Gloria, in extremis.

“This life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness.”

My mom loved Christmas dearly, and she instilled that love in me. My dad really seemed to think anything out of the normal work routine was a waste of time and money. Dad had had no religious upbringing. Mom had had plenty, but when a death in the family plunged the survivors into chaos, with the real threat of crushing poverty, it seemed to have drained all hope in God out of her. 

So here I am on Christmas morning, praying for them both. In my darkest days, bouncing from thoughtless atheism to agnosticism or to flirting with paganism, I never stopped loving Christmas. It was like the net that God used to keep me from drifting away from Him entirely. 

Folks in the neighborhood going big on Christmas spirit.

At one point in my childhood Mom decided we should start going to church -- although not Dad, who was uninterested and worked seven days a week anyhow -- but I believe that her heart was never in it. Kids can tell. If Mom is just doing it because a friend thought it would be a good idea, or because Mom thinks it will keep the kids from growing up bad, but has no desire for the thing herself, kids know. If Mom doesn't really care, why should we? The experiment didn't last more than a few months. Then it was back to the bulk of my faith formation being episodes of Davey and Goliath (because there was little else for kids on Sunday morning in those days, young'uns).

But Mom sure did pray, and mostly because of us lousy kids. Rather than the Our Father or the Glory Be she prayed the "What did I do to deserve this, Lord?" And she wasn't saying it to be funny. 

I have found that there's a real problem with praying in extremis only, having done a lot of that myself, and it's that the heart in those times cannot bear anything but instant relief from the terrible situation that brings on the prayer. But as that relief is usually not forthcoming immediately, despair rapidly follows. Whereas those in a greater habit of devotion are usually able to muster patience and hope in darkness. My mom had a million wonderful attributes, but the ability to find hope in dire situations was not one of them. 

I'm a Catholic now, and I do try maintain some discipline of faith, but it's always going to be a little like speaking a second language to me. My main language is that of fear and pessimism -- the language of my people. But Christmas I knew of as a word of hope in a long book of terror and darkness.  

I really love this banner. I don't know if it's really old or just made
to look old, but it's beautiful. 

I wish you a very happy Christmas and a blessed new year. Keep the light shining -- darkness cannot defeat it, but it sure as hell is always going to try. 

The message in the story.

When I was a kid I was stuck at an all-day flea market with my mom, bored stupid. Someone took pity on me and let me read some old comic books that were in the cheap (essentially free) pile to pass the time. There were no really popular comic heroes in the pile -- instead, oddball series like DC's Strange Sports Stories were present. I was surprised to see an Archie comic that was really different from the Archie gang that I was used to -- instead of their usual knuckleheaded high jinks, Archie, Jughead, and his pals were proselytizing for Jesus. 

I did not know that I had stumbled on an issue by Spire Christian Comics, a publisher of comic books with a Christian message. Spire licensed the Archie characters from the Pelham-based Archie Comic Publications, and published a series of Archie comics beginning in 1973.  

They didn't look too different from the normal
Archie books.

“Preachy” barely describes it. I grew up with no religious education at all, but I still knew heavy-handed -- even ham-handed -- messaging when I saw it. It was just above the legendary Jack Chick pamphlets, and to be fair to Chick, he knew he had a split-second to get the reader's attention before his comic would wind up in the gutter. 

The heavy hand of the message is a source of complaint within the Christian community as well as without. The Catholic Guy, Lino Rulli, complains about "boring Catholic radio" (his own show being of course his exception). Christians make fun of a lot of Christian movies. On the other hand, there have been plenty of writers whose Christian faith was fundamental, and yet it was hardly noticeable. For all I admire them, I doubt Walker Percy, Evelyn Waugh, or even T.S. Eliot ever brought a soul to Jesus. 

What got my thinking about this recently was the rise of a couple of Christian comic book companies. Good for them, and I hope they prosper. I am not able to review what they're doing, though, but I can tell you, if they can tread the line and make entertaining books that can inspire faith in the non- or lapsed faithful, they will be doing a real service. Mostly I guess they’ll be preaching to the choir, but hey, choirs need fortification too.

I have composed five rules for Christian publishers who want to bring their message to an audience outside the faith community. These rules are tough, but they are born of my observation of what works and what doesn't:

1) The story must be more prominent than the message, however important the message.

Why? Because this isn't homework. The story must be enjoyable. 

2) The message must not be completely lost, however.

See also: Evelyn Waugh. 

3) The audience must be treated with respect. 

They're not to be treated like students or pagans or heathen that need enlightenment, even if that's what they are -- they are readers first, or they will not be readers at all. 

4) The quality must be on the level with mainstream entertainment of the same kind. 

This is tough, because religious books will never pay as well -- in cold, hard cash, anyway. 

5) And most important, God must not be seen to do what He does not do, nor not do what he does do.

This is the most difficult part, because Man does not know the mind of God, nor God's purposes in little things, and the writer cannot overpromise the reader any more than the priest in the pulpit can, like: "If you pray everything will come out as you hope." We know this is not the case. Following Rule 5 properly requires serious theological reflection and thought. 

A writer who can follow all of these rules will be a true artist, and a godsend as well. 

It probably shows you where I think I fit that none of my books have or have attempted to follow all five rules to this point. Could I even do it? I'll let you know if I try.  

Sorrowful mysteries.

Wednesday evening I hit a wall. I guess I've been coasting on inertia for a while, and a large job I had expected to arrive got delayed -- and suddenly I had nothing I had to do, and I fell into a pit of misery. It came on fast, like a bad case of the flu. At three I'm okay, by four everything seems completely, even uniquely pointless. And then other thoughts and memories rush in to fill the emptiness and reinforce the endless sorrow.

I guess I'm a little burned out.

I did try to bounce out of it, spending time with youthful dog Izzy and going over the headlines of the day (Babylon Bee headlines, that is) with some old friends on a group text. But texting with my old friends reminded me that this year it will be a decade since one of our best guys, the one who helped make us all friends and kept us so through the years, died suddenly and left a wife and two young kids. 

And playing with Izzy reminded me that it's almost six months since we had to put Fazzy down. 

At the vet. Last photo, ever.

And I just couldn't stand anything anymore.

Sorrow is the curse and the consolation of Christianity. We can't pretend, like so many foolish Communists and transhumanists do, that some combination of perfect intelligence and technology will wipe every tear and bring humanity to a state of perfect joy. We know man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. On the other hand, it's the only religion that teaches that God Himself knows exactly what that is like, having assumed humanity and suffered for it. Our sorrow can never be thought of as meaningless; it has touched the heart of God. 

Still, I prayed last night, saying that if I never felt sadder than I did just then, I thought I could take it -- but that I didn't expect that to be the case.

But I hoped it would all be all right, some day.

Naughty, naughty words.

The silliest words are completely taboo now. Including taboo, because it might offend some Tongan people out there. 

Censorship has been in the news again, although the proponents aren't calling it that. Roald Dahl's books are getting the workover to remove offensive words like "fat" and "ugly" that might offend people who are... well, fat and/or ugly, I guess. I never liked Dahl's children's books -- he was not a lover of humanity, and his writing for adults has a high enough body count to back me up on that. But you don't even have to read those stories. Spoiler alert: In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory we have children being blown up and squashed, permanently discolored, thrown in the garbage, shrunk and stretched out, and all kinds of things I found traumatizing when we covered the book in second grade. That stuff's fine, but we can't use words like "fat"? 

If they think that taking insulting words out of the discourse will make children be nicer to one another, they have never met any children.

Even dumber of course (ooooh, dumb is a taboo word too!) is that Fleming's James Bond books are getting the treatment. For the love of all that is good, if you're an adult and you can't handle a seventy-year-old spy novel, you ought to go back to singing "Baby Shark" and let the adults talk. 

The American Library Association is useless, as always. They love to prance around with their so-called Banned Books Week in the fall. Altered Books Week is never going to happen, though. They're all for it. You might hope that the dead authors' estates would fight against this nonsense, but they couldn't care less, as long as the money keeps rolling in. 

Lately I find more of the companies I work for employ sensitivity readers, people whose entire job is to go off like a smoke detector if a bad word comes up. Not bad as in obscene, blasphemous, or grotesque, but bad as in possibly offensive to one of the many grievance farmers out there working the fields. Words like dumb (insults the deaf), insane (insults the crazy), handicapped (insults the handicapped), fat (covered above), hooker (insults sex workers), mumbo-jumbo (I think this is cultural appropriation), addict (insults bums), grandfather (as verb, from its relation to Jim Crow laws), master bedroom (because only plantations had master bedrooms?), and anything that might suggest masculinity, like fireman or congressman. Also any possible use of black in a negative sense (as in a black mood), or any use of white in a positive one (which will be a bummer to the saints in Revelation 7, who "came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb"). And you'd better not have a character wear moccasins. Although they have been a style in the shoe industry for more than a hundred years, now they're culturally insensitive.

Sensitivity readers have to keep coming up with new words to ban, if they're to justify their phony-baloney jobs.

We need more insensitivity readers. Speech is supposed to be free in this country, and we need to toughen the hell up. I was rereading a 98-year-old book by an Englishman and was surprised to find an incidental use of the old N-word. I'm an adult; I can that the author was using the term in a reflection of the attitudes of colonialists, whom he firmly opposed. But I dare not tell you what book or author it was, lest the Kancel Kops come for him next.   

One word that the sensitivity Nazis ignore, of course, is Jesus in a perjorative sense. It's peachy with them that some readers will be offended over that. It's ducky. No problemo. I've heard it said that Christians are the only religious people who consistently use the name of their Lord in vain, and that's probably true. But not all of us. However, that's not something a sensitivity reader worries about. 

After all, it's not like saying a simple scientific sentence like "Flowers contain male sex organs called stamens and female sex organs called pistils." That could get you fired. Who are you to assume that flower's gender?

Soul Fred.

I don't know if you've heard of Jen Fulwiler -- but she's heard of you. Nah, just kidding. She's a writer and comedienne in Texas, mother of six children, a convert from atheism to the Catholic church, and host of a podcast called This Is Jen. She does have a terrific sense of humor, as I think every mom ought to have, especially if they've got a brood like hers to chase around. Early in the lockdowns she put out a schedule for her family:

She had me at Feral Time.

Although she despises the term "momedy" for mom comics, her main natural audience is mothers -- not just Catholic or Christian moms but moms who are obsessed with social media as she is. Thus, her husband, as a manly man from Texas, was unable to understand why she would bother to create a Web site that would give you a word of the year. 

The Word of the Year generator was intended to give you a random word that would be a mantra for the near future -- maybe spark something inside the user to meditate on. Like: 

Back in December I was listening to her podcast when I heard her and her husband talking about it. I figured, Okay, I'll try it, see what pops up. The word I got was Soul.

I must confess that did make me think. I felt like I'd been running on fumes throughout 2020; in fact, could not remember the last time I had felt a sense of purpose beyond "Don't let the house cave in" and "Don't let the dogs have feral hour." I hated to admit it, but Jen's Jen-erator (ha!) made me realize that I needed to think of ways to care for my soul. This is not the kind of thing most guys I know think about, but it's a real issue. We spend all our time being responsible, but if we're getting empty inside, something is going to give.

So thanks, Jen, for getting me to think about something worth thinking about. I hope I can make some progress on this for 2021. Not looking good so far, but it's only February.

And I take back all the mean things I was thinking about your self-help book, Your Blue Flame. This seemed to me to be the kind of pep-talky "Believe in yourself and your dreams" that made me lash out at poor ol' Jeff Lynne a few years ago. I feared it might be an ace away from that diabolical Prosperity Christianity. Now I suspect it may be useful, not shallow, and I congratulate you on your own success. 

Who's celebrating?

Happy fourth Sunday of Advent! And down the stretch we go!

Anyway: I was walking along, minding my own business, when I passed a Protestant church with a Christmas tree out front. Nothing weird about that, not in December; it would be a little odd in August. Anyway, this church eschewed all the usual decorations to instead cover the tree with flags of the world.

So who's celebrating with us, according to the flags?

The United States, still a majority Christian country, as is Canada, and Chile above them, and Jamaica, and -- Israel? Well, okay, Judeo-Christian heritage and all that...

And here's the flag of Communist Cuba, about which the CIA World Factbook says it is more than 59% Christian. Yet as an official Communist state wherein the Communist party is the only legal political party, we know that they have an official position of atheism -- or at least, their only official religion is the religion of the state. 

