Marley, My Sweet Dog

Last Tuesday, my dearly beloved dog, Marley, was shuffled off this mortal coil with a couple of hypodermic shots. She was lying in my arms, scared by what was happening to her. I hated that - I wanted her passing to be peaceful, but instead she was trembling until the anesthetic took effect and her consciousness flagged.

This is one of the few times I wish I was rich - rich enough to have somehow patched her up for a few more months. Or days. Or hours. 

It was hopeless. 

I had taken her up to the field where she could run free the day before. All her life when I took her there, she knew where we were going when we got close and she started whining in happy anticipation of getting out in the field to pee and poop and sniff and wander around, and sometimes play with other dogs who were there. Last Monday she was silent. She was lying in the back seat of my car and wouldn't move when I opened the door for her to get out. She just looked at me as if to say I was asking too much of her. Just, "No."

Her kidneys were failing, and she wasn't going to get better. The vet told me that I was lucky to have had her this long, and she had already outlived her expected life span.

I thought she was 13, because when she came to live with us in 2012 we were told she was four years old. I was also told that American Staffordshire Terriers lived "about 14 years." Which seemed like a long time back then, and gave me the wrongheaded idea that she should have another year. Thus I was hobbled by my expectations - no, she can't go now. She's only 13. (The internet says 12 - 16 years for Staffies)

She was pure love. She never judged me, even when her incessasnt barking got on my nerves and I yelled, "Shut the fuck up!" Not that yelling at her ever made her shut up. I think she thought I was barking with her, not at her.

I also think she barked out of boredom, or to tell me to do something - "Pay attention to the dog. Go sit on the couch and let the dog cuddle up next to you. What are you doing that is more important than that?"

In the evening, when she was ready to go to bed - in my bed, that is - she would stand at the end of the hallway to the bedroom and look at me with meaning. The meaning was: "Come to bed." If I did not turn off my British mystery and come to bed, she would give up after a while and go down the hall to jump up on the bed and snuggle in. After I came home from rehab in early July, still dealing with my broken back, going to bed early was appealing, so I would often heed her call. "Yeah, Marley, you're right. Let's go crawl in." 

One of her vets and I speculated that she was the product of a puppy mill. She had purebred problems - shoulder dysplasia, and a crooked jaw that left her tongue hanging out most of the time. She was all white (a color "not encouraged" in the breed) and would have an allergic reaction to the grass she loved to lie in during the hot days of summer. She'd get hot spots. 

Fleas were not much of a problem. Because she was shorthaired and white, as soon as a flea jumped on her, I could see it and remove it. I kept her flea control in hand, using what seemed like magical drops between her shoulder blades, and did the same with my cat, Mellow. Not magical - the drops are chemical and are poison to fleas and stay on the animals' skin killing pests for weeks or months, which means a flea-free animal and house. 

If you had lived through flea infestations, as I had before these drops came along, it was easy to embrace the drops. Poison, yes, but so much easier to live with than poisoning the whole house with those flea bombs that killed everything, and told you to leave the doors and windows open and not to come back in for at least three hours and to remove all your potted plants as well. Oh yeah. Only had to use those bombs once, but that was sufficient to make me diligent about flea control before fleas got out of hand ever after. 

One unexpected benefit of those bombs: I had an old hand-me-down dresser that was infested with some kind of wood drilling bugs. There were little holes in the wood that sawdust dripped out of and onto the floor. After the flea bomb, no more holes, no more sawdust - no more drilling bugs. Also, we had no more fleas, which was the desired outcome.

But I do digress.

Marley was the sweetest dog I've ever had. AmStaffs' temperament is described as, "friendly, tenacious, devoted, loyal, attentive, courageous." Marley never had to prove her courage, but she was all the rest of those things. 

She did have abandonment issues from losing her first two or three homes. She becamse anxious when I left, and totally freaked out when she was on the wrong side of a door she wanted to get through - her magnificent jaws and teeth made slivers out of our French doors, our front door, and one of the bedroom doors when she got stuck in there. She actually pulled the trim off the wall. She also chewed up some doorframes in one of Joanna Gardiner's rental houses, but we don't talk about that. They were fixed by a carpenter who showed up out of the blue.

Marley shed so much of her short white hait I'm surprised she didn't go bald. It was everywhere. It still is everywhere, and I will look at it fondly when I run across it.

