Again (because I am a tad lazy)

This one was written in the midst of the building of the third West Chester Area High School, Bayard Rustin. 

The other day, while perusing a storm water management plan, standing in the resulting mess as the plan was not followed, it dawned on me that Government entities have become rather arrogant in their treatment of us common citizens.  Think about this for a minute with me, will ya?

     Imagine, hypothetically of course, that a school district wants to build a new high school.  The first step is to find the land for that school.  It doesn’t really matter who owns the land, they can just take it if they want it bad enough.  Sure, there is the matter of just compensation, but that never truly amounts to the true property value that was taken.  (And in the case of Coatesville, attempting to take land for a golf course; that compensation isn’t even close to the funds that would be realized by the property owners if they decided to sell to a builder.)  Once the land is decided upon, the engineers step in, along with a myriad of environmental groups, ensuring that everything is done as friendly to the bog turtles as possible, neglecting the wants and even needs of surrounding home owners.

     Then the construction companies arrive, inconveniencing all that happen to pass the site.  (Yes, it is a necessary evil, and can’t be avoided,  but it sounds bad so I added it to this rant.)  Noise, dust, mud, and workers that don’t usually live in the community they are working in, so they aren’t too terribly concerned where their Tasty-kake wrappers end up.  They do their jobs, hopefully according to the plans, dutifully ignoring the locals who express any concerns, directing them instead to the supervisors trailers that always pop up on these huge construction sites.

     Now the buck passing starts.  None of the concerns of the locals are the problem of the site supervisor, they are the problem of the township.  The township directs you to the school board, the school board directs you to the engineers who send you back to the site.  It can be inferred that all of this passing around of responsibility is designed to fatigue the injured party to the point where they give up and if this doesn’t happen…well…

“You can always sue us, but you are going to lose.”

     What kills me, figuratively of course, is that we pay for all of this nonsense.  When mistakes are made, no matter who’s fault, the tax paying citizens are held accountable for the bill; that is, if the situation is ever fixed.  The bureaucrats are not responsible for anything, and they let you know that in no uncertain terms.

We were tenacious, we fought, and we won. It helped that I could read site plans and noted that the 'emergency' fix that was being sold had been created with the original plan, omitted from the plans distributed to my Aunt, but part of the package at the Westtown Township Building!

First in a series

Many of the posts that are going to be a part of this series were written in the early aughts, just after the election of 2004. I am going to leave many of them as is, they are still relevant, others I might have to edit to fit the changing times...not this one:

     Ahhh, the Boy Scouts of America;  A wonderful institution? Or a secret indoctrination into Judeo/Christian religious beliefs?  Think about it for a minute with me, will ya?

       Across the Country, on any given night, one can find a group of boys and young men taking an oath.  That oath, among other things, includes a promise to do ‘duty to God and my Country’, and the phrase ‘morally straight’.  These phrases have come under fire recently as the liberal, socialist, atheistic, left-wing nut-jobs rant and rave how the zealous, religious, conservative right-wing nut-jobs are taking over the world.  Somewhere in the middle is the rest of the Country, and we believe that Scouting is a good thing.

     Starting with the claim that Scouting pushes Judeo/Christian beliefs.  It only takes a minute to peruse any one of the many scout guide books to realize that every and all religions are represented.  There is even a disclaimer at the bottom of the page that directs a boy to talk to his parent/guardian about their belief system if it wasn’t mentioned.  With that in mind, if you simply believe that nature is a higher power then yourself, that you do not run things, you can fit in with the scouts.

     Perhaps there is more to this attack then meets the eye.  Let’s eavesdrop on a conversation that must take place in those liberal households:

Little Johnny:  Mom, I want to join the Cub Scouts.

Progressive Mom:  No, Umm, I mean, don’t you think there are better ways to spend          your free time?

L.J.:  But all my friends have joined.

P.M.:  We’re not Christian Johnny, you can’t be a Cub Scout.

L.J.: But Sika is Hindu, he believes in reincarnation and he is a Wolf, that sounds so cool, and even ‘back to nature’ish.

P.M.  Such a violent animal the wolf is Johnny, hardly appropriate for children to emulate, all that clawing and biting and killing…

L.J.:  It symbolizes the pack…and that is how the wolf eats Mom, it has to eat to survive.

