Another year goes by

As the years pass by seemingly quicker and quicker I realize I have fewer of them left. One wonders with the limited time left what to do. How do you prioritize? Some many things to accomplish and so little time. I came across a quote recently that has stayed with me. Ben Franklin: "The best thing to give your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example... to all men, charity." I have stated in the past and continue to believe that the biggest loss in our society has been civility. We can disagree without being disagreeable. The fact that you and I can look at the same facts and come to different conclusions does not make me smart and you stupid. It doesn't even make me right and you wrong. Often, the things we think are facts, are in reality not facts at all. If they were then we would continue to know the earth is flat and at the very center of the universe. That the sun rotates around the earth. We gain knowledge and the "facts" we knew become ignorance we walk away from into a new reality. Now it appears that many believe if you say something loudly and frequently it suddenly becomes true. The solution to shootings at our schools is to introduce more guns to the equation. It sounds to me like the way to put out a gasoline fire is to add more gasoline. After all when all the gas is burned there will be no more fire. There is a solution to gun violence but that solution will not be reached by the various factions screaming at each other. When did civilized conversation and compromise become a sign of weakness? How did this part of our everyday lives become so impossible when we try to discuss public policy? Would we stay in a relationship, or even call it a relationship, if the other person always yelled, always wanted things their way, and never considered any alternative to their position?

So, to my enemies, I offer my forgiveness. It has no conditions or requirements. I forgive you fully and completely. I am sorry that things got to this point and I can and will do better by you. To those who disagree with me about anything and everything. I will listen with and open mind and heart. There is truth in your position as there is in mine. Together we can make progress and find solutions. To my friends, my ongoing commitment to be there in your time of need. The key in my mind to being a friend is to be the friend you would want to have. To my children and grandchildren I hope to be an example you can follow. Finally to all some measure of charity. Abraham Lincoln perhaps said it as well as any in his second inaugural address. "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Maybe I should have just gone with Rodney King who stated at the time of the L.A. riots: "Can't we all just get along?"

Gun control

Gun control is one of those hot button issues. So many people, usually men, act like you are trying to cut off their dicks when you talk about gun control. It's okay fellas, you can keep your dicks. Your guns, well that is something we need to talk about. First off, yes I own guns. I used to hunt and at one time in my life enjoyed hunting. It seems as I get older I lack the blood lust for it. I just don't have the desire any more to go out and take another living creatures life. Yea, I know, still eat meat from the store. Didn't say my beliefs were consistent and besides cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys taste really good. Since I am familiar with hunting lets talk for a minute about assault rifles. Personally never seen anyone go out hunting with one. Now to be clear I don't want to confiscate your assault rifle, I just want you to know that I think it has one purpose and one purpose only. It was designed to kill people. If you want to go hunting with one be my guest but understand that I will make fun of you. Deer, coyote, whatever it is you want to hunt. You need a 30 shot clip? I spent most of my time hunting using a single shot rifle or shotgun. There were a couple of reasons. First, you think about what you are shooting at. Do you really have a shot? What else is in the area? Second, I figured if I didn't hit it with my one shot it either deserved to live or I needed more target practice. So keep your gun but honestly give up the high capacity clips. I have a Savage .308 rifle that holds 5 shells. It is bolt action so effectively if I were to hunt with it I would get one shot. So I would take away your large capacity ammunition clips. I would also suggest that ammunition designed to pierce armour is probably not needed for nonmiltary applications. For those who believe that some day they will need to fight the government, get some mental health counseling. If you think an armour piercing round from any gun you own is going to help you then you know less about the capabilities of our military than I do. If we get to that place they can turn any of us into a stain on the ground before we can do anything harmful to them. If we face an event that threatens the future of mankind on this planet then I hope the initial event kills me. I have watched too many of the survivalists on TV and frankly if they are the future I would rather be dead. Besides, I am old, beyond breeding age and would simply be using resources that could keep someone younger alive.
I am in favor of concealed carry but there must be rules and training. You cannot just turn people loose with guns and think they have any idea how to use them. We don't turn people loose with cars. You have to prove you are able to drive. You have to be tested. You must be of a certain age. You must have a license. Once again the paranoid will complain if I have to register myself or my guns the government my come to take them. Look out in your driveway. Your car is licensed. Is it still there? Has the government ever attempted to take it? If you continue with this attitude then you may fail the mental health portion of gun ownership that I feel should be required. Crazy people don't need to own guns. I know that criminals and crazy people don't care about laws controlling the ownership and use of guns. If we didn't have those laws then they could legally possess weapons. So we need those safeguards even if they only work part of the time. I am willing to jump through whatever hoops the government puts out if if prevents one death. Buying a gun or ammunition has never been an emergency purchase. When it is it will be too late anyway.
So bottom line for me, no high capacity clips, no military use ammuntion for civilians, registered and licensed concealed carry with restrictions. Okay fellas, take a minute and reach into your pants. Still got your dick?

