h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hey Elektra, how are things? I haven't heard from you in a while and I see you haven't been posting here recently!

Thanks for your concern Willem, missing my little finds are you. Sorry my computer is on a fritz, I am hoping it hasn't gone completely. So I am getting up early and using D's desk top. I barely have time to check email and h2g2, not enough to add anything. Hopefully this will change shortly, please keep four fingers crossed that it can get better. Short finances and added difficulties checking jobs.

I think the problem is that things are changing and I need to learn something new. Sometimes it is very hard to let go of the old so that you cannot embrase and appreciate a new state of affairs. Part of it is Lithuianians are very stubborn---too much like the Boers in this respect.

We watched 'The Sixth Sense' the other night and encouraged Cactus Cafe to watch it and it deals with moving on and accepting change in a healing way.

This reality is unraveling at a very fast rate and since it is in fact a very bad dream in which a lot of people are suffering this is a GOOD thing but change frightens us and we cling to the bad old which is in fact preventing the GOOD New that the Spirit is encouraging us to embrace. In the gospels Jesus told parables about putting new wine in old bottles and trying to mend clothing with new bits ---this is worse than starting with the fresh so it is not really a new problem ---but it is a people problem.

Today is the 50th anniversity of Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream speech.' It is depressing how little has changed in this country regarding race relations and inequality. Financial hardships hit the last people who got their rights harder and everyone uncertain of their finances uses it as an excuse not to care BUT THAT SHOULDN'T BE.

i'LL get off my soapbox now --thanks for listening but your good deed of asking didn't go by unpunished now.

Hey Elektra thanks for letting me know! I saw The Sixth Sense ... back then in the theatre, my father liked it a lot. You can soapbox all you want to me! I'm sorry about things not changing enough over there race-relation wise. I thought having Obama president would make a big difference! I was positively impressed when he became president ... I didn't think I'd see America accept a non-white president so soon. Over here though ... I'm not impressed with the politicians so far. Nelson Mandela was great but he was mostly a figurehead ... actual policy that was decided didn't have much to do with him and a lot of 'deals with the devil' were made so that we today have a very corrupt country. Some things are improving ... but these *in spite of* the politicians mostly. South Africans of all colours do generally get along very well, but we have some problem areas which you'll know of by what we've already been speaking about here. The thing is that we still have a massive unemployment & poverty problem here. We do NOT have the kind of 'community' thinking that one would suppose going by the 'Ubuntu' philosophy. The people 'at the top' are very much more interested in enriching themselves and their closest relatives than in working to uplift all communities. Money that is supposed to go to building houses, sanitation, the various municipal duties, often end up in somebody's pocket and the essential things don't get done. Education is still a mess. State hospitals are scenes of unimaginable horror. There's a lot of police corruption and ineptitude. Rhinoceroses get poached and a lot of our wonderful countryside is destroyed for the sake of mining. There's very little 'forward-thinkingness'. People all over the country are very dissatisfied but most people see 'scapegoats' instead of seeing the root of the problems.

OK that's my own bit of soapboxing!