Three hundred years is a long time. Imagine how many people move from childhood to old age and beyond seeing, experiencing the same spiritual home, essentially unchanged from generation to generation to generation. Imagine that it is beautiful, elegant, simple, and perhaps imperishably pure. That was the First Congregational Church of Pomfret, Connecticut. Which died today.

A lovely church burned to the ground today. Don’t tell me it’s just a building, a materialist artifact. It’s a sacred place. Countless people were baptized, married, and memorialized upon their deaths there. They went there in hard times to renew hope, in good times to express thanks and humility. It was a place whose shape and legacy served to make them live up to the best in themselves. Its purpose was inspiration.

Its loss is not a brick and mortar accounting transaction. It’s a death in the family. A death for our own Lake, who has enlivened and informed this and the previous site for years. We are all in mourning tonight.

What music is appropriate? Later, I know, my wife will help me, but she is not here, so this is all I can think of:

I’m Personally, Elementally, Absolutely Certain He Meant: Go For it!

Apparently, we’re all supposed to tiptoe around this subject. Witness what I’ll call…

Exhibit I.

But I continue to think there’s a phase transition out there, one straw, one grain of sand, one stunningly shameless lie too many. For example, here’s a candidate I’ll call…

Exhibit II.

How brazen can it get? He’s just laughing at us now.

“Do I dare, and do I dare…?” — T.S. Eliot

*Oh, yeah. Look up the meaning of the name.

P.S. FAIR WARNING. Don’t get carried away.

If you follow the clues above, you could come to believe you’re on the trail of Serendicity. It’s more like insanity, or quantum pattern, which is indistinguishable from insanity. It’s a rabbit hole you should NOT dive into.

Beware the Rabbit Hole.

Most of you don’t know the difference between coincidence and conspiracy, destiny and determinism, or prophecy and paranoia. Don’t go there.

Don’t read anything into the first initial of this poem‘s title character. Or the content of the poem. Probably the kid book writer stole it from here for Freudian reasons of his own.

Don’t track down the etymology of the big fruit up top. Doesn’t matter that the noun is Persian and the verb means betrayal.

Don’t follow the Jacob root to Esau and Hussein. There is no link. If you read past the first full paragraph, you need professional help.

Consider instead that there’s something we could call Pseudo-Serendicity. I’m working on a definition of it. In the meantime, don’t move. Work on the London Times crossword instead.

Sydeffexin. We can make life better. We treat nothing, so you can enjoy all the side effects at no risk.

You’ve seen the ads for years. Hey, do your knees hurt? Wuddafuxxin can change your life. Ask your doctor. What are you taking for your Tunnel Vision Disease? Ask your physician about Seewhydexxicin. Is your skin getting worse even after all these years? Has your doctor told you about Pincperfexxscinitol? Are you still depressed after years of therapy? Maybe you should ask about Rilyrilychillinexxinacin? Do you suffer from Beady Eye Syndrome? Try the breakthrough medication Lizycine. [Picture of the good life to follow.]

Erik Satie music keeps playing. Cue butterflies and hummingbirds. “Yes, life can be great! (Quick sotte voce) Possible side effects include rashes, heartburn, acne, diarrhea, constipation, urinary incontinence, gynecomastia in men, hairy backs in women, instantaneous blindness, sudden heart explosions, total shutdown of the immune system, irresistible suicidal impulses, bleeding from every orifice, complete paralysis, gangrene, psychosis-inducing brain tumors, noxiously smelly feet, public tooth loss, and spontaneous human combustion. Do not suspend taking this medication without consulting your physician, which could lead to spree killing in your children's bedroom. Do not take if you’re a male who wants another erection or if you’re a woman of child-bearing years, post-child-bearing years, pregnant, or trans-gender pre-female. Otherwise, Sideffexxin is perfect for you. Unless you’re a smoker or have ever sprained your knee. Consult your physician for best results.”

Okay. As an annihilation of health care quality in the name of contractual health care coverage, ObamaCare is all side effects and no care. Joke. Not a very good one, I concede, unless you’re into gallows humor. Sorry.

But the rest of this is not. The drugs of modern medicine are all about unintended consequences. Here’s an article that has somewhat more authority than my goof on the subject.

Today I’m thinking about two things. How the rest of us survive in the age of ObamaCare and what possible unintended good consequences there might be.

As it happens, there are a couple of workarounds. One for families who have lost their individual or employer insurance. And one for businesses who are trying to resist the extortion of the federal death panel ObamaCare indubitably is without flinging employees into the abyss.

If you’re a person or a family, read this essay about the best way to opt out of ObamaCare.

It’s not insurance per se, but it’s insurance for real, the way close-knit communities like the Mennonites do it. The ObamaCare law allows it. Legal, cheaper, and beyond the reach of the IRS.