I don't understand

I don't know how this will turn out or if it will adequately express the hundreds of things buzzing around in my head. Twenty children are dead as the result of one man's actions. Twenty. First graders. Many classrooms don't have that many children in them. Everyone wonders why. How? What could happen that would cause someone, anyone, to do something that before Friday most of us could not imagine happening. I spent my career talking to people that most never have the time, opportunity or desire to speak with. Murderers, drug dealers, theives, rapists, child molesters, I have spoken to every kind of criminal you can imagine. I can honestly say with a very few exceptions, and by very few I mean numbered on one hand, people I talked to that I believe were truly evil. One is serving life in prison for the rape, murder and dismemberment of 8 women in the northern Illinois area. Most of the men I talked to over the years had a moral compass that didn't point in the same direction as the majority of people. Theft, if you had it and they needed it, well it was fair game if you weren't careful. Murder, if you shamed them or belittled them then you risked their wrath. Did they take revenge farther than you or I would? Sure. Did that make them evil? Not in my mind. They still had a sense of right and wrong. It wasn't the same as yours or mine, but they had a line they wouldn't cross. Their morality was situational but they had a moral code of sorts. Child molesters would tell you they couldn't understand how one person could kill another. Murderers could never understand how an adult could have sexual pleasure with a child. Each thought the other was completely immoral. Both were at least partially correct. Were they evil? Maybe to some, but I could never see them that way. Could they be redeemed somehow? My mind wondered but my heart always felt they could. Pay your debt to society and go forth and sin no more. Not that man is inherently good. There is the capacity for good in all of us. Yes, and the capacity for great evil. What punishment is great enough for someone who murders twenty children? There is none that man can assess. I am not a believer. I don't blame god for what happened, and don't hate him for failing to prevent it. We have free will. We are responsible for the choices we make. It is tempting to believe in hell at this point. Maybe god could make him suffer enough for his actions. He is beyond our reach now so that is the only way it can happen. Since retribution is not an option and really never was I offer the following. Maybe The Beatles had it right. "All you need is love". Hate and fear will never overcome evil. It will ultimately be defeated by kindness and love. So if you want to honor the memory of the victims do a kind deed. A random act of kindness to someone you don't know. A stranger at the store, a passer by on the sidewalk.  I will never speak of the man who committed these murders. He wanted to be remembered and be famous. I will not participate in what he wants. He is dead and forgotten. When I do something kind and loving as a result of this outrage it will be in loving memory of the victims. Twenty children and six adults who did not deserve the fate they were dealt. I choose to remember them, to honor them, to do what I can to make the world a better place. Can I change the world? No. Can I change a little piece of it for a moment? Yes. When all the pieces are put together the puzzle is complete and the world is different.

Random thoughts

Sometimes I wonder about things. These are a few of the things that have raced across my brain today.

