Thoughts On A Sunday

It was a quiet, somber day yesterday. I know I wasn’t up for doing much, considering the day. I went for a drive, stopped by the local farm stand and then visiting one of the many lakeside parks to sit for a while. I had watched some of the 9/11 TV programming yesterday morning, but could only deal with it for so long. I had to get away from it all, hence my drive around town.

I talked to a few people while I was out and some of them were out and about for the same reason I was: Too many memories of That Awful Day.

When I got back to The Gulch I decided I didn’t want to turn on the TV. I did anything but that – clean up the garage, run some loads of laundry, and so on.

Katy did pretty much the same thing, getting out of the house and as far way from any of the 9/11 remembrances. She didn’t want to relive That Awful Day, either.

As she told me Friday night “They started doing news broadcasts this week because so many [local] people either lost their lives or went to help. Couldn’t help but tear up again and again. It greatly affected my life, with young kids. So I keep my ‘distance’. It sounds like you are, too.”

It is an understatement saying the 9/11 has had a profound effect on me and Katy. Even after 20 years it still affects me. That Katy and I barely spoke to each other yesterday tells me that it is something that dwells deep inside of us. I know that whenever I see a movie or TV showing scenes of New York City where the Twin Towers are still standing I get a lump in my throat. That’s after 20 years. I have no doubt there are plenty of others out there that get the same feeling.

==+==

I wrote about the heavy acorn fall we’ve been experiencing while totally ignoring the sound of the crickets and katydids we’ve been enjoying nightly since the beginning of August.

The chorus of crickets chirping on these late summer evenings is one of the finest things in life, and last night they were loud. That evening bug-song has followed me through most of my life, and fills me with joy.

Field Crickets are found across the US. In New England, we have the Black Field Cricket who is at his prime in early October until the first hard frost. They are mainly nocturnal insects and eat almost anything.

Around here, we still have the Katydids singing at night along with the rapidly-growing Field Crickets.

It’s nice falling asleep to the sounds of the crickets, something that lulls me to sleep every time I can leave my bedroom windows open. It’s always a little sad later in the fall on those nights when I hear only a solo cricket chirping away and no others answering. Later in the fall when the crickets are all gone, I know the last vestiges of summer are gone with them.

==+==

By way of Maggie’s Farm comes this Spiked post about wokeness’s “New Puritanism”, applying ‘woke’ standards against classical literature, including children’s literature. In this case the failure of Asterix and Tintin comics to pass the woke purity test. Wokeness has become a cult, a puritanical cult.

New political ideologies often veer towards extremes as adherents try to prove to each other who is the most devout. Woke believers, in particular, are caught in an intoxicating and competitive purity spiral, making them more belligerent and intolerant with every passing day.

An alarming story from Canada has recently emerged, showing that followers of this 21st-century cult have turned their attention to burning books. Two years ago, in south-western Ontario, the Conseil scolaire catholique Providence (Providence Catholic School Board), which brings together 30 schools, carried out a purge of its institutional libraries, removing and destroying nearly 5,000 books, 30 of which were burned in a ceremony. These books included Asterix and Tintin titles, because of their allegedly racist depictions of indigenous American people. (Emphasis mine – ed.)

--snip--

The burning and destruction of books in the name of ideological purification and puritanical dogma has, of course, gruesome echoes of Nazi Germany. It at least belongs to the nightmarish science-fiction of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. That this is happening in modern-day Canada is a reminder that wokery is indeed a sinister, puritanical cult. And like classical Puritanism, it is a cult that demands total obedience in the name of righteousness.

I figure it’s only a matter of time before this kind of insanity arrives here. We’ve already seen cult-like activity by the woke on college campuses in the way of physical assaults against the “unwoke”. Burning books would be the next step. And should it go far enough, it won’t be a long trip to burning people, just like what happened in Germany from circa 1939 to 1945.

The Nazis were a puritanical political cult who killed millions as a means of ‘purifying’ the Reich. (Yes, I am equating the woke to the Nazis. After all, both groups are fascists, whether the wokerati will admit it or not.)

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

==+==

I do link posts by Glenn Reynolds on a semi-regular basis. This one is poignant as it addresses the lessons we have learned over the 20 years after 9/11. What are some of the lessons we’ve learned?

1) That our enemies have taken our measure, and we never took theirs. Bin Laden’s strategic predictions vis a vis Afghanistan and the United States have been vindicated: 9/11 was for the other side a massive, generational strategic success.

2) That the entire American governing apparatus is incapable of real strategic thought.

3) That the federal government of the United States is much more inventive, determined, and relentless in curbing its own citizenry than it is in curbing those who would slaughter that citizenry.

4) That the federal government of the United States will allow foreign-power interests — specifically Saudi and Pakistani — to override and eclipse the just interests of the American citizenry.

5) The preceding item exists, of course, because we are ruled by an elite with much stronger social ties to other elites than to the people of our republic.

6) That our generational response to 9/11 guarantees that 9/11 will happen again and again.

--snip--

What did we learn?

Twenty years later, we learn that the enemy won — and our ruling class was on their side.

There’s quite a bit more at the link and I suggest you Read The Whole Thing.

To provide an example of point #6 above there’s this from a Teen Vogue columnist which proves just how effin’ clueless some of our younger generation are when it comes to the realities of life.

“We have to be more honest,” Jackson wrote, “about what 9/11 was and what it wasn’t. It was an attack on the heteropatriarchal capitalistic systems that America relies upon to wrangle other countries into passivity. It was an attack on the systems many white Americans fight to protect.”

I’m sure if Jenn M. Jackson had an opportunity to interview the late 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta about why he and his fellow hijackers attacked the US that he would spout the woke bulls**t she claims as the cause of the attacks.

Yeah. Right.

To quote the great philosopher, Bugs Bunny: “What a maroon! What an ignoranimus!”

==+==

Bird Dog over at Maggie’s Farm talks about the Last Rosé of Summer for sunset boat drinks.

I know Katy would certainly enjoy such a thing...though it might take place in October after Columbus Day when it is time to pull the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water, something that will be the perfect way to close out the boating season and tie the ribbons on a great summer.

==+==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the madding crowds have thinned, the lake is ours again, and where the summer weather is hanging around.