Weapons

Walking with my wife today I saw a house with three quotes written on its various front retaining walls. If you see these quotes it means you are in my neighborhood. Check out the open mike night at the Riverview on Thursdays. It would be just behind you and up the street a little from where you're reading the quotes. It is too late for you to go to the sing-a-long Sound of Music at our lovely old art deco theater straight back up the street from the quotes, but I'm sure you'll find something worth seeing there if you need to see a movie. It's three dollars. They have real butter on the popcorn. No, I am not being paid for this.

One of the wall quotes was by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I appreciate the regionalism and the rah rah boosterism of a famous local's quote making it on a wall. Did you know Minnesota now sports two Nobel Prize winners for literature? Did you also know F. Scott is not one of them? He's the one we keep in our pocket for emergencies. But maybe the Nobel committee was on to something since I can't remember what his quote was. I'm pretty sure it wasn't as good as the one on the wall fronting the sidewalk. It was by Cornell West: "Justice is what love looks like in public."





I'm just respectfully letting you have a second with that since it's so good. But I'm here today about the third wall quote. 

Elie Wiesel said:

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.

As much as I like that quote I skipped right over what it might teach me and immediately thought of all the impassioned things I say that elicit a shrug of the shoulders. I thought of how fun it will be to say "You know, Elie Wiesel said "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."

We all need weapons. It's a war out there.