Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

You Missed It

Mouse, you missed my point.

As You Say

Actually, I don't think I did miss your point. We crossed that bridge a million years ago when ''Erectus'' began making fire. After that there is no turning back.

''There is always a minority who is afraid of something. And a vast majority who is afraid of the dark, afraid of the future or afraid of change.'' Carl Sagan ''The Demon Haunted World''



By Any Mouse

Missed it Again

I give up, Mouse, you missed my point again. You're not even close.

What inspires us?

I was not advocating that our society return to or adapt an Amish type life style. What I was suggesting was for one day each year we remind ourselves why we wake up in a warm and cozy bed. That we can go to the kitchen and run fresh water to make our coffee and we can go to our bath room in our bare feet. All of these actions seem to be taken for granted and many of our young people have never given one bit of thought to how these modern conveniences came about in our history.

Many of our young people today wake up in their homes and their parents have left for work. These same young people return home at night to an empty home. They then occupy their time with a machine or an electronic device like their TV or Computer. It seems to me that going without electricity one day each year would give us some time to reflect.

I believe that our life and our future actions after birth are pre-programmed by the heredity we all inherit from our family. Many families with the same biological parents and having more than one child end up with their children all being different. With the environment that they grow up in being very similar these children seem to all take different paths in life. Some families are very lucky in that all of the kids turn out great and others you see tragedy in every case. I had an aunt that had 10 kids. Nine of the ten grew up and were productive citizens. One lived most of his life in the Ohio Pen.

Clearly the environment that we grow up in has some effect on our future life and the way we will live it. In the young Mr. Lincoln?’s case he lost his mother at age 9 and at age 10 his father married another woman. His older sister died in child birth while he was still a teenager. The amount of time he spent in school could be measured in months. Yet he apparently learned to read at home and was an avid reader and basically taught himself the law. What I was questioning was what inspired Mr. Lincoln to have this strong desire to read and learn? How many of us would still have the energy and the drive to pick up a book after a very long day of hard labor in the woods just trying to help the family survive?

His life?’s calling was his opposition to slavery. What sparked this calling was apparently brought on by a slave auction he witnessed in New Orleans in his mid-twenties. It is one thing to oppose something but it is quite another issue to have the passion and the will power to pursue and correct the problem. His environment sparked his life?’s work but his inter passion and his soul gave him the staying power to succeed.

My question to all of you is our current life here in America too perfect? Is it just too mundane to spark those of us that may have it within our souls to correct any future injustices of our society or any further medical advances? Is the debate over the structure our children attend school in and the hours they spend there really going to make a difference in the end?





By Reflections