No More Books

Our founding fathers sat down at their desk with quill in hand, poised over paper and began to write. We now sit in our offices or living room with this small box on our laps and write. From a time when men pressed the ink upon the letters, then press the letters into the paper, to get us our news of the day. Now we go to our little box and get updated as the news happens. We can now see a story that happened a world away. At present in the United States news papers are shrinking and closing on a daily basis. No longer do we long to feel the paper as it caresses our fingers, to smell the ink on the morning edition. For now it is the joy of being connected to the world.
Books are becoming a thing of the past. Just this week Border's Book Stores have closed. Everyone is buying on-line or downloading books into their Kindles. Is this progress? What have we really achieved?
No longer do have the closeness of our neighbors. We make friends with people we have never met, nor will meet. No longer are men meeting in the taverns and debating life and politics. We sit, solitary in our homes and chat over our small box. We know more about our friend living in France, than we do about our neighbor across the street.
Is this what the world has become, a place of individuals that have no sense of his fellow man?
As for me, I long to hold a book in my hand, to feel the cover, to smell the pages, and to see the ink pressed in the paper. I for one will not go gracefully into the future.

Knowing one's place

Having been in policing for over 20 years now there is one thing that keeps bugging me. Never have I seen it in any other occupation, but policing. I have been through a police training academy, many schools over the years and I hold an Associates Degree in Criminal Justice. I have been certified as an instructor, special investigator and I have a Master Peace Officer License. With all this you would think I know just a little about working a crime or just a little about the law. However, it never fails that some citizen tells me how to do my job. I have had someone even tell me that I did not know what I was doing. I wonder, do these people hire a plumber and stand over him telling he is not doing his job right. Do they go through the line at HEB and tell the bag boy that, "No, milk and bread do not go in the same bag!"

So where do they get off telling me how to do my job? What is it in a person that they think they have to tell a policeman how and what to do while he is doing it? Come on people, I did not go through all that training just so you could tell me how you think I am doing wrong! Think you can do it, then go get your peace officer licence. No, wait, then you will have people telling you what you are doing wrong.