I forgot to take along my rainsuit on my sunny bike ride to work this morning, and sure enough, 20 minutes before time to begin the ride home, it began to rain.
I asked for a garbage can liner, to poke a few holes and at least keep my phone and money clip dry, and as I stood outside the storefront poking said holes, was able to watch some poor sucker using towels to dry out the driver's seat of his BMW convertible, the hatch top kind, where you remove the top and leave it at home when you want to go topless. He had pulled his vehicle onto the loading dock to get it under a roof and was frantically trying to dry things out. As it has now continued to rain for several hours, I imagine he's had to make other arrangements to get home.
No matter how bad things seem, someone is having a worse day.....
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TechnoratiNext week is Halloween. Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. There was something about the concept of getting to play a character for a day, to be someone completely not me, that appealed to me. Maybe I should have tried acting as a career……
But now Halloween just means we are entering a part of the year filled with tragic memories. Halloween, 2005, AKA “Trick or Trunk”. The remaining residents along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi tried to put the best face on a holiday tradition, trick or treating, when there were no houses left to visit. They would gather in parking lots, open the trunks of the cars to access bags of candy, and kids in costumes would go car-to-car instead of door-to-door. A community tailgate for candy, if you will. Brave on the face of it, attempting to bring normalcy to kids who could not understand the depth of the tragedy around them. But a sad reminder of how much had been lost during Hurricane Katrina.
And Christmas, 1998. Being a volunteer firefighter on the fireground where a father and 3 children didn’t survive to have any more holidays. It was that helpless feeling, watching the mother and her only surviving child cry on the sidewalk at 3 am, that brought me to leave the department. I went home that Christmas morning and hugged my children with the knowledge there may never be another chance to express my love. We all must remember that.
And January 13, the anniversary of my own son’s death in a house fire. Such a bright soul, love incarnate as we said at the time, who only demonstrated his joy and love for 8 short months and never knew what a holiday was. Still, he taught me the most important thing about life: every day is the most important one. Today is all we truly have. The ‘holiday spirit’ should be felt and expressed every moment, not just at a certain time of year, or on a particular day. Please touch the lives around you at every opportunity no matter what the calendar says. Be generous all year ‘round, not just at Christmas. Be thankful for what you have and what you have achieved. Not everyone is as lucky as you, my friend.
take a look....
Here are links to several articles about the continuing drama unfolding in Burma, some from Irrawaddy Online and some from the BBC.
Titled "Cornered but not defeated -- the true leader"
The US has already toughened its sanctions against Burma, and the EU is set to follow suit.
But far away from the world's debating chambers and boardrooms where their future is being discussed, the people of Burma have slightly different priorities.
"We would like to have democracy, but the most important thing for us is to have peace, and enough food on our plates," one woman said.
Sanction drawbacks
Burma is a country that is desperately poor. According to recent international estimates, 32% of the population live below the poverty line and, excluding a small rich elite, the rest are only just above it.
Comparisons are being drawn between Burma’s 1988 popular uprising and the current crisis, but there is one important difference. The enormous advances in high technology over the past 19 years mean that the appalling events in the streets of Rangoon, unlike those in 1988, can be witnessed by a horrified world almost at the time they are happening.
Monks, sons of Buddha, are being tortured and cracked down upon in interrogation centers, in concentration camps, in prisons and in forced labor camps. There are many questions, such as: “Why are these things happening?” “Who is responsible for this?” “Who is guilty?” and so on.
I can’t believe or understand why a group of so-called Buddhists in a majority Buddhist country dare to commit these ultimate sins.
I don’t understand where they get these evil minds to commit such atrocious religious violations. Time after time, I realize these disastrous events occur because the behavior of the military dictators and the conditions of the country are the same, like mirror images of each other.
When I realize this, I see that being a Buddhist is beside the point. Whether or not the oppressors are privileged in the power structure, the capital sharing system or the social system also does not matter. The key point is that people’s behavior of bullying and discrimination—above all, human rights violations—have become habitual in Burmese society. This is aside from the idea that people who hold power or receive rich rewards in money violate human rights to stay to receive those benefits.
Military despotism molds the people’s behavior to accept human rights violations and bullying as part of a tradition.
Zaw Aung is not alone in his decision to seek a better life abroad. In recent years, the flow of people out of Burma has become one of South East Asia's largest migration movements.
Sources: UNHCR, NGOs
Exact figures are hard to pin down.
Thousands are thought to have gone south to Malaysia. Others have gone north to India and China, while more than 200,000 of the Rohingya minority group live in Bangladesh to the west.
But by far the biggest group - two million people, by most estimates - have headed east, to Thailand.
1 Oct 2007 Downtown Rangoon; midday—Security forces around the Sule Pagoda in central Rangoon and at other downtown locations are searching people for cameras. Anyone found with a camera is detained and led away, according to one eyewitness. Passengers on city buses are also being searched.
This from The Irrawaddy News Magazine Online (a news digest focusing on Burma)
Tourists be careful!
He grew in my estimation last night as he tried to get through to Chris Matthews:
link to the "Daily Show" segment as posted on youtube
-- H.L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
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