September 28, 2005, 8:49pm - This is kind of exciting and stupid at the same time, this blog thing. But it is my kind of thing since I like to journal and let my feelings be known, although I'm not sure how many people that I want to broadcast my "feelings" to but since it is confidential, and nobody really cares what I think, that's okay.

This entry will be short since I decided on a spur of the moment to enter the blog world so I will try to think of something intelligent......yeah right.

It seems with the way the world is going, so to speak, that one wonders where this is all going. One could think of it as the fundamentalists do in the way that this is the end of the world and we should get ready. But since nobody really KNOWS when the end of the world is except God, we should probably live everyday like its the last day anyway and always be ready.

But really, what do we know about what happened years ago when there was no TV, no computer, no telephone, etc. And I have always had the TV and radio around as long as I remember and I am 55. Sure we have the history books, old newspapers, etc. but do we REALLY know if the weather was not like this, say 100 years ago. Most people that are alive in the year 2005 haven't lived before 1900 except those few that are 105 years old or more and there may be more of them than there use to be way back when.

There's a lot of talk about hurricanes and the GREENHOUSE EFFECT thing happening to our earth which might be causing the bad weather problems we have been having the last few years. I don't know if I really believe it about the global warming of the earth or not--I live in the upper 5 state area where we have had cold winters and it is still cold in the winter. We have had some warmer winters the last few years, but last year was certainly like one of those cold winters I remember as a child. So how do we know that this warming didn't happen, say in 1850? I am no scientist so I really don't know for sure if there is global warming but in a way, it doesn't seem logical to me.

There are alot of "trends" and "buzz words or phrases" these days, and one of those "phrases" are GLOBAL WARMING. And when they come up with these things, later they come up with that it's not true. Like when I was growing up, kids were "seen but not heard." Nowadays, that phrase is kind of obsolete. Children are allowed to speak up under certain circumstances which is okay most of the time. But for the most part, children are innocent and don't really know what to think about world situations which they hear about all the time on the radio, TV, and computers. Most of the time, just like when I was growing up, young children tend to take on the opinion of their parents.

When I was about 9 or 10, the John Kennedy and Richard Nixon campaigns were happening, and my non-Catholic, republican friends would say that their parents didn't want Kennedy to win because he'd make us all turn Catholic. How dumb is that for parents to say that in front of their kids when it wasn't true? My own democratic Catholic parents said that Nixon was a crook and they wouldn't vote for him. And I guess Nixon was a crook with Watergate and all. He started the distrust that many of us have in our elected officials (politicians) these days. Then me and my friends would go and play hide and seek or baseball in the neighborhood--we didn't really understand or care about world happenings. I think we knew that we would be protected by our parents which is true for the most part these days. I guess children in general pretty much follow the ideas and prejudices of their parents and loved ones. But inspite of all the things children know, they are still innocent

Also, these days we have alot to be afraid of because of 9/11 and terrorists. I remember being frightened as a child when Khruschev was head of the Communistic Soviet Union, and seeing him shake his fist at us on TV saying he will bury us. Plus we had to be ready and know where FALLOUT SHELTERS were so in case we were bombed on and the AIR RAID sirens went off, we would be ready. So terrorism is not new but just a little more frightening although Hitler's army surely were not nice people--VERY SCARRY. I don't know if life is more scarry these days or not. The neighborhood I grew up in--we didn't even lock our house and now we lock our car if we go in the grocery store or even into church on Sunday. And we certainly know the minute something happens no matter where it is in the world and that is different from when I was a child. We did hear things but not as fast as we do now. I think life is just as scarry and perplexing as it was when I was 5 years old and afraid of many things, even though the world was supposed to be better then. In some ways the world is better now and if I think of it, I'll go into that another time.

Well, I guess it's time to get off. Until next time, bye-bye!