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Thread: Daily Bread

  1. #271
    Williamsmith
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    Quote Originally Posted by sweetana3 View Post
    Toomuchstuff, I was thinking along the same lines.
    I’m simply making the observation that as a nation we lack balance between our supposed dedication to freedom and liberty and the association with and encouragement of the military industrial complex. We mortgage our grandchildren’s future in exchange for our own personal conveniences. We sacrifice our elderly in exchange for our own personal convenience. All this is born out of either fear or hatred. As a nation, we lack balance. We take military actions, drones strikes, special ops, secretly undermining other sovereign nations ....no more seriously than going to the convenience store for milk and bread.

    The elderly are not working because they enjoy retrieving shopping carts or standing as a cashier for hours. They would be shouldering a rifle if the military would accept them in exchange for unlimited access to healthcare. Should we just allow the tides to determine our direction or should we attempt to steer ourselves in the direction of progress? Keeping in balance is a participatory activity. And the reason we are out of balance as I see it is due to fear and hatred.

  2. #272
    Senior Member razz's Avatar
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    WS, over my life experience, I have found that I follow my highest sense of principles and quietly work to implement them slowly and patiently.

    Malcolm Gladwell had a book that included the theory that he called the chaos theory, I believe. Sand is poured into a growing mound and then one grain is enough to send the whole mound crashing down. The wall in Germany came tumbling down over a number of years of effort, drunk driving is reduced big-time over years of advocacy, equality for women to vote and own property took time and effort. For years I was responsible for any debt that my DH signed for but could not get a loan of even $500 in my own name without his signature. These are just a few examples.
    Keep persisting in questioning and challenging the current thinking based on fear and hate and right of privilege. As one nursing friend told me, we all look the same in a hospital gown. Don't get discouraged! I don't; I have seen far too many good things unfold.
    As Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”

  3. #273
    Senior Member Teacher Terry's Avatar
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    WS: as a country we have totally lost our moral compass. Hating entire groups of people has become the norm for some people.

  4. #274
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    Quote Originally Posted by Teacher Terry View Post
    WS: as a country we have totally lost our moral compass. Hating entire groups of people has become the norm for some people.
    Yes, that has never happened before in this country, snark.
    The British, the Irish, the blacks, the yankee's, the south, the indian's, the chinese, the catholic's (what will our president do), the jew's, the japanese/chinese/gooks, etc. etc. etc.

    How many people know how to use a compass?

  5. #275
    Senior Member Teacher Terry's Avatar
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    People are more educated than times in the past and you would think there would be less pure hatred because of it.

  6. #276
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    Quote Originally Posted by razz View Post
    How old is this show, WS?

    It is not just the cost of the wars but the number of lives destroyed as well. Was some of it necessary? Yes. But Iraq? The bailout of the banks and other institutions that sold garbage investments?

    Count on it! the entitlements that people have paid into for years and need are being reduced but the war machine will continue because corporate America is now completely in charge. Americans voted for it!
    Not the majority!!!

  7. #277
    Senior Member SteveinMN's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Teacher Terry View Post
    People are more educated than times in the past and you would think there would be less pure hatred because of it.
    I would contest the first half of your statement. More people may be formally educated than at other times in American history. And people certainly may be exposed to more facts in the course of a day/month/life. But I don't think I'd bet the mortgage money on them being better educated now than they were. Used to be people could add and multiply numbers without a calculator, took Civics classes in grade school (as well as shop/home ec), and were taught to think critically. Not to slag the educators on this forum, but I think the system has gotten away from that, to our detriment.
    Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington

  8. #278
    Senior Member Teacher Terry's Avatar
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    You are probably right Steve. Teachers aren’t free to teach but told what to teach and mostly to pass tests. It is extremely upsetting what is happening to our country. In the past I would vote but could always live with the opposition winning figuring all involved had the best interests of our country in mind even if we differed on what that was. That is no longer true and it is terrifying. I have read many books on the holocaust , how it happened and have been to Auschwitz. Many have made a comparison to what is happening now. People need to speak up, write, call, protest and let their voices be heard that as a country this is not who we are. We are better than this. There is strength in numbers.

  9. #279
    Williamsmith
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    “To see a World in a Grain of Sand
    And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
    Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
    And Eternity in an hour.”

    poet William Blake

    Coming back from my morning workout, I was gifted with an ephemeral image in the morning light of a newly born day. My driveway coincidentally overlooks the launch zone for hot air balloons that visit once a year for a festival. Two such balloons were piercing the morning blanket of fog that had developed overnight in the low lying field beneath my perch on a hill. I could see the blue sky that was their goal in the background but for the moment they seemed trapped by the influence of a gray mist enveloping them. The sun burned its way skyward over the horizon silhouetting the balloons and washing out their bold colors.

    In the fog of a new day they looked like ghostly pirate ships drifting slowly upward. I ran for my camera but when I returned I realized the sun was in the wrong place to capture the image and the balloons had passed behind some trees.

    In that moment, time had seemingly stood still. The vision was not a part of the days endless succession. That tiny second allowed me to be a child again. The thoughts of planning the day ahead we’re instantly and unexpectedly shut out. I suppose that’s why some people keep items, tokens, or monuments hanging on their walls or sitting on their end tables....to remind them of eternity or infinity or that moment time stood still.

    Like the memory I have as a child fearing sleep and the monster under my bed. What if I didn’t wake up? What if the monster came out from under and did terrible things to me? The sickening sound of the television antenna wire clicking repeating against the side of the house every time the wind blew. And then the calm of my father entering my room, his weight sagging the mattress as he sat down, me rolling toward him. In that moment when the palm of his hand was placed on my forehead, when he recited poetry to me to calm me down......time was in abatement. He would finish with a kiss on the forehead with the abrasive whiskers of his face not at all a bother to me. And he would shut the door having gifted inner peace and silence.

    Early in the morning, I would hear him rise while it was still dark, the morning birds announcing a new day coming. I could hear him shaving off those whiskers with his electric Norelco. As he stepped by my room, he’d peak in on his way to work. I’d pretend to sleep, and catch the smell of his Mennan aftershave lotion and as the car started and the sound disappeared I’d wonder how long I could make this feeling last.

    The experience of the moment certainly did not last but the memory like some trinket on the living room endtable reminds me that ghostly pirate balloons can stop the endless succession of time and return you to wonderful eternity.

  10. #280
    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    WS. I hope you're copying and pasting these posts into a personal notebook to draw on when you write your first book.

    Beautiful description of those moments that are both ephemeral and eternal.
    "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
    www.silententry.wordpress.com

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