Santa is a Double Entendre

So, you've probably heard it by now. Political correctness has reached into the folds of every religious, political, social and ethnic scenario, but it hits especially hard when the Christmastime standby for children, Santa Claus himself, is caught in the crossfire.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Westaff, a firm who recruits - well, among others - Santas, has instructed Australian Santas to replace "ho, ho, ho" with "ha, ha, ha," citing that the firm is fearful that the former term will scare kids and even imply a derogatory phrase to women. What is interesting to me is that news.com.au reports nothing about the derogatory undertones, and even the BBC has relegated this story to their children's version of their site, with no mention of women of ill repute.

Oh yes. But in America, dear readers, someone saw the words "derogatory" and "ho" in the same sentence and, while perusing CNN and FOX news, it seems that the fact that Westaff has mentioned its PC fears are being gobbled up greedily by our equality-crazed society.

The fact that I just wrote "equality-crazed society" makes me laugh, because not to mention the fact that no one has dared venture into the realm of a white guy saying "ho ho ho" was derogatory, or the fact that black rappers get away with it (and the women in their music videos seem to even like it!), we are indeed a long way off from everyone being "equal" here. But, there is a story for everything, so where does "ho, ho, ho" even come from?

From Wikipedia, a note about Santa Clause's American origins:

Later popularization was L. Frank Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, a 1902 children's book. Much of Santa Claus's mythos was not set in stone at the time, leaving Baum to give his "Neclaus" (Necile's Little One) a wide variety of immortal support, a home in the Laughing Valley of Hohaho, and ten reindeer which could not fly, but leapt in enormous, flight-like bounds.

This probably doesn't explain the origin of ho, ho, ho, but I thought it interesting nonetheless. In fact, I haven't been able to find where the phrase comes from yet.

What is most interesting, however, is that Santa himself based on several different stories and figures, but primarily based on the Christian figure St. Nicholas. Earlier parallels of similar figures from German and Dutch folklore also can be seen in our modern-day Santa. Even according to the Dutch, we're pronouncing it wrong: It should be Sinterklass, which in turn is a further different pronunciation from Sint Nicolaas. (Reference)

The fact remains, then, that the term "ho, ho, ho" is likely very much a modern take on Santa Claus, something that has not been around for ages. In fact, Santa's elves, his reindeer and his handmade toys in his shop are very modern ideas. It's all part of the Santa evolution, so to speak.

I do want my kid to know about Santa, but I also want to learn where Santa really came from, his roots in history and not just learning about him from Christmas cartoons and commercials. Maybe that makes me a spoiler of the Christmas spirit... but I disagree. Who really knows the spirit of Christmas? I mean, how did Christmas become the secularized poster holiday of the year? Anyone look into the origins of Valentine's Day? How about St. Patrick's Day? Even Easter has been bitten by the consumerism bug.

Look, as much as it will pain people for me to say this, there are a lot of "secular" holidays that we celebrate that do not have secular roots. Before we jump into the huge debate pool about why we're stealing away "ho, ho, ho" from Santa Claus, maybe we should figure out everything else we've stolen away from him in the past first. And that's about, oh, two centuries' worth of origins and folklore to get through.

Safety in Death II

Riley's mom's attorney has given her side of the story of what happened the night Riley died. IF the story is true, I have these thoughts:

1.) Zeigler was not Riley's father, yet was beating her for not saying "please," "yes sir" and "no sir."
2.) Trenor did not step in to defend her child.
3.) The fact that Zeigler was supervising his wife's disciplinary measures perhaps put Trenor in a compromising position: a position to RUN AWAY.

This, my friends, is the kind of corporal punishment that should be taken care of by our government. Not for parents who slap their kids' wrists when they are caught stealing candy out of the cookie jar.

Get OUT of my home!

I often wonder what would happen to our country if we started surrendering many of our rights to the government to police for us. Like raising our kids. I bet the government can do it better than I can, for sure! (Please do note the sarcasm in these words.) I bet it would take care of the illegal immigration debate, for one - no one would want to come here if that were the case.