And there's good ol' Communist China, hanging out with good ol' Socialist Venezuela. I'm sure they'll have a merry Christmas. 

Look, I get it -- Christ is supposed to have come to save all of us, not just Western people, not even people who go to church and make a big deal of faith. We have no idea who is saved and who is not, actually, and we may be surprised. And maybe we need to pray hardest for those nations that not only are anti-religious but actively persecute Christians. But displaying the flags of those nations on the Christmas tree seems less like wishful thinking and more like wanton foolishness, like turning a blind eye to the evils of the governments of this world. 

We can work and pray and strive and hope for world peace, but we should not be stupid. This is kind of stupid to me. It's not like they have every nation in the world up on the tree; there are 195 countries on planet Earth and there are nowhere near 195 flags on this tree. Perhaps the flags represent areas in which this denomination has opened offices or sent missionaries. That might make sense. But I still think it's just brotherhood-of-man stuff, or I guess we need to say personhood-of-persons. 

Having seen what I think is the pastor's house next door, I suspect that reverend personage believes Trump is the single largest cause of all the trouble in the world right now anyway, based on a myriad of signs and bumper stickers.

It's the kind of thinking that believes we are all naturally brothers unless some evil force turns us against one another, which is as naïve as anything can be. Naturally, those in America who subscribe to such notions immediately blame America as that evil force.  

All I can say is, if this minister has seen his congregation in action, he knows that people don't automatically get along all the time out of love, and should be able to understand why nations fight too. We all suffer from a condition called human nature. Our problems are bred in the bone, and don't go away from wishful thinking, or willful blindness. If all of us strove to live a Christian life, I think it would bring the fighting way down, but as long as humans are humans it's never going to be paradise on earth, and attempts to make it so usually go to hell fast.

Fred's Book Club: The Work of Forgiveness.

Greetings, fellow readers! Welcome to the Humpback Writers feature, our Wednesday (a.k.a. Hump Day) entry that looks at books and lets them look back at us. The writers may not actually have any humps, but the books have spines, so there is that.

Today we're preparing for Christmas, and while Advent is a season of joy, it's also a time for examination of conscience and learning to love our brethren. This will be helpful if we're going to be stuck with our brethren all Christmas Day at Aunt Tilly's house. But forgiveness is often more than we can stand to do, especially if the wound has been very deep. What is to be done?

Today's book is one of the smallest in our vast collection, at 71 pages, but is meant to help us in this work of forgiveness. Joan Mueller, Ph.D., is a professor of theology at Creighton University in Omaha, and also a professor of Christian spirituality. Forgiveness is one of the gigantic pillars of Christianity, something we all need and we're expected to give, so we might think Dr. Mueller has some useful thoughts. 

Forgiveness: Three Minute Reflections on Redeeming Life's Most Difficult Moments is a helpful book for those seeking to forgive and those seeking forgiveness. It is a series of meditations, broken into four sections of seven each, that can be literally read in three minutes. Each has a scriptural reading, a thought connected to it, and a spiritual exercise to help the reader. The exercises can take a lot longer than three minutes, of course, depending on how much thought we want or need to apply to them. But taken along the way, all can be useful, and if done one a day, the book can be completed in a month. I won't say painlessly -- forgiveness can be painful for everyone involved. But grudges can hurt a lot more.

Here's a sample page:

You may hate this kind of stuff. Dismiss it as nonsense or happy horse-hockey (or worse). Well, so do I, much of the time, and I used to all of the time. But I approached this with an open mind and I believe it was good for me.  

I picked this book up in the lobby of my Catholic church, when some of the publishers from New City Press came down for a visit. New City Press is not a Catholic publisher, but they seek to help any Christian or anyone looking into Christianity or anyone who needs to find faith. (And Hyde Park, New York, where they are based, is not far from where I live.) I wanted to support the small press, so I looked for a book that might be of interest, and this one surely was. I think it did help me make peace with some of the people against which I held grudges, even if they didn't know I was still mad. 

Finding peace with an angry world and the people in it can surely be a daunting task, but one particularly good to do, or at least try to do, at Christmastime. I thank Professor Mueller for her book, and New City Press for bringing it to my attention. But I'm still a work in progress.

The just man.

As every Catholic knows, or ought to, Advent is a period of hope, not penitence like Lent. But Advent and Lent are both periods of preparation. Today we mark the third Sunday in Advent, Gaudete Sunday, Rejoice Sunday, as a reminder that our expectation is coming near, that our hope may become stronger as we wait for the child in the manger who is God among us. 

Which brings me to St. Joseph, which you may recall is my Confirmation saint and a model for the worker and the head of the Holy Family. Look at it this way -- his wife is perfect and his foster son is God, yet he's the head of the household. Must be a pretty special guy.

And that is why I am cheered beyond measure that Pope Francis has proclaimed this to be the Year of St. Joseph:

Vatican City, Dec 8, 2020 / 04:08 am MT (CNA).- Pope Francis announced a Year of St. Joseph Tuesday in honor of the 150th anniversary of the saint’s proclamation as patron of the Universal Church. 

The year begins Dec. 8, 2020, and concludes on Dec. 8, 2021, according to a decree authorized by the pope. 

The decree said that Francis had established a Year of St. Joseph so that “every member of the faithful, following his example, may strengthen their life of faith daily in the complete fulfillment of God’s will.” 

I can't think of a better saint to look to at this miserable juncture in history than St. Joseph. He was a stalwart man, a provider, a protector, a hard worker, obedient to God and God's law, a just man, faithful to the end. He is the antithesis of everything we've endured in 2020 -- the constant lies, the destruction of businesses by our political class, the violent assaults on innocents, the attacks on families and faith from our cultural elites. The pope went on to write, “Our world today needs fathers." (A recent analysis in First Things would agree with that.) "It has no use for tyrants who would domineer others as a means of compensating for their own needs. It rejects those who confuse authority with authoritarianism, service with servility, discussion with oppression, charity with a welfare mentality, power with destruction.” 

This may be the first time I've been thrilled by anything coming from the Holy Father. 

I sure wasn't thrilled by the 2020 Vatican Playskool Nativity.

Pope Francis's silence over the horrors of China's oppression of religious groups, even Catholics, has frustrated me; his attacks on our president and our country have annoyed me; his endless taunts about "opening" the church to modernism -- that send the cardinals flocking to explain that what the pope said wasn't what he meant -- has worn me out. But this time I think he knocked it out of the park. 

