Culture
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Mean People Suck
(graphic found here) My mom moved in the middle of her junior year of high school. She first lived in San Mateo, CA, and was best friends with Kate. Then she moved to Modesto, and was best friends with Jane, Robert, and my dad, Michael. Jane and Robert eventually went on to get married and have kids, and later divorced. Jane remarried and had children with her new husband, Tip. When we moved to Alaska back in ’69, my mom lost touch with both Jane and Kate, who never knew each other anyway. But on a visit to California several years ago, my mom, Kate, and Jane all got together,…
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I am my body
I wrote a post last week about yoga, and (un)relaxeddad made a comment that included this: “It never ceases to amaze me how much our bodies know about where we are and what we need (and how separate we hold ourselves from them except in situations of extremis). ” That comment really stuck with me, and it reminded me of my mom in a lot of ways. She was working pretty hard to try to come to terms with her body, to accept and love it, and to not judge herself because she was fat. She was working with a program called Overcoming Overeating, and I think she was doing…
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Immigration
(photo found here) Every so often, in the argument about illegal immigrants in America, and more specifically here in California, we hear that we need these workers to come to America, legally or illegally, because Americans aren’t willing to take these jobs. The jobs that immigrants take in America, mostly agricultural, are jobs that Americans aren’t willing to take. Well, I stopped awhile ago to think about that, the last time I heard about coal miners getting trapped underground for days, weeks, until they die…I thought, if people are willing to go into the bowels of the Earth to bring out fuel, at the risk of becoming crushed and losing…
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Why?
Why does there have to be a TV wherever you go? There’s a nice spa down the street from our house, where we sometimes go for a massage. They have a stupid TV in the changing room, set to a horrid show, talking about some guy who murdered his children. Not the news, either, some sensationalist channel. So you come out after having a wonderful massage, and you’re confronted with that crap. They also have a changing room for after you work out, and I can understand having a TV there, since some people like to watch the news in the morning, and they go to the gym in the…
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Dinner with the Atheists
The other night, for some reason, we got to talking about saying grace at the dinner table, and how it is often just saying thank you to God for the nourishment and the family, and leaving it at that. I was reminded of a post on my mom’s blog that I came across the other day. It’s a long post, and well worth reading, but the part I remembered was about hearing grace as a child, and how different it was from just, ‘thanks for the food’: At meals with my great-grandfather, he always said grace and always blessed at least the farmer and the cook. Sometimes he would list…
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“George Bailey, I’ll Love You ‘Till The Day I Die”
I was sad to read that Bob Anderson, the actor who played the young George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life” died today, at the age of 75. I thought he did such a wonderful job of playing a young Jimmy Stewart, and made you care about the character from the get-go. Here’s an interesting tidbit about the filming of the scene where he gets his ear boxed by a very drunk and saddened Mr. Gower, the druggist, played by H.B. Warner: Warner took the role seriously and on the day of shooting had been drinking and was “pretty ripe,” Victoria Anderson said. The scene called for Warner’s character to…
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Go Big Brown!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoFquax2F-k[/youtube] This video is of Secretariat, who won the Belmont Stakes, and the Triple Crown, in 1973. Even if you’re not into horse racing, this is an amazing horse race to watch. Watch him make all of the other horses look like they’re standing still, as he goes on to win one of the most difficult flat races for 3 year olds in record time (still unbeaten), and make it look EASY. The Triple Crown is within reach of Big Brown, but just because he’s won the first two races does not mean he’ll win today’s Belmont. 11 horses have won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, and then failed to…
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Dear Idiots
Dear Idiots, Did you ever hear the expression, “If it seems to good to be true, it probably is?” Well, all you have to do is look at Wesley Snipes to know that’s true. He decided to throw his lot in with the folks that say that the IRS has no right to tax us, and that Income Taxes are illegal and unenforceable, and where did that get him? In big trouble. I’ll admit, I’ve been intrigued to know if anyone was ever dumb enough to go for these schemes…I mean, don’t you think that if there were an easy, LEGAL way to get out of paying taxes, we would…
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The “F” Word
This is a rerun of a post that I originally posted on May 10, 2006. It seemed a good post to rerun during this month of letters. 😉 Warning…this post contains SWEARING I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska, from the age of 4 until I was 9. It was the early 70’s, and it was much more a frontier society than we have down in the lower 48. I haven’t been back since, so I can’t speak to the modern sensibilities, but I digress. In Fairbanks, at that time, everyone swore. I mean, EVERYONE. At one point, we lived next door to a church, and it wasn’t unusual to hear people…
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Dear God
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mRJOXAZApo[/youtube] Dear god, Hope you got the letter, And I pray you can make it better down here. I don’t mean a big reduction in the price of beer, But all the people that you made in your image, See them starving on their feet, cause they don’t get enough to eat From god, I can’t believe in you. Dear god, Sorry to disturb you, But I feel that I should be heard loud and clear. We all need a big reduction in amount of tears, And all the people that you made in your image, See them fighting in the street, ‘Cause they cant make opinions meet, About god,…
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Virtue
I was thinking about virtue today, thinking about what I would consider real virtues, and those that are pushed upon us by society, and that what is virtuous depends greatly upon your culture. For example, in many cultures, it is considered virtuous to remain a virgin until you are married. I suspect this goes back to a man needing to know that the child he is rearing is his own, that he is carrying his own genes on into the next generation. This behavior can even be seen among animals. It is common for a male duck to kill all of a female’s ducklings before impregnating her with his own…
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TANSTAAFL
(picture found here) That stands for “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”, and when I was growing up as a Libertarian in Fairbanks, Alaska, it was a term that I heard from time to time. If you’re not familiar with the phrase, ‘no such thing as a free lunch’, the concept is that you don’t get something for nothing. For everything you get in life, you give something up, and it’s important to make decisions wisely, and make sure that what you are receiving is worth what you are foregoing. I was reminded of TANSTAAFL the other day in the car, when I was listening to Forum…
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Kindness
(picture found here. Kind of a groovy article accompanying the picture as well.) I’ve written about Kindness before. It is the virtue that resonates most deeply with me, because I feel like if more people were more kind more of the time, many of the world’s problems would disappear. If we were more kind to strangers, we would have many fewer problems like road rage and fights in bars. If we were more kind to children, we would raise more kind, thoughtful adults. If we were more kind to our families, we would have more harmony and laughter at home. If we were more kind to ourselves, we would have…
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Clean Plate Club
Are you a member of the ‘Clean Plate’ club? Were you raised to finish everything on your plate, lest starving children elsewhere go hungry? I understand parents wanting their children to fill up on healthy, nutritious food, rather than picking at their dinner and then chowing down on dessert. I also understand that food is expensive, takes work to prepare, and shouldn’t go to waste. But forcing your children to finish their food when they’re full isn’t the answer. I was reminded of this on my recent trip to Alaska. My mom was sitting in the hospital, faced with yucky meatloaf. I had gone down to the salad bar to…
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Can He Make You Thin?
I’ll confess that I’m hooked thus far on the short term TLC show, I Can Make You Thin. We watched the first episode last week, and it all seemed like good, rational, common sense advice to me. The guy’s name is Paul McKenna, and he’s a Brit who claims he can help you to lose weight without dieting. I’m suspicious of people who say no diets, and then proceed to put you on a diet, ever since Dr. Phil said he was anti-diet, and then put out a whole money making line of products to make money off of people dieting. I don’t like that AT ALL. And this guy…