Yet here is a print article, and a video of the interview with the nurse who convinced a Massachusetts state representative to introduce the bill to ban corporal punishment - in other words, this bill includes spanking.

It was one thing for the Patriot Act to let the government come in and listen in on our phone calls. Even if you have nothing to hide, I don't live here in America so they can take away my privacy. But it's quite another when someone wants to decide what I can and cannot do with disciplining my child.

Spanking has been a controversy among parents for ages, so I'll state this: Spanking is rare but necessary. I choose a time-out (which she utterly hates) over spanking, and I've never used an instrument such as a belt or a paddle. But some days, they need that snap back to reality, a bit of a sting to get them back in the moment, not just to "sit and think about what they've done."

Rep. Jay Kaufman mentions in the video that "it's not about criminalizing behavior; it's a matter of changing our behavior." Ah, but you are suggesting to criminalize behavior, and using the money from the fines to build a public awareness program to educate the public. Doesn't that seem backwards to you, folks? Let the parents break the law first, make them pay, and THEN tell them how to discipline their kids the "right" way. Make the kids get a spanking first before we tell them what the parents did wrong!

But laws tend to suppress behavior which usually morphs into another. Tax law is probably a classic example. Everyone who knows tax law knows there are ways to build up your capital without paying taxes on it. There's all sorts of loopholes in those thousands of pages; it's just a matter of knowing how to get through them, and the smart ones manipulate the system to their advantage legally. I don't even want to know what kind of punishment some parents might come up with for their kids without touching them. Are they going to pass a law stating what we can and cannot say to our kids, too? How about only certain times when we can ground them or take away their Nintendo?

Yet the FOX news article says that Rep. Kaufman is not taking a stand on the issue. Well, Rep. Kaufman, if you're going to let your left hand do one thing while your right does another, then let me know when you sync up, and I'll listen to you.

The nurse who convinced the proposal of the bill, Kathleen Wolf, even asserts that a small "swat on the seat" is not abuse. But the bill bans all corporal punishment. Look, I know I just wrote about Riley and the horrors of abuse at the hands of her mother and her mother's boyfriend. The systems in place to protect kids from abuse is overburdened and the reports of abuse have apparently skyrocketed (no numbers provided by CNN). Public education is a good start, I suppose, but is no one listening to these people when a "crime" has to be committed FIRST before they bother to educate others? Who gets to be the poster child for this kind of bill? I feel sorry for the one who does.

What I'm interested in is if Massachusetts actually passes this bill into law. How will this be enforced? Will the police be given the right to enter a home without due process to inspect our children for bruises? What if my kid just fell down the stairs? Does that give DSS or the police the right to whisk away my kids at the slightest cry, even when I caught her doing something wrong? What will the judicial system have to say when a DA is ready to prosecute the first parent under this law, setting a precedent for all cases to follow it? That, to me, is even scarier than the bill passing into law. What will happen to parents who are rightfully, safely, disciplining their children and yet are put on the same pedestal as those who killed Riley?

These are the questions we need to ask before any law goes into effect. That's what the three branches of government are here fore, checks and balances. But I don't need Big Brother in my home making sure I raise a law-abiding American citizen who will obey tax law without a slap on the hand or on the butt.

Safety in Death

Try to remember a time when you were very young, and unbelievably scared of something or someone. Maybe you were scared of hats or helmets (I was). Or spiders. Or your scary-looking cousin, or the old man down the street who murmured to himself.

Now imagine that fear, and put it in place of your mother. Most of you love your mothers, I'm pretty sure, so having an unbelievable fear of your mother is probably something you can't imagine, but just try. Imagine your mother as a single teenage mother living with her boyfriend, a gargantuan of a male with a pockmarked face.

Then imagine your mother and her boyfriend beating you with belts. Holding your head underwater in the bathtub. Picking you up by your hair and throwing you across the room, letting your head smash on the ground. What pain, what fear do you think you might experience? Pain and trauma enough to kill you.

