Sunday School

[_Robert_Participant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

@Enco – I make a point of telling Science deniers where all the information they need can be discovered 🙂

Reminds me of something one of my favorite authors would say.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Enjoyed listening to Ray Bradbury, ha?

[_Robert_Participant]

jakelafort wrote:

Enjoyed listening to Ray Bradbury, ha?

That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.

He became a crabby conservative in his old age (but don’t all white guys?)

I do at times wonder what he or Hitchens or Dennett or other authors I read would think of the MAGA scourge of today.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Conservatism in older age may reflect disillusionment. Idk.

Have not read Bradbury since i was 12 or 13. Might be a good idea to order a few books and get reacquainted. If i come back and remember my prior life i may take his advice on how to become a writer.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

W.B. Yeats written for the love of his life, Maud Gonne. The book refers to the book of his poems.

Fuck conservatism 🙂  That’s for people who live indoors.  So get your pilgrim soul outside and dare to disturb the Universe….or at least eat a peach.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

Aw, Gramps Bradbury! You can read probably all of those books and more on The Guttenberg Project or The Internet Archive without a library, a place where you don’t want to live because nowadays, everyone else lives there and brings their worst ways.

The last times I went to a library, it had loud, noisy kids who chased each other in the library and librarians and “security” who didn’t have the brass to throw them out, and the fleas from someone’s comfort/familiar animal attacked me and practically chased me out. One library had signs telling people not to bring food and drink, not to use restrooms to change clothes and bathe with the sinks, not to bring drug paraphernalia, and not to sleep in the facilities. After that, I shreded my library card and never went back.

None of these things happeened in the libraries of my youth and evidently, those libraries have gone the way of ancient Alexandria, minus curation of what’s left.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 5 days ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling

[_Robert_Participant]

Enco, yes. The local library is here is all of that. You get a good whiff of urine as you approach gateway to literary wonders. Those who have just about given up on life have all but moved in.

I also practically lived in the library at my university when I was working on my grad degree. Thankfully I did have a home to go to when I left.

Should I get mad at this mumbling smelly guy for depriving my city of a useful library? Has he no shame? Or did we all fail him?  Honestly, sometimes I feel like I don’t know anything anymore.

All I know is that my country is a floundering land of extremes.

 

[PopeBeanieModerator]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

The last times I went to a library, it had loud, noisy kids who chased each other in the library and librarians and “security” who didn’t have the brass to throw them out, and the fleas from someone’s comfort/familiar animal attacked me and practically chased me out. One library had signs telling people not to bring food and drink, not to use restrooms to change clothes and bathe with the sinks, not to bring drug paraphernalia, and not to sleep in the facilities. After that, I shreded my library card and never went back.

Wow, I haven’t seen any problems close to that in a dozen libraries nearby here in northern California. I imagine our taxes are significantly higher. 🙂

Our libraries have new pods people can reserve to conduct private meetings, a couple of recording studios, and a 3D printer I’d like to use someday. Fully charged Apple and PC laptops for free in a vending machine good for 90 minutes. Train and bus transit I can take through two counties for free or $1 at most. (I use the word “free” liberally, so to speak.)

True, sometimes I must sit far enough away from someone homeless and maskless who’s coughing a lot. (We’d improve our health system pretty quickly if we could just secede! Add Oregon and Washington, we could be western, WSA, while the other states reunite into a kingdom.)

As for recent emigration, I don’t know the numbers, but thousands of new apartments and homes are being built around here. In fact I just moved to a new great place, while I’m officially in a “low income” bracket.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Once MAGA replace all the State Library boards, the mess will be cleaned up. But the range of books will be all under the same section. The Dewey Decimal system will become redundant. They will probably have hundreds of copies of the same book. Any other books will require crayons.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

PopeBeanie,

Wow, I haven’t seen any problems close to that in a dozen libraries nearby here in northern California. I imagine our taxes are significantly higher. 🙂

You smile like that’s a good thing. I’m sure the taxes are even higher in L.A. and San Fransisco and other spots in southern California, yet Skid Row spills over into hallowed halls of learning.

Our libraries have new pods people can reserve to conduct private meetings, a couple of recording studios, and a 3D printer I’d like to use someday. Fully charged Apple and PC laptops for free in a vending machine good for 90 minutes. Train and bus transit I can take through two counties for free or $1 at most. (I use the word “free” liberally, so to speak.)

You know those services are subject to The Tragedy of the Commons and that public transit always runs at a loss, right?

True, sometimes I must sit far enough away from someone homeless and maskless who’s coughing a lot. (We’d improve our health system pretty quickly if we could just secede! Add Oregon and Washington, we could be western, WSA, while the other states reunite into a kingdom.)

You would first need arms and military training to secede, and the last time that was attempted 160 years ago, it cost over 600,000 lives on both sides.

And even if you succeeded at secession, you would need even more conventional arms and more powerful nuclear arms in case Emperor Xi decide to treat Taiwan as his “but no further” Sudatenland and leap frog from there across the Pacific. .

Hospitals and clinics would have to be commandeered for triage of combatants and hurt civilians instead of longevity and health augmentation and Nancy Lugosi’s plastic surgery.

I just don’t see any Paradise on Earth happining with the California/Oregon/Washinton fruit, nut, and flake granola cluster.

As for recent emigration, I don’t know the numbers, but thousands of new apartments and homes are being built around here. In fact I just moved to a new great place, while I’m officially in a “low income” bracket.

Just hope that they don’t manage wildfires as carelessly as they did in L.A. or you’ll be left behind by a fire chief for not looking like her. Things like that and all of the above messes are precisely why there is emigration from California.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Once MAGA replace all the State Library boards, the mess will be cleaned up. But the range of books will be all under the same section. The Dewey Decimal system will become redundant. They will probably have hundreds of copies of the same book. Any other books will require crayons.

Good. Then they’ll sit and collect as much dust as libraries do nowadays, and Trump will have to sell his own MAGA-branded allegy relief medicine fortified with Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. Maybe if we’re really lucky, Trump will think silverfish are an endanered species and they eat all his Trump Bibles and copies of The Power of Positive Thinking by his family minister Norman Vincent Peele.

Meanwhile, all who want to read bad enough have the capacity of uncounted Alexandrias in the palm of their hand or on their desktop.

Relax, Reg, the ones who really Make America Great have got this.

[Author]

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