Have hope, and if you're of a bent to do so, ask St. Joseph to pray for us. We need his example and his prayers to try to right the mess we're in now. Let us not be afraid, but rejoice and be brave.

Fred's Book Club: Ghosts.

Welcome to our Halloween edition of the Humpback Writers book feature! Even now there are no humpbacks or hunchbacks or anything of the kind, and it is a mean thing to call people who deal with the condition. But it is Hump Day, and the one before Halloween, so we have a spooky book for you. Probably the only spooky book that was published with an introduction by T.S. Eliot.

Charles Williams was one of the three most famous members of the Oxford Christian group known as the Inklings, the other two being J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Like those celebrated dons, Williams wrote fantastic fiction, fantastic in the sense of being otherworldly. While Tolkien created the most detailed fantasy world in history, and Lewis dabbled in fantasy for children and science fantasy for adults (among other things), Williams's stories were set in his current day England. He was also a poet, a playwright, a theologian, a biographer, a critic -- he did everything literate that a man may do with paper and pen. It is not surprising, then, that he was friends for twenty years with Eliot, a convert to Williams's Anglican church.

All Hallows' Eve was Williams's last novel before his untimely death in 1945. It is a ghost story, and unlike any other I have read. Here's the opener: 

She was standing on Westminster Bridge. It was twilight, but the City was no longer dark. The street lamps along the Embankment were still dimmed, but in the buildings shutters and blinds and curtains had been removed or left undrawn, and the lights were coming out there like the first faint stars above. Those lights were the peace. It was true that formal peace was not yet in being; all that had happened was that fighting had ceased. The enemy, as enemy, no longer existed and one more crisis of agony was done. Labor, intelligence, patience -- much need for these; and much certainty of boredom and suffering and misery, but no longer the sick vigils and daily despair. 

We're right at the end of the war, and she's is considering what will happen next, and where her husband Richard is. But what she (and we) will soon discover is that she is dead; the last thing she remembers is going down into the Tube. And that's only the beginning of her problems. The woman's name is Lester (I guess that was a woman's name in wartime London), and in the ghostly streets she soon encounters two other deceased women whom she knew in life, the chatty and annoying Evelyn and the woeful Betty, whom Lester and Evelyn had treated badly in school. And even this is still just the beginning of Lester's problems. 

Only a few people can be made aware, through brief contact, of the presence of the spectral women, including Lester's husband, and much more unsettling, a man named Simon Leclerc. Leclerc is a very bad man, and indeed Williams's books have no shortage of bad people engaged in bad acts. He is a necromancer, who uses Betty's ghost as a conduit to the spirit world, by which means he intends to amass power. It will be up to the ones who choose good to try to oppose Leclerc, if they can. 

Eliot's introduction discusses the book's central battle:

The conflict which is the theme of every one of Williams's novels, is not merely the conflict between good and bad men, in the usual sense. No one was less confined to conventional morality, in judging good and bad behavior, than Williams: his mortality is that of the Gospels. He sees the struggle between Good and Evil as carried on, more or less blindly, by men and women who are often only the instruments of higher or lower powers, but who always have the freedom to choose to which powers they will submit themselves. Simon, in this story, is a most austere ascetic, but he is evil; Evelyn is a woman who appears too insignificant, too petty in her faults, to be really "bad," but yet, just because she is no more than pettiness, she delivers herself willingly into the hand of evil.

Furthermore, Williams's writing on the experience of the supernatural is truly unique, as Eliot explains:

I have already tried to indicate the unity between the man and the work; and it follows that there is a unity between his works of very different kinds. Much of his work may appear to realize its form only imperfectly; but it is also true in a measure to say that Williams invented his own forms -- or to say that no form, if he had obeyed all its conventional laws, could have been satisfactory for what he wanted to say. What it is, essentially, that he had to say, comes near to defying definition. It was not simply a philosophy, a theology, or a set of ideas: it was primarily something imaginative.

This is true, and something I have seen time and again in Williams's work. Take this simple passage from All Hallows' Eve:

 

She made a third effort and again she heard from her own mouth only the flat voice of the dead. She was possessed by it. Death, it seemed, was not over; it had only just begun. She was dying further. She could not call; presently she would not be able to speak; then not to see -- neither the high stars nor the meaningless lights -- yet still, though meaningless, faintly metropolitan. But she would find even this pale light too much, and presently would creep away from it towards one of those great open entrances that loomed here and there, for inside she could hide from the light.

He writes as if he has experienced these things personally, like a man desperately trying to communicate this in all his books to those of us tied down with the mundane work of living -- a Lazarus "come from the dead, / Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all." His novels are characterized with these passages, some nearly impenetrable because they can be so hard to grasp -- because they grasp what to us is the ungraspable.

So I have to say I've never enjoyed Williams's books the way I've enjoyed others, because they are a lot of work, and even then I feel like I've never quite been able to tune him in. And yet it is rewarding. All Hallows' Eve has a remarkable spiritual struggle, unlike any I've seen in any other ghost story, even the (to me overpraised) Henry James novel The Turn of the Screw.

A Reader's Guide to Fantasy (by Searles, Meacham, and Franklin) sums Charles Williams up very well thus: "In his books he demonstrates a deep knowledge and understanding of traditional magical theories and implements, and invests them all with power as symbols of an absolute reality which underlies the manifest reality of the visible world."

Of Williams's books, I think War in Heaven is my favorite, mainly because it centers around the Holy Grail. The Greater Trumps is one of the more readable, and in spots terrifying. There is a scene in Many Dimensions regarding the Seal of Solomon that made me almost jump up in shock. And Descent into Hell is not only one of the scariest books I've ever read, but one of the most aptly titled books as well.

If you are prepared to work for your ghost story, All Hallows' Eve is as good as it gets. But Charles Williams is never light reading, although he can be enlightening reading.

Fred's Book Club: In the Days B.C.

Welcome back to the Humpback Writers (and sometimes Artists), the Wednesday book feature with the stupid name. Every week we look at books, and every week we do it on Hump Day. That's all the excuse I got.

This week we're looking at a pile of books, the kind of book not published much anymore but once the mark of a comic strip's strong popularity -- the cheap paperback collection:

The comic strip B.C. debuted in 1958, and its creator, Johnny Hart, wrote and drew it for almost fifty years. When he passed on in 2007, he died in the saddle -- literally at the drawing board. For better or worse, B.C. continues to the present, produced by Hart's grandson Mason Mastroianni.

