Time passes quickly in a busy life, so it oughtn’t surprise me that 1989 was as long ago as it is. But surprise me it does.
I suppose there is a psychological essay to be written about it, on the order of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief. In both, the first stage is denial. “No, I’m not really getting a cold…”
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, as you probably know.
I have a little trouble with Thanksgiving because it suggests that we don’t need to give thanks every other day, which we do. Nor is proper gratitude to our Creator conveyed by eating too much, drinking, and watching large men beat each other up over a football.
George Washington, we are told by Ken Burns’s latest documentary series, was a (mostly) great man and a terrible general. He was inspiring, yes, but an awful tactician. Oh, and unforgivably he was a slaveholder.
When I was small, living on a small farm near a college town, my father fell for an idea proffered by the Ralston Purina Company of Checkerboard Square in St. Louis.
It was the day that I stopped forever my weekly visit to Kroger.
The COVID-19 epidemic was underway, and we were advised to stay away from each other. It was cold, and the forecast was that an ice storm would hit about sundown (made an hour earlier each year for no good reason by the switch to standard time).
The Temptations had a hit song 55 years ago, “Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World Is Today).” It feels as if it were a prediction of the last week around here.
Charles Murray’s editor last week posted something about Murray’s latest book. “Taking Religion Seriously by @charlesmurray may be the most important book I\’ve ever edited,” Elizabeth Kantor wrote.
Cold water, applied suddenly, can be inspirational. I was reminded of this Friday morning when, mid-shower and all lathered and shampooed, the gas ran out. It wasn’t a matter of jumping out of the shower, either. I had to rinse it all off first. So I wasn’t just surprised by the icy blast. I had then to deliberately submit to it.
For as long as people have had fears, we have been afraid of things falling from the sky. Palentologists of comedy tell us that this particular danger may have been discovered by a researcher named Og, a colleague of the late Thag Simmons, when a flock of prehistoric pigeons flew over on a day he was late to an important meeting, though if challenged they admit that this is surmise.