P.M.:  Speaking of eating young man, finish your tofu and we will be off to your soccer Awards ceremony.

L.J.:  I would rather go to the Scout meeting tonight, they do such cool stuff, and they earn these badges and pins and ribbons…

P.M.:  You get a trophy for soccer.

L.J.:  Yeah, one in the spring, one in the summer, fall, winter.  And we never win, heck Mom, we have never scored a goal, we just run around in circles.

P.M.:  Your learning to be a part of a team, it doesn’t matter who wins, and besides, they actually have to complete achievements to get those badges and stuff, who ever thought up awarding kids for actual completion should rot in…well, it is so much better now that we recognize everyone equally.

L.J.:  But Mom, they get to go camping, in the real woods, and build fires and whittle and…

P.M.:  And contribute to Global warming with the fires, destroying the forest with their knives and hatchets…no, no more talk of this, we’re going to the soccer awards ceremony and that is final…unless you want to stay home that is. 

     Okay, a little poetic license I admit, but hopefully you are now thinking a little differently about Scouting, or at least thinking about it.  

I am sorry, Patrick Ness

"What a sad thing men are. Can’t do nothing good without being so weak we have to mess it up. Can’t build something up without tearing it down."(Ness, P. 545, 2010)

There, I found it. I am not going to argue the point. What bothered me is that Patrick felt it needed to be stated so blatantly. This was very close to the end of the third book in a series where the above sentiment was pretty obvious. I found it insulting that Mr. Ness implied that the reader was too stupid to get what he had been driving at. Sure, he makes his main character dumb, and then not dumb, and then dumb again so the character can think these things throughout the series, but this one was just too much. I get it Mr. Ness, you hate humans and what we have done to the planet. 

Get over it. 

Please. 

Ness, Patrick (2010-10-18). Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking) (p. 545). Candlewick Press. Kindle Edition. 

Monsters of Men

Finished. I did finish the book, but I am not sure if I am going back if Patrick Ness creates a second trilogy, or a pre-logy, or what the heck ever. and why? For this one two word paragraph, wholly un-needed:

And now I can't find it, but I will, later today. I just don't have the time at the moment.

Love-Hate

Mutually Assured Destruction. From the mind of the Land. Really. And I am not buying it. The Land wouldn’t use terms associated with Earth, no matter the contact with the Clearing. Of course I am talking about the book Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness. His Chaos Walking trilogy is great, and I am happy that I stole the first one from J.R. Wagner after a Toastmasters International meeting a few weeks ago. Immediately hooked, energized actually, enough to want to write, to want to create.

Patrick created characters I liked, that made sense, in a way. Then the envelope began to stretch, right at the end of Book 1. Book 2 had the envelope bursting at the seams, but I still love the story, the characters (the two main characters), but Ness began to weave his political world view into the story. I know, I am to ignore that, to put it out of my head, like I did when reading The Dome by Stephen King (also stolen from Josh). And for the most part, I managed.

Book Three made this difficult, especially when he began to tell the story from 1017’s point of view. This, in and of itself, wasn’t a bad thing. I wanted to learn about the natives of the New World, but it (so far, I began this post as soon as I read MAD) just confuses things. Maybe this is because feelings are confusing, but I tend to think Mr. Ness is trying to justify the violent nature of the Land by making the Clearing worse than they really are. 1017 should have by now forgiven Todd, not held the grudge this long. It just makes the coming epiphany that much more predictable.

All Clearing did not enslave the Land…

Okay. I am going back in, trying hard to remove 2012 political ideals out of it, but if he makes one more good character ‘kill’ based on erroneous emotions, then filling that character with guilt, I might not be able to finish.

Re-joining the blog world

Yes, I am going to come back this week. I am going to sit down and figure out a list of topics, I am going to steal from my list that I told myself was going to be published in the Daily Local News but I guess they only want journalism grads (yes, I tried twice). So mixed with some literary stuff will be political stuff!

GoodReads review

Exiled by J.R. Wagner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A fun beginning to what promises to be an exciting series. It flows a little like that TV show, Lost, with the jumps indicative of the mind of James, the main character. He's at once confused and resolved, strong and questioning; he knows what he must do, knows he has the power to do it, but harbors that nagging doubt in all of our minds.

The settings are well described, the characters have depths that can make you love and hate them, but you know them.

A for sure must read for teenagers of all ages!


View all my reviews