If you’re a business, read this, which is about self-insurance, also legal and exempt from ObamaCare, and also cheaper than the federal monstrosity.

Both of these are exemptions the heartless Republicans managed to sneak into the law. Ha.

But there’s a larger point than workarounds. One driven home to me by own experience and a new book called A Physician’s Apology.

The doctor author’s point is that we get too many drugs prescribed to us and we take too many of them without pushing back. He says there are 700,000 emergency room visits a year caused by side effects of prescription drugs. As many as 100,000 deaths might be prescription mistakes of one kind or another.

Which got me thinking, in my contrarian way, that higher premiums, deductibles, and co-pays might work counter to Obama’s purpose. Maybe, just possibly, people will — however improbably and counter-intuitively — discover that they don’t need all the supposed health care they have been receiving. Maybe they’ll stop calling the doctor for every ache and pain and blue mood. Maybe they’ll rediscover that people with abundant food and water are more inclined to be healthy than sick, regardless of all the sick-making propaganda that’s spewed through the media.

I know I was shocked to learn that if and when I’m forced into ObamaCare I’ll be penalized by up to triple premiums because I smoke. Okay. On the other hand, it’s hardly true that I have been a burden on the health care system up to now. In the last 30 years I have been to a medical doctor exactly twice. Once because I had a coldy-flu type thing when I had an important business trip to make by plane (he advised me, icily, not to smoke), and once when I put my hand through a window in a colonial house (c. 1757) with reluctant sashes. I’d bled for hours on an antique couch and needed stitches to clear my name. That’s it.

Things I don’t remember. Like lots of medical check ups as a kid. We only went when we got sick or fell out of a tree, or for occasional shots. We got our vaccinations from Dr. Ware’s sadistic wife. (He was nice; he stitched my head when I fell on the radiator after I jumped on the bed when I’d been told not to. He thought it was funny.) I don’t remember Boppa, who died at 82 with a 17 year old hole in his back, taking lots of pills, and I spent a lot of time with him. As I recall, we both in those days took our aspirin one at a time with a cracker afterwards. I don’t remember much pill-taking by my mother’s parents, who both lived past 90, although my mother did die at just 80 some years after a close call with a too powerful blood pressure pill that nearly exterminated her electrolytes over a decade or so. She seemed frailer after that.

Are you starting to catch my drift? My own approach has always been to stay as far away from doctors, their pills and their procedures, as I can. I’m always befuddled by the statistics relating how many times a year “healthy Americans” visit their doctor. On their side is the fact that I’ve probably had pneumonia twice in the last ten years without receiving antibiotics. There was a moment or two in there when I thought I might die. But I figured I wouldn’t, just like I never have yet. Once they get you into hospital, under medication, obeying their rules, fearing their check ups, you’re done anyway.

And I don’t believe their pronouncements, their certainties, their truths. I’ll close with one provocative example. How many women have been told that rising breast cancer rates are inexplicable, unless they’re the fault of chemicals, pollution, or some other act of man?

Take a look at this. Granted, it’s not definitive. But maybe longevity and immunity are more about trying to do the best you can rather than spending x-number of hours on treadmills and converting to the vegan faith?

I’m no fanatic on the subject of health. All I can boast for myself is that I’m not overweight. But I resent the idea that the government owns my body. It’s MY vehicle to do with as I see fit. If it expires, used up, tomorrow, it has still taken me far enough. It was never my dream to be a fossil in a Hoveround, revolving around a liege lord who calls himself president.

So, still, today, and perhaps for a few months to come, I can say defiantly to my totalitarian master, “This is a bag of bones you have not yet acquired. I have no prescriptions, no illusions about what a phony you are, and no reason to hide from your vain attempt to possess my body. You’ll never get there.”

Problem is, so many of you have so many years ahead of you to proclaim the same defiance. Can you do it?

The me I’m supposed to be at my age. Make sure you don’t wind up this way either. It’s the worst side effect of all. Shammadamma.

She talks about verbal abuse of women. Anyone recall her defending Palin last week?

I know how much trouble this is going to get me into. So I’m still thinking about it, weighing my words.

But the premise I’m toying with is that women will be the end of the United States and western civilization.

I’ll give you one big thing to think about. Many civilizations, dating back thousands of years, have established conditions that could keep women safe from rape and other kinds of violence caused by superior male strength, including serving in combat. (Sexist barbarians, I know.) But none of them put women in charge until the 20th century. Yes, I know Elizabeth I, Tzu Hsi, Golda Meir, and Margaret Thatcher were leaders of nations. They were the exceptions. There are always exceptions, or I wouldn’t be married at this point in my dotage.

