Monthly Archives: February 2015

Lifelong Learning

How Long Do You Want to Live?

Life extends easily into the eighth decade and it is not unusual to hear of one living past 100. Over our history, life expectancy has varied dramatically. In the recent history of the last two or three hundred year, men and women were lucky to live to be 50 or 60.

Women especially struggled to survive through the births of their many children, facing unsanitary conditions and the resulting infections and fevers. Men didn’t fare much better, facing hunting accidents and war injuries with less than sophisticated medical knowledge and technology.

Even in the last century, accidents were fatal. Stories of men or women burning to death from accidents resulting from kerosene lamps are not unusual, nor are stories of death and injury caused by other accidents.

The question is: how long do you really want to live?

In the far past, it was common for people to live much more than 100 years. Abraham lived 365 years; Methuselah was the longest lived man on record, living 969 years. Adam and Eve lived well into their ninth century. That is much longer than I want to live!

Our lives are easier than theirs; we have all the benefits of electricity and electronics. Easy travel and rapid communication join with near effortless work in the home, food production, and other occupations, especially in comparison to lives just a century ago.

Our lives are more difficult in some ways. Consider the intensity of the challenges of hate, immorality, and evil that inundate us. It is difficult to get through a day without facing scantily clad people caught up in fierce expressions of lust, unless you stay in bed with the television off. Violence, hatred, pornography, abuse, immorality, and many more symptoms of a failing society abound, throughout the world.

Ancient days were not much better. None of the modern conveniences were available. All the work we depend on electricity to do was done manually, often by servants or slaves. Cleanliness would have been difficult. Medical knowledge was adequate, but certainly unable for its practitioners to cure or prevent infections and diseases.

Worse, battles between men were hand-to-hand, face your enemy, and slash him to bits before being destroyed. Women whose husbands and sons went to war could only hope and pray theirs would be the lucky ones to return without injury, if they returned at all.

Women who lived in those early could expect to be attacked and raped without protection of husbands, fathers, or their hired guards. Most men in nearly all ages believed in their right to have sexual relations with about any woman, while holding their wives and daughters to a stricter standard of sexual purity.

Violence and evil of every kind surrounded these people—much like it does today.

Eve struggled in her time in learning to survive a new, uninhabited world. Everything was new requiring thought and effort to overcome the problems, often failing and needing to try many different solutions before finding one that worked. She, too, faced the grief too many of her children who listened and succumbed to the voice of evil.

No, living for multiple centuries is not enticing. Seventy or eighty years is more than enough for any of us!

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Neighborhood Divisions

Refuse to Check the “Ethnicity” Box!

Each time children register for school, or someone completes employment paperwork, there is an obnoxious little box quietly demanding to be checked, demanding self-revelation: What is your ethnicity or race?

Ethnicity? I know, some think it is Hispanic, or Black, or Eskimo, or Native American, Asian, or some other “color” people. Aren’t we all people? Don’t we all live here in America? What difference does it make where our ancestors came from?

Yes, money is added to a school or organization from the government if sufficient numbers of these “Ethnicities” are included.

All this sounds a bit biased. It has become almost shameful to check that box hiding on the bottom: Caucasian. My check doesn’t add money to coffers of the organization, or give them needed diversity.

Each time I see this box, I want to write in “Human”. Most American families can trace their heritage back to many different countries around the world. But the nasty little box doesn’t want to know your family arrived in America sometime in the 1600s, making you as much an American as about anyone else, except Native Americans. Many can follow their ancestry into multiple countries and more than one continent.

But, look! That naughty little box doesn’t offer “American” or “Descended from Multiple Countries”.

The United States is again becoming divided by “racism” even though it has been proven scientifically that there is no such thing as race. We are all humans. That should be enough. All the honoring of different groups of people sounds good, but in reality, it divides. Identifying differences causes everyone to notice differences. It is more important to recognize similarities.

Our communities need and want to draw together. We want to know our neighbors; we want to have friends around us, people we can visit. We need to be aware of who lives next door so when something that shouldn’t be, it can be stopped. Fear of others, caused by divisions of differences, does not help neighbors to interact.

