Sheep and Goats

Category: Entertainment

  • TV Doctor Blake Operates Without Blood

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen movie or TV treatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses that didn’t editorialize over the ‘life-saving’ nature of blood transfusions should the subject come up. As a rough guess, the drama over blood transfusion accounts for as much as half of all Witness mentions in movie or television. Almost always, the Witnesses get shellacked. For example, in one breathtakingly stupid episode of ‘Designated Survivor,’ an entire pack of them holed up in a cabin up there in the woods, refusing orders to evacuate as a forest fire approached, because they wanted to force the hands of doctors trying force blood on a newborn, as though they thought all the country would be captivated by their suicidal plight—and in the dopey world of TV, it was! Seemingly, the president of the United States had nothing else to do with his time that, with the eyes of the entire nation fixated on this determined bunch of crazies, this became his crisis of the week to solve. It was among the last of the Survivors my wife and I saw, a show that started out promisingly with the destruction of the U.S Capitol Building and held the suspense for a time, only to steadily deteriorate into today’s banal politics injected into an contrived setting. 

    So, when Dr. Blake, an Australian show set in the 1950s, plunked a Jehovah’s Witness character in the midst of a murder drama (initially as the chief suspect!), I said, “Okay, they’d better not screw this up. If they do, I’m out of here.” This would be a great shame because it is one of my top shows ever. My worries were for naught. They didn’t screw it up. That’s not to say I might not tweak a few lines here and there, but overall it was accurate—all the more impressive because it was not a portrayal of Witnesses today, but of 70 years ago.

    There were such persons as the Witness lad’s mom, a fantastically overbearing woman, from whom even the police chief did not escape a thorough witness, as he relates to his fellows with the air of reliving a war story. But, when Dr. Blake is queried by his Catholic sort-of fiance, ‘Be honest. Don’t you find them weird?’ he responds that he doesn’t really think so; after all, don’t Catholics have such a thing as a Crusade in their past? Then, there was the insight as to how mom became a Witness, after her husband died and she could find no answers in the Church. There were, and continue to be, people like that. Too, the Witness lad’s faith, while making him odd, has undeniably made him honest and successful in putting a lawbreaking past behind him.

    The fellow who was murdered—and the Witness lad was suspected because he had been the first to come upon him—was exactly the sort of curmudgeonly outlier person a Witness might have been drawn to. His illiteracy, which he kept secret from most persons, would not put the Witnesses off at all, as they do not judge people that way. Instead, he makes repeated visits to help him out with literacy, with witnessing demoted to a co-concern. ‘I actually liked him a lot,’ he tells the police chief. And even though he is about the only person who did in the storyline, it is instantly believable. He would.

    But, the corker lies in when the kid suffers an attempt on his life and bleeds heavily, requiring a blood transfusion. Doc Blake, a forensic doctor who can, in a pinch, work on live people, is about to operate but then he checks himself. ‘Wait! This boy is a Jehovah’s Witness. We can’t use blood.’ He uses saline solution instead—without any carrying on at all about his hands being ‘tied.’ He just does it. Afterward, though the boy doesn’t enter the storyline again, he is said to be doing well and will make a full recovery. Better still, the overbearing mom grows more overbearing still, hearing only “transfusion,” and not “saline transfusion,” flying off the handle but she later apologizes to the doctor when she realizes her mistake.

    I mean, you can tell when the writers have an idea of what they are talking about, unlike the Designator Surviver bozos. Somewhere, the Dr. Blake scriptwriters have found such a person. It may even be reflected in the episode’s title, “Measure Twice,” “measure” being a word used meaningfully in Witness literature. But I never thought I’d see the day when blood transfusions were mentioned in connection with Jehovah’s Witnesses without endless carrying on about how “life-saving” they are and how only a fanatic would ever not welcome one.

    Few Witnesses will enjoy their portrayal, for the show makes them look like loons. However, it is in the greater context that all religion is suspected for lunacy. The episode leaves it completely to the audience to reflect upon whether standing apart from a dominant religious world, with its contradictions and harshness that causes sporadic grief to the mainline characters, is such a bad thing after all. I sort of liked the episode and was not unduly put off that it didn’t explain the Witnesses’ Kingdom hope for them. Of course, it helped that the kid didn’t end up in the hoosegow, and was cleared of all wrongdoing.

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Death of Prince put the Fentanyl Crisis on the Map

    Prince’s death put fentanyl on the map as a national health crisis. It wasn’t unheard of before. But to the general public, the malady was vague. It often takes celebrity doings to put something front and center. This was the case with Prince. As the book ‘Tom Irregardless and Me’ may be the largest repository anywhere of Prince’s non-music life with accent on his JW life, it too put fentanyl on the map. An excerpt:

    “[Soon after his death,] Dr. Chris Johnson wrote that he is

    'forced to paint an unflattering picture of the industry that I have been a part of for the last 15 years. I wish I could tell you that this epidemic was due to an honest mistake. That the science was unclear or had mixed results that only later became evident. But I can’t. I also wish I could tell you that the only reason the problem persists is a ‘lack of physician awareness.’ But I won’t. The reason this opioid problem started and the reason it continues is sadly for the most American reason there is: business.'

    “At one time, Dr. Johnson points out, American doctors prescribed opioids as did doctors everywhere: for pain relief from cancer or acute injury. He then tells of a drug company, introducing a new opioid product in 1996, that swung for the fences. It didn’t want to target just cancer patients. It wanted to target everyone experiencing everyday pain: joint pain and back pain, for example:

    'To do this, they recruited and paid experts in the field of pain medicine to spread the message that these medicines were not as addictive as previously thought. . . . As a physician in training, I remember being told that the risk of addiction for patients taking opioids for pain was less than one percent. What I was not told was that there was no good science to suggest rates of addiction were really that low. That ‘less than one percent’ statistic came from a five-sentence paragraph in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1980. It has come to be known as the Porter and Jick study. However, it was not really a study. It was a letter to the editor; more like a tweet. You can read the whole thing in 90 seconds.'

    “Does the industry that made the drugs that killed Prince come crawling to his crew, friends, and fans to beg forgiveness? No. It sends one of its customers to transfer blame to Prince himself for allowing “VIP syndrome” to occur. In today’s arena of sexual harassment accusations, the mere hint of blaming the victim brings instantaneous wrath. But the medicine man doesn’t hesitate to do it to Prince. I’ll side with the performer’s bodyguard, Romeo, any day. Fiercely loyal to his boss and friend, he shoves back at some reporter trying to plant the notion that Prince was an addict: “He may have had to go to the doctor and they prescribed something for him but as far as his abusing drugs, that’s not him.” Yeah! I don’t want to hear doctors blaming Prince for VIP syndrome! I want to hear Romeo defending him like a grizzly bear its cub!

    “. . . Get these pill peddlers away from here so we can restore Prince’s good name! He wasn’t obnoxious and he wasn’t hard to please. In 2003, he was baptized as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. He afterward credited his new faith for turning his life around. His lyrics, once breathtakingly raunchy, cleared right up. “You only have to meet Prince for a few minutes to realize the extent to which God rather than the colour purple, now influences how he lives,” the Daily Mirror wrote. He didn’t swagger around at the Kingdom Hall he attended, as some might expect from a celebrity. Instead, he wore a plain business suit and it could be hard to pick him out. Some described him as shy.”

    The specific company still evades justice, though it has gone bankrupt. Perhaps in the business world, that is the extent of justice anyone can expect. But no one has personally been held liable, even though countless people have died and continue to die from the fentanyl crisis it introduced. Not only was the opioid medicine fantastically addictive, but it did not last 24 hours, as had been advertised. It lasted maybe 6 hours. When the physical pain returned, doctors would not prescribe more, not wanting to fuel addiction. It said right on the package ‘24 hours hours,’ not six. Pain is a very unpleasant thing. Desperate patients like Prince sought out substitutes on the black market and this is how the fentanyl crisis was unleashed.

    It is a little like the documentary ‘Inside Job,’ an analysis behind the 2007-2008 financial job that destroyed the lives of many. ‘Why do you think there has not been a systematic investigation?’ the director asks a business professor. ‘Because then you will find the culprits,’ is the cynical but true answer.

    You would almost think that the people who fixate on “manipulation,” “behavioral control” and so forth, would spend direct a bit more attention toward these woes, where the casualties are truly staggering.

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • Beards Get the Green Light

    An entire Update dedicated to beards might seem like overkill, but when they tried underkill it didn’t work. 

    Watchtower September 2016, in a study article, it said:

    “The Mosaic Law required men to wear a beard. However, Christians are not under the Mosaic Law, nor are they obliged to observe it. (Lev. 19:27; 21:5; Gal. 3:24, 25) In some cultures, a neatly trimmed beard may be acceptable and respectable, and it may not detract at all from the Kingdom message. In fact, some appointed brothers have beards.”

    When that Watchtower Study finally came, that paragraph was like the elephant in the room that everyone was awaiting, and then Yessss! paragraph 17–some congregations spent extra time to ‘explain’ it. I thought that would be the end of it. Instead, it seemed like congregations doubled-down, as if with the attitude: ‘Well, okay, ‘weak’ publishers can wear beards if they insist, but no way will they ever be appointed.’ A few publishers grew beards, but beyond that–nothing.

    ’Look, we don’t have an issue with it,’ is what the GB finally said in this latest 2023 Update, 7 years later. It’s not new. They said it before but it didn’t take. This time, to make sure it wasn’t another misfire that didn’t take, they made it a big production, brought in bells and whistles, the chariot, disclaimers for the guys who say, ‘It’s about time!’ and cushioning for rigid guys who had drawn a line in the sand and were aghast to see it erased. Old habits die hard. This one sure did. For me, it is like when the man who invented autocorrect died. The obits read: ‘Restaurant in peace.’ There were even some harsher ones that said, ‘May he rot in hello.’
     
    The greater world solved the beard issue decades ago:

    And the sign said, “Long-haired freaky people, need not apply” So I tucked my hair up under my hat, and I went in to ask him why. He said, “You look like a fine upstandin’ young man, I think you’ll do” So I took off my hat and said, “Imagine that, Huh, me workin’ for you.”

    There. Done. Settled. Back in 1990. Whereas, we don’t settle it till 2023! But, in fairness, it ought be remembered that the overall world is going down the toilet and Jehovah’s organization is not. More than once the Bible says that those drawn to the Lord must become like young children. And indeed, they have proved to be that way, not just in the good ways but also the not-so-good.

    It was not in the Bible. It never appeared in Watchtower print. (other than many examples of ‘shaving one’s beard’ listed in the changes made on the road to baptism) The reasons for it, linkage with beatniks and hippies, disappeared decades ago. There were articles to the effect that Witnesses don’t do rules, but mostly principles. And yet, no rule was more firmly enforced than the unwritten no-beard rule.

    Ah, well. ‘We have this treasure in earthen vessels.’ (2 Corinthians 4:7) The treasure is the ministry and the earthen vessels is us, with all of our petty flaws, mild hypocrisies, stubbornnesses, obtusenesses, insensitivities, and idiosyncrasies. Blame God for doing it that way, I guess. He could have assigned it all to angels.

    The 2023 Update began: “A number of branch offices around the world have written to us, indicating that there continues to be question about whether or not it is proper for a brother in an appointed position to wear a beard. . . . The Governing Body has concluded that there is a need for clarification.”

    Translation: “There continues to be a question.” There shouldn’t be by now. We keep getting letters. We’re tired of it. So:

    “The Governing Body does not have an issue with brothers wearing beards.”

    Got it? We don’t. To prove it, we’re now pulling out all the stops, employing all the bells and whistles, bringing out the chariot, because when we first said it was a non-issue, no one listened! So now, let us repeat…..(drum roll, please)….. We. Don’t. Care!

    Witnesses were the last (by far) to notice the world had moved on from no-beards. They missed it because they were ‘insular,’ a problem more difficult to remedy than you might think because it is the flipside of the ‘no part of the world’ coin. If you are the second—which Jesus says you have to be—you are almost by definition the first, ‘insular’ to an extent. That’s what insulation is—something that keeps two things that should not mix separate.

    At long last, the mess is resolved. It looks a little silly the way it happens, but it is resolved. It comes close on the heels of another irritant being resolved—the matter of ‘counting time’—applicable at one time, but less so with passing years, as it introduces curious, counterproductive notions of being ‘on duty’ and ‘off duty.’ It is a relic of guys raised in the factory era, when even if there was nothing to do, you’d better look busy to make the boss happy. Times change. God is not like that. It has been discarded. Two nettlesome things resolved in fairly short order.

    It is hard to direct a large group of people. One says, ‘Thanks for the new rule!’ whereas his neighbor says, ‘Huh? Did you say something?’
     
    My first thought upon hearing the Update was that my on-again, off-again study with Santa Claus might be actually on-again. He briefly came to meetings after that 2017 article, but soon dropped off. We weren’t all that sad to see him go. He had proved annoying, with thunderous “Ho Ho Ho’s!” if the speaker cracked even the lamest joke. Very judgmental, too, always pronouncing people good or bad. And he had shown no sign of giving up his annual extreme sport.

     

    ******  The bookstore

     

    ***

    Notes: 

    My first thought upon hearing the Update was that my on-again, off-again Bible study with Santa Claus might once more be on-again. He was doing so well until he saw that magazine equating a shortening beard to spiritual progress. Now, maybe, just maybe, he will resume his study. Of course, I’ll still have to help him with the holiday thing, but at least the beard thing is no more.

     

    If an entire Update dedicated to beards now being okay seems like overkill, one might recall that the Governing Body tried underkill and it didn’t work. From the September 2016 Watchtower: “Does Your Style of Dress Glorify God?”

    What about the propriety of brothers wearing a beard? The Mosaic Law required men to wear a beard. However, Christians are not under the Mosaic Law, nor are they obliged to observe it. (Lev. 19:27; 21:5; Gal. 3:24, 25) In some cultures, a neatly trimmed beard may be acceptable and respectable, and it may not detract at all from the Kingdom message. In fact, some appointed brothers have beards. Even so, some brothers might decide not to wear a beard. (1 Cor. 8:9, 13; 10:32) In other cultures or localities, beards are not the custom and are not considered acceptable for Christian ministers. In fact, having one may hinder a brother from bringing glory to God by his dress and grooming and his being irreprehensible.—Rom. 15:1-3; 1 Tim. 3:2, 7.

    This paragraph was a big deal at the time, at least in my area. Brothers were talking about it seemingly the day after it was written. When that Watchtower Study finally came, that paragraph was like the elephant in the room that everyone was awaiting, and then Yessss! paragraph 17 finally arrived and you could talk about it. Some congregations spent extra time to ‘explain’ it.

    I thought that would be the end of it. I thought at long last the issue had been laid to rest. I thought beards would soon be showing up—at first in publishers and then in MS and elders. Instead, it seemed like congregations doubled-down, as if with the attitude: ‘Well, okay, ‘weak’ publishers can wear beards if they insist, but no way will they ever be appointed.’ A few publishers grew beards, but beyond that–nothing.

    ’Look, we don’t have an issue with it,’ is what the GB finally said in this latest Update. It’s not new. It’s what they said 7 years ago only it didn’t take. This time, to make sure it wasn’t another misfire that didn’t take, they made it a big production, brought in bells and whistles, the chariot, and disclaimers for guys who say, ‘It’s about time!’ and for the more rigid guys who drew a line in the sand and are now aghast to see it erased. Old habits die hard. This one certainly did.

    For me, it is like when the man who invented autocorrect died. ‘Restaurant in peace’ the obits read, though there were a few harsher ones that said, ‘May he rot in hello.’

     

    On the one hand, it all seems pretty silly. The greater world solved this beard issue decades ago:

    And the sign said, “Long-haired freaky people, need not apply” So I tucked my hair up under my hat, and I went in to ask him why. He said, “You look like a fine upstandin’ young man, I think you’ll do” So I took off my hat and said, “Imagine that, Huh, me workin’ for you.”

    There. Done. Settled. Back in 1990. Whereas, we don’t settle it till 2023. But, in fairness, it ought be remembered that the overall world is going down the toilet and Jehovah’s organization is not.

    More than once the Bible says that those drawn to the Lord must become like young children. And indeed, they have proved to be that way, not just in the good ways but also the not-so-good. Paul said: “Brothers, do not become young children in your understanding, but be young children as to badness.” (1 Cor 14:20) Why did he say this—because they never became young children in their understanding?

    So it has proved today, with issues taking longer to resolve than you might think would be the case. Those the Lord can work with are like ‘young children.’ Those whom he cannot are ones too insistent upon their rights to be molded. They are left to the reward of whatever their discord can produce. In short, “they are having their reward in full.”

     

    It was not in the Bible. It never appeared in Watchtower print. (other than many examples of ‘shaving one’s beard’ listed in the changes made on the road to baptism) The reasons for it, association with beatniks and hippies, disappeared decades ago. We’ve had articles to the effect that we don’t do rules, but primarily principles. And yet, no rule was more firmly enforced than the unwritten no-beard rule.

    If you want to blame someone, blame God. He’s the one who created the paradigm of ‘We have this treasure in earthen vessels.’ (2 Corinthians 4:7) The treasure is the ministry and the earthen vessels is us, with all of our petty flaws, mild hypocrisies, stubbornnesses, obtusenesses, insensitivities, and idiosyncrasies. Blame Jehovah for arranging it that way and not handing the whole assignment over to angels.

    Believe me, I am sensitive to this issue. Years ago, I went to bat for a youngster being drummed out solely for not shaving a beard. I learned later he had a very atypical reason, unknown to me at the time, but all the brothers could see was obstinacy and standing upon ‘his rights.’ ‘Before this is all done, I’m going to grow a beard!’ I told certain elders. ‘It’s one thing to shove around a youngster. Try doing it with an adult.’ Trouble is, I didn’t want one. It’s too easy to get food caught there.

    It is fixed now. It’s about time, but it is done. If Jehovah is going to permit earthen vessels to have the treasure, you cannot be shocked if they behave earthenly. It’s his doing. Earthen is as earthen does.

    Are the brothers conservative? Things don’t have to conform to my taste. It is absolutely shocking to look around the world and see how people misuse their ‘freedom.’ I’m not a fan of authoritarian countries, but I can see how they might look at what happens in the West when all restraints are removed and say, ‘Whoa! We don’t want any part of that!”

     

    The reason for the change came out in the update itself:

    “A number of branch offices around the world have written to us, indicating that there continues to be question about whether or not it is proper for a brother in an appointed position to wear a beard. . . . The Governing Body has concluded that there is a need for clarification.”

    Translation: “There continues to be a question.” There should not be by now. We keep getting letters. We’re tired of it. “There is a need for clarification. Nothing new, here. Just restatement of the old.

    “The Governing Body does not have an issue with brothers wearing beards.” Got it? We don’t. To prove it, we’re now pulling out all the stops, employing all the bells and whistles, even hauling out the chariot, because when we first indicated it was a non-issue, no one took us up on it. So now, let us repeat…..(drum roll, please)….. We. Don’t. Care.

    “We thought sending a message 7 years ago was enough:

    “What about the propriety of brothers wearing a beard? The Mosaic Law required men to wear a beard. However, Christians are not under the Mosaic Law, nor are they obliged to observe it. (Lev. 19:27; 21:5; Gal. 3:24, 25) In some cultures, a neatly trimmed beard may be acceptable and respectable, and it may not detract at all from the Kingdom message. In fact, some appointed brothers have beards. Even so, some brothers might decide not to wear a beard. (1 Cor. 8:9, 13; 10:32) In other cultures or localities, beards are not the custom and are not considered acceptable for Christian ministers. In fact, having one may hinder a brother from bringing glory to God by his dress and grooming and his being irreprehensible. —Rom. 15:1-3; 1 Tim. 3:2, 7.” (Watchtower, Sept 2016)

    “We thought that would do the trick. “In some cultures, a neatly trimmed beard may be acceptable and respectable,” we said. “Near as we can tell, we live in one of those cultures,” we figured elder bodies would say. They didn’t. So now we’re saying it so emphatically that nobody could possibly misunderstand it.”

    It may well be that Witnesses back in the day disliked beards but so did everyone else of their time and well after. Look at television shows of that time. Count up the beards. Maynard G Krebs the beatnik had one. Beyond that, nearly zilch. I barely recall seeing any beards at all during by non-Witness youth, certainly not among my parents’ generation.

    Witnesses were just the last (by far) to notice the world had moved on from no-beards. They missed it because they were ‘insular,’ a problem more difficult to remedy than one might think because it is the flipside of the ‘no part of the world’ coin. If you are no part of the world, you are almost by definition ‘insular’ to a certain extent. That’s what insulation is—something that keeps two things that should not mix separate.

    After that 2016 Watchtower, bodies of elders considered its local applicability. Some began to not fuss over beards for appointed servants, but most continued to. Some of those that did fretted that beards among servants would stumble congregation members, completely missing the point that Paul’s counsel about stumbling (over eating meat) was out of concern for new ones or nonbelievers. In the case of beards, these ones had no issue with it, but only some ‘veterans’ who had made it a virtue in itself to be beardless and who you’d think would have moved on by now. Old habits die hard, especially when you are insular.

    At long last, the mess is resolved. It looks a little silly the way it happens, but it is resolved. It comes close on the heels of another irritant being resolved—the matter of ‘counting time’—applicable at one time, but less so with passing years, as it introduces curious and crippling notions of being ‘on duty’ and ‘off duty.’ It was a relic of guys raised from the factory era in which, even when there was nothing to do, you’d better look busy to avoid the boss’s displeasure. Times change. God is not like that. It has been discarded. Two nettlesome things resolved in fairly short order.

    It makes for unity to do things like #8. It also looks a little silly to those who have acquiesced to a disunited world, who consider that normal, and who grumble when anyone actually seeks unity not done their way, unity not achieved by waiting for all “the brokenhearted people living in the world [to] agree”—the way that history has demonstrated they never have or will.

    JWs in the United States are almost exactly 1/3 white, 1/3 black, and 1/3 Hispanic, says Pew Research, also with about 5% Asian. Meaning? They have solved racism, an issue that tears the greater world apart. Though, at first glance, it seems not the same thing, if you want unity, you have to oil the cogs every once it a while, maybe even give it a good whack with a hammer. and Update 8 is an example of that on a lesser issue that unexpectedly became large.

    Any criticism or ridicule of such ‘oiling’ is only valid if it comes from ones who themselves enjoy unity. Otherwise, it is little more than sour grapes. Some have simply acquiesced to a world without unity as ‘normal.’ Their criticisms don’t count. If you have long ago become part of the world, you can’t criticize the travails of those who haven’t.

     

    ***Xero is “not privy to the GB’s private thoughts, but “I can imagine them being frustrated at) some who have the desire to worship the organization,” he says.

    He cites a scripture: “…But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they ripped their outer garments and leaped out into the crowd, crying out and saying: ‘Men, why are you doing these things? We too are humans having the same infirmities as you have. ” Acts 14:8-18

    He cites another: “On hearing this, they began to glorify God, but they said to him: ‘You see, brother, how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, and they are all zealous for the Law.’” (Acts 21:20)

    Those referred to are Jewish converts to Christianity, yet still devoted to observing the Jewish law (the Mosaic Law). “Even then the customs were including a lot of things which weren’t written in the Mosaic Law. Yet they kept doing them. This is why it doesn’t surprise me that there are some who see changes in certain areas to be faith shaking because these have equated certain practices of the past to have been unequivocally scriptural, and if the Governing Body ever suggested we should adopt pattern A, rather than pattern B, then that was as good as scripture to these.”

    Yes. It is hard to direct a large group of people. One says, ‘Thanks for the new rule!’ whereas his neighbor says, ‘Huh? Did you say something?’

     

  • “He Beat You With Nothin!” Cool Hand Luke and the Atheist Search for Life’s Origin: Part 1

    God’s goose is cooked if atheist scientists can show that life came into existence all by itself, without any intelligence required. For that reason, atheist scientists are working around the clock to show just that. I figured I’d better take a look and see how they’re doing. 

    The Great Courses company landed Robert M. Hazen in 2005 to give a lecture series entitled ‘Origins of Life.’ He’ll do. Great Courses doesn’t hire losers. The company says at the outset of every course that it seeks out academic professors stellar in their respective fields and stellar in teaching ability. Hazen has written a few books on the topic. He’ll represent the field well.

    Nonetheless, I soon found myself thinking of the movie Cool Hand Luke. “Nothin’! A handful of nothin’. You stupid mullet head, he beat you with nothin!’—the derisive words of the senior jailbird.

    Luke didn’t exactly have nothing. He held the 4 of clubs, the jack of hearts, 9 of diamonds, 10 of clubs, and the deuce of clubs. Call that nothing? Never mind that they didn’t add up to anything. He still bluffed his way to the top with ‘nothin.’

    “Yeah, well sometimes nothing is a real cool hand,” he drawled, and was thereafter called Cool Hand Luke.

    Is it too dismissive, even unkind, to say that the origins of life people have ‘nothing?’ They work very hard and become very enthused. They give every appearance of having something. To the scientism/philosopher/cheerleader/atheists promoting their cause, seeking to ram atheism down everyone’s throat as the be-all and end-all, as though it, too, were good news, they are always two centimeters away from clinching the deal. So how can anyone conclude they have ‘nothin?’

    One can start by hearing out Hazen’s opening lecture. “In this lecture series I make a basic assumption, that life emerged by some kind of natural process.” It’s an assumption! Not something he will look into to see whether it is true or not He assumes it is true. “I propose that life arose by a sequence of events that was completely consistent with the natural laws of chemistry and physics. and in this assumption, I’m like other scientists.” They all assume it! All those in his orbit do. Isn’t science supposed to be a process of discovery?

    But wait! Is there not a competing model that holds God created the heavens and the earth and all life on it? How does he come to grips with that? “Let me say now for the record: I’m a scientist. I’m not a theologian nor am I a philosopher. This course focuses exclusively on the scientific approach to the question of life’s origins.”

    Of course! That’s how he deals with competing models—he ignores them! My legal career would have truly taken off if I could have just persuaded the judge to ignore the other side! It just may be that Hazen and those he represents should incorporate those other two disciplines into their work, since the urge to both worship and philosophize is near universal.

    No wonder he is not disheartened by his subsequent words—he admits to no other possibility for life’s origin. In that first lecture, he goes on to say: “I have to confess the nitty gritty details of that transformation remains a deep mystery. . . I have to be honest: Even with the scientific approach there is a possibility that we’ll never know, in fact that we can’t ever know how life emerged. That’s because it’s always possible that life emerged by an almost infinitely improbable sequence of difficult chemical reactions.. . . it’s even possible that earth is the only living planet in the entire universe. and if that’s true that any scientific attempt to understand life’s origins is doomed to failure.”

    Doesn’t that sound pretty close to nothin? Does that bother him unduly? Not at all. He admits to no other channel for life’s emergence! In his view, he may never prove his answer, but it is the answer, nonetheless.

    Thus we hear of many things that “must have” happened. Such as: “At some point a collection of molecules must have begun to make copies of itself. Then, those self-replicating cycles of molecules must have experienced competition, which quickly drove the evolution to even more complex assemblages.” Did those things in fact happen? They must have, he concludes, otherwise his pie in the sky research falls flat on its face!

    And they say religion is where the dogmatists hang out!

    It gets worse. Hazen tells of attending conferences in which half the name badges incorporate the phrase ‘Origin of Life’ and the other half ‘Origins of Life’—plural. What’s with that? Well, it used to be just ‘Origin of Life.’ But, in time, due to a “fascinating shift in attitudes . . . many researchers began to argue that life has arisen frequently in the universe.” Why would they reason that way? Is there good (or any) evidence to that effect? Hazen’s answer: “Without such an assumption [another assumption!] the scientific study of life’s origin is probably a waste of time.” Fascinating, indeed, to realize that. Nobody wants to waste their time. Cool Hand Luke didn’t want to, either. So he bluffed that the nothin he had was really somethin and he outfoxed all the other jailbirds!

    [Note: I have nothing against Hazen, as will be explained subsequently. I have simply selected him as representative of a certain approach. If it wasn’t him, it would be someone else. Kudos to him for being the point man of his field. It is not as though Great Courses has ever tapped me to lecture on anything.]

    To be continued: here

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • Johnny Cash and Job: Free From the Chain Gang: Commentary on Job 7

    On the one hand, Johnny Cash was freed from the chain gang of prison because he died:

    I got rid of the shackles that bound me / And the guards that were always around me / There were tears on the mail mother sent me in jail / But I'm free from the chain gang now.

    On the other hand, isn’t ‘chain gang’ his metaphor for a too-hard life? So it is that one can compare Job and the Cash song. Compare Job’s metaphor for a too-hard life:

    “Is not the life of mortal man on earth like compulsory labor . . . Like a slave, he longs for the shadow , , , I have been assigned months of futility And nights of misery have been counted out for me.” (Job 7:1-3)

    The second stanza of Cash’s version, actually a cover for an earlier artist, is:

    Back home I was known and respected / Then one day I was wrongly suspected / So they put me in chains in a cold freezing rain / But I'm free from the chain gang now.

    That fits Job as well. He was ‘known and respected’ one day, ‘wrongly suspected’ the next:

    Satan answered Jehovah: “Is it for nothing that Job has feared God? Have you not put up a protective hedge around him and his house and everything he has? . . .  But, for a change, stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your very face.” (Job 1:9-11)

    Job passed that test, only to be ‘wrongly suspected’ once again:

    “Skin for skin. A man will give everything that he has for his life. But, for a change, stretch out your hand and strike his bone and flesh, and he will surely curse you to your very face.” (Job 2:4-5)

    And so, “they put [Job] in chains in a cold freezing rain,” and finally made him long for an end to his chain gang life:

    “Remember that my life is wind, That my eye will never again see happiness. . . . I loathe my life; I do not want to go on living. (Job 7:7,17)

    Job did go on living. Cash didn’t. There may be common ground but the two were not the same. Cash’s outrageous conduct nearly ended his career. But after a lull, toward the end of his life, he teamed up with a new producer and released records markedly different from anything prior, hauntingly beautiful, purely acoustic, and nearly all themed the death that soon awaited him and all of humankind—with many fixated on repentance, salvation, and God. And well might he have repented from a life marred with womanizing and substance abuse.

    Only then does Cash remake his earlier cover of the same Chain Gang song that does appear to be only a song of prison. Only then does it seem to occur to him that it can also serve as a metaphor for life. He doesn’t change any lines, but he doubles down on some and drops others.

    When my friend who had years ago lost his wife to cancer heard Cash’s rendering of ‘On the Evening Train’—on the same album—he instantly broke into tears and shut off the CD player. This particular song features no repentance, nor marked need for it, but only the crushing loneliness of suddenly losing one’s closest companion, coupled with a plea for courage until future resurrection. 

    IMG_1127The song is  from the Cash album, American V: A Hundred Highways—same as where Free From the Chain Gang is. It is among my favorite albums. All of Cash’s later works are.

    Job wasn’t a womanizer or substance abuser, like Cash had been (though also not a musician). He doesn’t have serious sins to repent of. He knew it well, though under relentless accusation from his three ‘guards,’—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, he said to those guards (and to God, as though He were another):

    Will you not look away from me And leave me alone long enough to swallow my saliva? If I have sinned, how could I harm you, the Observer of mankind? Why have you made me your target? (7:19-20)

    Job did not know the test he was running, let alone its purpose or the outcome it would supply to benefit all future generations. His course under the most intense suffering answered those taunts of Satan.  He would display that man can keep integrity under the most adverse of circumstances. Answer, supplied, Jehovah chewed out the three  ‘guards,’ sent them packing, then went about restoring God’s life.

    For both Cash and Job, it was a rugged trial:

    All the years I was known by a number / How I kept my mind is a wonder.

    And (prison version only, but it works): And the bare prison cell that was one step from Hell / But I'm free from the chain gang now.

    Though it is realized differently with the two men—one womanizer and substance abuser, one blameless and upright, Johnny Cash’s final verse applies to them both: Johnny dies and is subject to future earthly resurrection. Job goes on to have family, wealth and health restored; then he dies and becomes subject to future earthly resurrection; both to commence after the doomed experiment in human self-rule has come to its end:

    Like a bird in a tree I got my liberty / And I'm free from the chain gang now.

    (I recommend going back to click the links—listen to the two songs.)

    Other posts on Job: click here and here.

     

    ******  The bookstore

  • Cool Hand Luke

    37410683-0538-49CA-94D0-49F91E507D7ACool hand Luke gazes into the rafters inside the abandoned church. “God, I never had much to do with you,” he says, “but you have to admit, you haven’t given me much of a break. If you are really up there, now would be a good time to show yourself.”

    Silence. For several seconds.

    ‘Yeah, I thought so,” he says, and a generation of movie-goers say, ‘Yeah, we thought so too.’

    It is like when Jerry Reed sees the judge:

    Well, when he took us inta court I couldn't believe my eyes, The judge was a fishin' buddy that I recognized

    I said "Hey, judge, old buddy, old pal, I'll pay ya that hundred I owe ya if you'll get me outta this spot"

    So he gave my friends a little fine to pay, He turned around and grinned at me and said, "Ninety days, Jerry, when you hot, you hot"

    He should have paid him back that hundred he owed him. Not only did Cool Hand Luke not get out of his spot. He got shot. It’s just a movie. Same as when the cast of Good Lord Bird showed up at Harper’s Ferry. The National Historical Park ranger told me people began asking them all sorts of questions about what John Brown did back then in that town, as though they were the actual participants. Look, it’s just a television show, they said.

    The only one who you don’t have to worry about getting out of  spots is God himself. It’s part of the qualifications for being God: “If I were hungry, I would not tell you,” he says. What! You’re going to get him out of that spot? (Psalm 50:12)

    There are in the archives many life experiences of those in a spot from which they call out to God and later say they were answered. But they generally propose a ‘deal’—‘get me out of this spot and I’ll do your will forever,’ something like that. Maybe God, who can read hearts, after all, translated Cool Hand Luke’s makeshift prayer as, ‘God—get me out of this spot—so I can raise hell among your people just like I’m raising it here.’ 

    And a cadre of humanists say, ‘How shocking! He should be able to raise hell wherever he wants!’

     

    ******  The bookstore

     

  • Mongeville and Big Pharma, with Guest Appearance of Peter Breggin. I Take it All Back What I’ve Said About France

    Huh! Here’s something I’ve never seen before. Is it just me? It’s at least everyone in France.

    American detective shows are too violent and/or banal to watch, so sometimes we opt for foreign offerings. This is how my wife and I  came to enjoy Manara, an Italian series. It is delightful, witty, empathetic, visually stunning—but with one major caveat. You can forget about any Hebrews 13:4 notion of the marriage bed being undefined. That doesn’t mean you’ll see anything super steamy but the idea is ever-present.

    Anyhow, that’s just background. 

    The next show up is the French detective show Mongeville, running 8 years, in which a retired judge teams up with a perky woman police officer. So far, no hanky-panky, nor does the tone seem set for any, but there are many episodes to go. We are just at the 4th. Neither of these shows, at least by American standards, are particularly violent. It’s hard to do a murder mystery without someone getting killed, but there’s no gore. It’s just a premise for some cute interaction of characters. Think, in the case of Manara, Jim pining after Pam, as in Office, then Pam pining after Jim, yet miscommunications and mishaps always occur so that they cannot connect.

    It is episode 4 of Mongeville season 1 that introduced something new to me. A sub theme of early episodes is that Judge Mongeville’s daughter disappeared long ago and he is trying to track her down. In episode 4, he interviews her old med school teacher. That teacher relates how the girl was brilliant, so brilliant that pharmaceutical recruiters hired her for one of their ‘missionary’ projects. When she saw what was going on there, she was so repulsed and in some way so fearful lest her response bring trouble to her family, that she disappeared into yet another country.

    See, pharmaceutical companies test their products, but they test them in developing countries so that “if anything goes wrong” there’s no one to complain about it. The statement is made matter-of-factly by the daughter’s med school teacher, not with the air of being shocking, but with the air that everyone knows about this, companies all do it, and if any of them do not, they quickly fall behind the competitive curve of those who do.

    Well, I’d never seen it—such a statement made on a popular TV entertainment show. Shows featuring ‘rouge doctors’ are a dime a dozen. Occasionally even a ‘rouge’ medical company, a bad actor in an otherwise beneficent industry, enters into plot, but never have I seen a show that sets forth the entire industry as villainous. 

    It reminded me of something in Peter and Ginger Breggin’s book, COVID-19 and the Global Predators, over the campaign to discredit cheap and effective anti-Covid drugs so that people would have no choice but to pine for a vaccine. He tells of one of the studies embraced as proof the drugs were no good in which patients were administered those drugs at known toxic levels so as to achieve the desired results: 39% died.

    “The Brazilian authors of this study must have known they were treading on dangerous territory by purposely causing many deaths. Coming from a poor area of the country, they may have felt they could get away with sacrificing their patients without local reprisals. They simply gave lethal doses of chloroquine to patients to prove that the drug and its derivative hydroxychloroquine were too dangerous to treat COVID-19.”

    It was shocking to me read this statement. Not unbelievable, because if you’ve been around the block a few times, few things are unbelievable. But shocking it was, completely new to me. Yet here is Mongeville in effect saying. “So what else is new? It’s just taking what we all know happens to next level.”

    D453CDA1-8451-4460-AFEB-C4B469167FE7

    I take back all I have ever said about France. I even take back what my right wing brother said about them during the French Fries / Freedom Fries brouhaha a few decades back, when my globetrotting cousin complained that she could no longer use the word gay because the homosexuals had commandeered it, and I said, ‘She’s just mad that she can no longer refer to Gay Paree.

    “Why can’t she?” my right wing brother said. 

    I take it all back.

    I even forgive (temporally) that France is the birthplace of FECRIS, that government-sponsored anti-cult agency that has greatly expanded the definition of cult to include most anything that is not firmly secular. You know, the agency that doubtless was behind that’s government imposing a 60% tax on Witness donations in a clear attempt to stamp out the faith, reversed with damages only many years later by the European Court of Human Rights. You know, the agency whose Russian vice president has labeled Witnesses extremists in that land of the bear and has caused them to suffer serious harm—even jail time and torture. Jehovah’s Witnesses will not take life under any circumstances—how extremist can they be?

    Even, whereas devotees of the Enlightment swooned with ecstasy when the power of the people escalated into the American revolution and representative government, but they cringed when the other result of that Enlightenment, the French Revolution, descended into murderous mayhem consuming even its early supporters for not being ‘dedicated’ enough—I overlook that too.

    I overlook all of it on account of the French show exposing the wiles of Big Pharma.

    “But don’t forget. ..” Abraham Lincoln related the tearjerker tale of a man on his deathbed making peace with his adversary. “If I get better, that grudge still stands!”

    That doesn’t entirely fit but it does give me opportunity to relate a favorite Lincoln anecdote. 

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Forest in Symbolism and History

    Could this really happen?

    “Absalom was riding on a mule, and the mule went under the thick branches of a large tree, and his head got entangled in the big tree, so that he was suspended in midair while the mule he had been riding kept going.” (2 Samuel 18:9)

    That’s one bad boy of a tree is all I can say!

    Maybe the problem was the mule. 9966A8AB-262E-4143-B56A-46A12C52ABD9 “A mule will labor ten years, willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once,” wrote William Faulkner. Absalom’s mule may not have kicked him, but it sure did do him dirty, hanging him up so hit man Joab could off him.

    Maybe it was was the forest. You ‘can’t see the forest for the trees,’ but in this case Absalom can’t see the tree for the forest. 20,000 combatants died and “the forest devoured more of the people than the sword did on that day,” says the verse just prior (8). Maybe it was one of those ‘Lord of the Rings’ forests.

    ‘Lord of the Rings’ forests are built on a solid tradition of forests being treacherous, even places where the Devil hangs out! 116BEC57-458D-4F1F-B90F-A5EF81889517Mistress Higgins is forever trying to lure folks into the forest for unsavory shenanigans with ‘the Black Man.’ (The author of the Scarlet Letter, Nathanial Hawthorne, modeled her after a real person, Ann Higgins, who was executed for witchcraft in 1656.) That forest was one foreboding place, where “the boughs were tossing heavily above their heads; while one solemn old tree groaned dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat beneath, or constrained to forebode evil to come.”

