Monday, February 16, 2009

Updates On What People Do For Fun

What in the world has she been doing????

I have taken a few days rest from the blog. It is harder to find the time during session. And, I like to write from home...late at night. (It is 11:28 PM as I start this entry.) Conditions have to be right! :o)

Updates On What People Do For Fun:

* Captain John and his family had a big farewell here at the farm before departing for their tour of duty in Germany. I had flown two weekends in a row to visit them at their stateside base prior to their leaving. I wanted to. I could. So, I did. Those were my least expensive visits for a long time.

* I spent all day on Saturday curled up with a book, in a big cushy chair, by the picture window here at the farm. I never left the house. I had been thinking about how great it would be just to spend a whole day reading. I wanted to. I could. So, I did.

* Congress passed a $780 Billion spending package. They wanted to. They could. So, they did.

* CPS called a good grandmother and her three-year-old granddaughter to their offices. Grandma had had the girl since birth. The mother had terminated parental rights in order for her parents to legally receive the child. CPS said: " We will take 'Lilly' down the hall for some Christmas presents while we talk with you." Lilly went down the hall. The grandma (a pre-school teacher) went into the windowless room. Then, CPS said to Grandma, "That was the last time you will ever see your granddaughter." CPS took Lilly. They placed her is a foster adopt house. There was never a good-bye. (Can you imagine?) CPS did this because they wanted to. They could. And, they did.
(More on this later.)

* Last Friday I noticed "Sophie's Choice" was showing on TV. I had read the book but never seen the movie. (That's because of a little rule I have that is generally kept. Since the book is usually better I don't want to spoil it by seeing the movie.*) I made an exception on Friday night...I found that I remembered very little of the story. Really, I only remembered one scene from the book. Sophie was in a line with a Nazi watching her with her son and daughter. The Nazi forced her to choose between them...which one would live...which one she could keep. Her six year old daughter screamed. In absolute terror she screamed as her mother cried out in anguish. All I could think of was "Lilly." People do good or evil because they want to and they can. I believe they enjoy their choices.

(* In The Thornbirds and all Harry Potter books...I read ahead of the TV mini-series and the movies. Sometimes the movies are a compliment. I admit it.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What is it going to take to stop these people or monsters?(CPS)This is why they get shot and still they don't get it. Maybe a nice hefty lawsuit.

mgirl said...

An excerpt from "The Gulag Archipelago" ... on how to resist fascism & tyranny. The lesson that is just as important today as it was half a century ago.

"During an arrest, you think since you are not guilty, how can they arrest you? Why should you run away? And how can you resist right then? After all, you’ll only make your situation worse; you will make it more difficult for them to sort out the mistake.

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family?

Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! We did not love freedom enough. Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself."