with all due respect

February 14, 2003

I think I've reached a new low. I have not ventured out of the house at all today. Not even to cross the parking lot to the dumpster. I tuned in to the broadcast of the UN weapons inspectors talking to the security council and listened until I realized I had missed lunch with former coworkers at the Westford Grille. I should point out that I listened while wrapped in blankets in my cozy warm bedroom. Even the badly hung door cloths over the drafty places have made a big difference. And, no, I am not about to seal my house with plastic and duct tape. If it's my time to go, it's my time. Besides, I think I already poisoned myself with either the leftover partially cooked curried turnip or the soy milk of indeterminate age I consumed for lunch because I am spending a way wicked lot of time in one small room ... not the safe room. And what right have I got to be depressed? I have a home. I have food. I have the love of a good woman and a cat who walks among the books. Yet the inevitability of war weighs on me. I cannot understand the people who are so gleeful about death and destruction. How many of those young people heading to war will come back alive? How many Americans will die in the war? How many Americans will die in the additional terrorist attacks that will be triggered once the war starts? How many Iraqis will die? I think the thing I really don't get about the gung-ho glee about the war is how easy it seems to be to believe that only Americans are human, that only American lives count. Why does it not matter if we kill Iraqi children and old people and whoever happens to be in Baghdad at the time?

With all due respect to both the pro-war and the anti-war advocates, killing human beings is serious business.

Today's Reading
The Measure of All Things by Ken Alder, Winter World by Bernd Heinrich

This Year's Reading
2003 Book List

El Beisbol
Red Sox pitchers and catchers report today!