|
Post by Hunny on Apr 18, 2013 22:27:58 GMT
All of us go through many changes in our life; from the moment we're born our life continually develops and throws up opportunities and obstacles. A baby has to learn to walk, talk, make sense of the world around, learn to evaluate other people and slowly to develop their own philosophy of life. Then as the hormonal changes kick in they have to adapt to the discovery of sexuality in their teens. And after that it's trying to find jobs, homes, establish relationships and so on. None of it's easy and most of the time we have to go into a kind of adaptational mode of approach.
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that we can't always have what we want. We also have to learn to tell the difference between wants and needs and we have to learn that sometimes we have to show a duty of care and responsibility towards other people even if we don't like them. At one stage in his life my father worked as a prison guard and some of the men in his care were guilty of terrible crimes. Even so he treated them all with humanity and tried to avoid letting his personal feelings affect the way he did his job.
In my own life I've seen huge changes; as a teenager I was stupid, violent and behaved appallingly badly. I took drugs, dealt drugs, belonged to a gang and committed a number of crimes. Then I saw sense but not unfortunately before I'd done a lot of bad things.
I suppose it's an interesting question about what my personal identity is. Am I the same woman now as I was when I was a teenage wild child? In some ways I suppose I am but in other ways I've changed out of all recognition.
I've still got the same lousy temper I've always had; I can still look after myself if it comes to the rough stuff; I can completely understand how and why a lot of young gangsters do what they do; but of course I've moved on in my own life and I'm married with two kids and nowadays I don't behave the same way. I still like to visit young offenders from time to time - about four times a year now, sadly, with so many other pressures on my time over the last couple of years - and try to help them turn their lives around. If anyone thinks I'm so kind of saint or do-gooder they couldn't be more wrong about me; I'm just a deeply flawed person who wants to try and do a little to give back to society for all the bad things I did when I was young.
Societies change as well as individuals. I've seen so much change in Britain over the last ten years it's almost like walking into a new planet. But overall I think most of the change has been for the better. Yes, I wish our economy was in better shape but most countries could say the same. Yes, I wish we could have world peace, an end to hunger and political freedom for everybody. But I honestly believe that overall the world is changing slowly for the better in spite of all the attempts that people ranging from religious extremists, political terrorists and downright criminals are making to try and stop those inevitable changes. But I don't think you can fight history; what's now the past was once the future. We'll move onwards and upwards and I'm an optimist; I believe the human race will get it right and that eventually the world will be better for every one of us. _________________________________________________________________________________________ Some people have never had to struggle. They will never know what it's like to work on a farm until their hands are raw, just so people can have fresh marijuana.Instead of trying to build newer and bigger weapons of destruction, we should be thinking about getting more use out of the ones we already have..
The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw. When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did - in his sleep. Not yelling and screaming like the passengers in his car. To me, it's always a good idea to carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, "Hey, can you give me a hand?," you can say, "Sorry, got these sacks."Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself, "mankind". Basically it's made up of two separate words, "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.________________________________________________________________________________ Delusions of A Hopeful Pessimist by Sadie1263 Sadie is married, with three grown sons and nine dogs. She works for a family business, loves reading (just about everything), watches a lot of TV and does a lot of dog walking!!
I have struggled with what to write since the Boston bombing. I believe we have two directions we can go. We can become bitter, more intolerant or live in cages of our own making.....or we can put more good out into the world. We can reach out to that neighbor we’ve never bothered to meet. We can take the time to learn about other cultures and beliefs then relying on other people to feed us their opinions. We don’t have to give up our own beliefs for others. Just understand that their can be other opinions and other lifestyles for other people.
I found this story on CNN......and to me it was rather beautiful.
“Comedian-actor Patton Oswalt may not seem the most likely person to soothe the wounded national psyche after the deadly bombs that struck the Boston Marathon. Oswalt has no obvious ties to Boston, and he makes a living telling jokes, not comforting the afflicted.
But Oswalt's eloquent thoughts about the attacks, which he posted Monday afternoon to his Facebook page, have been widely passed around the Internet as an inspiring testament to humankind's inherent goodness in the face of evil.
"I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, 'Well, I've had it with humanity.' But I was wrong,' " wrote Oswalt, best known as the voice of Remy the rat from "Ratatouille" and for playing Spencer on TV's "The King of Queens."
"This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness," he wrote.
"But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.
"So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, 'The good outnumber you, and we always will.' "
As of Tuesday morning, Oswalt's post had received more than 260,000 Likes and had been shared more than 200,000 times.
It has also garnered more than 10,000 comments on Facebook. Among them was this one, from a woman in Annapolis, Maryland:
"Sharing this message. This is exactly what I told my children last night. The good will always outnumber the bad. My husband was there and is safe. But my heart is just broken for those who are not."
We must all continue to be the light in the darkness.___________________________________________________________________________________________ mikemarshall
Husband to BigLin who founded the site, Mike Marshall is a retired college lecturer with a PhD in Philosophy. He and Lin have been together 15 years - married for 12 - and have a son who's eleven and a daughter aged seven. They make their way together, buying and renovating real estate to sell and let. Here is another brilliant article which he was kind enough to write for us.
