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Unread 04-30-2012, 09:30 AM
William A. Baurle William A. Baurle is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Arizona, USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling View Post
I am tempted to ask "Don't you discuss public events at home?" but won't.

When the family gets together these days I love the end-of-the meal arguing/debating that goes on among the grandchildren (from 16 to 21) and includes the adults who are lucky enough to get a word in edgewise.
It's a fair question, Janice. I only get my kids on weekends, as I'm divorced. I live in a duplex and I'm something of a hermit: stacks of books all around, but a kick-ass entertainment center and PC. When I get my boys I take them swimming, or to the parks about town. We dine out most of the time.

My boys go to a chartered school here and this school doesn't do report cards or anything like that. They email the kids' grades to my ex-wife, and she fills me in on how they're doing. It's actually a pretty busy interaction between parent and teacher. My ex gets several emails a week. She doesn't forward them to me and I haven't asked, though maybe I should.

Anyway, when I brought up the issue of the European Union, I was dumbfounded that my eldest didn't even know it existed. And his grades are all A's and B's.

On the flip-side of the coin, he told me that his social studies teacher had the class spend more than a week on the Civil War prison camp at Andersonville, and were shown photos that made the Nazi camp survivors look healthy by comparison. I would post a link to a photo of one survivor of that diabolical camp, but it's too arresting, too graphic. The evil that man can do to his fellow man never ceases to disturb and sicken me, even as I near my fiftieth year on this earth. It's the reason I've found faith in God. I don't believe in Hell, but I find it unconscionable that certain people should slip into oblivion scot free, without being taken to account for the awful and obscene things they did when they were alive. That may very well be the way it is, but I don't have to like it.

I'm rambling, sorry...
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