This and That

Oh, dear God, let this election be over soon.  I am so tired of political ads (and we aren't even getting Obama or Romney ads here in Northern California).  I'm tired of talking heads.  I'm tired of lying politicians. I'm tired of zillions of dollars spent on negative ads.  I'm tired of Newt Gingrich and his smirk.

I watched the debate tonight and don't even know how I think about it.  Chris Matthews on MSNBC was positively apoplectic about what he saw as a weak performance by Obama.  I was depressed about Jim Lehrer's failure to "moderate" and allowing Romney to hijack the debate.  

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I haven't been out in the last couple of days, but Walt tells me that from Monday morning to Wednesday afternoon, our gas price jumped 21 cents, from $4.19 a gallon to $4.40 a gallon.  I later heard from someone else that it is anticipated that it will jump another twenty cents in the next week.  It's a good thing we only have one car and that Walt bikes most of the places he needs to go in town.

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Walt did need the car to drive to nearby Woodland, where the county courthouse is, on Monday when he was called for jury duty.  We were hoping the case would be dismissed, but it went forward so it was Tuesday before he was finally dismissed (he's not sure why, but thinks it might have been because I work for the newspaper).   

Peach and I had planned to finally have another cousins day (we haven't had one since about April), but that had to be canceled since I wouldn't have a car.   We are going to do it next week, though, so we just have to hold on until then.

The plan is to finally take Kathy's ashes out to San Francisco Bay to scatter them.  The 14th is the first anniversary of her death so this is a good week to finally take her "home" after all this time.  There may be a problem, though.  We were going to scatter her ashes when we were last at my mother's, but the weather was bad, so we postponed it.  Instead of taking the ashes back to her own house, Peach decided to just leave them there at my mother's.  Only now my mother has no recollection of Peach leaving them and doesn't have a clue where they are.  Peach doesn't remember what she did with them either, so we may spend a good part of our Cousins Day searching for Kathy!

(Walt is convinced that my mother threw them away!)

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October is National Bullying Prevention Awareness month.  As someone I read today pointed out every month should be bullying prevention awareness month.  The blog I was reading told the sad story of 16 year old Dylan Lynn, who committed suicide last week.  Ron Kemp, the author of the blog, has devoted his time to making people aware of bullying incidents and the suicides which often accompany them.  Dylan was just the first story I read.  It was followed by the story of a young lesbian beaten up by a 15 year old football player, fracturing her jaw.  A young girl in Melbourne, Australia died of suicide after a barrage of email attacks encouraging her to kill herself.

In Pennsylvania last month there were four teen suicides within seven days, all within a 30 miles radius, and all listed bullying as the precipitating cause.   Two were 13, one was 15 and one was 16.  My heart aches for the parents.

It is heartening to see that the subject of bullying is getting more attention in the media, but suicide is still the #1 cause of death among young people (beating out auto accidents) and with the ability to bully anonymously on the internet, the cases will continue to rise.

We would all do well to become informed about what is going on, to speak out whenever we see instances of bullying, whether of adults of young people (but especially of young people).  Too many beautiful lives are being lost to the thoughtless, cruel taunts of others.

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Finally....

~~ HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STEVE ~~