Oh, and by the way, you're only two years old. Imagine your vocabulary only a hundred words or so, barely able to form sentences, let alone run very far on your tiny legs.

This is most likely what happened to Riley, a toddler with a ringlet-framed face and daughter to teenage mother Kimberly Dawn Trenor. Authorities believe Riley was discovered in a Galveston waterway, stuffed unceremoniously in a box after her death with severe head trauma. The DNA tests continue to confirm her identity, but a confession from Trenor about the abuse and death makes the story all more horrific for the girl formerly known as "Baby Grace."

We have read the travesties of what happens when sex offenders get their hands on young girls, and what happens when mentally sick mothers murder their children. But at the hands of such abuse and torture... even the most fastidious of heart would gulp in fear. I, personally, nearly vomited at the account of the end of this little girl's life.

I have a two-year-old daughter with blonde ringlets. Maybe it's just a natural reaction from a mother. But the fact is, it makes it that much easier for me to envision just what happened according to that affidavit, and how little toddler bodies are so hearty and fragile at the same time.

My wishes for what should happen to the two people being held in custody are not proper to print here. In all honesty, if the father and grandmother who loved Riley so much were standing by, and that Riley could have had a love-filled life with either of them but did not because of the custody ruling (almost always goes to the mother with visitation rights for the father; exception of Spears, Britney), then Riley's fate was probably doomed to begin with as soon as the custody battle began.

The boyfriend, Royce Zeigler, apparently attempted suicide soon after the murder. Pity. He was probably ashamed of what he would have seen of Riley in the afterlife and chickened out.

Now Riley is safe in death. Let's hope neither Zeigler nor Trenor are safe in the bowels of American justice.

Spendthrift

There are plenty of Facebook groups that don't get my attention, but some of them, like this one, are centered around a day or event, and since the Christmas season is nearly upon us, perhaps we should take a closer look.
Buy Nothing Day is exactly like it sounds – on Black Friday, masses of people gather to show that they have taken a stand against the mindless American consumerism that has swallowed the season, and prove that the same fate will not fall on their wallets. It’s the one day to not spend, but instead to think about it.

Well, I think they’re doing plenty of thinking on this topic. I started going through some of the pictures posted, and the conversations that were initiated below them. I started recognizing a lot of the liberal type folks who I went to school with, the English majors who do a lot of reading, writing and thinking (unfortunately, sometimes in that order). Artsy folk, some would say. They throw around authors’ names like Chomsky and suggest you read up on them sometime before you dare engage in any kind of conversation with them.

Ugh. Nothing like someone throwing around their academia roots to make you feel like crap. But this isn’t about what was being said, wholly, in this non-buying group; it was the conversation that followed between my husband and me over an IM conversation.

I was especially intrigued by one gentleman’s comment that if America’s economy and dollar were to crash, there would be a lot of Wal-Mart dependent addicts that would know nothing about sustaining themselves. Then I started thinking about the independent business owners in the country, the modern-day tradesmen of our time. These people have navigated Big Government and figured out ways to do their own taxes, find their own insurance coverage, hire their own workers. Those are the kind of people who, after enough sweat and blood, figure out how to manipulate the system to their advantage. A very small amount of these guys get rich in the end, regardless of the status of the economy. They can’t lay themselves off; they figure out how to float.

So, thanks to these independent entrepreneurs who figure out the system, do we owe our gratitude or scorn? In one way, these people (like The Donald, for instance) have built up their businesses and figured out ways to function in a system with ever-changing constants. It’s like trying to solve a math problem when the value of ‘x’ keeps changing. That takes an amazing amount of work, talent, a little luck, and a lot of contacts in the Blackberry. These people, believe it or not, have invested insane amounts of money and time and sanity, sacrificing everything except the oxygen in their lungs, to become who they are today. They build corporations that provide jobs and benefits to huge amounts of people, encouraging others to work hard and enjoy their money earned.

