My Time to Waste

There is a very old Peanuts strip that I am reminded of lately.  In the strip, Lucy is walking with Linus and explaining to him the origin of telephone poles.  She says something along the lines of “The telephone pole is actually a tree specially developed by the phone company to grow without branches.”

Charlie Brown over hears this lecture, drops his head against one of the phone poles and says “I can’t stand it.”

President Obama plans to deliver an address to the nation’s school children that “will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning.”

Conservatives are up in arms that the President wants to indoctrinate the nation’s school children with his “socialist agenda.”

So working hard, setting educational goals, and taking responsibility now constitutes a socialist agenda?

I can’t stand it.

More from Coming Into The Country by John McPhee…

This is from Book II, What They Were Hunting For in which the search for a location for a new Alaskan capital is described.  On page 133 a Robert Atwood is quoted:

Idealists here in town see a need for  a park in every housing development.  They want to bury utility lines, reserve green belts, build bicycle paths.  With these things, the bowl could only contain three hundred and fifty thousand people.  They favor animals, trees, water, flowers.  Who ever makes  a plan for man? Who ever will make a plan for man?  That is what I wonder.  I am known amound conservasionists as a bad guy.

Foolish me.  I thought favoring animals, trees, water (water!!!)  and flowers was a plan for man!