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Last night I was glued to the tube watching Frontline and their documentary about life in China. It is not reality tv. It is harsh reality television.

It is “Thank God I don’t live there” television. I was walking around today thinking about the young woman who had to fight off her parents and her community to avoid an arranged marriage. And finally managed to do it.

The alternative? She has a job working in the city in some sort of high tech factory. And she works eleven hours per day seven days per week. Her task is to put four wires into a receptacle six hundred times per hour. That is ten times per minute for eleven hours. Over and over again.

Maybe she gets a half hour for lunch.

But the good news is that she meets someone she genuinely likes and they fall in love. So she has some happiness in her life. And she is a cute little thing. I feel like sending her a wedding present.

She will probably insert millions of wires into receptacles before she is done.

AAggghhhhhhhh.

Anyway. Moving on. There are many interesting characters that we discover. There is a young guy with a winning smile and a very attractive shirt who plans to tailor shirts for individuals and sell them on the internet. And the next time we see him he has ten women working on sewing machines and boxes of shirts ready to go. Amazing!

He becomes a Christian and seems totally satisfied. There’s no girlfriend in the picture so he doesn’t have to worry about supporting a family. It’s just him and dear old mom.

Smart guy!

Most of them are not so lucky. Loneliness takes its toll. But everything revolves around money. Relationships suffer. It’s a hard life. I couldn’t handle it. I would have to take a slow boat to the United States. And that option is available to some of them. But the parents exert an amazing influence on them and they stay.

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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/youngchina/

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Tomorrow evening is the season finale of The Tudors.

Do you know what that means? Yes my friends. Henry VIII is going to have Ann killed. But that is not the unusual part. Lovers quarrel and kill each other all the time.

Henry on the other hand manages to kill his wife after he obtains a legal document granting him permission to do it. And he convinces thousands of his fellow citizens that it is a good idea for their queen to be beheaded.

They all have a party. And then she is escorted to the block and they watch as a guy with a mask chops her head off. A remarkable precedent is set and as we see in the next two centuries one that is not forgotten. First the queen. Then the king.

All of this pretty much blows my mind.

Ann should have known it was time to RUN long before this fateful day. Here is a portion of a love letter Henry wrote to her years earlier. There are love letters between the two that have been saved, ironically enough, in the Vatican Library. The love smitten King of England says. . .

“No more to you at this present mine own darling for lack of time but that I would you were in my arms or I in yours for I think it long since I kissed you. Written after the killing of an hart at a xj. of the clock minding with God’s grace tomorrow mightily timely to kill another: by the hand of him which I trust shortly shall be yours.”

Henry R.

Nice. He was probably trying to tell her something.

“I love you my dear. Run like a deer! I find it necessary to kill things when I am thinking of you.”

It really is a sad tale. And a true one. I have to give Showtime credit for making history come alive in this instance. I am sure there are lots of inaccuracies but history is full of those. I give them credit for trying.

Isn’t it ironic that these two produced one of the great rulers of all time in Queen Elizabeth I.

Here is some more information about Ann Boleyn and her life.

http://englishhistory.net/tudor/monarchs/boleyn.html

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Do you enjoy history when it is brought to television? Are there any shows that you feel have been particularly well done?

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Susan Sharon Stone has a problem. She said something about the recent earthquake being the result of bad karma. Because the Chinese have done so much damage to Tibet. And now about a billion people are mad at her. But maybe Tibet is doing some damage to China.

Using an extraordinary weapon that can cause massive earthquakes and is invisible.

That’s pretty cool I say. I would worry about it being used against us someday unless we can figure out how to ID it so we can send a cruise missile to MEET IT.

Karma is an interesting concept and I try not to mess around with it. I worry about stepping on bugs if I see them before I step on them. If I just hear the crunch I am not too worried. It’s the intention part that can mess you up.

Sharon says this:

“I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else,” Stone said in Cannes, according to footage widely available on YouTube.

If she is talking about the government then I have to agree with her. But I don’t think they were tossed about by the earthquake. Unfortunately.

The Karma weapon perhaps needs some fine tuning. It’s range finder is off by a few thousand miles.

And then she says:

“I’ve been concerned about how should we deal with the Olympics, because they are not being nice to the Dalai Lama, who is a good friend of mine,” she said.

Don’t you wish you could say that? I do.

