Intimations of Immorality

Yesterday, I bicycled past Hurd Farm, just down the road from my house.  This is a family farm so traditional it has become chic. I see the daughters throwing bread to the piglets, the goats roaming, the chickens pecking and in a large field I see turkeys walking about.  It's all very free range. They don't have cows, but they have lamas.
I have seen the alternative, industrial farms, where turkeys are packed into rooms reeking with the ammonia stench of urine so powerful no human being could last long in that space. 

My wonderful neighbor,  having heard me speak in glowing terms of the way these birds are raised sent me a texted photo: Turkeys on Death Row.

She was right, of course. These animals may have good lives, until they do not. 
That got me thinking about upcoming Thanksgiving, where I will see my nephew and hs wife and  his son and daughter.  The son is wonderful, and great fun, but his older sister, is something else again.
When they moved to New York City from Nashville recently, there were no places in any of the schools they sought, but one school agreed to at least meet and interview the kids and they took the girl off into a room and came back an hour later and the head of school said, "I think we'll have to make space for your children."
Apparently, they had the girl read "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," which she did, with aplomb. Then they asked if she knew what a star was, to which she replied, "Well, that is not mentioned in the poem of course, but a star is a gaseous ball of energy in space. Our sun is a star." 
They asked the right kid the right question.  
(Her brother is more interested in superheroes than stars, and when I asked him who Superman is--he was wearing a Superman T shirt--he replied brightly, "He is the one who saves the day.")
So, I am looking forward to hearing what these two might have to say.
I have also been looking for a copy of "Animal Farm" to bring, so I can read it to them. 

I used to read "The Polar Express" and other books to my kids and it was one of those unexpected things about having kids hang about which turned out to be really fun.  They were seeing everything for the first time.
"Animal Farm" should be just about right for the girl. I'll have to explain the allegory part of it, about communism and all that, and that should be fun.
If we actually have the time.
The boy might like "The Iliad and the Odyssey."  I loved that book and so did my kids.  My older son had to read a more advanced version in college, in a course called "Anger." 
"Why would you read the Iliad in that course?"
"Dad," he laughed, shaking his head at my obtuseness, "There isn't much in the Iliad but anger." 

By the time I see all these kids, we'll have a new President.  Unless I miss my bet, the President we will have will be all about anger.
The fact is, however, unless he pushes the nuclear button in a pique of anger, he won't be able to do much to our family, other than wreck the economy. But only for ten years or so.
Maybe my neighbors are right. Government isn't all that important, after all. What really changes our lives is business and technology: the internet, computers, electricity, medical breakthroughs, innovations in transportation and communications.  Maybe, as Ronald Reagan insisted, all we need from government is a military to defend us. 

If having an open minded, intellectual, mild mannered Black man in the White House did not make our country any of those things, why should the presence of a racist, anti-intellectual, bloviator  make us any of those things. 
I will now assume the Lotus position and hum.