Daily Surge 6-28-21

— On Abortion Front: Both Inconceivable Tragedy and Commendable Courage …
https://dailysurge.com/2021/06/on-abortion-front-both-inconceivable-tragedy-and-commendable-courage/

Daily Surge 6-28-21

(open columns below)

— On Abortion Front: Both Inconceivable Tragedy and Commendable Courage …
https://dailysurge.com/2021/06/on-abortion-front-both-inconceivable-tragedy-and-commendable-courage/

Daily Surge 6-28-21

(open columns below)

Taking Credit Where It’s Not Due – the Left’s Specialty

Lots of folks are shaking their heads nowadays.

President Barak Obama, understandably, is making the most of the spectacular mission that bumped-off Threat Osama. It happened on his watch and, fair or not, snagging props for the good things is a handy perq that goes with residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Less defensibly, he’s offered nary a peep acknowledging, let alone commending, the terror-battling policies of his predecessor; policies he had sanctimoniously and persistently denounced in bygone days, but which made that mission possible.

Those wagging their noggins at the Commander-in-Chief’s boorishness are justified. But those surprised by his grandstanding? – what were they expecting? The political Left’s bread-and-butter long has been repudiating their rivals’ every accomplishment, and then living off the capital of those very same accomplishments. And Barack Obama is nothing if not the embodiment of all things Leftist.

Our exertions in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, “enhanced interrogation techniques”, aggressive intelligence measures, a more robustly funded military – all were formerly deplored by Team Obama as the diabolical machinations of the Rove/Cheney/George W. Bush axis. Yet, turns out all served as pivotal links in the chain of variables which lead American special operators to the squalid doorstep of the world’s most wanted jihadist.

The New York Post’s Michael Walsh has pithily summarized, “President Obama has now, with his targeted killing of bin Laden, essentially accepted every element of the Bush war-fighting doctrine in the battle against Islamic terror.”

Plainly, this pattern is no out-of-the-blue anomaly: before crowing about his newly-minted Mighty-Warlord status, the President was busily trumpeting record domestic oil harvests. Whitehouse.gov recently chortled, “[O]il production last year rose to its highest level since 2003″. Phooey on those $4/gallon gasoline prices! Ignore those forlornly idled Gulf Coast derricks! — things actually have never been better on the stateside fossil-fuels front.

Then again, our jauntily garrulous leader declined to mention any recent supply increases resulted from energy developments which emerged significantly during the tenures – once again – of dastardly, “Right-Wing” luminaries: Reagan and Bush 43. (For the record, on this score Bill Clinton also played a commendable role.)

Redstate.com’s Steve Mahley evaluates, “Obama Administration policies had nothing whatever to do with the production buildup in late ’09 into early 2010.” Additionally, any recent inventory growth can be traced to “industry ingenuity and competitiveness … [T]hey have excelled in spite of hostile Federal policies, not because of them.”

Again, it’s not just the present Chief Speechifier forsaking honest communication – this has been Liberal/Democratic stock-in-trade for decades. The insufferable Bill Clinton and his toadies are still high-fiving themselves for taming the 1990’s deficits and “leaving a surplus” for GWB’s maiden term. As with his wife’s current boss, though, the scalawag from Arkansas scants meaningful details: a GOP-dominated congress squeezed Clinton for essential tax-cuts, balanced budgets and welfare reform (he twice vetoed it before eventually signing the Republican-engineered legislation.)

Moreover, a Republican player named Reagan steered America victoriously through the Cold War, relieving the Clinton presidency of the burden of checking a predatory Soviet Union. Styled “the Peace Dividend”, that, along with GOP contributions referenced above, massively benefited not only the nation’s fisc, but the political fortunes of Bill Clinton, as well.

With wearying predictability, impudent Lefties win public office, commandeering the governmental driver’s seat for a season, and make a general hash of things. The grown-ups (Constitution-centered conservatives) then step up and set the house back in comparative order – whereupon the big-government, welfare-statist, America-is-the-problem, put-it-to-the-Man, punish-the-successful, kill-babies-and-wreck-marriage “Progressives” get another crack at thumping their chests over what the other guys have built up; and promptly get busy draining and devouring, ransacking and overthrowing it all over again.

