Some Days You Eat the Bear

And some days the bear eats you. I always have napkins, to cover any eventuality. 
This is from long ago, maybe before you were born; maybe not. 

As we head towards the Holiday Season (mental, if not always actual, capital letters), we (or at the very least, I) start to lose sight of the reason for the season and regard this time of year (between Labor Day and Hallowe'en (which isn't a holiday dammit!)) as just another obstacle to be cleared, another steeple-chase to be run, another 'thing' to be gotten through. 

I'm not alone. I'm seeing lots of grumpy and frumpy folks out in the stores in recent days probably doing what I'm doing which is wondering 'what the heqq are all these people doing out here shopping today while I'm shopping?' We have a landmark store and chain closing forever around here tomorrow, I think, and going in there right now is like going to a wake.

We are blessed with choice. It's a cliche, I know, but that doesn't make it less true: and we are blessed as a society. We really do throw away more of everything than most other people on earth have had, or will ever have. And yet, given the chance, we cry for the moon and the stars and cry even louder when we all we receive is the sun. Is it possible our greed grows exponentially as our needs grow arithmetically? How much is enough and how much more is too much?

Did The Lord give us two hands just so we could take as much as we could grab and two pockets to put it all in? Maybe. Here's another question: how are we supposed to say a prayer of thanks when our mouths are full?
-bill kenny