Well. 

Goodbye, Marley, you good dog. How I miss you.

 

It’s Been Good - the last Loop essay

 Steven Allen, who has kept the Loop going all these years, bless his heart, has announced that this is the last issue of the Loop that he will be publishing. Turns out he has a life, and paid employment.

Steven has let it be known that if someone wants to take on publishing the Loop, they should speak up. Does anyone have a dream of publishing an alternative island newspaper? Contact Steven Allen, editor@vashonloop.com

The Loop began as the Ticket, and was started by Hamish Todd, with a lot of help from Rex Morris and several other people. The Ticket was political, and funny. When Hamish injured his ankle, someone asked him if he had fallen off his soapbox.

In 2002, I was working at the then True Value hardware store. One day Rex Morris came in and asked if I would like to write a column for the Ticket, with an illustration by my cartoonist husband, Rick.

In July of 2002, I wrote the first Spiritual Smart Aleck column. It was titled, “Grandma’s Diary,” and was accompanied by a drawing Rick did of me asleep on a couch with a baby snoozing on top of me (that baby is now 19 and starting college in a couple of weeks).

My intention at first was to write a humorous column, a la Erma Bombeck, about home, and the kids, etc. You know.

Life hammered that sort of wholesomeness out of me fast. While I have written of spiritual topics, and humor, I wrote a
bout dialysis when Rick’s kidneys failed. I wrote about grief after Rick died. I ranted a lot after the 2016 election.

A little rage, a little religion, a little humor, and a few true stories, like the one about the night Rick and his friends went deer hunting on a golf course in Marin. In a Volkswagen beetle. With a spear made from a lead pipe.

They got one, too.

The uppity yuppie who wanted to know where the “secret ferry” was – the one only we islanders knew about – because he did not think he should have to wait in line for a regular ferry. So a nice woman at Sound Food said, why, yes, of course, and gave him directions for getting to Manzanita Beach.

Around 2004 the Ticket changed hands. Marie Blichfeldt and Troy Kindred took over and renamed the paper the Loop.

Most other contributors and I kept writing for the paper, and for a few years Rick kept drawing the illustrations for my column as well as drawing his comic strip, Offshore.

A little historical review: after 9/11, George W. Bush went after Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was allegedly hiding. In 2003 we went to war with Iraq, because of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Children who were in elementary school when those military actions began have grown up to fight, and die, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By 2007, the housing bubble popped, and the economy crashed. So many homes were lost, as well as jobs.

In 2008, Obama was elected, and he and his Democratic Congress did the best they could to clean up the financial mess Bush et al had left. They passed the Affordable Care Act, which we hoped would lead to healthcare for all. Alas, so far, we, as a country, have been too stupid to take care of our greatest resource, our people.

The racism and white supremacy that had been festering covertly became overt. All the racist worms crawled out of the woodwork, blaming Obama for the Bush administration’s Great Recession. Not the first or last time Republicans would ignore facts and manufacture bull poop.

Which somehow led to Donald Trump becoming president in 2016. Because pocket gophers, nine-banded armadillos, and kudzu have electoral votes.

Now here we are, with a “Republican Party” that is trying to overthrow the American government and institute a pure white fascist regime. I do not know if they will make Trump their puppet dictator. It is his dream job, but we all know that he is a murderously clueless loose cannon.

Then there is that covid pandemic, now well into its second year, and the homicidal weather that is attacking all over the world.

There will be so much to write about, but this is the last Spiritual Smart Aleck column for this version of the Loop. Will it rise again? We’ll see.

 I shall post my writing on my blog in future. Google “Spiritual Smart Aleck,” to find a link to my blog.

All in all, writing the column has been a great ride. Thank you for reading. Thank you for coming up to me in the grocery stores and at Granny’s to thank me for writing the column. That kept me going.

Peace.

Amen.

 

Lordy Mercy!

 When I began writing this column nineteen years ago, I wished to write about the spiritual side of the spiritual smart aleck; that is, my faith (Christian) and my church (Episcopal). I knew that Vashon has a lot of churches, but also a lot of agnostics and atheists who would be more likely to read the Loop than some of the churchgoers.

I was afraid I might get some hostility from anti-religion people, but by that time, I figured that if I was going to be a Christian, I was not going to apologize for it. If anyone was offended by my Christian writings, they never told me.

