No amount of gear will beat luck
| I love this little story. Being a non-fisherman in the land of 10,000 lakes, I’ve never had any appreciation for all of the elaborate, expensive gear accumulated by those who fish. Many times I’ve pretended interest when shown fishing gear, chuckling inside at the absurdity we all exhibit with our hobbies.
I recall fondly the story, long ago, about a Hmong immigrant who was arrested for catching a barrel’s worth of fish from a local in-city lake. He didn’t know about limits, and was just trying to feed his family and make some money. In the news today though, is the story of a Grandpa in North Carolina who caught a RECORD catfish while holding his granddaughters rod and reel… a Barbie rod and reel. |
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A time of pleasant distractions
Although I’m a man of carefully-honed habits, I am occasionally dragged from my hermithood routines, and shoved into “the real world”, or at least the real world as it exists for most of you. My daughter’s visit from Seattle, a big birthday party by my other daughter for both her sons, the Olympics, and even a clogged kitchen sink, all contributed to my “normalcy” over the past couple of weeks.
Going out to eat, which I almost never do, seems to be compulsory when people get together socially and for no other reason. Where you ate, with whom, seem to be the “events” of today’s world. I suspect small-town newspapers cover those events, e.g. “Mabel and John Blair dined out with Jim and Harriet Yoder at the new Chat-and-Chew cafe on Thursday evening”. For the record, I recently dined at Leeann Chin’s, Perkins, and Curran’s.
The birthday party was again an unbelievably creative effort by my daughter for her sons (it’s the 2nd annual). With her magic, she kept a dozen kids entertained for hours, while about the same number of adults chatted and watched in amazement as their kids had fun without them. She even managed to produce involvement between adults and kids (just enough, not too much). The party was Star Wars themed, and thoroughly so, right down to 8 homemade cakes spelling out STAR WARS. The party lasted for hours, but the preparatory work was more akin to preparing for the RNC visit to St. Paul. It’s hard for me to imagine, but even I had a great time at the party.
Having been an Olympics fan for many decades, I can no longer resist watching. I’m continually amazed that what amazed me 20 or 30 years ago pales by comparison with what current athletes are doing. As usual, I wonder whether these young folks have permanently warped their lives to achieve such feats. As always, the old ABC Wide World of Sports opening returns to mind… the Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat. Also as always, I grieve for those athletes who compete on teams. In individual competitions, failure hurts only yourself, and victory is yours alone to savor, but not so in team competitions. One lovely young American gymnast had two falls in the team finals that may have dropped her team from a gold medal to silver. Regardless of her years of hard training, and remarkable feats that got them close to gold, she will probably be remembered for those two falls. That’s a cruel load for a young girl to carry.
So, perhaps my routine will return now, but such distractions are pleasant, and remind me that even a hermit has to peek out of his cave now and again.
Maybe no news IS good news
I recently complained that the bulk of our local news was vapid… devoid of importance. This morning was different. A couple of very disturbing articles in the newspaper (St. Paul Pioneer Press)… both continuations of previous stories. One is another “good samaritan”-gets-punished story… I wrote about one in Be Careful Who You Help. This one involves a man who stopped to help a girl in seeming distress, only to have her concoct a story about him and another man trying to abduct and rape her. Despite this 8th-grade girl having already pleaded guilty to concocting a different false accusation, the police found, arrested, and charged the helpful man, and allowed the media to plaster his mug shot, name, and the charges on the front page.
The man’s life and reputation has been seriously damaged by this young girl’s false claims, yet we still do not know who SHE is. Yes, 8th grade is a bitch of a time for girls, and they can be emotional basket-cases, but the public needs to be warned about that girl. Her picture and name should be on the front page. Her story, and that of the adult responsible for her should be front-page news, before she strikes again.
The other startling story this morning is about a SECOND attack by baseball-bat-wielding youth at Lake Phalen. The first attack was on a woman suffering from cancer, and it was unusually brutal. It sounds as if they were trying to kill her, and that she was a random choice. The new attack doesn’t seem to have involved much injury, but the police have arrested 3 guys who “roughly match” the description from the first attack… “three young Asian men”. Gosh, how did the police ever find “three young Asian men”? What sleuthing!