    But at the same time, push deeply enough into the forest and break freeeeee! or at least settle for that illusion.

    “Backward to the settlement, thou sayest!” Hester remonstrates with Dimmesdale. “Yes; but onward, too! Deeper it goes, and deeper, into the wilderness, less plainly to be seen at every step; until, some few miles hence, the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white mans tread. There thou art free! So brief a journey would bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched, to one where thou mayest still be happy! Is there not shade enough in all this boundless forest …”

    Guelzo (without quoting Hawthorne—that’s mine) points to early writers of American history with this Janus-view of the forest. (Janus—the ‘two-faced’ god facing both left and right) Fearful, on the one hand, but promising on the other. Though the ‘promising’ is for an ‘unpromising’ reason. Press into the forest deep enough and you can escape your own screw-ups from the past! The early American view of history according to Guelzo? “Don’t have any, don’t need any, don’t want any.”.  In new America, the “human experiment” can begin anew!

    (“Gimme that fruit!” Adam said. “Let the ‘human experiment’ begin!” ‘No, no, no,’ God tacitly says. ‘You’ll screw it all up! Trust me on this, you do not want to usurp the duty of telling good from bad!’ ‘Nah,’ comes the reply—what can go wrong?)

    It’s not winners who came to America. It was losers, those driven out for religious reasons, crushed by financial reasons, or refugees from ‘man dominating man to his injury’ reasons. The first settlers “were radical Puritans who were looking for a way out from under the thumb screws of the Church of England. It was only after every other avenue of escape [was] closed off to them that . . . they turned to those vast . . . countries of America” (Guelzo) And “looking over the bow of the Mayflower what could they see [but a] hideous and desolate wilderness full of wild beasts and wild men. Why, said [William] Bradford, even the air, diet, and drinking of water in America would infect their bodies with sore sicknesses and grievous diseases.”

    That forest was a dangerous place, make no mistake. It remained ever dangerous in waves of westward expansion, though fear was mixed with growing confidence as humans invented, and then led, with bulldozers Upon reaching the coast and finally conquering the forest, what remains?

    “Space—the final frontier,” intones James T. Kirk, introducing a show that would have been dead on arrival were it not for Lucille Ball. The forests are all conquered, some trees rounded up for a ‘tree museum’ for which you must pay a dollar and a half just to see ‘em! (Joni Mitchell) Space is the new frontier. Boldly going where no man has gone before! What is discovered out there? Guys that look just like us, save for pointed ears. Is that evolution great stuff or what!? Pour me a double-shot of it!

    What do aliens gain from their new contact with humans? “One damn minute,” Spock pleasantly responds to one of Captain Kirk’s commands. He’s learned to swear! He had just spent the entire 45 previous episodal minutes on 20th-century earth; he had time-traveled there for some reason and Kirk had told him to use profanity. Keep tuque pulled over ears, swear, and they’ve never know you’re not one of them, he tells the Vulcan.

    What a stupid, brain-dead, ignorant stab at science fiction prophesy! How unrealistic! However, had he said, ‘One f**ken minute,’ the forecast would have been spot-on. That’s the course ‘evolution’ has taken.

    They didn’t learn that in no forest. No way. They were in all their civilized glory when they adopted that new norm.

    To be continued:

    ******  The bookstore

  • Making a ‘Great Name’ for Oneself: Part 1

    As shown in link, George Benson, long known as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, is still going strong at 79..

    This news did not sit well with all.

    “You would think at this age he would put Jehovah first. Instead his career still going….still working hard on his career,” said Aubree.  “Older people like this could set the right example.”

    Tom: At Prince’s funeral, one of the congregation’s pioneers told reporters, (I included the quote in the Prince chapter of Tom Irregardless & Me) “I was just standing there and all of a sudden, in he walks. I thought, ‘He just wants to be treated like an average person,’ so I just kind of acknowledged him, and he came in and sat down.” She added: “I think he wanted to be private and my observation is: he had to have his creative outlet. Maybe he just needed it to survive.” 

    He wanted to be treated like an average person. But people do what they need to survive. I’m not sure that he’s not ‘putting Jehovah first.’ We can expend too much energy pounding square pegs into round holes.

    Aubree didn’t give up:

    “When one is famous and has a lot of income coming in from royalties…. one can cut your life-style and put Jehovah first….There are many brothers and sisters who have left lucrative political careers, football careers, ballet careers, singing careers, acting careers and other careers for which they have natural talent and have all the necessary skills – to put Jehovah first in their life.”

    Tom: I would not assume that he is not. Time was when coming across someone like him we would say that he has his own special territory, one that others will find hard to reach. As to income, who is to say he does not put it to very good use? The angels may sing out, “Another nickel from Harley!” at the end of the month, but it is perhaps guys like Benson who provide much of the practical fuel.

    “I do not share the same sentiment.…I have a nasty suspicion it is the ego that remains involved…. the need of achieving something and still be admired by the people!”

    On the other hand, “Have you beheld a man skillful in his work? Before kings is where he will station himself; he will not station himself before commonplace men.” Do these ones all grovel around in sackcloth? These days ordinary publishers are given counsel not to let spiritual gifts go to their head. Why conclude just from his work that he has an inflated ego? If he does, he has plenty of company in others who have yet to separate their own egos from bringing their gifts to the altar.

    In the mid-seventies, rumors swirled that Glen Campbell had become a Witness. The rumors were untrue. He hadn’t. However, one of his band members had and proceeded to talk Bible so much that an exasperated Glen forbade all discussion of religion during working hours. Who is to say that George is not doing the same before people who cannot tell him to shut up? He’s to quit this gig in order to write letters? Given the restricted forms of ministry available today, it’s even more understandable he would choose to continue what he does.

    Aubree still doesn’t back down. She seldom does. It’s the prerogative of we old people who have seen a lot and think we have something to say, who see young people chomping down on cotton candy, imagining it substantial, and would warn them that it’s not. And it certainly is true that those who ‘reach for the stars’ come to spiritual ruin far more often than not. So I will tell her a story that spins things her way.

    The story was told at LeRoy’s funeral that he, as a young black man in the Deep South, was invited to play along as one of B.B. King’s band members. His son confirmed it. He declined the offer, on the basis of family and spirituality. Instead, he went on to make his living on the railroad. He came up from the South in his later years to my neck of the woods. For a time we served together on the same body of elders. He was outspoken, even occasionally outrageous in things he would say, but always genuine and universally appreciated. In time, he stepped down as an elder. I even helped persuade him that it would be a good thing, that he had done it all, and should go out ‘on top,’ not when his faculties were starting to decline and people would start to say bad things about him. He was true to the faith till his death and would frequently get together and jam with brothers young enough to be his grandsons. 