Why didn’t they want women in charge?

Amazing to me that Dee Dee Myers, former press secretary to President Clinton, could write a book arguing that women should be in charge of everything now. Why? Because women ARE in charge of everything now and everything sucks. (Don’t even try to tell me Obama’s in charge because Michelle would set you right in a second.) Kathleen Sebelius is in charge of ObamaCare, and she can’t begin to figure out what her responsibility might be. Janet Napolitano is in charge of Homeland Security, and she has no idea what to say about the NSA rampaging through our private communications. Who was in charge at the IRS when persons and groups were targeted because of their allegiance to the Constitution? Her name was Lois Lerner. Who was Secretary of State when the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was attacked for nine hours and our foreign service personnel were slaughtered with no attempt to rescue them? Hillary Clinton. Who was the Speaker of the House when the ObamaCare nightmare got jammed through congress on purely technical manipulation of the rules? Nancy Pelosi. Who was the presidential adviser who undertook the secret negotiations that will now give Iran nuclear weapons? Valerie Jarrett. Or VaJ as her intimates call her.

And who, besides me, in the entire MSM/Internet universe has put this list before you in these terms? No one. Because men have become women too.

Why do they talk about a nanny state? Because women want to be in charge of everything, down to the shirts and underpants you wear. They know better because they know better and don’t stop talking long enough to learn different. The nonstop all-knowing mouth is what’s most important. Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t need boobs or a uterus to be everybody’s mommy. He has a virtual ‘knitting vagina,’ which spins the myth of fem superiority into nooses designed to hang everyone.

Women are somehow kinder, fairer, smarter, wiser, more cooperative, more competent? Give me a break. For the most part, they’re the same rigid, backbiting, dangerous, fanatically emotional time bombs they always were. Why nobody was ever dumb enough to put them in charge. Until we did.

But think…

Have women’s lives really improved since they got the vote in 1920? More importantly, have the lives of our citizenry as a whole improved since women got the vote? Maybe there’s more money because of all those working moms, but even the leftists don’t believe more money equals happiness. (Only power matters to them.) There are more abortions, more divorces, more broken homes, more struggling single mothers, more bastard, fatherless children who fall into lives of drugs, crime, and failure. And more middle class strippers, lap dancers, hookers, Craigslist escorts, and amateur webcam porn performers than our grandparents could ever have imagined. Wouldn’t the suffragettes be proud?

Okay. I’ll leave you to think about it on your own. I’ll also leave you to think about the moral cesspool we’ve plummeted into since the day almost a hundred years ago when women got the vote. The idea that women are somehow more moral is also a joke. Men commit the most violent crime? Imagine a million babies a year flushed down toilets… And on top of it, they want all of us to pay for it and admire them for their twerking.

Progressives call this progress. Don’t they?

Back at you later.

Raebert’s done in.

It was a fine day here but tiring. Great food, family members who actually get along with one another, and two kids who are smart, funny, and affectionate. Go figure.

Tougher for Raebert, who is frightened by children. A good moment for a grandson, though, who was unnerved by Raebert’s size and learned that petting the big guy soothed both of them.

Did I mention that Lady Laird put on a feast with all the trimmings? I helped. You should have seen me with my giant list in the supermarket. One guy who was stacking shelves helped me find things four times. Old ladies helped me find the rest. Only one was disapproving. She thought I should have known that chocolate chips were in the baking aisle, not the candy section.

So we were both tired come the weekend. Why I can justify the amount of football and streaming shows we watched from Turkey Day on.

Highlights. The Auburn Miracle. Instantly into legend, of course, as the greatest college football game ever played. Also, probably the greatest ending of an Ohio State-Michigan game ever. (My mother and both her parents were Ohio State alums. You don’t ever get over that affiliation.) Lady Laird’s Ravens beat the Steelers, and my Eagles survived another heart attack comeback by a team they dominated utterly for three quarters. She also had the last laugh over me with respect to Peyton Manning. I’ve been saying he’s done and should retire, which I got really final about when I witnessed his second interception, a wobbly mess of a pass at a particularly inopportune time. I won’t say she chortled when the Broncos subsequently scored 28 unanswered points. But she did.

What else? We watched Red2. Hilarious from beginning to end and better than the movie it was a sequel to, whatever critics say. Pure entertainment, witty and ferociously paced. We also stumbled on Wallander — no, not the weepy BBC Kenneth Branagh slop, but the Swedish version, which is now on Netflix and splendid. There are 13 episodes and three or so in, they’re neither repetitive nor unintelligent.

It was also her birthday yesterday. Which we celebrated very very quietly, with the promise of more to come. I’m taking steps. I guarantee it.

And Raebert will be better, by and by.