The Median Sib

I wrote a few weeks ago about a child (I’ll call her Meredith) in one of my reading groups who told me a story about how when she tried to pull something out of the ground, it flipped her up into the air. And her brother tried it, and it flipped him into the air, too. And then the very same thing happened to her father - flying in circles in the air! This week I told the children about riding in the airplane with PawPaw last weekend. Meredith immediately piped up with the story about the time her father was flying a helicopter and shot her brother from the air. (I guess this happened after the air flipping experience.) Methinks Meredith has a need to have a bigger and better story. Classic one-upmanship. Today I asked her if she had someone at home to read her book to, and she replied that she had a sister in the first grade. A pause. “No, wait,” she said, “She’s not in the first grade, she’s in the ‘twenty-grade.’” The other kids just looked at her.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, I will go camping again this weekend. I’m getting excited about it. The weather will be perfect - maybe even a little too warm. I know exactly where I want to camp - same place I went last time, but I’ll choose a different campsite this time. The campground probably won’t have a lot of people there like it did a couple weeks ago. Maybe I’ll be wrong about that. I will remember to take my camera this time to take pictures of my adventure. My throngs of readers can look forward to seeing the photos in a few days. Well, I’ll enjoy looking at them anyway.

I found another news article that tells it like it is. This one was written by Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe. It’s well worth reading.

According to a Washington Post story the CIA has numerous secret prisons in other countries in which they are holding terror suspects. The article is interesting - four cyber-pages long. After watching a video a couple years ago of terrorists in Iraq savagely sawing off an American reporter’s head with a knife and hearing the reporter’s cries and death gurgles, I really don’t worry much about whether or not terrorist prisoners are treated well. I understand that we don’t want to sink to the terrorists’ level by treating prisoners inhumanely. But I also understand that these terrorists are unlike any previous enemies we’ve had. All our civilized debate and public arguing about how we treat prisoners just make them that much bolder and give them more hope. We are our own worst enemy. I think it is time we let our soldiers FIGHT the war without our politicians interfering at every step.