Back to Normal

Spring break is over and the daily routine is back to normal now. The break was a good one, but the best is still the year we went to Hawaii.

Saturday we received a phone call from some dear friends telling us they had gone off to Chicago and gotten married! Being of Irish descent, they thought after 9 years of being engaged, it was a fun idea. They left their home in Indiana and went to Chicago for the weekend. They got married on St. Patrick's Day at City Hall and celebrated in the city. Good times.

Good news is more than welcomed from them after the last three or four years they've had. They've dealt with a liver transplant, lung cancer and the removal of one lung, and a couple of heart attacks, too, between them.

Saturday night we went to see the play version of "Of Mice and Men". So good. Not a dry eye in the place at the end.

The husband went into the kitchen after we came back home to get a drink and discovered water leaking out from under the kitchen sink. The dishwasher was running and he thought it was backed up. I went in and noticed the water coming right out of a hole in the pipe. So, yesterday his job was to head out to the home improvement store and fix the pipe. He replaced a segment of it but had to improvise on some of the leak coming from a piece not changeable. He was successful.

I took a break from the news over the weekend, until late last night. I knew what it would hold and I didn't feel like being irritated. Did you see the coverage of the rallies held over the war? I'm sure you did of the one held by the anti-war group, ANSWER. I knew the socialist/communist sponsored rally would rate the headlines and cameras.

Interesting contrast not being publicized, though - Organizing for a year and headlining a screaming, cursing Cindy Sheehan, the ANSWER rally only brought a crowd estimated at 5,000 - 10,000. The tv coverage on the network news never gave the park police estimates, though, they only referred to them as in the thousands. Why? Well, maybe because if they highlighted the small turnout, when the organizers had been promising crowds of 100,000 marchers, they would have had to give an accurate count on the pro-troops supporters who had gathered.

The Gathering of Eagles organization pulled together a turnout of 40,000 supporters in a 6 week time frame. The Gathering of Eagles has a 10 point mission statement on their website; www.gatheringofeagles.org . In the second point, it reads "Our focus is guarding our memorials and their grounds." In point three, "We believe that the war memorials are sacred ground; as such we will not allow them to be desecrated..."
They were concentrating on protecting the Vietnam memorial.

With the kooks storming the steps of the Capitol building during recent protests and spray painting the building and other spots in D.C., who could blame them for concern over the past weekend? They demand peaceful, respectful behavior from everyone but themselves.

So, who do you think would be the most effective of the protestors? The group without celebs, profanity, a year to devote to planning the event? Or the noticeably smaller group using the opposite approach? That's why the Gathering of Eagles weren't given the coverage they deserved.