July Week 1, 2008

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

Jerry & Joanne are leaving today, wish they could have stayed longer, I might have been able to teach him to play pool. Jerry and I drove up to the Oriole Mine early. The road up there is really washed out bad but we made it and he seemed to enjoy poking around, I got back before 10:00 to take the girls to Drivers Ed, I raced back to pick up everyone to go look at Sullivan Lake and tour the Mill Pond and then raced back to the school to get Amanda... Monica and Calie were at Basketball practice.

Amanda started working at the MMM so I dropped her off there. I said goodbye to the Noyes's and got Monica to take her to Colville for her shot. I had to be home by 1730 and I had plenty of time but while Monica and I were shopping at Wall Mart she started to feel bad, I figured she wa having a reaction to the shot but the nurse said no... in my concern for Monica I forgot about the Town Council Meeting.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men"

François-Marie Arouet 1694 - 1778, better known by the pen name Voltaire

Trash-day

Thursday, July 03, 2008

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

Albert Einstein

I took Monica and Amanda to Colville, they wanted to shop after Monica's shot... somewhere along the way they had another spat... it is really getting annoying too. There seem to be enough neurotic people in this house to make me even crazier than they are. The girls had the illusion that when Amanda moved in it would be one continuous 'sleep-over laugh a minute riot... not so, they are learning (too slowly for my sanity) to be room-mates, the sooner this actually takes place the happier I will be.

Friday, July 04, 2008

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men:

Plato

Fourth of July... it is hard for me to think Patriotic Thoughts when our soldiers are getting killed because our leaders are afraid to bring them home... there is absolutely no reason, to my mind, why they need to be there. Afghanistan is unraveling before our eyes and Iraq is a hopeless wreck...

The picnic was great, the food was wonderful and the fireworks was a pretty good show, went on too long though... I never thought I would live to see the day when I was indifferent about fireworks...

Saturday, July 05, 2008

In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king

Erasmus c.1469 - 1536

Mike came over and cut down some trees for me. They were dead and 'unsightly' but too far down the slope for me to get to safely... he did a good job.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

Henry Louis Mencken: American humorous journalist, 1880-1956

Calie left for Soap Lake at 0730, she will be gone till Wednesday Night.

Sorry this week's journal entry was so sparse, it's been sort of hectic, I just haven't had or taken the time to reflect on anything other than logistics...

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau - (1712-1778) Political philosopher, educationist and essayist -Source: The Social Contract

"No man survives when freedom fails, The best men rot in filthy jails, And those who cry 'appease, appease' Are hanged by those they tried to please."

Hiram Mann

"Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. . . . It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. . . "

Bertrand Russell, "The Impact of Science on Society", 1953, pg 49-50

"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude."

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.

Patrick Henry

'Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime"

Ernest Hemingway

"How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?"

Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845

"There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used.... Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed'

Gil Bailie Catholic layman, author and lecturer Founder of the Cornerstone Forum

"Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace"

Charles Sumner

A single lie destroys a whole reputation for integrity.

Baltasar Gracian: Spanish philosopher and writer, 1601-1658

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.

Patrick Henry, revolutionary (1736-1799)

Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury:

William Lloyd Garrison, Declaration of Sentiments, Boston Peace Conference, 1838 

The War Prayer : by Mark Twain

O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-- 

For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, strain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!