My friend and colleague Jenna Nigro alerted me to the fact (reported in The New York Times Magazine, July 23, 2017) that Elvis Presley, while driving some associates through Arizona, saw the face of Joseph Stalin in a cloud. That troubled him but “as he watched the cloud transformed into the smiling face of Christ.” He stopped the bus and “ran out into the desert weeping, in a state of profound spiritual exaltation.”
Tonight’s clouds have been varied. This one looks to me like the huge Trump Chicken that someone put on the White House lawn this week:
That troubles me.
This one might lead to a state of profound spiritual exaltation in someone who sees a whirling Dervish in the center of more straightforward clouds:
I’ll settle for profound awe at the forces of nature.
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About Scott Abbott
I received my Ph.D. in German Literature from Princeton University in 1979. Then I taught at Vanderbilt University, BYU, and Utah Valley State College. At Utah Valley University, I directed the Program in Integrated Studies for its initial 13 years and was also Chair of the Department of Humanities and Philosophy for three years. My publications include a book on Freemasonry and the German Novel, two co-authored books with Zarko Radakovic (REPETITIONS and VAMPIRES & A REASONABLE DICTIONARY, published in Serbo-Croatian in Belgrade and in English with Punctum Books), a book with Sam Rushforth (WILD RIDES AND WILDFLOWERS, Torrey House Press), a "fraternal meditation" called IMMORTAL FOR QUITE SOME TIME (University of Utah Press), and translations of three books by Austrian author Peter Handke, of an exhibition catalogue called "The German Army and Genocide," and, with Dan Fairbanks, of Gregor Mendel's important paper on hybridity in peas. More famously, my children are in the process of creating good lives for themselves: as a model and dance/yoga studio manager, as a teacher of Chinese language, as an ecologist and science writer, as a jazz musician, as a parole officer, as a contractor, as a seasonal worker (Alaska and Park City, Utah), and as parents. I share my life with UVU historian Lyn Bennett, with whom I have written a cultural history of barbed wire -- THE PERFECT FENCE (Texas A&M University Press). Some publications at http://works.bepress.com/scott_abbott/
THE GOALIE'S ANXIETY 