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Peter Burnett's avatar

Curious.

I wrote words I should perhaps not have written, for they shared deep shock. And the moment I had written and moved to post what I had written, they disappeared. Not the first time this has happened.

I wrote, Kim, to thank you for reminding us of Jim Barger’s deep, clean, resonant, heart-to-heart message.

There are words spoken by the great Jewish sage, Hillel, and repeated in the Quran (5:32):

“Whosoever destroys one soul, it is as though he had destroyed the entire world. And whosoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved the entire world.”

A man IS a whole world.

And yet, in America, killing is as normal and unnoticed as breathing. For all that babbling about “the sanctity of life”. At most, we catch a breath, normal breathing soon resumes, and all’s forgotten. And for all the brave ongoing struggle of these Letters from an American to awaken our awareness, I came away from the account of this killing feeling powerless and lost.

“And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9)

Even if our lives are writ in water, may the spreading ripples from those lives be ripples of awareness. May awareness be our monument.

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Diane Love (St Petersburg FL)'s avatar

May awareness be our monument indeed Peter.

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Mike S's avatar

Peter, perhaps you did not press the post key before you left the page and came back?

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Peter Burnett's avatar

Thanks, Mike, but no, it wasn't that... I moved to press the Post button but at that moment my entire message disappeared.

I had difficulty posting another message shortly after this one and wasn't sure I'd succeeded until I saw it on my phone. The draft was still on my computer. Maybe it's the computer playing up. I've had the impression over the past 20 years or so that every time that I'm completely at ease with a Microsoft product, they scrap it and bring in something worse, when it's not plain awful.

For my own purposes, I've never had anything better than Word XP. I remember that a theoretical physicist I knew felt the same way...

I'm reminded of when I was a kid and American car manufacturers turned out a new model every year... So, even when they made something lovely to look at like the '48 Buick, it was succeeded by a crap design.

As we saw with Manila's Jeepneys and Havana's seemingly everlasting American cars from prehistory, unsafe-at-any-speed may have guzzled gas but was long-lasting...

Excuse the digression frm serious things...

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Anne-Louise Luccarini's avatar

I've kept my old laptop with XP on it. I use it as a table for my present laptop. I loved my XP.

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Lynell(VA by way of MD&DC)'s avatar

I saved mine, too!

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Peter Burnett's avatar

I call that set-up Micro... something else...

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Lynell(VA by way of MD&DC)'s avatar

XP, yes! And the rest of what you say, Peter.

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JaneDough56's avatar

I had troubles posting last night too. I went to post and it was already there, like a running duplicate.

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Mike S's avatar

Hmmm....... are you on WiFi? Maybe it is cutting out.

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Peter Burnett's avatar

No, this looks the same as what Jane DoughS reports. In my case WiFi on the phone functioned but my computer's wired up to a modem connected to fibreglass cable.

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