The day following OBL’s vanquishment, some participants on morning TV’s gabfest The View were beside themselves with Barack-euphoria. A beaming Joy Behar, exulting “We love our President”, literally couldn’t sit still. The normally more dignified Barbara Walters effused mock pity for any 2012 Republican Oval-Office aspirant.

Reminded me of a gaggle of junior high-school ‘tweeners – which works on several levels, actually. Pubescents major in trashing adults’ “boring” but essential activities; stuff that makes life work, keeping the kiddos clothed, fed, safe. Thriving on what mature, serious folks provide, teenyboppers gigglingly ridicule “old people” efforts, sometimes, conversely, fancying they had a part making them happen.

Behold the contemporary Left – seems some pubescents never change.

Seeing Red Because Green Hornet Has Gone Blue

    I admit, at nearly fifty years old I’m still transfixed by the exploits of super-powered, colorfully costumed chaps who keep the world safe. So I was genuinely anticipating Columbia Pictures’ release of The Green Hornet. The trailers for this cinematic treatment of the 1960’s TV series looked kinda fun – and, as noted, I’m a softie for the genre.

     Then I started reading the reviews. And my heart sank. Two in a row featured the off-putting observation that, contrary to reasonable assumptions, the film is decidedly un-family-friendly. True enough, Hornet was co-written by comedic, cinematic sex-romp superstar Seth Rogen (also tapped to play the masked protagonist) – so perhaps its crudity shouldn’t be a complete surprise.

     Screen Rant’s Vic Holtreman, nevertheless, frets, “It seemed quite seriously like those involved (Rogen?) … REALLY wanted this to be … R-rated … I can honestly not remember the last time I watched a PG-13 with so much profanity.”

     Agreeing was Crosswalk.com’s Jeffery Huston who lamented “the free-flowing profanity and base crudity (often sexual …) that we expect in R-rated raunch-fests”. Verdict?  “[U]ltimately too crass and offensive to take the kids”. 

      That was enough for me. No double-sawbucks of mine would be going toward father/son night in this case. I’m tired of underwriting a Hollyweird which evidently can’t resist trashing-up about everything to which it applies its scrofulous little fingers. Even the Green Hornet, turns out, is no longer safe.

     This exasperation reminds me of a relatively recent, minor but instructive debate involving the latest Die Hard installment. 2007’s Live Free or Die Hard was an impressive box-office performer and enormously entertaining. One head-scratching beef among fans of Bruce Willis’s Detective John McClane, however, was that this third sequel in the big-screen, action/thriller franchise clipped the character’s ribald signature line. A clichéd trope from Saturday morning cowboy serials blended snarkily with an “f-word” variant reportedly favored by former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanual, McClane’s obscenity was only partially uttered in the PG-13 Live Free/Die Hard. Its R-rated predecessors, on the other hand, had featured the full, unveiled vulgarity.

     This situation was flatly too much for the potty-mouth enthusiasts. An “f-bomb”-free Jonn McClane? What a revoltin’ development!  Or, as they more likely put it, “What a @!#*& revoltin’ development!” Live Free simply had failed to measure up to (down to?) Die Hard‘s pre-established standards.

     Then there’s TNT’s Southland. My wife and I have become regular viewers of this Tuesday evening police drama (my penchant for fictional crime-fighters doesn’t stop with the super-hero variety). Its edgy storylines, engrossing characters, and abundant, but not cartoonish, heroics grabbed our attention early on.

     But, when the series kicked-off its third season just weeks ago, I noticed something rankling: an eruption of persistent, envelope-pushing coarse language. Once again, the renowned “f-words” are bleeped out, literally; but just about everything else earns a profanity-pass: the whole panoply of curse words, lewd sexual dishing, even blasphemous misuses of God’s name (which, for the record, lots of folks find most offensive of all.)

     I’m planning on dropping TNT note, protesting their needless debasement of this superior drama. Who knows? –  my plaint may make a difference. I suspect, however, and with regret, that Southland‘s days on our household’s “appointment TV” docket are numbered.

     One’s faculties boggle – how did Shakespeare, Dickens, even Hemingway, for all that, ever manage to address their eras’ ticklish scandals and outrages without sewage-saturated prose? Or John Ford, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra capture silver-screen magic minus the unrelenting, jack-hammering presence of blue material? Orson Wells’ feat in Citizen Kane – popularly toasted as the greatest film of all time – becomes all the more towering when one acknowledges its script’s lack of scurrilous dialogue despite the unsettling nature of its subject matter.

