I thought that I had decided not to post to this thread anymore. But I just woke up from a dream with these words sing songing in my head Noah's Ark Noak's Ark Noah's Ark. And the plot that of that dream that I remembered was very long and involved but mostly centered around a person who had thought that they were making changes in the world by adding some kind of chemical to the atmosphere to cause it to rain in a place where there had been too little rain for too long. And it did rain, and red wildflowers with yellow spots in their middle grew and they were beautiful. But then it rained and the red & yellow wild flowers kept getting bigger and it rained some more and the wild flowers got bigger and it rained and rained and rained and the flowers got bigger and bigger and bigger and the person realized the wrong she had done trying to mess with mother nature but she didn't mean no harm but harm was done anyway and she cried as the water rose higher and higher she was carried by the water and other people were carried also toward these volzwagon beatle type vans of different colors but all shaped the same. And the vans were being driven or were floating down the middle of this water which had come about because of the woman's good intentioned mistake which was more than a mistake since it meant the end of the world not just the world that she knew but the world for every body else. The procession of vans was going in a vertical line straight ahead but where? As the woman was carried by the water's movement she cried and cried she saw the procession of vans ahead of her and thought if she could get on board one of those vans than she could be saved and if other people could than they would be saved also. And as she thought this the main thing that echoed in her head was Noah's Ark Noak Ark Noak's Ark. And she floated closer and closer to one of the vans.

And then I woke up.

with thoughts about that scene and bits and pieces of the story which it was a part of but also with thoughts about this Mudcat thread. I thought about my good intentions for starting this thread and I thought about the saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". Then I thought about Rodney King's saying "Can't we all get along?" and I thought about the bickering that was occurring on this thread the last time I checked. Right after that the Smokey Robinson song "Tracks of My Tears" popped into my mind and right after that came a memory of an experience I had in the 1980s when a crazy woman or was she crazy? chanted over and over again on the bus "America is the last leg of the last trip of Christ's 2000 year old journey through SPACE. And then came the question "Suppose this is a test?" Suppose right now at this time in the world when the planets are aligned a certain way and people are ready for it then are tested to see if they really are ready? Suppose throughout the world in different ways people who mean well are tested in different ways to see if they stay true to themselves when they are taunted or maligned or treated badly. They have a choice will they keep to the high road or take the low road and if they take the low that means that failed the test and we who are the world we the people aren't ready yet to move on to the next stage of our development but still there are Noah's Arks to save us or at least save those of us who can make it on to those arks. I hope we yield not to temptation but we keep on keepin on showing that we not only can get along but we can learn from others and we can deal with heavy duty subjects like what is discussed in this thread in truly civilized way without getting down and without getting dirty.