Aspies For Freedom

I had a nice easter 2008, but I was short on sleep (after the bug spray man sprayed my empty kitchen cabinets and drawers, and I wet wiped them, I laid down shelf liner on maybe a third of them and put the breakable dishes and cookware and all utensils back where they should go, until 3 AM).  Oh well, I made the best of it.

I made it to the 9:30 church breakfast at 9:45 (a buffet of sausage patties, scrambled eggs, French toast, coffee cake, fruit salad, chocolate Easter bunnies, rolls, and pastries).  I felt sleep deprivation kicking in so I napped a little before Sunday service, then tried to stay awake for service.  They were still serving what was left from breakfast at fellowship time after the service, so I had a French toast and drove home 1 mile while I was still refreshed and slept from noon to 4:30 PM, cat keeping me company.  I was supposed to meet my ex-girlfriend for Easter dinner in Woodbridge at 2 PM but I slept longer than I had planned.

Apologies made, and fully rested, I drove the 20 miles to Woodbridge down I-95.  Traffic was fairly light until I hit the bottleneck at Newington/7100 (you lose a lane and traffic tries to adjust).  We slowly drove past an accident scene: someone crunched someone else's rear trunk pretty bad so he must have been speeding, and a cop was there probably writing him a big ticket.   I eventually made it to exit 56 (Potomac Mills) and greeted my ex-gf and her mom: good that I am on good terms with both.  I took her to Bob Evans, mom wishing us protection with saints and angels.

The dinner was dutch treat (each taking our own bill).

I had the sliced turkey with bread dressing and mashed potatoes, all with gravy, green beans and ham, cranberry granish on lettuce, and rolls with butter, and diet Coke.  For dessert, I had a coconut cream pie a la mode.

She had the single-piece fried chicken dinner, mashed potatoes, carrots, biscuits and butter, and diet Coke.  For dessert, she had a cherry cobbler a la mode.  

We left at 8 PM, there wasn't time for a movie afterward, so I returned home, did some shopping, and went to bed to try to pay back the sleep debt.

Well I hope you recover quickly.

I have to have flu and pneumonia shots.  It is a part of type 2 diabetes.  That means almost no sick leave.  Except for the rare noravirus (vomiting spells for 24 hours) and the exceptional physical injury (like an ankle sprain last August, which put me to bed for a day).

What movie did you see Guess who?

I had a quiet Easter - can't really remember what I did - I've got essays to write - so I did try to spend some time reading and gathering information. I enjoyed sitting in the sun, house work - gardening - visiting parents. Lazy time.
I have a precious kitty asleep on my lap. He's purring. A treat.

oops --- what movie did you miss Chris

We didn't even make it to the theater to check.  We tried checking movie listings in the Washington Post.  I went through it carefully but found nothing, not even in the Arts section (ex gf laughing as I went, I nonchalantly suggested she look when we got to restaurant, she suggested we could look when we got to the cinema).  

Cat tries to go in the kitchen cabinets at floor level, even if there are no bugs or mice.  Cat is just curious.

I'm going to see Stop Loss when I can.  It is about the soldiers who are in the Army on multiple tours, even when their contracts say they should be home, and the toll on their relationships back home.

The Army never planned for this.  They presumed by now we'd have the draft.  The people aren't having any of it.

Our soldiers are fighting for freedom.  The freedom of military age men and women to stay out of the military and war, especially the privileged and the sons of the political elite.

That would be sad movie, I don't know if I could watch it, too sad.
The draft would be another inhumanity place on top of the disaster already in place.
There is much understated wisdom in your last sentence. You should be a war correspondent.

I think it is nice that you and your ex are still good friends and get to share special occassions together.

My kitty kept me awake last night, he was determined to sleep on top of me by my neck - his purring was really loud.

The soldiers are fighting almost for my freedom.

I was 31 when the Twin Towers fell.  If I was the President in 2001, I would have asked Congress nicely for The Draft, just in case (simply the conscription of men 18 to 25 as is provided for under the existing framework).

Others think The Draft should go to 35 for men.  Others same for men and women.

Congressman Charles Rangel says men and women age 42 (which would make a soldier of me yet at 37), but his agenda is not millions and millions of boots, his point is that we have an Army top heavy of poor people and racial minorities with too few rich kids white kids and politician kids, and George Bush feels free (liberal if I may say so) to have an aggressive foreign policy as long as Jenna and Barbara don't have to be part of it.  Maybe W would cool down the foreign policy if it was possible he could have a daughter come home in a body bag, Rangel reasons, when he suggests the universal draft as a way of respecting everybody's children for the time when war is really unavoidable.

I read Charles Rangel's interview in Playboy.  Rangel served in Korea.

Actually, thinking about it. Even the rebirth of Jesus could have some grounding in ancient fertility rites. (It brings to mind the "death" and life cycle of the Greek underworld queen, Persephone.) I didn't get this from anywhere -- just from thinking.

As for me, I haven't celebrated Easter for years. (At least since I moved to Japan didn't even know when Easter was while I was there.)

I think that it is a good idea for festivals to be celebrated together, even if the same festival means different things to different peoples at different times!

The ancient Celtic world had four main festivals; as each new day started at sunset, thus the day followed the night, so each new year started at the beginning of the dark half of the year 'Gamh' i.e. the first of November. As this was the 'gap between the years' the dead could move around freely, which is the basis of the ghosts of Hallowe'en.

Then each quarter year was dedicated to a different god or goddess;

1st February:Brigit, goddess of fertility, learning and healing.
1st May: Beltaine, after Bel, god of fire and the first day of the bright half of the year, 'Samh'.
1st August: Lughnasad, after Lugh, god of the harvest. I have a grandson named Lughaidh.


I do not know where other festivals were celebrated, or when; the Christian calendar adopted so many from different cultures. It was easier to turn an existing festival into a Christian one, on the pretext of it being the anniversary of Christ's birth or death, for example, than it was to forbid its celebration outright; as Cromwell found out when he tried to ban Christmas.

By the time Christianity took hold in Britain, the country was a hodge-podge of assorted races, cultures and religions thanks to the Roman occupation.

It is my understanding that the other festivals were resurrected from other pre-Christian religions in the Nineteen-Sixties when a new interest in older faiths was ignited by the flower-power era.

The eight-point wheel, I believe, was created in America in the Nineteen-Seventies.

I don't believe there should be conscription, universal or other, unless we are in imminent danger of being attacked and even then, they should call for volunteers first.

It's bad enough when volunteers get killed in overseas conflicts; even worse when they had no choice about going there. Conscription is something that should only be invoked when there is clear and present danger to one's own country. I am not sure why the US and Australia had to get inolved in the Vietnam conflict either.

Of course it could, but I don't see why there should be conscription for foreign wars that we shouldn't get mixed up in in the first place.