Today on the radio, I woke up to the sound of the hosts arguing over a forced chemo case.  I’d never heard anything about it until today, and it was so interesting, I forgot to get dressed, missed my bus by the time I did get dressed, and was almost late for school.

This is all mostly because I’m very ticked off at the way that the media is handling the story.  They are portraying a concerned mother with very strong religious convictions as a crazy woman when she is trying to protect her child. 

My basic feelings about the case are that the government is overstepping boundaries and intruding in too much of a family’s decision.  The state claims this is a form of neglect, but how can it be neglect if the mother is pursuing a path that she believes will be better for her child?  There would be a case if the mother was just forcing him to stay home and not giving him any medicine.  If the government, at the state level none the less, can force a specific treatment for an illness on a patient, which is a form of control I don’t wish to be a part of.  What happens when pharmaceutical companies start to lobby and bribe to make their medicines the only ones that are allowed to be used as treatment?

Someone tries to make the case that in this case, the treatment for his age bracket is over 90% while if they do nothing, there is only a 5% survival rate, and they act like these numbers form a perfect opposition to the debate.  What these people seem to be forgetting is that this family isn’t doing “nothing” they’re trying to find an alternative cure for a disease whose conventional treatment is painful, toxic, and not entirely perfect.  The family is also religiously against the chemo therapy and through this alternative method; they are fulfilling both a personal desire not to pump their child full of toxins and religious duties.

My worries in this case are not purely in the form of defense of religious rights in this country where state and church are separated, but some people seem to forget that.  They are in the power of the government overstepping boundaries into people’s lives and seemingly being able to control the medicine that is given to a citizen, and whether or not there are other medicines available, there is only one ‘proper’ cure.  When you have judges deciding what must go in your body, they are too powerful, and being powerful makes them extraordinarily weak.  Then they are at the fingertips of the pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, and impure hands.  Pharmaceutical companies will drive home profits through the courts, forcing expensive treatments on families, and if “universal” healthcare is passed, that will come from the government’s pockets.  This seems like a trap, financially and with personal rights.

I got to the theatre at 1750, a good 40 minutes before they even started selling tickets, and there were already 70-some people waiting in line, and I learned that you had to be there before 1800 anytime they did one of the PWYC productions to even get a ticket.  Anyway, I sat there and read part of my book and the line, once they opened the doors, moved very quickly.  I gave 5$ for my ticket, then walked around outstide for about an hour and slipped into my seat.

The offical synopsis is:

In 1939, Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta, a city still struggling with the aftershocks of slavery. Meanwhile in Europe, Hitler’s death camps flourished and Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. The romance of Hollywood movies and Berlin cabarets collides with history’s harshest cruelties as a forbidden love transcends the bounds of time, race and religion.

The opening set was the front of a plantation house with elaborate hangings on the windows, and the audience was positioned as if looking in.  The front of the house was on flys and lifted up to show the inside of the house, with trees in the background, seen through two back windows.  On stage left there is a door, a fireplace, and a mirror above the fireplace. In stage center there was a series of sofas on a rug.  On stage right there was a large library and a wooden desk in front of it.

I won’t tell you too much about the plot, as I think you should all go see it but it plays through April 9.  The basic plot is that in Atlanta during the Gone with the Wind primere a black woman comes into Sarah and Ariel’s house and explains that she has come to Atlanta to work.   At a relatively similar time, in Berlin, a German SS commander had taken a gay, black lover.  The transitions that occured during the scenes was the best part of the entire show because they tied everything together by having members of the scene coming in while the scene before it was still going on.  You could tell that there was the slight idea that the characters knew what was happening in the other scene, even though they had nothing to do with it.

There was full male nudity for a couple scenes, very realistic gun shots, and some homosexual sex scenes.  This did not really detract from the show overall, unless there is a particularly prude audience, but I doubt they would be at the Woolly Mammoth to begin with.  I think the show was beautiful and touched on the subjects of race and homosexuality, obviously, but the love that we all share and the true nature that we believe in .

Well, after getting past that and milling about in the main part of the Bingo Hall, the speeches finally started with Tom Davis introducing a pastor from a local Korean church to lead the prayer, which was nice but a bit long, but nothing was wrong or overtly fundamental, so it was good.  Davis’ speech was pretty quick and he handed it over the Congressman Wolf who was very good and seemed very personable.  The mic was then passed to Bolling who is running for Lt. Governor, and held this position for the last 4 years and seems to have done a fine job.  During Bolling’s speech I had to make a phone call, and yes i know it’s rude to make calls in crowded places and especially when someone’s talking, but I was pretty much boxed in, and it was just to arrange a ride home.  I couldn’t have been on the phone longer than 45 seconds, and I tried everything I could do to be quiet, but these two nasty, unpleasant people in front of me both turned and glared at me one saying ‘Hey junior, why don’t you take it outside’ and the other exclaiming ‘That’s very rude you know.’   Whatever, I had to make the call, and they can get over themselves.

