[Vision2020] Trinity Fest Concerns re City Council

[Chasuk]

On 6/23/06, J Ford <privatejf32 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> And when the CITY throws a gathering, that is one thing.  But a group that
> is opposed to by the Citizens of this city throws a gathering, with alcohol,
> that is totally a different story.

J, this isn't directed at you, but at everyone who brings alcohol into
a sentence as if it were a bugbear.  The entire subject frustrates me,
and I am expressing that frustration below.

When I lived in the UK with my family, we would go to ceilidhs
approximately once a week, where there was folk music and singing and
dancing and alcohol.  My kids attended from the time they were two.
They watched their mother drink and their father drink and most of the
rest of the entire boisterous crowd drink, and it didn't teach them
anything except that late teens and adults can enjoy alcohol
responsibly, and sometimes get sick when it is consumed irresponsibly.
 It didn't become a rite-of-passage, aspirational, dysfunctional
thing, but another lesson about partaking in moderation, and about
celebration.

Why are USians so hung up about alcohol?  If you don't want to drink,
don't drink.  If you don't want to attend public events where alcohol
is consumed, stay home.  There isn't any chance that we will become a
nation of teetotalers, so let's make alcohol a part of our children's
lives while we are still in charge, and shed all of our hypocritical,
anal, anti-alcohol angst.

-- 
http://emmagoldman.wordpress.com/

"Aren't people absurd! They never use the freedoms they do have, but
demand those they don't have; they have freedom of thought, they
demand freedom of speech." -- Søren Kierkegaard