My adult conversion began in my mid-30s, a time of life during which many people discover a more thoughtful and perhaps spiritual angle to their lives. Some come to a faith or practice for the first time. Some delve deeper into the faith that has been part of them since childhood. Some find new life in a faith from which they had walked away. Some become Baha’i, or Buddhist, or Hindu, or Muslim. Some think they would rather be a secular humanist, thanks. Some dig in and say it’s all a crock.

My attitude after all these years is, “Whatever floats your boat.”

That would not fly in the Baptist Church in which I was raised. We were supposed to get out there and save souls so they could spend eternity in heaven, and every soul we missed would burn in the fires of hell.

As a child I wondered, what about all the people who were born before Christianity? Were they all sizzling away?

It is good to remember that Jesus was not a Christian. He was a Jew, probably a member of the Pharisees, a large sect of Judaism in those days. The Pharisees he denounced were leaders who did not act like true people of faith. They were in it for the money and power.

Sound familiar?

After the American Revolution England was so mad at the former American colonies that they would not allow a Church of England bishop come over to ordain priests in the American church, but the Church of Scotland obliged, and once priests were ordained here, they could ordain others because they were part of the Apostolic Succession.

What in the heck is the Apostolic Succession?

To the best of my understanding the Apostolic Succession means that you have hands laid on you by someone who had hands laid on them, who had hands laid on them, and so on, in an unbroken chain of laying on of hands that goes back to Jesus’ Apostles, who did the original laying on of hands in first century Palestine.

You are now asking, “Who kept track?” Good question, and I do not have an answer. Those of you who are learned Christian theologians could explain Apostolic Succession more accurately.

In the 1970s when women began to demand to be ordained as priests in the Anglican and Episcopal churches, it was the belief of many in the church that when the Apostolic Succession reached a woman, it dropped dead: “Okay, missy, maybe you have been blessed by this ancient rite, but you cannot pass it on to anyone else because you have the wrong chromosomes.”

To which women priests said, “Hah.”

Women continue, in all things, not just religion, to struggle to get men’s feet off our necks. It never ends.

Well, anyway, I felt called and I became an Episcopalian around 1986. I love the liturgy, the music, the expectation that you will use the brain God gave you, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Episcopalians. And singing in the choir, which we all hope will happen again someday.

That initial rush of conversion calmed down long ago, and life has smacked me around some, but having a firm faith has been, well, everything. How do you get a firm faith? Same way you get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice.

Then there are lame Bible jokes:

Q: What kind of car does God have? A: A Plymouth. He drove Adam and Eve out of the garden in a Fury.

Q: What kind of car did the Apostles have? A: A Honda. The Apostles were all in one Accord.

I will give you a little time to recover from your groans.

Ready?

Over the years I have been a lot more smart aleck than spiritual in this column. Whatever you believe, or do not believe, I hope the column has given you some smiles and laughs and even some comfort. After all, what’s a spiritual smart aleck for?

My mother told me many times when she thought I was being sassy, “Nobody likes a smart aleck.”

She was wrong. People love smart alecks.

Big Fat Lies

 When Trump was in the White House, I reached the point of feeling that a rock would cry out at the insanity going on. Some of my columns here were those rocky cries, expressing what I felt about watching the Republican party follow Donald Trump over a cliff and try to pull the country over the cliff as well. Granted, the Right Believers had been primed to go over that cliff for the last thirty years, but they found a leader they could die for in Trump.

After President Biden was sworn in, I thought that perhaps we would settle into the more conventional kvetching that is aimed at all presidents.

Hah. I am so naïve.

In the tradition of the late (unlamented, at least at my house) Rush Limbaugh, the right wing media continue to lie, edit videos, and make up windmills for the cultists to charge, and a large audience continues to swallow this poison and smile and ask for more, and as we have seen, the MAGA crowd and their elected representatives are committed to overthrowing the American republic. Patriots, pah. I spit in the corner.

A couple of weeks ago the Republicans were running around like chickens with their heads cut off because Joe Biden was going to take away their meat, limiting everyone to four pounds of meat per year. This was a lie that the citizens of Trumpworld bought right into, and not only grassroots people but politicians like Governor Greg Abbott of Texas.

“Ain’t gonna happen here!” he tweeted.

No, Greg, it is not. Because that story was a Big Fat Lie.

