From the Treetop

Quote of the Day: "A

Quote of the Day: "A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key." -- Paul Valery

I'm somewhat amused at all this blogging about blogging about blogging. Kind of reminds me of those three pane mirrors. When you look in the one on the right and angle the one on the left so it's opposite, you can see yourself reflected into infinity.

Oh well, on to other things ...

Although, I am quite aware that I march to the beat of the proverbial "different drummer" (drummer nothing - I have a whole different band!), I have a rather strange habit of thinking that everyone thinks like I do. I also tend to think that if I know something, everyone else knows it too. When I come up against something that disproves these two theories, it often leaves me smacking myself in the head and saying, "Duh!"

Yesterday I was surfing around, reading blogs, and I came across these two sites - Keep Trying and News From Storybook Farm. My immediate thought was - whoa, someone has nicked someone else's design. I took a look at the source code of each site, and saw that they were nearly identical, then I spotted this reference "bloggertemplate59." Duh! Of course they looked alike - they are both using Blogger templates.

Though I use Blogger, I had forgotten all about the Blogger templates. When I signed up for Blogger, I just picked the first one in the group to get the Blogger code, then set about making my own page. I never gave using the templates a second thought. And of course, I just presumed that everyone else would do the same. Out of curiosity, I took a quick look through the templates and I recognized many of them from Blogs that I've been reading. I guess not everyone believes in doing things the hard way, like I do.<g> And I'm an inveterate tinkerer to boot! In fact, I've been known to tinker something to death.

Just rambling along similar lines ... A few months back when the Harry Potter movie premiered, I heard an interview with the author. She told the reporter that the publisher had made her change the title from "Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone" to "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," because the publisher didn't think Americans would know what a Philosopher Stone was. I thought, "how ridiculous and insulting." After all everyone knows what a Philosopher Stone is.

When I told the story around work, I got a lot of strange looks. "Ehr, Kath," someone said, "What is a Philosopher Stone?" I looked around and everyone was looking back at me with the same question glimmering in their eyes. They didn't know either. So I explained that alchemists believed that the Philosopher Stone was the key that they needed to turn ordinary metal, usually lead, into gold.

They didn't believe me <g> They went to look it up on the internet and found out I was right.

How do I know these things? Where do they come from? I don't honestly know. My mind seems to suck up totally useless facts like a Hoover.

One of my teachers told me that I had a very broad knowledge base. The implication being that it wasn't very deep. One of my former bosses told me she couldn't understand how I could possibly think with all the nonsense that filled my brain. She didn't mean it kindly. At least I don't think she did.

I don't set out to learn all these things, they just collect in the corners of my mind, like cat hair collects in the corners of my home. (I think my cats are secretly trying to build another cat, but that's a story for another day.)

Yet, I keep figuring that everyone has such a collection of trivia. Don't they?

Mind your head, major change in tack coming. Don't let the boom knock you over board. I have a bunch of jumbled thoughts and I just have to get them down while I'm thinking about them.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting a bit tired of hearing about all this "Axis of Evil" talk. It makes me very uncomfortable. I know we're all supposed to be thinking George W. Bush is the greatest thing since sliced bread - patriotic duty and all that, but I didn't like him before the election. Didn't vote for him. Didn't like his father either. And much of what he's done since September 11, has left me very uncomfortable, as well.

I guess it's all part of the whole different drummer thing (and you thought there wasn't a theme!). I quite frequently find myself with very ambivalent feelings on significant issues. I often see both sides of an issue. Finding myself sitting atop a fence much of the time, could explain the uncomfortable feeling.

I'm neither a conservative nor a liberal. I'm not a Democrat nor am I a Republican. I'm mostly an odd mixture of the two.

I'm not entirely convinced that the US of A should be the guardian of the world, though George W. apparently feels we are. I mean really, who died and left us boss, anyway. I don't quite buy the, "We are the last superpower" bit. I was taught that might doesn't make right.

I know I'm not a "my country, right or wrong," kind of person, nor am I a "love it or leave it kind of person." In my opinion, the best thing about living in the US has been our freedoms, but as I look around in post 9/11 America, I see far too many of those freedoms being eroded away slowly with not enough people noticing. I see far too many Americans willing to surrender freedoms and liberties our founding fathers fought valiantly to secure for us. All to secure a very thin margin of safety. And I wonder how we will ever get those lost freedoms back once they are gone.

But to get back to the "Axis of Evil" business. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a turn the other cheek kind of person. Nor do I consider myself a pacifist. It just seems to me that if you want to win someone over to your way of thinking, you don't start out by labeling, not only the governments of 3 sovereign nations but the citizens of those countries as well, "evil."

Evil is one of those words that carries a whole lot more emotional weight than its dictionary definition would indicate. Many people who live in the Middle East and the East clearly think we're the ones who are evil. I don't like them thinking that, so I assume that they don't like us thinking of them in this manner either. Not exactly the way to "Win Friends and Influence People."

For far too many centuries countries, and tribes and clans before them have settled their differences by waging war. Perhaps it's a male thing, but I'm not so sure we women would do much better. Still I can't help but think that there has to be a better way.

I don't have the answer, but communication comes to mind. Breaking down the barriers that separate us all into little clusters, all eyeing the other clusters with suspicion, would certainly help.

We need to learn how the other folks think, and why they think that way. We need to teach them how we think and why we think that way.

I don't think we'll ever make any progress with the learning process if we stand on opposite sides of the world pointing fingers and calling each other names. We teach our children that this isn't the way to settle an argument, and yet it seems our leaders never learned these simple school yard lessons.

It takes two to Tango, two to wage war. How many does it take to make peace? My guess would be at least two, as well. Indira Gandhi said, "You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist." Seems like a good starting place.