The Leader of the Universe.

I told earlier in this blog that I don't tell anybody what my religion is because I don't want to get into contests over whether or not I am 'saved' in the appropriate manner or if my morals are Bible-based, therefore 'true.'

But every now and then on Sunday I get the urge to go to church and pay my respects with my brothers and sisters..  The Catholics come in the morning at 10 and the Protestants, usually Baptists, show up about three in the afternoon.  And I usually hit the Baptists because they have the most seriously good fast piano music that seems to come out like rock n roll without the sex and drugs, and still stirring for all that.

For a full fifteen minutes before the service last Sunday, the minister played a continuous medley of songs that rivaled some professionals I've heard do the same thing.  Then we sang one or two.  I had goose bumps.  But from that point it all started going down like a bomb picking up speed as it lost altitude.  The country is in terrible shape. (True.)  This may be the last days. (Maybe..) Lots and lots and lots of people are going to hell because they didn't make an adult decision to designate Jesus Christ as their personal savior.  (I guess sex, drugs and rock n roll are OK after that, you just say 'I'm sorry' after the smoke clears.)

By the time we got to the part where the preacher's wife was sorrowful about a girl she knew who had been killed in an automobile accident, and who is undoubtedly experiencing the pleasures of eternal hell because she hadn't made an adult declaration for Jesus Christ, I was ready for a nice quiet read of Sigmund Freud and a good cry.  I had an English murder mystery instead and found great comfort in that.

 

                                                         

I have a new amulet that I am wearing around my neck.  (There used to be an Orthodox cross, a gift from a fireman friend in Russia.  And most people around here seem to think I am Orthodox although they're not sure what that is.)  Now I have a creation from China that looks like a round amoeba and is surely 99% lead and one percent pot metal to hold it together. Three dollars and niiney-nine!  Must be having a burnout on Christians.  I have to figure out what to tell people it represents.   Jesus blessing the Flying Saucers sounds good.  It's that big round thing in the picture, not the colorful stringy thing.  That is some true jewelry, a tourmaline tennis bracelet set in sterling silver.

Your religion, my religion, who flung poo!  I don't know what God is, energy, the Universe.  Or maybe we all just wink out when we die.  Hope not.  Can't tell from here.  I know what I call God and I have deeply felt and firm principles about how my God would like me to live this life.  Don't we all?  As much as I hate organized religions, I think Jesus Christ is just fine and led an exemplary life worthy of emulation.  It's his Fan Club who screws it all up.  Ta!

The murky bottom of Catfish Bay.

I asked a woman for a date today. For supper.  At Frischs'. It turned out not to be a fortuitous question. She replied "Probably, but do you know Jesus Christ?"  That should have warned me about something right then.  I told her he was a pretty good friend and great conversationalist.  Perversely she has to pray about it and 'take counsel.'  I am thinking that I am getting into something way to deep for me.  I need to pick possible supper dates more wisely.  Like a nice trailer trash girl. Or a heavily muscled biker bitch. When she got to the Personal Savior bit, I mentioned, in addition to Jesus, Allah, I Am Who Am, Buddha, Freya, Jack and Diane, and Vishnu.  I think that might have scared her off.  She started breathing heavily. It was not excitement.

We had a deal here in town last year where the wife in a very religious family disappeared and turned up later in Florida with the husband of a lady who had 14 cats.  Not a great way to start a relationship.  Married and all.  The In Depth commentaries were attempting to solve the puzzle of why two otherwise perfectly normal people would do something like this.  Hell, I knew all the time:  he got tired of cat hair in his Fruit of the Looms and she got tired of being beaten to death with church, bible and Jesus.  (Been there and have the t-shirt.)  They divorced their respective spouses and are now living together in the real world.  Do I approve?  Well, you never know what you can do until you're choking to death.

In the sixties, in college, we had a group of people we called PK's - Preacher's Kids.  After twelve or more years of having religion crammed down their throats, they were inevitably the first ones who got into the kind of mischief we were all warned by our mothers about - sex, drugs, booze and rock 'n roll.

If you think this is a statement on religion, it isn't.  It's about who you date.  Whenever I discuss my religion with anybody they always want to convert me because I am not somehow Saved in the proper manner. Like the lady in the first part of this story.

 

 

This tiny lake we have here outside my window is about one hundred feet deep.  Used to be a limestone quarry.  Every boat I've seen out there this summer contains people who show no vestige of a life vest of any kind.  The first one was a grandmother and three grand kids, little grand kids.  Happily splashing along in a paddle boat.  Today there were some bass fishermen doing the same thing.

