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I hope your Christmas preparations are going well and almost done. I wrapped all but one gift last night and am going to finish making and wrapping the last gift this afternoon. I’m only traveling about 10 miles to my sister’s house, so I have time. For those of you who are traveling farther than that, please have a safe trip. Merry Christmas from my house to yours!
I live in a really politically and ecologically conscious town. We have recycle bins that that city picks up with our garbage, a farmer’s market every Saturday downtown, and political and ecological bumper stickers are seen all over. I hardly ever notice them anymore. But I saw one today that caught my eye … and made me giggle. It said “A woman’s place is in the House… and the Senate.” I’ll skip the lengthy feminist diatribe and just say I loved it!
I am being so incredibly scatterbrained today! (My sister and I call it having a really A.D.D. day… I seriously do think I have adult A.D.D. sometimes!) Anyway… I’d been doing laundry this morning and put the sheets off my bed into the washing machine. I got a set of clean sheets out of the closet and started making my bed back up. Somehow I got distracted by the Christmas tree ornaments laying on the floor in the living room that needed to be put on the tree. So I decorated the Christmas tree. About an hour later I walked into my bedroom and had to laugh at myself. My bed was only half made up. The bottom sheet was on, the top sheet was halfway unfolded and spread out, and the blanket and comforter were still sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed. I don’t really remember why I walked away in the middle of making the bed up… I’m sure I had some perfectly reasonable explanation at the time.
After doing laundry and decorating the tree I put on some Christmas music and wrote out about half of my Christmas cards. It’s fun to be in the Christmas mood!
I have no clue what my deal is with blogging about sad news stories lately… My life is going very well and I’m happier than I’ve been in a while. I guess it’s just the abundance of those tragic news stories out there. Anyway, this 16 year old boy in California was recently found in just just boxer briefs with a shackle on his ankle and covered in soot and looking very emaciated. He had escaped from the home where he had been kept captive for approximately a year and walked into a gym in search of help. The couple who kept him against his will are in jail and charged with multiple felony counts. They beat his knees with a baseball bat and burned him with a metal baseball bat heated in a fireplace. As the story unfolds, he came to their home by way of his aunt who had legal custody of him. It turns out she had been given legal custody because his father had been found guilty of beating him! What tragic irony that he’d been removed from one abusive situation only to find himself in another living hell. I can only hope someone realizes how important some professional mental health help is going to be to this boy in his future. Not one but a total of four adults he should have been able to trust to protect him abused him in horrible ways. There’s no way that can’t leave some serious psychological scars.
Do any of you remember Paul Harvey’s “The rest of the story” show? Where he took a news story and delved more into the details of it and ended with “And that… is the rest of the story.”? Well, this is my version of doing that. I just read an article stating that the family of the WalMart employee trampled to death on Black Friday is bringing a wrongful-death lawsuit against WalMart for not providing ample security in the frenzied atmosphere they knew was going to occur. (That’s my paraphrasing the actual wording in the article.) Interesting, no? I had said if I were his family I would be furious at the senselessness of the whole situation. Apparently they are indeed angry. And rightfully so. Another interesting detail is that this man, Jdimytai Damour, was 6 ft 5 inches tall and weighed 270 lbs. That’s a whole lot of body mass for people to have literally walked right over while he was lying on the ground dying. It’s not as though they could have missed that amount of body mass. And unfortunately I’m not the only one who thinks it’s unlikely that any specific shopper who trampled him will be held responsible in a court of law. A county police commissioner in the county where this happened has said that criminal charges are unlikely. How sad.
First of all, a belated Happy Thanksgiving to all of you! I had a most wonderful holiday and am truly blessed to have so many things to be thankful for. It was my first holiday spent with my family in three years and it was special. Now, on to what’s on my mind… The entire world’s gone crazy! A WalMart employee at a store about 20 miles east of Manhattan died Friday morning as Black Friday shopping was beginning. He was trampled to death by shoppers swarming into the store as he opened the doors. Witnesses reported the doors were literally ripped off their hinges. The man was only 34 years old. How incredibly sad… what a senseless death. What is even more appalling is the fact that witnesses stated that when the police told shoppers they needed to close the store to investigate and move the man’s body, they complained that they’d been waiting in line for several hours and attempted to continue to shop! Does human life have such little value to these idiots? Who in their right mind would think that saving a few dollars and getting your Christmas shopping done is more important that this man’s life? I’m sorry, folks, but human life trumps saving money every time! I can’t imagine how angry this man’s family and friends must be. Angry at the senseless loss of his life, and angry at the fact that most likely no one will ever be held responsible in a court of law for his death. There were just too many shoppers, too many people involved, and it would just be too difficult to identify and prosecute every single one of them. I know that would make me very angry if it were my loved one. I pray for his family and friends that they might find some way to come to terms with that has happened.
