Recession vs. Slow Down

Well, today President Bush said we are not in a recession, we are in an economic slow down.

My first thought is - there’s a difference? And my second is - no shit, Sherlock.

But we’re gonna be saved because of the economic stimulus package - I’m gonna get what, $300 and that’s gonna encourage me to go out and buy a new car or house or some other major purchase that will bring jobs and prosperity to the multitudes. Yeah, right.

What are these people smoking? And can we get some, because we are gonna need it to get through this whatever it is.

The tax rebate - if they can afford to give it back, that must mean taxes were too high in the first place and let’s lower those so that people can have more money to spend on trinkets like food and fuel.

Oh, and that’s the other big news of the day - food prices are going up. Once again I say no shit, Sherlock? I bet the big brains that figured that out make a whole lot more money than I do and I could have told them that quite a while back.

And just why are food prices going up - and ps, what is gonna keep people from spending money on trinkets more that higher food prices? Hmm-choice between feeding the family and a trinket - yeah, really tough call, huh?

Food and all other prices are going up primarily because of one thing. Oil prices. Oil that gets made into heating fuel for all the factories that need to have heat for the people to work there. Oil that gets made into so many things that are associated with food and all of our needs and trinkets. But, mainly, oil that gets made into diesel fuel that gets used by the trucks that bring you everything.

Look around. Unless you’re living in a self-sufficient commune in the southern woods, what do you have that did not spend part of it’s life on a truck? Not much of anything. Where does food come from? This time of year, veggies from California, potatoes from Idaho, meat from the west and Midwest, fruit from Florida -I’ve brought enough of it here from all of those and more. And when the truck has to spend right around a dollar ($1.00) for every mile it runs to get that food to you*, who do you think is gonna pay for that? The experts? The President? Nope, you got it right again - it’s gonna be you. And me.

And that’s just food - not to mention clothing, furniture, books, paper, toys, soap, computers, Ipods - all of the other things you use everyday and take for granted. How about the trucks that bring the heating oil from the refineries to the plant that then delivers it to your house? And the gasoline tankers that bring the product to the gas station for your car? Yup, right around $1.00 a mile - so no wonder you’re paying $3.25 or so a gallon (in NY, with the damn taxes, that is) for gas and almost $4.00 a gallon to get some heat in your house in the winter. Let’s all move to Arizona - then they can run out of water and we’ll have to pay $4.00 a gallon for that!

* That comes to about $2,500 to bring a head of lettuce from Yuma, Arizona to the northeast. Well, not one head all by itself, there are probably a few thousand heads in the truck, but you get the idea. And that’s just for the fuel, not paying the driver or paying the over $100,000 for the truck itself, and more for licensing, insurance, permits and all the other fees that trucks get charged because why not, they can afford it, look how much they must be making by bringing all that stuff to us. Sorry, got off on an angle there, but trucking is close to me and I’ll defend it as much as I can.

So what’s the answer? Hell if I know, but maybe a start would be to encourage everyone to contact their politicians and demand they reposition their heads on their shoulders instead of - well, you fill in the rest - and Do Something to help us all. Maybe a start would be to get Obama and Hillary to stop their 3^rd grade squabbles and look in to what they could do to help this situation if elected and tell us what that would be. Maybe a start would be to get someone to look in to why the oil companies make so much money and still can’t pass some lower prices down to the common people.

Or, horrible as it would be, maybe it’s time for a big recession or even the ‘D’ word to clean up this mess and start fresh.

Who knows. Not me. I just know I’m glad I can walk to work and only have me to buy groceries for.

A Heroine

One of my e-friends (friends I have never met in person, I met them on line and only know them through email) send a newspaper story on the daughter of a friend of hers, returning home from a tour in Iraq. Made me tear up. Of course, I’m old enough that the whole women in the fighting military is a revolutionary new idea. I remember when I was in college a friend and I discussed going into the military (something I now wish I had done, but oh, well. . . . .) and did not because at that time the rumor was ‘the women don’t get to do anything but be secretaries, and have to be wh---s for the officers’. With apologies to two good e-friends who were in the military at that time.

Now women do everything the men do and no doubt do it as well or even better in some instances.

The article mentioned this woman’s niece wearing a shirt proclaiming ‘Aunt Val is my Heroine’. She, and all she represents, should be everyone’s heroine. Bad enough for men to leave their families and friends to go to any war, especially one so controversial. I cannot imagine the torn feelings a mother leaving her children to do the same.

But, for those who say ‘what’s a woman gonna do in combat’ - just think about a mother defending her children. I’d far rather face any man I can think of and some I can’t. Imagine knowing that seeing her children again depends on her survival. No, I think the women have the advantage here, in sheer will to get back to mother their children.

One of my aunts was a combat nurse in WWII. A cousin’s daughter compiled her letters home, and those are fascinating. At one time she and another nurse went on leave, and when they went back to where they had been stationed, their unit had been moved, and they were in fact behind the enemy lines! She never made much of her service, I don’t recall her talking about it too much at all. It was just something she did, and moved her life on. I’m having a hard time reading a thick book about those early combat nurses - what they went through is just amazing.

