• Waxing enthusiasm.

    A trip with unprecedented driving distances is coming up soon. We will be driving eleven hours to visit with family in a major metropolitan area.

  • Have fun storming Bagdad!

    People disagree.
    You can’t always be right.

    Would you agree that those two statements are accurate? I should hope so. In that case, think about world events for a moment. In particular, I’m thinking of a certain armed conflict that seems inevitable and the worldwide disagreement over whether it should happen. I don’t even want to discuss wether we should or not. Instead, I want to discuss the disagreement. I find it troubling that certain countries are being vilified for their opposition. If it’s true that you can’t always be right, and someone else thinks you are wrong, isn’t it their duty to let you know? So we don’t agree. In a case like this, that does not make the other folks “bad”. It may be frustrating as hell, but it is not reason enough for the kinds of reactions I’ve been reading about lately. The propaganda machine is in high gear. People are renaming the popular foods they eat (“Freedom Fries”), dumping out their expensive wines, threatening to exhume their fallen veterans, and generally acting like spoiled children. I would expect as much from my five year old daughter (“fine, I’ll take my toys and go home”), but not of my country; not of my fellow countrymen. Consider Europe’s history. Over the last century, Europe has been the scene of two world wars – fought on their own soil. Many people are still old enough to remember first hand what that was like, wether they fought in the war or not. They didn’t have any choice, it was going on outside their front door (and in many cases coming right through). Is it any wonder they might be a little bit more hesitant to fight? Wether this fight is right or not, I can imagine I might be a little worried if I could remember a war being fought in my back yard.

    So we’re going to war. That seems to be a foregone conclusion. Let’s just lay off the dissenters. They’re not necessarily bad folks, they’re just speaking their mind.

  • Sharing our world with others.

    It seems people don’t mind putting up with other people in their world, as long as they don’t get in the way. Nowhere was this more evident than at the ice skating rink last week. Now, I know what you’re thinking … ice skating rinks are not exactly a bastion of peace on earth and good will towards our fellow homo sapiens. Even still, Cheryl was taken aback by one woman’s comments last Wednesday. This middle aged woman was sharing a hockey rink sized piece of ice with Beth and six other youths. She had one close encounter with a certain five year old with six months worth of skating lessons, and subsequently pulled that same five year old aside to ask her a question. Beth apparently responded to this question with a pointing gesture towards Cheryl. The older woman skated over and said to Cheryl, “I don’t think your daughter is old enough to be skating around alone.” I’m not sure what she was expecting, but she apparently didn’t get it. Cheryl responded, “I think you should watch where you’re going. If you don’t want to skate with kids, maybe you should come out when school’s in session.”
    Touche!

    Beth can be reckless, but she’s too new to skating to be intentionally careless. She’s at least a couple of lessons shy of doing anything other than skating straight – with intent. At the same time, she’s not exactly an accident waiting to happen either. Her feet spend more time on the ice than her back side and she can glide in a straight line, even if she can’t stop on a dime.

    We live in a world filled with other people. Why are so many people surprised when they run into one? Will we ever figure out how to coexist?