Ouch, there’s a plank in my eye.

What a world we live in. Today I went to a fun first birthday party at a beautiful city park. On one side of the park was a farm with horses in the pasture. There was one foal, and I walked over with my son so he could see them. He loved it. We played in the dirt, ate fruit salad and chips and salsa and drank Capri Suns. It was such a nice day.

I’ve had this nagging guilt - or as my sister would say, “a check in my spirit” for the last few days about the judgmental posts I’ve been writing. I mean, I still think clubbing a seal is awful. BUT, I am rational enough to see that some villages of people have subsisted on seals for centuries. Just as Alaskan natives have subsisted on whales. What they do is no different, in my mind, than a bear eating a salmon or a snake eating a mouse.

I don’t mean to demonize people that are trying to feed their families. And I have no right to. I was born into a lower-middle class family with two working parents - I always had food and a roof. I may have always been behind on the fashion train, but who cares? I mean, I cared when I was 13, but that’s pretty normal.

The problem is that it’s so hard to decipher what the real cause to fight is here. Is it the big fishing trawlers that gobble up all the fish? Probably. Is it the Japanese whaling ships that don’t properly account for their catches? Probably. Is it the individual sealer that makes 30% of his annual income by participating in the annual seal hunt? Maybe - but I’m a lot less sure about that one. Do I wish they had better aim and really killed the seals with one strike? Absolutely.

Basically, I have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m just talking. And that can be pretty dangerous.

There are people like this guy who is so strongly against recycling, that he’s willing to call Al Gore a nazi. To me, this makes no sense. To him, it’s perfectly justified. I didn’t even realize there were people against recycling. Stupid me. If there are still people that don’t believe the Holocaust happened, and I’ve met at least one (raving, scary lunatic), and there are people that still doubt global warming, and there are people that still think they might find WMDs in Iraq, then I guess not believing in the benefits of recycling is par for the course.

So how do I fight without judging or belittling others beliefs? Even though I’ve been a Christian for many years - this has always been one of my main problems with my faith. I have friends who are Buddhists, Muslim, Jewish. I don’t think the Jesus I love would forsake them - even if they never “prayed the prayer.”

Jeez, I’m really all over the place on this one.

Basically, I want to live a life that I can be proud of. I want to teach my son to stand up for what he believes in just like my mom and dad taught me. But I don’t want to be another sealer, clubbing people over the head with my rants. It seems okay to share information, like the bake sales to save whales. I think people can participate if they want, right? But only if they know about it.

And who am I to say Alec Baldwin is an ass? I’ve probably said something just as bad to my husband. I’d like to think I’d never say things like that to my son, but he’s so small I can’t imagine it. One day he’ll be a surly teenager, and I may very well lose my temper and say terrible things. I hope not, but who knows? I think I was really just so sad for his daughter. That message must have hurt her so much and I wanted him to feel really awful for doing it. And then when his statements - on his site and on The View - didn’t seem very apologetic (apologetic to his daughter, I don’t really think he owes any one else an apology, except maybe Tina Fey, because I love her), I was even more sad for his daughter.

So anyway, there’s a big plank in my eye, and I don’t like it.