June 13, 2006: The first comment breaks my heart.....

There are several newer posts below but the comment from this reader bothered me so I have placed it at the top.



I don't know why I had not seen this before, at least that I remember. I am often bothered by problems posting to Blogger and/or trying to publish comments which seem not to appear later. Perhaps this is one of them. I wonder why this is so ........

Anyway, I am re-posting this comment here because it touches something in me.

Anonymous said...

ummm....obviously, as always the extremely detrimental impact of smoking pot is overlooked. OF COURSE it should stay illegal. I was addicted for years, my best friend is addicted, my husband is addicted. They can't even go a few hours without a toke. They buy pot before food. Ask my husband who's pawned off our kid's video games for weed if it's harmless. I've talked to hookers who work the streets to buy pot-just pot...no crack or heroin. I know from experience what it can do. Just come on over to my house and witness the man who cries himself to sleep because he can't stop smoking it. Talk to my friend. Talk to me. I couldn't even stop when I was pregnant. So there....there's your "study consequences", and yes, I live in BC. The most losers and unemployed per capita in North America.

Tue May 03, 07:34:38 AM 2005

I did respond to the above today, much too late for readers to notice; also, I draw your attention to the content of the post that drew the above response entitled:

October 23, 2004
Pot Rot -- Pot-Marijuana-MaryJane and Organized Crime--Grow Ops--Fraser Institute Report

http://
frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com
/2004_10_17_frosthitstherhubarb_archive.html



How can all of us help? I think that we must start with every effort to support the family. I had someone visit me lately who is involved with social services in another province. We both agree that giving someone money--EI? Welfare? whatever-- that allows the person to sit at home in poverty, but that does not contribute enough support so that the individual may rise ... get and go to a job and maintain some semblance of a normal life -- a life which requires enough sustenance to get off drugs or to get education and to develop skills that are saleable, is useless. I have an example of one young man but I cannot post the story for reasons of privacy. How a solution may be worked out requires more time than I have available, also.

One suggestion:

Make use of those people who are retired or otherwise out of the work force through disability or whatever; let them go into the schools and support the education of the children even just to listen to them read which is the foundation of so much learning. I could recommend SPORT, SPORT, SPORT for health and to burn off excess energy, along with studying really interesting things and events that will pique their learning, lead them on to more ... instead of promoting dependency, guilt and the idea that Big Brother will provide ... or, well, whatever the schools do now.

I am reading a book which just happened to include a section on the Roaring Twenties which will lead into the Dirty Thirties / the Great Depression and on up to the present. I know stories of this era that would send young people off on a quest to learn more. Should we not engage students and young adults, even young parents, in their own history and, related to that, the Roaring Twenties section, for example, lead them to learn that buying on time / hire purchase / overextending oneself / buying on credit ..... add your own name for it ... whatever, can only lead to insecurity and fear of an economic downturn. Then, teach our children to want for less in the general junk/junque department, to study to learn and to gain skills they can always sell for sustenance. They don't have to all be university graduates.