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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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Torture…
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=PtS45bh_INY[/youtube] I wrote last year about waterboarding, and how it’s clearly torture, no matter what the dickwads in Washington think. Well, I was walking Genevieve the other day, and listening to Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me on my beloved iPod, and what should I discover? (I swear, you get better news from this show and Comedy Central than 99.9% of what else is out there.) The U.S. government is being sued for copyright infringement, because they tortured inmates at Guantanamo by playing crappy music over and over again, and they never paid the artists any sort of royalties. Kind of an ingenious way to stop torture, I guess, but I…
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Don’t Hold Your Breath
(image found here) Growing up, my mom was a Libertarian, and being a child, I pretty much followed her lead. Being a Libertarian means never having to say you’re sorry for what the current administration is doing, because the current administration is never going to be comprised of Libertarians. It also meant that I was raised with a large dose of cynicism about politics and politicians. Always told to follow the money, because that’s what makes politicians tick, even if their ideals are high, the reality is that they need money to run election and re-election campaigns. So if you want your favorite politician to be in office, to do…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Flight of the Conchords
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=gZQopX6r-54[/youtube] Flight of the Conchords, ‘Mutha Uckers’ Kookiejar over at A Fraternity of Dreamers has been talking for awhile of her passionate love for Flight of the Conchords. Since we didn’t have HBO, I had no idea what she was talking about. But recently, we decided not to put our life on hold anymore (what with the not moving and so on), and we went ahead and signed up for digital cable, which includes HBO. That means when the time comes, we can watch Big Love. Yay! Also, (and more importantly) we get Sci-Fi, which means we can watch Battlestar Galactica when it starts and repeats of Star Trek: The…
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Purple Hibiscus
Kambili is a 15 year old girl, growing up in Nigeria with her older brother, Jaja, and their parents, Eugene and Beatrice. Eugene is a very wealthy, influential man, one of the few who dares to stand up and tell the truth about the local government by means of the newspaper he owns. Theirs is a charmed life, with Eugene donating richly to the poorer neighbors, to the church, and to the many charities he supports. They live in a compound surrounded by high walls, and they have servants to cook and clean and drive for them. They have cable television and luxurious cars, plenty of meat to eat, and…
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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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Sheila
Today is Ted’s mom’s birthday. Her name is Susheela, but back home in Guyana, she was often called ‘Sheila’. Happy Birthday Ma! This song is called “Sea Lion Woman”, and they say ‘sea lion’ a lot, but when I listen to it, it sounds like they’re saying, “Sheila”, and it sounds like a party to me. So, let’s have some Veuve Cliquout (Ma’s favorite champagne), and let’s dance to “Sea Lion Woman”, OK? 🙂
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Yoga and Grief
I used to take yoga somewhat regularly, meaning a once-a-week practice. It kind of fell by the wayside a few years ago, and while I was too lazy to do anything about it, I missed it. When my mom went back into the hospital in May, I was so overwhelmed by the stress of her illness, it seemed like getting back into yoga would be a good way to help me deal with some of this stress. So I started up again, and it did help some. The class I take is through our city’s recreation program, so classes are 9 or 10 weeks in length, and then a new…
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The Great Divorce
The Great Divorce is the story of a man, a man dreaming of an exploratory trip to Heaven. He arrives on a bus with many other riders, all of whom are approached by angels, who are trying to help the people to overcome their issues and fears, so that they can enter the kingdom of Heaven. They are all pretty much given the options of Heaven or Hell, Hell being not so much the fiery pit described by Dante, but more a matter of Not Heaven. The title refers to William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which C.S. Lewis refutes, saying “If we insist on keeping Hell (or…
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The Westing Game
I first heard of The Westing Game, I think, in a comment left by my old bloggy friend, Wendy. (She’s not old, just quit blogging, so she’s not a current bloggy friend, right? I miss her writing, actually.) Based on her loving the book as a kid, I bought it for Maya and put it on her bookshelf. It has thus far failed to capture her interest, so it’s just been sitting there, waiting. When I signed up for the Herding Cats reading challenge, I saw this book on the list, and thought it was a good chance to read it. The Westing Game is the story surrounding the…
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Wordless Wednesday- Hawaii Edition
Then, 2005 Now, 2008
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Banyan Tree
Have you ever seen something that made you realize that the world doesn’t always work the way that you think it does? Often it’s a matter of nature…an animal or a plant that is so different than what you might expect to see, that it makes you stop in your tracks and think. While in Hawaii, I was struck by this very strange looking tree…turns out it’s an Indian Banyan Tree, which originates in India. The branches of the Banyan tree fan out over a large canopy, much like an Oak tree. One problem with Oak trees is that when the branches grow long and cover a large space, they…
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Home Again
(photo found here) Monday morning, and the vacation was, as most vacations are, all too brief. Now there’s laundry to be done, groceries to shop for, library books to return, and prescriptions to pick up. Back to the old grind, as they say. But it was a great week. I would say that the high point of the week was Thursday. When we went kayaking on Tuesday, we mentioned to our guide that we really liked the snorkeling, and he suggested that we might enjoy the snorkeling at Shark’s Cove. So on Thursday, we rented a convertible and drove up to the North Shore of the Island, to Pupukea. Isn’t…