July Week 4, 2008
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July Week 4, 2008
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Monday, July 21, 2008 Once, in the Orient, I talked of suicide with a sage whose clear and gentle eyes seemed forever to be gazing at a never-ending sunset. 'Dying is no solution,' he affirmed. 'And living?' I asked. 'Not living either,' he conceded. 'But, who tells you there is a solution?' Elie(zer) Wiesel writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor.
Amanda's father tried to commit suicide tonight, he may have succeeded we don't know yet. Her Dad live s in Ketchikan Alaska, he shot him self on his boat. Amanda has no coping mechanism for this, I don't know that anyone does. Poor kid, Amanda's mother came up from Newport and Amanda ended up comforting her. This really sucks. I have no patience with suicides, what a chicken shit thing to do, all he did is dump his troubles on somebody else. Amanda is too young and impressionable to have to deal with this. What a hell of a thing... kids really shouldn't have to confront this aspect of humanities dark side.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true. Buddha - Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta
Spokane today, Christy finally got the port removed from her right arm... she is bruised so bad, it looks like they used a hammer and chisel to remove it. We did some shopping and were home by 1500. Grandma cooked again, a suitable finale to my day and mood. Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Robert Musil, novelist (1880-1942) It is about 1500, the dishwasher leaks, there is thunder but no rain, I assume that fires are starting all over the place... I am still not in a very good mood, the world seems to have left me behind lately. Everything seems to be falling apart.
Thursday, July 24, 2008 People of small caliber like to sit on high horses.
Magdalena Samozwaniec, writer (1894-1972) I took Mike down to the Court House in Newport, the 120 miles round trip, we we left at 0745 and we were home by 1130. The proceedings went well, I have no details for this venue but give me a call if you feel you need to know more. I think Mike is trying very hard, he has had more than enough trauma in his life, I hope the job he has works out for him, he needs a break. Friday, July 25, 2008 "He who would do good" wrote William Blake, "must do so in minute particulars. General good is the plea of the scoundrel, the hypocrite and the liar." It is also the plea of most political ideologues who do not hesitate, and often in the name of "the People", to persecute in minute particulars for the sake of the general good. " Extract from Jeremy Taylor's Book - Ag Pleez Deddy - a South African musician I have always despised people who would justify their insensitivity with "Policy". The only problem I ever really had as a Foster Parent was banging heads with bureaucrats and bean-counters. The policy of the day ruled, the one-size-fits-all accountability wonks, the nine to five decision makers who were focused on policy and procedure and could not care less about the actual needs of a child. Their jobs appeared to be to decide which box to put a kid in instead of constructing plan specific to the child they tried to force the child to fit into the generic plans they had already devised. I can't tell you how many times I lost my composure talking to dweebs who refused service because one of my kids didn't fit into their choreographed, homogenized little organization. Autumn, Cindy, Mike, Christian all were betrayed by the people who were being paid to help them because their problems didn't fit in the framework they were forced to operate in. Mike and Cindy's learning disabilities were resolved by lowering the bar, they created "Modified Curriculums" that deemed what they could accomplish on their own to be sufficient to pass into the next level. Mike needed intense one one one assistance in the earlier grades and he never got it, he needed behavior modification experts to help him cope with inferiority, aggression and empathy. Christy, Monica and G'ma and G'pa all had Dr. visits in Colville today, I stayed home with Autumn and Amanda. We went to breakfast at Cathy's. Christy and I cleaned our bedroom today, we are almost done. Rhonda and Keith Henderson are coming over for a visit after Christy's church and Pot Luck. Keith has to get back to LA so they won't be able to visit long. We had a nice, but short, visit with the Henderson's, they have a son, Austin, and two adopted daughters, Samantha 'Sammie' and Alexandra 'Allie', I called her Matilda after the title character in the movie. She was very self-conscious, rarely smiled and willfully determined to get what she needed. Sammie was just an infant when the trauma that got them into the Foster-Care System happened, Rhonda and Keith fought very hard to keep them because the Courts were back in their Family Reunification at any cost mode and the girl's family was... awful.
Saturday, July 26, 2008 "...most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right" Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self Reliance - 1841 - From 'Essays", First series grammatolatry: Def: The worship of words; regard for the letter while ignoring the spirit of something There are few more tragic examples of grammatolatry than the near-fetishist obsession with the words of a document cobbled together by eighteenth century politicians using eighteenth century language. If contemporary English is inherently ambiguous, how much more problematic is the intention of a text interpreted through a filter of more than two centuries of unprecedented technological, societal, and political change. And yet the nine people who, almost literally, hold our lives in their hands parse this prose like so many tea leaves, while ignoring the stark reality of the streets just beyond their marble halls. Would the founding fathers' "arms" -- quaintly cumbersome weaponry in the relatively benign context of the early republic -- truly embrace the brutally efficient killing instruments of our time?
Sunday, July 27, 2008 "What our leaders and pundits never let slip is that the terrorists -- whatever else they might be -- might also be rational human beings; which is to say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for their actions. Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States .." I worked at the Selkirk Track Team booth at Down River Days in Ione, that's the weekend they have the Watercross races and jumps. The booth was selling burgers, German Sausage and hotdogs, they wanted me to do the grill but I refused, I kept the grill loaded, assembled the meals and sort of triaged the process, I was supposed to work an hour but I ended up working almost three. We sold a hell of a lot of burgers... it was actually fun (don't tell anyone I said that) This is the race where they run snow mobiles across the river... (click to enlarge)
They also jump them off a ramp...
One guy even towed his buddy behind one on a wakeboard...
Monica and her friend Kayte won some fish doing something or rather...
I went to see 'Hancock', much better than I had heard, a very well done superhero movie.
"We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet." : - Hermann Hesse, German poet and novelist. For what is the
crime of burglarizing a bank, compared with the crime of building one?" --Bertolt
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