Join the movement, refuse to mark that obnoxious box!

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Uncategorized

Will You Let Your Fears Hurt Your Children: Measles and Vaccinations

The big measles outbreak has captured the attention of the country, as even little babies are becoming ill with this disease that should have been extinguished years ago. We were told it was gone, at least from the United States.

In the past decade, there were less than 100 cases of measles in most years. Most of the people who contracted the disease were unvaccinated, and came in contact with people from other parts of the world where vaccinations are either unavailable or unused by the majority of the population. Often the cause is lack of vaccination serum or lack of funds to pay for it.

In some poor countries, mothers walk with their children for miles to join long lines for vaccinations, when offered by a humanitarian group. They understand the severity of the disease.

A vaccination was developed for good reason–children die from the measles and its accompanying fevers. The fevers cause mental disabilities if not controlled. Children have been lost to this “childhood illness”.

Some children can’t handle the vaccination. It makes them sick. But this is just a small percentage of children. Most are protected from the side effects by the vaccination.

In 1998 a British doctor wanted his name in the news, and published a paper suggesting a connection between these vaccinations and autism. Autism causes major problems for parents and children and some parents saw the connection after the report was published. Like wildfire in dry grass, fear of vaccinations spread. Parents stopped ensuring their children were vaccinated, using excuses that it went against their beliefs, most often the belief was a fear of autism.

In earlier years, people who carried measles were not a major problem, for nearly everyone was vaccinated. Now, when someone arrives in the United States carrying the disease, it spreads, and even little babies catch it.

We in the United States have no excuse for not protecting our children. Most of us have insurance that will pay for these essential vaccinations. If not, public health agencies will provide them for little or no cost. I have never heard of a shortage of measles or the more common MMR vaccine. We don’t have to walk miles and stand in long lines.

We live in one of the strongest nations in the world, but we allow fears to keep us from protecting our children. There haven’t been any deaths, yet. With blessings from God, there won’t be, but will there be other challenges because of the high fevers?

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Uncategorized

Will You Let Your Fears Hurt Your Children: Measles and Vaccinations

The big measles outbreak has captured the attention of the country, as even little babies are becoming ill with this disease that should have been extinguished years ago. We were told it was gone, at least from the United States.

In the past decade, there were less than 100 cases of measles in most years. Most of the people who contracted the disease were unvaccinated, and came in contact with people from other parts of the world where vaccinations are either unavailable or unused by the majority of the population. Often the cause is lack of vaccination serum or lack of funds to pay for it.

In some poor countries, mothers walk with their children for miles to join long lines for vaccinations, when offered by a humanitarian group. They understand the severity of the disease.

A vaccination was developed for good reason–children die from the measles and its accompanying fevers. The fevers cause mental disabilities if not controlled. Children have been lost to this “childhood illness”.

Some children can’t handle the vaccination. It makes them sick. But this is just a small percentage of children. Most are protected from the side effects by the vaccination.

In 1998 a British doctor wanted his name in the news, and published a paper suggesting a connection between these vaccinations and autism. Autism causes major problems for parents and children and some parents saw the connection after the report was published. Like wildfire in dry grass, fear of vaccinations spread. Parents stopped ensuring their children were vaccinated, using excuses that it went against their beliefs, most often the belief was a fear of autism.

In earlier years, people who carried measles were not a major problem, for nearly everyone was vaccinated. Now, when someone arrives in the United States carrying the disease, it spreads, and even little babies catch it.

We in the United States have no excuse for not protecting our children. Most of us have insurance that will pay for these essential vaccinations. If not, public health agencies will provide them for little or no cost. I have never heard of a shortage of measles or the more common MMR vaccine. We don’t have to walk miles and stand in long lines.

We live in one of the strongest nations in the world, but we allow fears to keep us from protecting our children. There haven’t been any deaths, yet. With blessings from God, there won’t be, but will there be other challenges because of the high fevers?

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