OneAmerica News (which is somewhat to the right of Fox News) declared on January 6 that the people invading the Capitol had to be antifa disguised as Trump supporters because, of course, Republican/Trump supporters are never violent, unlike the antifa-commie-socialist-Democrat-black protesters.

If you are ever taking a psychology class and need an example of what “projection” is – look to the Republican/right wing Americans who constantly accuse everyone else of doing what they are doing.

Meanwhile, back at the insurrection - at least OneAmerica’s insistence that the rioters could not be Republicans shows that there was some awareness that day that invading the Capitol was wrong. There are still people who are trying to blame antifa for the insurrection, which is a Big Fat Lie.

Then there is THE Big Fat Lie – that Biden did not win the election. Millions of people believe that, the poor gullible dangerous saps.

I hear that many younger people coming along are fed up with the lies, calumnies, and outright claptrap of the far Right. That gives me hope. Please, young people. Save us from the sins of my generation and the generations that came before. I like to believe that we, as people, are becoming better in small increments, but it is not enough.

Joe Biden has turned out to be a President who acts. For starters, he has taken steps to fight the pandemic, is trying to reunite the families that were ripped apart at our southern border, and has reclaimed money that was taken to finance building the border wall that would not keep anyone out and would destroy a lot of natural habitats for some species of flora and fauna.

Is Biden perfect? Oh, heck no. That reclaimed money is going back to the defense budget. Wahoo. He was in the Senate too long not to know how to play politics.

But who knew that there were politicians around who would work for the good of the people? Such a quaint old notion, eh?

Now - next I would like to see all the people who claim to be Christians start practicing love instead of hate.

I am so naïve.

(pause)

In other news, my grandchild is graduating from high school, and his parents have bought airplane tickets so that I can be present for this milestone in his life.

Perhaps you know that the thought of flying makes me sick to my stomach.

There were times over the years when flying seemed necessary – when there were deaths in the family, mostly.

And then, in September of 2001, the day we remember as 9/11 happened. All my fear of the many things that can happen on an airplane came rushing back into my psyche, plus more things I had not imagined.

I have not set foot on an airplane since, and I have been okay with that.

It is almost certain that these upcoming flights will be fine, but because every time I fly, I’m afraid I’m going to die, I will say: It has been a pleasure writing for you all these years, and I really appreciate your reading my columns. Thank you.

Blessings, beloveds, and I encourage you to fight the Big Fat Lies.

Wild Things

 The first earwig of summer showed up today. It scampered out from under my blood glucose testing kit and was scurrying across the kitchen table at earwig top speed when it met with misfortune: I got all medieval on its fanny and brushed it over the edge. Earwigs give me the willies, with those big pincers on their heads, and they show up when I least expect them.

Earwigs do not respect my boundaries.

Nor do slugs.

I gave up on planting vegetables years ago. My yard is in a declivity in the west side bluff, surrounded by tall trees - firs, cedars, big leaf maples, and the horse chestnut that blocks off about a third of the sky in the summer. When I planted vegetables, I was merely feeding slugs and other plant predators, but mostly slugs.

I tried various slug remedies. The little containers of beer that they would fall into and drown were effective but disgusting to clean up, and the beer got a little expensive.

For a few days once, I went out with a paring knife, and stabbed slugs. I got a little sick to my stomach stabbing slugs. I felt like a Mongol horde, laying waste to the slug community. I felt like a monster. Worse, my slug assaults never seemed to make a dent in the slug population.

I read that if you put a ring of marigolds around the garden, the pungent plants would stop the slugs before they got in. So I went out and bought a bunch of marigolds and planted them around the garden.

Next morning - you have probably guessed or know from experience - the slugs had eaten all the marigolds. After that I stopped growing vegetables and used slug bait where I did not want slugs.

Earwigs, slugs, and then came the feral cats.

Around 1989 there was a feral cat city here in our ‘hood. Rick and I began trapping cats and having them spayed and neutered (with financial aid from VIPP. Thank you!) and then released. At the time some people thought we were loony, but this is a common method for controlling feral cat populations now. It was new then.

After we did that, the feral cat population in the neighborhood stabilized, and the cats were no longer wearing themselves out making kittens. They all died off after fifteen years or so, and in that time VIPP had taken over most of the kitten and puppy action here on the island, so cats were no longer dumped in the neighborhood. Now my yard is patrolled by Mr. Mellow, a tuxedo cat of charm and drool.

