Featured image: Oatmeal, porridge, whatever you call it, I like it. I had this bowl of steel-cut  goodness at Hoppers Restaurant on Old US 31, a few miles south of Berrien Springs, Michigan, It was our breakfast stop on a two-day foray into Southwest Michigan.

Cogitation 34 Saturday 3 November 2018   Turning back the clock by an hour tonight hardly qualifies as “new time,” but it’s one step forward in a cooperative action by the majority of people who order their lives by the clock.

It’s a new time when people simply cooperate.

It’s a new time when people step back and consider the best for others. One of those bests is the camaraderie and fun we saw on Halloween night in South Haven, Michigan. Families were out with their children, calling at houses where people sat on their porches or steps, ready to dish out treats.

The spirit of community flourished in that engagingly fun time.

 

Sifting the good from the bad

It’s a new time when we divide the good from the bad of the past.  There’s plenty to bemoan from the past, as from the present. I’m calling on the Roman statesman, orator, lawyer and philosopher Cicero (108-43 B.C.) to shed light on the subject:

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”

“The good of all people is the chief law.”

For it is commonly said: completed labours are pleasant.”

And I like the positive potential of this quote: ” Oh, the times! Oh, the manners!”

Nothing is lost on the wings of time when we value the tried and true and push on from there. On that note I’m quoting Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774): “I love everything that’s old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.”

It’s a new time when we embrace what matters.

From my newspaper reading this week I mention a column by Leonard Pitts, “Reality always has the last word.” Pitts is addressing the words uttered without foundation that flow from the Executive Office. “This ongoing insult of reality, this daily denigration of truth, is epidemic among Trump’s people.” You can’t run from it, he says, “Not even down a rabbit hole, not even in a kingdom of lies.” I agree, reality will always have the last word.

 

Photos from the week

Wellfield Botanic Gardens, Elkhart, Indiana

 

Oxbow Park, Elkhart County

 

Saugatuck, Michigan

 

 

 

 

South Haven, Michigan

 

New Buffalo, Michigan and area

 

Back home again in Indiana

 

Grief, senseless infliction of grief at Tree of Life Synagogue and elsewhere

 

There’s a time to mourn. Mourn for the families and friends bereft of loved ones mowed down in a hateful shooting rampage that left 11 worshipers dead at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We mourn the loss of lives, the loss of tolerance, civility, and understanding at every level of the religious, social and political community. We mourn.

We mourn the loss of children in accidents caused by vehicles disregarding school bus stop signs, close to home and in other states, too. Twin boys and a sister died when a driver plowed them down near Rochester, Indiana, as they were crossing the road to get on the school bus. Another boy is in critical condition in hospital.

We barely imagine the conditions people in Latin America are leaving behind as they walk in a caravan to seek asylum in the north. USA Today (11.01.18) detailed in a special report “How a lie took hold and took off,” reporting how groups and individuals concocted a conspiracy theory about how the caravan of Hondurans got to walking nearly 2,000 miles to the United States. The story begins, “This is the life of a lie.”

We mourn for the 600,000 children killed by polluted air in 2016. Doyle Rice, reporting in USA Today (10.31.18) said, “Nearly 2 billion children–about93 percent of the world’s children–breath toxic, putrid air that’s so polluted it puts their health and well-being at serious risk, a new report said.”

The report from the World Heath Organization, estimates 600,000 children died in 2016 because of dirty air.

In light of the  dismal responses to the ills affecting all peoples, as well as the sincere efforts on the part of many to make this a better world for those living now and those still to be born, I look for a word from a new song; the new song is Psalm 96. “The LORD is king!” asserts v. 10. All nations, indeed, the whole universe, is called to praise the LORD, creator, king and judge. There’s plenty enough there to guide me through a week where it’s a new day already.

-John