Imagine
Of all the songs I ever heard, the one I hate the most is Imagine by John Lennon. I think the music is pretty, but the words express exactly the opposite of everything I believe.
I don’t feel like analyzing the whole song right now. But I will just point out a little of the irony.
The lyrics recommend that everyone should give away all their possessions and live in peace. John Lennon thought the whole world could get along — billions of people — and yet the four Beatles weren’t able to get along.
And I very much doubt that any of the Beatles gave all their money away. Even if they gave some to charity, I’m sure they kept enough to make sure they would always have a comfortable life.
I could say a lot more about why I hate that song. It’s stupid, and it’s wrong in every way, and it’s a naive expression of communism, a political/economic system which has failed, sometimes horribly, every time it was tried.
Well John Lennon was never expected to be a political/financial genius. But I know a lot of people who are crazy about that song and see nothing wrong with it.
The lighter side of Florida crime!
First up:
Nude dude on beach fleeing deputies left ID, cellphone, shorts behind
Deputies arrived in a marked four-wheel-drive patrol vechicle to respond to a report of nudity on a public St. Augustine beach Thursday morning. Once there, they saw a naked man walking along the water’s edge ….
Okay, I’ve actually done that, once, long ago, when I was still young and at least arguably worth seeing nude. Several of us were talking about going skinny dipping, but no one else had the nerve. Actually it was great, as the water temps were very warm and the surf was light. Also? Didn’t get stung by jelly fish!
… in view of several beachgoers, according to an arrest affidavit from the St. John Sheriff’s Office.
Um, but I didn’t do that. It was the middle of the night (like 3 AM or thereabouts) and the only witnesses were the people I was with. Plus, I was auditioning, as it were, for two women I was interested in. I eventually ended up involved with one of them, and probably just mis-timed things with the other. Oh well, the follies of youth!
But back to our intrepid naked man. It turns out that alcohol was probably involved! I know, who would have guessed?
Also, witnesses told police that a SECOND naked man had been walking around the area. They eventually found the shorts, phones and IDs of the people involved. Nothing like getting plastered in the middle of the day and walking around naked at the beach. Other than getting arrested, the second most likely bad outcome would be some NASTY sunburn!
And that takes us to story number two:
Man running from deputies attacked by alligator
You would think the headline says it all, but not quite!
A Florida man fleeing a traffic stop was attacked by an alligator Thursday, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies attempted to pull Bryan Zuniga, 20, over for not driving in a single lane around 2:47 a.m. near the 7100 block of 78th Avenue North. Zuniga stopped the vehicle, jumped out of the passenger side and broke through a fence, deputies said.
He reached a water treatment plant between Westchester Boulevard and 71st Street North, which is where he said the alligator attacked him.
Deputies found Zuniga at a nearby hospital where he was being treated for multiple puncture wounds to his face, arm and armpit area.
He was arrested around 12 p.m., taken to the Pinellas County Jail and charged with breaking or injuring fences, fleeing and eluding a police officer, driving while licenses suspended and resisting an officer without violence, reports show.
He’s being charged with ‘breaking or injuring fences’! This guy isn’t exactly Keyser Söze.
The Down-side of Modern Criminal Forensics
Modern DNA detection is a great boon for people trying to solve certain crimes. But there is a real down-side risk involved as well: criminals working harder to destroy evidence.
Warning, what follows is disturbing, so I’ll put it ‘below the fold’ for the squeamish.
Miss Spider’s Tea Party
Miss Spider’s Tea Party, a charming children’s book in a series by David Kirk, was written well before the founding of the political group of the same name. In this book, Miss Spider hosts a vegetarian tea party for her insect friends. They are understandably nervous, but Miss Spider has learned to replace Nature with Kindness and literally wouldn’t hurt a fly. In this, she is a thoughtful, politically-correct, modern, liberal sort of arachnid. She plainly would never have anything to do with the political Tea Party, had it existed in her day.
The following video shows Nancy Pelosi, children, and Members of Congress, including the late Ted Kennedy, enrolling the Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007. This is a normal Congressional procedure turned into an occasion for a very off-key rendition of “Itsy-Bitsy Spider.” You can tell who comes from a large family, or at least was raised properly (not Speaker Pelosi), because they get the words right.
Miss Spider would certainly approve.
The following video, on the other hand, is the stuff of Miss Spider’s nightmares. In it, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey demonstrates for a group of impressionable schoolchildren his forthright and robust solution to the Spider Problem.
You’re a mean man, Gov. Christie.
Miss Spider would never vote for you.
Random Observations #3 (Updated)
So many things have changed since I was my daughter’s age.
- There’s one fewer planet in our Solar System now.
- There are a lot more planets known now, all outside our system.
- When I was her age, we went to the Moon; these days we have to hitchhike rides to low Earth orbit from the remnant of our one-time mortal enemy.
- Which means that all those planets are just that much farther away now.
- The brontosaurus is no more, replaced by the more taxonomically correct apatosaurus.
- The disposable diaper.
- The mores and morals of the country.
- The socio-economic and demographic structure of the country: we’re a lot more like a Third World country these days in so many ways.
- Extremely powerful computers are so common that they’re hardly remarked upon anymore – except by people roughly my age and older. We remember when computers of any power were much less common than toasters, not more common than radios.
