Theater Night

Kathy invited me to join her at our local theatre in the round The Glendale Center Theater to see Oklahoma.

I had to admit to her that I had never see the entire movie all the way through, but was excited to do so.

I really enjoy our local theater. It has been a family run business for many many years. The Dietlin's have owned, run and performed in this theater Each year at Christmas time we go there and enjoy the Christmas Carol.

It is cozy and nice to see familiar faces in the crowd and on the stage. You recognize different performers from previous plays and yet, they blend in to whatever play they are doing at the time.

The perks of being in the Los Angeles, nee, Hollywood area is that sometimes you see faces that you recognize from TV and movies.

All in all a good fun evening.

If you have a local theater group, get out and support them.

Father's Day

Some of us are lucky enough to have our dads around to celebrate Father's Day. Some of us have a hard relationship with our Father but it doesn't change the fact that the relationship is still there.

Some of us have been through hell and back this past year. So sometimes, the best we can do is share a person's experience and let them know we have their back. That while we may not how they feel, we recognize that there are days that are just going to suck beyond the telling of it.

So today we celebrate firsts. Just a very few of Maddie's firsts from the Spohr family flickr photostream:

First time being held by daddy

First time being held by mommy

Chillin' after the first bath

First Christmas

First Sunshine, First Car Ride

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First nap when a totally embarrassing picture of Mike was taken

First Baseball Game

We celebrate all the joyous firsts with you, and stand guard over you for all the firsts to come.

For all fathers everywhere, Happy Father's Day.

Politically Correct or Common Courtesy

A fellow Twitterer and I had a bit of a discussion the other day regarding the reasoning behind Spring Break now being referred to as Spring Break and no longer being called Easter Break.

SheTweeted:
Whatever happened to "Easter Vacation"..*sigh* Remember that? Now it's "Spring Break".God forbid we insult somebody :(
And GOD forbid we say "Christmas Vacation" now it's Winter Holiday, or Winter Break.. ughhhhhhhhh
My reply:
it doesn't happen at "easter" anymore
I think our world has evolved enough that we no longer need to plan our schedules around the Christian calendar.
She:No, but sometimes tradition is tradition, history etc.This pc bullshit needs to stop (in my honest opinion).
Me: Who's tradition? Christian tradition? What about Jewish holidays or Muslim or Wiccan? Should all religions be granted as school/work holidays for Everyone?

At this point we just decided to agree to disagree and both go out and run our errands.

So why is one person's tradition more important than another's? This can be looked at two ways. First - If all the Christians jumped off a bridge should everyone else do it too? (remember your parents telling you that one?) Second - Have you never said to someone "If I do it for you I will have to do it for everyone"? So if we give school/work holidays to Christian's should we not respect ALL religious holidays no matter the denomination? We would be home evey single day of the year.

And please do not give me this crap about us being a Christian nation. No we are not. We are a nation of many many religions and faiths and even non-religions and non-faiths. And that is exactly how our forefathers wanted it.

"Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."
-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

I know some people have gotten their knickers in a bunch because they are chastised for saying Merry Christmas and asked to say Happy Holidays instead. Is that being PC or is that a common courtesy. Should you not be courteous to others and mindful and respectful of their traditions and celebrations.

To me it all reverts back to my favorite thing - logic.

Think about this with an open and completely unbiased mind.

On YOUR birthday, do you wish others a Happy Birthday? It is your Birthday, you are celebrating it as YOUR day ergo others say to you Happy Birthday.

Why then would you wish someone Merry Christmas or Happy Hanakuh (I know it's wrong) or Eid Mubarach if they don't celebrate that particular holiday?

Should we then ask someone what, if anything they are celebrating at that time of the year and then subsequently wish them that? You could if you were very sincere about your wish, heck if you were that sincere about your gesture, this wouldn't be an issue for you, you would KNOW what the other person celebrates already. But we as a race as a whole are lazy and insincere, therefore we have chosen to wish a Happy Holiday in general, whatever it is you happen to celebrate I hope you enjoy it. Why is that so hard and so offensive to some?

Is it being Politically Correct to be mindful of someone's feelings? When your parents taught you manners were they teaching you to be politically correct or were they simply teaching you common courtesy. Remember this? If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. That is what I think of with politically correctness.

Is it really a burden on you to refer to someone as African American instead of a derrogatory term? How about Latino or Hispanic instead of just "Mexican". This same Twitterer in an earlier conversation we had (she is a native Californian) proclaimed her ignorance in the fact that someone that is Hispanic is not necessarily Mexican but someone of Spanish heritage. Whether she never bothered to find out, or never had occasion to, I don't know. I appreciate that she was open to the revelation and I hope she embraces it.

In that same vein I hope one day everyone can embrace each other's differences. It is what makes us all who we are. How boring we would be to all be the same (unless you were each like me).

A little reminder

In 1897 a young girl asked a simple question:

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.