Have you ever seen an American Bison in person? To put it mildly, it is an impressive beast. Or I could ask, “Have you ever seen American Bison in person?”, because the plural of bison is bison, at least according to the websites that confirmed what I thought was correct. And not to matriculate too far off topic, don’t you love that about the internet? No matter how wild or ridiculous a theory you might have, there are others, sometimes many others, that will share your cockamamie belief and dedicate their time trying to convince the ignorant or ill-informed (i.e. sane people) via the ‘Web. Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I took a dive into the topic of “Flat Earth”. To my great delight and deep chagrin, I found The Flat Earth Society’s site, and whoa Nelly, is it a doozy! I’ve heard of these guys before. And yes, I said guys. I can’t imagine a woman that I’ve ever met associating herself with them. I was especially fascinated by PDF files of the “Flat Earth News”, published by Charles K. Nelson. If you ever have some time to kill and want yet another reason to lament mankind’s existence, I HIGHLY recommend that you peruse this particular newsletter, dated June 1979. Granted, I didn’t read the whole thing, but did want to share a few selected nuggets. Their tagline is, in all caps, “RESTORING THE WORLD TO SANITY”. At the bottom of this particular newsletter, they call out NASA and offer this admonition, one that they say cannot be refused: “stop, end, call off the Space Shuttle Hoax before your limb is sawed off the spinning ball tree of Deceit”. Alrighty then! To their credit, they did mention this: “Chicago was then as it is now, a Democratic Stronghold, a Center of Monstrous Underworld Evil of all description…”. A broken clock, amirite? Sadly, the last entry for the website was in 2016. Maybe they were correct, got too close, and fell off the edge of the earth. One can only dream…
Back to the bison. From a distance, they appear to be a serene, thickly coiffed cow, peacefully meandering about hill, dale, and occasionally traffic. If you’ve ever been to Yellowstone, or any other home where the buffalo roam (work with me), you’ve been repeatedly warned to stay away from them; they are, contrary to their appearance, quite dangerous. Just last year, there were four well-publicized attacks, three at Yellowstone in one month. Why? Quoting from livescience.com, “Park officials warned visitors to be respectful of the enormous beasts’ personal space, as approaching too close can provoke bison to charge.” Fool around and find out, paraphrasing modern philosophers. Despite warnings, or what common sense we may possess, sometimes the lure of excitement, pleasure, or the perfect selfie may compel us to take foolish, potentially deadly risks. That which we may deem harmless may be the very thing that destroys us.
There are many hazards in life, some that are unavoidable. But there are other perils that can and should be averted, those that can threaten our very souls. Are you aware?
(Click “Stand on Firmer Ground” for a deeper look into Beware!)