Celebrating Holidays During Tough Times

Halloween is now over, and immediately our thoughts turn to Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannakuh, Quanza or the New Year. During tough economic times being faced all over the world, how will celebrations be handled? Please share your suggestions and ideas for how you plan to enjoy the holidays and acknowledge the occasions without having the financial means to do what you may have done in previous years. I know that many of you have great ideas, creative suggestions, and positive attitudes that dictate making the best of everything despite the circumstances. If you share your thoughts in the comment section below I will be glad to publish them so they are available for everyone to read. Thanks for participating! Who knows? Your ideas may help another family celebrate in ways they would not have thought of, thereby making the holidays more enjoyable for them.

I Did Not Vote For Meanness, Vulgarity, Stupidity and Trash Talk. Did You?

More and more I am less and less pleased or impressed with the veritable garbage dump that the Internet has spawned in terms of people leaving comments on websites, in forums, and in chat rooms, etc. When did it become okay to spout vulgar insults at strangers? When did it beome okay to pepper every blurb with profanity? When did it become a badge of toughness to see how many times the "F" word can be used in a sentence? Who decided and when that it is unnecessary to respect other peoples' rights to their own opinions regardless of how much they differ from one's own ideas? When did we become a nation of self-appointed experts droning endlessly on and on about topics for which no research or fact-finding has been done? Who decided that it is okay to make pronouncements as if they are indeed the Gospel truth when in fact they are either half-truths or blatant lies? Who ? Who voted to change from professional, polite, intelligent, sophisticated conversation to rudeness, interrupting, talking over other people, never listening or allowing audience members to listen, and that mass stupidity would be on display for the entire world to see? There are millions of children in this world and in our country, and we are raising them in what is looking and sounding more and more like the City Dump. I did NOT vote for these changes, and in truth I don't know anyone who did. SO HOW HAVE WE ALLOWED THIS TO BECOME THE NORM? WHY ARE WE TOLERATING IT? IS THIS HOW WE WANT OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO BEHAVE AS CHILDREN OR AS ADULTS? I for one say, "No, no, a thousand times no!"