CSotD: Love is all around, no need to fake it
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Ah, Pearls Before Swine brings back such memories!
All the girls I've ever loved!
And the summer camp where the pioneering counselors kept a huge jar of mayonnaise on a shelf in the trip shack, made sandwiches with it and then took us on an overnight, which turned into an over-only-part-of-a-night because we had to drive back to camp around three in the morning with half the crew hanging over the tailgate of the trip truck.
Mem'ries, may be beautiful and yet what's too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget.
Not that I've ever been the sentimental type. Today's Pardon My Planet sums up my feelings about the hereafter.
I like cemeteries, because they provide a form of immortality that is more about history than theology. There's a cemetery on the opposite side of the block and I often walk through it with the dog, who, yes, is required to stay on the path and keep all four feet on the ground.
I don't know anyone there, but I like to read their stones and speculate about their lives.
For instance, it's easy to make the simple assumption that Submit Porter lived a browbeaten life in which she obeyed Arnold unquestioningly.
But it's more historically logical to assume her name reflects submitting to the will of the Lord, which, if you are a staunch fundamentalist atheist, is still a very bad thing, but, applying a little more history and a dash of philosophy, can be a statement of stoic calm, similar to the Arabic "inshallah" or the no-particular-language "que sera sera."
Within the Christian context, when Almanzo Wilder went off into the teeth of a blizzard to seek food for the people of De Smet, Laura and Mary Ingalls debated whether it was proper to pray for his safety, or if, as they had been taught, that would be questioning God's mercy and will, and assuming that you knew better than He did.
Unlike their TV characters, the Ingalls family was not, in real life, a barrel of laughs and I don't suppose Submit Porter's life was one big comedy, but, on the other hand, she may have had a strength and self-assurance that can come from having the strength to change what you can, etc.
And the cemetery does provide this laugh, if you purposely ignore how many of his fellow-lodge members who also died before WWII have this ancient symbol inscribed on their stones.
In any case, I don't think you need the faith of a Submit Porter to accept that, for your mortal remains, dead is dead.
Those who believe in bodily resurrection argue over missing limbs and suchlike, as well as cremation, and I gather their God can replace an arm or a leg but is completely flummoxed by a jar full of cremains, which strikes me as pretty short of omnipotence.
For my part, I don't care what in the Sam Hill happens to whatever I leave behind.
Or, more precisely, what in the Sam Hall happens to it.
You can have your late moment of zen early:
Meanwhile, back in this vale of tears:
Keith Knight – who not only knows how to spell "Du Bois" but what the W.E.B. stood for as well as what the man stood for — is interviewed on the GoComics blog. It's a short piece but well done.
A less encouraging but crucial portrait is painted on the Nib by Kane Lynch, who outlines the career of Vladimir Putin, our new Minister of External Affairs.
I chose this particular portion of the piece because I remember that shining moment when Yeltsin stepped in and it looked, briefly, as if Russia was going to become part of the rest of the world.
Specifically, I spent the better part of a week with some executives of the Soviet timber industry, shortly before the Soviet Union split into independent republics, who were studying capitalism at Plattsburgh State prior to having to adopt it themselves.
They were delightful company, which was quite a surprise for someone raised in the Cold War, but it was astonishing how little these top leaders of large enterprises understood fundamentals like "supply and demand."
When one lecturer tried to explain that a better coffee cup would replace an inferior one in the marketplace, someone asked "How can a system be said to work if it allows failure?" and, when he was finished, another commented, "But you have not told us about the role of the central government in setting production goals."
It was, however, sincere ignorance and they wanted to understand, and, between classes, they were eager to know what Americans had heard about Boris Yeltsin, who had recently foiled a military coup against Gorbachev.
However, as Lynch's graphic explainer says, the move to free markets failed and the oligarchs emerged.
About two years after my sojourn with the timber executives, my stepdaughter's roommate served an internship in Moscow and saw how quickly mobsters had moved in: Being of East German heritage, she blended in at a nightclub, until, in the ladies room, one of the other women asked her a question and her accent betrayed her as the only American in the place.
And the only attractive young woman who wasn't being paid to be there.
The Wild West atmosphere she found there quickly gave way to an economy that was extremely mobbed-up and I suppose Putin may have indeed seemed like a savior, particularly to a people with a long history of strong central governments setting their goals for them.
Go read it.
And Happy Valentine's Day
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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