The Mending Wall

Image via Wikipedia

I think I’ve posted this poem before, but I’m going to post it again (below). One of my favorite poems is “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost. Recently, I discovered I was de-friended on facebook by a blood uncle whom I’ve never met. In case you don’t know, I’m adopted. I’m friends with some of my biological family on facebook.

I think I offended my uncle by responding to a load of rants he made against people who vote democrat. He pretty much said anyone who votes democrat is unpatriotic. Whoever voted for Obama is contributing to this country’s demise.

What a load of shit. Different people love this country differently. Democrats don’t hate America. They have an ideal that differs from republicans. Otherwise, both sides (and everything in between) loves this country.

Anyway, I emailed him to say, “Hey what’s up?” and “I hope you’re well.” He wrote back that we needed to mend our wall.

Mend our wall? I wasn’t aware a wall had been built. And if there is a wall, I didn’t want it there in the first place.

The point of the mending wall is that the writer discovered how unnecessary the wall was, and he wants to do what is naturally taking place, remove the wall.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, says the poem.

In the poem, there are two men, one on each side of the wall, replacing stones that had fallen over time. The narrator questions what the two men are walling in or walling out. It is, in fact, almost barbaric to build a wall where none is required.

The reason there is a wall has been forgotten. “Good fences make good neighbors,” says the other man in the poem. He only wants it, but he can’t remember why. Tradition is like that. Tradition sometimes needs to be removed.

The incident with my uncle made me appreciate my family … my real family. I may be adopted, but I am a blood Witteveen. Despite my differences of opinion, differences of views, I am a Witteveen, and I’m proud of it.

Despite “coming out” atheist, they built no walls. In fact, if there were walls in place, they helped me tear them down. And for that, I am astounded, grateful and elated.

Here’s the poem. Read it aloud to your loved one(s) when you get a chance. It is gorgeous.

MENDING WALL

Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Wyndham Vacation Resorts, Timeshares, Hustlers, Con Artists, Frauds, Nightmares and YOU!

Image via Wikipedia

Last weekend, my wife Tina and I used a hotel package I bought for four days and three nights through a company called Wyndham Vacation Resorts®.

After staying in a Wyndham hotel last February while on business, a customer service representative (CSR) called me and said she was with Wyndham Hotels. “As a thank you,” she said, “I wanted to offer you a special hotel package.”

For about $100, I bought the above deal (3 nights/4 days in a luxury resort hotel).

The woman sounded older. She told me she was a grandmother. I never say yes to telemarketers, but there was something that seemed legit. She explained that there was no obligation. This was strictly a “Thank you.” Should I buy, it would be a luxury, multi-room suite with a kitchen. This was their way of saying thank you for staying at Wyndham. All I would be required to do would be to sit in on a two-hour presentation.

When I asked her if the presentation obligated me to buy something, she said, no, the presentation was to show off how great Wyndham facilities are, and it was their hope that we would share with others about the trip. The return, she explained, was that word-of-mouth advertising would spread the message for them. This was a targeted way to do their advertising as word-of-mouth advertising is proven to work best.

Everything she told me was a lie. The presentation was in fact a sales presentation for a timeshare package based on a points system. If you buy the points, you keep those points the rest of your life. The points buy timeshares at Wyndham hotel resorts all over the planet. We did not get a suite with a kitchen. We got a run-of-the-mill room with a kingsize bed.

Wyndham Vacations Resorts and its timeshares operation is a complete sales scam. Their sales people are sycophantic con artists. They will lie to land a sale. It may be a legitimate business, but they are a slimy business with awful business practices. They prey on the weak minded. They go out of their way to confuse and pressure people into buying their product, promising one-time, all-time-low rates.

They will not provide you with sales information that you can review or allow you to check against competitors’ rates to verify the deal.

I’m going to post the rest of my story below the fold (the long version). Should you happen upon this review, the one thing I want you to take away is that

Wyndham Hotels and Resorts is a HUSTLE. It’s a SCAM! It is a FRAUD!

Do not buy! Do not be pressured. It’s a ruse, and they should be shut down for bad business practices.

Click read more to read the detailed version of our story. Or click here, here, here or here for more stories.

Mr. Deity and the Casting Call

New Mr. Deity!

Friday morning Quickies

Watch out for Saturday nooners!

Smooth move! Sarah Palin favorited an Ann Coulter tweet of a sign saying calling Obama a “Taliban Muslim.”

Uh oh, Minnesota mom hit with $1.5 million fine for downloading 24 songs. She should have stopped at 23.

The Crooks Cooks Source magazine saga from yesterday carries on. This time the crooks stole from The Food Network. Shame shame!

Links seen here.

Image above from I have seen the whole of the internet

A great rally for sanity sign (that I didn’t photograph)

I saw this over at the land of reddit this morning:

“You say ‘Anti-Christ’ like it’s a bad thing.”

Boehner: Calling Carbon Dioxide Dangerous Is ‘Almost Comical’

Over at reddit.com, user wingedmetaphor wrote this response to Republican John Boehner who obviously doesn’t agree with science on science:

Dear Mr. Boehner, cows fart METHANE, not “carbon dioxide”. And CO2 isn’t a problem for the environment because it’s a “carcinogen.” Your ignorance is embarrassing to ranchers, scientists, America, and the world.

Read what wingedmetaphor is referring to here.

I couldn’t agree with wingedmetaphor more.

Strap in, kids. This boner named Boehner may be second in line to the presidency behind VP Joe Biden should something happen to the president and then the vice pres if he’s sworn in as speaker.

This boner leads the party toward anti-science for no other reason than his party dissociates themselves from it. It’s why I wouldn’t associate myself with conservative politics until they make some easy steps toward progress.

I say we take science away from them. Take their cars, their travel, their computers, their microphones, their hip surgeries, and let them wallow in their quiet, painful solitude.