…and devoted it to improving the lives of children who have been born into lives of poverty, violence, and neglect, they could make a world shine. Let me dispel a myth here. Women (the overwhelming majority) who get an abortion do not do so lightly. Nor do they regard abortion as contraception.
Sometimes, it is just not viable to continue the pregnancy to the stage where there is a viable human being.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
I have never had to conn a ship. I believe I could set a bone or butcher a hog, but I wouldn’t enjoy it. Not the point though. The rest I have participated in to some degree, or done thoroughly. So, is this point of view valid? I happen to think so.
Oh, while we are on Heinlein :
“The loss of manners is the first sign of the decay of a society. People lose their manners and then they start voting for cake and circuses (modern welfare and other social programs that put a band aid on a problem instead of fixing it). One of the early sign of the loss of manners is how clean public rest rooms are.”
My youngest child, my small lad, that sweet little zoomy guy, turns five on the 27th. He was a very sick little man when born, a difficult, life saving caesarian, frightening for us both, had to struggle with life and death stuff.
For my sweet lad died at birth. I was pretty ill, so did not realise till after, when they said he was ill but would pull through, just how close I came to not having my tough boy. But tough he is, and with the amazing, magic staff at Flinders NICU, he made it. Two weeks of antibiotics, and one on one care, and he never looked back.
Here is an article discussing the cost of some of the frailer babies we saw in NICU. My close to 6 pound lad looked like a monster baby among them.
Which of them wasn’t worth trying to save?
And again, always, daily thank you to NICU staff, for saving my son, and my sanity. It was two weeks of fear, and huge dramas and I could not have made it without them, or my magic friends.
I enrolled him for school this week. The kindy has said but I already knew, he is very bright, articulate, warm, loving, funny, and clever.
…from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don’t seem to see this.
Personally, I see political correctness as committee madness - a good idea of tolerance and respect completely out of hand, with no humour or sense of proportion.
So, lets throw some of that back in the mix, shall we? And can I just say how much I pine for MST3K to return??? The world has no chance for peace, no happy puppies and kittens, no sunshiny smiles, until it returns. Or something.
…to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
So much change in my life this month.So much more upcoming. May I meet it with grace and dignity, and may I have serenity in doing what must be done.
The moving finger has written and moved on, change again and again to be embraced:)
…for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
Listening to music, pondering my melancholy.
A self indulgent past time, perhaps, but not also not done enough. We rush through life, avoiding grief, looking for quick fixes and relief for pain. Maybe we need to stop, slow, listen to ourselves a bit. Allow that pain and grief to tell us what we need to learn. Acknowledge, accept, and move on to a new tomorrow.
I have found such times to be incredibly valuable. So, allow me the whimsy of sharing this. I feel sorrow, and loss, and I will give it tonight to have its time in the foreground of my mind. Tomorrow, it must give way for the everyday small joys that form my life. For I enjoy my life, it is relatively peaceful after all. I have a vast amount of gratitude for my world, and have little reason for fear or anguish.
I am so lucky that I will, tonight, indulge in the luxury of melancholy.
Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York’s Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897.
“DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?”
VIRGINIA O’HANLON. 115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
…and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.
Merry whatever you celebrate people. I personally keep this time of year as a time to let the kidlets have a blast[1]. So have a good one, and stay safe.