But, do we scorn these people who build businesses that encourage the rest of America’s bell curve into the corporate middle class, earning money that they will spend on things that provide absolutely no return, mere status symbols, who take that money and recycle it back into the huge corporate world? Do they prey on our vanity and entice us with their merchandise, telling us the only way we can ever be better in this world is to buy their brand?

One thing about this is interesting, indeed: If everyone had the guts to sell their home, exchange their cars for a winter beater, go into debt by taking out a business loan, move far away from home and invest in thousands into tools and office space just to further their own lives instead of being dependent on Big Money, then what would happen to our capitalist society? As the Buy Nothing Day folks see it, capitalism encourages the mindless, relentless advertising to buy product that gives nothing in return, and we need to sit down and think about the effects of that over-consumption.

Well, what if everyone stopped “buying" stuff and started “investing” in their education in order to learn terms such as "assets" and "liabilities?" Sometimes it's as easy as buying a book or a CD and listening to what these rich folks have to say. What if we snuck out of the work week mentality and started using our weekends to learn and not just go buy beer or go car shopping? What if we started thinking about the reasons why terms like J.O.B. (Just Over Broke) exist? What if we learned that we don't have to buy a bigger house with our raises, just like everyone else does?

Blame who you want. It’s scary what kind of cattle mentality has been bred into the American Homo sapiens.

A Beacon of Truth

I found this interesting group on Facebook just today. It had me wondering - is Facebook really following me all over the Internet by using their Beacon feature, tracking my personal purchases, and publishing a story in my News Feed that I just bought "x" or "y" on a website? Yee-ikes. That's not cool.

But the thing is, I just ordered my Christmas cards on Winkflash, and a story didn't appear in my News Feed. Likewise, I bought a custom template (backwards, I know, but trust me) through Dimpled Bottoms Designs, and no story in my News Feed. Are these guys just trying to get our goat?

Well... you guessed it... there are two sides of the story. Instead of jumping on the bandwagon, I did a quick Google search, and found out that while it's true that this Beacon feature is an "opt-out" instead of an "opt-in," I wondered which websites were exactly affiliated with the feature.

Turns out there are 19 websites. NINETEEN. Out of the millions on the web, there are 19 websites that will offer you to publish a story in your News Feed. There are several ways to opt out of the story publish to your News Feed, but allegedly they are hard to see and use. Allegedly, because I haven't tried it. To save you the trouble, here are the websites that are currently affiliated with Facebook's Beacon feature.

Nineteen. Well, I can do better than harassing Facebook to change their Beacon feature. None of these companies are going to get my business until they decide to un-affiliate themselves from the Beacon feature. Passive-aggressive, perhaps, but I already belong to enough FB groups than to join one with a boring name and administered by no other than a spokesperson for MoveOn.org.

So, Facebook has discouraged me from giving my business, and eBay gets to keep my dormant account until notified otherwise. Two birds with one stone, and I actually did something about it instead of following everyone off the Beacon's cliff. Maybe not so passive-aggressive after all.

Work the chain gang or else!

This is something I've already talked about in "Bureaucracy's Earache," but apparently, self-employed folks who don't have access to group health care are not the only ones seeing the gaping holes in the system. Unfortunately, it's having more repercussions for the men and women who are losing limbs in Iraq.

Wounded military members are coming home to the VA, for sure, but there are some spooky stories out there about the red tape fight that goes on. One soldier claims that after he lost part of his brain in an attack, the VA classified it as only 10% rating for disability, and attributed 80% for facial disfigurement. Another claims that the VA told him his injuries (sustained in Iraq while driving a truck) are not service-related.

Then I found this tidbit in Reader's Digest (o Mother of all Bathroom Reading!):

Since then, however, members of Congress have courted the vet vote by defining the law much more generously. Now a veteran doesn't have to prove that military service caused his disability, only that it appeared or got worse during his service. So if you develop diabetes while stationed in Germany, you're covered for it, for life. Veterans don't even have to show that the condition has affected their ability to earn a living.

