Outgoing Presidential Address.

        I dreamed that N and I as well as eight others were gathered on the steps between two landings outside a public meeting hall. The wooden steps, whitewashed years ago and showing their age, were on the side of a large wooden building.

        An elderly gentleman, short with a silver flat top, handed each of us a book and asked us to pick out any two pages to read.

        I asked what sort of theme he was looking for.

        He said it didn’t matter, no one would really be listening anyway. If they are, at least the material will be inspiring.

        I leafed through the book, it seemed to be a bunch of essays by someone trying hard to be Garrison Keeler, but missing by a large degree. Not a single essay was less than 10 pages. All of them were a sappy paean to the uselessness of human effort and mankind’s only hope being to trust in God.

        I looked up, everyone else was dutifully leafing through the book and trying to find two consecutive pages.

        Inside, the Elderly Gentleman introduced me as the outgoing president of the Rotary.

        I stepped up to the podium and proceeded to explain that N and I had enjoyed our first year in the little mountain community. That I didn’t remember being elected president, so it was certainly the easiest job I’d ever held.

        Apparently someone was actually paying attention because he asked me why I wasn’t reading from the book.

        “You mean the sappy ‘you aren’t strong enough to do this without God’ book?”

        Okay, that wasn’t the smartest way to phrase that. He took exception to my characterization. I then pointed out computers, vaccines, surgery, and many other things that kept us alive and healthier than any previous generation were certainly not dictated by any book.

        Suddenly we seemed to have everyone in the auditorium paying attention. I started taking questions (mostly hostile) and trying to explain that they were capable and society wouldn’t collapse unless good men did nothing.

        It sort of erupted when I asked them to tell me straight up that I wasn’t a good man because I didn’t believe in their god.

        EG was trying to get me off the stage, “That was more than two pages!”

        “Happy to leave if there are no more questions.”

        Oddly, the rest of the Rotary were not so willing to let me go just yet.

Ad astra per technica,

FF