I’m running a series review on the places we saw in the UK.  This series can be found on my blog at markhamanderson.com/blog.

That’s right, I don’t really have time to blog from work anymore, so I thought I had better assume greater control of my blog setup and hosting.

A review a number of the performances at Renaissance festivals about Sacramento:

I have patronized four Renaissance faires about Sacramento in the last twelvemonth: Auburn, Folsom, South Lake Tahoe, and Fair Oaks.  From one fair to the next, you’ll see a lot of the same acts.  Bring along a handful of one-dollar bills and keep them free of your wallet so that you can smoothly and swiftly show your appreciation at the end of pleasing performances.

I had better own at the outset that I have a predilection for magical and musical performances, and I tend not to care for bawdy performances.

Claude the fire-breathing dragon

Merloch Silvermaine - click 2 view

The following are rated from okay to very good (so 1 = okay).

Magic with Merloch Silvermaine (5/5)

If you see one act this year, let it be Kim Silverman’s (a.k.a. Merloch Silvermain).  Not only is the man a superb showman and not only is the character he plays nothing short of enchanting, his magic is astounding.  It will inspire the most jaded and incredulous observer.

I have encountered Merloch Silvermain only at the Auburn Renaissance faire.  (Yes, the beard is real.)

The Smith family (5/5)

If you see two acts, let this be the second.  Two parents and three girls singing like seraphs.  They do a worthy rendition of one of my favourite songs, ‘She Moves through the Fair’.  (Here’s another good version to sample.)

I have encountered the Smiths only at the Auburn Renaissance faire.

Paul the Magnificent (4/5)

A magic show.  I’ve seen good and bad, and Paul (a.k.a. Brother Paul) ranks among the pretty good.  He would be a solid 4/5 except that his opening tricks (involving two bowls and water) were none too wonderful.  Nonetheless, I was in amazement at the better portion of his feats.

I have encountered Paul the Magnificent only at the Fair Oaks Renaissance faire.

Yea Jeffrey (4/5)

Jeffrey does juggling tricks, and they’re quite good, but the better value lies in Jeffrey’s character. Jeffrey excels at playing the fool—not in the modern, metaphoric sense, but rather recalling the days when the king’s fool held a position of honour.

Don’t worry, he’s not the sort of fool who is obnoxious or attempts to ingratiate himself through pity.  Nor is he overmuch silly.  He’s a good showman with a good sense of poise, humour, and timing.

I have encountered Jeffrey only at the Fair Oaks Renaissance faire.

The Method - click to enlarge

The Method (2/5)

A singing couple.  There’s nothing wrong with their act, and indeed sitting for their songs would not be a waste of your time, except that you may find more delightful things to do.

I have seen The Method at every or nearly every one of the Renaissance festivals mentioned up top.

Aryeh Frankfurter (4/5)

Aryeh (pronounced R-E-A) plays Celtic and Nordic music on the nyckelharpa (keyed fiddle).  I’ve never seen this fellow take the stage, but I’ve seen him at both of the Folsom Renaissance festivals that I’ve attended.  A harp minus track, played through a speaker beside his chair, accompanies.  I enjoy this guy’s music enough that I bought a disc from him (Two Worlds One).

I have encountered Aryeh only at the Folsom Renaissance faire.

Pyrtaneum's cellist - click2view

Prytaneum (3/5)

A cellist and a harpist.  Their material is good, though not as engaging as some.

Fowl Tales (3/5)

For children, this might be a solid 5 out of 5.  A man and his parrots do tricks in guise of a sailor aboard a ship.  The trainer and the parrots are all good performers.

I have seen Fowl Tales at every or nearly every one of the Renaissance festivals mentioned up top.

Broon (4/5)

The Broon show is quite a lark.  Broon performs magic, which is good in its own right, but he is also an excellent showman, witty and light on his toes.  He will have the audience rolling from their seats with laughter.

Glenn Morgan - click to enlarge

Glenn Morgan (3/5)

Glenn plays the hammered dulcimer, and his music is beautiful.  I recommend seeking this fellow out.  You don’t need to look for him at one of the stages (though he may have booked a couple of times there); he’ll probably be stationed somewhere playing most of the day long.  Good for a conversation.

Merrie Pryanksters (2/5)

(Is that really how they spell it?)  The pryanksters provide fiddle and dance.  As with any other 2/5, this is not a bad performance.  Indeed, if you have kids who enjoy dance, have them watch or dance along.  Still, it isn’t enough to hold my attention long on most days.

Hay Penny Consort - click to view

Hay Penny Consort (3/5)

From 2 to 5 ladies playing recorder flutes (from soprano to bass).  Lovely tunes in lovely harmonies.

St. Valerius (1/5)

Okay, I haven’t the right to really rate this act, as I only looked in for a minute before moving on.  They were performing the well-worn Pyramus and Thisbe piece as recorded in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  The fact is that I’m disappointed with nearly all Shakespearean performances, one reason being that upwards of half the cast thinks its character is the clown.  Even well-reviewed, supposedly high-brow casts just can’t act.  This was the most clownish I have yet seen.  (Feel free to leave comments disabusing me of my first impressions.)

The Sell Swords (1/5)

Silliness perhaps suitable for children, but I didn’t remain around long enough to determine the second point for certain.  Two “brothers” portraying sailors or pirates.

You remember Noah’s three sons: Japheth, Shem, & Ham.  Scriptural record suggests that there were at least two other, older brothers, who, if they existed, perished in or before the great flood.

A matter of numbers

The record in the book of Moses has Noah’s granddaughters marrying prior to the great flood, but the timeline hardly allows for Shem, Ham, or Japheth to have had children of marrying age prior to the flood.  Rather, it has a vacuum which seems to expect the existence of earlier progeny, whose children would certainly have been of marrying age before the flood.

Admittedly, scriptural record has come under fire in the last 100 years, and consequently, timelines given prior to the divided kingdom of Israel will be taken lightly by critics, but in the face of criticism, the scriptural record tends to be vindicated where there is any evidence either to prove or disprove.

The age at which one becomes a father

The simplest hint that Noah had earlier sons is only circumstantial, but it had better be discussed first because the circumstance in question is integral to the weightier evidence to come.  The meat of it is that unless Noah had children earlier than Japheth, he was substantially slower to father children than his forebears were—4 times slower!

Moses chapters 6 and 7 records the age of each patriarch from Adam to Noah at the time each fathered his primogeniture*.  The generations before Noah yield the following ages:

130†, 105, 90, 70, 65, 162, 65, 187, 182

…and for Noah: 450.  That’s about 4.3 times the median age for all previous generations (105).

(*We may reasonably presume, at least, that the lineage given follows a line of filius primus, or at least, that of the first son who survived to carry on his father’s lineage.  This is not explicit in the record, however.)

(†This age actually represents the age at which Adam fathered Seth, who was preceded by at least two brothers.  Having Adam’s age in fact be younger even than 130 strengthens the evidence.)

Noah’s granddaughters

Moses 8 speaks of Noah’s granddaughters marrying wicked men‡ prior to the flood (indeed, their conduct is presented as though it were a significant incitement of the flood).  Significantly, Moses 8:14–15 speaks of them as the daughters of the sons of Noah, so if we imagine that Shem, Ham, and Japheth were the only sons of Noah, at least Japheth and Shem were old enough to have daughters of marrying age.

Noah was 492 when Shem was born, so if we give Shem the mean fathering age for his predecessors (105 years old), then Noah would have been approximately 597 years old at the time his granddaughters were born.

At what age would a woman of that period marry? It’s hard to say, but the earliest suggestion of the parity/disparity of a wife’s age to that of her husband in the descendancy that we’re dealing with is that of Sarai (Sarah) and Abram (Abraham).  Genesis 17:17 indicates that Sarai was 10 years younger than Abram.  This isn’t enough evidence to suggest that in the time of Noah (1000 years earlier) the practice was the same, but it is enough to destroy any assumption that Noah’s practice was associated with the marrying age at the time of Christ (~12 years old for a woman) (unless the marrying age for men was ~20, but that’s just not realistic, as it means that couples would generally put off procreating for ~100 years).

Regardless of whether the marrying age of Noah’s granddaughters was near to that of their husbands or much lower, however, the math still doesn’t work.  Genesis 7:6 states that “Noah was 600 years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.”  If we keep our assumption that Shem married at age 105, his daughters would have to marry at the age of 3 for that to work.

If we back down Shem’s (and Japheth’s) fathering age to the very earliest had among their predecessors (65 years old), that leaves 43 years for the daughters.  Having Shem’s daughters marry at the age of 43 comes across unlikely since their husbands presumably got married at a mean age of 2.4 times as old (unless there was a consistent and significant gap between marriage and filius primus, which is doubtful).

