63 Days Before Closing (The time that remains before we have to get out of this house)

34 Days Before Closing (The time that remains before we can move into the new house)

As I sit here with my first cup of coffee, I again find myself in the position of wondering what the heck I should write about in my blog. There is so much going on in the world but you all can read about that in the newspapers or you can hear about it on any number of TV news stations. I tend to get my first bit of news in the morning when I fire up my computer's search engine. It's set at Yahoo at this point. I could change that but then I tend to be rather lazy and phobic when it comes to changing anything operational with my computer. And so ends a whole paragraph of absolutely nothing sayings.

I could have written about something political. It's difficult to do this because most of the political information provided by newspaper and television has a definite bias or agenda these days. I listen to talk radio too and that has a definite agenda and bias too. Even the stuff on the internet is biased, even when it pretends not to be biased. I suppose it's all on who you are and how you interpret things. I like to think of myself as an independent thinker. I'm not a Republican who votes the Republican ticket do or die. I'm not a Democrat who votes the Democratic ticket do or die. And I guess I'm not an Independent either because I sure as heck didn't go through some primary to elect Ralph Nadar to represent my thinking. So, I'm an independent thinker...no capital letters. Unfortunately, it's more then apparent that getting real information is harder for us independent thinkers. You have to weed out the rhetoric from the fact. You have to recognize the bias and dismiss it. You have to make up your own mind. This takes a lot of doing these days. You need to dig a bit deeper into where these newspapers send their political contributions. They're pretty open sometimes and will tell you who they support. Television stations aren't as open when it comes to telling you who they support. Who is writing out their paychecks? AOL? You can tell right off when you listen to talk radio who they support. What I find is that you need to listen to every side and then wend your way mentally down a pretty tricky middle road avoiding rocks of rhetoric and the boulders of bias. I find that I keep stumbling over this rhetoric but I imagine that eventually I'll reach some decision come November.

I could have written about religion this morning. People don't really want to make me feel guilty that I don't want to go see Mel Gibson's new movie. I understand that it's an epic film. It's not that I don't want to go see the movie, it's that I know that I can't see the movie. I'm one of those people who just can't watch films with violence. I couldn't watch, Shindler's List, Apocalypse, Platoon, Saving Private Ryan...the list goes on and on. I was dragged out to see Titanic and Gone With the Wind but I didn't want to go. I'm not going to go to The Passion of Christ. Going to the film won't make me a better Christian. Not going to the film won't make me less of a believer. I don't need to go to the film to affirm my faith. I don't need to place my hand in Jesus' wounds to believe. If I had the mental strength, I'd go see the film, not to place my hand's on Jesus' wounds, but to join in communion with other believers. I just don't have the capability to go to a movie where I feel every blow.

Religion and politics. Yes, I can write about these two subjects. I just did. I don't usually care to do so. You all can read about such things in other places. Wars are justified for these two subjects. That's right...I could have written about the war. The war on terror, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Haiti....

Today's Little Bit of Trivia

When Margaret Mead died in 1978, she was one of the most famous anthropologists in the world. She had published 44 books and more then 1,000 articles which helped shape our understanding of human behavior.

"Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited."

"We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet."

"Thanks to television, for the first time the young are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders."

"We need to devise a system within which peace will be more rewarding than war."

"Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else."

-Margaret Mead