I've written about this magazine before, Sojourners (www.sojo.net), and how much I like it. Well, the January 2007 issue arrived this morning and I really wish you would get a copy of it, either by purchasing a subscription or finding it at your local newstand/bookdealer.

There's one article in particular, The Innocent Victims, page 9, written by Tom Davis. You need to read it.

One of the things Mr. Davis says in this piece is that the war in Iraq has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and 2,800-plus American soldiers lives.

Also, some 551,00 adult Iraqis have been killed since the war began three years.

But even more shockingly, approximately 54,000 Iraqi children have been killed since the war began. 54,000 innocent children dead!

Even if you support the war in Iraq, how in the world can you justify or live with the fact that 54,000 innocent children have been casualties? Their blood is on our hands.

Tawny
www.tawnyford.com

I'm sorry I missed your calls last night from 10pm to 11:15pm but I was glued to the tube watching the last episode of this season's Wire on HBO. That show is so good!

Tawny

Seems like everyone is always asking me what's new. Well, I'll tell you what's new---my back door!

My garage is attached to my house. The door leading from my kitchen to the garage was as old as my house and my house was built sometime in the mid-60's. 40 some years later, even when the door was closed, you could see light from the garage around the edges. And if you cranked up the lawnmower or the snowblower in the garage, well, you could smell it all through my house.

So I called the place here in town where I'd bought the new garage door a couple of years earlier and they came out and installed a really nice new door for me. It probably sounds crazy to get all excited over a door, but it is so nice. It shuts with a vacuum-like seal and not only does it keep garage smells out, but it keeps the house's heat in.

I should have done this years ago.


Tawny

I ran into one of my cousins the other day at the meat market. She was just coming from the beauty shop and had ducked in the doorway of the market to get out of the cold while she waited for the bus. I was there to buy some ox tails to cook for that night's dinner.

Her hair was fixed real pretty. Probably a hundred skinny little braids all going this way and that.

Turns out she gets her hair fixed twice a month and it takes a minimum of five hours each time for the beautician to undo the old braids, wash her hair, braid in new extensions, etc. Five hours??? I told her I could never sit still for five hours while someone fiddled with my hair. Turns out it costs her $225 each time! I told her I would never spend $450 a month for something like that. And she told me that's why my hair 'looks like that' and not nice like hers.

So I start walking out to my truck to head home and she says she sure wished she had a car, one of those new Durangos. And I told her she did, it was on her head. For $450 a month she could be making a car payment on a new Durango and not be standing out on the street to catch a bus every time she wanted to go someplace.

It's priorities. We all spend our money based on what we feel to be a priority in our lives.

Tawny
tawnyford@webtv.net

I know it's been weeks since I've wriiten anything here. I kept meaning to, but just never seemed to get to it. Sometimes life is like that for us all, I think.

Tawny