My WWII friend, Armand, wanted to introduce me to a new restaurant.  I worried if it might be too expensive, or maybe too common.  We had enjoyed Hispanic cuisine at a restaurant he adopted in Hicksville, Punto Rojo, with which he had been associated since its opening.

But when he told me the name of the new restaurant, I knew I couldn’t take my wife there because of the sad connotations.  The name was Monroe’s, after Marilyn.  Poor Marilyn had been the plaything of various men, none of whom wished her harm, but they had been unconscious of her real welfare.  From their standpoint, there was too much me, me.

There was no Son of Man to save her.  She could have used a man like that.

My wife, who corrected me when I said writing thirteen books was the greatest accomplishment of my life, said, “No, raising three boys was your greatest accomplishment.”  I might have added, “Teaching forty-one years was a contribution, too.”

A new book (Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe, by Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson), says that quantum physics shows us we leave our imprint on the environment, an imprint that can never be erased from the universe, which shows the everlasting quality of our decisions.  I decided it was a good thing I wanted to be a good guy.

Raising three boys was perhaps the second most exciting part of my life.  The first was teaching.  But I remember that on the 4^th of July they, one year, found diversion in taking ordinary fire crackers, slicing them open with a razor blade, and making bigger fire crackers, what they called M-4s.

I was kept ignorant of these goings-on, but one day, as I was going into our basement to my work bench, I met Paul coming up in a hurry.  I noticed a piece of pipe in his hand, and curious about his doings these last few days, I questioned him on it.

Now I was always honest with my boys, and they in turn were always honest with me.  He said he was making a bigger firecracker.  I looked at the piece of plumbing in his hand.  As an adult, I would call it a pipe-bomb.  I gently told him I would keep that piece of pipe.

Time is not one of the things God might be short of.  He took 3.8 BILLION years to present us with the world we have today, and unfortunately, the Cuban George Washington, a likable fellow named Castro, picked Communism as his political system of choice, and led them down a path that will take more years to undo.

The Communist government will lead them into bankruptcy and starvation, as they are protesting now at the risk of life and limb.  They need time.  They never realized they had some prosperity before the big Communist fiasco.  But the good Lord has plenty of time.  God will wait.

I don’t know if it’s the cane I carry (the doctor said I must use a cane) or the tenets of Western Civilization, but people are actually kinder, more deferential to me in my old age.  I can’t compare this to any other civilization, having been in this Judeo-Christian civilization all my life.  But I know enough about some of the others to be confident in my judgment.

I would not expect this kindness from a cannibal in New Guinea.  Though to give him credit, he may have heard about the Judeo-Christian ideas from one of the Catholic missionaries who used to work among them.

Somehow, we all get the good news.  What we do with it depends on the brain maps we formed growing up.  These maps are formed uniquely just like our fingerprints, and what we do with them is up to us.