please, mr. president

when i was a child, my grandmother instilled one guiding principle in my brother and i, when you go someplace, leave it in a better condition than when you arrived. for us boys, this usually applied to camping, or to staying at her house for the weekend. as i've gotten older, i've tried to apply this to the rest of my life, with the side-effect that i expect others to do the same.

i certainly expect my elected officials to hold themselves to the standards which i and the rest of thier constituents hold themselves. i expect that if they don't hold themselves to at least the same standard as the public, that it is the people's duty to do something about it, whether it be simply reminding them, or kicking them out of office.

i do not agree with president bush's war in iraq. it seems ludicrous to wage war on a whole country just because of one man or a small group of men. i believe that mr. bush himself stated about the same when addressing the terrorist attacks on new york and washington d.c.

but, i can't go back in time and change what the u.s. has done. all i can ask is that we make it right. we destroyed iraq's infrastructure, we are obligated to rebuild it at least to the level it was at prior to the war in iraq, even prior to the gulf war. part of this infrastructure is the oil pipeline. part of rebuilding it, is putting control of it back in the hands of its rightful owners.

please, mr. president, do right by your people. do right by your country. do right by me and my grandmother.

let it snow

I hate winter but love the first snow of the year.

Why do I love the first snow of the year? Fair enough question. I live in the Twin Cities. If you’re not from here, you probably don’t realize how large they are, and you probably don’t realize how dirty they are. I’ve never been to New York City, or to Philadelphia, or to Chicago, but I bet my reasoning is applicable to them as well. I hate how dirty the cities get, and most of it is litter. The first snow falls and the discarded cigarette pack ceases to be a cigarette pack and becomes a bump in the snow. It becomes a bump the same way a rock or a pile of leaves becomes a bump. For a brief while (sometimes a long while), I stop passing judgment on the garbage and just look at the beautiful white landscape.

I grew up and have spent most of my life living in the Pacific Northwest, within an hour or so of the Pacific Ocean. We don’t get a lot of snow. I think it would be fair to say that we don’t even get snow every winter, not counting appreciable accumulation. So, the first snow brings with it a kind of child-like euphoria, that’s reminiscent of Christmas coming.

Plus, it’s not that cold for the first snow. The temperature hovering right around freezing is absolutely balmy compared to the sub-zero temps I know are coming.