The CEO of the Certina Watch Corp. at that time was my Uncle Hans, and on a business trip he stopped by on his return to Switzerland from Hawaii.  We showed him the North Shore of Long Island and he said it was one of the most beautiful places he’d seen. So we compare nicely to Switzerland and Hawaii!

To top it all off, at an English teachers’ convention, one of the teachers told me I had a North Shore accent.  This was the same teacher who not only recognized that I was from New York, but also from Long Island.  Shades of My Fair Lady! Maybe he had that ability, because my name tag gave no indication of my origin.

The universe is a magnificent creation.  But to be able to discern such minutiae as the way a person intones his a’s and o’s gives proof that there’s more to it than meets the eye or ear.  Praised be the Creator!      

Like the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America have fallen on hard times.  Human weakness manifests itself especially in the sexual field, as we know from the earliest times, the camp followers.  Then there were the harlots in times of peace, and now the pedophiles.  It doesn’t look good.

Moses did his best, and Christ summed it all up, but somehow there’s still always an interloper in the woodpile.  That is a human one.  But Christ understood all this, and hence the saying, “To err is human, but to forgive—divine.”

We struggle with our weaknesses, and sometimes nobody helps.  Some very effective solutions, like prayer, are often derided, perhaps because those who are helped by it are often unaware.  So don’t think it’s sissy to pray; the man who voluntarily took on a crucifixion prayed all the time.

The other day I asked a neighbor, “Do you believe in life after death?”  She laughed.  It probably sounded to her like the line from the TV Laugh-in,  “Do you believe in the hereafter?”  They had a great time with what he was hereafter.  I didn’t mind.  It would be lovely to meet her in a life after death.

We don’t take Christ’s words seriously enough to warrant eternal life.  Yet Christianity is what brought the Judaeo-Christian outlook into the Twenty-first Century. And somehow you can’t separate our science and Weltanschauung from it.  Our customs, our culture, are dependent on that outlook.

So I choose to believe.  Would I believe if I had gone into science the way I planned?  Christ pity me if I had done with my spiritual life what a few scientists have done with theirs.

Marijuana is addictive for some people, and woe to them, because it’ll mess up their thinking.  It can lead to a false interpretation of reality (mental illness) and therefore suicide.  It is almost laughable the way some legislators make it legal, with no idea of the harm it can do.

We are struggling to come to terms with the discoveries of the 20^th and 21^st Centuries, and not everybody understands them.  If we proceed with ignorance, we are sometimes lost, though the good Lord has ways that alleviate our consequent suffering.

Our ways are not His ways, a theme that is repeated several times in the Bible.  Fortunately He has ways out of our predicaments, and the Holy Spirit will often reveal them to us.  Keep praying.

The Swatch people, who took over my grandfather’s Certina watches, are now falling on pandemic recession.  They sold a bargain Swiss watch ($50) that kept observatory time for more than five years (you had to replace the battery and straps) and that’s all I needed as a teacher.  They are still in New York City, on W 72^nd St. and also on Broadway near Times Square.  But they closed the Roosevelt Field store on Long Island.

I don’t know how the pricey Swiss watches, like Patek-Philippe and Rolex are doing, but bargain watches like Swatch are gone.  It seems once a watch is accessible, it’s no longer prized, like an expensive watch.  And while I’m at it, what happened to Catholic education?  Once the rival of the great US public school system, Catholic schools are now undergoing closings.

Make up your mind.  Do you want a watch that gives you the essentials or do you want a watch that doubles as a piece of jewelry?  Do you want an education for the child’s adulthood or the child’s potential lifetime (eternity)?  When you get to be my age, life beyond death no longer sounds like fantasy.  You’ve seen it and heard it more than anyone else still alive.