Spending Time

Annie Dillard recently died. She was renowned for her writings, especially Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Holy the Firm. I read these books, and did not get much out of them, but maybe I just didn’t get it. It happens sometimes. I didn’t like Faulkner, Hemingway, Joyce, or Salinger either. She wrote The Writing Life. The purpose of my writing is life, that is, my life and the lives of others who will, I hope, be blessed by what I write. To keep people laughing is a good way to bless them.

Annie said, “Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.” We have all heard statements like this regarding money and possessions. But time is also a resource which we must spend, not waste. I am one of those personalities who tried to cram as many accomplishments into a day as I could. I planned ahead for them, and kept detailed records of them. In retirement, I still do this to a great extent.

Having said this, I must point out that sometimes the best investment of time is to rest. I have had a lifelong insomnia problem, which to my amazement seems to be now under control. I do not nap very often, but when I do, it is because (I think) my body needs it. The result of my nap this afternoon is this mediocre essay.

Life, including naps, is an investment, and one in which you have no choice but to participate. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is truer than you may think.

Tails of Evolution: Unnatural Selections, a story collection by Stan Rice, story five. At the Captain’s Table

Stan Rice has published a collection of short stories, Tails of Evolution. Rice is also the author of the Encyclopedia of Evolution, Life of Earth, and popular articles about evolution. Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

            What you don’t know about evolution can kill you.

In these stories, Stan Rice introduces us to people who would never have imagined that evolution had any impact on their lives. A young fundamentalist Christian woman, out of place at a university, discovers that love can evolve. A creationist discovers half-fish half-amphibians in a swamp in Oklahoma. Two young Englishmen find themselves actors on the stage of Darwinian sexual selection. A fundamentalist bases his faith on hearing a devil bird. A young preacher finds a hidden city that is based on Darwinism. A food scientist discovers a tribe of Homo ergaster pre-humans in the cliffs of Madagascar. Darwin meets Lincoln, who was born on the same day in 1809. And a young man discovers that love is the most combustible thing in the universe.

A young fundamentalist preacher is trapped in a snowstorm at a restaurant and hotel in the mountains of Pennsylvania. The people that run it, and the church that meets at the restaurant, are almost too perfect to be true, especially the beautiful wife of the owner. The only problem is that the church is based not on the Bible but on the writings of Charles Darwin.

The people are all beautiful and all alike: all white and blond. They recognize that they need some genetic diversity, which they intend to get from the preacher, who is black. Their attempt to seduce him into inseminating the woman fails. He changes his mind and wants to have sex after all, but all the people and facilities have disappeared, except the building.

Evolutionary scientists like Rice understand that genetic diversity is necessary for not only evolution but for the persistence of a population.

The preacher decides to come back later, when the roads are open again, with a pile of Bibles. I am not going to tell you what he found.

Tails of Evolution: Unnatural Selections, a story collection by Stan Rice, story four. Turn Ye to Me

Stan Rice has published a collection of short stories, Tails of Evolution. Rice is also the author of the Encyclopedia of Evolution, Life of Earth, and popular articles about evolution. Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

            What you don’t know about evolution can kill you.

In these stories, Stan Rice introduces us to people who would never have imagined that evolution had any impact on their lives. A young fundamentalist Christian woman, out of place at a university, discovers that love can evolve. A creationist discovers half-fish half-amphibians in a swamp in Oklahoma. Two young Englishmen find themselves actors on the stage of Darwinian sexual selection. A fundamentalist bases his faith on hearing a devil bird. A young preacher finds a hidden city that is based on Darwinism. A food scientist discovers a tribe of Homo ergaster pre-humans in the cliffs of Madagascar. Darwin meets Lincoln, who was born on the same day in 1809. And a young man discovers that love is the most combustible thing in the universe.

Roderick is a fundamentalist American exchange student in Scotland. He has many reasons for his faith, but the main one is that he believes Satan is real and can appear to us at any moment.

