Let the weird times roll

 

The coolest news for me last week was the metal monolith found in the middle of nowhere in Utah. Then it got weirder when it disappeared. Now, NPR reports that another one showed up in Romania. This has got to be one of the best practical jokes of the century so far. 

Or maybe the mayor of the Romanian city where it showed up got it right: 

"My guess is that some alien, cheeky and terrible teenagers left home with their parents' UFO and started planting metal monoliths around the world. First in Utah and then at Piatra Neamt, I am honored that they chose our city."

Move over, Dracula. 

Finally...the good kind of weird

 I don't know about the Gentle Reader, but the news in the last month or so has really worn me out. It was weird, but the bad kind of weird.

That's why I was so grateful to run across this story about the good kind of weird, to wit a 10 to 12 feet tall three-sided metal monolith found out in the middle of nowhere in Utah. It's almost the best news I've seen since some asteroid near misses.

If some wild artist with a sense of humor and ability to delay gratification to put it there I'm OK with that. After all, in junior high during a UFO craze, a friend and I wrapped up in aluminum foil so we could look like space aliens and walked around on I-64 at night.

But I'm kind of holding out for some kind of truly bizarre. C'mon, 2020! 

More good news

I'll take all the good news I can get these days. Here are two items that fit the bill. The first is an AP article about Medicaid expansion in West Virginia and what a huge success it has been. Let me say again that this has been the biggest advance for social justice on my watch.

At the time I was a small part of the push to get Gov. Tomblin to make this decision, the most optimistic of us thought we might eventually cover 120,000 or so uninsured West Virginians after a few years. The latest numbers are right at 164,400, which comes pretty close to being 1 out of 10 state residents. Again, these are people who work for a living.

Yesterday's post talked about how Utah may be moving toward its own version of expansion. I found out today that Alaska Gov. plans to expand Medicaid coverage, this time without one of those lame waivers that reduces the quality of coverage and transfers wealth to the private sector. This will mean health insurance for around 42,000 low income working

I think this means that something like 30 states and the District of Columbia have embraced basic humanity by enacting this life saving and life changing reform.

It's not all bad news.

A little good news, maybe

It looks like Republican leaders in Utah have hammered together a version of Medicaid expansion that will bring health coverage to thousands of uninsured residents. It still has to make it through the state legislature and get a waiver from the feds, but as the Salt Lake Tribune reports,

If the new proposal is ultimately accepted, Utah would be the first state with a Republican-led Legislature and a GOP governor to expand Medicaid through a market-driven system.

Here's hoping....

Like the swift flight of a sparrow

The English church historian Bede, from a 1493 illustration.

The theme here lately is Beowulf, although you will also find links and comments about current events below. One of the interesting things about that poem is the light it sheds on religion in the Anglo-Saxon world.

It would seem that when these Germanic tribes invaded or migrated to England in the 500s, most of them were pagan and held to some variety of Norse religion, which survives in such places as the names of several weekdays (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are named after gods). An effort to convert them to Christianity got into high gear around the year 600, give or take a few.

Unlike in other places, it seems to have taken place without much in the way of martyrdoms on either the Christian or pagan side. Maybe one reason why Christianity appealed to them was that it offered a less dark view of the world than the old religion. In Norse mythology, gods, humans and the whole shooting match were expected to go down in a cataclysm known as Ragnarok.

According to the Venerable Bede (circa 672-735), an early chronicler of English church history, a pagan priest was consulted about the new religion and he was fairly open to it. Bede says that he described the human condition thus:

The present life man, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter amid your officers and ministers, with a good fire in the midst whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door and immediately another, whilst he is within is safe from the wintry but after a short space of fair weather he immediately vanishes out of your sight into the dark winter from which he has emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space but of what went before or what is to follow we are ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.

If that isn't one of the world's best analogies, I don't know what is. But if I was the sparrow, I'd have stayed in the mead hall.

THIS IS OUR CONCERN, DUDE. Some economists warn that spending cuts and freezes advocated by President Obama and his "friends" in Congress could be the real job killers. Here's another take on it while we're at it, along with Dean Baker's response.

ROADBLOCKS. Here's Jeff Goodell, author of Big Coal, in a Rolling Stone article on the 12 politicians who are doing the most to block progress on dealing with climate change. West Virginia's senior senator made the list, which makes me wonder if our junior senator is jealous. One startling change from the past is that Don Blankenship didn't make the list this time. The former CEO of Massey Energy appears to be taking a time out. Thanks to Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo for the heads up.

WHAT I'M SCREAMING. WV needs to modernize its unemployment system now.

GOOD TO KNOW. Legislators in Utah may soon make the M1911 the official state gun.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, optimism in America is at a four year high (which may not be saying much).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED