Another celebrated South Bender

Last Sunday was cold, and our church met indoors, but today’s service was held in the parking lot, in balmy weather. After Karin and Samuel and I went home and ate lunch, Samuel refused to sleep, so I pushed him in his stroller around the block. “Enjoy the last day of good weather,” one neighbor said. Sure enough, the temperature is supposed to fall by twenty degrees.

Another sign of summer’s end: people have been towing their boats back into the neighborhood.

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Recently widowed, Karin’s mom went on holiday to Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, a two-and-a-half-hour ferry ride from the northern town of Charlevoix. Beaver Island seems to be a hideaway for the rich. The residents kept telling Karin’s mom not to walk on the beaches (which may well be their private property) or on the roads (which probably aren’t).

“You’re lucky you didn’t get shot,” her brother said.

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Pete Buttigieg’s failure notwithstanding, a South Bender will become a very high federal official. I mean the Notre Dame professor, the Catholic charismatic, conservative Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s SCOTUS choice. This is hardly the nomination that Pete’s fans would have wished for. As for me, I don’t mind Barrett like I minded Brett Kavanaugh. Although Barrett is both a textualist and an originalist, she might rule as justly as any SCOTUS judge could do (it’s U.S. constitutionalism and judicial review themselves that are problematic, I’ve come to believe).

But the hypocrisy! What was it the Republicans were saying four years ago, when Obama wanted to install a judge before an election?

I’m surprised that I continue to be surprised.

Here are some interesting remarks by a friend of a friend. (As always, to enlarge an image: click on it; then, right-click on it; then, open it in a new tab; and, finally, click on it again with the magnifying cursor.)