Well, this discrepancy would have been helpful to present to Congress, allowing that Mr. Crowley got his facts right. Because of this fact, he says, is why hemorrhoids are getting a whopping $14 million to 120,000 vets, and others are getting benefits for contracting STDs (most definitely NOT service-related) and hypertension:

According to a 2003 Congressional Budget Office report, almost 300,000 veterans get disability payments for conditions that are "generally neither caused nor aggravated by military service." The annual price tag for these cases is $970 million.

At least the VA is covering some of the sick folks in this country. Apparently you need to be spic-and-span to even get individual insurance. It's been a month since I submitted my paperwork, and now they want even more health records from me. Now I don't even know if I want to be insured by these guys, especially since I found out that California is an "all-or-nothing" state for coverage: If they don't want to cover you for anything, any little thing at all, they'll just deny you coverage. No pre-existing condition rules in place there. Great.

No question, the repercussions of covering those who were legitimately injured in Iraq will reverberate for many years to come. There are soldiers coming home, some in their early 20s, with major physical and psychological damage. Between this and Medicaid preparing for the baby boomers, I have a feeling the system is going to crumple up for us working folk, especially those on the periphery by working on their own.

An interesting blog entry I found last night embraced all the ill-will I have towards the system, but the comments left were even more interesting. Not only were people sympathizing with the situation, but some interesting "solutions" came up. Workarounds, if you will. Like joining a local Chamber of Commerce. Or getting a Sam's Club membership. Looking at http://www.nase.org/.

So maybe this isn't the end of the journey, even if I get the Big Red X on my application. But it's very clear by some of the comments that our neighbors up north (and even one from Norway)are enjoying the fact that they can pay more taxes in order to have health insurance, always. At this point, if there weren't such a taboo on raising U.S. taxes, maybe I'd pay for a little help, too.

I don't want to even START on the benefits that our government employees receive. Someone should plant themselves in the audience and ask these guys: "So, you think you have an answer to health care? Tell me, what benefits are you getting right now, and would you give those up benefits in order to take advantage of your own health care plan?" You all know what the real answer would be.

Flaunt it if you've got it

All right, guys, I know I'm on a posting spree today - but this stuff drives me nuts. I do not agree that police have killed unarmed black men, okay? We'll get that statement out of the way before I proceed.

An 18-year-old man was killed in New York. The man's mother called 911 and in the background, he was screaming that he had a gun. When police arrived, apparently, he was holding an object under his shirt and started to approach police. Police told him to stop and he refused. After 20 rounds were fired at the man, the weapon turned out to be a black hairbrush.

What buggered me about this article was that they interviewed a gentleman who was a neighbor to the 18-year-old man who was killed. He says:

Another neighbor, Wayne Holder, said police should be required to see a weapon before opening fire on a suspect. "At least see a gun before you start to discharge it," Holder said. Police "don't even have to see it, [if] they think you got one, you're going to get shot."

Wow. That is some backwards logic. There is a reason that police ask you to put both hands up. Who hasn't thought of the whole conceal-gun-in-pocket-and-shoot ploy? Yea, everyone thinks that will work. Concealed weapons are the reason why we have to take our shoes off at the airport. Concealed weapons are the reason why we get patted down at the courthouse. Concealed weapons are the reason suicide bombers are successful. Look, I'm not saying the police are right 100% of the time. But they and the military are in no danger of taking over our streets! (See Pakistan and Musharraf; Cuba and Castro.) So why is it that it's unfair to our police to protect themselves under a very important assumption when it is a life and death situation?

The fact that this guy was shot at 20 times is very concerning to me. The fact that Mayor Bloomberg and Rev. Al Sharpton are involved are not surprising. But the fact that people think that forcing a suspect to show they're actually armed, especially when they have proof that the kid confirmed that suspicion over a 911 call, is foolish and dangerous to our police forces. It's not the solution to the bigger problem - and what is that, exactly? Racism? A lack of cultural sensitivity training? That's a whole different bag of frozen peas, people, but I certainly know that visual evidence of a weapon will not save lives on either side of the police tape.