(‡It is interesting to note at this point that we see quite the reverse of what is represented in Genesis viz. sons/daughters of god  and sons/daughters of men.  In Genesis, the sons of god take the daughters of men to wife, whereas in Moses, the daughters of the sons of god are taken to wife of the sons of men.)

It gets worse

Even if you discredit the foregoing assumptions—that is, if you suppose that:

1. two of Noah’s sons married as young as the youngest in precedent
2. (and)
3. brides at the time of Noah’s grandchildren were less than half as old as their husbands
4. (or)
5. couples tended to wait a long time after marrying before birthing their primogeniture
6. (and)
7. two of Noah’s sons defied this convention, having daughters shortly after marrying

—even then, you still have problems with the timeline.  Look at Moses 8:15–17.  In verse 15, God decries the marriages of Noah’s granddaughters.  In verse 16, Noah undertakes a ministry.  In verse 17, God threatens to send the great flood.

The line to focus on is in verse 17: “all flesh shall die; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years; and if men do not repent, I will send in the floods upon them.”

It is possible that God’s pronouncement in verse 17 was given before the events of verses 15 and 16, but the organization of the chapter implies the contrary.  That means that the flood must have fallen no sooner than 120 years after the earliest marriages of the daughters of the sons of Noah.

Even if you outright omit Noah’s granddaughters and add that 120 years into the timeline right after the birth of Shem, Noah would be 612.  That’s 12 years after the flood.

If Noah had at least 5 sons…

If Noah had at least 5 sons, the math works (and so do the semantics of “daughters of [Noah's] sons”).

We can suppose that Noah started fathering at the median time for his ascendancy (age 105).  Add another 105 years for his first sons to have children of their own (Noah reaches age 210).  Add another 105 years for his earliest granddaughters to get married (Noah reaches age 315).  Add another 120 years for God’s prophesy in Moses 7:17 (Noah reaches age 435).

That’s completely believable and there’s no shortage of wiggle room.  We just have to push the prophecy 165 years later, during which interim, we suppose it was business as usual, fathering more children, grandfathering more grandchildren.

Room for error

Admittedly, interpretation of scripture is notorious for being contradicted by other scriptures, and the matter of Noah’s children is no exception.

In particular, Moses 7:42–43 displays the prophecy (made in Enoch’s day) “that the posterity of all the sons of Noah should be saved with a temporal salvation.”  (Verse 43 makes it clear that the temporal salvation in question is indeed salvation from death in the flood.)

Tradition and 1 Peter 3:20 teach that none of Noah’s grandchildren was saved in the ark.  If our portrait of history relies on Noah’s earlier sons having daughters and on none of those daughters surviving the flood, then we have a conflict of source material.  I.e. if none of Noah’s grandchildren were spared the flood, then the posterity of his drowned sons was not saved with a temporal salvation.

It seems likely that our interpretation of one or more of the foregoing scriptures is in error.  The most likely error is an error in the semantics of “all” (not an unknown problem with transmitted, transmuted, or translated texts).  Perhaps “all the sons of Noah” as used in Moses 7 means only all the sons that are known.

There is good scope for creativity, however; the foregoing teachings might yet be reconciled at least one other way: a remnant of the houses of Noah’s earlier sons might have escaped the known world and so avoided the flood.  In such case, the whole (known) world would still be inundated, but the posterity of all the sons of Noah would be preserved.

What do C. S. Lewis and Iron Maiden have to do with one another?  (If you’re a Maiden fan, then you probably guessed 90% of the answer aright just upon hearing the question.)

Anyone who has listened to much Iron Maiden can tell that these blokes (or at least bassist Steve Harris, who does the larger part of their writing) are culturally literate.  Songs about Alexander the Great, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Dune, Icarus and Daedalus, to name a few, speckle their catalogue.  It’s no surprise, then, to find one of C. S. Lewis’ works integrated into one of their own.

Clive Staples “Jack” Lewis is better known for his writings in defense of Christianity (“Christian apologetics”) and his Narnia series.  Lesser known among his works is his Space Trilogy, the first volume of which bears the title Out of the Silent Planet.  It is this work that appears in Iron Maiden’s song catalogue, track 9 on their 13th album Brave New World.

