Life Adventures for Miles

Today we celebrate Memorial Day in America. Originally called Decoration Day and honoring the civil war soldiers who died, it became a national holiday in the 1960s (or is it early 1970s?) and opened to honor all military deaths. Nowadays it's celebrated with BBQs and beer and a vat of commercialism. However, it was originally a somber day to remember and mourn the dead. It's an interesting thing this mourning of the dead. Western culture finds it a somber event...even with most of its (white spiritual) belief that the dead are going to be in a better place than holds them like kings and queen of old (in reverence) probably due to its roots in Puritan and Quakerism. In contrasting colors, the other cultures (most notably Spanish, Indian, Native, and African American communities) view death as a joyous celebration. They celebrate the life lived and its (possible) afterlife. Cleaning the cemetery (and essentially caring for the dead) are also among the major acts done on this

This week I worked on repurposing some wire rings and gift bags from Amazon (thanks mama!). The brown...fake?...leather came from my stash of recycled fabric too! It is a little messy (I will clean it up at some other point) but I had fun making it (for the most part). Yay me!!!

So the introduction of this book laid out a scene of the author and his wife of exploring Utah's (and Arizona's) public lands. Within this scene he painted the plot of the story and the reason for it's plot: the "land-transfer movement". This concept was not knew to me (think about in a people perspective-groups of people were transferred everywhere and to the highest bidder) however,, I was unaware of how much traction it has gotten for our land. I naively thought that the majority of our population, in this day and age, understood the consequences and the responsibilities of "owning" living and breathing species. The argument that land and animals are different then people...well,  I would point to science with a raised eyebrow and "oh yeah"? Whether one believes in creation or evolution, one cannot ignore the scientific (both social and physical) evidence of our similarities: we all have cycles of birth, life and death, and its species that