With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
2002-05-08 - 11:01 a.m.
My audience is shrinking every day now. If a diary is written in a forest and there is no one there to read it does it still have punctuation and homonym errors?
I pretty much wasted yesterday. I did pick my mother up in time. I got to the luggage area about 5 minutes before she did, she was early and I always cut it close when I go to LaGuardia airport. She came down in a wheelchair, I'm glad she prepared me for that. There was nothing new wrong with her but it is a long way for her to walk. She is 84 and has heart valve problems so she gets short of breath.
When I got home I should have graded tests and I should have seen the lawyer. I did neither. I was totally lethargic yesterday. I couldn't get head cleared, I felt like I was in a fog.
I have so much to do, I have to mark the corrections of two tests, make up a final, see the lawyer, install a pair of phone/intercoms, and set up my mother's new cell phone. The corrections are the top priority right now. I'll try and do that today.
Last night I went to the Met game. They lost 5-1, not a great game. We try to not go to games when Trachsel pitches because they take so long but we had these tickets already. The game lasted about 3:20 minutes.
I keep meaning to write about my protest at the games. Since 9/11 they have played God Bless America during the seventh inning stretch. I really object to it. I'd rather they didn't do any sort of patriotic song then and just played Take Me Out To The Ballgame Apparently other people missed that at least and now they play both. If they had to do a patriotic song do they have to do that one? Alan would prefer America the Beautiful, I vote for This Land of course. Woody Guthrie wrote This Land as a response to God Bless America.
When they play GBA Alan leaves the seats and goes inside. I have a more overt protest. I don't stand up or remove my cap. I sing Take Me Out To the Ballgame quietly when everyone else is singing GBA. Larry joined me in not standing or taking off his cap last night. When they play TMOTTB we stand up and sing out loud.
On the way home from Carey this weekend I was listening to a show for Pete Seeger's birthday. Pete is one of the truly special people. I don't think he gets enough credit for his musicianship. He had an amazing voice and is one of the greatest banjo players ever. No one can get an audience involved in a show like he can. His politics is of the sort that it is so easy to sound foolish when espousing but he never does. He never just spouts out politically correct buzzwords. He actually thinks about what he says. I don't always agree with him but even when I don't I don't think he is being unreasonable. I actually do agree with him on most things except nuclear power. The show played a recording of a parable he told at a concert, which was wonderful.
Imagine there is a seesaw with a weight on the lower end and a bucket on the upper end. We want to lower the bucket so we put sand in it but all we have to carry the sand is teaspoons and the bucket leaks. At first the sand leaks out faster than it goes in and people make fun of us for trying to fill it with teaspoons. We say that we are getting more people to help all the time and there are more and more teaspoons of sands going into the bucket. Eventually, all of a sudden there is enough sand and the seesaw tips and the bucket is lowered. Then everyone will say, "How did that happen so fast?"
That so beautifully expresses one of my running themes. Even when our actions seem far too insignificant to make a difference they can if we aren't the only ones trying. I love the basic logic of the parable too; it is essentially scientific and mathematical. In essence it is an example of applied catastrophe theory.
So do you have your spoons out? Are you filling that bucket?
I never used a spoon but I've heard of them. They are those things they give you in Chinese restaurants…….. for your food.
The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy - October 07, 2008
On the Road to Westchester County - October 06, 2008
Inside the Madison Square Studio - October 05, 2008
I'm a Bosniac and I'm debating like I've never debated before - October 03, 2008
Islands in the Stream of Consciousness - October 02, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile 2002-05-08