The “silent planet” of mention is our planet, Earth.  It seems a strange moniker, certainly, for what planet could be noisier than one inhabited by humans?  The answer requires the reader to understand a point of view different from his own, for thought the earth is not silent to our ears, it is strangely cut off from the higher spheres (referring to the mediaeval astronomical concept); the spirits that enliven other planets/heavenly bodies are unable to communicate with or receive correspondence from the spirit that inhabits Earth.

Is your interest piqued?  Why not visit your local library today and pick up a good C. S. Lewis book or Iron Maiden album?

Lamp post image by Rob Farrow [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Steve Harris image by Rockk3r (Original version by Darz Mol here) (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Tabitha the zombie

I don’t find time or jokes for cartooning much these days, but here are a couple of doodles for a strip I’d really like to run if I could.

This is Tabitha.  She’s a zombie.  When she returned from the grave, the life insurance company denied her death claim.

Now she spends her time attending support groups and trying to build a new life, not infrequently making a meal out of someone who deserves it.

Tabitha at a support group. It's crying time.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve looked on haircuts rather like suffering an act of mayhem: that is, I lose a part of my body, everyone feels obliged to comment on it, and talking about it is the last thing I want to do.  (And I need to accomplish 6 more things for this series of posts before I reach the last thing I want to do.)

before

after

Let me address a couple of points that were raised in the comments on yesterday’s post.

one

A point made about the unlikelihood/difficulty of actually dismantline a Ponzi scheme: don’t cheques usually start bouncing before complaints get filed?

Agreed.  In the private sector, we might expect the SEC watchdogs to nip a Ponzi scheme before it caused as much damage as its capacity warrants, but when an insolvent operation is authored and administered by the federal government, then it’s unlikely to be excised before crisis realizes its potential.

However, in the case of the federal government’s insolvent entitlement spending, it’s unlikely we’ll actually see cheques bounce or even see the programmes fail to make payments.  If I may borrow what others have said, we can expect that the federal government will make ends meet (their ends, that is) by devaluing currency (inflation) and dropping interest rates.  Defaulting without defaulting.

This is typical of emergency responses under current US fiscal philosophy.  The result is that people who have been saving and investing will find their nest egg eaten up from the bottom, while people who are carrying debt will find their debt effectively reduced.

Now look further into the future, to the time following aforesaid psuedo-default.  If the federal government makes ends meet by destroying the value of the taxpayer’s wealth, then the entitlements programmes can remain intact.  They can, in fact, persist indefinitely, so long as the federal government inflicts a severe blow on the economy every so many years or decades.

Consequently, a revolution of culture is the only way to get rid of insolvent entitlements programmes.  It could be a slow revolution, but if it’s like the transition I predicted in the last two posts, it will be quick and painful (and begin about 30 years from now).

two

Do I have any evidence for concluding that lower-class voters may see their interests won in a political victory that depreciates their circumstances, so long as it hits the entire economy even more?

This claim was made half tongue-in-cheek, half hoping I’d learn someone else’s thoughts on it (didn’t happen).  Read on.

I arrived at this tenuous conclusion from observations that lower-class fellows in my close acquaintance (incl. myself), though not a plaintive lot, do carry a gripe for our financial standing, even though we’re richer than the royalty of most of the history of the world (we have plenty to eat, more hot water piped into our houses than we can use, minstrel shows with tremendous production values transmitted right into our houses, etc.).

I admit this does not amount to solid evidence for my claim; however, I posit that the veracity of said claim may be tested by determining whether the poor of today would rather live as the kings of 500 years ago or as they do now, and I hypothesize, half in sobriety, half in jocularity, that the general preference is to be a king of a dark age rather than a plebian in an age of riches.

My genuine prejudice is that most voters don’t know where their interests lie, which makes my initial claim irrelevant.  In asserting the ignorance of average voters, I don’t mean that they’re inferior.  The fact is that unless one’s full-time job is that of a politician or pundit, it’s close to impossible to be educated on the rights and wrongs of the decisions our public servants make.  (Hint: that’s why we had better elect servants of character and intelligence than those who promise the best for our own demographic.)

etc.

I invite you to go back and read the comments on the previous two posts.  In particular, you might do some research on Matt’s comment from Monday’s post.  Write up your findings as a blog post, and email it to me if you want to be a guest writer.

Bad cheques image credit to BrentDPayne

Yesterday, we observed that the US holds a Ponzi operation in place, a government-built, government-administrated system of entitlements which depends on perpetually expanding participation in order to pay its debts.