Because we fed the feral cats kibble in trays we put outside, raccoons became frequent visitors. That went on until the last feral cat died. A raccoon is a rare sight in my yard these days.

For years deer have jumped the fence and come into the yard to graze. I do not mind them grazing in the yard if they do not strip off my roses and leave naked little sticks.

Then there are the squirrels, and the crows, and the smaller birds, and the insects. Lots of wild things live or hang out in my yard.

Coyotes, I am told, live all over the island. In 2019, five separate packs were counted. I have yet to see a coyote on Vashon, but I know they are here.

I saw the cougar that lived here a few years back in security camera videos posted online. I have heard of sightings of other cougars on the island, mostly on the south end. I have seen bears, who, like the cougars and the deer, sometimes swim over from the peninsula. Bears do not seem to settle in here like the deer and that cougar.

In the 1970s, I saw nary a bald eagle here at all, but their population has recovered. They have been hard on the heron rookeries, I hear, but I see both birds in my rambles around the island and seeing either one gives me a thrill.

Herons are usually standing alongside or in the water.

Eagles are usually soaring overhead, although sometimes I have seen them sitting in a tree. Thinking.

Sometimes eagles are attacked in the air by three or more small birds. Plucky little vigilantes.

Random encounters:

One day while I was parked by the side of the road south of Burton, two otters came down the hill, dived into Quartermaster Harbor, and started coming up with fish.

A mink once came up out of the ravine here at the house and spotted me sitting on the porch. We both froze and stared at each other for a while, then the mink left.

Wild things.

They make my heart sing.

They make everything groovy.

Wild things.

Resurrection for Dummies

 It is now the Easter season in the Western Christian church.

Eastern/Orthodox Christians will not observe Easter until May 7. They are still in Lent.

You do know that Easter is the re-named pagan spring celebration called Eostre, that was co-opted by Christianity, right? Once the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great became Christian, he propagated a policy of re-naming and Christianizing pagan special days. So he was a proponent of the faith, but he waited until his dying day to be baptized because he figured that would cover (all his sins) (his butt).

For us Christians, Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Christ, the burgeoning of new life, as we see all around us at this time of year.

The day of the crucifixion is remembered on Good Friday. I have asked lots of times what was so good about it, but it is a necessary part of the Triduum, the three days of Easter: first, a meal together with Jesus washing the disciples’ feet to show his servanthood on Thursday, followed by Jesus’ death and his followers’ and family’s despair on Friday, followed by resurrection Sunday morning, followed by what I recently saw described as the terror of the women who came to the tomb to wash Jesus’ body. They found the tomb empty and were told by a man there (who was that guy?) that Jesus was gone. He was alive. How were they supposed to process this?

There is not a one of us who has not experienced a personal Good Friday, when despair gains the advantage. Like the disciples on that first dark Friday, we think it is all over and we see no way out.

Those of us who experience depression certainly know that feeling. Perhaps if you are not subject to depression, you experience that feeling only when someone you love dies, or some other misfortune of that magnitude occurs. I do not know.

At those times, like the disciples, we do not believe that Easter is coming. It usually is not someone dead coming back to life, although I do not rule out the possibility. It is an upwelling of the life inside you. It might take some time and a good therapist, but you are glad you did not give up.

We all experience resurrections in our lives. Perhaps reconnecting with a family member or a friend whom you thought was lost to you; the mending of a broken marriage; the child you were told was developmentally delayed, who was actually deaf and is in fact rather brilliant; some modest victory that you were convinced could not happen; learning that the object of your affection reciprocates your feelings (that is when the trouble begins, but that’s another essay).

My dog, Marley, experienced a resurrection miracle this Easter week.

She had stopped eating and drinking. She was sick and in pain, and her hind legs gave out beneath her.

Monday morning was a Good Friday day for me, as I drove her to the vet’s, believing that she would not come home again.

The vet techs carried her into the clinic on a stretcher, and they told me to go home, and they would call me in a while. I did not think there was anything they could do for her, but okay.

I figured that if I brought Marley home, it would be to do doggy hospice.

The call came in an hour or so: come and pick her up. Really?

The vet said Marley had a bad infection. They walloped her with antibiotics and sent us home with more pills for Marley.