I enjoyed the strip when I was a kid, and my wife too was a fan. It had a terrific cast of characters, human and non-human, who worked as well together for comic and satiric purposes as the gang from Peanuts in that strip's golden age. From the title hero, B.C., an average Joe, to sarcastic Curls, to inventive Thor, to nerdy Carp, to the grouchy Wiley, to ambitious Peter, to the Fat Naggy One and the Cute Skinny One, to John the turtle, to Grog the ice man, to the Apteryx ("a wingless bird with hairy feathers"), to the ants (for domestic humor), and on and on, Hart made a great stage for his jokes and gibes. The books above are collected strips from the late sixties/early seventies, but a lot of the gags, timely then, would still work now. (As always, forgive the poor scans of old books.)

The Key Law of Comic Strips says at most a strip can remain fresh and funny for twenty years. Then it begins to fade, and attempts to revive it are poor. It can run out the string for a long time, but it can only show glimpses of its old genius. I fear that's what happened with B.C., although the strip famously underwent a large change when its creator himself underwent a large change.

When I was a young, sprightly lad, looking for work in the big city, I had a nice chat with an fellow at an employment agency who, like me, loved comic strips and once dreamed of creating one himself. He had even been to some of the conventions of comic art and seen some of his heroes, including Johnny Hart. "He was hilarious," he told me; "hammered the whole time."

B.C. strips of this era in my books dealt a lot with adult themes of the time; social satire, boozing, chasing women, etc., such as:

But in the eighties Johnny Hart had a religious awakening, and if he truly did have a drinking problem was able to put it behind him. He also put a Christian bent on the strip. Here's one of his later works:

A friend of mine, also a fan of comic art, would go bananas over these strips. "It's supposed to be B.C.! 'Before Christ'! How can characters be talking about Christ in caveman days?"

And yet, although the strips could still be funny and quite moving (and though Hart denied it, could be prickly, like the famous post-9/11 example), it still ran into the Key Law. He was a dedicated worker, did all the gags himself, productive enough to do The Wizard of Id concurrently, but coming up with a new strip every single day is brutal. I like doing cartoons occasionally on this blog, but I don't get ideas I like every day, or even ideas I sorta like. A daily strip is tough. You can do the funniest joke of your life, and the next day it's gone forever, unless someone collects it in a book like the ones above. Next gag, please! Deadlines don't wait!

But no one can ever deny that Hart was a genius of the form, as in the famous "clams got legs" series:

It became a running joke in the strip, probably to this day:

I'm glad that clams don't actually got legs; if 2020 has taught us anything, it's that yesterday's joke is today's horrific menace. I would hate to face an invasion of angry, running clams. But it's just a joke, right?

Uuuhhhhh.....

Fred's Book Club: Good Things Come in Trees.

Welcome back to the Humpback Writers, the book club that takes place on a Wednesday even if that day is a major civil and religious holiday. Nothing stops us, not even Christmas!

But then again, Christmas is strongly involved with today's book. It's another child's picture book, the second since we started this feature last summer. And to me, it is a classic.

The Tale of Three Trees, as retold by Christian writer Angela Elwell Hunt, was first published in 1989 by Lion Publishing of Illinois. I believe it is still in print. Hunt says that the author of this tale is unknown; I'd never heard it before I read this book, and a brief look around the Internet tends to take me back to this book. I did see another version of it on the Bible.org site, not as well written and without Tim Jonke's terrific illustrations.

So is it a real folktale, or just something concocted in modern days? Beats me. I'm no folklorist. But it's a great Christian fable.

In brief, this is the story of three trees that have big dreams. One is dazzled by the beauty of the stars, and wants to be a great treasure chest; one wants to be a mighty sailing ship and cross the world on the business of kings; one wants to remain where he is and grow so tall that people look up at him and think of heaven.

Well, things don't usually work out the way we hope.

All three trees are cut down. The first tree goes to a carpenter's shop, but instead of being used to make a treasure chest, he is made into a hay box for a stable. The indignity!

But then (and pardon me for the bad stitch on the spread):

You can probably guess how things turn out for the other trees.

Hunt does a lovely job with the story, and Jonke's rich and evocative illustrations pair perfectly with it. I'd recommend it to anyone, but especially families with children getting a Christian education; they can learn about their faith, but they can also learn lessons that are so seldom seen in children's books these days, like hope and humility.

The book touches on a number of things -- rudiments of the life of Jesus, but also dreams being fulfilled when we least expect it and not in the way we'd hoped. I once knew a priest who worked in a college; he liked to tell the kids that we head on out with our Plan A (like Jesus's triumphant entry into Jerusalem) and we wind up running into Plan B (the Crucifixion) but we can be amazed by the way things turn out with Plan C (the Resurrection). Plans A and B are what men work, but Plan C is God's work.

Any Christian knows stories like that, of people with a plan for life that comes to nothing until after they fail, and then it's nothing like what they expect. This is seen in many of the great saints, like the bloodthirsty soldier and duelist, Íñigo, injured by a cannonball, converted to a real faith, and transforming Europe as St. Ignatius of Loyola. My old buddy G.K. Chesterton wrote about the similar transformation of St. Francis of Assisi, a spoiled, lavish youth, fanboy of troubadours and jongleurs, who went off to become an adventurous hero and wound up nearly dying in captivity.

Francis, at the time or somewhere about the time when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern, underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind; which was really like the reversal of a complete somersault, in that by coming full circle it came back, or apparently came back, to the same normal posture. It is necessary to use the grotesque simile of an acrobatic antic, because there is hardly any other figure that will make the fact clear. But in the inward sense it was a profound spiritual revolution. The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again; in that sense he was almost as different as if he were dead, as if he were a ghost or a blessed spirit. And the effects of this on his attitude towards the actual world were really as extravagant as any parallel can make them. He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands. 

It's not that much of a stretch to see the same happening -- thwarted plans leading to miraculous lives -- in so many unknown "little S" saints around us, or even, fictionally, in a little tree. Things fall apart; God can put them together. That's what He came here to do.

Thanks for reading, and I wish you a most happy Christmas on this Christmas Day.

Marriage is a great institution.