Be nice to the Dalai Lama who is a good friend of mine. Because I don’t like my friends having their countries taken over by communist governments. And if they do I might get upset.

And I might not be nice to you even though I believe we should all be nice to each other.

I wish I could call up Mr. Lama and have a nice chat with him. I have seen him on television and he seems to be very good natured. Maybe he talks with God. Maybe he is God. I don’t know. But it would be nice to talk with him and get a feeling for who he might be.

Do you think he controls the Karma weapon? Because somebody has to pull the trigger.

If he does maybe he should practice a bit more. Or go to an eye doctor for a checkup. Maybe he could put a bullseye up on his wall and type BEIJING in the center.

Isn’t that where they are having the Olympics? Is Sharon Stone going to be there when it opens?

Lord this could get complicated.

“Sharon Stone was bounced up in the air and came down on her head the other day when a 4.5 earthquake hit the Olympic Village just prior to the Opening Ceremonies.”

Practice, practice. Someday it will be a useful weapon. Maybe. But it still has a long way to go.

Today the weather turned hot and humid so I guess play time is over. We had a nice run but now it’s time for some real Virginia weather. I came home and made a drink. The flipped the switch on the AC unit recently installed and sat down to see what was happening here.

I have more time now to go out and read blogs and meet people. My blogs are running (more or less) and it really is fun and interesting to meet other bloggers. Robin Easton is a jewel. And Evita of Evolving Wellness is another very special person. I read her posts and the hair on my neck starts to tingle.

What?!!

Oh no. That’s a good thing actually. It’s not something that my wife minds because it’s a thought process more than anything else based on my fascination with the sincerity and single mindedness of her approach to health and our wellbeing.

So I was reading her post about alcohol and the fact that it is poison while I was enjoying my rum and coke. The big old rum bottle was sitting there. Empty. And I had planned to go out and get another one.

But then I decided not too. I need all my remaining brain cells.

Pretty desperately in fact at this point.

And then Robin and I were talking about fear and dying. I think we agreed that being dead is not really a problem. Because after all we can fly when we are in our spirit bodies. And we all want to do that.

I mean if we could buy tickets to do it there would be long lines out to the sidewalk every day.

Not to die but just to fly. And then we were talking about the hard part actually being PAIN. I fear pain. And I was watching Henry last night on Showtime (The Tudors) go ballistic and start torturing all these poor guys who had done nothing.

Because he thought they had slept with Ann. And by the time he got done with them they all said “Well yes. I did sleep with her” even though they hadn’t. Because you know you will say anything if someone tortures you.

They wouldn’t even have to torture me. I would be like “Please just let me know what you think I did. I’m pretty sure I did it. Just remind me if you would about the details. I’m a little forgetful”.

Torture is so stupid. You want the truth? Forget it. You want someone to agree with you. NO PROBLEM.

They put the poor fiddle player on the rack and pulled him apart. I was very upset even though I know he is an actor and can hit that high C note without being stretched if he wants to do it.

I couldn’t sleep. I’m still upset about it. How can one human being do these things to another human being?

“I was just doing my job mister. I work here in the Tower of London. I’ve got five kids at home to feed. And I just turn the wheel. Somebody else brings em in here. Maybe they should have not gotten themselves in trouble”.

Please. I need to stop watching television. Putting torture on tv is worse than letting naked men and women have at it. And what it says about the human race is much worse.

My eyes cracked open at the crack of dawn today. And I wobbled over to the window and looked out through more cracks in the blinds and the spaces between the leaves outside. And I was happy to see. . . COLOR!

That’s right sports fans. There was a little bit of pink or light red in the sky and this is a very good sign.

Because it means that in about thirty minutes if your intrepid photo guy can put on his pants and find his way down to the James River we may end up with something like this to show you before 8 am.

I even had time to go to Starbucks for a coffee and blueberry scone before heading down to the Pony Pasture to see all my winged friends. Because I have done this before and kind of know what I am doing now.

This is why you need a nice camera dude! What did you see last night on television that can compare with this?

The Tudors? Well, alright. You have a point. But you can record that sucker and go to bed. Or you can sleep less and do both. But in any case you need to be out there when the sun comes up.

Because this is when the magic happens.

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Here is a larger view on Blogger

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In this photo we can see the reflection of the sun as it peaks over the hill on the scales of this large fish. The Osprey is having him over for breakfast.

Who says birds are not hospitable?

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