The Dooryard

A mouse in manhattan

I had a melancholy moment yesterday as I was walking back from lunch along 29th Street. As I approached some scaffolding hanging over a grate, I noticed a tiny little mouse walking around the sidewalk. It seemed the rest of the passersby were oblivious to him. Luckily, the scaffolding funneled the pedestrians away from where he was.

I stood there for a couple of minutes watching him and wondering about his life and his death. I literally have trouble killing plants. I pulled up some weeds in my pots on the lanai the other day and felt terrible about it. I have long felt the need to help the innocent, and helpless, and that translates for me past humanity. The plans and animals that surround us, that make our life more rich, are more in need of my help and protection than most humans.

I watched that little mouse and thought what would happen if the wrong person saw him. All it would take was one thoughtless beast to lift up his Timberlands and end that innocent little mouse's life needlessly and purposelessly.

We watched, as far as I know, all of Discovery Channel's Planet Earth series. It included a lot of death. I had never really thought about it before, but the only way to sustain life through food is death. To eat, you either kill a plant or an animal. Some things, like milk and honey, are ways around that. But eating anything else - salad, eggs, grains, meat - is destroying life or the potential for life. I can certainly rationalize that in my head: It is purposeful death - either it dies or I die. And I, like every other living thing in this world, will choose myself.

But that doesn't account for the future of that little mouse and the hundreds, thousands, millions of living things we as humans will needlessly kill in the next 24 hours. I guess I can just do my part in trying to bring more life into this world rather than end it, and encourage others to do the same.

Lessons of loss

It never fails to hit me when I see the stories of lives taken prematurely and seemingly meaninglessly. Maybe it's my desire to make the loss meaningful that I try to take a lesson from every death and every seemingly unsurmountable challenge life throws in my way and the way of the people I care about.

Life has this week smacked me up side the head again. It's good for me. It rights me on my course. It sucks for a while, and it pains me to see other people hurting so badly. But I like to think that all my lessons in life will lead me to somewhere beautiful, and that I'll enjoy the journey along the way that much more having lived with loss, be it loss of life or in this case loss of innocence. I think many people view loss that way. I hope it's a healthy perspective.

I saw this story just today, about a boy beaten to death at a "boot camp" in Florida. Disgusting. I don't care what a 14-year-old boy has done; unless he's killed someone or put a gun to someone's head, he doesn't deserve a 20-plus-minute beating that leaves him dead. The people who killed him should pay with their lives. Excessive violence by anyone - civilians, police, military personnel - should never ever be tolerated.

Pointless loss of life - there is nothing worse to me.

More on the divisives

A telling post after my last post about socialists and divisives who helps make my point entirely"

The irony in your assumption that what turns a Liberal into a Socialist is exactly what we/you would call the "Far right/Neo Cons". They are the one's who are "driven by advancing their personal beliefs at the expense of the thoughts and beliefs of others". If you truly do not see that than you better open your eyes soon...it's almost laughable. Most Liberals have a "live and let live" philosophy. They could care less what you believe or don't believe. The same can't be said for the Far Right Conservatives unfortunately...

This is exactly what I was talking about. The socialists and "far right" (I still don't think that's the right term, but I'll stick with it) are liberal and conservative divisives. They use the same tactics to get their point across.

The big difference is that the socialists control much of the mainstream media, so we see their divisive nature all the time. It's almost become accepted as the norm because we hear it every night on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and every morning in the New York Times. L.A. Times, Houston Chronicle, etc....

The above poster is right - most liberals are good people with good hearts. So are most conservatives. But because the media is run by divisives, and because media outlets thrive off of division and conflict, that is what they endlessly push.

That is the agenda that America is really rebelling against. Not this right/left, blue/red nonsense (which, again, is designed by the media to divide us). It's the inclusives/divisives that is the real battle.

The little things

It's the little day-to-day things in life that really get to me. Strangers being kind to one another really makes me smile and feel good. Today, while I was shopping at Nader Food Market at 28th & Fifth, the shop manager kept offering me things to try. I thought it was just a ploy to get me to buy stuff, but he kept doing it as I was leaving and after I'd said I wasn't going to buy anything else. As I was walking out the door, it hit me that he was just being nice to me; and it was the jaded part of me that was assuming he was just trying to sell me more.

Every morning, I take a 20-minute walk to work. Along the way, somehow my mood changes depending on what I encounter. Walking past a heated exchange in the flower district can put me in a bad mood for the rest of the morning; watching a little French bulldog run alongside its owner with a toy in its mouth can make me smile for the rest of the day.

I think a lot of people are like me: They're moved by the little things in life, by stopping to smell the roses. And that's an encouraging thought.

It's all about perspective

A friend of mine who enjoys attacking most politically minded posts on this blog earlier today posted his prespective on how I view the world. Of course, things like this always say more about the person who's writing than about what they're observing.

And that's perspective. That's what's wonderful about sharing - no matter how much we try to make things objective or subjective or funny or serious, what always comes out is more information about how we see things than how things really are.

I certainly understand his perspective. There are blogs that I only go to read when I want my blood to boil. But, for every person with his perspective, there's the soldier in Iraq who finds comfort in what I say, and there's my mom who finds what I say to be critical and thoughtful.