But who wants to be in an institution?

I see a lot of jewelry ads this time of year where guys are giving big diamond engagement rings to girls in Christmas settings. I actually know a couple that got engaged on a carriage ride at Christmas. You'd think Christmas was by nature a romantic time of year, but it really isn't -- the Holy Family modeled perfect love, but not romance. However, folk songs (yick) demonstrate that Christmas has long had a "true love gave to me" feel to it, so I suppose there's something to it. 

Then again, people get a lot of cars in Christmas commercials too, and I've never gotten one. 

But we must assume that many people in relationships are considering popping the big one this time of year, so we ought to add a word of advice here, dusted off from my old defunct blog:

As that profound religious thinker, The Impressive Clergyman, once said, “Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togedder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wiffin a dweam. And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva. So tweasure your wuv.”

It’s a sad fact that there is a lot of divorce about today. Then again, maybe some people don’t think of it as a sad fact. Maybe they think in olden times when few people were divorced that most people were stuck with other miserable people, but now everyone can be free to dump the other person and they can each go and try again elsewhere, and that it’s a good thing all around. Hooray!

But divorce is not exactly a new thing. As far back as 1947, in the novel Full Moon, P.G. Wodehouse describes his young American millionaire, Tipton Plimsoll, as "The son of parents who after marrying each other had almost immediately started marrying other people with a perseverance worthy of a better cause," and that "his had been one of those childhoods where the faintly bewildered offspring finds himself passed from hand to hand like a medicine ball." Back then the American wealthy were known for divorcing---see also 1939’s The Women by Clare Boothe Luce---while the peons, aware that their reputation as well as their financial security was at stake, stayed together. Now it’s the other way around, ironically.

I am a strong believer in the institution of marriage. Of course, mine is intact because I married a saint. Still, for at least one of us, there was a steep learning curve when we first got married. Maybe more like a learning wall. Sorry, honey. Anyway, marriage is the building block of society; people running around permanently unattached do not make a society, they make anarchy. Two problems with anarchy: It’s only fun until it actually happens; it may be the shortest-lived of any kind of society, because some tyrant will come along and impose order with the promise of security. Only the strong like anarchy because they intend to do away with it.

Divorce is nothing short of disaster to the one who still wants to stay in the marriage while the other does not. A number of my friends have gone through that and my heart goes out to them. I’ve also known folks who said their marriage had fallen or was falling apart, but I think that's a misnomer. Barring tragic circumstances, marriages do not just fall apart. Someone is dismantling them. Or they never existed in the first place.

That’s why we Catholics insist on Pre-Cana, the preparation for marriage. No one ever knows entirely what they’re getting in for with marriage, but you had better have some awareness and be warned to build that house out of bricks. Even lapsed Catholics have a lower rate of divorce than the norm, but they have a considerably higher rate of divorce than those who attend Mass faithfully. And no matter whether divorce is a needful or frivolous thing, there's nothing happy about it.

So don't go popping the question because Zales or Kay make it look like fun. Go into marriage with your eyes open and your TV off, kid. 

And remember, always tweasure your wuv. Wuv, after all, makes the world go ’wound.

Perspective.

Easter reminder.

Today is Palm Sunday, which celebrates -- if that's the word I want -- the Passion and death of Jesus. It's one of the longest Masses of the year for Catholics, and the only one that requires audience participation in the Gospel.

Really -- and we get some of the worst dialogue. If you're not familiar with the format, the reading is divided among the narrator (usually a deacon or priest), Jesus (a priest), a speaker (a lector), and chorus (the congregation). The lector will read the words spoken by individuals like Judas, Pilate, Peter, and Caiaphas, and we all do the bloody-minded mob.

"We want Barabbas! We are schmucks!"

Anytime an idiot is speaking, it's us.

It's always interesting when the congregation is called on to do something. American Catholics generally shy at getting involved in our own services, unlike other Christians and Catholics in other countries. We're terrible about the group singing. We avoid the front pews as if the father is going to snag a volunteer for his sawing-a-congregant-in-half trick. In our parish we once had a visiting priest from the Philippines who always seemed to be wondering what he had to do to get a reaction out of these people, for Pete's sake.

But everyone seems to get into the spirit of the Palm Sunday readings, even though we feel the shame of participating in the Crucifixion. We know that we are not mouthing the words of blinkered Jerusalemites; we are speaking for all of us, who would not have fought to save the life of this blasphemer, even if we believed he was who he said he was. He'll get out of this on his own if he's that great -- there's a lot of that in the Gospel. I don't want to piss off Herod. I don't want to piss off the Sanhedrin. I really don't want to piss off the Romans. Besides, he probably is a blasphemer, lawbreaker, troublemaker. He's offended everybody, hasn't he? Hey, if he's so great how'd they manage to arrest him?

Church doctrine teaches that we're all guilty; many of us just don't know it. Palm Sunday is our reminder.

Lousy Lent.

I'm not gonna lie: So far Lent has sucked.

I tend to see Lent as a spiritual journey, and indeed it is often described that way in homily and song. But I never got off on a good foot this year. I had no directions, no ideas, no inspiration. Definitely no road map.

This actually would have been an improvement.

I feel like that first step dropped me into the Slough of Despond, and there I wallow.

Oh, sure, I had some plans, the usual giving up of this and intending to do that. Usually I make it a point to do some appropriate reading in Lent as well as Advent -- the Gospels, Acts, the Epistles, some of the more crucial prophets, books about the faith, as well as books by great Christian authors like Lewis and Belloc, have all been in my reading list at these times of year. This year it's been a failure. I decided to read G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man, which I probably last read close to twenty years ago. I got a couple of chapters in and I got stuck. It's not Chesterton's writing, which I love, or his arguments or anything else. I just would appear to be having some kind of revolt against books.

You probably know about these novels I've written; you may know that the bulk of my freelance work comes from editing books. I've been devoted to the written word since childhood. Now I want to start my own little book burning in the backyard. (With all my books it would rival the Texas A&M Aggie bonfire.)

It's true; the last book I finished with no one paying me to do it was John Delaney's A Woman Clothed with the Sun, my Advent reading. It's not a fun read. Yet somehow a handful of months ago I was able to get through that, and now I can't make myself read a book I love.

