Welcome to this Sunday’s Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. Today we target: The Patch

  • Anticipating trick or treat time Tuesday, will we stand vigil like Linus in a sincere, pumpkin patch to catch the Great Pumpkin in the act ?
  • Will we dress up like “noisy spirits” (literal translation from the German ‘poltergeists’) and go out a-viking for candy à la the Peanuts gang?
  • If not eager to dress up and cavort, like the hordes of demanding, costumed, little beastards, should we still shell out the sweets while warily guarding the home patch from the big beastards?
  • Are the rituals of vigil and vigilance not yearly events but daily chores dealing with the definitional variances of “the patch?”
  • For example, despite giving meaning and legacy, if you don’t want interrupting kids around, is it transdermal patch time?
  • Why are expensive ripped jeans in fashion? Why not patched pants, shirts too, with mom’s affirming label “perfectly useable”?
  • Is a darned sock a patch job, and like software and engineering patches, just a quick, temporary fix?
  • If one can, over time, patch up matters with people, even family, why don’t nations, knowing the terrible costs of war, patch up conflict.
  • Is space a factor? Like Thoreau, better to sit alone on a pumpkin than be crowded on a velvet pillow?
  • Does a clever quote and imagery patch over Lebensraum plus ethnic propaganda and peril?
  • Are pumpkins in the patch not a problem but worry about the lumpkins? Not the bumpkins, the lumpkins?
  • When leaders are lumpkins, what does it say of followers and the future? Scary? Is there a patch?
  • Since man is willing to fight and die for an idea, and current means of destruction are cataclysmic, is any patching possible short of domination and/or an ever beckoning grave?
  • So, Happy Halloween, I guess, from the patch with its always past, present and pressing poltergeists?
  • Should we seek and beseech a host of Great Pumpkins to provide opportunity for us to earn and deserve a patch of plenitude……not peanuts?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The answers and actions are yours?