18 February 2020

♂

 18 February 12020 is probably Independence Day in Gambia, though I don’t know where I picked up that item. It is Nikos Kazantzakis’ birthday. I’m reading in the news that the Boy Scouts are filing for bankruptcy protection from a rash of lawsuits alleging molestation in connection with organization activities or the like. I’m actually not clear on this—I haven’t read up on events thanks to personal distaste for the subject, but I’m not a fan of the Boy Scouts, though several people I grew up with were heavily involved with the organization and appeared to get a lot out of it. My father was a scout, and when I was young he used to regale us with stories of how his troop was a rather standoffish bunch that were hard to get to know, and after his family moved away he read in the paper about their arrest for disassembling stolen cars and selling the parts…. Noble little bastions of democracy somebody used to call them—Tom Lehrer, maybe. But, as I wrote, I had friends who got a lot out of scouting, or said they did, and I can’t help but hope that the organization manages to get through this particular crisis somehow or other.