Heroines, every one. And don’t you forget it. Blessings on them all, and all the thanks that can be gathered.

Running Free

I wrote this for my e-friend Marti a couple of weeks ago, after she had to have her beloved mare Rushbruk Gabriella put down due to colic. It's for everyone who has an animal waiting for them at the Rainbow Bridge. Although, as my sister said, when my mother passed away, 'She's not going to like meeting some of those cows there!'

PS, these words started wandering around in my head while I was in the shower. That's where and when more than a few of my 'inspirations' come from. I'm not even going to try to figure out that association - and it's probably best if you don't either.

The grass is green, the hay is sweet

Where I am running free

There’s some old friends again to meet

Where I am running free

A field we crossed, a lane we rode

A memory that gets retold

That’s always warm and always strong

In this new world where nothing’s wrong

The wind blows through my mane and tail

And I can leap the highest rail

Lift my knees high and toss my head

And perk my ears at what’s ahead

In this new world where nothing’s wrong

All that we did will now belong

While you keep the memory

And know that I am running free.

DRAG RACING DEATHS

Someone mentioned that I had not commented on these. She had the same first thought I did, upon reading the quote from a woman who sadly lost her father to this tragedy: ‘What in hell is someone doing out at 4 a.m., with their children, at something like that?’ Never mind why is anyone doing something like this on a street like that, where there is obviously the chance for other traffic, even at 4 a.m.? How do you spell ‘DUH!’?

As long as there are vehicles (or any other sort of conveyance, how old is horse racing?) there will be contests to see whose is fastest. But don’t let the heat of the moment, the challenge, remove common sense. You stand in a street, another vehicle might come along. You stand in smoke, they can’t see you. DUH again!

Now that people see what the outcome can be, will they act differently in another time and place? Sadly, I think not. This too will turn into something that only happens to other people, and it will happen again. But if it makes one or a few stop and think and not put themselves in the same situation, it will have given a lesson and helped. We can hope for that.

My sympathies are with all those affected.

Also, having been a driver, it saddens me that a truck driver came along and through no fault of his own contributed to this tragedy. Poor guy (or gal, I don’t recall noticing if it said) just out doing their job and thrown into a situation that will affect them for life.

SUICIDE BOMBER AT A ‘DOG EVENT’

‘Explosion at Afghan dog event kills at least 80’

For some reason when I read the headline about this on the USA Today news on-line this morning, I immediately thought ‘I didn’t know they had dog shows in Afghanistan’. Guess the whole ‘Uno’ hype has me thinking that way - and btw isn’t it great that a little ‘all-American’ dog like that won? What a schweetie!

Anyway - turns out that this wasn’t a dog show, it was a dog fight. So then my first reaction was ‘serves them right’ and my second was ‘hope the dogs were all right’.

But it doesn’t serve them right, and the dogs, even if not injured in the blast, will not be all right.

No one deserves to die this way, no matter how much we don’t like what they are doing.

And the dogs will not be all right ever, if they are trained to fight - at least not when they are in a place that condones and encourages dog fighting, as it seems they are.

The story reports: “Dog fighting competitions are a popular form of entertainment around Afghanistan. The fights can attract hundreds of spectators who cram into a tight circle around the spectacle. The sport was banned during the Taliban rule.”

Huh - well, let’s hear it for the Taliban on that count, anyway.

Dog fighting is part of some country’s culture, and part of the culture in some parts of our country. Whoopie Goldberg took a lot of heat for seeming to defend Michael Vick by saying that he grew up where it is an accepted practice. That in no way excuses his dog fighting business, but it is a sad truth. At Camp Katrina we had to walk security at night, after taking care of the animals or being in the city searching and rescuing for 18 hour days, because there were dog thieves in the area trying to steal the pit bulls - any of the dogs - for fighting or bait dogs. Many of the dogs rescued when I was there were pit bulls, hardier dogs that were still alive after a month on the streets. And with few exceptions they were some damn fine dogs, that I would not have minded having as a pet.

We suspected a dog fighting site up a dirt road across from the HSLA shelter. When local law enforcement was told, they gave a half-hearted response, and did nothing.

Tylertown, Mississippi, the year 2005. It is here and it is now and it is everywhere. There have been reports recently, no doubt encouraged by the Michael Vick publicity, of suspected dog fighting in my area, upstate New York. If nothing else, maybe the publicity generated by that case will help make people more aware.

Here’s What I Think: once again, everyone needs to be aware, and to do something. If you suspect dog fighting - or any other kind of animal abuse - tell authorities. If everyone does something, something can be done. It is a horrible excuse for a sport. Personally, I think anyone having anything to do with it should be made to go a round with a trained fighting dog, but I suppose that’s against our ‘civilized’ methods of punishment. Then again, I’m the one who thinks that child molesters should be tied up - naked - in a pen full of week-old calves. Yeah, think about it. I like it.

