Wednesday, March 2, 2022

A Failure to Connect Thoughts in a Coherent Fashion - Weekly Column 13 February 2022

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Failure to Connect Thoughts in a Coherent Fashion

 

I heard something about a football game on Sunday night.  Now, now, don’t tell me, because I can guess: one team lost the game, the other team won, a mob burned some cars and looted liquor stores, and the world is now a better place.

 

I also heard a rumor about some winter sports competitions in China, but no one seems to be able to confirm it.  In truth, see if you can view CBC’s Anthony Germain from Beijing. And if he doesn’t stop telling the truth about the bleakness of the scene and the heavy-handedness of the Communists he might suffer the same smacking-around a Dutch journalist got.

 

Elon Musk plans to launch 30,000 Elon Musk satellites so that the entire planet will have Elon Musk InterGossip service. I thought the only place that didn’t have the InterGossip was Death Valley.  A problem with any satellite is that someday it will fall to earth. Maybe we’ll be given Elon Musk umbrellas.

 

If Mr. Putin’s soldiers do invade Ukraine this week we might not have to worry about football mobs or falling satellites. In this too-connected world and with all those nuclear weapons piled up here and there every war affects everyone on the planet now. Russia and Ukraine are both energy exporters, and when all the oil wells and pipelines go BOOM! the worldwide shortage of energy will affect not only the price of gas and electricity for us, but the prices of all manufactured goods and food, if they are available at all. In Shakespeare’s Henry V the King says to his victorious army, “Do we all holy rites. / Let there be sung “Non Nobis” and “Te Deum,” / The dead with charity enclosed in clay.” The dead now will be enclosed in rubble, dust, and maybe clouds of radioactivity. This is an appropriate occasion for re-reading Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer.”

 

Two years ago I forgot to put on my mask when I entered a Denny’s and was scorned with an accusatory chorus of “MASSSSSKKKK!!!!!”  Two months ago I remember to put on my mask when I entered the same Denny’s and was scorned with silent looks of disapproval.  Happily, no one cried out “FAAAAACE!!!!!”

 

Last week my family received four made-in-China Covid test kits. Appreciate the irony. And they’re a little late, eh?

 

According to the American Embassy in Poland [Message to U.S. Citizens:  Poland/Ukraine Border Open to U.S. Citizens - February 12, 2022 - U.S. Embassy & Consulate in Poland (usembassy.gov)] Americans fleeing  Ukraine through Poland (there is no other way by land – the Russians are on all the other sides) need proof of a Covid jab. Well, their country, their rules. Poland didn’t start this mess, Mr. Putin did, and in giving assistant to Americans they are defying a great big bully of a nation that has on numerous occasions attacked and occupied Poland.

 

And I don’t understand any of it.

 

Let us pray to God that these next few weeks are boring.

 

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