Hey Regina, How's The Weather?

Ok, the weatherman for KXMC our local CBS affiliate must hear "Hey Tom, how's the weather?" (the lead-in to his displaying ... the weather) more than he cares to -- sorry, Tom. But like last year it seems Tom Schrader was a judge at our church Bethany Lutheran's Rhubarb Fest where anybody who elects to can submit their own dessert that used rhubarb in some way. The main courses of dinner there last night were roast pork and venison. That's where Martha who also played flute and the kids who posed in a photo booth (I was told this morning) were last night and got SOME victuals anyway -- by the time I was off work and at home we'd started on burritos and while eating caught another episode of OUAT (read back for what I mean; I can't make this too easy) on the DVD set we have. "The Evil Queen" starts as Snow White's stepmother pre-Dark Curse and asks her whereabouts from the population of a village; evidently the entire population has no idea (or won't tell Her Majesty) where she is. So she orders hers soldiers to burn the town down.


Talk about population control.


In order to get closer to Snow and kill her -- the reason within the show isn't that complicated, but I've used my digressions for the week -- Regina (the Queen's proper name, by the way) asks Rumpelstiltskin for help to disguise herself, and he even warns her she may not like what she finds the common people think of her. The disguised queen stops some villagers from target practicing on a straw effigy of her ("You... you can't hit the Queen in the heart. Because she ain't got one!") and she herself is arrested by some of her own soldiers who are about to behead her ... and then Snow comes along. They run away to spare the villagers further royal wrath -- they think --  but soon come along the entire. population. slaughtered. As Rumple later says to Regina sans disguise, she will never make the people she rules love her. So she decides to settle for their fear. ("The Queen is dead. Long live the Evil Queen!")


As for what happens in Storybrooke ... I'll let you check that out for yourself.


It's a fun and intriguing show, OUAT is. But as for what else, yesterday I surprised Jeffrey at school by coming to have lunch with him (Sarah got to bag hers and pick up chips and a soda before school while Jeffrey couldn't get anything, he moped) and sat at the table with him, five other boys, and a girl from his class. I was impressed; during the meal we were bending the tines of plastic forks every which way and at recess time spent some time outdoors, and one of his fellow third-graders told me their wrestling to get out the door and in line before they have to go happens every day. I'm glad nobody gets hurt, and I can't help but think that we who are raising children now are raising tougher kids. And I think we're the better for it -- even when we sometimes see them as TOO tough or ever too smart for there own good! I think I'd have appreciated more a balance growing up myself.


Thirty years ago today.


Still hard to swallow that the space shuttle Challenger blew up about a minute and a half after liftoff. Or that so many people remember it. I was fourteen and living in Florida with my parents at the time, and I remember at fourteen driving my dad home, and we were passing a local camper/RV park when we saw the trail from Challenger's thrusters abruptly split into several shorter directions. It wasn't until we got home and watched the news that we realized the shuttle had exploded. And we heard about that when we got back to school the next day, and for years I wondered in the back of my head whether there were E.T.s involved in that. The truth wasn't only out there but in here *tapping my heart* with us earthbound. Thirty years ago if the Challenger had NOT exploded and the crew had completed its mission, how much different would our world and our reaching out into the final frontier be? Sometimes I think about that.

David