Welcome to Politics, Kid

Poor girl. I'd almost think that this should be news, but in reality, who would be surprised? When public image is the only thing worth to Presidential hopefuls, I'm sure they don't want someone to pull another Kerry-esque risk and have another Tasering incident at their rallies. I'd bet my winter beater car that they all do this.

Anonymous Friend

An Anonymous Friend has made the front headlines of CNN with the title: "Rust Belt City gets $100 million anonymous gift." Fox News has this story, and even the AP picked up on it.

What's the Rust Belt? Ever hear of the Pittsburgh Steelers? It's a clue. About two hours north of where the Three Rivers meet, there's a smaller town located on the southern shore of Lake Erie bearing the same name. Erie, according to CNN, used to be a bustling industrial town but has seen an increase in the poverty level, that over the national average, and resorted to promoting themselves as a tourist town, complete with brand-new casino. (Of course, they wouldn't mention that it has one of the most popular parks in state, that there is an unbelievably low costs of living, and that the housing market has nary been affected, unlike the poor folks in California who were living on doomed subprime mortgages. A city were the Colts' Bob Sanders made his beginnings, where Tom Ridge comes from, where Sharon Stone grew up near.)

Erie papers carried this news nearly a month ago. It's that long ago that Erie (and probably surrounding areas) knew about this act of kindness and incredible generosity. The original article ran on October 6, and Sharla Bordin of the Erie Times-News reports:

An anonymous donor has made history in Erie County.

The Erie Community Foundation has received $100 million from the donor, the largest charitable gift ever received by an Erie County organization, foundation President Mike Batchelor said Friday.

The gift also is believed to be one of the largest anonymous contributions to a community foundation in the nation.

"It will literally change our community forever," Batchelor said.

Most people in Erie probably want to know who made the donation, but feel it's nearly sinful to ask who. The person specifically asked to remain anonymous, as well as their association to Erie, and if they are even alive. Some have theories as to who it is.

No matter who it was, it was a spectacular amount of money, an act of generosity that made history across the nation. Someone who so dearly loved Erie, this little Rust Belt City That Was.

Race, thy name is charged (but not too much)

You know, there's a lot of bad stuff going on in the world today. Other than the atrocities going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, there's our environmental worries, everything that we're ignoring between Israel and Palestine, the 2008 presidential election campaigns, and the dominance of the New England Patriots (ok, just kidding on the latter). But what keeps catching my attention between these news-saturated events are the smaller ones that pop up from time to time involving nooses and the "N" word.

Ah, yes. Remember Don Imus? Michael Richards? And now, Duane "Dog" Chapman? The Jena 6? Boy, that's a lot of racially-charged stuff going on in the U.S.

I was curious to see what BBC said about Dog; I searched their entire site and only this came up. I searched CNN, and got this, as well as several videos. Not to say our friends across the pond don't have their own reports of racism, as well as most every other country in this world.

So, dear friends, this issue of racism does not revolve around Dog (or any white man using the "N" word), or even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (or any of our admirable black leaders). This is nothing new to the world. Actually, replace the word racism with discrimination, and you'll see that even the issue of racism does not revolve around itself. Being racist is only part of the problem. It's a problem that we all have, in one way, shape or form. Did you ever make fun of the fat kid at school when you were younger? Did you ever talk behind someone else's back (otherwise known as gossip)? Do you purposefully avoid the homeless on the street?

You know what? I've done those three things; I'd be a fool not to admit it. And 99.999% of the readership has done at least one of these things in their lifetime. Admittedly, I don't make fun of obese people any more; I'd much rather talk about my health issues than gossip these days; and after living/visiting in many big cities, I try to carry change and dollar bills with me now. But we are all afraid of someone because they are different from us - not the collective "us," but you and me as individuals. We all have our fears about differences. I know there are women out there who are afraid they would not love their children if they were born mentally retarded. I know some women choose abortion after finding out the baby has the trisomy-23 gene. It is fear that drives discrimination because we like the comforts and belonging we were afforded when growing up.

