14 sept 06

Greetings,

Here, on a little spinning rock called Earth early morning risers gather way down below. They are on a red track.

Groups of elderly women teachers preparing for Tai Chi movements stand on cement and gab their hearts out. Old men walk in circles while listening to small portable radio news.

Students run. They pursue education. Education is illusive and slippery.

A father and his adolescent son jog at a slow pace. The kid is overweight and a whiner. We heard him crying the other day as his father, in the best tradition of a hard-line ideology, exhorted him to perform, to keep up, to get with the program. The kid was having a traumatic breakdown.

This morning, as his father with head bowed and hands tightly clasped behind his bent back waited for his son to jog, to move, to do something worthwhile you could easily see and sense his unrelenting authoritarian nature. Being a parent is a tough assignment.

"Try easier," someone whispered.

Sounds drift on wind as the national anthem begins blasting from speakers at the Middle School across the lake. Kids scramble to get dressed and out the door to formation before breakfast. Before resuming their educational chase.

An orange sunrise dances over green forested mountains.
Peace.