Saves thinking...

To do things today exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking.

- Woodrow Wilson

...like there is a world wide shortage of thinking! Just wouldn't want to waste any thinking. Probably shouldn't practice thinking either.

(P.S. I really wonder how appropriate this quote is coming from an educational administrator.)

Railing against the darkness...

...as if we could change the celestial definition of night.

I know a fellow, a good old boy, who formulates his world perspective using sticks-and-stones metaphors mixed with yard-dog analogies. Literally.

If a person hits me with a stick I am going to hit him with a stone. A big stone. If he hits me with the stick again I am going to go out and get a bigger stone. A much bigger stone. Pretty soon he is going to think twice about hitting me with a stick.

Never mind that factions in the middle east have been having their current conversation for hundreds if not thousands of years. Never mind that fundamentalist believers on both sides fuel their argumentative positions with sticks-and-stones metaphors mixed with yard-dog analogies.

Now iffen my neighbor had a dog and this dog came into my yard to take a crap, well I wouldn't think too highly of my neighbor, iffen you know what I mean. But iffen that dog was to come into my yard and bite one of my kids I'd just plain shoot the dog. An then iffen the neighbor complained I would remind him that he was the one that put up with the dog to begin with. And iffen he still complained I'd just go find me a bigger stone, just to be ready.

I suppose I, and this fellow, are just railing against the darkness. He for applying such down-home-reasonin' to a situation half the world away that is steeped in history and culture far beyond his wildest imagination. I rail against the cost. The cost of politely listening to good ol' boy rants. The cost of perpetuated simplicity and naivete among the good ol' boy movers and shakers.

I suppose the cost would be a bit high to realign the celestial bodies so that night wasn't so dark.

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