Yesterday I tripped over the 500,000 word mark for this blog, as noted by this little WordPress widget-y thing:
Been here since 2001 on self-hosted Blogger and then self-hosted WordPress so I’m glad for little incentives to keep going.
Almost every day, often on the way to work and on the way home from work and often sitting having lunch, I enjoy looking at the sky. I stop and take photos of sunsets and clouds and all kinds of things but I spend more time looking up at the daytime sky than even that indicates. (Heck, when I played Warcraft I loved all the changes in the sky in various parts of the world.)
This morning I was looking at all the different kinds of clouds I could see in the sky as I drove along I-90 and all the varied shades of blue I could see. I thought, if there was nothing else wonderful to see and to make us amazed and in awe of the world and how it works and looks, just the sky would be sufficient. It brings me joy every single day. Last night driving home I thought the light on the clouds from a moon I couldn’t see gave the clouds and sky a strangely x-ray sort of appearance and color. So yes, every single day.
It doesn’t matter what your religion is. If it condones violence of any kind, intolerance of others because of their beliefs, or their color, or their lifestyle, your religion is a failure. It has not improved the world, or your life or anyone’s life in any way. If you’re wondering why, you need to think about it for awhile.
This contains a very very graphic video of a woman being attacked, killed, mutilated and burned because someone accused her – ACCUSED HER – of burning a Quran. The police were willing to take her to a nearby police station but could not contain the mob. At the very end of the video, the text says that a court ruled that she had not burned a Quran.
The Quran is a book. Pieces of paper with printing on it. It contains ideas that do not go away if the book is destroyed. If you think that someone destroying such a thing is just cause for killing them, you are wrong. You will always be wrong.
If you feel, as we all feel from time to time, that you can’t make a difference, take note that 17,721 people have raised $719,199 so far in two days for eleven families immigrating from Syria, through the fine community effort of Humans of New York. Most of those donations are small and heart-felt and will make a difference in many lives.
Let peace and goodness start with you.
Landline rings at home this morning and it was a person from Fairpoint. He says they hear I’ve been having problem with my dsl. Yeeeesssssss…
Anyway they want to replace my modem and connect me to… Wait for it… A DSL substation just down the road from me rather than west Lebanon. Guaranteed better service.
Make it so.
They were surprised that they couldn’t just come in any time and do that but agreed to leave the new modem and test it up to the house. Amazing enough. No argument from them.
So I’m out to get cat food and such stuff.
UPDATE: Came home and found modem waiting for me. Plugged it in with all the new cables provided. It came up much faster than previous one, connected to dsl quickly… Time will tell on this possible Christmas miracle.
Really Fairpoint? A closer DSL connection and you don’t move people to it?
I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.