For a while following WWII, Americans churned out 2.4 children per couple and immigrants slipped into the cracks (and crack slipped into more than a few immigrants).  Yes, we’ve had population growth, but no, not enough to keep our machine running.

People vote their own interests

People tend to vote their pocketbooks.  Simple.  When people in a different economic class than yours votes for your opposition, they’re not displaying stupidity or ignorance (not necessarily, anyway).  They’re voting to elevate their own circumstances.

Even when a political victory depresses one’s standard of living more than the opposing candidate would have done, lower class voters can yet see their interests won out: they are socially better off because they’ve reduced the difference between themselves and the higher classes.

Baby Boomer interests

Right now, the Baby Boomers are aging out, which means a hefty chunk of voters are entering the old-folks camp.  Successful politicians play the song called by the majority, and with aging Baby Boomers, that means either greater entitlements for old folks or at least further entrenchment of existing entitlements.

New American interests

In another few decades, Generation X is going to be the one aging out of the work force.  If we stay the current course, Gen X will have a burdensome system of entitlements in place and a labour force with little or no allegiance to them.  The work force should have a consequential infusion of 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-generation Americans.

Whether accurate or not, the opinion of many new voters will be that X’ers were the spoiled children of a hard-working lineage, children who didn’t deserve the high life their forebears passed down to them.  We can only expect that they’ll do the right thing: radically reduce the entitlements.

Why behave so?  Looking at Social Security and Medicare for examples, a big part of our doctrine of entitlement is that we shoulder the burden of the old folks now in expectation that the next generation will shoulder our burden.  But remember: every generation, that burden gets bigger, and we need a larger and larger work force to pay it off.

In defense of the retirees

Fact one: retirees are living longer than they expected, which makes retirement more expensive.

Fact two: low interest rates and more-or-less steady inflation are eroding retirement savings (which were unfortunately scarce to begin with).

My heart goes out to the old folks of today and tomorrow who are now too old to work.  Blame is hard to assign, which makes quick solutions hard to find, but here are at least three factors in complicity:

1. Our fiscal policy likes inflation.  Why?  It encourages spending and investment instead of saving; saving prevents the flow of money, thus reducing the amount that an entire economy produces.  Besides that, as long as we’re inflating currency, we don’t risk deflation (which is death for commerce, death for economy).  Due to inflation, our savings get eaten away from the bottom up, making life hard for people too old to work.

2. People don’t put away as much as they should—this includes both savings and investments—to retire as early as they do.  Part of this is because Americans just aren’t good at understanding their expenses, particularly in the long term (working in life insurance, I have a testimony of this).  Part of this is because our inflationary fiscal policy (mentioned in point 2) discourages holding onto money.  Even investing can put you at a loss (witness the recent recession), so consumption and immediate gratification is the surest option.

3. The better part of health care expenditures are made (wasted) in the last year of a person’s life.  That is, we too often pay more money for the last year of a person’s health care than all the health care that person enjoyed theretofore.  And for little or no reward, since the patient ends up dead within a twelvemonth.  (In 2007, over 60% of personal bankruptcies resulted from medical expenses. (LIMRA, Guaranteed Uncertainty))

Cultural revolution

We’re slowly but surely approaching a transition in which the Baby Boomers will disappear, Gen X will begin to retire, and the American vote will shift dramatically due to the great number of new Americans.  One way or another, we’re going to have a cultural revolution.  I think we had better start cleaning house today.

Our system of imposing burdens on future generations for the benefit of current voters is not sustainable.  Even if Americans were disposed to keep swelling the population by a few percent every year, eventually, we just wouldn’t have the room or resources to keep it up.  We need to look back to the time before the New Deal, give up hopes of something for nothing, and support ourselves and develop strong familial ligatures.

(If your schooling was like mine, then you were taught that the New Deal was a glorious achievement for reasons of economic magic you can never understand.  Bunk.  This propaganda is disseminated (but rarely examined or explained) because it plays in harmony with the winds of fiscal policy today.)

Last remarks on geriatric medical care

Too often we defend our spending with the question, “But how much is a human life worth?”  I’ve got news for the askers: nothing you can do saves human lives; it can only postpone death.  This becomes painfully apparent (but too late) when we blow thousands of dollars on medical cures in a patient’s old age.  Accept your mortality and—of more difficulty—the mortality of cherished ones.  Meanwhile, keep a healthy lifestyle.  An ounce of prevention is less expensive than a pound of cure.

