Companions

     Today, the Third Sunday of the Easter season, is the day Catholics read about the encounter on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus:

     And behold, two of them went, the same day, to a town which was sixty furlongs from Jerusalem, named Emmaus. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that while they talked and reasoned with themselves, Jesus himself also drawing near, went with them. But their eyes were held, that they should not know him.
     And he said to them: What are these discourses that you hold one with another as you walk, and are sad?
     And the one of them, whose name was Cleophas, answering, said to him: Art thou only a stranger to Jerusalem, and hast not known the things that have been done there in these days? To whom he said: What things? And they said: Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet, mighty in work and word before God and all the people; And how our chief priests and princes delivered him to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we hoped, that it was he that should have redeemed Israel: and now besides all this, to day is the third day since these things were done. Yea and certain women also of our company affrighted us, who before it was light, were at the sepulchre, And not finding his body, came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, who say that he is alive. And some of our people went to the sepulchre, and found it so as the women had said, but him they found not.
     Then he said to them: O foolish, and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him.
     And they drew night to the town, whither they were going: and he made as though he would go farther. But they constrained him; saying: Stay with us, because it is towards evening, and the day is now far spent. And he went in with them.
     And it came to pass, whilst he was at table with them, he took bread, and blessed, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him: and he vanished out of their sight.
     And they said one to the other: Was not our heart burning within us, whilst he spoke in this way, and opened to us the scriptures?
     And rising up, the same hour, they went back to Jerusalem: and they found the eleven gathered together, and those that were staying with them, Saying: The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. And they told what things were done in the way; and how they knew him in the breaking of the bread.

     [Luke 24:13-35]

     What a good thing it was that they were two together! For miracles that occur in the presence of a single witness are easily waved away. But when two or more give witness an event, it becomes harder for others to doubt it. It’s still possible, of course, but disbelievers’ accusations must change from hallucination to conspiracy.

* * *

     I have no quarrel with sola scriptura Christians. After all, the Church’s proper authority depends upon the Gospels, so he who prefers his own interpretation of Christ’s words is welcome to it. However, the sola scriptura Christian is frequently alone. That can be an uncomfortable condition.

     Those of us who occasionally entertain doubts are comforted by the knowledge that we’re not alone in our beliefs. Really, how many Christians are there who never have a moment’s doubt? After all, the key events are far back in time. Surely it’s possible that the history is inaccurate, as histories have sometimes been. And there’s always the (remote) possibility that it’s pure fiction – that Jesus of Nazareth was an ordinary man like ourselves, or even that He never existed at all!

     Doubt can creep into any man’s soul. Pope Benedict XVI was unabashed in admitting that doubt had sometimes afflicted him. In his book Introduction to Christianity, he declared doubt an unavoidable part of human existence. I feel that he is correct. Moreover, doubt can work most powerfully upon one who is alone in his faith.

     What really holds faith fast is the determination to go on living it:

     Gavin extracted himself from his bed and plunged into his Sunday morning ritual. When he'd buckled himself into the passenger seat of his father's car, and Evan had backed them out of the driveway and onto Kettle Knoll Way, he said, "Dad? Do you ever...doubt?"
     "Hm? Our faith in God, you mean?" Evan kept his eyes on the dark ribbon of road unwinding before them.
     "Yeah." Gavin braced himself for the answer. What he got was not what he expected.
     "Now and then," his father said. "It's hard not to doubt something you can't see or touch. But faith isn't about certainty. It's about will."
     "So you...will away your doubts?"
     Evan chuckled. "That would be a neat trick, wouldn't it?" He pulled the Mercedes Maybach into the small side parking lot of Our Lady of the Pines, parked and killed the engine. "No, I simply command myself to do as I know I should do. Faith is expressed just as much by our deeds as by our words. As long as I can consistently act from faith, I can keep my grip on it, regardless of my doubts." He nodded toward the unlit church, barely visible in the darkness. "You might say that's why we're here."

     [From this short story.]

     But even that determination can falter in the face of severe temptation – and never doubt this, at least: it’s the best among us who are most severely assailed by their tempters.

     A companion in faith is a kind of armor against doubt. If you have one, you can’t doubt your own intellect or sanity without doubting his as well. Cleophas and his companion on the journey to Emmaus saw the same thing: the risen Christ, briefly revealed to them in His glory. Neither doubted for that same reason.

