In conversation the other night

it was brought up that we might be in a sort of modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.

That isn’t, I don’t think, the case. Sodom was destroyed because it was loaded with evil; the decent people just up and left.

We seem to be in a death spiral where the “Progressives” have taken over and the nation- the planet, even- is going downhill and nothing short of a miracle will retrieve us.

It is my opinion- or at least the opinion is forming in my mind- that the root cause of this is the cavalier attitude we have displayed towards human life. Another conversation, via email, compares abortion to slavery, and that one sticks hard and begins to make other pieces fall into place.

In this article, you can see the comparison.

Even more telling is how vociferously people claim this not to be true. The kicked dog, as they say, yelps loudest. This deserves and requires some more meditation.

Second act.

Well, ACT. The daughter retakes it today to hopefully improve her score. Then looking at tractors with Partner. Maybe some ice cream later.

And now, for something completely different

On a Saturday evening, in around 1974, I was with my neighbor at the local stock car track with a “Borrowed” car driving in the “straight street” amateur heats. We had won about fourteen dollars, I think from coming in third. It was exciting, even if we only got that due to four other cars wrecking.

Anyway, we were in the pits and I was taking the “Real” tires out of the trunk and putting the “Racing” tires back in, and I found a water heater anode that had come out of our heater just a day before.

We had just done experiments with magnesium in chem class that semester, and I knew this thing would burn, so in a clelbratory mood, I hammered the rod into the ground and lit it with a propane torch.

You would have thought I had started a new religion. All the people in the pits came to stare at the shiny white magnesium flame, and half the stands emptied out to come stare. I looked around, propane torch in hand, and saw men and women rubbing up against one another and making it clear this was the most exciting thing they’d seen in a while. Well, it is Indiana, after all. Anyway, rather than getting into trouble, I was a hero, for the remainder of the night. We drove the car home, later than usual, put the “Racing” tires back on the car of their rightful owner, and snuck back into bed.

The next day- like all sundays- I served mass. As it was late in my seniority I got the early mass, but my heart wasn’t in it and I still had the smell of the burning magnesium in my nose. I didn’t get sick but it was touch and go a minute.

I have no earthly idea how I survived my childhood.

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