Now you can most assuredly drown in two inches of water, and in one if you're really creative.  But you drown a lot better in one hundred feet.  Kind of like, more completely.  If you get far enough down the catfish and snapping turtles will eat you and save us the trouble of calling the Police and Fire Department.  Makes me think you might get to know Jesus and company very intimately and pretty fast.

Ta!

Two's a Crowd.

                                                    

There are two issues today that I think worth commenting about and I'm going to start with the school test cheating scandal in Atlanta, Georgia.

BUT CAN YOU MAKE CHANGE ?   The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has released an eight hundred page report that a number of teachers and administrators in the Atlanta school system have deliberately cheated on tests designed to indicate where students stand in educational areas of language, math and other subjects.  There is a great  froo-frah going on including claims that teachers were told by principals and supervisors that students would pass achievement tests or else.  Presumably meaning they would be fired from their jobs if scores weren't up to snuff.

When did we Americans start getting the idea that the object of education was to pass achievement tests?   During my education in the 50's and 60's I learned reading, writing, arithmetic.  I had it drilled into me.  I also almost flunked Chemistry, Latin and something else, I forget.  Did a fine job in Biology and American Government. I didn't have to take a standardized test to enter a community college in 1986.  I just had to have passed high school. In spite of all that...

I write something almost every day of my life including this blog.  I know good words to use that I get from a cornucopian vocabulary mostly amassed before I graduated from college.  I've used math almost daily, especially in work settings, and particularly when I worked with fertilizers and pesticides in the business of grounds maintenance.  Did some pretty complicated calculations with a pencil and a note pad standing in the middle of a forty-acre field. Sometimes just in my head. Got it right. And I know what the capital of Sri Lanka is - it was Ceylon back in the olden days.  (Now you guess...)  And where most rubber comes from, and from what kind of living tissue (guess that one too...).  And I don't need a fancy cash register to tell me how much change somebody's owed.  I do that in my head.  Have done since I was 13 with a paper route.

I like my way better.  They didn't have to fire any teachers for teaching me writing with no tests.  I learned to write.  Period.

CREDIT RATING.   Is this one of those "we should have seen it coming" matters?  Of course it is!    President Obama has told us and the world that we are still a triple-A country no matter if we only officially now have a AA.  

If I apply for a credit card and the bank I apply to does a financial check on me and finds that I have four other ones and owe a total of over ten thousand dollars, they are going to send me a form letter back saying "No you can't.  You are so extended in relation to your income that we don't think you can reasonably pay us back on time."  Standard & Poors did precisely the financially correct thing.  This country is so over extended with debt it's no wonder Apple has more money than the United States government.  Possibly Apple should run the country.

Ta!

Relationship Locomotive.

When I was  old enough to roam part of the town by myself, trains looked like this. Except for steam engines. I thought they were gigantic, a little scary, and probably a lot of fun to drive.  This railroad is long gone and so is the engine, an F-series EMD (General Motors) locomotive.  It might be pulling a train across the bridge from Louisville to eventually run down 15th Street past my Uncle Benny's lumberyard in New Albany.

The Dodge Coronet over on the right side is a beauty too.  Send one for Christmas please.  Nobody makes nice cars in America anymore.  Since about 1995 they have all looked like suppositories or turds depending on how you feel about them.

I had a conversation with Bee-Bee last night. Pretty short.  She had some troubles on her mind and I asked her if she might want to sit on a bench by the lake and talk about it.  In front of God and everybody.

"Well I don't know, I thought you were going with Jinx.

"What's that got to do with it?  I'm not going with anybody.

"Well I'm not ready for a relationship right now, and I don't want to be seen running around with some other woman's man.

"Wait a minute.  I'm just talking about a conversation.

"Well you know when Flay was going to school she walked in with some guy who belonged to another woman and she threw a rock at her and cut her head. And she needed ten stitches.

"When was this?

"About 1943. 

Bring me Little Abner and a Doctor Pepper!  I think that when all little girls from Kentucky were about 11, some preacher, or nun, or mother, or uncle, told them that whatever a man asks if you, it's about having sex. No matter how he frames it. Or a relationship. (Infer sex...)  Well there you go.  And you wonder why I read mysteries and take naps.

I am going to find the Meals On Wheels lady and help her with her deliveries.  Ta!