Life On a Lake 

Dedicated to the Joys of Waterside Living

381

Fishing is a little bit like prayer. You are trying to make contact with an unknown entity that is obscure and normally out of reach. In fact, you don't know whether it truly exists, or is a projection of your imagination. And what lies under water can only be guessed at.

You imagine a big trout or a giant largemouth bass. But you can't see it. It exists mostly in your mind. The water is dark and cold and deep. You can see only a few inches, or a few feet, beneath the surface, and it is not often a fish lets himself be glimpsed, and this is usually only in late summer, when the bass fry and bluegills feed at night in the shallows. How they will grab a fly just before dark. And sometimes a trout.

The rest of the time fishing is solely guess work. The illusive quarry remains unknown and unreachable. Like God. If there is a God.

Fishing and prayer are largely guesswork. I would want it no other way.

Every Soldier's dream. (But what do Marines dream of?)

380

You ask, and I thank you, why we are fighting Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is to protect the American way of life, as exemplified in the picture above. The terrorist wish to destroy our economy and value system. They want to end The Academy Awards, pro-football, shoot-em-up movies, surfing, drag races, gay marriages.

We have to stop them, for if we don't they will come to America and bomb us silly. They will steal our wives, corrupt our children with TV and video games, end organized sports as we know and love them, produce shoddy goods and make us buy them, without any hope of manufacturer's rebate ever coming in the mail.

The idea is, for us to invade the smaller of such countries, with virtually no weaponry or military, and systematically destroy their infrastructure. Take their oil.  Capture them, humiliate them, torture them, take lots of pictures of them, with us laughing. This way, you see, we will drive our lessons home. They will learn to admire us and our ways of life and our government.

That way, in time, they will become just like us.
 

February full moon rising early over some conifers

379

Try to be a little different, but--remember--they will hate you for it.

Thanks for the visit,
Robert C. Arnold, Editor