HOW DO YOU COUNT IT ?

Self-help guru Tony Robbins was only 6 years old when he published his first book, "Unlimited Power", or was he 26 years old?

Rapper Ja Rule was only 5 years old when his debut album, "Venni Vetti Vecci" went platinum, or was he 23 years old?

Actor Alex Rocco is best known for playing Vegas mob boss Moe Green in "The Godfather", is 18 years old, or is he 22 years old?

It all depends on how you count it. I suppose they could be either or?

No I'm not senile -- yet. So tell me how do you count your age? Are you a year older on the anniversary of your birth?
Or do you just pick a day each year and say I'm a year older this year and every year thereafter no matter what day you were born on.

How do you count your birthday?

If a birthday should be counted on the day of our birth like most of us do, then these people are out of luck, or maybe they are the lucky ones, because three years out of four they get to pick a day.
They are the 'leap year ' babies of the world, all born on February 29th regardless of the year.
Oh what a dilemma, If I had been born in February of 1944 instead of August of 1944 I could claim to be 18 years old instead of well --- none of your business.

Leap years, leap days and leaplings owe their existence to the peculiar way we keep time and lay out our calendars.
While we conventionally count a year as lasting 365 days, it actually takes our planet 365 days, six hours, nine minutes and 9.7 seconds to complete a single revolution in its orbit around the sun. Astronomers call that a sidereal year, and it's close enough to count as 365 and one quarter days.

So in order to get rid of that pesky quarter-day (and make the scientific facts reconcile with our regular calendar), we add a single day back onto the calendar every four years. So 2008 will last 366 days, not 365--and anyone born Feb. 29, 2008, will have to wait until 2012 for their next birthday --- Or will they?

IT'S OVER , STILL I VENT

My grandson is in the 10th grade now, but still something bothers me and I sure could use the opinion of a English teacher right now.

Some of you may remember the essay my grandson wrote last year for his English class when he was in the ninth grade. He had just turned fifteen and he was pretty excited about it because this time they got to pick anything they wanted and apparently he had something on his mind that he wanted to get out so he used this opportunity to put it on paper. When he was finished he asked me to read it and I was so very impressed I decided to share it and so I posted it.

Some of you asked me to let you know what his grade was when he received it, well at the time I couldn't. This teacher always kept their papers for weeks and sometime months and many times the students couldn't find out what their grades were until progress reports or report cards came out. On the occasions when I would ask my grandson about it, he would say he asked her but she would reply she hadn't had time to grade them yet.

I'm posting his essay here again, with the second half in red only because I don't know how to make a big fat ' X ' across the whole bottom half of the essay.
He received his paper and the grade on it a day or two before report cards came out, he brought it home along with a ton of old assignments that the students hadn't seen in months.

My grandson received a ' D ' for that essay and the paper had a huge ' X ' across the whole bottom part of it. She didn't count the whole bottom half, it was unacceptable.

Finally he spoke up and asked her why? What was wrong with it?
Her reply was, " You don't have the right to try to make people think like you do.

So here it is once again, please tell me what you think, especially about the part in red.

Genocide: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

By XXXX XXXXXX

History, it seems, has a tendency to repeat itself. Genocide is the mass extermination or discrimination against an entire group of people based on ethnicity , religion, or political beliefs. The earliest form of a genocide can be seen in the bible when the Egyptians enslaved the Jewish people. The first major publicized was during WWI when the Turkish government, killed over two million Armenians and over one million Greeks. Then during the 1930’s and 40’s, a mass extermination of millions of Jews, prisoners of war , and any and all people deemed as “unwanted” by fascist Germany during WWII. Then during the 90’s, the Serbian government killed eight thousand male Bosnians. Today, millions of dafurian people are being slaughtered

The Point to get across is the fact that some people will omit any accusations that a genocide happened. Like today’s neo Nazis who deny that the Holocaust ever happened, Turkey denies any part in the genocide during world war one. Serbia denied ever killing those eight thousand male Bosnians. So it would come as no surprise that Sudan denies having ever done anything to the Dafur people.

When you turn on the T.V today, you see only the wars in Iraq, the war on terror, or how the stock market was down a few meaningless numbers. What you do not see is the men, women, and children that are being killed today in the dafur region. Haile Selassie once said that “Through out history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” We owe it to ourselves and for the sake of all that is good and great in this country, to tell the government of the United States to act now and declare a war on the true ‘Terror’.

Now close your eyes for a second here. Imagine you are just a simple everyday person, except for one thing. You are starving because your government denies your ability to buy food. Now imagine you are a woman who has been raped, yet you can do nothing because the police are against you. Now imagine you are a child, a child that walks alone because your parents were slaughtered by the government and there bodies burned so you can not give them a proper burial. Now imagine you are a refuge from dafur, just arrived in America, ready to finally have peace. But, you can never have any peace because of the nightmares that linger on, the screams of terror and pain, the smell of burning flesh, the cries of the children who are dying. Most of all, you can never have peace because the people in the city you are in are oblivious to what is going on in your homeland. You would never have peace because you would feel it is your duty to let it be known what is happening, for all those who never made it. For those who were born and killed in a world so cold and unjust.

So do not deny, and do not forget. History has told us before to be alert, to never allow for deaths of millions to happen again, yet we still do. Genocide still happens today, and I believe we should let history be history, and never let it predict our futures. And above all, do not let one death be a tragedy and a death of a million just be a statistic.

I'm posting it here again because, I need some opinions.

Excuse me, am I crazy? Is asking someone to imagine a situation so that they can get the full impact of the story imposing your will on them.

Is asking someone to imagine what you are describing so that they can mentally visualize what these people are going through, imposing your will on them?

Is asking someone to imagine, the same as asking them to agree with you or to have the same opinion as you?

I don't think so.

PIECES OF MY HEART

These memories I share with pride
they are the way I feel inside.

My fathers hands, my mothers arms,
the way I feel when they're around.

The way we used to play at night,
brothers and sisters saying goodnight.

Remembering those teenage years
with all the laughter and the tears.

My first corsage, the senior prom,
the way I cried when things went wrong.

My wedding day, my child at play,
the happiness I feel today.

The friends that come, the friends that go,
the love I feel for all I know.

These memories that I hold dear,
are pieces of my heart for sure.