    I used to tell him that, should I die before him, I wanted him to give my funeral talk. What a trip that would be! “Hee hee hee,” I could picture him rumbling in his deep roguish and jocular voice, “that Tom Harley was a good ol boy, but he’s deead now, D-E-A-D!”

    I don’t know. Maybe George is being a bad boy. There he is posted with a ‘Look! A celebrity! And he’s one of ours!’ type of admiration. Is it really so that having celebrities onboard somehow buttresses your cause? Some of the silliest people on earth are celebrities—all of them, really, except our guys, and we only have a handful. Serena doesn’t even count, because it doesn’t appear she was ever baptized and she has gone on record saying (now that she has a daughter) she means to get serious about the faith she was raised in. We shall see what comes to pass. I have a chapter in TrueTom vs the Apostates on the brouhaha surrounding that statement of hers..

    No, I suppose George is not the one to emulate. But don’t we do damage when we become too insistent that everyone must be ‘an example?’ Leave the fellow in peace and appreciate him for what gifts he has. Here we put the constantly repeated, ‘Do not compare yourself with one another’ counsel in a setting that we usually don’t put it in, though it applies nonetheless. Alas it is human nature that we will do exactly that.

    Growing up, I took one of those psychological tests in which you answer all sorts of nosy questions and are rewarded with indications of what vocation you are best suited for. Being raised in a suburban and non-Witness home, I imagined results would point me to some nice secure field, the sort in keeping with the saying then in vogue, “To get a good job, get a good education.” My dad, raised on the farm, used the GI bill to put himself through engineering school after WWII and took a job with the local utility. He figured that since everyone requires heat and electricity, no job could be more secure. People raised during the Depression came to highly value security. 

    Instead of similar recommendations, results were that I should be A) a music performer, or (slightly lower priority, but still head and shoulders above anything else) B) a youth counselor. I’ve never done either of those things, but I have come close enough to satisfy both urges. Public speaking (and now blogging) is not so different than music performing. Shepherding (and now writing) is not so different than youth counseling. 

    So I have a thing for creative people. And I don’t like  to see them dismissed as ones ‘trying to make a name for themselves.’ or persons incessantly in quest of satisfying their ‘big egos.’ That doesn’t have to be the case, though it can be.

    ***

    Workers could be crude at the power company, though my dad was not one of them. “I just wasn’t prepared,” said one brother who started working there as a young man, “for one of those guys to grab me from behind and another pull my pants down,” a common hazing of new employees. He came to know my dad, as he was sometimes assigned to the nuclear plant where my dad had been promoted. Nuclear technology was then brand new. This plant was among the first in the country. Tour guides would lead visitors through the plant. By prior agreement, an employee would walk by staggering and drooling, muttering nonsense. “Don’t mind him,” the guide would say. “He’s one of the earliest here and absorbed a little too much radiation.” 

    Another story this new employee told, our brother who is now retired, was of visiting laborers being advised that invisible radiation hangs around at the 3 foot level, but if you stay below that, you’re okay. They would walk about and work all day, even carrying heavy gear, in a crouched over position. 

    Here were jokesters satisfying their ‘big egos,’ though perhaps not making ‘a great name for themselves.’ Or maybe they were. Our brother remembers these donkeys decades later as though it were yesterday.

    To be continued here

    ******  The bookstore

  • The Normalization of the F-Bomb

    Sat through a crime drama recently in which all characters used the f-bomb. (Yes, I know it is not ‘wholesome.’) Good guys said it. Bad guys said it. High class said it. Low class said it. They said it when angry. They said it when not angry. Men said it. Women said it. Everyone said it—constantly. It used to be that people said ‘um’ as a word whisker. Do they have any idea how ridiculous they sound?

    And no, I’m not worried about bad associations spoiling useful habits. “Pass the f-n salt, please,” I said at the family dinner.  (Not hardly. Not yet. Not never, assuming I don’t make a practice of watching such shows.)

    Too bad, really, because it’s otherwise not a bad show, as cop shows go. I can even put up with ‘a little bit of poison,’ to use the expression. I’m not so sure I want to chug it by the vatful however. Sheesh!

    And to think I took Pops to the movies 15 years ago and he objected to the cursing—cursing that wasn’t one tenth as bad but was still novel for him. (And no—he was not a religious man.)

    ***

    The gallery: “I hope you don’t get taken out into the virtual back room.”

    I’m not all that worried. Obviously, bad words are things to avoid. They have a corrosive effect, and I do avoid them, save for when the jacked-up car slips off and lands on my foot. But there is the type of person who would never ever use a swear word and points to that abstinence as ‘Exhibit A’ in his claims to be a Christian. Would that it was so simple.

    After all, if upbraided, I could always point to the elder who said, ‘S**t!’ after smacking into my car when it was in the turnaround spot he didn’t expect it to be while backing up. He apologized. “Don’t worry about it,” I told him, ‘that’s what bumpers are for.”

    ***More from the gallery: “I have a 6 year old grand daughter that uses it frequently in conversation. Unbelievable!”

    “I have a little story from a number of years back. When my little buddy (my dog) and I were walking through the park by my place one fine summer day, we were walking behind two girls. They were late teens, early twenties. Between the F-bombs, and the word "like," for the life of me I had no idea what they were talking about. No clue how they knew either! Amazing in it's own way.”

    “I remember a couple of (fleshly) brothers that I used to run into occasionally at lunch time that worked in another body shop across the street from the one I worked in at the time.  I wasn't a Witness then & I definitely wasn't a goody two-shoes, but those guys embarrassed me with the flood of 4 letter words that came out of there mouths.  I don't believe they could say 3 words w/o one of them being f—.  Now adays, a lot of TV shows and movies are almost as bad as those brothers were.  We will, quite often, quit a program after a few minutes into it because of that.”

    “You have to switch off the TV. Personally I think it is used to fill up space in modern films instead of pithy dialogue. If you took away the f__ words used those 90 minute films would likely only last around 40 minutes.”

    We’ve come a long way from the days where moviemakers were allowed one F-bomb to avoid a no-no rating. ‘Make it count, son’ moviemakers would say as they maneuvered so that F-bomb would be the crescendo of the film. Maybe it is still that way, but it doesn’t matter. A torrent of entertainment venues have arisen that don’t give a hoot about what the rating police want. 

    B25E760E-8B89-4350-9DF2-A91144E6282BAnd to think that, as a boy, I was on the beach with my family, surrounded by other families with beach towels, umbrellas, and picnic baskets. A group of teens passed by. One of them uttered the S-word. My dad rose like a grizzly bear. “Hey! There’s decent families here! Watch your mouths!” They may have made fun of him, but not until they were very far away.

    (photo by mana5280 on Upsplash)

    ******  The bookstore