Remembrance Day is always a special day for me -- I remember my father who was a WWII veteran, and I honour the memory of my great uncle who died in November, 1917 during the second battle of Passcendale in Belgium.

My father died ten years ago. When I was a kid, watching the national Remembrance Day celebrations televised from Ottawa, I remember him turning to me, saying, "Do I look as old as those guys?" Every year they look older and frailer, and fewer and fewer of them are left to parade, and participate in the laying of the wreaths at the cenotaph. My father turned very anti-war in his last years. I suppose most old soldiers are the same. He was terribly burdened by his memories, of the bombing of England before D-Day, of losing his comrades once they landed in France, and of the terrible things he saw, especially in Holland. He always said that the real heroes were the ones who never came home.

I suppose that the current Canadian military personnel in Afghanistan will come home with the same burden of memory. And the veterans of Iraq as well. That's the real tragedy of war -- the human cost just goes on and on. I am sure that my own personality was to a certain extent influenced by my father's problems dealing with his memories. And perhaps I've passed those influences on to my own kids. There is no end to it.

Does anyone else find it tedious trying ot get to the Jet Li MB through the alivenotdead site? What a pain. The process takes too long. The shortened thread list also annoys me.

I'm not losing interest in Jet or his movies or in hearing what my MB friends have to say. BUT sometimes I find myself thinking "Why bother?"  The threads are out of sight so soon; so many new people whose names I don't recognize are posting, and it all seems so impersonal.

I've never done this before. The only blog I've ever read is Jet's, and that is kind of intimidating. Am I supposed to be profound? Is my writing supposed to be coherent and well-structured?

I'm assuming that I should express my thoughts. Well here goes: it's Friday night and I'm exhausted after a long week at work, but I'm too tired to go to bed. At school this week there has been a lot of discussion about school safety, since a 14-year-old boy was gunned down in the hallway of his school a few days ago (the funeral was yesterday). This is the very first school shooting in Toronto -- but that is not to say that it couldn't happen in my school. This is what we've been talking about all week -- it could happen anywhere, in any school where the administration doesn't take the issue of student and staff safety seriously. A couple of weks ago a female student threatened to stab a teacher. All that the principal wanted to do was suspend the girl for a few days, and then promise the teacher involved that the girl would be removed from her class, and that she'd be escorted to and from her other classes. We were all supposed to be happy with that. Perosnally, I think that threats to kill or do bodily harm should be taken to be serious threats at a literal level. The principal eventually backed down and had the student sent to a special program. But he could have just as easily stood firm on having her stay.