The legacy of Margaret Thatcher I imagine some people may well expect me to be one of those people who are having celebratory parties on the event of her death.
That is not at all how I feel.
Margaret Thatcher was a complex individual who in my opinion was motivated by many undesirable impulses - greed, snobbery, an inferiority complex, jealousy, resentment and a compulsion always to be right.
On the other hand it would be both foolish and ungenerous not to recognise that she had genuine achievements to her credit.
I was a teenager when she became leader of the Conservative Party and I found her election an inspired choice. It made me think that perhaps a woman could rise to the highest office in my country.
Then in 1979 at my very first General Election I was among those who voted her into power.
i saw the state of the country and felt that she would probably be able to do a better job than Callaghan (whom I utterly detested).
Following their electoral defeat Labour went mad. They chose Michael Foot as leader and the party became dominated by the likes of Tony Benn, Derek Hatton and similarly obnoxious Stalinist and Trotskite types.
It became impossible to consider Labour as a serious party of government and then the Argentines invaded the Falkland Islands.
This was a big test of will; a fascist military junta had invaded part of our Commonwealth and the situation had to be dealt with. The likes of Benn called for negotiation which in reality (as that loathsome and despicable hypocrite knew perfectly well) was a code word for surrender.
Thatcher did not hesitate; she announced that she would retake the islands and restore them to democracy and self-government. She managed to do so after a surprisingly bloody campaign and also brought down the Argentine fascists. Democracy was restored in that country so two birds were in effect killed with one stone.
In 1983 the Labour election manifesto was famously described by the Marxist Eric Hobsbawn as 'the longest suicide note in history.' Not ALL the proposals it contained were bad but overwhelmingly it was the product of minds utterly detached from reality who were clearly incapable of being trusted with the realities of power.
For the second time I voted Conservative in 1983.
Then things began to turn ugly. The miners' strike was fueled by a combination of her own authoritarian obstinacy and rigidity coming up against the equally inflexible Marxism of the lunatic Arthur Scargill. He chose to strike when the country had record stocks of coal, when the weather was mild and temperate and - crucially - REFUSED to hold a ballot of his members.
The miners in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire angrily demanded a vote. They told Scargill that if he held a ballot they would support strike action but if he refused they would not. Scargill, every bit as authoritarian as Thatcher, refused.
The result was that most miners in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire defied the unofficial strike and continued working.
Scargill immediately condemned them as scabs and blacklegs but made his own hypocrisy clear by deliberately walking through picket lines himself when his female office workers at the union went on strike for higher pay. He told them contemptuously that they were only women and that they should just shut up and get on with making the tea and typing letters for the men of the union.
The strike was disastrous on every level; it destroyed the power of the strongest union in Britain, allowed Thatcher to adopt the most draconian tactics against strikers seen since the nineteenth century and destroyed our country's coal industry.
In spite of this and the bitterness caused by the strike which will probably not go away for at least a generation she won the election in 1987 largely because the economy had started to recover. This time round I did NOT vote for her but chose instead to vote for the Alliance (a merger of the now defunct Social Democratic Party with the Liberal Party).
in her third term of office the rigidity, authoritarianism and incipient megalomania that had dogged for her years led her to become not simply increasingly confrontational but increasingly unbalanced in her judgement. Her instability was clearly leading the Tories towards electoral defeat so eventually a palace coup took place and she was effectively deposed. Technically she resigned but had she not done so she would have been humiliated in the second ballot so she reluctantly stood down.
Her achievements were perhaps less obvious than her faults; she was at least always sincere and passionate and she HAD beliefs rather than waiting for her spin doctors to advise her. She genuinely thought - IMO mistakenly - that her economic policies were the right ones for the country and in some respects I concur.
There is little doubt that unions now are less corrupt, authoritarian and inflexible than they were in Thatcher's time. Unfortunately they also have so little power now that their proper role as a group arguing for workers' rights is now extremely difficult to maintain.
There is little doubt that her Euroescepticism was ahead of its time in many ways although she did sign the Treaty of Maastricht which represented a huge abandonment of British sovereignty.
On the debit side she destroyed British manufacturing, introduced a number of repressive laws and created a culture of greed, envy, snobbery and aspiration.
I was as pleased to see her leave office in 1990 as I had been to see her enter No 10 in 1979.
Her approach to politics resembled that of the military commanders during the Crimean and Boer Wars - if a strategy was not working it had to be continued with because it clearly had not had time to work yet.
A very sad comment on an intelligent and complex woman who was neither the monster her detractors would have us believe nor the saviour of our country that her admirers proclaim.
