Time to Think

Having lost my officemate some months ago, I now have the peace and quiet I require to think.  Not to mention I can listen to something other than puerile country music all day.  Thus it has been with a sense of relief and quiet expectation that I've turned the radio dial from meaningless prattle about lost love and drinking binges to something a bit more mentally edifying.  Thank you, Lord, for NPR, BBC and PRI!  My brain is now recovering from the mush caused by the whole country music culture.  I swear being forced to endure forty hours a week of country music and the inane DJs on the country music stations dropped my IQ by at least ten points!

The down side to all of this -- if, indeed, one could call it a down side -- is that I spend a lot of time thinking about what's going on in the world.  As one would expect, doing so makes me much more mindful of what is going on right in my own backyard and causes me to be a bit more of the activist.  I've come to the conclusion that most of the radio programming on other stations exists to lull people into a false sense of security so they won't think about what is going on around them and what needs to be changed.

Lately something that has really weighed heavily on my mind is the vast inequalities in the world.  I understand that not everybody can live in a McMansion, drive a Benz and have a vacation home in the south of France, but surely everybody should have access to the very basics.  Clean water comes to mind. 

Along with these musings on the inequalities of the world, I also start to think about how those with the power often abuse those with no power.  Of course, sometimes those with no power rise up and successfully advocate for themselves.  Here I think of those protesters involved in the Arab Spring uprisings.  But then I'm reminded of those who didn't meet with such stellar results.  They didn't get the coverage that the protesters in Lybia got, but one cannot overlook their suffering.  My heart goes out to the people of Bahrain, Algeria and Iran.  While Lybia, Tunisia and Egypt have seen changes, the people of Bahrain, Algeria and Iran still suffer and die from the brutality of a government with complete control.

And then on January 2nd I learned that Gordon Hirabayashi died at the age of 93.  Now I will grant you his story is not as bad as the stories of the people previously mentioned, but it does bring into sharp focus how even our own government abuses its power.  Not that any of us find this surprising.  However, I will admit that sometimes I forget when I focus on what is happening overseas.

I often wonder how our government can justify what has happened to Japanese-Americans.  And why weren't German-Americans rounded up?  Or Italian-Americans?  Yes, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, but they had allies.  They were not exactly engaged in the war all by themselves.  I often think it was easy to signal out the Japanese-Americans.  After all, they were pretty easy to spot.  And it's easy enough to sell the idea of internment when it was the Japanese who actually did the bombing.

What bothers me the most is that the vast majority of the American population supported this!  Yes, there were some that opposed the internment, but not very many.  Though the reasons were different, this reminds me of how the Native Americans were relocated.  Again, a complete lack of understanding and an easy to identify population without a voice had their rights trampled by a greedy, bigoted government.

I wonder:  If this were to happen right now, how many would stand up and say, "Not on my watch!"  How many people would actually risk their own comfortable existence to advocate for those who's rights are being violated?  I would like to think I would be one of those people.

A Morning in the Life of...

Several of you have asked what a typical day is like for me, where I go in a typical day, etc. Honestly, I can't imagine that you would find this interesting, but, OK, I'll show you. The only catch is, I can't show my work or say where I work. But other than that, you'll see a typical day.

Well not a full day. I'm just doing the morning. Trust me, there isn't much for the morning. I do *not* do mornings. If my day started at 3pm I'd be very happy.

So, this morning when I went out the sky was looking pretty cool. It had something to do with the impending rain. And, I have little doubt, it looked cool to me because I am rarely truly awake enough at 7am to even pay attention to the sky, much less appreciate its beauty.



I have a 15 minute drive to work. Some days I stop at McDonald's for oatmeal and a large sweet tea. Not sure why I try to get something healthy like oatmeal and then get a 44oz drink that has so much sugar in it it's like drinking syrup. But yeah, that's breakfast a few times a week. Do I really need to take a pic of McDonald's? I think not. Y'all know what it looks like.

So I drag my butt into my office. Barely awake. Functioning on only the most basic of levels. Skin burning from the sun. Oh wait, no....I'm not supposed to mention that!

Right...moving right along....

I plop down at my desk and unlock it and begin my morning ritual of staring out the window for the next hour or two. This is what I see:

Window #1


That is Veteran's Park that you see off in the distance. It has flagpoles for every state in the Union. Unfortunately they don't fly said flags every day. It would be really cool if they did though. And around 1100am a guy comes and plays his bagpipes every day. I always open my window so I can hear him better.

Window#2


It's hard to tell in this pic, but that's bamboo. Yep, bamboo. It makes me happy. Very happy. It reminds me of Japan. But I love the moss that fell from the oak trees into the bamboo. It combines two things that are so very me. The bamboo for Japan and the moss for the South.

So, that's my morning. I don't do much in the morning. I'm barely coherent in the morning. It's just wrong for a person to be required to be awake at that hour!