Good news from
href="http://trancejen.diaryland.com/030319_72.html">TranceJen, proving that
good things do sometimes happen even to those who have given up expecting
them.
The Online Books page now links to Dorothy L. Sayers' article
The Lost Tools of
Learning
Go,
href="http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/2003_03.html#002462">New
Mexico!
Wishing much joy and love to
href="http://batten.diaryland.com/030320_78.html">Jenn, about to embark on the
adventure of marriage. I firmly believe all the best marriages are adventures,
ones in which you get to share new experiences with the best of all traveling
companions.
Egret's twins
are progressing nicely. One's definitely a boy; they're not sure about the other.
We're looking forward to seeing them (Egret and T2, not the babies yet!) next
month
The news about (Trance)Jen's diagnosis and (Batten) Jenn's
upcoming wedding, about new and much-wanted babies and scholarship and courageous
patriotism remind me that even at a time of global trouble there is always local
good. A wise woman on one of my lists just shared this story: "A wonderful man I
used to teach with years ago, he is about 80 now, was a German slave laborer
during WWII. He was a fairly young man at that time. He is Lithuanian and had been
captured there. One reason he thinks his life was "spared" is because he was
fluent in English, French and German and Russian as well as Lithuanian. He was
sent to in a camp in southern Germany, where he was starving, filthy, and
considering suicide. He happened to see an edilweiss (and that I don't know how to
spell!) blooming. He thought if that beautiful little flower could still bloom in
all that horror, he could hang on. He was liberated just weeks
later."
When I look at stories like the ones linked above, I feel
somewhat like that man looking at an edelweiss blooming amid the horrors of a
slave camp. There is no question but that this war could lead to worldwide horror,
but (maybe as a result of reading years of F & SF) I believe that the future is
not a predestined path, but a crossroads, a choice of paths each of which will
brach still further. And the choices are the crossroads are determined by our
decisions. Each choice shuts off some paths and opens others. I fear it's possible
to make enough bad choices that all the paths left are dire, but I still believe
that we're not there yet, that the choices made by a few, whether necessary and
right or not, have not doomed all of us to a terrible single path. Not while
there's still love, hope, truth, and courage abroad. In a radio essay about that
silly fish story, Andre Koudrescu (sp?) reminded me of the old Jewish fable that
the world will continue to be preserved as long as there are 36 truly righteous
men alive at all times. (God would never be so sexist, surely; women must be
counted as well.) There are more than five billion of us now; I won't believe that
there aren't more righteous souls than that -- and that the vast majority of those
billions aren't righteous at least some of the time. Particularly while we still
can find love, stubborn hope, truth and courage for inspiration among us.