Our labour force is shrinking!  Well… it isn’t shrinking exactly, but it’s swelling more slowly than it was in the past!

Some or most readers shouldn’t see a problem in this, but the economic lookouts who have been speaking doom for several years now have a point that merits consideration: unless the population continues to expand, we’ll be consumed by our own system of entitlements.  However, the economic lookouts who look for nothing better than a continually-swelling workforce are not looking far enough ahead.

What’s a Ponzi scheme?

Named for Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant of the early 20^th century, a Ponzi scheme is an investment operation that relies on continuous, ever-enlarging enrollment of new investors in order to make due payments to existing investors.

Social Security has been labelled (accurately) a Ponzi scheme: it does not generate enough wealth on its own to pay out the benefits it promises; rather, it relies upon ever-increasing participation to meet its obligations.  Social Security isn’t the only problem, though; as a whole, Medicare, disability plans, retirement plans (which are notoriously exorbitant for government employees) and our entire culture of entitlements operate similarly to Ponzi’s swindles.

With a large enough work force (i.e. taxable population), a population produces enough wealth that retirees, invalids, etc. don’t create such a drain on resources as to cultivate resentment.  But a decreasing workforce or even one that just isn’t growing quickly enough spells economic destruction.

Is growth really slowing?

You’ve probably heard reports that in ‘07, our birth rate hit its highest mark since the very peak of the baby boom (1957).  Couple that with lower infant mortality, and it can’t be that our population growth is dropping, can it?

Birth rate means babies born per year, not babies born per adult.  We may be having more babies as a population, but we’re having fewer babies proportional to the existing population. That means that when they’re adults, there should be fewer workers per senior citizen.  That’s a problem because the workers of tomorrow are expected to pay for Social Security, Medicare, and whatever else we install in the next thirty-or-so years.  The problem is exacerbated by an increasing life expectancy, which so far has increased the length of retirements more than it has increased the careers of Americans.

Thank goodness for the influx of immigrants, right?  I haven’t verified the following claim for myself, but the recent LIMRA report “Guaranteed Uncertainty” says that current legal immigration alone exceeds either of the European immigration waves of the 20^th century (that’s 1900’s, Nick).

Replacing our population with immigrants

True, some writers talk about the expanding immigrant population as a scare tactic: oh no, in 20 years your neighbours, bosses, and juries will have a different language, skin colour, religion, etc.!  There’s nothing to be said to people who are emotionally moved by that “horror”; there is something to be said to people who are under the illusion that the new Americans (naturalized immigrants) are going to stand for the system of entitlements that current Americans uphold.

Replacing our workforce with immigrants will drum up some more taxable commerce, but our political centre is going to change dramatically as our population does the same.  Nobody has to teach voters to vote their own interests; they just do it.  So after recent generations of Americans (Baby Boomers and Gen X, potentially Gen Y) shrugged off much of the financial and emotional burden of raising their own families, shrugged them off in order to be liberated and pursue careers and independence, let’s don’t expect other nations to stand in as our dutiful offspring to nurse us in our old age.

Tomorrow, we’ll look further into the transition between the inheritance of the Baby Boomers and the ascendancy of new Americans (immigrants and 2^nd generation Americans).

Occasionally, a certain acquaintance of mine will talk about how good he looks for his age (and since there’s no denying that he does, it’s a tolerable torment).  One day, though, this talk led him to share a relevant account of one businessman who interviewed another for a job opening:

Although the latter had all the credentials to make him an ideal fit for the position, the interviewer turned him away.  Coworkers asked later why the interviewee had not been hired, and the interviewer’s response was, “After 50, a person’s life shows in their face.”  The speaker of my acquaintance asserted that it was indeed true that the character of people aged 50 and more—in question of whether they have lived happy lives or sad ones—is apparent in their faces.

Why this is asserted or why the story is passed on escapes me unless it is to promulgate one man’s glib excuse for judging people on appearance.  Or perhaps it is what I imagined it to be at the time: a rationalization for the correctness of excluding sad people from our society.  So blackhearted.

My thoughts followed:  “[Mock claps.]  Sad people have no claim on assistance or work opportunities and ought indeed to be turned away.  Rather reminds one of the old saying: ‘Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him.’” (Isaiah 53:3, KJV)

I kept my mouth shut at the time, but since then, the tale—and more importantly, the mindset—have continued to distress me.  Yes, sad people are and will continue to be shunned; but let’s not call it righteous.