Here We Are

I had a handful of ideas for the title of this blog - the usual array of distracting Latin words, plus a clutch of generally interesting sounding things.  I've always enjoyed the sounds of words together, used properly, but a fella gets too enamored of himself in that pursuit, and can lose the meaning a bit. One of my front-runners was "A Little Hopeful Ephemery."  Seems modest and nice, but when you're modest before you do something, that's really just vanity.  When it isn't vanity it's self-deprecation, and that stopped getting me girls way back in high school.  We're here to grow up.

Having a kid will grow you up.  Having a second will make you old.  That's where my experience ends.  I imagine a third child makes you crazy, and anything beyond that gets you early membership to AARP with a bonus gift of a short wooden stool at the milking station in Heaven.  It's hard work and hell on your back, but at least it's Heaven, right?

Speaking of Heaven:  Sent Lightnings.  It's a Job thing (that's in The Bible.  Quick - make a joke!  Unless you are alone or had decent parents).  I know it because I've been reading a book called The Information, detailing the march of information dissemination from grunts and clubbing all the way up to the internet and social media, which is definable as grunts from people who go clubbing.  Everything is full circle before it even begins, it seems, which really just makes any use of modesty pretty empty.  We all know where it's going to end up, if we care to look very closely.

"Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go and say unto thee, Here we are?"

This was God challenging Job, and this was the telegraph with its electricity challenging mankind, and this prescience mirrors all the full-circle modesty of a father talking to his children.  For now it is me talking to you, telling you that I intend to look closely at a lot of things. Of course we vote differently, so that's going to suck for you, unless you are alone or had decent parents.

I said on Facebook a couple of days ago that one of the things that interests me is

telling you what's wrong in way that's only insulting if it both applies to you, and you haven't the nerve to do anything about it. Meet one of those conditions alone, and you can still be alright if you have a nice enough bunch of people around you (I know this firsthand, thanksmuch). Meet both of those conditions at the same time, and the best I can do is play at semaphore from my basement. It has no windows.

It's worth being honest about the fact that very few people are saying anything at all about what's right. There's no sense ignoring all the evil out there (halloo, Islam!), but the overwhelming content of modern discourse is nothing but diagnosis.  Symptom tracking.   I'll do my best to whip up the occasional cure.  Not that anyone will listen, but that's OK because as I am trying to make my children understand, our job is to make things better, not people.  You can't start a car by giving it a pretty paint job, after all.

Here we are.