Just Thinking

I spent most of the day outside in the garden. It is a beautiful spring day, cool but sunny, and everything is erupting with growth and color. Most of all I love the glowing greens of spring, as trees and shrubs and perennials begin the leaf out, and the grass is lush. I want my spirit to soar with the beauty of the season, but I feel like there is a cloud over me much of the time. At my last visit to physical therapy, I was given an exercise that has aggravated my back problem. I had the nerve pressure under control, but now it is back. I'm having trouble sitting anywhere but my recliner without feeling symptoms in my foot and leg. It nags at me as I try to go about my normal activities. I am conflicted about the national debate over what to do about the wrong doings of the previous administration. We tortured people, probably to extract false evidence for justifying a disastrous war. Should the people responsible go free? I personally don't need severe punishment or revenge, but I do need to have the whole truth told, the facts revealed. These are crimes we do not want to have repeated. As bad as war and torture are, we have an even bigger problem. We live in a violent society, with more than a thousand deaths per year in the last ten years due to gun violence. And yet we dare not take on the gun lobby? We're going to let criminals and crazy people buy guns at gun shows without background checks? It's OK to let them have assault weapons? Even if our police are being out gunned? This is not OK with me. As a retired teacher, I shudder over the cuts that will have to be made in the schools in our state because of the downturn in the economy. We all know that free public education is the foundation of our democracy, and that we have more and more severe problems to deal with in public schools. Our schools are under-resourced now, let alone after more cuts. And yet we have people staging "tea parties", objecting to paying their taxes. They don't like this, they don't like that, they don't approve of the bail out. They don't know what they're talking about, and they revel in perpetuating their own ignorance. Well, the sun is still shining. I'll go for a walk after dinner. Then we'll pack up and be ready to head for Whidbey Island tomorrow for a few days. The problems won't be solved while I'm gone, but I'm going to work on ignoring them for a while. See you later.