Who Wears The Ruby Slippers?

I tell you, when I start on the manuscript I plan for "The Gospel According To Once Upon A Time" this summer hiatus it's going to be -- in my daughter Sarah's words when she watched the episode on her tablet last night "good ... and interesting!" And I don't say that solely for Sunday night's episode "Ruby Slippers", which incidentally does not refer to Dorothy's in-Oz choice of footwear (true to the original Baum story, it's the Silver Shoes that Dorothy had on her first visit and the Wicked Witch craved). I recognize the pun on Ruby, one of the show's peripheral characters who stands for Red Riding Hood AND the Big Bad Wolf, who wears them traveling from Oz to the Underworld (why?) where Emma, Regina, and Company are frustrating Hades with inspiring hope and then back to Oz again to awaken Dorothy with True Love's Kiss. Again, why Hades hasn't just blown Emma and Company away since they're on his turf is beyond my logic circuits.


I'm told love does that.


Friday night (ok, this is my flashback after recalling a series that's replete with them) after work I met Martha, Sarah, and Jeffrey at Longfellow's Family Fun Night and even got to play some of the games set up in the gym with Jeffrey. We were on our way there and a woman pushing a stroller gave me ten tickets she wasn't going to use and we had fun and won candy and then on my way back to meeting Martha and the rest of the family in the cafeteria (oh, Martha got me some food there because I wouldn't have eaten dinner and I really appreciate that!) Martha had pointed how to her that she had won the top prize in the raffle, a 40-inch Samsung flat screen TV that we're all excited about and prepared to install ... once we get an entertainment center or stand big enough for it. Family's looking around (our current flat screen TV is 30 inches and our entertainment center's barely big enough for that) for one with us, and the photo's already been shared a lot.


Martha only bought one ticket.


But it was the right one. I got through reading Amy Newman's book The Nuremberg Laws (ISBN 1560063548) about how the Nazis eventually legalized discrimination against Jews, Gypsies, and anyone else who wasn't of pure "Aryan blood". It didn't happen overnight. And the fact that it is possible to make the letter of the law make anyone an outsider and for others to turn a blind eye to it ... you could argue such a policy made World War II inevitable. I've read some historians argue that if Britain and France had stood firmer against Nazi Germany when it annexed the Sudetenland (more or less today's Czech Republic) or even pushed it back that there's no way such laws could have stayed on the books. You sort of kind of need live and armed people at the barricades and borders when other countries are pushing in on you more than you need scapegoats. Here in the second decade of the Thirty Years War of the 21st century, we're really looking for new scapegoats?


But I am not so sure I digress.

Today's the beginning of Spring Break for Minot Public Schools and it actually looks like spring outside! Martha and I beseeched the kids to sleep in (even though Martha can't with her current job, snif) and I am glad to not have had to shout at Sarah and Jeffrey to come down. They did on their own, spent some time on their tablets, and before getting them to Robert and Sharon's (Martha's parents, remember?) for the day I asked them to help me clear some books off the shelves that they aren't reading or don't read anymore, as I am doing that too. Oh don't look so surprised, I realize that I have one life and it's short enough. Why waste it on things I don't want? Sounds like an issue I hope I've made peace at church with; I just don't have the heart to be mad anymore. And when I hear enough people tell me I have anger issues ... you know, I'll have to cancel my subscription. To those issues, as well as some people.


'Twas him,


David