As I write this, a good many of my friends have already seen the new year arrive. Many of us still have more than 12 hours to go.
What kind of year has it been for you?
It has been a year of major change here. It was my daughter and son-in-law's first full year as a married couple. My son and daughter-in-law have moved to another state. My grandsons have definitely become little boys - and all that goes with it.
My wife retired and now we have the time to do all the things that we always had planned on doing - including traveling at times when every family with school age children were also traveling.
We have literally weathered a storm - the strongest one in the history of the Northeast US. We made it through without too much inconvenience ... many can not say that. Many are still homeless.
New Years are a time to look ahead with hope. There is much I would like to see changed on many levels ... perhaps this will be the year some of that happens.
To all my friends, online or in real life - and the ones who have overlapped - let me take this time to wish you a very happy and healthy new year to you and your family and friends. I hope it will bring you all you want and more.
It's Christmas morning here - which really doesn't mean terribly much, but I can't really say it's just another day even though, being Jewish, we don't celebrate it.
It's always an unusual time of year for those of us who don't celebrate Christmas. Even as a little kid I knew that it wasn't our holiday - and never experienced any jealousy ... we had our own holidays and I always embraced our Jewish culture. I believe my own children grew up like that as well.
But there still is a feeling of being on the outside looking in, and it is mostly felt on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day when the TV is taken over with Christmas music and Christmas specials. Ironically, I happen to truly love Christmas music - and even stranger, the more religious of the music is the most beautiful. And as for the Christmas specials - I have to admit that my wife and myself were quite excited to see Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol back on the air for the first time since the 1980's!
The feeling of being on the outside looking in is strongest in the years that we are at home for the holidays. Often - and for the past few years - we spend the holiday in Walt Disney World in Florida. Christmas is just as prevalent there - in fact even more so, but ... well, we are in Disney World where we are not an outsider at all!
If you like seeing the Christmas displays all lit up, how can you beat the Osborne Spectacle of Dancing Lights in Disney's Hollywood Studios - especially when you remember that these were at one time a private collection of the Osborne Family of Arkansas.
I certainly don't feel like an outsider here ... there is even a small nod to Chanukah which is part of the display.
Perhaps the most religious event happens in EPCOT, The Candlelight Processional. And while it is a celebrity narrator reading the story of Christmas, we love hearing the full orchestra and choir performing Christmas music.
I will admit however, that while I totally enjoy this performance and whenever we are here for the holidays this is a must attend performance, the usual feeling of being an outsider is quite present here.
However, we are home this year - the first year both my wife and I are retired ... we no longer have to be in Disney World during school vacations ... the busiest times of the year. (We will be watching the parade from The Magic Kingdom in a little while though.)
There is not much for Jewish families (and other families who do not celebrate Christmas) to do today, so the tradition of going to the movies has developed. (And yes, many Chinese restaurants are open today as well giving rise to the other tradition.) This year there are quite a few good movies to see. (Our choice, having seen the others, is Les Misérables.)
If you walk through my neighborhood, my house is rather easy to spot as it is one of the few that isn't decorated. Chanukah is over and by tomorrow, Christmas will be as well. New Year's Eve is just a week away and then the Christmas trees start showing up at the curb for the Sanitation Department to pick up ... the lights will come down and we will no longer be outsiders - at least until Easter.
When I wish my online friends a Merry Christmas and they respond in kind, rather than correcting them I accept the greeting as is and in the spirit in which it was intended.
So before today passes, let me wish EVERYONE who celebrates Christmas a Merry Christmas and everyone else Seasons Greetings. New Year's wishes to come under separate cover.
These words, written into our Constitution via the Bill of Rights in December of 1791, have been the stuff of debate in the centuries that have followed their adoption.
"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important." --Thomas Jefferson, 1803
"It is more a subject of joy [than of regret] that we have so few of the desperate characters which compose modern regular armies.
" --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1813
In the times that the Bill of RIghts were written, regular national armies were looked at with some large amount of mistrust. It was not unusual to see a country's legitimate ruler overthrown by an army under the command of a particularly ambitious general. And soldiers as a whole were not the most reputable of people, so in the world of the late 18th Century, in a country with no more than a fledgling regular army, it was the local militias that were the country's primary protection.
