December 99 December 98 December 97 _________________ Wednesday 29 December 99 6 33 pm pst   [ long ago words ] I spent a small chunk of the day adding photos to my entries from 17 Dec. 1999 up through yeasterday. To my great disappointment, I am still quite under the weather. I hope I don't find myself still in bed for the new year. * * * When I was in elementary school, we had an assignment to write a letter to ourselvelves in the future. My friend Alexandra wrote hers to be opened on her graduation from high school, and I clearly remember her reading it a-loud at her pre-college party. I wrote mine to be opened on New Year's Eve 1999. I remember asking myself if I was married, and if I still horseback rode, but I don't recall much else. I hope the letter can be located [my father supposedly put it in his safety deposit box]. I very much look forward to my long ago words. * * * I used to be very much opposed to the death penalty. I believed that under no circumstances should the government have the right to kill people. I was very adement about this. Amenesty Inernational was amongst my myriad volunteer activites, and I would write several anti-death-penalty leters to various government officials every month. After many years of carrying around this strong belief, I relized that of all the activities I could spend my time on, working to get convicted criminals life sentances instead of death sentances was at the very bottom of my list. I know good and well about the innocent people who have been put to death over the history of capitol punishment. But seeing that so many of the death row inmates are people who confessed to their crimes, I find them to be a waste of my valuable time. And so, in college, I was against the death penalty, but unwilling to put forth any effort to support that conviction. That conviction has since dwindled further. Now I find my feelings swaying again. I wonder what the point is of a life spent in prison on tax-payers' dollars. I feel more and more that a life sentence is a waste of effort. If a human being commits a heinus crime -- murders, rapes, or mutilates another human being -- why not be rid of them. Our planet is overcrowded and out resources our overtaxed. Even if an increase in the death peanalty was not a greater deterent to crime (which I am sure it would be) it would help solve some of our more immediate problems. Rehabilitation is a beautiful thing, but should perhaps be denied to those who are able to disregard fellow humans to such a huge degree.