Tom Brokaw makes a controversial statement

Tom Brokaw makes a controversial statement during a commencement address when he stated that more guns means more terrorism.  While it is true that having a firearm empowers some people to act more quickly to settle a problem by using a weapon against another banning weapons will not prevent acts of terror any more than requiring drivers to have licenses and insurance will prevent traffic accidents.    

sick puppy

     I started on insulin yesterday after 3 months of extra high glucose readings.  The tip of my little finger has experienced some numbness of late and I'm afraid it is a consequence of dupredrens contracture.  In case you are unaware of what that is I'll fill you in.  It is a involuntary curving of the little and ring finger of the hand.  The little finger on my left hand has curved so much that the tip of the finger normally rests in my palm.  I can move it about half an inch.  I am experiencing some curvature in my right hand as well but it may never be a serious problem or it could curl rapidly.

   My concern is that the disease will cause an interruption in the blood flow to my finger so I'm exploring the possibility of amputation.  My father suffered from the same malady and because of his work it caused him problems so he had his amputated. 

  It seems some things that are minor inconveniences when we are young  can become serious problems when we get older.  I have done a good job of controlling my diabetes over the years but the older one gets the harder it is to stay healthy. 
     

Photo controversy highlights black women in Long Gray Line

16 black women just graduated from West Point and posed for a graduation picture in dress uniform, complete with swords, and with their fists raised in the air.  They just didn't understand why the picture would be controversial. 
   During my high school days the band would play a certain song every time the football team scored a touchdown but after integration the song wasn't allowed to be played anymore.  If your relatives fought in the War Between the States and you fly a flag or put up a statue, or belong to an organization that remembers the contributions of those brave soldiers that fought and died in the war, then you are labeled a racist.  You can name any organization after the color of your skin except if you are white and not draw the ire of the community.  One can tell blonde jokes all day long but for goodness sakes don't call anyone "nappy headed" or you will find yourself out of a job and in a lawsuit. 
  I don't know how many women graduated with these 16 in the photo but I am willing to bet there were more and probably some of them were not black women but they were excluded from the photo.  maybe there is no cause to believe the picture was politically motivated but if all the non-black women had taken such a picture then I'm willing to bet it would have been labeled racist and heads would have rolled. 
  There once was a blog entitled "big pieces of chicken" and the writer of that blog complained
that at events at the Greensboro coliseum white did not come over and sit in the same sections black people were sitting in and said it was because white people were racists.  I suggested he swallow his racist pride and go sit in the section s that white people were sitting in that way he could demonstrate his willingness to break the color barrier and show himself friendly.  Racism  works both ways and so does the solutions. 
  When I had a part-time job at a convenience  store, sometimes customers started pumping their gas without using a credit card or pre-paying for the gas.  When customers do that there is always the possibility of a drive-off.  One evening after the sun had gone down, business was extremely slow and it had been a while since I had a customer but about the same time two people pulled up to the gas pump.  One was pump 10 and started pumping   gas without prepaying or using a credit card.  Pump 10 is the pump most likely to have a drive-off as it is futherest from the store and harder to see a license tag.   The driver was also young, the age group most likely to leave without paying.  That particular customer was also female, pretty, and dressed in a bikini.  The other driver was pumping gas on pump six and was a middle aged black male who had used a credit card at the pump.  Pump 6 was in direct line of sight to pump 10. 
   I wasn't interested in him as he had pre-paid via credit card for his gas but the other driver was a different story.  Besides being attractive she was a potential risk and for that reason I watched her to insure she didn't drive off.  Of course, the man came into the store and started accusing me of being racist because I was watching him.  I asked him to look at pump 10 and then decide who I was watching.  He left but didn't apologize. 
  All I'm saying is that what one looks at as racist isn't always so but sometime what one doesn't see is.   

Another stupid article

MSN has an article titled "23 foods we have been eating wrong our entire lives".  I don't know about you but I just open my mouth, shovel something in, chew and swallow.  Anyone do it differently?

A different South

     This isn't the South that I grew up in.  I grew up in the rural South where it seemed everyone went to church, policemen were former neighborhood bullies or those that were to much of a drunk to keep driving their cabs, where blacks had their own neighborhood and place, where ruthless bank robbers could be hero's but  most citizens were so honest stores sold newspapers on the honor system.  There were lots of things to like about the old South and there were a lot of things to not like also. 
   For one thing, why good church going people who believed Jesus died on the cross for everyone still found it justifiable to exclude a good portion of society from dignity.  Even if the races remained separate everyone deserved to be treated with the same amount of respect.  The majority had no cause to hate the minority.  Even so, the redneck, outhouse owning, backward living barefoot half toothless character of cartoons were far from what the average Southerner was like.  That idea is as far from what a Southerner truly is as the idea that a Yankee is an educated, tolerate, highly advanced form of life that can drive in three feet of snow with nary a problem.  Being more subtly about ones vices doesn't make them more virtuous. 
   Honestly, I miss the old South.  Not the part about separate but equal because there was nothing equal or fair about that policy.  Today even with integration the equal part just doesn't seem to exist.  It's been a hundred and fifty years since there were legal slaves in the country.  I believe it is past time both races forget and forgive that part of our heritage.  The part of the South that I miss was the part were family's stayed together and gathered at Grandma's house on Sunday's after church for a chicken dinner and a soda in the back yard under the shade tree. 
  I miss the part where strangers said hello to each other and were often seen stopping to help one another.  I miss the part where a man's hand shake and his word meant something.  I suppose that part of the South has moved on too and now times have given away  to an era of selfishness where people want to act like they want to act and one has to force them to behave, where people do illegal and immoral things but the people who are hated are the ones who stand up for what is right. 

National Association of the Easily offended

  I go to the YMCA for an arthritis exercise class done in the heated pool.  Sometimes one of the men who used the pool or the gym will come into the locker room and parade around in full nakedness as if I would really enjoy looking at their nude and wrinkled body, which I do not.  I know that some exposure will happen when people get into a confined area in which they have to shower and change clothes but there is no reason to walk to ones locker which is on the bottom and bend over while totally naked when their is a person sitting on a bench   putting on his shoes. 
   I totally understand that such behavior is offensive and can be avoided.  But that is not the kind of offensive practices I am referring to.  I am talking about intellectual intrusion where my thoughts or ideas are deemed offensive to you yet you feel that your thoughts and ideas are enlightened and
should be accepted by me.    I'm sorry about that but I have already been down the road where I questioned my beliefs, studied the alternatives, and applied them to my life and am sure of the results.  It is your right to disagree with me but not to call me names and bring hurt to me in one or more ways because my belief system is different.