     Could cinematically gifted colossi like today’s Scorcese or Tarantino test their talents against a post-modern challenge? Producing compelling works without recourse to smothering filth? Vulgarity has become expected fare in their stuff; point of fact, in almost everything pop culture grinds out nowadays. How’s about a more tasteful, albeit still aesthetically distinguished, change of pace? Would they be up to that?

     Sophisticates, of course, roll their eyes at the rubes’ finger-wagging, pleading the smut-peddler’s dog-eared defense: “We’re only recording how real people speak!” 

     Please. Human beings have bowel movements, as well; yet, unless it’s a Jim Carrey movie, most films thankfully forgo that explicit depiction. Portraying depravity can be accomplished without engaging in it – by a sufficiently competent and imaginative artist, that is.

     Meantime, the coarsening of society gallops along. The fellow in the green mask has gone blue.

     I suppose I should start worrying about Tinsel Town’s plans for the upcoming Green Lantern movie.

Making it Until April

     Every year, post-Christmas reality reaffirms why, much as I love the holidays, I ‘m vexed by mixed feelings when late-November initially rolls around. Planted in all the year-end ho-ho-ho festivities lurks a dread of what’s to follow: months of shrunken days and extended nights, most of them frigid and snow-choked.

     Wintertime ushered in by Yuletide clearly poses no problem for skiers salivating over three feet of powder. Ditto, for those hankering after snow-groomed, backwoods trails custom-made for their Arctic Cats.

     For the rest of us? January-March often spell more a brumal ordeal to be outlasted than an enchanting stretch to be welcomed.

     So, how to survive until April?

     First, although for most this suggestion arrives too late to be tested this time around: why not leave up the Christmas decorations awhile? Is there some unheralded law that forty-eight hours after the Big Day the tree has to be orphaned disconsolately at the end of the driveway? The shivering house ransacked of holiday lights? The garland consigned back to the attic? Seems like a no-brainer: why not maintain a personal oasis of brightness and color for a handful of weeks during the calendar’s gloomiest phase? Why choose to “go dark” yourself, just as the hibernal environs around you are doing the same? 

    I’ll be keeping my office’s diminutive Christmas tree, cheering me as I write this, fired up at least through January. Sure, it’s only a psychological bump, but I’ll take whatever I can these days when the sun sets hours before dinnertime. Any port in a storm, as they say. Or snowstorm.

      Create events. Target an otherwise not-too-spectacular activity, stir in the right blend of people, maybe some food – and voila! You’ve whipped-up something to anticipate despite the surrounding, frigid murk.

      NFL playoffs, the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards ceremony, or something as unimaginative as DVD movie night – all can be transformed from a few hours’ throwaway diversion into a winter-defying production, a fortifying tonic against the worst ravages Jack Frost tosses our way.  

    A long-departed pair of holy men additionally provides promising material for wintry-doldrums getaways. While Saint Valentine’s and Patrick’s Days earn comparatively low-billing on the festival scale, with some forethought they can serve up a handy mid-winter emotional boost.

     Few folks enjoy more than sketchy familiarity with the historical adventures of Ireland’s Patrick. No leprechaun he – more a cross between Mother Theresa and Indiana Jones.

     Valentine? This courageous third-century Christian martyr was … well, you do the research.                

     Then throw yourself, with “wintertime-you-ain’t-gonna-beat-me” gusto and the help of friends, into making an experience of memorializing these spiritual giants. February 14 will jump way beyond an overdone romantic gesture. And no more will corned beef and cabbage be simply once-a-year, specialty-menu items. March will yield a fresh reason to be appreciated, not just put up with.

     This further underscores a broader, undying truth: relationships matter most in life. Plunging mercury doesn’t diminish that one degree. Humans’ interacting is meant to be more impactful than even the weather; and can be, if we reject the unfortunate, unflattering reflex of surly withdrawal. Cabin fever need not be a given. – it can be pre-empted every time, despite the season’s most caliginous elements, with a regular dose of  Intentional living, intentional friendships.