     Perhaps you don’t have a companion in faith. Perhaps you don’t feel you need one. But if there’s room in your life, why not see about making the acquaintance of someone like yourself who’s willing to talk about his faith now and then? He’ll be a fallible human believer, who’s subject to doubt from time to time. But at such times he’ll have you, and vice versa. Each of you, in living your faith, will help to protect the other.

     May God bless and keep you all.

The Best We Can

     Good morning, Gentle Reader. I sense that this will be a special day, here at the Fortress. Unusually for these latter years, there are no irritating home-maintenance issues to labor over or spend on. The routine chores have all been addressed; nothing lingers. We have adequate supplies of everything that should be kept in stock. And – thank You, God – there’s no customer-assembled furniture to build or fix.

     It’s that rarest of all jewels, a completely free day!

     So I thought I might talk about ideology.

* * *

     The word ideology has an irritating etymology. Given its roots, it “should” mean “the study of ideas.” But of course, it doesn’t. Rather, it’s a categorizing term that’s used to answer questions such as “What is Marxism?” or “What is Islam?”

     Here’s what the nice folks at Merriam-Webster have to say about ideology:

     Ideology has been in use in English since the end of the 18th century and is one of the few words whose coiner we can identify. The French writer A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy proposed it as a term to designate the “science of ideas,” and in that sense the word was quickly borrowed into English. Though ideology originated as a serious philosophical term, within a few decades it took on connotations of impracticality thanks to Napoleon, who used it in a derisive manner. Such connotations are still present in some contexts, but the word today is largely used neutrally, most often to refer to a systematic body of concepts, and especially to the set of ideas and beliefs held by a particular group or political party.

     Several political stances are routinely referred to as ideologies. Others tend to avert that categorization, though the reasons are often unclear. For example, while Marxism is called an ideology, capitalism doesn’t wear that label. Libertarianism, which is a relatively systematized ideology focused on freedom, does bear the label.

     Regardless of what ideas or attitudes we may discuss, and whether or not they qualify as ideologies, one set of questions stands above all others. For any Idea X:

1. What are Idea X’s goals?
2. Has it ever achieved them?
3. If so, what are its requirements?

     Every idea that aims at achieving some goal will have requirements: a set of conditions that must be met for that idea, when put into practice, to have a chance of success. Absent those conditions, the idea will fail, or will be irrelevant.

     Those conditions are called the idea’s domain of applicability. Within its domain, the idea will be effective. It will work, given some expenditure of time, money, and effort. Outside its domain, the idea is irrelevant, if not destructive.

     One of the best examples of the importance of such a domain is the nuclear family. A family cannot be operated along capitalist lines. Demanding that minor children pay for what they need is pure madness; so also with a dependent housewife. The breadwinner must practice a kind of Marxism within the family: “To each according to his needs.” Else the thing flies apart, with much destruction and sorrow.

     But when a nation-state tries to apply Marxian socialism nationwide, poverty and oppression follow. You cannot bind millions of people to one another by the bonds of love and mutual responsibility that occur within a (healthy) family. The nation-state is outside Marxism’s domain.

* * *

     To limit the destructive potential of ideology – don’t kid yourself; your ideology can be just as destructive as any other – we must illuminate and emphasize the concept of domain of applicability. Of course, that demands that we put in the effort required to understand why Idea X succeeds in this case but not that one, and why Idea Y, which fails in the former case, succeeds brilliantly in the latter. And that demands that we be unsparing of ourselves and others in asking “What are you trying to achieve?” and “How will you know when you’ve succeeded or failed?”

     The great Thomas Sowell has proposed three questions for us in the Right to put to those on the Left when one of their proposals comes up for discussion:

1. Compared to what?
2. At what cost?
3. What hard evidence do you have?

     Sharp questions such as those clarify an idea’s proper domain of application. They can put an end to a lot of nonsense, especially the sort of starry-eyed Utopianism that propels so many fanatical evangelists. Mind you, I’m not talking here about “proving” or “disproving” particular ideologies. I merely seek to limit their power to cloud men’s minds. Proof and disproof have their own requirements, none of which are found in common discourse about ideologies and their implementations.

     We can only do the best we can.

