Random thoughts

When you spend three hours driving everyday, the majority of which is spent listening to NPR, you tend to be drawn into long periods of intense reflection. I have three thoughts running through my head, and if I don't write them down, I'm going to forget them - so here goes.

Our forefathers would be shocked
One entire branch of our government is devoted to interpreting our forefathers' constitutional intentions, and talking heads seem to thrive on pointing out changes of which our forefathers would never approve. This argument shows a complete misunderstanding of the constitution's most important characteristic - the ability to change. Our forefathers were aristocratic slave-owners who would gasp at the idea of a woman having a profession, much less voting! However, they were brilliant enough to recognize that whatever the future held, it would certainly be unimaginably different. To this end, they allowed the constitution the ability to evolve...and it has, twenty-seven times. Rather than looking backwards in an effort to guess what this nation's founders would think, we can better honor their lives and their work by thinking for ourselves when creating our laws, just as the inhabitants of our own unimaginable future will do for us.

Education vs. 'Education'
The word education has come to mean a very specific type of education - formal academic training. This is a horrible misnomer - some of the most uneducated people I know have extensive collections of degrees while some of the most educated have never seen the inside of a college classroom. Education, in my eyes, indicates a realization that the world is larger and more complex than any one person's intellect - that there are multiple sides to every issue and that your opinion is neither absolutely accepted nor absolutely correct. Those who see the world, either through cultural experience or through academia, are more prone to this realization, but there is no educational monopoly. Ironic and unfortunate then than those who know the least think they know the most, talk the loudest, and grab the most attention.

Abortion
Look at this map of international abortion laws (source: wikipedia.com):

(click on picture for high-res version)

...I reserve comment - my views on this issue have been made repeatedly clear.

Page du Jour

For those of you who don't know, while I studied in France, I had a webpage called the 'Page du Jour' (Page of the Day for you non French speakers) which I updated everyday with a picture and a description of that picture in French and in English. I recently ran across the files and decided to rehost it here. Many of the links won't work because I'm not the world's best html coder, but you can get to each of the pages by navigating back to the main archive page. Enjoy!

Click here for the English archives
Click here for the French archives

Anger breeds anger

These last few weeks, I have taken to volunteering as an escort at Planned Parenthood on Saturday mornings. Protestors come and taunt the people walking to the clinic. They yell at them, call them names, hand them pictures of dead babies - all this despite the fact that the vast majority of the people coming to this clinic are coming for reasons other than abortion. Our job as escorts is simply to walk with the people from their cars to the clinic and keep them engaged so they don't hear the horrible things the protestors are yelling. If there are enough of us, we form a little circle around them to keep them from being harassed altogether.

It is a very rewarding experience, but it is a difficult way to begin a Saturday - surrounded by so much hatred. I feel as though I am one of the few volunteers who feels no ill-will towards the protestors. They are there, standing up for what they believe, just like I am - why can't we be pleasant to one another?

One of the protestors has taken to saving my soul. He quotes scripture to me and tells me about my sinful ways. I usually listen quietly, always excusing myself politely when another car pulls up. It is odd, but I almost feel as though we could be friends soon - his feelings seem quite genuine. Even if I disagree with what he says, I have come to appreciate the effort.