Discrimination is a constantly simmering pot, just under the skin of every human on this earth - but it's directed at all sorts of people. The obese, the dwarfs; the black, the Chinese; the Hindus, the Muslims; the gays, the lesbians. Black people are not the only ones discriminated against, and I think some people in this country resent the fact that they currently get the most attention in this country when it comes to matters of discrimination. No one gets on CNN when they call someone a towelhead, runts, and "yo mama" jokes (and those are the mild insults, to take into account that this is somewhat of a family blog). Even when these insults are used, they're usually used incorrectly.

People can be changed, though. I know that for sure. I will leave you with these thoughts, however:

"Of course, America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up."- Oscar Wilde

"No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute."-
Paul Gallico, US writer

To wear or not to wear, Part Deux

Remember the whole flap about Sen. Obama taking off his American flag pin? Well, it looks like there are some people trying to catch him again in his "non-patriotic" self.

This is why things taken out of context run rabid in our free press, by the way.

There is a video/snapshot being circulated via email of Sen. Obama at a steak fry in September with Sen. Clinton and Gov. Bill Richardson. The picture shows Clinton and Richardson with their hands over their hearts, while Sen. Obama has his at his sides, appearing as though they are looking towards the American flag. Yet the email alleges that at this point in time, Sen. Obama "refused" to say the Pledge of Allegiance or place his hand over his heart.

Ah, the power of photos, right? They're worth a thousand words? But not a thousand sounds. Sen. Obama responded, rightfully frustrated, "During the Pledge of Allegiance you put your hand over your heart, during the National Anthem you sing." Yes, in that photo at that point in time, they were singing the National Anthem. And he's right. You see folks at the baseball games respectfully remove their hats during the Anthem, and some place their hand over their hearts, but usually they're just singing the lyrics off the Jumbo-Tron while a virtual flag flies in the background. But remember in kindergarten, every morning, you had to get up out of your seat and stare at the American flag posted front and center over the chalkboard, and hold your heart and say the Pledge?

Yes, it seems the most important things we learned were in kindergarten.

Look Both Ways

Remember, today is the end of Daylight Saving Time. Look both ways before you cross the street, because you're more likely to get hit by a car at dusk than before the change. (I'm just happy for the extra hour of work I can do tonight.)

If it's sexy, they will come

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was once quoted as saying that if being environmentally friendly was going to be successful, one had to make it "sexy" and attractive in order for the general population to pick up on it. And he's right, of course. Our hunger for more things and status and bling and the comments like oh-my-God-where-did-you-get-that will only be satiated when Mercedes makes their vehicles hybrids and Calvin Klein uses green energy to produce and deliver everything straight off the runway. Without using carbon credits, Mr. Al Gore, you silly man.

But the real point is that you have to make lots of things sexy for them to become mainstream. You say I can make my own web page, populate it with all things me, and people will come admire it?! MySpace and Facebook, welcome! You mean I can post videos of myself and earn instant viral fame?! YouTube/GodTube/YouPorn, my savior! (Yes, YouPorn really does exist. Yikes.) You mean I can actually learn to be grammatically correct and feel like I'm rubbing elbows with the stars at the same time?! It really does exist!!

My sister-in-law was recently voted by some friends on Facebook to Most Likely Correct One's Grammar, and both of us know where to stick our apostrophes. It seems there is a small movement to get Americans to care about their dangling participles and remember when to use to/two/too. See also Truss, Lynne: Eats, Shoots and Leaves; Grammar Girl; Grammar, Dr.; Grammar Aquarium, The; Grammar Blast; Grammar Bytes; Go Fug Yourself (Lohan, Lindsey). It probably seems ridiculous, but they're out there. No matter what, there is still that tiny movement of people who are silently correcting your storefront windows that say "Come Get You're Free Sample Today!" and loathing the fact that your "apostrophe's" are given possession when they only deserve a bit of plural healing. Let's face it, America has turned into a bunch of grammar slobs, and not to mention the fact that no one has yet made dieting and exercise sexy enough for us to become at least less fat than our First World country counterparts. We like vice. We like torture. We like cheating and guns and big scary vehicles with loud, rumbling, sexy engines. The movies give it all to us; you don't see Mr. and Mrs. Smith driving Prius hybrids as a getaway car, do you?