We have a wonderful puppy named Lily Lu. She is a Redbone Coonhound. I thought I understood dogs but I have never met one like her. Life to her is a world of smells. She experiences everything  through her nose. We go out so she can do her business and by business I mean shit and piss. She wanders about nose to the ground looking for a place to pee. When she finds the right spot she squats and pees. What does that spot smell like? Why that spot and not some other spot? What makes it special? She then moves on to find a place to take a shit. Does that spot have to smell different from the one where she pees? If you stop to shit or pee and the last place you smelled is in front of you aren't you pissing or shitting about a foot from where you last sniffed? Research tells us that dogs sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times as acute as a humans. If you made it into a visual analogy what you see at one third of a mile a dog could see at 3000 miles just as clearly. A dog has up to 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses as compared to about 6 million in a human. A dog's brain has an area devoted to analyzing smells that is 40 times greater than ours. So back to Lily Lu. She will wander around the yard and walk up to a pile of her shit from a day or two ago. She sticks her nose about 2 inches from it and starts sniffing. I don't know about you but every now and then I take a shit that smells like it could peel the paint of the walls. I thank natural selection for not making my sense of smell 10,000 times stronger. It makes me wonder why Lily Lu has to get so close when she smells her shit. What odor is she smelling for? Why doesn't it make her gag or turn head away in disgust? I have no answers, just questions. If there is a god and he can answer all our questions these will be on my list. After all from what I understand of religion we will have eternity together and he knows everything.

Well while I was thinking about noses I got to thinking about cars. A natural connection would be made to why we find new car smell so enchanting. That might be your question, it wasn't mine. Essentially when we are driving a car we are traveling around in a portable room made of glass. We drive along (maybe it's just me) with our fingers stuck in our noses like we are mining for diamonds. Why do we sit in a glass room with other people all around us in their glass rooms and think no one can see us? We head bang to the music, play the air guitar or drums, scratch, pick, floss, and do a hundred other things we don't want other people to see. It raises the question. What happens to our brains when we drive. We all think we are good at it but we look at everyone else and think they suck. We all act like we are invisible when we are not. Why oh Divine one?

Finally my last issue with noses. We blow our noses into a tissue or handkerchief and then take a look at our handiwork. Why? What useful information to we hope to obtain? Did the Hope Diamond fly out of there and we caught it? Hate to throw anything valuable away. Have you ever found anything in that tissue or hankie that you wanted to keep? Was the vision of it somehow reassuring? Happy to see that there was no brain tissue involved? We all look. What the fuck are we looking for? I have yet to obtain any vital information from these reviews but I continue to do them. Why? I have no answer. God, this is another one for my list.

Pregnant?

There was plenty of news coverage this week regarding the pregnancy of one Kate Middleton, Duchess of WTF. She is Duchess of WTF because I don't know or care what she actually is duchess of. She is pregnant with the future king or queen of England. I have two things to say. First, Prince William, well done old chap. You should be hitting that every chance you get. My second point, really, who gives a shit. Ok, she's preggers. Happens to millions of women every year. The world doesn't stop to take notice. One of them is likely pregnant with a future Hitler or president of the United States, or Einstein. She is getting all the attention as she tosses her crumpets while junior wiggles around in her girly bits.
America faces a manufactured crisis that the media and politicians have dubbed the fiscal cliff. It is sort of the zombie apocalypse of government income and expense. If Congress doesn't act then apparently like Thelma and Louise we go over the cliff to our doom. It would seem clear to most by now that we might as well hold hands and step on the gas pedal. If we are expecting Congress to do anything we are bound to be disappointed. To me it looks more like a fiscal ski slope. We are headed downhill, and have been for a while. We are just trying to stay upright and reach the bottom of the mountain without breaking a hip or ankle. 
So what do a pregnant royal and a fiscal cliff have to do with each other. Well more news time is being spent on the pregnant royal than the demise of our way of life. I guess maybe we will just be distracted until one day we wake up and we have landed on our faces at the bottom of the cliff. Maybe if all goes well Kate's gigantic belly will cushion our fall, the impact will shoot the little king or queen of the future out of her splayed legs, and whoever catches the flying royal will win the Publisher's Clearing House.