A Quick Survey

     I don’t have it in me to produce an essay today. However, I have something developing that will probably be of interest to a great many people. To get a sense for its impact, I’d appreciate it greatly if my Gentle Readers, and anyone else they can rope in, would answer a few questions about “the oldest funny subject:” sex.

     I’ve written many pieces concerned with sex. Thirty-six of them adorn this site. Though I’m a Catholic, my views on sex differ rather sharply from the teachings of my Church. I’ve been called a “cafeteria Catholic” for that reason. But I maintain that there are good reasons to dispute Church doctrine on this subject.

     So, if you’re willing to help me with my project, please read and answer the following questions, preferably in an email:

1. Are you male or female?
2. Are you currently married?
3. Have you had sex outside of marriage?
4. Do you regard sex outside of marriage as sinful?
5. Do you regard parasexual conduct (e.g., “oral sex,” “heavy petting,” etc.) as morally equivalent to sex?

     That’s all. It’s just a survey, conditioned by gender and marital status. I’d like it to be answered widely enough to be statistically significant, though given the sensitivity of the subject, I’m not hopeful that it will be. I don’t need to know your name, your age, your religious affiliation, or any other details about you. So please don’t include any such details.

     Thank you for considering responding to this request. This post will be at the top of the blog for the rest of the week. Look below it for new material.

All my best,
Fran

The Felony Of Life (UPDATED)

     Great age tends to diminish the energies required for certain activities, such as fulminating about injustices. Even so, there are some discoveries that still light my boiler and turn it up to 11.

     This is one such:

     WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden “withheld evidence” and approved “aggressive arrest tactics” when targeting pro-life defendants — and then slapped them with longer prison sentences than pro-abortion ones, according to an explosive internal review released Tuesday.
     The DOJ revealed the stunning abuses in a nearly 900-page report after examining more than 700,000 records related to the Biden administration’s prosecutions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.
     The 1994 law was passed to protect access to houses of worship, religious institutions, abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers.
     But the Biden DOJ was found to have engaged multiple times in “biased enforcement” of it — while also collaborating with and even seeking to fund pro-abortion groups, according to the DOJ Office of Legal Policy report.

     The article is long, but it’s eminently worth your time, regardless of your opinions about abortion. I thought I was past taking umbrage at the Biden Administration. I was wrong.

     Rather than froth at the mouth over this, I’ll simply point out that Joe Biden is, nominally at least, a Catholic. A plurality of seriously active pro-lifers are Catholics. So a Catholic president presided over a Justice Department that pursued and prosecuted Americans for their Catholic affiliation. When the prosecutors were able to secure a conviction under the notoriously vague “FACE Act,” they exhorted the sentencing judge to be far harsher toward the convicted pro-lifer than toward a pro-abortion defendant convicted for the same offense. So much for Catholic politicians taking orders from the Vatican.

     Meanwhile, we have violent offenders – assaulters, rapists, kidnappers – being given light sentences because of their “religion:” Islam. A number of such criminals, here and in Europe, have been able to avert punishment by pleading that their “religion” commands that they do as they did. Given the propensity of Muslims to riot over cartoons and such, I doubt that requires a great deal of explanation.

     Could it be clearer that the First World, these United States in particular, need a clarification of what constitutes a valid religion protected under the First Amendment? Could it be clearer that religious affiliation must be excluded from decisions to prosecute, from sentencing decisions, and from peremptory challenges during the voir dire? Could it be clearer, given the events of the Mark Houck incident, that the “FACE Act” must be repealed, or failing that, heavily revised to make absolutely objective and indisputable what constitutes an offense?

     “The law is a ass—a idiot,” wrote Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist. Sometimes, definitely. Especially when it’s made by villains with an axe to grind, and enforced by others who seek to ply that tool against the necks of disfavored persons and groups.

     UPDATE: I've just learned that Mark Houck has won a $1,000,000 award from the FBI for the tactics it used against him. I can't think of anyone who would deserve it more.

Sophie

     Her life started in circumstances unknown to me. All I know of her first two years is that she was neglected. Her humans sent her out to forage for her meals. They left the back door to their house open at all times, so that they didn’t have to be bothered walking her or taking her out to eliminate.

     That family was pure trash. Why they wanted a dog in the house is unclear, considering how little attention they paid her. They had to haul stakes and leave town quickly when their 14-year-old daughter got knocked up by a member of MS-13. They drove off in a big hurry and left Sophie behind them. I’m told she chased their rented truck for a couple of miles before giving up on them.

