Spring has sprung!

The first day of spring generally has me thinking more positively about life. The days are longer, temperatures are increasing, my birthday is on the horizon (actually just passed), and the Winter academic term is winding to a close. This spring, I’m just feeling tired and conflicted.

I’m working my bum off with school and work (glad I was not offered a TAship this semester, I’m drowning as it is), the past few weeks have been especially rough after, among other things, a sinus infection, death in my family and increased work load. Looking forward to having Good Friday off next week!

And on another note, I’m increasingly distressed by the current political climate in my home country. What are you people doing!? Is a “controversial” health care bill really enough reason to hurl expletives at politicians? The n-word? Baby killer? F-word? And then to follow up your words with bricks through windows and threats of violence (not to mention the posting of home addresses of politicians to your angry and unpredictable followers)? I’ve blogged about this once before (when I saw a video of a belligerent woman calling an Israeli man a Nazi for discussing his support of the health care system in Israel) but really, this needs to stop. How can you have an intelligent debate with someone who wants to attack you, verbally or physically? How can we move forward as a people if we cannot communicate with each other? So to whomever will listen, stop condoning this behaviour! If you realize you are behaving in this way, please, take a step back and reconsider the efficacy of your words in effecting real change! By threatening and whining, are you really moving the debate forward or are you simply a roadblock? America has always been a country that is greater than the sum of its individual parts, stop this divisive crap. It is not, and should not be, an ‘us vs. them’ situation, only ‘us’.

I’ll leave you, dear reader, with a quote that I really like from Jamie Oliver. Many years ago, I watched his TV series about improving public school lunches and one thing he said has really stuck with me. “I want us to have a f—ing better, cooler, cleverer, healthier nation.” And that won’t happen if we don’t work together.

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