A couple of things on my mind

First of all, last night I woke up in the middle of the night, worried about my dad. Having nothing better to do at Oh-dark-hundred, I went online to look for a convenient way to send him condiments. Yes, he gets food from the mess. Last time, however, he was half begging for something with more flavor, so I sent him a box full of spices and condiments - curry powder, Old Bay crab seasoning (It's a Maryland thing to put it on nearly everything. A friend of mine swears she saw some on ice cream once.), bbq sauce, hot sauce, lemon pepper, blackening spice, you name it. So last night, I found a site that sells those mini-packets of condiments that you get with fast food, only with a wider variety. They have packets of saurkraut, little jars of fancy mustard, and even mini toiletries available. While I don't like the waste in this kind of packaging, I also know that that's the preferred way to send stuff.

Secondly, there's the case of this teacher in NJ. Now, I went to a religiously oriented Christian high school. Not only did we have students that were not of the majority denomination, we also had a student who was a Muslim. Amazingly enough, since it was part of the requirement for graduation, we all took religion classes together, and at no point did any of our teachers say to any student that he or she would be headed for hell. Somehow, I came out with the belief that one's final destination is not something other people determine.

Unfortunately, a friend of mine recently had a similar problem, and the reaction of the community to any complaint is likely to be as bad or worse, so she's been home-schooling her daughter.