Bolling was not terribly long winded, but ended his speech with a bit of ad-lib humor before passing the mic, one more time, to McDonnell’s daughter who was a member of the US Army and fought over in Iraq while her dad ran for Attorney General in 2005.  Her speech seemed heartfelt and she sounded like she loved her dad a lot.  Then, with a loud burst of applause, Bob McDonnell took the podium.

McDonnell’s speech was wonderful.  I really connected with it and he seemed to really mean what he said to the crowds.  Everyone cheered for him and I don’t blame them.  He is one of the first politicians that I didn’t get any vibes from, other than that he wanted the job and would do anything to get it because he is the best man for the job.  He talked for a good 30 minutes, but his speech meant something and connected with the audience.

After the speech people started to leave and I got into the mob to meet with Mr McDonnell and there, Congressman Wolf was trying to escape the stampeded and crossed in front of me and shook my hand.  We all crowded around McDonnell and stood to shake his hand.  He took a good 20 seconds or more for each person, looking them in the eyes and talking sincerely.  He was very nice, with a very strong grip. 

I only wish I’d gotten a chance to meet John Brownlee who was at the rally, but didn’t speak.

Overall, I think the rally was a lot of fun, with very interesting people and a good chance to size up the candidates, and I really enjoyed myself, I only wish that some of the people had been a bit nicer, but hey, what can you do?

This website made me stop and look outside today, and wonder what I am going to do tomorrow.  We all think about what we’ve missed and what we really want, but none of think of what we are really going to do for it.

Right now I’m going to make a list of things to do, and maybe I’ll actually get them done.  Who knows.

As I listened to my iPod today, I flipped to the song The Dangling Conversationand it really spoke to me.  The song is about the over-analyzation f daily life and of the loss of arts and beauty in the world, and if we look at the world around us we are losing a lot of the beauty in the sake of progress and science.  I know this is an idea not new, but it isn’t one that is going to go away any time soon. 

Two lines struck me when I listened to the song though, “And we note our place with bookmarkers/That measure what we’ve lost.”  This is beautiful and speaks volumes to me.  The idea that we move forward, and we appreciate that we are moving forward, but we are losing everything we pass by, it’s not just simply moving forward, but forgetting the past, but we can’t live in the past, we must move forward, and it is as natural to humankind as death, which in itself is a form of moving forward and forgetting the past.

The imagry present in the lines give the idea of a solomn man or woman sitting, closing an old and dusty book, slipping a bookmark to their page, and putting it aside and resting by the fire or in the sun in a large, overstuffed armchair.  As they sit there, they think back about the book, their lives, and they realize how much they’ve passed by, but how much there is to look forward to.  Even in a book they’ve read before, a word will strike them differently or elicit an emotion not present before, and that is the beauty of books, and as an extension, of life.

As I get older I don’t want to move too quickly through life, but even at my age I see things I wish I’d done, things I’m glad I’ve done, and things I want to do.  There is no way we can fit every bit of our hopes into our lives, something will always be passed by, whether or not realize it, but that is what makes us want to live.  To experience the most, and enjoy what we have.

This post really doesn’t have much to do with anything, but I like to think and put a little philosophy down.  It makes the day a little easier to get through, like you’ve actually thought about and done something.

This woman was riveting.  Old, almost 89, strong, a face lined by sorrow and by joy, bright piercing eyes, with her elderly husband, thin with age with a deep, sunken, knowing face, and her daughter, a woman who was as connected to the holocaust as anyone not there could be.  Living in Hungary, the woman, at 24, had been corralled with the rest of her family and the Jewish community and they were sent to the ghetto.  From the ghetto they were packed onto freight cars, 80 to a car, and sent on a three day long journey, where 2 died, and a baby was born, to one of the most frightening names of Nazi Germany, Auschwitz.  There, within an hour, she met the horrible Dr Mengele, she had her parents taken forever, been stripped and completely shaved, and treated as a sub-human, all in the name of a racist, hateful dictator.  The speaker, having to relive the memory, even after writing a book about her experiences, started to cry, in front of about 75 students, but she kept her steady pace with her deep, foreign accent that was aimed straight for your heart, and you couldn’t help but empathize with the feelings of loss and of grief that swelled within the woman.

She told us about her horrible time in Auschwitz, having barracks packed with girls, being given a simple broth soup with no bowls and no utensils, the pot being shared between 10 girls, gulping the nearly inedible soup down, as the only food.  There she lost her cousin, who was 12, to the gas chambers as she got too thin, and many of her friends were lost in that horrid camp where she was prisoner for almost a year.  After that year she was transferred, by train to a work camp inside of Germany.

