Green Grass

I bet I'm not the only teacher who is nervous about going to school tomorrow.  Copy-cat crimes do happen.  We won't have any added protection, I am sure of that.  The powers that be want our school to be open and easily accessible to visitors.  We have been told not to lock our doors.  Guess who is locking her doors anyway. "They can bill me," as Sigourney Weaver so aptly put it in the movie, Aliens.  I find myself visualizing my last moments on earth, as Victoria Soto did, standing in front of her little charges.  My students, bless them,  would be more likely to charge the bastard and beat him to a pulp. I think I can safely say "him": as women don't do mass killings - hmmm, that's something to ponder.   I used to think everything happened for a reason, as part of a big plan set out for us by a higher power.  It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that's not true.  It totally negates free will.  If everything is "meant to be" it reduces us to robots with no power over our destiny.   I believe there is a higher power that loves us and regrets the bad choices we make.  I believe there is also evil.  Wasn't Satan kicked out of heaven?  A student told me he doesn't believe in God.  I usually steer clear of religious conversations - after all we have separation of church and state in public schools - but I asked him "Do you believe in Satan?"  He emphatically replied that he did.  I said, OK, then you have to believe in God.  He was a little confused over that debacle of faith.  I let it go at that.  Does Satan rejoice when a disturbed young man carries an assault weapon into a school and blows away all those innocent lives?  Certainly.  I don't know what the answer is.  My President allows himself to be held hostage by organizations and donors who take the second amendment to a ridiculous literal degree.  The Constitution was meant to be a living document that grows and changes with the times.  The British are no longer taking away our guns and refusing to let colonists assemble for fear they would plan a revolt.  I believe the "well armed militia" meant the citizens who formed the militias at the time, but now we have the military and police who should carry the weapons, not the citizens.  The citizens should be protected by law enforcement.  Of course all this would happen in a perfect world, free from drugs and criminals...but that's it - you expect criminals to have guns and assault weapons?  But young kids in upscale neighborhoods?  Purchased for them by their mothers who told babysitters not to leave the kid alone not even for a minute?  Come on... I'll go about my business on the farm and protect me and mine the best I can.  Christmas and the end of the year is closing in.  I am loving this mild winter.  People all over are moaning and groaning, but it makes my farming so much easier.  The water in the barn has not frozen hard yet, and I am not using that much firewood.  I start the stove every morning in the wee hours, but then wonder why as the sun is coming up and it will be 40 F. during the day.  On deck for today - sewing a Latin tote for a customer and working in the barn.  We are closing off broken windows in the barn with plastic sheeting.  We surrounded the front porch with some rippled hard plastic sheets to keep the steps from blowing over with snow, when it comes.  The porch kitties love it as they can see out while they snuggle in their boxes of wool.  I have a gigantic barn for them to hide in, with many nooks and crannies for them to find shelter, but cats are very territorial.  Once a group of kitties decides to stake out an area they are nasty to others who want to encroach on their space.  Kind of like humans, huh?  I think I'll let the sheep out to graze again today.  Yes, we still have green grass, incredibly.  I chose not to think of the global implications of the fact that I have green grass this late in the season.  I'm going to watch my sheep graze, the ultimate bucolic setting, and enjoy it.  I'll get my little gift bundles together for friends at school, and wrap gifts to take to Eric and family in Maine.  With the weather like this I might get there after all.