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Pine Nuts: Letter from Earth 2022

Mark Twain once penned a book, “Letters from the Earth,” in which an archangel makes sarcastic remarks about the Creator and gets banished into space, where he flaps around until it occurs to him to push on and hunt up the Earth to see how the Human-Race experiment is coming along. He writes home, very privately, to St. Michael about his findings. And just here, I might like to invoke poetic license, and insert a personal letter to St. Michael, as I revisit Earth in this Year of Our Lord, 2022 …

Michael, these Earthlings are having far too much fun! They skylark around making music, but not with harps, they fiddle. They enjoy the sports they enjoyed when I was here last, but they are more violent now. Little League umpires are walking off the field, refusing to take abuse from parents and Little Leaguers alike. While most individuals still do get along, political factions are mutating into warring tribes that dump vitriol by the bucketful on each other’s heads.

Smart and civilized nations are making misbegotten wars on each other. Russia is presently attacking neighboring Ukraine, creating hell’s own acre. At the same time, the atom is making its way from worker to warrior, and the threat of internecine nuclear war is palpable. It’s disheartening to see international relations tainted so by toxic testosterone.



Here in America the only thing left that the two major parties have in common is humor impairment, and while floating rudderless upon zero-sum politics, congress has become the world’s greatest non-deliberative body.

Amidst a world-wide pandemic there are still those who do not, or cannot, recognize that freedom comes with a responsibility to the commonwealth. And from Genesis to Revelation, I never saw the likes of what Earthlings are doing to their climate, resulting in floods, fires, and yes, there are locusts swarming across East Africa’s draught induced famine.



Young people seem to grasp the gravity and urgency of their climate calamity, but their elders continue to attend daily ostrich classes. Some of Earth’s best minds are fixated on space, when they ought rightly be fixated on fixing the planet. Time is running out for these Earthlings, for they continue to fiddle, while their Earth burns. It is a terrible thing to contemplate. I’m going to leave them a note, a call to action if you will, in all caps …

EARTHLINGS, TURN YOUR ENTIRE ATTENTIONS TO SAVING YOUR PLANET,

OR, ACCEPT THE INEXORABLE CONSEQUENCES OF EXTINCTION. — A FRIEND

When it comes to short-term gains, the state of Nevada has a leg up on the other 49 states, having posted gambling winnings of over a billion dollars in each of the last twelve months, then too, in Las Vegas the word “book,” continues to be a verb, and they continue to party-on.

Well Michael, I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have time …

Audio: https://anchor.fm/mcavoy-layne

Learn more about McAvoy Layne at http://www.ghostoftwain.com


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