     A friend of ours who’s involved in rescue work found her and took her in. She told us almost offhandedly about the two-year-old German Shepherd / Husky mix she’d just taken in. I immediately told her we’d take Sophie. My wife Beth gave me one of those looks; I shut her down on the spot.

     Sophie was ours a few days later. She had a little trouble settling in: learning not to pee or poop in the house; adjusting to Rufus, our Newf; learning not to eat the cats’ food; and so forth. But from the start she was as affectionate as if she’d been with us from birth.

     That was the late summer of 2012. Sophie hung on through a lot of changes. We lost Rufus in 2017, to lymphoma. We lost Precious, our Pit Bull Terrier, in 2023, to an untreatable abdominal tumor. We lost several cats. Sophie took that hard. She loved the cats.

     Sophie was my dog. Beth has always been more partial to Newfs. That didn’t bother Sophie. It certainly didn’t bother me.

     Dogs do get old. They do deteriorate and die. But their humans are never really ready for it. I certainly wasn’t.

     For nearly fourteen years I had her companionship and affection. She’d sit in my home office while I worked. I’d take her on walks around the neighborhood, or out in the back yard, where she’d romp around with our other dogs, and sometimes with a neighbor dog. I had her on the sofa beside me, her head in my lap, while I read or watched some sporting event on the idiot box.

     These past few months, Sophie’s joints and nervous system started to degenerate. She lost control of her back legs and her sphincters. As of early in March, she could no longer deal with stairs, even the two steps from our deck to the back yard grass. I told myself she could still get over it. Even if it was against the odds, she still might recover. I knew better, of course.

     Sophie died today, at 12:35 PM New York time. Her breathing stopped and didn’t resume, and that was that. We can’t be sure of her exact age, but our best guess is that she was sixteen years old.

     I’m 74 years old. My age and heritage suggest that I shouldn’t adopt another dog. I don’t suppose I will. I’ll be in mourning for Sophie for quite a while.

Automata And Idiomata

     On occasion I receive compliments for my facility with the English language. It’s a heartwarming thing, as the use and manipulation of symbols of all kinds has been my greatest asset lifelong. At such times I try to exhibit a modicum of modesty by reminding my admirer(s) that English is by far the world’s largest and most complex language. Its vocabulary is well over 2,000,000 words in size. I doubt I have the use of even five percent of that total. Then there’s English grammar and syntax, which we who speak it seldom reflect on, but which are as complex as any rule-based system ever devised.

     But all that, as overwhelming as it can seem, pales in importance before the extent to which communication in English depends upon the mastery of idioms.

     Idiom is a thing generally if vaguely understood. As idioms fly freely in our discourse, we must have both a sense for them and adequate skill at using them. Yet the sheer volume of idioms in even formal communications eludes most ordinary English speakers… until someone like your humble Curmudgeon comes along and points each of them out.

     No, this isn’t a dithyramb to the idiom or the services idioms render to us. It’s a reflection on peace and its requirements.

* * *

     Among the things that have kept peoples apart over the centuries, unintelligibility ranks high. Different countries have different languages. Within those languages they have different idioms. Until very recently, a traveler in a land where his native tongue isn’t spoken had to proceed with great caution. He could trip and fall over an idiom that a technical knowledge of the local tongue could not translate accurately.

     However, owing to the Anglo-American dominance of three key activities – finance, aviation, and computing – English, approximately of the American variety, has become the de facto international language. This is especially fortunate for Americans, who are well known to be unlikely to master a foreign language well enough to speak it fluently. It’s also fortunate for visitors to America from other lands, though they are often surprised at some of our abuses of our own tongue.

     But today, we have access to programs of remarkable power that can translate between any two of the world’s major languages. Google’s free Translate website, in particular, has been a great help to me, and no doubt to others as well. And of course pioneers in artificial intelligence have made great strides in programming their Large Language Models to do much the same.

     Yet beyond all that lies a problem domain that no one had dared to tackle until very recently: the real-time, multi-person, multi-language exchange. Imagine two hundred persons, each of whom speaks a language shared by none of the others, sitting together in a room and trying to converse. Imagine the complexity involved in arranging for mutual comprehensibility. Every utterance by any member of the group would need to be translated 199 times, immediately. Imagine the computing power it would consume.