     Then, there’s this reminder: beset by our first months’ all-encompassing frost, February’s buffeting blizzards and March’s blustery inhospitability, we still call America our home – a land whose dazzling lifestyle would leave those of any other age – even some in this age who inhabit other corners of the planet – slack-jawed. July or January, our local markets’ Produce Departments remain dependable kaleidoscopes of sight and taste. Need something? The Wal-Mart or Target down the road likely has it. Feel a chill? Tap a button and your domicile toasts right up. The poorest among us typically have access to automobiles, cell phones, televisions. Obesity generally threatens their ranks more than starvation.

     These plentiful, year-round blessings alone should encourage, revive, exhilarate us even in a very dark, cold season. When Christmas celebrations linger merely as cozy, but months-distant, memories, if our chief gripe is shoveling the walk, scraping the windshield? Life remains good.

Thanksgiving’s Antidote for irony

Could Thanksgiving Day be the most “uncool” major American holiday? I mean, once one gets past the mounds of festive comestibles, the fourth Thursday in November represents, at bottom, pretty serious business. It’s intended an exercise in gratitude – actually, by shockingly unhip implication, gratitude (gasp!) to God.

Modern Western culture doesn’t do “serious” terribly well these days. Existence, for many a 21st century American, centers on entertainment, pleasurable diversion, laughter – certainly not anything particularly heavy or sobering.

Thanksgiving Day, though, mirthful as it ought to be, never quite escapes its tone of soberness. It commemorates the adventures of an intrepid band of pioneers who courted death and privation to tame a foreboding land. They faced near-extinction, sacrificed for a divinely-ordained destiny, secured survival, and never chucked their exuberant (Christian!) faith along the way. 

The holiday has no Santa Clause or elves to elide its spiritual aspects, no scary masks or horror movie marathons to overshadow its transcendent roots. Our Pilgrim forebears’ purposeful, four-centuries-removed offering of gratitude to their Creator is still presented, rather forthrightly, as paradigm for us today. It’s not just about “giving thanks”, but nurturing a personal and national disposition which acknowledges life’s stuff matters enough to notice.

Dilemma: for decades now, America increasingly has been big on the “ironic”, short on semi-sacred sentiments like gratefulness and appreciation. The latter are much too ickily, drearily earnest for fashionable types who ceaselessly tweak our cultural thermostat. Irony, of course, in today’s parlance connotes: sarcastic detachment, snooty ridicule of anything/everything; nothing taken too solemnly, nor too reflectively. It dominates our culture. Writer David Aikman, thus, christens this age “Generation I for irony “.

In the immediate, smoky wake of the 9/11 outrage, Time magazine’s Roger Rosenblatt announced: “The age of irony comes to an end”. And he was correct; it did. For about three weeks. Whereupon voguish and smirking insouciance came roaring back with smug, shoulder-shrugging vengeance.  

So, nowadays more than ever, we hear much approvingly about “irreverent” humor. Nothing is off limits for the laugh-seeking ironist who claims it as his métier. Matter of fact, the more cherished a topic, the better for the stand-up routine or sit-com plot. Seinfeld, perhaps the most acclaimed prime-time comedy of the past generation, was the television incarnation of this trend: eight seasons of a self-professed “show about nothing”; because, ultimately, nihilistically, nothing was deemed important.

Hardly the most gratitude-friendly atmosphere.

More recently, this self-satisfied snarkiness was showcased at Washington, D.C.’s October 30th “Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear”. Literal days before potentially history-making, nation-altering mid-term elections what did late-night talkers/(alleged) funny guys John Stewart and Stephen Colbert opt for? A public gathering cum satirical skit, situated on the Mall and drenched in the sniggering milieu of our era. It cast the whole democratic process as giggle fodder.

For three hours, the Saturday before ballot-box Tuesday, with international financial calamity looming, with Americans fighting and dying abroad in a war against jihad, the Comedy Channel luminaries mugged for the cameras, indulged in rhetorical nudges and winks, and, at one point at least, scampered around the stage like a buffoon (Colbert); all before myriad impressionable, on-site spectators. I understand, at festivities’ wrap-up Stewart donned suit and tie and lectured the throngs about civic “civility” – ostensibly a “grown-up” gesture; but regrettably preceded and, I suspect, overwhelmed by the afternoon’s let’s-just-have-a-chortle clownishness.  

