Hey y'all! It's TUESDAY! The long weekend is over and I must say that it was a pretty good one down in the old North State. We were blessed with TERRIFIC weather, and so made mostly the most of it by renting some people-powered watercraft and spending several hours on Sunday and Monday out on the waters of Falls Lake, a-boatin' and a-swimming and a-making up games one can play on a submerged stump.
Checkers is not one of them.
There's something about being in the great outdoors that is both invigorating and exhausting. A little sun, a lot of rowing, some relaxing on the shoreline, and I'm about plum(b?) tuckered out. Wonderful.
Heh - that loan I took against my 401 K to 'get out of debt' is in danger of being used (partly) to purchase a cupla canoes. It's just THAT much fun, and with the lake a mere 20-minute ride from the Tiny House, it's a something that can be done at regular intervals. Heck, the Things aren't all that in love with tennis, and schlepping to a pool for swimming involves crowds and other people's children, so why NOT canoeing and lake swimming? Ah, the idle float in murkish water, surrounded by nothing but gentle breeze and your own loved ones....there's not a whole lot to not like about that, now is there?
Plus which, lake time means never having to make small talk with yupster parents while dripping wet and in a bathing suit. Lake people are casual, affable, outDOORSY types, and pool people are more SUV-driving, green-lawn-having, big-sunglasses-wearing types, don't you think? Nothing against it, but I find the sandy shore of a lake ever so much more inviting that the vast stretches of concrete pool deck.
Also? There's mud and stuff on lakeshores that young boys cam smear all over their faces and hands. There's tree stumps to jump off of. There's trees and fish and turtles and water striders, and lekking gnats, and all manner of glittering sun off waves that you just can't find at your average pool.
And I'm waxing rhapsodic here, aren't I? I enjoyed the boating and swimming a very much lot, is all I'm saying.
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I heard this morning that Texas is thinking of making the adults at the polygamist ranch pay for the privilege of having their children taken from them.
Millions of dollars of privilege.
I'm not sure what to think of this. On one hand, if there was a chance that the kids were being abused, then perhaps there's a call for making the adults who abused them pay for their introduction to mainstream society, If, on the other hand, the kids were well cared for by parents who loved them, then making those parents pay millions of dollars to have their kids taken from them and put in the foster care system seems like a double jeopardy thing.
I had a knee-jerk reaction of "oh hell NO" when I heard it, but I'm cautious about the jerking and want to make a more informed decision on how I feel about this. Let's see - young girls (so I heard) were forced to marry men much older than them that they might not have even met before they married, in general the girls were pregnant at a young age and not introduced to the concept of contraception, let's not forget that the girls were also made to wear horrific dresses and Stepford Hairstyles....and the young boys were chased off the ranch once they got to breedin' age (again, so I've heard).
But, that was normal. For them.
OUR normal isn't their normal. Begs the question: Should it be? Should they be made to adjust to our way of life? A large part of me says 'yes,' because we value individual freedom in this country and as such value the idea (if not the practice) of being allowed to cast our own lots in life and make of it what we can. Also, polygamy is (I believe) illegal, and as such they were being made to live a crime.
I have a very hard time with the idea of polygamy, with the subversion (or so it seems ) of women to the will of one man, to the churning out of children by young ignorant women in order to increase the flock, to fill the quiver as it were, in the excommunication of men who perhaps might want something different from what the all-powerful sect leader (and please, go read the link....any man who says that laughter causes the spirit of God to leak from your body is not high on my top ten list of people I'd like to meet. I firmly believe that God wants us to be happy, that laughter is divine (in more than one sense of the word), and that sharing good times with joy is one of the best ways to celebrate life...) says is the truth for them, and yet I'm not so sure these people were entirely unhappy. This is their life, and even if OUR lives and lifestyle say it's abhorrent, if it's not illegal can we say that it's not right?
Of course, if it IS illegal, then they're committing a crime. Case well and truly closed.
Someone, please tell me it's illegal. Then I can stop thinking about this, and return to reflecting on more meaningful things....like what's for lunch.
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Have a great day, folks - I'm intending to do that very thing. ;)
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