The story about the 2nd attack is strangely written, mostly about a candlelight vigil and march being held in support of the first victim, while the 2nd attack was taking place. Pretty good illustration of how valuable such “vigils” are. The article contains one of the oddest sentences I’ve ever seen. Quoting a friend of the first victim, it’s written:
“She told me she said, ‘Stop! I have cancer!’ ” Frelich said, sipping a Diet Coke in the heat.
Why the reporter, Bob Shaw, decided to add the completely irrelevant bit about the Diet Coke is about as peculiar as writing gets, compounding writing that is already confused. Frelich was “introduced” five paragraphs earlier, and is secondary to the also-female victim who is being quoted secondhand. Tough to write, and Shaw failed completely. Perhaps writers are pressed into writing quickly? Wouldn’t this be much simpler and more understandable?
Frelich said that Tammie told her attackers ‘Stop! I have cancer!’
I could not help but wonder, when reading about baseball bat attacks, what the reaction to those stories would be from the people who so righteously opposed the licensing of concealed-carry handguns in Minnesota. Would they understand that either attack could have been stopped cold by the mere appearance of a handgun by the victims? Would they comprehend that almost anything can be used as a deadly weapon, not just guns, but that a handgun can stop a brutal attack without so much as firing a shot? Would they now realize that even eliminating guns completely will not eliminate violence?
Well… I probably won’t complain about no news for a while.
Serving your country
Over my lifetime, that ubiquitous, loaded phrase, “serving your country” has gone from being a vaguely honorable label to instead representing, to me, much of what is wrong with our society. The phrase now makes me sick.
If the U.S. were under attack, I would volunteer, and certainly be willing to fight to the death to protect my country. That’s as close as I can come to “serving my country”, and it’s nowhere close to what most people mean when they use the phrase. What “serving your country” has come to mean is doing whatever the U.S. government decides they want you to do. What it really means is putting what the government wants ahead of everything else… ahead of personal morals, ethics, family, friends, religious belief, and personal ambitions. It is a propagandized slogan that is used to create totally robotic slaves to the insane whims of government.
Every day, one can read about formerly normal individuals who have become such slaves, and about the destruction such slavery entails; not just for the individuals but for their family members. Here is just one such set of brief stories. Read about the mother who leaves small children behind to “serve country”. Read about the constant worry suffered by others abandoned to “serve country”. We are all expected to understand such suffering and then write it off in the name of “serving your country”. In fact, we’re expected to honor those who suffer as if their suffering somehow made this a better, safer world. They’ve all sacrificed for all of us.
Suicide bombers feel the same way. Street gang members feel the same way. They’re defending their way of life too, and choose to subjugate themselves to “the pack” in return for a vague sense of “serving” a cause.
While you might label suicide bombers as “terrorists” and street gang members as “violent thugs”, do you view American military personnel as “heroes”?
Military personnel are not “serving their country” in any way that makes sense. “Country” is meaningless unless you mean the physical territory of the nation in which you live, and U.S. troops haven’t defended this territory for a very long time, and certainly are not doing so now. “Country” can’t mean “way of life” because the U.S. has a thousand differing “ways of life”. What country DOES mean is whatever mess our government manages to get into.
“Serving” is the other key word, of course… serving is supposed to be good, because sacrifice is supposed to be good. Nobody can explain why… it just is. It’s somehow vaguely linked with Jesus’ sacrifice for all of us, and then all rolled up as a way to explain away the most horrific events in history. I’ve got news for you… serving is serving… subjugation to someone or something else… it’s a brain-dead, do-as-you’re-told-no-matter-what deal, because YOU are insignificant compared to… whatever. It was a great gimmick for Charles Manson, and it’s a great gimmick for governments.
Yes, I was accused of “serving my country” at one time, for 4 long years. Did I sacrifice myself for a cause? Well… it was sacrifice, because there were a thousand more productive things I could have been doing during that time. I enlisted to get away from home, to sample a completely different lifestyle. I didn’t know that every attempt would be made to extinguish my ability to think for myself (which obviously failed). I didn’t understand the magnitude of feeble-minded group behavior I would be expected to subjugate myself to. Nobody who enlists understands those things, but once they’re in the grasp, it becomes much easier to think of yourself as a hero than to admit that you’re one of hundreds of thousands of dumb slaves.
Is it possible to be “serving your country” when you’re doing something that a large majority of your fellow Americans don’t want you to be doing? If you can somehow manage a Yes answer to that question, then you’re the perfect pawn for government.