Roderick also disapproves of his own sexual attraction to Pamela. They go camping on a beach. He is certain that he can keep his hands off of Pamela. And he does, but not because of his will power. It is because, just as they started to sleep, they hear a loud satanic noise, which chase them back to their respective homes. For years afterward, Roderick tells people he almost lost his faith, until he heard the very voice of Satan on a beach in Scotland.

It was only many years later, when Pamela visits the home where Roderick and his wife raised little fundamentalist kids, that Roderick discovers, on educational television, the territorial call of the Manx shearwater, also called the devil-bird.

As science educators like Rice know, our beliefs are sometimes based on illusions.

Tails of Evolution: Unnatural Selections, a story collection by Stan Rice, story three. Lord Bob and Sir Dick

Stan Rice has published a collection of short stories, Tails of Evolution.  Rice is also the author of the Encyclopedia of Evolution, Life of Earth, and popular articles about evolution. Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

            What you don’t know about evolution can kill you.

In these stories, Stan Rice introduces us to people who would never have imagined that evolution had any impact on their lives. A young fundamentalist Christian woman, out of place at a university, discovers that love can evolve. A creationist discovers half-fish half-amphibians in a swamp in Oklahoma. Two young Englishmen find themselves actors on the stage of Darwinian sexual selection. A fundamentalist bases his faith on hearing a devil bird. A young preacher finds a hidden city that is based on Darwinism. A food scientist discovers a tribe of Homo ergaster pre-humans in the cliffs of Madagascar. Darwin meets Lincoln, who was born on the same day in 1809. And a young man discovers that love is the most combustible thing in the universe.

Bob and Dick are two British students who are wildly enthusiastic about science, especially natural history. Bob puts down Dick for his failure to understand nature—especially evolution—as well as Bob does. They form a secret club—which meets in an old shed at Charles Darwin’s childhood home in Shrewsbury—in which they become Lord Bob and Sir Dick (based, the author says, on Lord Bob May and Sir Richard Dawkins, both leaders in evolutionary science). They find a bottle of flammable chemical in the shed.

Into this intellectual competition comes mate competition in the form of Betsy, a red-haired Irish girl who becomes Lady Elizabeth in the club. That is, as an evolutionary scientist like Rice would explain, natural selection and sexual selection are both at work. Bob is prevailing to gain Betsy’s interest, especially after he discovers them making love in the shed. As Dick, crazed by lust, considers what he might do, he quietly removes the stopper from the chemical bottle. A fire, caused by a Nazi bomb, makes the decision for him.

Tails of Evolution: Unnatural Selections, a story collection by Stan Rice, story two. Fish Fry

Stan Rice has published a collection of short stories, Tails of Evolution. Rice is also the author of the Encyclopedia of Evolution, Life of Earth, and popular articles about evolution. Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

            What you don’t know about evolution can kill you.

In these stories, Stan Rice introduces us to people who would never have imagined that evolution had any impact on their lives. A young fundamentalist Christian woman, out of place at a university, discovers that love can evolve. A creationist discovers half-fish half-amphibians in a swamp in Oklahoma. Two young Englishmen find themselves actors on the stage of Darwinian sexual selection. A fundamentalist bases his faith on hearing a devil bird. A young preacher finds a hidden city that is based on Darwinism. A food scientist discovers a tribe of Homo ergaster pre-humans in the cliffs of Madagascar. Darwin meets Lincoln, who was born on the same day in 1809. And a young man discovers that love is the most combustible thing in the universe.

Dr. Fishbein is a creationist who runs a Creationist Evidences museum, to which homeschool fundamentalist moms bring their piles of children. The museum is not well-funded, but a rich Christian investor has come to visit his museum. Fishbein proposes a whole new, and lavish, museum which the investor funds. Fishbein has a particular problem with the evolutionary assertion that amphibians evolved from fishes, and that fossils intermediate between the two have been discovered.

The new museum site is a swamp that turns out to be a remnant from what most scientists (but not those who believe in the Flood of Noah) consider to be hundreds of millions of years old. While planning a big fish fry to dedicate the new building, he discovers something that lives in the swamp that discombobulates his whole belief system. What is it? Nobody ever finds out, because the people who come to the “fish” fry eat the evidence.