Thank you, PA Cat. You remind us again of the miraculous nature of this place, where we can share thoughts and mull over ideas that force us repeatedly to re-examine fundamental assumptions.

I’m just finishing several years of full time teaching at a faith-based university. As my contract is not being renewed, I’m reflecting on both the circumstances that had made me ready to accept the appointment, and how the experience has affected me. Most importantly it’s helped me see more clearly how to integrate my own faith into my everyday activities. I’m no academic, so the prospect of continuing there indefinitely was never certain, nor was it my ultimate goal to spend the rest of my career teaching rather than actually designing and producing animation.

Throughout these years of 60-hour weeks (seemingly common among the full time faculty) the community Wretchard has cultivated and nurtured has helped keep me sane, reminding me that there are vast currents and titanic forces at work in the great wide world to which we must attend. They beggar the puny bickerings of faculty senate governance committee proceedings, budget shocks, grading, the parade of interim deans, replacement deans, demoted deans, and assistant deans jockeying for advancement. And – oh, yeah – the hapless students wondering if their majors will still exist by the time they reach their culminating semester…

Wow. I know there are times I’ve just used this forum to vent — petty self-indulgence, saying gratuitously mean things about a hapless mediocrity who likely can’t wrap his head around the nasty business he’s gotten into since Señor Soros and company began grooming him.

But much of the comment here repeatedly reminds us (and me) that we must translate the outrage to action, engaging with other citizens to challenge them to THINK about what is unfolding, and preparing our selves and families as we should for any foreseeable cataclysm. Lay in appropriate supplies, learn skills, build networks with people you can trust, and all the while act responsibly to counter the trends that seem to be leading us relentlessly toward catastrophe. They are, after all, acts of men, not forces of nature.

And the hearts of men and women can be changed, sometimes by acts of selfless courage and love as effectively as by violence or anger.

So often, we can see the solutions. What is needed is the will.