"Evolution............................."

For the second time in as many weeks, the granddaughter and I have been reading Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn”, eleven chapters each setting, McKenna answering her teacher’s questions as we go. While there is this sense of having watched the movie somewhere back there, this might just be my initial excursion into the book, itself; and, in truth, even though my early years knew such language from some in our family, it makes me somewhat uneasy for my grandchild to be bombarded with that offensive term so many utilized in addressing African Americans. I would be lacking, however, if I didn’t confess to always needing to pause before voicing that latter tag considered “ethnically correct”. To me, they’ve always been “blacks”; and, in hearing how we’re noted in their vernacular, this old man wonders why it isn’t a reciprocal matter. Indeed, isn’t the real offense found in the manner we speak to each other and not in cultural linguistics? If a man wants respect, shouldn’t he give it as well? Surely, on both sides of the fence, it would be best, not to dismiss the past, but to at least come together in an attempt to recognize: underneath our skin, we all are one… In class Wednesday evening, I spoke of it often being hard to visualize all these Old Testament characters as being anything other than almost prehistoric in their identity. The story books always picture them, from early on, dressed in linen robes of some sort; and that could well be, although Adam and Eve were divinely supplied in the Garden with animal skins to cover their nakedness. It remains a mystery as to when “fashion” came into the picture. Does that make the early members of humanity “knuckle-dragging, club-wielding cavemen, though”? Not in my opinion; but I do believe they lacked, not intelligence, but most certainly knowledge, the world around them an enigma in many ways. Thousands of years down the road, that which we are has changed only in those discoveries made along the way. I differ from them only in a brain that has accumulated information unknown to them. That doesn’t make me smarter, just better equipped for life as it comes to me. It yet remains, however, that each of us, from Genesis unto Judgment, will one day be held accountable for the journey……