Quote of the week: ''To leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you lived -- that is to have succeeded.'' Ralph Waldo Emerson
What a vacation. Sun, sand, and sin. Navarre Beach, Fla. The prettiest white sand in all of Florida. And the greatest thing about it, no one was there. No crowds. Everybody there thinks it's winter. Idiots. Actually, there were a lot of fascinating things in the area. One day, driving down the road in Pensacola Beach, we saw Jesus walking down the sidewalk. He was wearing a white robe and carrying a cross. There was blood on his robe. This kind of thing scares me. If it were around Easter I could understand, but after checking the calendar, it was clear this was no Easter reenactment. So what can you say, I just saw Jesus. Further down the road, we see a space ship sitting on top of a house. No big deal, probably some old hippie burnt out on LSD and couldn't resist the temptation, building his drug-induced dream home. Anyway, I almost forgot the whole thing. We're heading back to winter, crossing the bridge connecting Pensacola to Pensacola Beach, when low and behold, we spot another Jesus, standing amongst the fishermen on the bridge. Now I get really nervous, especially with the fishing thing. It all starts to come together, Jesus, a space ship and fishing. I looked to the road map for a possible answer to this puzzling situation: Just where the hell am I?
Walking along the beach can be very relaxing. I got way down the beach one day, probably two miles from the condo we were staying at, on a remote stretch of beach along a designated national seashore. No one had warned me about a nude beach. There were all men there. I'm not exactly sure what this meant, but I have a good notion. Anyway, this one old fart was way up on the beach, standing there facing the ocean with a boner. Not suspecting anything like this, I was a bit surprised, to say the least. I figured he had just taken a viagra and couldn't help himself, or he was showing it off to the ocean. Either way, I was sorry to have entered his ecstasy. I turned around and headed back.
Every time we got lost, I was driving. I'm sick and tired of it.
Attorney General John Ashcroft attempts to stop doctor-assisted death in Oregon. This is a state that legally voted to allow doctors to assist the terminally ill to die, if they so chose. Their decision doesn't fit into Ashcroft's neatly woven right-wing Christian outlook on life. Fortunately, a federal judge stopped his one-man crusade. While America chases the terrorists of the world, our own brand of terror will creep forward in Washington. You can count on Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Powell, and W.George to push their right-wing agenda, hoping most of America doesn't notice while swept up in a patriotic frenzy.
Revenge will not heal our grief. There is no bomb ever built that will extinguish hatred.
We no sooner got home from our vacation, and we got a call that our niece had been killed in an auto accident. This is my brother-in-law's only daughter. She must be somewhere around thirty. What a terrible thing, to see a light gone dim so early. There is a hundred things I would like to tell his family. To take heart, to have faith, to remember the good times. But the only thing I can manage to utter is I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry.