Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

I have watched HGTV shows where a couple are looking to buy a house. We learn what the husband desires. We learn what the wife wants. There are conflicts in these wishes. We watch them visit homes for sale, and, of course, the husband likes one house and the wife another. At the end of the show is “the big reveal” where we learn which house was selected, which almost invariably is the one the wife preferred. I am not surprised by this dynamic, but I have been surprised by the fact that even though many of these couples have children, neither husband nor wife ever asks about schools. I expect that any concerned parent would ask how far away is the school. How would the kids get there? How would they get home from afterschool activities? How does the quality of the schools vary from one place to another? These couples ask none of that. Is this another piece of evidence that indicates the decline of America?

“Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t.”  Pete Seeger.

I liked a line in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Wolf Hall, which I saw quite some time ago. A character explained why Thomas More was so hard to understand: “Everything he learned growing up, he still believes.”

Polls galore. Some may be meaningful, but I don’t understand the point of asking, “Do you think the country is headed in the right or wrong direction?”. The results routinely proclaim that many more people think the country is headed in the wrong direction than the right one. The direction question is so open-ended that I can’t imagine that the poll results tell us very much. I, for example, think that our country is tugged in the wrong direction when it pays college football coaches $10 million a year. You might think we are not headed correctly because more people report they have no religion. She might not like that the country is too woke. He might think the price of a six-pack is too high. Others might be sad to see that too much of the country denounces trans people. And so on and so on. What is the point to asking about whether the country is heading in the right direction?

State officials ordered Floridians to evacuate their homes in advance of a hurricane. I expected big-name conservatives to let out the Big Government cry or perhaps even the Socialist denunciation when people are ordered from their homes. That has not happened. Why not?

At that Republican get-together, Mike Pence labeled another attendee a “rookie” whome we should not elect. He said this without any irony I could detect, and yet he was on the ticket in 2016 with what almost anyone would label a rookie.

“Either heaven or hell will have continuous background music. Which one you think it will be tells a lot about you.” Bill Vaughan.

People talk about the likelihood that Donald Trump will go to jail. I hope he does get imprisoned. Wouldn’t it be great that while there, he converts to Islam?

“I have no use for lawyers,/That I have I won’t pretend,/I admit, though, one comes in handy/ When a felon needs a friend.”

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Narcissus was too perfect for sex or pelf—

He longed only to gaze in love at himself . . .

The moral of which is that, even in myths,

Too much reflection may be your nemesis.

                    Kenneth Leonhardt

I can’t get beyond the beginning of my new poem. Maybe somebody can advance it:

Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson/ Of smirk and rolling eyes.

Republicans’ new epithet is “grooming.” I was surprised that the conservatives were taking on the Catholic church.

Australians must be different from us. I am watching a Netflix series from down under, and many of the scenes take place in modern homes featuring glass walls. There is never a handprint or other kind of smudge on the surfaces.

The Supreme Court recently heard a case concerning a high school football coach who would kneel at the fifty-yard line after the game and pray out loud. That reminded me of my not-stellar days on the junior varsity high school basketball team when Johnny M. asked our coach if we could pray before the game. I was too timid to object and no one else did either, and the coach okayed it. No one was willing to lead the prayer, so someone suggested the Lord’s Prayer. (There were no Jews and certainly no Muslims, Buddhists, or “others” among the twelve of us.) Before the next game, we said it, and I learned about religious differences as I think others did. We now realized that Catholics had a different version of the prayer from the rest of us–it seemed to end abruptly–and the Protestants’ versions also varied depending on what translation of the Bible the denomination used. It made all of us feel awkward. We did not pray before other games.

I feel better now because I heard it is harder to kidnap overweight old people.

I opened a Twitter account because I read a report of a tweet I wanted to read. Since then I have not used the account. I have never tweeted. I am wondering if Twitter is important in shaping views, or is it merely an entertainment and only reinforces what is already believed?

Conservatives have rejoiced that Elon Musk is purchasing Twitter. They say they believe in free speech and want an open forum, which they believe Musk will bring to Twitter. At the same time, conservatives are punishing Disney for exercising its free speech rights. Go figure.

Luther: “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear the scorn.” Thomas More: “The devil . . . the prowde spirit . . . cannot endure to be mocked.” Quoted in C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.

I liked the platform of a failed politician. He wanted to remove nationalism from the names of cheeses.