Home Pet Surgery Meets The Civil War

It has been a strange week of weather round these parts. We started with an 8 inch snowfall last Monday, followed by polar vortex 50 below wind chills mid week followed by 40+ temps for a few days, followed by a freezing rain/ice storm.

I mention it because it is how our discussion began over coffee this morning with my coffee buddies. As I've mentioned, we meet every Thursday, as an informal book study, one that sometimes doesn't get to the book at all. In fact as a preparatory text last night Claude, the guy who kind of rallies folks every Wednesday evening, said that Thursday's discussion would be Chapter 4 which was mandatorily optional. That's sort of how we roll.

For no one reason, I really love this hour of the week. I love the randomness and the deep thinking and the laughter that it brings. It's like scrolling through Twitter for an hour, but way better.

Today's discussion took a winding road. We went from the weird weather to:

One of the guys' books that was beat up and highlighted in complete with worn pages. He said he bought it on Amazon in "Good" condition. We agreed it was good compared to maybe the other books in the basement that this one was in with. That led to,

• the same guy saying that during the cold weather last week he looked out his window to see his a house burning in his subdivision. That led to,

• Claude speculating that it was a fire caused by dryer lint. He said you can buy endoscopes to see through dryer vents. That led to,

• Randy saying that you could probably do home pet surgeries using the endoscopes. That led to,

• Me saying, "We're only looking for a few polyps, Toby." Which led to,

• Someone redirecting our attention back to the book. We talked about Monastic life and how people are leaving organized church and religion in record numbers and why was that? Which led to,

• Each of us speculating about our kids and how we brought them up through the church, but at some point you have to let them go and be themselves and hope that some of it stuck. This led to,

• Someone else directing us to how the language of this book, written in the '70s was changed in subsequent editions to take out the '70s colloquialisms like the "far outs" and "heavy". This led to,

• Nick, the guy with the 70s copy saying that he never understood why books written in a dialect needed to be neutered or changed. That they were a reflection from the period. Which led to,

• Me asking if that is similar to tearing down statues of Robert E. Lee in order to rewrite history. (I was playing devil's advocate). This practically raised a guy out of his chair when he said,

• Lee, like Benedict Arnold was treasonous and you don't see a lot of Benedict Arnold statues around. His point was that while the statue is gone, the history of both men is still there. It is just not adored of idolized. Which led to,

• Me mentioning that I'd been to Stone Mountain which has a huge high relief etching on it of Robert E. Lee on it, and how do we erase that? Which led to,

• Claude saying how he'd melted a camera while photographing something in his foundry one day.

And on and on. 

Stone Mountain - Georgia

It is a caffeine-fueled, philosophical, goofy, challenging, mind-bending, working out of the world's problems, personal issues, political corruption and spiritual growth all rolled up in the name of a book study. 

It's the best hour of the work week. 

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