I fear I may be dealing with a case of depression. I've been diagnosed with major depression in the past, and submitted to counseling and medication for a while, but it has not reared up at me in a few years. Back then I was still able to read, although unable to write. Maybe because I was working in magazines at the time rather than books.

Even worse, I've come to a place where I can no longer trust my hunches or instincts at all. "Go with your gut" is pretty good advice -- but no longer for me. Nowadays if I have a strong conviction or inspiration, I guarantee you I will be proved wrong. If there is a bundle of primordial nerves that give us good direction when our higher brains fail, or if there is a guardian angel seeking to lead each of us to good decision and good action, I'm telling you I cannot get proper messages from either of them.

I'll grant you there's a lot of things going on right now, some of them frustrating or depressing, but whose life does not have challenges and even dangers? If my faith isn't helping me deal with these things, then there's something wrong with it or there's something wrong with me. Experience tells me to suspect first that the problem is sitting in my chair, typing on my laptop, right this second.

Smash Wednesday.

Here comes that old man Lent again, ruining everybody's fun.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of the season of Lent in many (not all) Christian churches. (My Eastern Orthodox pals actually started the Great Lent on Monday.) I usually look forward to Lent; I could use a chance to catch a breath, try to start off on a good spiritual footing.

Last year I wrote about forgiveness during Lent; instead of giving up chocolate or alcohol, why not give up holding a grudge? And it's still a good idea, although perhaps impossible for my more, shall we say, Irish friends. I'd often heard that Irish Alzheimer's is when you forget everything but the grudge; recently I learned of a sweet Irish lady who's suffering from dementia, who still is sore at the friend who shot her in the rear end during a paintball match a generation ago.

So: Forgiveness. Perhaps I ought to take some time each day this season to think of those who -- hard to believe, I know! -- bear some grudge against me, hate me, or just don't like me. Say a prayer for each one. Say, "God, if you would, please bless this person. Please watch over this person, please keep this person in your heart, please press that smite button that Gary Larson said you have right there on your keyboard..."

Or perhaps that's not exactly what I ought to be saying.

I can't recall a time when I faced Lent with less enthusiasm. I'm not real rah-rah on myself right now -- Christianity, when exercised properly, is an excellent means of stripping away pleasant illusions about ourselves -- and I seem to be facing a number of problems for which I have no solutions. At times like that you only want someone (or Someone) to hand you an answer; everything else is just noise.

That's where I am today. God, perhaps you could give me some direction here? Or maybe just do a little smiting on my behalf...?

Peace be with you.

Well, this makes me want to hit something.

I've seen one or two of these around, and I suppose the idea of the peace symbol as a Christmas wreath is supposed to be a reference to Jesus's title as Prince of Peace, mentioned in hymns like "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing." It comes from the book of the prophet Isaiah (9:6), rendered in the King James Version as "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."

But there's a serious problem with conflating these two things.

The peace symbol (sometimes called the Footprint of the American Chicken) has always been a hateful sign to me, as there was never a doubt in my mind that it was anything other than the flag that Americans who hated America pledged allegiance to because they knew that if they actually flew the flags of America's actual enemies they'd get a pop in the snoot. The sign originated (according to Wikipedia) as part of the British nuclear disarmament movement, which, however good or bad you may find the cause or the people behind it, must be considered a political movement.

As I've gotten older I have come to respect the opinions of genuine pacifists, people who would not punch someone even to defend themselves, but I think they are as foolish as anarchists, in that they know painfully little about human nature. If you want to say that you have declared peace with the world and will not fight anyone, great. But most Christian denominations do not expect you to roll over and take it in the face of violent threats. Nor, do I expect, do most people who hang out peace signs. (Generally these days I take the peace symbol as a form of virtue signaling anyway.)

In John 14 (KJV again), Jesus tells his disciples, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." That is very different from saying they will have peaceful lives, and for the disciples, then and since, they sure didn't. What Jesus is saying here has deep roots in the Old Testament, and means a good deal more than "No one's going to hurt you" (which it doesn't mean at all) or "Don't go getting all fisty out there" (which may be part of it but only part). Peace in the faith is itself a massive subject, a lot more than just the absence of fighting, and more information can be found about it here and here (and of particular interest, C. S. Lewis's "Why I Am Not a Pacifist" in The Weight of Glory).

But I don't want to get into all that -- Christians always pray for the literal kind of peace, as in no fighting, and like everyone else I'm glad we've never seen the need to drop atomic weapons all over the joint. These are right and good things to pray for. The point is that the peace symbol is a political symbol, and thus is the mayonnaise in the punch bowl of Christmas. I think the peace-wreath people are not happy to see American flag-based Christmas decorations, and for the same reason.

The fact is, Christians believe or ought to believe that politics will not save us; we're told to pray "Thy will be done," rather than "Let the 2017 Omnibus Spending Consolidated Appropriations Bill Pass Intact." As Mark 12:17 tells us, "And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

Gaudete Sunday.

Here it is, Gaudete Sunday, the Third Sunday of Advent. This is the one for which priests of the Catholic church do not wear the purple vestments typical of the Advent season, but rather rose-colored vestments (or, as one young priest at our parish once said, "It's not pink! It's rose! Manly rose!"). Rose vestments, where they are used, are worn on Gaudete Sunday in Advent and Laetare Sunday in Lent, a marker that the penitential season is halfway over. 

Yes, Advent is a season of penitence and preparation. So put down that cookie and go to Confession! But wait---"Gaudete" means rejoice. So eat the cookie and go to Confession tomorrow.

I first became aware of Gaudete Sunday when I was essentially a drunken heathen, and Advent was just a time for drunken heathenocity to me. I'd picked up Steeleye Span's 1972 album Below the Salt, which featured the UK folkster's version of the 16th century carol "Gaudete." Steeleye Span reached number 14 on the UK singles chart, the first top-50 pop hit in Latin.

New Advent's Catholic Encyclopedia's considerable essay on Gaudete Sunday says: "The joy of expectation is emphasized by the constant Alleluias, which occur in both Office and Mass throughout the entire season. In the Mass, the Introit 'Gaudete in Domino semper' strikes the same note, and gives its name to the day. The Epistle again incites us to rejoicing, and bids us prepare to meet the coming Saviour with prayers and supplication and thanksgiving, whilst the Gospel, the words of St. John Baptist, warns us that the Lamb of God is even now in our midst, though we appear to know Him not. The spirit of the Office and Liturgy all through Advent is one of expectation and preparation for the Christmas feast as well as for the second coming of Christ, and the penitential exercises suitable to that spirit are thus on Gaudete Sunday suspended, as were, for a while in order to symbolize that joy and gladness in the Promised Redemption which should never be absent from the heart of the faithful." (Emphasis added)

So celebrate!

