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.
January 12, 2008 - 1:42 p.m.
Lena left me a comment yesterday pointing out that I forgot to write about something in my last entry so I’m adding this addendum. I’ll also put in something that I only remembered after reading the New York Times after I updated last night. As this is just and addendum make sure you read the previous entry Old Acquaintance Not Forgotten first.
So Lena thinks that I should have mentioned a little thing; that I almost burned my house down yesterday. She knows about it because it happened while I was talking to her on the phone. She called as I was making dinner, the kitchen was the scene of the crime. I have been praising my cooking lately but one thing I didn’t mention is weakness of mine, I am terrible at flipping burgers. I cook them on a skillet. As we were talking I went over with my spatula to flip them. I have no problem picking them up, it is the actual flipping that causes me difficulty. I had the first burger on the spatula while I tried to pull the classic wrestling maneuver the reverse hoping to get the pin. It came down sort of hard an on the edge of the skillet and the result was the entire skillet burst into flames. I imagine what happened was a bit of fat went over the edge and caught fire and the flames followed it back into the pan. It happened to fast for me to follow. Now I know you are supposed to cover the fire when that happens but the towel wasn’t hand and neither was anything else. What I ended up doing was simply blowing it out. Yes that actually worked. I was pretty impressed considering the size of the blaze. The burgers ended up none the worse for the experience. The reason I didn’t mention it before is because as I have often said I don’t expect to be able to actually cook. It shocks me every time something comes out well. When that happens I write about it as it is man bites dog. When I start a fire that is simply dog bites man.
That reminds me of a joke that Ira told me. When you take a dog in and give it a place to live and feed it, it thinks, “He must be very good.” When you take a cat in and give it a place to live and feed it, it thinks, “I must be very good.”
The news story I wanted to write about was the death of Sir Edmond Hillary. I’m not even sure if he has instant name recognition any more but he does for me. I cannot remember not knowing about him. In 1953 he and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to climb Mt. Everest. As I’ve written before the great explorers have always had a special place in my heart. Everest was the last of the extreme places on the earth to be conquered. It wasn’t done with technology but with mind, body, and heart. I won’t go through all the facts, you can find them in his obituary.
After the climb made him a hero he used his put his fame to good use. He worked on improving the lives of the Sherpas, the people that live in the Mountains of Nepal; the place where he started his trek. He also worked on preserving the wildlife and the environment. He never described himself as a mountaineer or explorer but by the profession he shared with his father, a beekeeper. He was the opposite of the celebrities that have done nothing to be celebrated but think the world revolves around them.
The most famous quote about Everest came not from Hillary or Norgay but from George Leigh Mallory. Mallory attempted to climb Everest in 1924. H died in the attempt. His frozen body was found in 1999. When he was asked why he wanted to climb Everest he snapped back; “Because it is there.” Do you understand that is all the reason needed? Does it resonate with you the way it does with me? It is why we have the widest range of any animal in the history of the earth. It is why in prehistory we spread to every place that can be reached by walking from our ancestral home in Africa. It is why the tiny islands of the vast pacific were populated by Polynesians in their canoes. It is why we reached the moon. It is the essence of what makes us human.
Good thing I made that decision to not be afraid of sounding pretentious. Or is that a bad thing? Well we can all agree it was a thing.
Mount Everest
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 January 12, 2008
