From the Writer

I hate being told what to think about this or that. I’m a grown up, and I’ve been around the block once or twice. I hate watching as talking heads tell me what I should think about something I’ve seen or something I’ve heard. It makes me want to yell out, “Red light, Sailor! Keep your agenda to yourself. I’ve got my own.” Sometimes I want to shout, “Unpublish!” I do like Charles Krauthammer, however and Dan Katz.

In our usual fifteen minute cat chasing, coffee drinking show and tell every morning that E and I don’t open the school, just before Mass, we discuss important things like how you get a skirt to hang right when you sew to the last stupid thing we heard about the bishop – makes us laugh. We talk about painting, cat food, books we are reading – I just finished the John Adam’s book and am reading the Mark Twain – Ulysses Grant friendship book and wading through James Joyce’s Ulysses. E is reading a beautiful religious book by Richard Neuhaus, Death On A Friday Afternoon and an Egyptian mystery while she’s waiting for the Andy Jackson book.

We talk about education now and years ago and things we want to implement in the school and things we want to do away with. This morning she wanted to do away with news commentators who want to review the life around her. “I told the guy at the book store that I admire Jackson because before he died, he said his only regret was that he hadn’t shot a few particular people. Today I’m sure the media would be on his list.”

Why is it that thinking people just hate being told what to think? I mean do you really want someone you don’t even know whose religious, philosophical and moral views you don’t know to slide you into complacency or agreement or disagreement simply because he-she’s on TV? TV is not a qualifier; it’s about three strikes in a box. And all the hair spray and pancake makeup trying to fuse itself into glamour won’t do it either. Glamour comes off, you know, when we slip into the tub.

That’s why – long way around – when E suggested this morning that I comment on the articles I’m posting I gasped. But she, in her very reasonable and elegant manner said, “It would be a personal insight, a reason you put it on the blog. People might want to know. From Ellie to Viet Nam is a stretch.”

Well, I hemmed and hawed (does someone actually haw? I’ve never heard a haw.) Maybe we should invent the haw. “Ty, answer either haw or hem.” Might be a go.

And I began to think perhaps readers should know why I chose to put this or that article on the blog, and when I got home and found my husbands rude email about that lovely book being schlock, I decided on the spot that “Of course I will.”

Decisions decisions. Terry can be so helpful at times especially when his New York slip shows. So coming up, please find comments. Please understand that I am terribly right brained, and only gaze into Leftyville when I absolutely have to. The world is not an explainable place nor should it be, so discovery doors are always open, and that’s where they should be and that’s why I post what I post -- for discovery, for thought, for ideas and mostly for information to play with. That’s what information is good for, you know, playing with. It doesn’t store well – collects dust real fast, and often it’s put into a never find place. So as I post what’s going on in the world of childcare, please bear with my little notes and as always, please be free to share a thought.