When I was in college, many in the California College Republicans said I was liberal; of course, most on campus considered me conservative. Some people who post comments on this blog call me conservative; at Outsports, I've gotten comments in the last two weeks calling me a Feminazi (that was a first) and "politically correct" (again, a first).

This is the biggest reason I often go after The New York Times. It and its supporters claim it is the paper of record. That it, somehow, paints the news as it objectively is. But, it doesn't. That's impossible. No one can write news that is completely objective. In everything we write, our knowledge, or contacts, our choices come out. The NYT is no better at painting a picture of reality than any other publication in America; and, personally, I think it's a lot worse than most.

I continue to thank all of the readers of this blog. And I hope that I continue to show people a little of my world and give readers a better perspective on how they see the world.

Reflection

As I was reading a bunch of blogs in reaction to the State of the Union address last night, something finally hit me. It kept me restless, unable to sleep. It was the real problem that we're all facing. It doesn't matter who started it or who escalated it. What matters is that it's a fact that we now face, and that it ends is what is most important.

Most of America just wants to live a peaceful life and be happy. Most of America doesn't give a shit who does what or who takes credit, they just want to make enough money to feed their family, maybe go to Disneyland, and have the outside world cause as little friction in their sometimes-difficult personal lives.

Unfortunately, so many of us with a voice contribute to that friction. We point fingers, we blame, we call names. We lose sight of what is important and what we all want – a little peace and happiness.

Making a personal change away from negativity is far easier said than done. It's so easy to take the visceral reactions we have to hearing someone express an idea we disagree with and plaster them on every media outlet we can get ahold of. But, I think it's important that we try to begin to focus on the good in life, and where we agree, than where we disagree.

A big part of the problem is most certainly the climate in Washington. It comes from members of both parties. In the '80s, the interparty debates that transpired were no less forcefully fought than they are today. The difference was, the leaders in the '80s were ladies and gentlemen. Speaker Tip O'Neill (above) and President Ronald Reagan were fierce competitors in politics, but they treated one another with respect and dignity (did you know Bush I gave O'Neill the Presidential Medal of Freedom?). They believed in what they fought for, yet they believed in something greater even more: a peaceful, united America.

My hope is that The Dooryard will again return to where I started it: a place for dialogue, not attacks. A place to share, not condemn. I will do my best, though I will surely fail at times. My hope is that the few people who read this will do their best to hold me to it.

Liberal Elitists

I want to be clear about something. I use the term "Liberal Elitists" throughout this Web site to describe liberals who think they are intellectually right and those who disagree with them are intellectually wrong.

Let me be clear about one thing: I am NOT talking about all liberal-thinking people. In fact, MOST liberal-thinking people are not like this. If I somehow lump all liberals into this category, please alert me and I will correct it - that would be an oversimplification and an incorrect statement and assumption, and I don't want to do that.

Ben Stein's parting wisdom

Ben Stein had long written a column for E! online titled "Monday Night at Morton's." Morton's is a steakhouse in L.A. that has long attracted the rich and famous. In his farewell column - dated back in 2003 - he talked about the fading of Hollywood stars and the growing importance of the "average" people who put their lives on the line to help the rest of us.

This excerpt, to me, was particularly thought-provoking:

"A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad."

Because we know their names and they're either pretty or funny, we give movie stars the keys to the kingdom. For soldiers fighting for freedom in Iraq, we meet them with protests and claims that they're wasting their time. We don't know their names. We don't even know their generals' names. They're nameless, faceless. And they're far more deserving of our praise than some 18-year-old girl who can act like a "Mean Girl" and drive an animated car. (Thanks for this, Mike)

A wizard's wise words

"All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you." - Gandalf

These words from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring struck me when I first heard them uttered by Gandalf in the Mines of Moria, and then again ringing in Frodo's ears on the shores of Sarn Gebir.

It entirely reflecs my attitude about life's accomplishments: You simply have to decide what you're going to do. That decision, for a man of integrity, will lead to pointed action. And once that decision is made, again, for a man of integrity, the only two things that will stop that decision from becoming realized are 1) the decision that it won't be or 2) the true inability to understand how to make it happen. I can decide all I want that I'm going to fly; but, without the deep knowledge of how to do that, it won't happen.

I think too often people let life just roll over them. They want to do something, but their ability to overcome resistance is low; so, they get stopped too easily. Pressure builds and they can't handle it, so they decide to override their previous decision. The challenge is to let our best wishes guide us, not our fears; let our strengths govern what we do, not our weaknesses.

The days are shorter

The days are shorter. The air is cooler, crisper. Autumn is upon is.

It's my favorite time of year, but it is also a melancholy time for me. For whatever reason, I get this almost-satisfying sadness in the autumn. There's a lump in my throat both days, as though I'm about ready to break down and cry. Last year it was more intense than the year before; this year is more intense than the last.

This picture is what's on my desktop at work. It makes me think of Maine and sitting on the side of a lake with a book or my journal and soaking in the sun and the colors and the energy of autumn. And, in melancholy, sipping some decaf coffee and letting my mind wander into peacefulness.

Life is so complicated. So much moreso than I want right now. Too much drama. But, this is autumn. I've somehow come to expect it.