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Showing posts from August, 2014

But First, They Are Our Babies

Before I could publish my post about Ferguson, another article popped up in my newsfeed. This time about a 9 year old who shot a shooting instructor at a shooting range: 9 Year Old Shoots Instructor . It actually wouldn’t have bothered me that much- after all, any time you handle a loaded weapon you are risking death- except that the gun she was shooting was a Uzi. A Uzi. The real thing- an automatic weapon preferred by the Israelites in the 1940s. And she could not handle the recoil and started spraying fire, killing her instructor. It’s being called a “tragic accident”. But is it either? To be sure I understood that a 9 year old American girl (please don’t even TRY to compare our children to child soldiers) had been given a Uzi as a recreational toy (and yes, if it is used by a child, it is a TOY).  So I consulted Wikipedia and here is what I read: The   Uzi   ( Hebrew :   עוזי ‎, officially cased as   UZI ) is a family of   Israeli   open-bolt , blowback -operated   submachine gu

The American Dream Home (Spoiler Alert: We Don't Own It.... Or Do We?)

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True Story. I am not a minimalist. Don't be shocked. Over the years, I have read a ton of books about organizing, decluttering, making room for more by having less. I went through a phase when I was a teenager (thus procuring me the nickname "Buddha") when I tried to get rid of everything. I remember reading some novel in which the main character's sister did this, and the parents ended up just sneaking all of her stuff up into the attic. In the story she subsisted on something like three pairs of socks and a pair of jeans. It didn't work out for her. It didn't work out for me. I was fantasizing about living out of a backpack, kind of like a hitchhiker. Doesn't fly for a southern girl. In what kind of world do you not hang on to your mother/aunt/grandmother/someone you met once's....something.     If you've been a reader for a while, this might not sound like anything exciting or new from me. "She's reading a new organizational book, she&