Thanksgiving Day grates against this spirit of our age – if all is a joke, how can genuine gratitude be sustained? The mid-autumn observance’s contrariness serves a vital purpose, affirming that all around us much remains precious; hence, much demands thankfulness. It’s an annual tonic against that alternative outlook – indifferent, flippant, ever-amused, never inspired – which is cancerous for individuals. For civilizations.

Crusading atheist Ayn Rand, of all unlikely sources, recognized that to destroy a person “tell them to laugh at everything … Don’t let anything remain sacred in a man’s soul … Kill reverence and you’ve killed the hero in man. One doesn’t reverence with a giggle … anything goes – nothing is too serious”.

 Our fiercely theistic Pilgrim Fathers undoubtedly would’ve hailed Rand’s observation, if not her impiety. While, contrary to the widespread but unhistorical caricature, Plymouth Rock’s settlers could savor a healthy laugh, I won’t pretend they were an especially ironic bunch. Red-blooded thankfulness, expressed regularly, was paramount. That’s one part of the legacy they left us. So, even now Thanksgiving Day reminds us sometimes it’s necessary to dump the sneering jibe, hit pause on the punch-lines, and get serious.

Conservatives, Christmas and Cellar Door

Cellar door. Let your lips form the words, speak them gently to yourself. Do you feel your heartbeat de-escalating? Blood pressure easing? Pinballing thoughts soothing? If so, J.R.R. Tolkien, were he still alive, wouldn’t be surprised. He, after all, was the famed British scribe (The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings) who reputedly anointed “cellar door” the most fetching word-phrase in the English tongue. True, that observation has been variously ascribed to others, Edgar Alan Poe and poet Robert Frost among them – but a 1955 essay puts Tolkien on the record savoring the word-duo.

“Cellar door” earns its favorable rating via a mildly exotic,  academic specialty known as phonaesthetics, which analyzes words’ sounds as opposed to their semantics. It concerns itself, that is, with the way groups of letters play on the eardrum; addressing melody, if you will, irrespective of meaning. Other contenders for most dulcet-toned terms, posted by dictionary.com readers, include “cinnamon”, “epiphany”, and “languorous”. Then there’s “dog-kennel”. A buddy of mine nominated that one for the prize; euphonious enough, in spite of its obviously scruffy associations.

Lexicons, meanwhile, are a-brim with words that communicate sublime notions without leaving any acoustic impression worth mentioning. Definitionally? They’re delightful. Aurally? Often unremarkable. Sure they stir our hearts and minds, just not necessarily our audio-sensibilities.

I’m thinking of examples like: “liberty”, “forgiveness”, “family”,” integrity”. It’s not how they sound that rivets, but what they represent. With characteristic impishness, American satirist Dorothy Parker supposedly demonstrated this alternative approach to word-evaluation when she puckishly dubbed “check enclosed” the most striking Anglo-Saxon pairing. 

Could “Christmas” be one of those comparatively rare birds that excels in both categories, marrying a winning tone with stimulating content? Clearly boasting a susurrus, crystalline delicacy that enchants the ear’s palate, this term also inspires in the soul so much that is, undeniably, thrilling. Not for nothing does Andy Williams croon about “the most wonderful time of the year”!

Closing on half-a-century of living, I still enjoy the deep, warm glow excited by mention of A Christmas Carol, the familiar magic of Christmas tunes and lights, or by the “Christmas Story” of a divine baby drawing first breath in a manger two-thousand years ago. And these all have precisely what in common? Letters: C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S. So nice to say, to hear. So nice in their implications.  

Curiously, the C-word has another, less conspicuous connection to pleasant and potent vocables: the historical figure after Whose birth it is named is granted a fascinating, and very pertinent, title by one of His chief chroniclers. The Apostle John opens his account of Jesus Christ’s ministry by identifying Jesus as the “Word made flesh”. Dwelling as human being among fellow human beings,  Christ  articulated flawlessly, in visual form, exactly what God is like. The Creator donned an earth-suit, descended to the planet, made Himself known! – that, insists the fourth Gospel writer, is what the Jesus of Christmas was all about: a Heaven-dispatched, many-splendored communiqué from God,  .

