Rudyard Kipling and Ted Haggard

Quote of the day:
“Contrary to popular belief, manners are far from superficial. Once ingrained, they become part of people’s humanity....”
--Judith Martin, "Miss Manners"

Untrue truism of the day:
“East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet.”
--Rudyard Kipling

Punchline of old joke:
“Yeast is yeast and nest is nest, and never the mane shall tweet.”

News lead of the day:
“Evangelical leader Ted Haggard, in apologizing to his followers for contact with a gay prostitute, said he had sought help to combat a ‘repulsive and dark’ side of his life but that no approach had proven effective.”
--David Crary, the Associated Press

Like Ted Haggard, we often set up part of our lives as war. We do battle. We may face combat each morning when we get out of bed. Our main combat strategy seems to be separation. That is, we identify, categorize and separate ourselves from anything foreign.

Separation can take many forms. One of the easiest is to identify the foreign characteristic in another individual or institution and then either do battle with them or wall ourselves off from them.

We are constantly separating, as in:
the good guys from the bad guys,
stainless-steel appliances from white appliances,
time alone from time with people,
darkness from light,
BMW drivers from Ford pickup drivers,
evil from good,
work from fun,
religion from science,
sound from silence,
heart from mind,
thought from feeling,
men from women,
serious from funny,
Americans from terrorists,
rich from poor,
gay from straight,
cool from uncool,
the country from the city,
the good old days from today.

And the list goes on and on and on. More to come.