Huber

Funeral Home & Cremation Services

952-474-9595

Pediatric Rehabilitation Clinic.

Occupational Therapy.  Speech Therapy.

952-443-9888

Victoria’s Corner Bar.  Nightly Specials and Menus.  952-443-9944

Buying or Selling Victoria?

Call Nan Emmer.  612-702-2020

Weinzierl

Jewelers

8 First Street in Waconia.  952-442-2885

Preschool and Childcare in Victoria. 

Call 952-443-2121.

MVT Excavating

No job is too small.  952-446-9341

The Key

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in the Victoria Gazette. 

Located at www.VictoriaGazette.com.

952-443-2808

Specialized assisted living for those

with memory challenges. 

Victoria.  952-908-2215

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The Victoria

GAZETTE

         Do you hear what I hear?  Do you see what I see?  Do you read what I read?

***

         I read that Wal-Mart is going to put electronic identification tags in clothing.  I believe they have already done so!  The recent publicity confirms my suspicions.  It’s often that way.  By the time we hear about something, it’s already a matter of fact.  For some time now, I haven’t been able to tolerate neck tags in my shirts, although none of them come from Wal-Mart.  In other words, we’re walking around with live tags on us.  Gives me the creeps.  I try to purchase clothes without tags, but with only imprints directly onto the fabric.  I suppose the ink imprints are also electronically enhanced.  Egad, what’s a girl to do!

         I read that the tags will likely be part of everything Wal-Mart sells.  More and more products and devices are being created with these tags built in.  This retail giant beats a path that other retailers and manufacturers tend to follow.  As I said, however, I believe Wal-Mart isn’t the first.

         I read that Wal-Mart uses radio-frequency ID chips to track its merchandise.  The tags allow retailers to track remotely the precise location of goods.  But if retailers can track the goods, they can also track the customers, nicht wahr?

         I read that retailers have been studying the technology for years.  Benetton and Prada already embed RFID in their wares.  In other words, Prada knows when I’m sleeping (my glasses are on my night stand, motionless) and Prada knows when I’m at the Mall of America or Tioga, North Dakota.  Yikes! 

         I read that in the future we could be tracked by what we are wearing, eating, and carrying because many objects are being carefully designed for tracking.  In other words, we’ll be tracked through our personal possessions.  We know that we’re already tracked by our credit cards and spending patterns.  We should have been able to predict the next step.

         I read that we’ll soon be tracked from cradle to grave, and that includes our bedroom.  Well, I’ve already ripped neck tags out of my pajamas.  I refuse to sleep with the enemy.

***

         I read that English is now the official language in Lino Lakes, Minnesota, and that the 4-1 decision of the Lino Lakes City Council is making headlines around the world.  I don’t understand the hullabaloo.  What’s the official language in Victoria, Minnesota?  Or isn’t there such a thing on our books?  Well, there should be, or we taxpayers could be asked to translate all city proceedings into Spanish or Arabic or Swahili, in the name of the new god called Multicultural Diversity.  Do you know what kind of a backlog that would create at 7951 Rose Street?

***

         I read that the words “one nation under God” in our Pledge Of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America were not pulled from a letter by Thomas Jefferson nor from a sermon by Billy Graham nor from a papal encyclical.

         I read that the words “one nation under God” were taken from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address delivered personally by him in 1863.  The Pledge of Allegiance simply quotes one of our nation’s founding texts.

         I read that Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which millions of Americans can recite by heart, expressly characterizes the United States as a nation under God.  This was a good reminder to me of my high school years in Minneota, Minnesota.  As we should all know, the Gettysburg Address begins, “Four score and seven years ago ...” and the final paragraph is ...

         “It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

         I read that some recent publications of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address have been omitting the words “under God.”  Hmmm.  We must ask, to what purpose?  It appears to be cold and deliberate dishonesty.  There’s a lot of that going around lately.  Must be contagious.

***

         I read that until baseball appeared, “humans were a sad and benighted lot, lost in the labyrinth of matter, dimly and achingly aware of something incandescently beautiful and unattainable, something infinitely desirable shining up above in the empyrean of the ideas; but, throughout most of the history of the race, no culture was able to produce more than a shadowy sketch of whatever glorious mystery prompted those nameless longings.”

         Oofda.  Do you think I should stop reading?

August 2010

From the Editor