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I’ve had a terrible headache the past couple of days. I still have it. But I’m sitting on the couch relaxing, with crappy TV on in the background, and I feel like posting.
Why this week sucks:
– 33 dead kids in Virgina.
– 171 dead in Baghdad, and that’s just today.
– The Supreme Court upheld a ban that will limit our abortion rights.
I’ve got a picture of Buddy because he’s just a big old sweet, innocent, leaf-eating (“bad cat!”) cat. I also offer the last stanzas from the Walt Whitman poem Darest Thou Now O Soul that Ralph Vaughan Williams set to music and we’ll be performing next month. He’s musing about what will happen to us when we die. I don’t imagine it as Whitman does, which is why I am posting his words instead of mine.
I know it not, O Soul;
Nor dost thou all is a blank before us;
All waits, undream’d of, in that region that inaccessible land.
Till, when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds, bound us.
Then we burst forth we float,
In Time and Space, O Soul prepared for them;
Equal, equipt at last (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil, O Soul.
On a happier note, this new chapter is going well. Who do you think is going home on American Idol this week?
Yay! Sanjaya is FINALLY gone! I feel badly for him (re: “Vote for the Worst”) but I am glad it has finally been nipped in the bud. I wonder what would have happened to the show if he HAD won it all due to crank voters?
It is a sad, dark week. I have also had a headache waxing and waning but never quite leaving for the past few days.
What to do? I think I’m going to bring a big load of supplies to the humane society this weekend, and I’m already signed up to volunteer at Vermont’s high school for juvenile delinquents next week. It’s all I can think to do in the face of Big Evil – just try to do my small part to restore the balance on the side of good.
Living here in Canada and not paying for cable that would enable me to see US channels, I have only seen the killer’s video on one newscast. It only lasted a minute or so. My reaction afterwards was “Why did I watch this???” I will not watch any more of this guy’s rantings. He sent the stuff to NBC hoping and expecting that it would be broadcast and I will not spend another second of my time watching or listening to him. I fully acknowledge that psychologists, members of law enforcement and school officials probably need to see this stuff to know what some warning signs might be to stop it from happening again. Stacy, is there much debate like this going on in the US right now? Do you or any of your readers feel like this?
We’re pretty busy playing … what’s the phrase? There’s a football phrase. I just posted about this and then felt bad calling the killer “the killer” because he’s some insane kid. Not to downplay what he did, but, well, you know what I mean? A murderous kid, but it’s sad for him and his family that he grew up into this. No one wins.
I felt this about the 9/11 terrorists and their families. I want them punished (not the families), but at the same time, what on earth happened to them to make them this??
I agree with Molly’s approach.