For the first two hundred years of our county's existence, the courts, both the Supreme Court and lower courts, broke the amendment into two clauses ... the "militia clause" and the "bear arms" clause. For most of our country's history, it was the "militia clause" that was deemed the operational of the two. According to the Supreme Court, the amendment conferred on state militias a right to bear arms - but did not give individuals a right to own or carry a weapon.
Then came 1977. Prior to then, the National Rifle Association (NRA) had been a non-political organization whose main focus was to educate gun owners and promote gun safety. But that changed at the 1977 board meeting of the NRA.
A coup d’état at the group’s annual convention in 1977 brought a group of committed political conservatives to power. … The new group pushed for a novel interpretation of the Second Amendment, one that gave individuals, not just militias, the right to bear arms. It was an uphill battle. (From The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin)
It was then that the US gun culture was born. This was also a time in which the conservatives in the Republican Party were starting to gain strength as well as electing a president from their ranks, Ronald Reagan in 1980. With his appointments to the Supreme Court, it too had become conservative. In 2010, Justice Scalia wrote his opinion in the majority ruling on a Second Amendment case; "Nowhere else in the Constitution does a 'right' attributed to 'the people' refer to anything other than an individual right."
Today, while fully automatic firearms are banned for the general population, a ban on semi-automatic weapons was allowed to expire in 2004. Today, President Obama created a commission to be chaired by Vice-president Biden to recommend actions to take to prevent tragedies such as occurred at Newtown, Connecticut from happening in the future. The re-instatement of the semi-automatic ban will probably be among the suggestions.
Whatever is reported out of that commission, it is certain that it will need to be a combination of many things including gun control and mental health issues.
I usually don't write about religion, not because I don't like talking about it, I do. I love to discuss religion and learn about all religions. However, I usually don't write about it for fear that what I might say could possibly and inadvertently hurt people about whom I care. I actually respect anyone's religious beliefs as long as it isn't used for purposes of hurting others. Religion should be about good, not evil - love, not hate.
But this group deserves all the indignation and insult that can be brought against it.
Less than 48 hours after the Connecticut school shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, which took place on Dec. 14, the Westboro Baptist Church is already making plans to picket. The Westboro Baptist Church is known for picketing and protesting at funerals across the country.“Westboro will picket Sandy Hook Elementary School to sing praise to God for the glory of his work in executing his judgment,” Shirley Phelps-Roper tweeted on Dec. 15.“They need to come back to Oklahoma,” Bryan Weathers, from Moore, said. “We know how to take care of them here.”“Westboro 'God hates Fags' Baptist Church is planning to pciket at Sandy Hook, to praise 'God's judgment,'” Margie Phelps tweeted as well on Dec. 15.The Supreme Court ruled that it is legal for the Westboro Baptist Church to picket funerals. Despite that ruling, many cities and towns have passed laws that force the Westboro Baptist Church to stay a specific distance away from funerals.Westoboro Baptist Church is known for carrying signs that read “Thank God for dead babies” and the like. It is unknown what kind of signs will be seen, if the Westboro Baptist Church actually pickets in Newtown, CT.
This group's purpose, it seems, is to cause more pain, where pain is already intolerable. They first came to light by picketing and spewing their brand of hate at funerals of soldiers killed overseas. And what makes it worse, is that our Supreme Court has ruled that they have the right of free speech to do this terrible thing.
I am not saying that they don't have the right to believe whatever they want, but I am saying that they shouldn't have the right to infringe on other's rights. They should keep it among their own congregation and their own people. They should not have the right to inflict pain on parents, relatives, neighbors and a town (if not a country) who are already suffering the worst possible kind of grief. I have always believed that the rights granted us by our Constitution were only ours until they started interfering with the rights of others.
We need to start focussing less on the letter of the law and more on the intent of the law. Once again I am embarrassed that the highest court in the country has condoned this evil act.
