Apple Sauce is Great for Cottonmouth

I went to Greensboro this weekend. I was not in a hurry to get there, because I had a very important Calculus test to prepare for the following week, but it was my niece's fifth birthday party. I had a good time taking pictures of my niece and the other kids. It was unusually warm outside, and it was being held at a natural science center that also had a zoo behind it. After cutting the cake and the usual birthday celebrations, we walked around and looked at the animals, I mostly payed attention to the incredible colors I saw outside, the fall was in peak. That night I met a girl I shortly dated a few years back for a drink at the bar around the corner from my older sister's house. We talked quite a bit, but she seemed extremely distressed. She said that she was tired, mostly from always having to support her family, from raising a daughter by herself. Her daughter pretty much lives in the ghetto, and has two kids with different fathers, she also never graduated from high schoo...

Today I have thought about my life over the last few years. I keep thinking about how tired I am sometimes, and how the days constantly keep flowing, one into the next and how I so easily lose track. The summertime has come around again, and I thought about being a kid when summer always represented the complete lack of any responsibility, and how we could spend day after day not having to worry about anything. I miss those times, because now I can't even sleep at night because I have to think about how I'm going to get through tomorrow. I told myself that I have to give myself a little credit sometimes, for getting through the things I never thought I could have done. I had a long recovery from my knee surgery and it is something that I do not have to think about much anymore. I thought again about what it would be like this year at my Grandmother's house. We spent the fourth of July there sometimes and it had been so long since I had thought about her I almost forgot that...

Bin Laden was killed last night. The world is rejoicing at the news of a notorious criminal mastermind responsible for the attacks against the United States on September 11th 2001. Our world was changed and the governments around the world declared a war against those that committed the attacks that left thousands of innocent Americans dead. I however have very mixed emotions concerning this news. Was this act committed by men simply wielding box cutters? Was 9/11 the work of terrorists with no other weapons, no other technological means other than cell phones that were able to outsmart the most sophisticated security network in the world. The CIA, the FBI, the most well trained, equipped and funded security force in the world was overrun by a few men with box cutters? I know that Osama Bin Laden was probably a very dangerous person. The people that followed him and still wish harm to this country still exist. But even ten years later most of the story concerning 9/11 still don't m...

There was a lot of snow on the ground. Here in North Carolina we missed it, but this past week in Virginia it came down pretty heavily. We drove to my Grandmothers house and I looked at the miles of farmland, completely covered in white. We arrived and it was cold inside, and I looked around at what had accumulated in the house that my Grandmother lived in for thirty plus years. It was pretty depressing, there was trash piled up in every corner and ever crevice in the entire house. It was pretty difficult to separate between what was to be thrown in the huge red dumpster in the driveway and what could possibly be something important, an old photograph of my grandparents or cousins, a letter written to my Grandmother by one of my sisters when they were still in grade school. I have never liked to see the end of things. I had to force myself to just work as quickly as possible and not think about how I was throwing away what was a life to someone else. I know that I will never go back to...

As more and more Tea Party conservatives belch rhetoric that contain violent undertones, the connection between those who support their idea that picking up arms and literally killing the democratic ideals of this country surfaced this past week. A 22 year old man attempted to kill a Democratic Congresswoman and not surprisingly appears to be quite pleased with himself, as you will note when looking at the mugshot of the man who recently committed this horrific crime. It is quite clear that the messages sent out by Republican figureheads that have blatantly stated that it is time to put their political opposites in crosshairs have found a home and embedded themselves in heinous individuals. It is sad. It is despicable that our country continues to suffer at the hands of imbeciles who push for violent action against anyone who does not follow their idiotic beliefs. I think that people like Sarah Palin, that publish propaganda that contains images of American cities in crosshairs and cla...