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.”