WHERE’D THEY GET THE GUNS?

Now it is on the news that the shooter in Illinois got his weapon(s) from the same Internet business that the Virginia Tech shooter did.

Am I the only one who sees a major problem in this whole situation? I hope not.

Buying weapons on the internet is scary enough. Background check on the internet - come on, get real - do the people who think that’s effective also believe in a sweet, silent fairy who flies in your bedroom at night to take a tooth and leaves a dollar under your pillow? Pretty much the same logic.

Yes, I know it is an American Constitutional right to own guns, the whole ‘Right To Bear Arms’ thing. Yes, I know the NRA has one of the most powerful lobbies in the country. But, let’s get real, folks. The constitution was written when people needed guns to protect themselves, not to mention to feed themselves. Last time I went to the market, the meat was all laid out, I didn’t have to shoot it first. And a gun to protect yourself only works if it is in your hand, loaded and cocked, when you need it - and then there’s still the chance that the perpetrator will be able to get it away and use it against you. Or you shoot the dog or someone in your family instead of the bad guy. Or, if you do actually shoot them, they can turn around and sue you - and win.

Guns for hunting? Hunting is a fine sport. I come from a family of hunters. We had venison on the table a lot. I’ve hunted woodchucks. But it doesn’t take a huge caliber assault rifle to bring down a woodchuck, rabbit or even a deer. Contrary to some people’s reasoning that the bigger the gun the more manly it makes them, Here’s What I Think: the bigger the gun, the less the sport.

Here’s What I Think: that the gun situation needs to be addressed. Gun manufacturers and sellers need to be limited in the size and caliber of weapons that are available to the general public. Yes, I know that ‘if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns’ and there is a smidgen of logic to this - but if the weapons are not even manufactured, then they won’t be there for anyone to have, will they? What the hell does the average homeowner, or gun sportsperson need with an assault rifle, anyway?

That there need to be severe, strict and serious background checks in any gun sale. Gun shows, where pretty much my deaf dog could walk in and buy a weapon? Bad idea. Guns on the internet - worse idea. As much as I am against giving government any more restriction power than they already have, this needs to be uniform, not different from state to state. Gee, maybe some of the money that goes to checking little old ladies shoes at the airports could be diverted to this. Because this is a new form of terrorism, right here in our country, and because if it stops one shooter, isn’t that worth it?

ANOTHER SCHOOL SHOOTING

(Sad sigh.) Another shooting in a college. The second in what, a week, more than that in the past year. Young people slain, needlessly, senselessly, at the beginning of their lives and dreams.

Why? We may never know. In the Virginia Tech tragedy last spring, the killer left messages that indicated a troubled young man, angry at treatment by peers - and life. In Louisiana, no hints, at least not that I have seen. In Illinois, the same. A seemingly good student, ‘he was nice’ - a phrase that always seems to get in there somewhere. In Louisiana, if I read right, a student in an EMT class, presumably studying to help people, to save them, not to kill them.

Why? The why’s are there, often, in retrospect. The Columbine shooters, teased by their peers for being ‘different’, for not being ‘jocks’, teased and frustrated for not fitting the ‘in crowd’ image of what they needed to be to count, to be someone in that school. The VT shooter, a similar story. The others, perhaps also similar. One teasing, one rebuff, one frustration too many. The news relates that the Illinois shooter had ‘stopped taking medication’, showing that it was know there was a problem.

Why? Because others around let these people get to the point where this far beyond drastic action seemed to be their only choice. Some even helped, albeit not knowing their reaction would be so horrific. Blame television programs, video games, the internet, all you want, and I do believe these play their part in making disaster and death seem too common, too distant from real life, but the real blame lies in other people. Other people who tease and torment, who make light of other’s dreams and problems, who don’t see and don’t stop to lend a hand.

School bullying has become an issue in many places. Teasing and bullying in schools has always been with us. Pointing at someone who is different is easy to do. Try something harder. Try to defend them, try to make everyone see it is their right to be different, and it is not anyone’s right to mock this.

Here’s What I Think: Not a jock, not on the team? So what - there are lots of other outlets and these should be just as important as the sports teams, to the students and faculty and community alike. How many kids would this raise the self-esteem of, to know that people would be watching and cheering them in a school play, a science fair, a poetry reading? Enough to stop one shooter? That would be worth it.

See and hear teasing? Stop it! Stop the big mouths, and support the person it is being done to. Give them a friend, make them important. How many kids would thank you for helping them? Enough to stop one shooter? That would be worth it.

We might not reach them all, but if we each reach only one, that would be worth it. And if enough of us help enough of them, it will all be worth it.

OOps

Now I have to learn how to use it, huh? I just found out you don't hit Enter after you put the title in. Probably gonna learn a lot as I go along. Or not.
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