The first snow/#21

This is one of my favorite days of the year. For me, winter officially begins with the first snow, and yes, we still have 15 days until winter actually begins and we'll probably not see snow again until February, but I will celebrate now. I used to have a tradition on t he first snowfall of the year where I would run around my yard in nothing but my underwear, but I think I might actually be maturing (insert you own sarcastic comment here).

I also wanted to briefly comment on the Sean Taylor stuff that went down last week. As you all know, I am a huge Skins fan, and Taylor was one of my favorite players. I was shocked when I first heard the news, but like some, I was not surprised. Michael Wilbon has taken a lot of criticism about his article Dying Young, Black (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/27/AR2007112702680.html registration is free, you just need to sign up) and how he said he was not surprised Taylor was shot, but not necessarily because of his past like many have said, rather because the culture of violence in our country. He called for an open honest discussion about how the number one killer of black men between the ages of 15-24 is murder.

I can never fully understand the difficulty of this situation, I will never have the life experiences to gain the perspective of what it means to be black in America (or any country). The perspective I can share though is an overall fear about the direction our country (and humanity in general) is heading. I know every generation looks at the ones that follow and fear the worst, but I am genuinely afraid of how our value system in degrading and what we perceive as a society is important.

I think technology has played a major role in this, in the way we seem to be creating more and better ways of avoiding actual human contact to the point where our lack of reliance on other actual people has made us devalue other people's lives. We no longer see the need to have actual human contact and perceive our lives more important than anyone else. While a sense of self-preservation is natural, and necessary, but not to the level of thinking someone else does not have as much of a right to existence as you.