Yesterday, two layers of clothes and long tights. 13.93 miles, just over an hour. Home to Massasoit and back.
Today, short sleeve jersey and shorts. 13.74 miles, 70.25 minutes, average speed 11.7 mph, top speed 28.8 mph. Home to Massasoit and back, some technical work at Massasoit.
While I am not Catholic, I mourn the loss of Pope John Paul II.
Who else but this man could meet with his would-be assassin in prison and offer him his forgiveness, as we see in the picture below.
Requiescat in pace. Domine, dona nobis pacem.
Spring is coming. Just not quite there yet.. but you can see water now:
All pictures taken this past Saturday at Massasoit State Park outside of Taunton, Massachusetts.
Having flown into LA earlier today and not having a work commitment until tomorrow, I took some time to drive up to Simi Valley, just north of town, in order to pay my respects at the grave of President Ronald Reagan and visit his library.
As was obvious on television during his funeral, the San Fernando Valley is incredibly gorgeous. While I hold deep affection for Maine and Cape Cod, I believe this is some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve seen in the United States:
And overlooking it all – facing the sunset in the West lies the grave of President Reagan.
“I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.”
In other news, after watching my monthly phone bill climb and climb, I am dropping Verizon and switching to Vonage.
Picked up a new 5.8ghz phone yesterday with two handsets and a digital answering machine at Circuit City along with the LinkSys Vonage Router. Got it home, spent 5 minutes plugging them in, and 5 more minutes setting up on the web.
10 minutes later I had a Minnesota phone number in my home in Taunton, Massachusetts and unlimited long distance for $24.99/month.
As I said via IM to a friend yesterday, “why the hell didn’t I do this before?”
Over at Neptunus Lex, Lex’s latest takes a shot across the bow that those that can’t seem to get past the last election:
Nothing do I see that clarifies for me any more than all of that which has gone before, the necessity of the fight, or how long it might last. How many more must die, or be maimed, before we come to the clearing at the end of the path. Everything points on to a grim slog, a painful task that needs being done. And this is only one theater, in a much larger, potentially generational struggle between the forces of modernity and those of reaction. And make no mistake – even as events in Lebanon, Syria, Israel/Palestine, Baghdad and even Saudi unfold in a direction which could scarcely have been imagined a few short years ago, the forces of reaction are not about to strike the tent and fade into the background. Their death struggles will be titanic, because for them, like for us, there is no turning back, no possibility of surrender.
But I am persuaded, and have been for a long time, of the necessity of taking the fight to the Salafist heartland. Of winning it there, by supplanting tyranny with hope.
[..]
But there are some out there that just can’t get over it, any of it. They can’t get the politics out of their head, even while brave soldiers engage in incredibleacts of heroism, and some of them make ultimate sacrifices. They can’t get over the fact that the last national election was nothing if not a judgment on all that went before, and a mandate on how to finish – even if it wasn’t a whole-hearted endorsement of the process. These folks are justso damned certain that the war’s Original Sin blots out any chance to salvage a righteous outcome. For these folks it’s all a part of some right wing plot to… do what? Ruin the country, I gather. Quite how, I’m never sure. Many of them evidently keep their fingers crossed hoping for bad news (payable in Iraqi and American lives) while stuffing their fingers in their ears whenever good news comes out. For these folks, and their despicable certainty, I have nothing but genial contempt – and much less patience than Smash.
I’m an impatient irritable bastard usually, so I’ll be even more impatient. I can’t even discuss the war anymore with the folks that Lex describes in his last paragraph – it’s not worth my time.
The last few weeks of news have been filled with the saga of Terri Schiavo, that of her family, and of the bitter issue that divides us as a nation: How we choose to die.
I’d said little about this case in particular other than in private to the sidekick, family, and friends because I think that my position on issues involving an individual’s rights are pretty clear. As a Libertarian, and a general follower of what I believe to be conservatism, government has no business being involved in this matter. Let alone the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Governor of Florida, or the President of the United States.
Regardless of one may think of Michael Shiavo’s motives or desires – the law is the law is the law.
A trial court, having weighed the evidence, ruled that Ms. Schiavo would not have wanted to live in this condition. Trial courts are the finders of fact. Once they have decided, the appeals are about matters of law. And those courts – state and federal – at every level – have consistently ruled against her parents.
The harsh bitter reality of this situation is that Florida law reigns supreme in this case – and that law was followed.
We could stand around and debate emotion, theology, politics, or whatever poison of your choice. None of that matters. I’ll choose to believe that he pursued this course of action because he truly believed that this is what his wife would have wanted. I’d fight like hell to do the same.
While I am not a lawyer, I believe on the surface that the law passed by Congress to allow this case to be heard in the federal courts would not hold constitutional scrutiny. I just can’t remember reading that part of the Constitution which allows Congress to get involved in a case like this. It was a severe overreaching based an emotional appeal rather than any fact or understanding of the law.
It’s a shame. What should be a private matter between members of her family and their doctors is now on the national stage. It’s not what I would want for my family.
There’s a level of hypocrisy in this that I also find troubling, and one that I did not consider until this morning while waiting to board my flight for Los Angeles. It’s the religious right and the anti-abortion/pro-list movement that does not want her feeding tube to be removed – they would prefer that she live on. But that’s the same group that would prevent a person’s doctor from relieving them from a painful death outlawing the ability for a physician to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs.
I do believe in the days ahead that we’ll see more conversation about the end of our days. We’ll see more living wills put into place. In fact, in talking with my parents last night, they have already printed out the forms and are having those discussions together. I hope that in the years ahead we see more laws like Oregon’s assisted suicide law which, under a tightly controlled set of circumstances, allows a doctor to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to a terminally ill patient.
If we do indeed have a right to privacy, as the Supreme Court has ruled in Griswold and Roe, then isn’t the extension of that right the ability to have the death of our choice?
I believe it is. Hopefully, that’s the lesson that we’ll take away from all of this.