     That is X, formerly known as Twitter. Persons from every currently spoken language make use of it. Time was, they’d have had no chance of communicating fluidly and comprehensibly with persons of other lands. No longer.

* * *

     AI translation services have matured greatly these past few years. However, AI programs are computing-power gluttons. Massive arrays of CPUs, memory, and storage devices are required for use by a single powerful AI. That’s one of the stiffest limitations on the application of AI programs at this time. Another, infrequently discussed, is the burden the idiomatic nature of human communication puts on such a program, for as I noted earlier, idioms defy straightforward translation.

     Enter Elon Musk. On his own initiative, Musk has dedicated a large fraction of the capabilities of his pet AI, Grok, to providing for the translation of tweets from any known language to any other – idioms and all. Thus, X users can talk to other X users without concern for language barriers. Considering the volume of traffic that flows through X, the processing power required by that application is mind-boggling. Yet Musk has made that translation service free to all X users.

     The enormity of this development defies description. People of widely separated lands are talking to one another, understanding one another, and discovering that they have little or nothing to fear from one another. They’re making friends with persons of nations whose governments are at war with their own. And they’re drawing the implications… no doubt much to their rulers’ dismay.

     It’s not peoples that fight wars. It’s governments – States. Those entities must induce their subjects to fight, for rulers don’t fight in the armies they dispatch. That requires propaganda to make “the enemy” appear evil, even inhuman.

     But fluid communication among the common peoples of nations defeats such propaganda. The State cannot “other the Other” if “the Other” is too plainly just like oneself. That vitiates the war effort at home. States resolved upon enmity toward others will have to deny their people access to X, lest they lose their grip.

     Elon Musk has been hailed for his enterprises SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company, and Neuralink, and deservedly so. But his greatest contribution to Mankind may lie in his use of his xAI firm to provide real-time translation services to X’s users. This is the route to peace… and possibly, if I may fantasize for a moment, to the end of that ravenous and wholly destructive institution we call the State.

     Thank you, Elon.

Dominance Displays

     Societies are held together principally by their customs. Laws are far inferior to customs in providing social cohesion. When a nation’s laws are being openly flouted, it’s in the end stage of collapse, not an early one. The degeneration begins with disregard for the customs of public order and social dealing.

     Surely none of my Gentle Readers are unaware of what Islamic immigrants have done to the nations of Europe. Whatever bizarre chain of irrationalities led to their admission, today they’re asserting dominance over the European societies that host them. Their displays mostly defy important customs of public order. The following, cribbed from a Frenchman commenting at X, is a case of note:

     Tonight, I'm really angry and I need to let it out.
     Downstairs from my place, there's a little playground where I like to sit after work.
     There's a gentle cool breeze, I know people in the neighborhood, we chat peacefully.
     But regularly, a group of kids shows up and starts playing soccer.
     At first it was harmless, but the shots got more and more violent, until they nearly hit the little ones who were playing there.
     I took it upon myself to grab the ball and politely asked them to be careful and not shoot toward the younger kids.
     Immediately, a veiled mother (of course) got worked up and told me they weren't moving.
     Yet, just 100 meters away, there's a proper little soccer field perfect for them.
     The exchange turned heated. Then her friends showed up and, all in one voice, they threw at me:
     This is our home here, we're not leaving.
     If a kid gets hit by a ball, that's not our problem
     They won't go to the field they'll stay here and do whatever they want
     It's up to you to leave, not us.

     Here's a sampling of the phrases I had to endure.
     I preferred to leave rather than make the situation worse.

     So is this the France of today?
     Letting people with zero respect dictate their law in our country?
     People who have no business being here acting like everything belongs to them?

     Tonight, my desire for remigration has never been stronger.
     This is my country, not theirs. And I'll do everything to make them understand: they have no right to impose their law on our soil.
     The worst part? I'm almost scared now to go out and run into their husbands, who might be way more violent than they are.

     What country has my France become?
     How did we get here?

     Sorry for the length and the vehemence, but I really needed to vent tonight.

     The commenter never said “Muslims.” It wasn’t necessary; it was clear from the context. Only Muslims in Europe do such things.

