What's Wrong With Work?

I just read some comments that were posted after an article in which a politician was reported to have made comments regarding how poor kids in poor neighborhoods had no one around them who worked and therefore had no experience of the things necessary to get and hold jobs. From the comments, you would think he was advocating slamming such kids into a workhouse and feeding the gruel. The people posting used vile words to describe this person and said that "Kids don't work they need to go to school, etc, etc " - ALL IN CAPS, NO LESS!

Well, what is wrong with work anyway? I know I am of a different generation. But, ... I worked from age 8. I sold boiled peanuts for 5 cents a bag during the "season". At 12 I rode my bike to meet my father at his second job to mix mortar and carry bricks for him to lay. At 16 I worked part time at a shoe shop running up and down stairs carrying shoes for the ladies to try on. I also worked in the tobacco fields picking tobacco and at the warehouses where it was auctioned off, loaded in trucks and shipped. And, I went to school every day -- well almost every day. I never ate a meal at a restaurant with my family. I saved money. After graduating, I served in the Army for 3 years and then went to college - the first of my extended family ever to do so. I lived and worked in a funeral home to make money while going to classes. Yes. I got a GI check while going to school - $110 per month. I have been employed my entire life and have paid the maximum Social security contribution every year until after I retired.

What's wrong with working??

I have just heard the news that some members of a high school football team in New Jersey were involved in an assault of some people who are in very serious condition. The Coach of the team went before the school board and bullied them into allowing the boys under investigation to play the next game.

I am sorry, but I am now officially anti-high school football. Period. It is not just the New Jersey thing. These thoughts have been on my mind for quite a while. I was a player in high school. I even played while in the army in Europe. I am outraged over the Penn State affair and now this high school coach has gotten my ire up as well. Something is wrong when high school coaches are more admired and compensated than the Superintendent or Principal. And at the college level you can say all that in spades! It is time we got our entire education system out of big league sports. If there is a market for such activity, let it be run by the city or county recreation departments for the school age kids and by the professional leagues beyond that. I am sure that the big colleges and universities could work out franchise arrangements with the pros for the use of the school mascot names and rental of the stadiums and probably come out ahead of where they are now.

The sea is up and the wind is blowing pretty hard so no one is on the beach.  Something made me think of "cultures" and "environments" and "ecosystems".  And some thoughts are wallowing around in my mind.  I watch a lot of the stuff on the Smithsonian channel as well as on PBS that have just dynamite pictures of wildlife and obscure cultures that are found in out of the way places.  I really like to see those things.

But it seems to me that it is a required part of the genre that the producer of the piece must lay a load of guilt on the audience by reminding us that we are polluting the world, raping the lands and oceans of all the resources, warming the globe, etc, etc.  And then there is the people.  Whether it is the (ex) headhunters of Borneo or the people I used to call Eskimos but now seem to have a dozen or so different names, or guys in the jungles of Brazil, they are all presented to us as having such a wonderful culture that meets all their needs if we (not the photographers who are making money off them but just the rest of us) just would leave them alone and quit raping the land and polluting the rivers and ocean of the world.  You get the picture.

But then, it seems to me that the same folks (not the photographers, but the people who actually cast the piece with the subtle messages mentioned above) don't give a whit about preserving my culture.  My culture should just make way for everyone else and get over it.

Maybe I am just too sensitive.

I don't know why I started doing this in the first place.  Nobody ever reads this stuff anyway.  I thought it might be a way to leave some evidence of myself for my grand kids.  I was going to be all nice and easy and try to be a little funny as well.

But, just now I read another news flash about more soldiers getting killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan - and I have changed my mind.

I have never been hard nosed about either major political party.  The first time I voted, it was for John Kennedy.  When Lyndon Johnson ran against Barry Goldwater, I supported Goldwater much to the chagrin of my father who was a yellow dog democrat if ever there was one.  After all, it was the Republicans who started the war against the South.  And.. God help me, I voted for Jimmy Carter.  How could a good ole boy from Georgia turn out the way he did.  Anyway, the point is, I have always had an open mind when it came to presidential politics even though those close to me probably think I am some kind of rock ribbed Republican conservative.  Well, I am not.  I currently lean in that direction because of the state of affairs our country is in.  And I don't know whether we will find our way out of this mess or not.

In my youth, I can remember my mother saying - "you children just don't know what hard times really are".
And she was right.  She and my father lived through the depression - buried one baby and raised three and at least I (the youngest) never knew hunger or want of real necessity.  And, ever since I have been an adult, my standard of living has always gone up.  Lately the curve has turned down but with any luck at all, I will die before the money runs out.

Which brings me back to Afghanistan.  When those guys bombed the Trade Center and the Pentagon  on 9/11, I was all for extracting revenge in a major way.  I just lumped all that together, Afghanistan , Iraq, lets just do it.

But, after that report today, I am ready to call it quits.  Those ...assholes don't deserve anything better than they already have.  I am sorry for the kids and the women but I am afraid the menfolk are just not worth the effort.  But when I say quits, I mean get out of every where - Germany, Japan, Korea, Taiwan - everywhere!  That sounds really odd for a guy like me who has lived and worked all over the world saying such a parochial thing,  but I have about had it with our soldiers standing in harm's way for everyone else.  Just look at the crap that went on in Libya - a place that I have spent a lot of time in - The European members of NATO couldn't have accomplished beans without the technical, command and logistical assistance of the USA.  The whole of Europe, probably couldn't repulse an invasion of.... New Zealand!  All these countries need to pull their own load and we need to tend to our own knitting.

But, if somebody... anybody ... tries to come at us again, we need to unload on the country that spawned the attack with everything... I mean intercontinental missiles.  The whole shebang and let the stuff fall where it may.  If those idiots are looking for Armageddon, let's get at it and get it over with.

Well.  That felt good.  Perhaps I will feel different tomorrow.