving course of life. It is a total disregard of the well being of others.
Do we have to have someone to hate? Is it a human need, at least for some? Sept. 11 gave us no country to fight, and in my opinion, no religion. But there are terrorists. Extremists. Do we blame a whole religion for that? Some apparently do.
Tim McVeighy parroted Christian teachings. And he bombed Oklahoma City. Very successfully. And we don't condemn Christianity.
We don't know the Koran. How many of us have read the Bible? Damn few. Moslems, Christians, and Jews share two commandments: Love the Lord Your God with All Your Might, and Love Your Neighbors As Yourselves. Most of us in all three religions fail to live up to that.
That causes trouble.
Will there be protesters at the burning of the Koran? I hope so.
This is a better country than that. We can absorb such as these. We do not have to agree with them.
And I do not. I hate it with every fiber of my being, and agree with my country's constitution that however repugnant it is, he has the right. Goddamn him. That, of course, is out of my hands.
And it is happening again.
It has happened many times. We fear, we strike, we kill, we fight....
Doesn't mean there are are not reasons to fight. Doesn't mean we don't have enemies that imperil us. But in fear, we often include innocent people.
My fear is that it is happening again. It has happened over and over. A lot of times, it is the little guy that loses--life, liberty, possessions.
There's the mosque or community center several blocks from ground zero, where by the way, several Moslem (even American) victims fell.
Then there's the bookburner who plans to burn the Koran on Sept.11. A bookburner in particular is repugnant to me. That he chooses to burn religious books, of whatever faith, makes me want to vomit. He has the right. But he is evil.
I don't use that word lightly. Evil. I've seen it. I know it exists. It is horrible when directed towards children or neighbors or supposed friends. Evil. It is a total disruption of the peaceful,loving course of life. It is a total disregard of the well being of others.
Do we have to have someone to hate? Is it a human need, at least for some? Sept. 11 gave us no country to fight, and in my opinion, no religion. But there are terrorists. Extremists. Do we blame a whole religion for that? Some apparently do.
Tim McVeighy parroted Christian teachings. And he bombed Oklahoma City. Very successfully. And we don't condemn Christianity.
We don't know the Koran. How many of us have read the Bible? Damn few. Moslems, Christians, and Jews share two commandments: Love the Lord Your God with All Your Might, and Love Your Neighbors As Yourselves. Most of us in all three religions fail to live up to that.
That causes trouble.
Will there be protesters at the burning of the Koran? I hope so.
This is a better country than that. We can absorb such as these. We do not have to agree with them.
And I do not. I hate it with every fiber of my being, and agree with my country's constitution that however repugnant it is, he has the right. Goddamn him. That, of course, is out of my hands.
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