There, she worked hard, getting sores from the work and the sun, no protection, no food.  She was attacked brutally any time the guards pleased.  She was there for several months until, finally, she was forced, along with the other girls, to walk to their next camp destination.  They walked for hours, sick as they were and were slowly picked off.  Those that couldn’t walk were shot and left for dead alongside the road, without a burial or anything, they just kept walking.  Once they reached their destination they were taken to the barracks again.  Soon after that, they were carrying the heavy pots back to the barracks, having to rest along the way, when a new group of women came forward and, just off the train, they swarmed on the girls resting, and started to suck up their soup, their only form of sustenance, but the girls were understanding, knowing how hungry they were when they first arrived to the camps.

Not too long after being at the final stop, as she laid on the dusty floor, she heard a commotion outside, and slowly crawled across to the door and peered out, and there she saw the British flag waving in the spring winds, and sunk back onto the floor.

That was the woman’s story, maybe not word for word, but it struck a chord in my heart.  The surprise speaker has changed my view of the holocaust and of what we are going to lose in the next 10 years.  Soon there won’t be holocaust survivors or WWII soldiers or anyone to tell us the stories of the past, of the beauty and horror that people experiance.  This makes me so sad, and I wish that everyone would go to their elders, go to the nursing homes, and take a tape recorder, and get the stories of the past that changed their lives and the lives of their family.

Well, I’m off to entertain people, and go sledding.  Enjoy your day.

At our school a suicide has happened, not in my year, but the year below me, and there were many students out to attend the funeral and service.  I did not know the student that died, but I felt a little deceived when I found out about what had happened.  The teachers had been instructed not to even mention the suicide and were not given much more in the way of information, just the basics.  On Thursday, when people were at the service, a couple of kids were missing from most of my classes, and when a teacher would ask “Where are they today?” and someone answered them, they would get flustered and act like we should not know what had happened.

This doesn’t seem to make much sense to me.  Why hide the fact that people die, even if by suicide?  Even the teachers do not fully understand, many of the teachers, and even students, coming to talk to our psychology teacher, treating her like the “Doctor”.  I sat there and listened to her explain it to someone and it makes sense.  Suicide is so damaging because it does touch every single person, and it can make those students who did not do anything feel worse, and there are millions of unanswered questions.  Unlike a car crash, which many of us accept as a bit of bad luck, but nothing that feels like God has forsaken them and those around them.  It hurts everyone and I suppose it is the school’s job to protect us, but is it their place to lie to us?  I do not know, I was just thinking. 

What brought me to the thoughts of suicide was a beautiful play I saw at George Mason University last night.  The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis.  The play starts with Judas’ mother crying after her son’s suicide, by hanging.  The plot of the play is the trial of Judas Iscariot  in Purgatory after his suicide after betraying Jesus.  The two lawyers, one an atheist trying to get Judas forgiven and into Heaven, the other a flattering lover man.  They call many characters forward: Sigmund Freud, Mother Theresa, Pontius Pilate, and Satan himself.  These are witnesses called to the stand to put forth their ideas about Judas’ betrayal, the purpose behind it and the path of Judas.  Different parts of Judas’ life are explained through flashbacks where Judas, previously comatose, stands and interacts with characters of the Bible and explores the varying actions behind Judas.

This is no formal play critique, but I believe that this play demands accolades.  The entire play is very New York in style, with crude language, common stereotypes, and a heart-wrenching strong message that is only stronger in the language we use today.  Cursing fills the air, Saint Monica smokes Newports, and Satan has “tits and a dick”.  This is no Sunday school show, but instead an adult show of coming to God, his forgiveness, and the strength of people’s love.  At times the “Fuck”s and “Shit”s seem to be used purely for shock value, and while not detracting from the play, they did little to further the plot. 

Overall the play was fantastic, the GMU Players did a wonderful job on the backdrop and the idea of Purgatory.  I agreed with most of the casting of characters, and I think that the Satan was amazing.  Judas was perfectly cast as well.  I know I will be attending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead show April.

I just want to post my support for Bob McDonnell for Governor, and John Brownlee for AG. I will be submitting my application to become an intern for McDonnell and I will be attending the Republican State Convention in Richmond in May and hope to do my part to get them elected.

McDonnell was AG in Virginia until February 20, when he stepped down to be able to give full time to his campaign and to make sure Virginia had a full time AG.  Brownlee is a prosecutor running for the position of AG.  McDonnell is currently leading all three democratic candidates and Brownlee, as the prosecutor running, has a very high chance of winning as Virginia has a record of voting for the current prosecutor no matter the party.