9/23

Well, well, well. It's early Wednesday morning and I have a blog to write. With no other ideas coming to mind, I'll fall back onto This Day in History.

On September 23, 1779 during the American Revolution ('The Troubles' to you Brits) John Paul Jones uttered his famous "I have not yet begun to fight!" in answer to an English demand that he surrender his ship during a naval engagement. 

For you astronomers, on September 23, 1846, the planet Neptune was first spotted.

Mickey Rooney, Julio Iglesias, Ray Charles, and Bruce Springsteen were all born the 23rd.

St. Pio of Pietrelcina, better as Padre Pio, died September 23, 1968. He had the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, on his body. 

Lewis and Clark returned to St. Louis from their exploration of the Louisiana Territory September 23, 1806.

Merkle's Boner, a famous baseball mistake, gave the Chicago Cubs the National League Pennant on this day in 1908. It's one of the most famous plays (or non plays) in the sport's history.

There you have it, friends. September 23 in history!

The More They Stay the Same

To hear some people talk, particularly average news shows and the fringe groups, the world is going to hell. We're the last generation on Earth. Or, at least, the last generation on Earth as we know it.

The world is going to hell; that I will not argue. It's going there in the same way that we're all bound for death from the day we're born. If you care to be Christian, as I do, it's because humanity is fallen. What ought we expect from a world which turns a deaf ear to God? But if you prefer to be secular about it, humanity isn't perfect and, I must add, never will be. All your efforts will, someday, be for naught. No matter how great and sincere your ideas about making a better, kinder, more just world, take no heart. Someone will torpedo the best laid plans.

I actually say this with a grin on my face though. The world and our fate in it are perhaps better seen with a wry eye, a sense of the absurd. It is absurd; anything less than perfect must be, precisely because it is lacking in some necessary quality for goodness.

But to my point. I see no real benefit to fretting about current conditions in our nation or the world around us. Pray, hope, and don't worry, Padre Pio taught. The same problems exist which have always, which will always, exist. There will be poverty. There will be war. There will be laziness and sloth. People will be shocked at it all, angry at it all, despondent about it. And there will be people who thrive on that. That's why we have news shows and fringe groups. Every act of inhumanity feeds them.

Don't let them feed you. They see the same issues you see and insist they have the answers. Bosh. Look upon every item you read, see, or hear with a wary eye. Don't allow them to force you, the MSM or the fringes, into the corners where they want to keep you. The world has never been perfect, the troubles in it will never go away, there is nothing new under the Sun. Take a grain of salt with your morning flow of information and do what positive things you can in your own little part of the world. If there is a scintilla of a chance the world can be kept from going to hell soon, it will be in that.