Ethan and Ehlana:
The top family news of the day is that Cassie and Michael are on their way to the South Pacific with a first stop in Fiji while Grandma and Grandpa are already in Arizona for the start of their fall and winter getaway. They all came over to our house for a last family breakfast and Cassie and Michael were early-enough for Tai Chi by the river too; so that made for a great start to our day. Cassie and Michael didn’t need to take an early flight to the west coast, but they did hit the road for the airport by the time we were busy with our first academic adventures. We didn’t get to have the excitement of beginning a southern vacation or major work trip, but we did have a good day at school through to our football or cheer squad practices.
Ehlana and I hosted our now-usual Monday evening dinner and study session with our four best friends. In addition to the meal and studying, Mom did a group Magi lesson with us that was awesome; and then we had a band practice to get ready for our next ‘gigs’ at the school Halloween dance and the Haunted Halloween Walk. We’ll also be doing a song at the seniors’ Halloween luncheon at the church along with the school band music; so we’re going to be busy with all of that added to the rest of our already-busy schedules. Our friends went home at around ten-thirty with the timing during a break in the rain we’ve been getting tonight. We didn’t go along or take Silkie for a walk, but that was mostly because our dog is a bit of a princess and only wanted to go out long-enough to do her business and not get her paws any wetter than necessary!
We did a bit of time-phased charity work with Mom after our friends left; and now we’re winding down fast to nap time. There have been a lot of world news stories out there today with President Trump’s address to the Israeli Knesset one of the top stories, but we weren’t impressed with that and actually think that a barely-noticed story might be a bigger deal. The Dutch government basically stole a China-owned semiconductor company – or at least the divisions of the company based in the Netherlands; using a cold war era law meant to protect critical supplies. This is yet another insane decision that will end badly for them; since that precedent should lead to no other foreign investment into their country – not to mention that the company they stole will still likely need things like rare earth minerals to build their semiconductors – something that they can only get from China. Does the Dutch government really want to go to economic war with China? We’ll take the country with one-point-four billion people for the win over the country with the population smaller than the top four or five cities in China!
Regardless of how we feel about the likelihood of actual peace between Israel and the Palestinians, we should give credit for the hostage and prisoner releases and exchanges that happened today – though we also noticed that the Israeli hostages were returned to Israel while most or all of the Palestinian prisoners were deported to Egypt instead of reunited with their families. We also do not believe that there should be no consequences to the Israeli leaders responsible for leveling Gaza and all of the horrors they’ve inflicted on the Palestinian people, but then we don’t actually believe that they are done trying to destroy the Palestinians or that they have even more haters than ever before because of this slaughter and destruction. That kind of hatred is sure to be true on both sides of the Ukraine war, and the fighting on the ground and the air attacks continue the destruction of Ukraine far more than the damage in Russia; so we really can’t understand why the Ukrainian leaders won’t accept a bad deal for them over what will surely be a worse deal later if their army can’t keep fighting for years more as they claim is possible. Threats of using long-range missiles, as we’ve already written about, might lead to a much-larger war that does spread into Europe; and we continue to contend that nobody should want that over any kind of diplomatic deal.
Let’s stop there and call it a night. We don’t have any news from Cassie and Michael now other than that they’ll be flying overnight and won’t get where they are going until Wednesday because Fiji is on the edge of the International Date Line and uses the UTC+12 time zone that has them a day ahead of neighboring islands slightly to their east. That will make keeping up with them a challenge too with such a large time difference, but we’ll still manage to keep updated on their adventures and keep you posted for at least some of the highlights. Ehlana and I are ready to sleep now; so we’re out of here.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
