Saturday, April 5, 2008

Good and Bad Press

The AP article about my wife being frugal is on more than 200 web sites so far. She got many emails from friends and strangers, most with congratulations, some with advice on how to be more frugal. One was nasty. It was also anonymous. The message ended with him saying the message had been routed through seven ISPs so don't try to trace it. So this coward went to all that trouble to say something ugly to a mother of four . CS Lewis said (following all the great Church leaders of the last 2000 years) that Pride is the worst sin. It is the sin that separates us from God, because a proud person is (in his or her own mind) God's equal. But in this life cowardice is the worst sin "horrible to anticipate, horrible in the act, horrible to remember" is how CS Lewis describes cowardice. And this particular coward uses the email address Jack_Ryan@lycos.com. Jack Ryan is the hero of the Tom Clancy novels. So this actual coward uses the name of a fictional hero to hide behind when threatening a woman who is a live organ donor (a kidney, 2002) and for several years a hospice volunteer. An illustrated dictionary could use a picture of this guy as the definition of a coward.

"Blindness" by Jose Saramago--terrifying look at society falling apart

  Blindness  reached out and grabbed me from the first page.  A very ordinary scene of cars waiting for a traffic introduces the horror to c...