But bear in mind that, as the old saying goes, you may be cool, but you'll never be Santa-Claus-in-shorts-on-a-unicycle-playing-flaming-bagpipes-doing-doughnuts-in-the-snow cool.

Immaculate Conception.

There are some erroneous concepts that need to be cleared up about this day, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception:

1) It's not Jesus's conception. Even Catholics get this wrong. Jesus's miraculous conception is honored on March 25 (the Feast of the Annunciation)---reasonably, nine months before his birthday is celebrated. It gets confusing, because with Christmas coming up, we're thinking about Jesus's babyhood. The Immaculate Conception is the day Mary was conceived, as she was born without Original Sin, unlike the rest of us slobs. But why is Mary's conception celebrated so close to Christmas---especially since we don't really know what dates any of these took place?

2) I'm not sure why December 8 was chosen, actually; a reading of the history of the feast shows that it arose slowly in the monasteries, and other dates were used at times. All I can say is that it should be celebrated and 12/8 had a 1 in 365.25 chance of being precisely right -- if you presume divine guidance along the way, the chances improve immeasurably.

Interestingly, the Annunciation is not a US day of obligation, meaning Catholics are not obliged to attend Mass that day, but the Feast of the Immaculate Conception is. Why?

3) Everyone knows that Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, that George is the patron saint of England, that Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, and that Archangel Michael is the patron saint of Papua New Guinea. (What, you didn't know that?) Well, the Virgin Mary, as Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, is the patron saint of the United States of America. (A lot of Catholics don't know that, either.) (Brazil, too.) So it's not just a day of commemorating the Queen of the Saints; it's a national holiday in this country as well. Which is why, unlike other days of obligation like the Assumption of Mary into heaven (August 15) and All Saints Day (November 1), which may be abrogated in the U.S. if they fall on a Saturday or Monday -- in other words, the feast is moved to the neighboring Sunday -- the Feast of the Immaculate Conception always requires church attendance in America regardless of the day of the week upon which December 8 falls.

In the United States, and indeed throughout the Western Hemisphere, devotion to Mary is extremely strong. Her appearance at Guadelupe occured on December 9, 1531, when the church had barely arrived here. In 1859 she appeared three times in Wisconsin---really.

The church does not accept these things easily, by the way, so don't go running to the local parish because you see Mary in a potato chip. It is far easier for you or me to become a publicly proclaimed saint than to have a claim of an apparition from Mary accepted by Rome. It's true! We don't have to walk on water or chase all the snakes out of Cleveland; we just have to get murdered while preaching the Gospel. There's a lot of that about these days. Fans of Dan Brown's novels may think that people are getting killed because of the Catholic church's secrets, but in fact people are getting killed because of Christianity's very public knowledge.

On this feast day, I, as a Catholic, suggest you go visit your parish if you're Catholic, or even if you're not---what could it hurt? You might be inspired by it. You might even enjoy it.

Loathe thy neighbor.

Decided in church that I am the definition of a terrible Christian.

No, seriously; what are we always told to do? Love thy neighbor.

There was a time when the only person I would not speak to on the street was my neighbor.

Why? Well, I didn't start the fracas. I did not initiate anything, nor was I accused of initiating anything. It was begun by the crazy member of his family, and all the rest of them closed ranks rather than admit they were embarrassed by the brainless lunatic that started the mess. If I am remembered for one axiom, let it be this: The craziest person in the house holds all the others hostage.

Anyway, even had I been tempted to make a Christian effort at reconciliation, it was prevented by the box they put me in. The one thing I could not do, say that I was wrong---because you cannot lie your way to grace---was the only thing that they would have wanted to hear.

So, there we were.

And I came to thoroughly dislike my neighbor.

My wife told me that the commandment was not to "like my neighbor." I had to love him, but I didn't have to be pals with him. Would I push him in front of a bus, or out of the way of a bus?

Suppose I saw the family's house was burning down; would I call 911?

Well...

Sure, but it might go like this:

"Hello, is this 911? ... Hi. How are you today? ... Me? Oh, nothing. No, I'm fine... Yes, that's right, emergency, right. This is 911, right? Because first I dialed 912, then 921... Butterfingers, that's me... What? ... Yes, yes, sorry, yes, there is an emergency. Uh-huh. ... No, no, it's not me. We're just fine. In fact, my little puppy is doing great in obedience class! You should see him. Hey, I could send you some pic-- What's that? ... No, no, wait, please, there really is an emergency. My mind just wanders. Getting old, I swear. Now, let's see, what was it again? No, no, let me guess! It was on the tip of my tongue. Starts with S... No, no, F. Fire! That's it. Yes, there is a fire. Can you help? ... You can? Oh, isn't that nice of you. Thank you. It does my heart good to hear--- What? No, no fire with us, we're fine. In fact, our little puppy... Oh, sorry, I guess I didn't sleep too well. Not focusing today at all. I need more coffee, right? Heh heh... Fire, yes, that's right, sorry. Well, you see, it's like this. I looked out the window a little while ago? And I noticed my neighbor's house, the one next door. And it was on fire. ... Oh, yes, big gouts of flame and smoke, it's really something. ... Home? Yes, I'm home now. Oh, are they home? Well, I really don't know. I'm not their social secretary, you know. Why don't you ask them? ... Address? Yes, I suppose you'll need to know that. Well, let's just see. Heading north on the block the numbers go up, right? So they must be number--- No, wait, that's wrong. On our block the numbers go down as you head north. Northeast, really, but why be picky? So that would make them number 129. So that's their address. ... I didn't tell you the street? How silly of me. It's right here in town. Can you guess? ... You can? ... Caller ID? Well, yes, that's right! Aren't you folks clever down there at 911! Hey, guess what I'm wearing! ... No, it's my college sweatshirt, but you were close. ... Now, there's no need to take that tone with me, young lady. Let me have a look, and--- Oh, you know what? It's burned down. Never mind. But thanks so much for your time."

That's nuts. I would never do that.

The fire could have spread to my house. Wouldn't THAT be infuriating!