Things seen and heard on the road

I traveled a number of miles in the last 48 hours, and saw and heard some things that caught my attention in lovely and horrifying ways.

Wednesday night, driving home from Gladstone with my colleague Kevin, a big white owl flew into the path of his car. It was raining sporadically, and quite foggy. I'd joked about being on deer watch, as the deer have really started moving. Suddenly, from nowhere, it seemed, a huge white owl appeared in front of the windshield. It was flying across the road, and was moving so quickly that we didn't hit it, thank goodness. I was so busy thinking deer that owl was outside of my cognitive zone. "What the hell was that?" I asked, even as my brain was slowly coming to owl. Kevin said that in his six years of driving around the UP, he'd never seen an owl like that.

Thursday morning, driving towards Ironwood on M-28, I saw a bald eagle eating a dead deer by the side of the road. It was HUGE. This is my fourth eagle sighting since I've arrived, and by far the closest I've ever been to one. I pulled onto the shoulder, and got a good look before it flew up and over my car. As I drove away, it was circling back to continue its feast.

Finally, Thursday night, I ran to the IGA to get milk, and was scanning for something on the radio. I came to some interesting-sounding choral music. It turned out to be a scary-fundamentalist radio station. I'll confess that I don't usually have much patience for that sort of thing, but before I could hit scan, the voice said, "Tonight, we begin a new bible study on the book of Leviticus." The announcer told us that Dr. So-and-So, the famous biblical scholar will lead us through this "amazing book of the bible. He will tell us," the announcer exclaimed, "why he believes that Leviticus is the most important book in our whole bible."

What? Leviticus? The most important book in our whole bible? Oh please. Well, I was hooked, I have to say. Purity codes? Condemnation against gay and lesbian people? What would this man tell me was the reason for giving Leviticus such vaunted status?

I actually had an anti-NPR moment. Rather than sitting in my car because an NPR story had so captured me, I was sitting in the parking lot in the IGA in horror, listening to this scholar tell the folks out there in radioland that Leviticus was "written by Moses." And that it was important because it was highlighting all those things that Jesus said in the Gospels.

It's no wonder to me that people are so biblically clueless. There are folks out there listening to this crap that sounds so smart and academic (though I have to say that this man sounded like he was about 80, a cattle-rancher, and a chain smoker, he had the raspiest voice I've ever heard). The believe that if someone who has Doctor appended to his name, what is being said must be true.

I was horrified. Clearly. And still am.