UPDATE: wj makes the following additional, excellent point in the comments:
I’d add ubiquitous cameras. It’s not just that everybody has a cell phone with a camera . . . and seems to use it constantly. It’s that cameras seem to be in every public space, and running most of the time. No doubt this is handy for police trying to track criminals. But it means that you have to get a long way into the country to have any chance of any privacy in your life.
The Size of God
We were trying to figure out the size of God, but the comments were closed. So I want to continue here.
My estimate, based on the scriptures, is that God is at least 12 hundred feet tall.
I also want to say something about the comments about having children. It is true that the instinct for taking care of children can be even stronger than the instinct to survive. But that is NOT because of Christianity. The survival of most mammal and bird species depends on the selfless devotion of parents.
The ideal of parental love has become a central image of Christianity — the virgin mother and her infant Jesus.
It’s kind of funny to me, since Jesus never even mentions his mother in the gospels, except to tell her to leave him alone. He really had no family values at all.
But the ideal of selfless motherly love is important in Christianity, since it is a religion of selflessness and devotion. So that is why I guess the other commenters kept bringing it up.
Did God put us on earth mainly so we can learn to experience the kind of selfless love that parents, especially mothers, usually feel? I think that could be one reason, but there are many other things we can learn in this life.
Isn’t it possible that we are also here to learn and create and express ourselves artistically? I value love of course but I value other things also.
I can understand why mothers would say there is nothing more important than motherly love, and it’s our whole reason for existence. But they are forgetting that different people care about different things. Men love their children, of course, but they usually also care about other things.
A Magnificent Tribute
On April 19, 2013, Ron West was taken by (or, from another vantage point, finally broke free from the clutches of) the same illness that took Jacques, Lewy body dementia.
My God, Ron was only 70. I’m just realizing that right now. I didn’t know him, but his wife of, now, 48 years, Marianne, and I met virtually in an e-mail support group that has been a lifeline for those of us taking care of spouses with “Lewy” (yes, we have been known to break into a chorus of “Lewy Louie”). We’ve witnessed one another’s struggles, provided practical tips and vital information, permission to be human and lose it from time to time, sources of faith, strength, and laughs . . . and most of us have stayed in touch even after “graduation.”
That’s how I found out Ron had passed, and that’s how I got to read this magnificent word portrait of him by his youngest son, Doug. I asked permission to share it here because it is just the essence of what you want a father to be and how you would hope to feel about your father. It just makes you love and admire the man, wish you’d met him, and feel that you have. Sail on, Ron. Thank you, Marianne and Doug.
* * *
You taught me the real meaning of Honor by living it every single day of your life and holding yourself to a higher standard than to where our world tries to tear us down. Honor is the most difficult when dishonor has become fashionable.
You taught me Compassion by your actions towards all the things that needed that little extra helping hand; especially that tiny, awkward and misshapen runt that had choked on a piece of big-dog food. I watched you furiously fight to remove the blockage and then breathe life back into its limp form. You named him Lucky when you set him down on the ground and he wobbled over to stand on your shoe. That very same puppy you had rescued a few days earlier, along with its brothers and sisters, when the wood shed flooded from a terrible rain. With lightning striking, you laid yourself down in a pool of water and reached under the wall of the shed to pull out pup after pup, refusing to give up until the entire litter was safe.
You taught me Patience, Forgiveness, Wisdom and Worthiness, by taking the time to be sure that I knew precisely what I did wrong, why it was wrong and how it can hurt others, but most importantly ourselves. It wasn’t until I was long grown that I was able to look back and remember those two to three hour long lectures and see that you spent the majority of any free time you had available striving to being certain that I knew right from wrong.
You taught me Love by hugging me tightly every night and never being afraid to tell me you loved me every chance you got. I remember the many times while I was in chronic pain, you would sit with me, my head on your lap and your strong, callused hand gently rubbing my back. At my darkest moment, you turned a two hour distance into less than an hour, just to sit with me. I don’t even think we said ten words, but your presence drove away the darkness.
You were never boastful and you were never cruel. You were a lion facing our fears and a lamb facing our sorrows. You could thunder wrath, crack your quick wit and smile whenever we were nervous or frightened and nothing could ever hurt us.
You were the oak that stood strong during all of our storms and your roots will hold our ground together forever.
Thank you for being my Dad! I will love you always!
~ Douglas West (Colorado Springs, CO)
Green and the Number Seven
As something of the Official Bostonian on this site, I have had a few things to say about the Marathon bombing and its aftermath. Now, however, I’m done, and I won’t importune you any longer. But I do want to say one more thing—not that it’s original in any way. That is, this horrible event and the following week gave many of us a view of news reporting we might not have had otherwise. There have been some unexpected bright spots of sheer competence, but far more sinkholes of inadequacy.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to complain about them, not even the bloviating sophisticates in New York and other international locations who have no clue about life in Boston but write about it anyway.
No, I’m going to leave the subject with a quote from Garrison Keillor. Years ago, he was in the midst of controversy, mostly with the St. Paul, Minnesota Pioneer Press (“Gastric Distress” as Keillor called it), and mostly about his morals. I recall him saying something like the following on his radio show:
If you know the reality of a situation, the relationship between truth and a newspaper is like the relationship between the color green and the number seven. Occasionally you will see the number seven written in green, but you learn not to expect this.
I’ve seen a few green sevens, mostly painted in Boston, but far more blue, red, polka-dot and paisley ones than I like to think about. Time to pick another number.
Ambiance 