The Road Beckons
-by Linda Marshall
your outstretched arms invite me to walk along your surfaces, so I approach, coming nearer to the camber that shrouds you and shields your glistening heart of green and brown from the waking world where do you lead? what if I should follow your invitation?? your precise fingers call me out with the insistent beat of a military drum but for what coming war? oh, every day you change yourself as snakes slough their skins. the tread of feet, the tyres of vehicles, the hammer of rain, the cold scarf of snow all change you. and it is only for that instant when my feet upon your surface tread a path of discovery that you, at least for a moment, take me for your bride __________________________________________________________________________________ ODD NEWS !!!Woman Feels Sexier Since Growing Out Her Beard, Now Looking For LoveMan Awarded $1.6M Because He Has Frogs In His YardTwo-thirds of the world's lawyers live in the United States.Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."The French Kiss isn’t from France; it’s actually a slur against the nation. In the 1920s, the English derided the French as the kind of people who’d go around sticking their tongues where they didn’t belong._______________________________________________________________________________MEMBER INTERVIEWS___________________________________________Our Member of The MonthDonna!Congratulations! ___________________________________________Tell us how you discovered the internet, and a brief history of where you've been online. Originally just looking for information. Then I found yahoo groups, then various websites on issues that interested me and finally blogs and forums. Tell us about your family?I'm married with two daughters and a son. My eldest daughter is not my husband's child but he's brought her up as his own for some years now and never treated her any different from his own two kids. Please tell us your three favorite things in life?I love country walks, love writing and love traveling. Tell us some favorite advice or lesson you got along the way?My Mum told me always to try and stay focused and humorous because that way you're better off when you get bad times coming. Do you play a musical instrument? No, I can't play any but I love listening to music! Did you play sports in school?Yes, I was quite good at running and the high jump and long jump. I wasn't bad at netball either! Did you get into trouble as a kid? Any stories you can tell?As a kid, only ordinary, stuff - but of course when I turned 18 things really turned upside down for a while. My childhood wasn't much out of the ordinary to be honest. Do you like to cook?Yes, I love it. I'm always trying new recipes and my family always say I'm very good at it! What's your fondest wish?Well, that's a toughie; in one way I'd like to turn back the clock to when I was 18, but then I'd never have had my wonderful eldest daughter. Other than that I'd like to see a fairer society - boring, I know! Oh, and I wouldn't mind winning the lottery! Your favorite material possession(s)?Jewelry and make-up! Oh, and my CD collection! What genre of entertainment do you like best? Comedy. (But I like thrillers and horror too!) Do you have any funny or strange tales to tell, things that happened along the way?Funny or strange tales - well, not that I can call to mind right away. (Though I'm sure I saw a ghost in the woods a few years ago!) If there is one thing you are absolutely passionate about, what is it?One thing I'm passionate about - only one? I can think of lots - my family, my faith (I found that God helped me pull through after tragedy struck my life at 18) and my political views (even if they do defy description and certainly I'll never be a single party type of person!) __________________________________________________________________ By Donna
Married, with three children - a son and two daughters - Donna works part-time as an office cleaner, loves the countryside, West Ham United Football Club and politics. In her spare time she writes as much as she can as well as running three yahoo groups, four blogs and two other forums!
Pioneers I've always been fascinated by the stories of the old pioneers of the Wild West - not just the stuff you see on Westerns but the whole movement of wives and children. Women played a huge part in settling the new lands of America and I often wish I could have been one of them. In the same way I've always been fascinated by science fiction and fantasy that's set in a pioneering type of context with an alternative type of society not all that different from the days of the wagon trains or whatever.
All over the world there's trouble but I'm still full of hope for the future. We're seeing the death-pangs of the old order and just as a wounded animal is at its most dangerous so the old dinosaurs of socialism, communism, feminism, capitalism and religious fundamentalism are making a last stand to oppress us all so to the new wave of pioneers of the future are raising their heads with the certainty that the time of the old ways is going forever.
Yes, our world is run by a lot of dodgy people and they certainly don't have our best interests at heart. But every political and economic system eventually dies and that's what happening now.
People make a fetish out of money but money's nothing in itself. You can't eat money or clothe yourself in money. All it is about money is what you can do with it.
Like I said I often dream about being a pioneer, living off the land, being self-sufficient, growing my own food and so on. The way things are set up in Britain you either become a wage slave or a welfare druggie. Neither of them is for me or my hubby and I don't want them for our kids either.
When capitalism finally dies it won't be money that matters any more.
It will be skills, savvy, resources that count.
And we, the pioneers, will be ready and waiting for that gladsome day.
Society will be very different from what it is now. Better, I think
You can stay in a rut and think and act like the herd or you can go to the top of the mountain and look at the world around you.
The new world will belong to the pioneers of the future, the ones who didn't follow the masses or thought right outside the parameters of prejudice and convention
I may not live to see it but my kids will inherit the new heaven and earth that's coming sure as eggs is eggs.
Pioneers, onwards and upwards!
A bright new future awaits us all!
____________________________
Bits & Pieces CONTRIBUTING STAFF Big Lin MikeMarshall Sadie1263 Hunny Donna Chips
__________________________________________________ If you have anything you'd like to submit for next month's issue, send it to Hunny (click). Copyrighted material re-printed herein is with permission, or for purpose of review or education, by allowance - in the U.S. - of the Fair Use Act. We do not claim ownership of said material. Our writers do claim copyright of their own material, by-lined or not. To contact the Editor, click here.
|
|