So, does this kind of "sexation" of the uncool appeal to our deepest, darkest selfish needs? Of course. We all just want to fit in, and being part of the so-called Grammar Police is only a term of admiration from others who just want to forget the sentence diagramming they did for an entire year in 8th grade. But don't worry. Once some of us admit that being green really is sexy and cool, we'll be sitting in the heart of America with the coasts coming closer than ever, bumming cigarettes and smoking them as though we're being watched through a lens, reminiscing about the good ol' days when LA use to shine brighter than the sun. Because that was the cool thing to do.

Allow me to clean that up for you

These kinds of people are why my generation, and Rachel's generation, have to pick up the slack and "save the planet" from imminent warming dangers.

Neighbors in Atlanta are arguing over a man's right granted by the county to erect a 45-ft. high wind turbine on his property, at the price of $15,000, in order to curb his dependence on fossil fuels. Angry detractors have placed signs such as "Trees: Yes, Towers: No" in front of Curt Mann's property, blaming zoning officials for siding with Mann and damaging the historic preservation of the neighborhood, which boasts nearly century-old homes and trees.

I love history in its principle. It is the only reason any of us has made it to this moment in time, and although I find it deadly dull to study, there is something to be said for listening to a grandmother talk about the way things were decades ago, or researching how technology has evolved over the years. It teaches us our mistakes and we use it like a compass, pointing us in the right direction when we can't find our way through new terrain.

But. BUT. It is frustrating when humans fall victim to the folly of wishing for no change, for resisting against forces that require us to keep up, forces that sometimes we pushed into motion but now are unable to stop or even slow down. I do not care for people who cry when their neighborhood landscape is marred by a man's attempt at using nature's other resources to make a better future for his kids, and to adapt to the inevitable: that the fuel our Earth has fed us will run out. That the globe is warming at an alarming rate, perhaps faster than it should be, even if we were on the natural evolution for a warming planet. Watching the polar bears suffer from ice melting. Watching our oceans rise, perhaps threatening coastal cities (New Orleans is too obvious: New York City! San Francisco!) and permanently altering the Earth landscape.

Some argue that Earth is on its natural warming trend, that it goes through cycles of hot and cold, and we're just witnesses to a phenomenon that will happen no matter what. But this is supposed to take hundreds of years. We're measuring changes over the last 50 years - a sliver of time, a mere millisecond in the Earth's lifetime.

And you people are worried about your Victorian houses. A shame. I like me a good Victorian house, for sure, but modern times are everywhere. Why not admire the beauty of the mix of the historical and the modern in one landscape? Why not be thankful for the piece of history that you own, and yet realize that it was the very thing that helped your neighbor point himself in the right direction for what is so desperately needed? When Ford rolled his first car off the assembly line, no one had any clue that the thing spewed toxic gases and would eventually force today's car companies to wonder what we have built our lives around?

All I know is that, when my daughter is my age, what will the landscape look like? Will New Orleans be destroyed for good by then? Will San Francisco and Oakland be half-washed into the ocean because of an earthquake that shook the ocean with a record-sized tsunami? Will New York be a wading pool? The lives of coastal peoples all around the world could be, well, not. Look at Indonesia and the Indian Ocean earthquake that spawned the tsunami that destroyed the lives of thousands. In two decades, what will my daughter's generation have to think of? And will they have the luxury of arguing over their Victorian-era houses' livelihood then?

I think my generation's actions now will prove the answer for that question. I can only hope we point them in the right direction.