I almost titled this post as “Small Miracles”, but then decided that might be stretching things a bit. So, I opted for the current title, instead.
Wednesday afternoon, as my wife and I were driving home from work, a car suddenly pulled out from the oncoming lane of traffic and was heading for us head-on. The oncoming car was very close to us with a relative closing speed of something like 90 mph. (The speed limit in that stretch is 45 mph, I was doing that, I assume the other car was doing about the same.) Acting completely on instinct, I steered my car to the right, onto the icy shoulder, then further right onto the verge barely avoiding the ditch. Somehow, I managed to avoid both the onrushing car and the ditch and steered back onto the road.
My wife, as white as a sheet, (I assume I looked the same) said, “I would have hit him. I don’t know how you did that.” Neither, quite frankly, do I. We both looked at the tracks the next day (when we were driving separately) and I missed hitting the ditch by less than a few inches. The car had to miss by the same or less. Small favors.
Friday, we stayed home after the massive ice storm that hit us Thursday. When I was out in front of the house during the day, my across-the-road neighbor, a deputy sheriff, came over and told me that my next door neighbor had been involved (on Wednesday) in a very nasty automobile accident. He had turned in front of an oncoming semi and was in intensive care.
We went over to see the neighbor’s wife (who is house-bound). She told us he had just been moved out on the ICU and was expected to make a full recovery. Small favors.
Today, my wife checked her cell phone – usually left off on weekends – and found three voice mails. When she listened to them, she found out that her brother’s wife had been involved in a serious automobile accident. Someone had pulled out in front of her on Route 104 in Upstate New York. (That is a bad highway. Four lanes with multiple grade-level crossings). This happened yesterday. We just heard that she has been released from the hospital with two broken ribs and a lot of bruising. But she is okay. Small favors.
Wow. This guy is unbelievable.
Dr Rowan Williams risks causing a new controversy by inviting a comparison between Gordon Brown’s response to the economic downturn and the Third Reich.
In an article for The Daily Telegraph, he claims Germany in the 1930s pursued a “principle” that worked consistently but only on the basis that “quite a lot of people that you might have thought mattered as human beings actually didn’t”.
Dr Williams, the most senior cleric in the Church of England, then appears to draw a parallel between the Nazis and the UK Government’s policies for tackling the downturn, which he says fails to take account of the “particular human costs” to the most vulnerable in society.
As for the Marx reference:
But after the collapse of banks around the world in September, Dr Williams called for governments to increase regulation of the financial sector and claimed Karl Marx had been right in his analysis of the dangers of capitalism.
Winston Churchill would have more than a bit to say to Williams. But then, he said it long ago:
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
I frankly don’t have a clue how the Archbishop of Canterbury is chosen, but they sure picked a real gem in this one. Thankfully for Williams, he doesn’t actually live in the totalitarian state he fantasizes about. Or he would be up against the wall in the first group.
The fact is that capitalism gave Williams the bully pulpit he preaches from. Without the enormous standard of living he enjoys he would be a very small voice in a very different world. Not a world he would recognize – or enjoy. His violation of Godwin’s law by proxy says rather a lot about the man. None of it flattering.
Quite literally.
KENNEWICK — Buddy is the top cat in his house, and arguably the toughest feline in the Tri-Cities.
The muscular 17-pound bobtail cat, which belongs to William and Shannon Secolo, fought off coyotes inside its Kennewick home early one morning last week.
And while Buddy emerged without a scratch from the scrap, his vanquished foes left behind a trail of dung and fur as they fled into the frigid night.
“I think of Buddy as a little hero,” William Secolo said Saturday. “Those coyotes were twice his size.”
Bobtail cat. Coyote. The story reports that Secolo never actually saw the coyotes, but did step in one of their calling cards. Obviously, Buddy is one tough cat – the coyotes never laid a paw on him.
On a side note, we have at least one, more likely two, very large coyote packs running in our area right now. They’ve been here for years, but they have been growing and getting more and more active lately. (My wife saw one coyote run across our backyard in broad daylight a few weeks back.)We are being very careful about letting our animals out. But now we are also going to be very careful about making sure the doors are locked at night. This is kind of a creepy story.
Personal Thoughts | Gaius December 21, 2008 | 
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