Jack and The Beanstalk

Jack Met a Tall Tall Giant.

Within the last few days I had the occasion to once again read Jack and the Beanstalk...several times.  I had forgotten a lot of the story from my childhood and my children's young years.

When reading it, I began to wonder if this story is really one the little kids should be in love with.  Here we are as parents trying to teach a bunch of the world's future grown-ups right from wrong and that dang Jack not only steals gold and the hen which lays golden eggs on demand but also a golden harp....then a bit later he kills the giant by cutting down the beanstalk when the giant is climbing down.  Why did I always think this book was good clean fun for the kiddies of today? Not only does this book seem to teach kids to steal from giants but to also kill them in order to be able to eat the giant's food.  Implied violence and theft!!!  WOW!!  However, I will admit Jack sure did display a lot of perseverance in the story.

And of course the giant made it quite clean he wanted to grind Jack's bones to make his bread.  Is this all violence or what?  And gory thoughts too!

Perhaps I'm getting old and see things more plainly than I did when I was young and when I was raising kids.  For those of us who grew up in a world where violence just "wasn't"......most of us probably never even think about kids reading a book like Jack and the Beanstalk and how it fits into today's world which at times can have a lot of violence and theft and other gruesome things. 

I was kind of glad I read about Jack and his escapades....but, now I'm worried about the trillion of kids who also read it/have read it.  hmmm.......

Springfield City Hall 1908

Springfield City Water Light & Power before growing into

the mega plant it is today.  This utility is the largest municipal

utility in Illinois.

The explosion and fire at City Water Light and Power

November 10, 2007, approximately 6:50 pm.

1961 Luers Shoe Advertisement.

Springfield Americana Nursing Home,

707 North Rutledge...no longer in existence....SUI Springfield

campus buildings now in that area.

Thought For The Day

Always walk through life as if you have

something new to learn and you will.

--Vernon Howard



Look it's a plane, no it's a big flying machine with tails.....no look again it's huge flocks of geese.....pooping and puttering to somewhere....we know not where.

For the last several days, the sight of thousands of geese in the sky has been common.  Not only big brownish colored ones, but snow geese too.  We aren't talking about a few and sparsely flying flocks of geese on the move.....we are talking about thousands of geese flying with long trails of geese in lines.  It kind of looks like they are flying south but then they turn around and fly the opposite way towards evening looking for a big corn field so they can fill their bellies to replenish their energy.  This is one time you don't want to be driving underneath the geese for fear of getting a downpour of geese poop.  I bet the ground has become well fertilized these past several days.   And you better hope that one of these heavy birds doesn't have a heart attack and die and fall on you,  since I read an article last year that a Canadian goose fell on the firefighters club building at the lake and made a huge hole in the roof.

We've been seeing these geese since Friday and, as of yesterday, they were still in the sky and we saw many more white snow geese yesterday than any other day.  Why are they flying and where are they going???  The 64 thousand dollar question.  The extended forecast doesn't show bad weather coming to our area any time soon.  I guess the big geese are just as confused as we are about the weather....Mother Nature is fooling humans and fowl.....shame on her.

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