Days and days

I have been trying to find out what day it is today.  Oh I know that it is tuesday because my computer tells me so, but what "Day"is it? Every day seems to have been allocated a label other than its date. We have, of course, national holidays and days of religious celebrations that date back to when the lunacy began, but there are so many more now than there were a few years go. Mother's day stemmed from Mothering sunday was traditionally an event that allowed the servants one day off to visit their mothers.  Then along came father's day, grandfather's day, grandmother's day and so on. Given enough time we'll have third cousin's day, unless of course the card manufacturer's have already planned that one.

On this day in 1925 the first TV images were transmitted by John Logie Baird, so maybe we could declare this National TV day and we could all celebrate by watching TV all day long. But wait, a large clump of the population does that anyhow and there is little to be gained financially by having everyone on their couches for longer than usual.

Declaring a day special does not make it so. National no smoking day, I would assert makes no difference. Those who smoke will continue so to do, and those that don't will not even give it a moment's thought.

Tomorrow is Halloween, or all Hallow's Eve. A religious celebration based upon the belief that on this night the souls of the dead return to visit. Like most of this mumbo jumbo, the date has shifted from time to time at the whim of Rome. Although this day originated in Europe, it travelled with the settlers to America, and like everything else that they lay hands on, it turned into a money making scheme and like all American absurdities, it travelled back over the pond and now we have yet another period when cheap plastic garbage from China fills the shops and children are encouraged to beg from door to door, fuelling the greed and consumerism that our system relies upon.   For many people, tomorrow night will be a misery as hoards of people in ridiculous costumes roam the streets knocking on doors; and no, I am not talking about the police.

Religion and other crimes

It has been a while since the last rant; I seem to have been bathing in the ever enlarging sea of apathy, along with most of the rest of the world. Sometimes it is easier to drift along with the tide.  People often ask atheists why they care so much about religion and why they cannot just ignore it and get on with things.  It is easy to bury one's head in the sand, and so, though there is nothing that I can actually do, I feel the need to express my horror and disgust at what happens in the name of religion.

This week, a fourteen year old girl was shot in the head by members of a pernicious group of muslims. Her crime was to want to go to school and to support the rights of girls and women to have an education.  If there has been a public outcry, then it has not been well reported.  Such crimes take place on a daily basis is some countries and are considered acceptable because they are perpetrated in the name of  a god.  These people are so deeply indoctrinated from birth that everything they do is determined by the vile doctrines that control them. Education is the biggest enemy that religion has, and it is no wonder that governments are so glad to support religions, whatever brand of nonsense they subscribe to.

This week there was a documentary on TV about a group of fundamental creationists, who were taken on a road trip and confronted with evidence for the process of evolution.  It was a scary program in that five, reasonably intelligent adults, when confronted with hard facts that contradicted their faith, were unmoved. For them, Noah's ark was real, dinosaurs and men cohabited, the world was created a few thousand years ago and that humans were created, from.......what?  For them, Adam and Eve were the first people, they had two sons, Cain and Abel, one of whom killed the other. So where did the rest of the people come from. The bible doesn't give any help there so that was brushed aside.  To many people the bible or the Qran is the absolute truth and everything written in it is fact.  Having seen these five, and realising that they represent a huge and growing number of people throughout the world, it is terrifying to think of so many who have abandoned their powers of reason. Such minds can be so easily led by the charismatic and manipulative church leaders, many of which have ulterior motives.

Only recently we learned of the death of the leader of the Moonies, who most people would describe as a lunatic sect.  To the members of that following, the self proclaimed representative of god, was just that and they were quite happy to follow his every word and to fill up his bank accounts. He died a very rich man, and I am sure that there will be others stepping in and collecting the contributions from those whose minds have been damaged.

I can see little difference between these so called extreme groups, and the rank and file followers of any denomination. 

My family however dysfunctional

Recently, I was given the task of editing and reformatting a family history that someone had put together in Word and frankly looked a mess.  This  encouraged me to dig out a box of old family photos of my own and to begin to make some sense out of the jumble of images that go back as far as 1914. Nearly a century of snatched instants of time and I realised that most of it is and will remain a mystery to me. There are people that are my ancestors that I cannot even identify, and so putting the story together and the pieces in the jigsaw will be a major undertaking.  I have decided to have a go at it, if only so that future generations may have a clearer picture of where they have come from; maybe then they will have a better sense of where they are going

I know that I have done some of the groundwork in this blog - it originally set out to become a record of my own experiences, but I was unable to maintain focus and it has become a vehicle for ranting and venting, knowing that my audience is small and distant.

Family histories seem to be in vogue these days. With the internet, searches for information have been made simpler and access to a whole range of information technology makes presenting findings and ideas so much easier than ever before. Perhaps people are beginning to realise, like myself, that they have become detached from their families. Previous generations had extended families that rarely travelled and so all lived in the locality and were aware of each other's existence. I do remember as a child having a large number of aunts, uncles and cousins that we actually met  on a regular basis and everyone knew everyone else's business.  It has been said that the biggest contributor to outbreeding was the invention of the bicycle.  Then of course, and I am talking of the 1950s and 60s, the frequency of cars and other means of transport began it's steady increase and so escaping from one's locality became a simpler process.  The expansion of the education service gave people greater opportunities and  families began to spread out. MIne certainly did, though there is still a nucleus that never left the area.

I find it sad really, that  I know so little of my parents past. Both were very cagey about talking of their family histories and only recently am I finding out some of the reasons why.  I always knew that my mother was very young when I was born.  She was in fact sixteen and a half.  It doesn't require a lot of maths to work out her age at my conception.  It would appear that my father and she ran away together and the fact that she was underage meant that he risked a prison sentence had they been caught. It seems that the family closed ranks and he was protected.  No doubt I was on the way when they were taken into the custody of my grandmother.

I will keep digging. There are relatives that are still compos mentis and are a source of memories that I have never before had interest in or access to.  I still want to know why my mother and her twin were given away as very young children and what effect that had on them both.  I want to know about what went on in my family in the six years that I was in hospital and what difference it made when I came home. I guess there will always be unanswered questions and perhaps in some ways that is a good thing.