Blogs are places to rant. They are places to discuss. They are places to emote feelings - and reason. All these things can be done separately, but if they come together in one blog, it can be an awesome/fearful place to be.
Today,
someone vandalized a garden I've grown for the community, the back of my
building. It has a design made of ornamental cabbages, kale, various flowers
and plants and acrylic rock. I know the vandalism is deliberate since it was
done after I had posted a sign about previous vandalism. I've now posted a sign
to the effect that if it happens again, I will plow the entire garden under
since I am not about to learn a lesson in futility.
Below are some pics I must share in my rant against senseless destruction.
But this post has something else to reflect upon: the emotional vandalism that tried to take place in Maryland and failed ... miserably.
The
Westboro Baptist clan has tried its hand at emotional vandalism before, but the
last two times have been met with extraordinary opposition: in Newtown, the
official hate group was forced to abandon it's protest after witnessing the
"wall" amassed outside their hotel room window. In Maryland - where
it picketed against same-sex marriages beginning - it met with counter-protesters
organized by a local church:
"Fortunately for the state's lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender (LGBT) community, more than 250 demonstrators participated in a
counter-protest staged by St. Anne's Episcopal Church, which is located not far
from the courthouse.
The
satisfaction of seeing Westboro foiled - again - lies not in the protest
itself, but in its organization by a church. True, St. Anne's will now be
forever labeled a "demonic, progressive" church not only by Phelps
but also by the rabidly homophobic Christian Right crowd, but it is a Christian
Church helping to set the trend that even Newt Gingrich admitted was
inevitable.
The
latest protests have also sparked a petition to the White House, asking it to
revoke Westboro's tax-exempt status and declare it a hate group.
This
year may be the year that we can get the vandals off the streets and our of our
minds.
I
wish we could get them out of our gardens.
The
50 Chumasero Memorial Garden, the heart, its placement, my vandal rants.
