PUMA OR NOT?
Today a young friend came knocking on my door to tell me someone was stealing gas from my truck. He had seen them while he was mowing a neighbors yard. I ran out in time to see the culprits take off in their car. I called the police – you know, they didn’t pull it off and would still be looking. Of course, in my neighborhood, for my friend to have my back, comes at a price. He’ll have to watch his own back for a while.
Now, we don’t live in a bad neighborhood, but people are struggling. It’s a suburb, where all the youngsters know each other, and memory is long and deep. Doing the right thing isn’t always the safest thing. It’s a sure bet that gas siphoning is on the rise. So, a mark on the police log won’t hurt.
Anyway, later in the evening I went over to spread word of the nefarious deed to another neighbor. That neighbor, in turn, had been watching over one of our resident 95 year old’s, who just went into assisted living, probably to stay. Her son is down from Alaska, and it turns out he’s having to take his wife into a new round of Chemotherapy, so he is pretty busy.
So as I said, I went over to talk to the neighbor and what do you know, there was my cat, last seen six years ago. You see, my cat had decided all those years ago that she didn’t like my other cats, and hi-tailed it over across the street, to my elderly neighbor, where she was treated to tuna and personal attention.
However, times change, the son is worn out, my neighbor is starting a new journey. So there she was, my cat, outside, the most flea bitten, self scratched, furless, skinny, thing I had seen, heading straight for me. She followed me back across the street. I’ve got her sequestered in my RV until I can get her cleaned up. After a meal, we meowed to each other a long time, we both had a lot to say.
Cats or people; the nature of community is determined by one’s willingness to communicate with others and the actions one takes. The same is true in the bloggasphere. In various ways it can be unpleasant, satisfying, informing and extra work.
The growing list on the right of this blog page represents one community. Clinking one of the links might have made you aware of this recent event. A communication was delivered to members of the Democratic National Committee, soliciting ideas for the Party platform, in an open format for the upcoming DNC Convention in August. The interesting thing about this flyer that was that it asked the participants to send ideas not to the DNC, but to THE BARACK OBAMA WEBSITE. As you can see from the SFGate/AP report, the response was pretty successful.
Active participation in democracy is a good thing. However, we already have delegates picked for the August Democratic Convention. They are supposed to represent our interests there. We already can contact them. Sending ideas to a DNC that is been moved to and taken over by Chicago Obamacons does not inspire confidence in the process. “Kerry’s Transformation” appears to have chosen yet another way to bypass the platform and nomination food fight at convention. And lest we forget, It was Speaker Pelosi who is reported as saying this. Pelosi appears to be saying that if Clinton is not on the 1st ballot as nominee, and by default, Obama becomes the elected nominee – HE will decide on seating delegates. In the spirit of the Denver location, the DNC has obviously chosen western square dance as its logic theme.
(Spin your partner, hand her off:
Oh, how can Obama be nominee, if the delegates ain’t a voted?
Dosey left and turn and grab that man!
And how can Obama pick those delegates and who is a votin?
Promenade! Men together! Women fall behind!
Oh, boy, I thought those durn delegates voted for the Party nominee?
March to your woman, spin her off and dosey back again)
As a group dedicated to the placement of Hillary Clinton on the nominating ballot PUMA PAC obviously had some thoughts about whether to participate in this show of “Democracy in the DNC”. Click here to see.
So, in summary, when thieves come to steal your gas, you can report, attack, or use subtrafuge against them. You do not offer to help the process. You do tell your neighbors about the event, and you take on a little extra work.
WOW. I made the mistake of starting to read these posts late at night, after working 11 hours. My brain is fried at the moment. However, I couldnt stop reading. I’ve never been a real fan of blogging. The simplest explaination is that Im lazy. My brain and my commitment to stay aware of anything beyond my immediate needs, is lazy. I am the worst kind of voter. I vote with a high degree of ignorance – because Im lazy. It is not the first time I’ve voted with ignorance and unfortunately, probably not my last. In many ways, I depend on you all to provide me little snippets of information on what’s ahppening in the world. Some fact, and some fiction…….ok…I’ll use the word opinion. Either way, I have placed the burden on people like you. People who understand that our bigggest and most effective resource is our voice. Well, after reading as much as I could, I found myself overstimuated. Who knew? But it is this simple story that stays with me as I fall into a coma tonight. The idea that “the nature of community is determined by one’s willingness to communicate with others and the actions one takes” that is profoundly simple yet inheritantly difficult for those of us that wear the scarlet letter – lazy. For now, I, like the cat, will continue to be sequestered from the rest of the world until I can get cleaned up and one day get enough energy to meow with you all sometime.
Update: This is the second time I wrote the above paragraph because I got this error after the first try – “Error: please fill the required fields (name, email)”. So I supressed my laziness, again, and wrote again.
My lazy monster just reminded me why she dosent blog. She dosent like errors either :>(
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