For the first half-century of my life, my mom cut my hair. She had the skills, was within visiting distance, and charged hardly anything at all. With her passing a few years ago, I was lucky enough to find a worthy replacement in my wife’s stylist, who kindly took to trimming my tresses at the family rate.
Between appointments, she watches movies. The other day, we found her running a romantic comedy of years gone by, and while the players and the plot held little appeal for me, I was working to place the title. She came up with it, and we moved on to other topics. We never lack for conversation.
Hours later, back at home, I was checking my email. The first item in the inbox was … an ad from Amazon for the movie the barber had mentioned. I had never mentioned the name of that movie. Never looked it up online. Never even looked up any of the actors. Yet those tireless sellers at Amazon somehow supposed I might have a sudden interest in that particular picture.
Why would they think that?
My wife was amused at my surprise. “You had your phone with you,” she said. “They’re listening. They’re always listening.”
Finished lunch a few days ago at a little place I like to frequent over by my office. The usual: a sandwich, a little fruit on the side, a glass of tea. The waitress handed me my bill: $32.
I blinked, but there was nothing for it. I reached for my wallet, first marking my place in the book I was reading with a little piece of paper I’ve been using for that purpose. As I did, I saw that it was another lunch ticket for the same restaurant – and the same meal – dated six weeks earlier: $18.
This looks like the end of a beautiful relationship.
Wednesday, I flew up to Boise, Idaho, on business. My in-laws picked me up at the airport. Our chatter on the drive back to their house was dominated by their astonishment at passing their favorite gas station and finding fuel priced at $4.19 a gallon. It was, for them, quite a jump from what they’d been paying only a week before. I felt their pain, but pointed out that this was also the price I’d paid that morning, filling my tank on the way to the airport in Phoenix.
Friday, back in Phoenix and heading home from the airport, I passed that same station and spied the newly adjusted numbers: $4.59 a gallon. A 40-cent jump, in two days.
I’m not one especially prone to dwell on economics (a pause, while my wife laughs herself into a stupor), but these rude awakenings to inflation nudged a few other mental dominoes to fall. One, the Democrats, and Biden & Company in particular, are responsible for this. Two, the Dems, and whomever they push Biden aside for in the coming months, will soon win re-election. So, three, the prices will continue to go up. And up. And up.
Hard choices are coming … for employers and employees alike. For families and singles alike. Lifestyle choices. Transportation choices. Food choices.
Don’t put all of that on the Democrats. They’re only half of the problem … albeit the half that wantonly lusts for the pleasure of destroying the soul of America, and (more especially) anyone who cherishes her ideals.
The other half is the Republicans, who are blithely persuaded that America is indestructible. They don’t care about Chinese subversion or sexual perversion or southern invasion or rabid inflation. They care, least of all – a fathomless apathy – about election integrity, which is the only thing that might enable us to do anything about the rest.
For their part, the whole cock-eyed world (but for their beloved Ukraine) – can go down in a blazing inferno of self-destruction, just so long as Donald Trump goes first.
They live for the breathless hope of his abject humiliation. If the Dems could manage to flay him alive – slowly – at some stadium event, GOP leaders would pay Taylor Swift concert prices for the joy of chewing popcorn and chortling while he bleeds.
I say that not as a particular fan of Mr. Trump, but as one sad and agog at our leaders’ capacity for personal hatred and unrelenting vendettas. “Hate leads to the Dark Side,” as a wise green gnome once said, and it’s pitch dark, these days, in the halls of Washington, D.C.
You might not think it, to read those last few paragraphs, but a few things still give me hope.
My Boise trip was to interview a widowed mother of five, who – though badly battered by tragedy – has asked the state of Oregon for the privilege of sharing her remarkable family’s resilient love and contagious joy with some lonely foster children.
The state said “no.” They won’t let anyone adopt who won’t promise to take these children to Pride parades, use whatever pronouns they’re in the mood for, and submit any child who wants to be maimed by insane sex-change surgeries to the nearest doctor willing to perform them.
The woman, who is not insane, declined to do any of that, though she happily offered to take in any child, whatever their sexual identity or delusion, and show them kindness and love. When the state still refused her that opportunity, she decided to sue them. Why? “It isn’t right,” she says.
It really is that simple. And happily, my work brings me into contact with so many ordinary people all over America who still know it’s that simple. That right is right and wrong is wrong.
As a nation, we can work with that.
Is there any simpler pleasure to be had than watching people who enjoy their work?
Flying north, I caught one of those flight attendants who keeps the whole plane in stitches from takeoff to landing. Then, out of town, I ate in more restaurants than usual. In each one, I was struck by the sweet smiles and warm good nature of the servers. They genuinely seemed to be delighting in the job and the people they were serving. They laughed easily, did their duties conscientiously, graciously juggled the flurries of orders and substitutions.
That kind of attitude has become more rare in recent years; seeing it again, in so many places, was really refreshing. Almost made me game to pay $32 for a sandwich.
Bad things are coming … but then, bad things always have been. C.S. Lewis, writing in 1948 to those shivering at the prospect of Mutually Assured Destruction, had his usual thoughtful take on what we do in the face of the Ominous, the Impending, the Unthinkable – whatever they may look like:
“If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb,” he said, “let that bomb, when it comes, find us doing sensible and human things. Praying. Working. Teaching. Reading. Listening to music. Bathing the children. Playing tennis. Chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts. Not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
Elon Musk is no C.S. Lewis, but he, too, had a thoughtful rumination the other day that keeps resurfacing amid my mental tides and currents. “Whatever’s coming,” he said, “it’s not going to be what we think.”
Which – glancing at history, and thinking on God – is probably true. He never comes through the door we think He will.
Pulled up at a stoplight yesterday. Looked over at some trees at the side of the road, bobbing and weaving in the breeze. Smog and traffic, politics and prices mean nothing to them. Hot as it is, they’re still green, still growing, still stirring in the rising wind. A few minutes later, my dog raced joyfully to greet me. My wife gave me her great welcoming smile.
Our God reigns. He's always listening. He'll be moving in whatever is about to happen.
Leave all the doors open you can.
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