An upside of working with my hands is that it leaves my mind free to do a lot of thinking. The downside? Yup. My mind is free to do a lot of thinking.
Right now, it seems that there is violence and injustice everywhere. In no particular order:
Russian soccer/football (pick your preferred term) laying into English football fans. Violence and mayhem ensuing on the streets in France.
A man enters a night club where young people are having a good time and opens fire. One man was able to shoot approximately 100 people, killing roughly half that number (reports vary).
Brock Turner gets a ludicrously light sentence for raping a woman, and then he and his father have the temerity to talk about how his life has been ruined.
Oscar Pistorius is in court for the murder of his girlfriend. His psychologist tells the court that his client is too mentally ill to deal with prison.
A Dutch woman who reported that she had been raped in Qatar has been detained and sentenced for extramarital sex.
And in the middle of this vortex of horror and injustice, we took a body blow as a family (more of that another time).
So, while my hands are busy painting a mural, my mind is churning. Thoughts are swirling and finding no place to roost.
For some reason, I keep being reminded of Herman Charles Bosman - a highly skilled and very popular South African author. He mainly wrote short stories, but in Cold Stone Jug (which you can read online here, if the mood strikes you), he writes of his own time in prison for killing his brother in law. One of the things he remarked upon was that all the other prisoners were absolutely adamant that they were innocent. It seemed that Bosman was the only guilty man in the place. When Bosman acknowledged that he had, in fact, committed the crime for which he was incarcerated, a fellow inmate declared - with no hint of irony - that it was unfair on him to be locked up with someone who really had committed a crime. There should be one prison for us innocent ones, and another one for you guilty people, he said (or words to that effect). The relevant section of the story can be found in chapter 5 (language alert: as a product of its time, this book contains terms that are considered highly offensive today).
I'm pretty sure you've been as inundated as I have with all the horror stories. And there's so little we can do. I am only one person. You're only one person.
But hang on.
So is Brock Turner. So is Oscar Pistorius. So was Omar Mateen. So was Attila the Hun. So was Josef Stalin. So was Adolf Hitler. So was Mother Theresa. So was Nelson Mandela. So was Martin Luther King Jr.
So this is me, hitching up my big girl panties with renewed determination. I'm going to be kind to people. I'm going to spread the love. I can't change what is going on in the big wide world. But I can have an impact on the lives of the people with whom I come into contact. I can also say things like 'that's not right' when I see something that's not right. I can be like those two lads on bicycles who intervened when they saw Brock Turner having his way with an unconscious woman.
Normal service will be resumed, but I just wanted to share this with you. It seemed to big to just flit over it like it never happened and talk about my latest upcycling project.
Right now, it seems that there is violence and injustice everywhere. In no particular order:
Russian soccer/football (pick your preferred term) laying into English football fans. Violence and mayhem ensuing on the streets in France.
A man enters a night club where young people are having a good time and opens fire. One man was able to shoot approximately 100 people, killing roughly half that number (reports vary).
Brock Turner gets a ludicrously light sentence for raping a woman, and then he and his father have the temerity to talk about how his life has been ruined.
Oscar Pistorius is in court for the murder of his girlfriend. His psychologist tells the court that his client is too mentally ill to deal with prison.
A Dutch woman who reported that she had been raped in Qatar has been detained and sentenced for extramarital sex.
And in the middle of this vortex of horror and injustice, we took a body blow as a family (more of that another time).
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| Work in progress |
For some reason, I keep being reminded of Herman Charles Bosman - a highly skilled and very popular South African author. He mainly wrote short stories, but in Cold Stone Jug (which you can read online here, if the mood strikes you), he writes of his own time in prison for killing his brother in law. One of the things he remarked upon was that all the other prisoners were absolutely adamant that they were innocent. It seemed that Bosman was the only guilty man in the place. When Bosman acknowledged that he had, in fact, committed the crime for which he was incarcerated, a fellow inmate declared - with no hint of irony - that it was unfair on him to be locked up with someone who really had committed a crime. There should be one prison for us innocent ones, and another one for you guilty people, he said (or words to that effect). The relevant section of the story can be found in chapter 5 (language alert: as a product of its time, this book contains terms that are considered highly offensive today).
I'm pretty sure you've been as inundated as I have with all the horror stories. And there's so little we can do. I am only one person. You're only one person.
But hang on.
So is Brock Turner. So is Oscar Pistorius. So was Omar Mateen. So was Attila the Hun. So was Josef Stalin. So was Adolf Hitler. So was Mother Theresa. So was Nelson Mandela. So was Martin Luther King Jr.
So this is me, hitching up my big girl panties with renewed determination. I'm going to be kind to people. I'm going to spread the love. I can't change what is going on in the big wide world. But I can have an impact on the lives of the people with whom I come into contact. I can also say things like 'that's not right' when I see something that's not right. I can be like those two lads on bicycles who intervened when they saw Brock Turner having his way with an unconscious woman.
Normal service will be resumed, but I just wanted to share this with you. It seemed to big to just flit over it like it never happened and talk about my latest upcycling project.
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