The Utopia of Free Things

Well now our generous, gracious, munificent president has decided that community colleges should be free. Why, I wonder, does he stop there? Why not all colleges? I've always had an inkling to take classes at say, Yale, or Dartmouth, or perhaps abroad at Oxford or Cambridge or even the Puritan Harvard but tuition was a stopper. Back in the day the odd notion was that one saved up for what one wanted whether it be a knapsack, a plattoon of plastic soldiers, or college.  How ludicrous it seems now when government with their unlimited finances can make any fantasy real! How foolish were we and our ancestors saving up a meager allowance! (By the by I wonder when minimum wage legislation will come to the aid of a kid's allowance---quite overdue don't you think?). Certainly today it does seem awfully quaint and antiquated this idea of savings and spending one's own money when our very generous government is opening up the treasury for so many things. I am quite relieved (as no doubt nearly all citizens of FREEdom must be) to be under an administration that seeks to eliminate the foolish capitalist concept of delaying gratification by having anything like a savings account or buying anything out of one's own checkbook. I must say it is about time we did have free stuff---and learning, free learning should be universally adopted and it looks, in my limited prophetical perspective, that it won't be long before EVERYTHING will be free. Think of it! Imagine for instance being able to go into WHOLE FOODS without wallet or purse and simply lift whatever beckons the palate right off the organic cage-free shelf, or stopping at a dealership and simply removing the free keys to a free ignition of a free Lexus without in the least hesitation. Or being able to simply head out to the luxurious lifestyle that awaits one in say, Santa Barbara, and asking for the house-keys of a complex complete with free furniture, freezer and fridge full of the latest genetically modified foods. But wait, the Utopia of Free Things does not end there: imagine how freeing it must be to be able to stop at the local Jeweler's with a desire for diamonds and having such a desire completely satisfied simply by way of the taxpayer's tab. Well, heaven couldn't be better than such a Utopia as that!

Of course we will be in debt (I only mean this in a figurative, purely figurative sense) to the present Government Guardians---certainly we must allow that they are so much more enlightened than previous presidents and legislatures who had the queer concept of citizens not getting governmental gifts but paying their own way. Now this seems to be all changed. Now with such a generous Head of State at the helm who understands so well how free stuff contributes to FREEdom and the utopia he seeks to usher in.  Why wouldn't it be a crime against compassion not to redistribute all the wealth? Thus, we find the present propositions seek to eliminate in various societal spheres the obstacle of money...this is quite a relief. Though I am past taking advantage of such a generous offer of free community college I am not so naive as to not expect this to be only the beginning of ubiquitous availability of the FREE in the utopia of free things. Why under this most munificent Manager we have affordable health, the bailouts of mismanaged auto companies, free learning---to just name a few. Certainly there is hope for the cancellation of all debt, a freedom that would free (forgive the use of the word as a verb here) us to live wherever we wished, eat whatever our palates desired, and on and on. But on this latest delight:  free community college---- I'm quite thankful too to all the professors that will be donating their time and effort, and all the booksellers that will be donating all their books, all the energy companies donating the heat in the winter months and the air conditioning in the summer.  But I must add that I don't see why at this point we don't immediately extend free to other things like toll booths, and most especially make taxes free. Now there is a utopia of free things that I could find almost irresistible. 

Snow and the Prayers of Children

The reason for all the snow, and the 'snow event' (don't you love the modern way of putting things now) is not due to global warming, climate change, carbon footprints, SUV emissions, the residue of airbuses, Al Gore's forty room mansion heated to tropical temperatures, O'Bama's sending out to Chicago for brick oven pizza by jet, no. It is, according to one of the priests in his request last Sunday, from children. "Please," he began in quite a desperate beseeching tone, "have your children stop praying for snow." On my walk home over the mountainous drifts I thought about this and realized the priest had good theology backing up his request. Yes, I would concur that a child's prayers, because his heart is more able to trust, are---as we are being made more and more aware---quite efficacious, especially in New England.

The Innocence of Weather

I think I would like snowstorms and nor'easters much more if when the snow fell it was left alone for a time that one could walk on whitened streets, pass the high mounds of miraculous new mountains, snowmen appearing like new neighbors, all without the salt and sand to defeat it seems the innocence of weather. I wish for just even a day one could have the prerogative of a pristine walk down a path once a street, to be in a world of wondrous white robes and raiment so clean is must be real

Looking at the Leadish Skies

As to snow I think the hemispheres have shifted, the latitudes have inverted and now Boston and vicinity is what the arctic used to be and the arctic perhaps is becoming like Honduras. Montreal has the climate of Guatemala, and Mexico is feeling the snow and ice of the mountains of Montana. Well.... I am now looking out of the Gordon College window and seeing leadish looking skies that make me realize that perhaps the meteorologists are right in their assessment of another barrage of blizzard. Where to put the snow? I may just have to get a wheelbarrow and convey the white treasure over to the cove and dump it into the ocean. But then the dilemma of ocean levels, of possible affects on climate change, perhaps there is a carbon footprint in doing it. So the question still is where to put it? Perhaps it can be carted to someplace experiencing the inordinate warming brought about by the inconvenient truth?