Early Morning Adrenaline Rush

Way early Betty woke me- "I need you!!! There's a snake in the den!!! The kitties were trying to play with it!!!!" She had a cat in each arm and really wide eyes. Cats were pretty wide-eyed, too.

I went to look at it and thought, "Yikes, that's a coral snake!" About 4-5 inches long and skinny, really pretty. I put on garden gloves, got cooking tongs and an empty pill bottle and stuffed him in.

Then, just to be sure, I went to the handy-dandy online Florida snake identification guide. Turns out our visitor was not a very poisonous coral snake, but a friendly little scarlet kingsnake.

Everyone calmed down, got heart rates under control, let the cats out of the closed bedroom, and put the visitor back outside where he belonged. Of course, too wired to go back to bed. Cats are still looking and sniffing around the den, looking for their playmate. Of course, I suspect the snake is just as glad he got away.

Required Reading...

One of my favorite bloggers is Perry Noble. This little speculation of his ought to be required reading in every church, parachurch, denominational office and seminary in the whole of Christiandom.

What if?

Social Media...

What many (usually older) people who don't understand is that young people are no more aware of social media and ubiquitous communication than a fish is aware of water- it is simply a part of their environment. Neither is a young person aware of their language- they simply acquire it and use it naturally. But learning a new language in adulthood is difficult, and it's likely we will never become really fluent in the new language. And adjusting to social media can be just as difficult.

Social media are really more about means and opportunity than about content. Since the Garden, people have used whatever means are at hand to communicate. It started with the spoken word, and stayed there for a long time. With the spoken word, stories were heard only within the immediate circle, and were preserved and transmitted within a very noisy channel.

The first huge technological leap was writing itself. Suddenly (historically speaking) stories were preserved and spread faster and farther than could be imagined before. And periodically since, there have been these quantum spurts of technologically-driven increases in the speed and reach of information- think Gutenberg, Morse, Bell.

Did our grandparents many times removed scratch their heads and wonder if parchment and reed pens would really catch on?