A holiday season this rich with “word” motifs ought remind us of the massive potential, for good or ill, of whatever we speak and write. What is language, after all, but alphabetized packages which convey ideas; thus shaping actions, lives, societies, history.

Words, thankfully, are persuaders. This year’s Christmas season, happily, overlaps a time of political and societal ferment. Epochal change quivers in the atmosphere, and what folks have been saying and writing played an indispensable role in bringing that about. It will continue to do so if perceptive people keep promulgating their perceptions.  

Guess what? The drubbing Leftists endured in November’s mid-terms notwithstanding, there remains an appreciable demographic which still maintains government possesses authority to demand individuals purchase health insurance; which insists D.C.’s overriding obligation is to take care of the unemployed, the elderly and, well, the respirating. They’re still cool with this administration’s dereliction of duty on our southern border and regarding Islamist jihad. They  enviously persevere endorsing a system that tolerates forty-percent of U.S. residents’ paying zero income tax while the rest obscenely shoulder an extortionate share.

Plenty of territory there for sound words to do their salubrious thing.

Indeed, American founding principles – low taxes, limited government, patriotism, respect for life and family, a virile military – can (and must!) be advanced, one word, one sentence at a time, by every Constitution-revering citizen. Explaining. Convincing. Words alone are rarely enough – but, usually they play at least some essential role.

All because words are awesome. Words carry a life-transforming wallop. Sometimes they sound real pretty, too.

Do Kenyan Molestors matter?

Was there ever really a time the Mainstream Media (MSM) didn’t stampede like a herd of rabid lemmings on crack to report every allegation that young boys were molested by Roman Catholic priests? Okay, we admit there was, but seems like it occurred wayyyyyyy back during the misty seasons of our youth. Y’know, before Sinead O’Connor was tearing up that photo of John Paul II on late-night TV. Before Madonna was cavorting lasciviously in music videos, draped in lingerie and a crucifix. Nowadays, the MSM’s standing headlines routinely condemn “pedophile-protecting” Popes or the “circle-the-wagon” Church of Rome – or maybe by extension, Jesus Christ Himself since these are assumed to represent Him.

It’s odd then that the bullhorns of print and broadcast media have been comparatively mum about a child molestation epidemic occurring in the East African nation of Kenya. It’s estimated between 2003 and 2007 alone well over 12,500 girls were molested. Since 2009, more than 1000 teachers have been fired for sexually abusing pupils, mostly aged twelve to fifteen. In one southwestern Kenyan elementary school twenty girls turned up pregnant, nearly half of them by educators. Some degenerates racked up to a full score of victims before being discovered. Also beginning to surface are yucko trysts between female teachers and youthful male charges.

Could the global MSM’s relative lack of enthusiasm for this story be chalked up to the perpetrators’ positions in Kenya’s government educational system? Support for public school teachers, after all, is a hard, nearly sacrosanct plank of Leftist (read “media”) ideology. It’s safe to say that, had the guilty parties gone by the moniker “father” and been wearing a clerical collar while doing their dirty deeds, international attention would be far greater. When it’s a “reverend” defiling little ones, it’s all H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks rightly breaking loose from the ranks of the ink-stained wretches and talking heads. When the reprobate is merely a government-paid pedagogue? It might get some attention. Or maybe not.  

Now, any Lame Stream Media flacks who fear they are opening themselves up to charges of favoritism or journalistic double-dealing can cheer up – we have a possible solution for their predicament! Since upwards of eighty-percent of Kenyan citizens profess themselves Catholic or Protestant believers, it’s likely most of the perverts are “Christians” – not the authentic, Jesus-Is-Lord, live-in-obedience-to-God’s-commands variety, mind you, but cultural, born-that-a-way types. A technically acceptable, above-the-fold banner, therefore, could be: “Outbreak of Child Molestation Among Kenyan Christians!”; or, “In Kenya, Christians on Child-Raping Rampage!” Y’see? The poobahs of the planet’s press get a two-fer here: a way to maintain a superficial consistency in exposing pedophiles while indulging their relish for trashing all things Jesus-oriented.

Okay, a minor hitch: ten-percent of the Kenyan populace identifies as Muslim. So, at minimum it’s expected a handful of the deviants will end up being alleged followers of Allah. It was an Islamic teacher, for example, who secretly abused thirteen boys until he infected them with a disease, prompting one lad’s parents finally to contact a clinic.

