Be Happy

It’s your choice

By Sharon Stoner

[Editor’s Note: Readers need to know where Sharon is coming from, in order to understand that her advice was hard won and does not come from a place of comfort and ease. Sharon has experienced much pain and suffering. I asked her three days ago how her hands and kidneys were doing.

Thirst Satyrday for Eros: Love in a cold climate

Original letterpress print for a Nancy Mitford novel

Does Hell give off or absorb heat?

By Anonymous

Edited by Morris Dean

[The following is alleged to be an actual question given on a University of Arizona chemistry midterm, and an actual answer turned in by a student. It didn't start out to have anything at all to do with Eros, unless by a circuitous route of associations having to do with love...death...heaven...hell.]

For Bonus Points: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

The sadness of glad

I was surprised and more than simply glad to receive this morning an email from a close relative nearly my age, for I don't receive too many commendations. The email said:

I completely agree with what I have read so far [on your blog] and find your stuff delightful and inspiring. Don't tell my..., who would be sure to say I'm going to go to Hell. I...have been a liberal Democrat for many years. So glad I have found you! [altered to try to keep my relative's...from finding out]

    But it's sad to think that the writer and I were both in our thirties the last time we saw each other and haven't been in touch for more years than either of us has left on this green Earth. (And sad to think there are people who believe that reading my blog is sufficient reason for someone to go to Hell. Or is it being a liberal Democrat?)

My wife and I (and Siegfried) had to go over to Chapel Hill later in the morning. I was glad that Carolina's home game wouldn't start until evening. The streets of the town were still passable. Sadly, to quote a headline in the sports section of a local newspaper this morning, "It's that time of the year again." I.e., football. Intercollegiate athletics. Caravans of flag-fluttering automobiles on weekends. In fact, we saw a car with a little dark blue flag on either side on the interstate—Duke? At least it was headed for Durham and not Chapel Hill.

On the drive over, my wife told me about Cameron Todd Willingham. We're glad to know that he was an honorable man. He said he wouldn't plead guilty to avoid the death sentence because he was innocent of the fire that burned down his house in Corsicana, Texas on December 23, 1991¹ and killed his three young children. So the great State of Texas executed him.
    Sadly, they killed an innocent man. From an August 26 Associated Press account of the inquiry that exonerated Willingham:

Willingham's stepmother, Eugenia Willingham, called the [fire investigation] report another step in the "long, drawn-out process" of clearing his name.
    "He lived 12 years on death row," she said. "He went through hell, I'm telling you. It was probably worse than hell."
    She said her husband died in 2005, the year after his son's execution, of prostate cancer and "a broken heart."

_______________

1. The fatal fire occurred five days before the murder at the CBS Lounge in Phoenix for which Ray Krone was wrongfully convicted and spent three years on death row before being wrongfully convicted a second time and sentenced to "life" in Arizona prisons.

Ladies and gentlemen

N'est pas un interlude

In David Lodge's novel about Henry James (Author, Author!), the author recounts an anecdote told by James's friend George Du Maurier:

It was a fine but very cold Sunday just before Christmas, and Henry had made the effort to walk up to Hampstead and take Du Maurier for his constitutional on the Heath, according to custom. They were alone, apart from the terrier Don, who nosed about on the frost-hardened ground looking frustrated at the scarcity of interesting smells. It was too cold to sit on their favorite bench—cold enough for people to be skating on the ponds. Watching them, Du Maurier recalled an occasion long ago when a dog fell through the ice on the Whitestone Pond and got into difficulties, and he had plunged into the icy water to rescue the creature. "The grateful owner tried to tip me half-a-crown, upon which I'm afraid I was rather short with him. 'I beg your pardon,' he said, 'I didn't realize you were a gentleman.'" [pp. 143-144]

Men and women—gentlemen and ladies in their God-blessed freedom—should not require the promise of heaven (or the hope of avoiding hell) to do what is right.