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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The "Where were you when the World came to an End?" Story

It was an ordinary day. Heading to work at the Gallery and listening to a song on FM97 by Kansas called "Dust in the Wind." It was written in 1977 and reached #6 on the Billboard charts in 1978. The lyrics are philosophical and have a depressing message, especially in the last verse which begins: "Don't hang on/Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky". Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the song was placed on the list of songs deemed 'lyrically questionable'. And now ..... Well, at least the world didn't come to an end a few weeks ago as Harold Camping predicted. Remember Harold. He was the 89-year-old retired civil engineer who predicted the rapture would begin May 21 and the faithful 3% would be yanked into heaven to survive while the rest of us would surely perish. Unless of course you and I were in that 3%. Based on the population, that would be about 200,000,000 people would follow him to the promised land. Let's see, on May 21, Carol and I were sitting on the beach in our orange chairs, under our yellow umbrella, having a BBC and reading our favorite novel. I doubt if we were in the 3%. Looked to the heavens a few times during the day and at one point saw a few nasty clouds, but zero everything else. Seems that the day was an invisible judgement day. No earthquakes, storms, plagues, or even another day of rain during our vacation. Harold should have been with us for the whole vacation and maybe we would have had better weather. OK, now he tells us that May 21 was only a trial run for THE REAL THING. That's going to happen on October 21! Gives us a few more months to prepare for it again. Should I live it up until October 21 or should I be praying harder each day? Oh, the choices! Then I checked my calendar and low and behold, I'll be on another beach on October 21. Probably Bottom Bay beach or Crane Beach in Barbados. I hope Barbados is excluded from his prediction, but just in case, I'll be watching the skies again as I sit on my chair, under my umbrella reading my book. Oh yeah, with a drink in my hand. Hope it won't be a "Dust in the Wind" ending! It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

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