     The phenomenon of traffic-blocking street prayers is an aspect of this. Muslims, aware that their host countries are reluctant to do anything about it, are disregarding customs, convention, and courtesy to assert their dominance over the countries to which they’ve immigrated. That makes them the outriders of an invasion: the spearhead of a much larger force that will soon arrive to Islamicize the whole country, sharia law and all.

     Someone must have read them Lenin’s famous maxim: "Probe with the bayonet: if you meet steel, stop; if you meet mush, push." For decades, Europe has been mushy. Muslims are taking advantage – taking over.

     Yes, they’ve been trying it here in America, too. Principally in cities where they’ve concentrated their numbers. Has America turned mushy? Has the “world policeman” ceased to police its own lands? Unclear.

     What’s perfectly clear is that this cannot continue. But it seems that everyone is waiting for someone else to act.

     Were private citizens with guns to gather and forcibly disperse such a group, shooting a few pour encourager les autres, it would probably be deemed excessive. But municipal authorities appear unwilling to act. And indeed, were they to marshal their courage, what would follow? Water cannons? Bulldozers? Tear gas? The bien-pensants would pee their panties. Can’t have that.

     First-World civilizations cannot abide an influx of savages determined to flout all the customs that make our nations orderly and peaceful. Yet Europe has done so, and America isn’t far behind.

     When, then, must we do?

A Pleasant Departure From The Usual Run Of Things

     There’s nothing newsworthy or opinion-worthy for me to blather about this morning, so I’ll refrain from that. But something notable did occur the day before yesterday. I was cheered by it, and knowing that many people need a little cheer in their lives, I thought I might tell my Gentle Readers about it.

     Insurance is a strange sort of good. It’s not a capital good; you can’t use it to produce other goods. And it’s not a consumption good; no one actually “consumes” it, nor wants to do so. It occupies a third category: overhead goods, which we purchase because not to do so would entail unacceptable risk. Insurance shares that category with several other goods we pay for grudgingly, such as the national armed forces.

     Now, it’s uncommon that a vendor of an overhead good should take a personal interest in a customer. Uncommon? Practically unknown. But such vendors are aware that their products and services aren’t actually desired by anyone. They know they need to work to keep public opinion about them positive. That’s a singular challenge for an insurance company, many of whose customers buy their products under coercion.

     Well, on Tuesday I received a thank-you card from my insurance company. My scanner isn’t working just now, so I’ll transcribe the message on it:

We are so thankful for you!

Dear Francis:

     We’re honored that you’ve trusted us to protect you over these many years. It’s our mission to empower you with protection so you can achieve your hopes and dreams.

     A lot has changed in the world since you got your first Allstate policy, but one thing remains the same: You can count on us every day.

     Thank you for being a loyal customer. We look forward to serving you for decades to come.

Sincerely,
Tom Wilson
Chair, President and CEO
Allstate Insurance Company

     I was rather surprised to receive that card. Yes, it’s a little overly earnest, but that’s often how these things go. But it made me think about that first Allstate policy. I took it out in 1975: auto insurance, of course. In 1980 I added homeowner’s insurance. Though those two policies have endured a little alteration, I’ve stuck with them ever since.

     As I said above, no one buys insurance for positive reasons, but rather to avert potential negative consequences. A lot of people “shop” their insurance needs every year or two. I’ve never been inclined to do that. Allstate may not be the cheapest insurer in America, but it’s reliable. When I’ve had to make a claim, I’ve had no problem with the company; their representatives and adjusters are pleasant and fair. Indeed, Allstate has gone to some lengths to make necessary repairs convenient, more so than a lot of other insurers. So I’ve had sound reasons for staying with them.

     But the years do pass quickly. 1975 is fifty-one years ago. That’s two-thirds of my life on Earth. I hadn’t been looking for a thank-you card from Allstate, but I’m pleased that the company’s data-processing systems flagged my longevity and had such a card sent to me. They noticed, though I hadn’t.

     That’s good PR. Really good PR. I don’t think I’ll be switching insurers. Actually, I hadn’t been thinking about doing so before that card arrived, but this is a little extra reason.

     Just a small positive note for anyone who might want or need one. Life isn’t all bills, doctor visits, and dietary restrictions. Sometimes there are refunds, declarations that one is healthy and sound, and literal doctor’s recommendations to eat more chocolate. Yes, really.

     Have a nice day.