What’s your typical, Christo-phobic news-hack to do?

Well, he could simply overlook the inconvenient details – that is, any bit of datum that doesn’t make the RC church, or any Christian institution for that matter, look as skeevy as possible. That should be particularly easy in this instance since the MSM is in the deeply-ingrained habit not only of dissing anything connected with historic Christianity, but of making excuses for the peccadilloes of Muslim bad boys, as well. Whether we’re talking about obnoxious, New York City/Ground Zero Mosque building, the threatening of “infidels”, or the bullying imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the establishment media’s watchdogs regularly give a pass to aficionados of Islam. And scarcely cut a break to the “We-Love-Jesus” set.

  It’s not that the MSM doesn’t care about children. It’s just that sometimes they seem to care more about maximally dumping on, in whatever manner possible, those awful people who take their Christianity seriously.

Autumn Surprises. Again

I was under the impression it was “past peak” – that’s how leaf-peeper enthusiasts put it – and so wasn’t totally prepared for two recent experiences. There I was traversing a couple of genuinely local by-ways, simply going about my unremarkable, daily business; then jarringly, gloriously I’m being reminded of one reason New England is so incomparable a place to live.

Distracted in the late afternoon, en route to pick up my youngest, I drove into a bower of mid-October splendor that actually startled me. What is most times a dismissively familiar street had been transformed into a riot of autumnal, take-my-breath-away color. Something like banks of ridiculously-hued candy, ranged vertically along the roadside, hovering overhead. I was tempted to stop the car in the middle of the pavement. And stare. Agog.

 Our British cousins might apply the term “gob-smacked: utterly astonished, astounded, dumbstruck”. Yup, that’d work. 

 Really, this shouldn’t be happening to me after nearly half-a-century’s residence in the Northeastern and Upper Mid-Western United States. Yet, happen it does, at least a handful of times every fall season; and again this time around.

 Then, just yesterday (as I type this), I’m negotiating another unsuspecting drive down another nearby street. It’s early AM, a gloomy, leaden day, chilly; and I stumble yet again upon a visual tsunami: New England’s gigantic Sugar Maples promenading in full, sumptuous, autumn regalia; aching yellows and blazing oranges, tinged with crimson and all crowded together. To boot, they glow over an ancient, stone walled cemetery – a description-beggaring, this-time-of-year, iconic canvas. I gasped – literally gasped. Very simply, it was exuberant sensory overload.

 The sight was so overwhelming, a few hours later I had to corral my wife into the vehicle and venture back to the same spot so she could sample it, so I could share it with someone. Rain was threatening all day, winds were blustery – the thought of that flamboyant tableaux being stripped bare before she could take at least one gander – and before I could take a second – was nearly unbearable. So we stopped what we were doing to make it happen.

 And all this five or ten minutes from my front door? Are you kidding me? It’s an annual exhibit, courtesy of the Creator, which ought to be classed with any of the nations’ wonders.

 I admit, here in New Hampshire our frigid (even at the height of summer), rocky beaches are grade-B level, at best. Likewise our mountains, certainly serviceable for skiing or hiking, are, nonetheless, hardly world-renowned. But the Granite State’s autumn plumage? Worth putting up against any on the planet.

 My enthusiasm this season of the year is tempered, regrettably, by what its magnificence presages: too soon these miraculous boughs will be skeletally stark; and next, worse, they’ll be bundling frosty, white stuff. You know, that frosty white stuff that makes every part of life a whole lot more work all the way around. Autumn is the doorway to winter – for me, not an invigorating proposition.

 Couldn’t fall’s iridescence just persevere six or eight weeks longer and the frigid season contract the same? I know that’s not the way it plays out, but it sure would be nice.

 If, however, I relocated south, where lots of my friends call home, and harvest time’s dependable ­- but always dazzling – pageantry never made an appearance, I admit I’d miss it. Perpetually temperate climates may boast palm trees and cacti, but usually spell colorless Octobers, as well. I’m not certain that’s a trade I’m willing to make. Mid-autumn New England is an inestimable, month-long rarity – probably too precious to be abandoned, probably sufficient compensation for wintertime’s impending rigors.

Then again, check back with me in January.