As I do just about every week, I stopped off on the way home from work last Friday to check a couple of books out of the Fayetteville Public Library. I usually read quite a bit, and I try to keep the beast supplied with a plenitude of reasonably nutritious fare — otherwise I start browsing things like the back of my cereal box or the ingredients list on my Twinkies, and there are some things we really weren’t meant to know.
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When I hear politicians and pundits talking about the way Big Government is sucking the life out of this country, I can’t help but feel a smidgin of guilt: my family is one of those that has been robbing the taxpayer blind for the past fifty years.
We can start with my parents, who, as members of the United States Air Force, were living off the taxpayers when they met. They courted and were married (by a Justice of the Peace, no less; yet another piglet sucking at the taxpayer teat) and in the fullness of time my brother, sister and I all came along — clutched firmly in the arms of Big Government, as my mother gave birth to each of us in Air Force hospitals built, staffed and run at taxpayer expense.
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Last night I dreamt that my family was being studied by a world-famous psychiatrist (the doctor’s first name was Hannah, but that’s all I remember of her identity) and dozens of my relatives had been gathered together for the purpose, almost none of whom I recognized. Even my father — who died some years ago — showed up in a cheap brown suit and took a stroll through the crowd and then wandered back out the way he came, without saying a word to anyone.
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The foxes are at it again.
It’s hard to believe something that doesn’t come from the fifth planet of Arcturus could make such a strange assortment of noises. Rattling, choking, yipping, barking, whining, screeching — It’s like my family at dinner when I was fifteen.
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Somewhere back in the mid 1970’s my mother decided to attend night classes at our local junior college. I encouraged this ambition in the hope (futile, as it turned out) that she would get it out of her system before I graduated high school, as I was not altogether thrilled at the idea of finally starting college only to find my mother already there. Since I had recently acquired (on the second try) a shiny new driver’s licence, it became my job to drive her the mile or so from our home to the campus a couple of nights a week.
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This weekend marks the traditional anniversary of the founding of Rome in 753 BC. Like so many historically important events, we know it happened, but the devil, it seems, is in the details.
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There have been geese flying over my cabin late at night for about a week; headed back to Canada, I suppose.
For most people who live in areas frequented by flocks of geese, the birds are about as exciting as chickens; in many cities they may even be viewed as serious pests, especially around airfields and parks, where they can be aggressive and very, very messy. For me, the romance hasn’t quite worn off yet. In the places I’ve spent most of my life — northern Alabama, South Florida, Dallas — geese are pretty rare, and here in northwest Arkansas I still slow down to gawk when I see a flock of them nibbling their way across a field, like strange, alien cattle.
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The temperature tonight is descending into the thirties. (Single digits, centigrade, for those of you who measure things that way.) After having fretted for weeks about the unusually warm winter we’ve enjoyed so far, this evening I feel the need to fret about the cold.
Nights like this I think back fondly on the ten years I lived in what is collectively referred to as South Florida: a few years in Hollywood, then a few more years in Fort Lauderdale. In that context, a cold winter meant wearing socks — and there, of course, I fretted about the absence of a traditional cycle of seasons.
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Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum — and in somewhat less strident tones, Mitt Romney — keep telling us that we as a nation are going to hell in a handbasket, and that only God can help us, and that He will only do so if we allow organized religion to exert more overt control over such institutions as education and government. Many Americans are clinging to these statements as if they were — well, gospel. The facts, however, may confuse things a bit.
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This morning in a town in central Nigeria a car bomber attacked a Church of Christ and killed at least three people, while injuring dozens more. No matter what you believe — or disbelieve — it’s very hard to find a way to make attacks like these make sense.
I couldn’t help but notice, however, that this was not an attack by atheist secular-humanist college professors, but rather by a Muslim extremist group called Boko Haram. The bomber and his targets alike all professed to believe in God.
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