My son's house is on the market finally- for what it is and it's price I'm confidant it will sell quickly, though there are a few odds and ends that still need doing. The sign went up in his yard a week ago, and after a day to recover I spent the next one taking care of the lawn and gutters I'd neglected during all the other chaos going on in my life. Today I'm glad as the rain from Tropical Storm Hermine is just south of me now and we're supposed to get up to a foot of it in the next 36 hours or so.
What spare time I've had, snatches of a few minutes here and there I've been reading a memoir. "Last Night I Dreamed of Peace" I heard about in an NPR interview before I retired and bought it last holiday season with a gift card I received. Transcribed from diaries saved by the intelligence officer told to burn them, it is the diaries of a lady doctor serving her country in the combat zones of Vietnam in the late 60's until her death in 1970. I can't help but think of the doctor killed in Afghanistan, Karen Woo. In reading her blog (reference is a link to the story, her name is a link to her blog) I feel guilty sitting here in the relative comfort of my living room...
Dang Thuy Tram's memoir is especially poignant for me as a few years later I was off the Vietnam coast on the Kittyhawk, serving with pilots who probably overflew her and that she refers to in her writing; most certainly with aircraft that did. Her references to "us" have a lot of the same rhetoric I hear being used to describe others by many of "us" today...less than human terms...terms that not only imply a lack of understanding, but a lack of intent to ever understand.
I am always awed by the intolerance of this world...be it by one religion for another...one race for another...awed and sickened!
A beautiful artist I know through this blog world has recently been asked to leave a venue she loved because of someone else's intolerance for her. She has a knack with brush that touches my soul, yet someone can't see the beauty in her work and has decided that she has no right to show it.
I see the news of religious intolerance in New York and Florida...
Churches burning in other states...
Tea Party people asking for instruction manuals for "Wyoming displays" ...
The "enlightenment" I thought was beginning two years ago...a great age of tolerance and understanding that would lead us to great things is being overshadowed by those who fear losing their grip on power, be it the power of money or the power of "control". Those who would rather drag us kicking and screaming back to the 19th century instead of entering the one we are in.
Finally bringing me to my own point of intolerance!
Because I refuse to let them do that...to me, to you; to my grandkids or yours!
"Over the last three years, most victims of terrorism have been Muslim. So there’s not a war between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between extremists and moderates of all the religions. ... What is important is not to live in fear. The most dangerous [thing to do] is to give up and lose hope. The main enemy is not terrorism or extremism, but ignorance"
Queen Rania of Jordan
That applies to so much in this world!
Or, in the words of someone wise beyond his age:
"We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others."
Will Rogers-1924
May the week be kind to each of you!
alan
