Aimee Mann, Boxing and Shrek

A singer named Aimee Mann was being interviewed on the radio this afternoon. As she talked, it came up that she had learned boxing before she made it as a singer. She said it taught her some important life lessons.

When you box, you have to stay on task and on your plan. If you get hit, you don't suddenly lose focus and just try to hit the other guy, you will just lose. No, instead you work your plan. She said she applies the same lessons when she gets cut off in a parking lot. Instead of getting diverted into anger at whoever cut her off, she focuses on her goals.

She said that staying on track is what has made her a success in her life and in music. Oh, and that let her make the music in Shrek the Third her own.

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News links:

• Texas Supreme Court rules against CPS, Judge Walthers; when will FLDS kids go home?
• Texas Supreme Court Upholds Lower Court FLDS Ruling
• Supremes Uphold Overturning of YFZ Removal Order

I initially resisted comparisons between what the YFZ families are going through and the Indian experience of the last two centuries. Tim Giago's column makes a good case, particularly in the context of Indian boarding schools, however I still think the comparison is a strained one. An argument can be made that both the FLDS and Indians were targeted by the government due to their religion and culture, true, but one raid, however mismanaged and ham-fisted, hardly compares to 200 years of cultural genocide. The FLDS lived on that ranch because they wanted to, not because the Federal government seized their homes and herded them there. The FLDS are considered human beings under the law, a distinction not bestowed on Indians until 1879. Family members who objected to the removal of their children were not indiscriminately mowed down by Army howitzers.

The quoted author has an excellent point, there have been terrible injustices that are still on-going in our world.