Giving her the pills at home was a wrestling match because she was not eating. Once I got the pills down her throat, she retreated to the other couch and would not speak to me for a few hours.

On Tuesday she was slightly better; on Wednesday, she began to drink water; on Thursday she began to eat, and I was able to wrap pills in cheese and chicken and she snarfed them right down.

By Friday she was almost her old self, starting to bark and beg again.

I imagine this is how people felt during World War II when penicillin saved lives that would have been lost before that time. Antibiotics are miracles. My dog was pulled back from the brink.

I want to thank Dr. Teri Byrd and her staff at the 4 Paws Veterinary Clinic for kindness and swift treatment of my Marley. And thanks to Sylvia at Fair Isle, who when they could not fit Marley in, gave me the number for 4 Paws.

Island veterinarians and their staff members rock, and resurrection is real, if you know how to recognize it.

Lordy Mercy!

 

 

When I began writing this column nineteen years ago, I wished to write about the spiritual side of the spiritual smart aleck; that is, my faith (Christian) and my church (Episcopal). I knew that Vashon has a lot of churches, but also a lot of agnostics and atheists who would be more likely to read the Loop than some of the churchgoers.

I was afraid I might get some hostility from anti-religion people, but by that time, I figured that if I was going to be a Christian, I was not going to apologize for it. If anyone was offended by my Christian writings, they never told me.

My adult conversion began in my mid-30s, a time of life during which many people discover a more thoughtful and perhaps spiritual angle to their lives. Some come to a faith or practice for the first time. Some delve deeper into the faith that has been part of them since childhood. Some find new life in a faith from which they had walked away. Some become Baha’i, or Buddhist, or Hindu, or Muslim. Some think they would rather be a secular humanist, thanks. Some dig in and say it’s all a crock.

My attitude after all these years is, “Whatever floats your boat.”

That would not fly in the Baptist Church in which I was raised. We were supposed to get out there and save souls so they could spend eternity in heaven, and every soul we missed would burn in the fires of hell.

As a child I wondered, what about all the people who were born before Christianity? Were they all sizzling away?

It is good to remember that Jesus was not a Christian. He was a Jew, probably a member of the Pharisees, a large sect of Judaism in those days. The Pharisees he denounced were leaders who did not act like true people of faith. They were in it for the money and power.

Sound familiar?

After the American Revolution England was so mad at the former American colonies that they would not allow a Church of England bishop come over to ordain priests in the American church, but the Church of Scotland obliged, and once priests were ordained here, they could ordain others because they were part of the Apostolic Succession.

What in the heck is the Apostolic Succession?

To the best of my understanding the Apostolic Succession means that you have hands laid on you by someone who had hands laid on them, who had hands laid on them, and so on, in an unbroken chain of laying on of hands that goes back to Jesus’ Apostles, who did the original laying on of hands in first century Palestine.

You are now asking, “Who kept track?” Good question, and I do not have an answer. Those of you who are learned Christian theologians could explain Apostolic Succession more accurately.

In the 1970s when women began to demand to be ordained as priests in the Anglican and Episcopal churches, it was the belief of many in the church that when the Apostolic Succession reached a woman, it dropped dead: “Okay, missy, maybe you have been blessed by this ancient rite, but you cannot pass it on to anyone else because you have the wrong chromosomes.”

To which women priests said, “Hah.”

Women continue, in all things, not just religion, to struggle to get men’s feet off our necks. It never ends.

Well, anyway, I felt called and I became an Episcopalian around 1986. I love the liturgy, the music, the expectation that you will use the brain God gave you, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Episcopalians. And singing in the choir, which we all hope will happen again someday.

That initial rush of conversion calmed down long ago, and life has smacked me around some, but having a firm faith has been, well, everything. How do you get a firm faith? Same way you get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice.

Then there are lame Bible jokes:

Q: What kind of car does God have? A: A Plymouth. He drove Adam and Eve out of the garden in a Fury.

Q: What kind of car did the Apostles have? A: A Honda. The Apostles were all in one Accord.

I will give you a little time to recover from your groans.

Ready?

Over the years I have been a lot more smart aleck than spiritual in this column. Whatever you believe, or do not believe, I hope the column has given you some smiles and laughs and even some comfort. After all, what’s a spiritual smart aleck for?

My mother told me many times when she thought I was being sassy, “Nobody likes a smart aleck.”

She was wrong. People love smart alecks.