(78) Truth, and nothing but!

26. 9. 2023

My distant nephew lives in a distant country. His long-deceased father, my cousin, and I used to be good friends. This nephew, whom I have never met in person, discovered me in his father's correspondence, found me on the Internet, and we have been corresponding for about ten years now. At first, I sent him photos and my memories of his father, but in recent years we have been writing about events in our Families. One of those events in his Family is worth mentioning.

This nephew has an eighteen-year-old son. This son recently had his graduation exams. Together with two of his friends, members of the local skinny youth, he has a not very good reputation in their small town. In addition, during the entire long years of high school, these three did not get higher than a little bit from the bottom with their grades. So, they barely progressed from year to year, and suddenly there are graduation exams, the results of which will determine the direction for the next life.

A few weeks before graduation, the local Catholic archbishop visited their town. My nephew, together with his son and his two friends, decided to look at the archbishop. They listened to the mass and after it they were invited to the lawn behind the church to talk to the archbishop.

They stood there for a while until it was their turn and the archbishop stood in front of them, in a high cap, in his impressive cloaks, and asked my distant nephew that "and you, my son, what should you tell me about yourself?"

My nephew says that he doesn't have much to say for himself, but "my son here, and his two friends have graduation in a week and our whole family is desperate because the boys have little hope of making it through the graduation exams."

The archbishop waved his hand: "Don't worry about it, God knows how to deal with worse situations." Then he turned to the boys, touched each of them with two fingers on their foreheads, airily waved the sign of the cross in front of them, and walked to the next group of people.

When my nephew got his hands on the results a few weeks later, he couldn't believe his eyes: his son passed the graduation exams with the best possible grades! And not only that, his two friends did too, all three of them finished as the best of their entire year!

A few weeks later, the son of my distant nephew got a job at the best local university, moved to the capital near that school – and now I'm waiting for more news...

Added on 26/04/2024.

At the end of 2023, several people were shot dead at the same university. This son of my distant nephew was sitting on a tram on his way to the same university short while before the event. A phone rang in his pocket, from which he learned that the lecture had been cancelled and postponed to a later date. The boy got off the tram and waited for another one that was going in the opposite direction. At home, he heard about the shooting... That the archbishop's blessing would still work???

(67) Archaeology blog.

 (67) Archaeology blog.

I painted a wall in the living room, and I constantly had to drive away a stubborn mosquito that was hanging around the freshly painted area. When I finished painting and washing and putting away the utensils, I returned for a little enjoyment. At one point I noticed a slight unevenness - a mosquito! He settled on fresh paint, tried to fly away, and during the match he managed to wrap himself in color from head to heels. Since the colour was already partially dry, and the mosquito tomb was not very pronounced, I left it there.

My wife and I lived in the house until we left for eternity, after us one of our children and a few grandchildren lived in it. Each of the inhabitants painted the ceilings with their own color, the tomb of the mosquito was covered with another and another layer of sculpture, until finally the house was dismantled and served. One of our great-offspring demolished it, used what could be used, took the rest to the garbage dump and there the mosquito ended up in his plastic tomb.

History rolled on, a century, a millennium, a hundred thousand years passed...

Half a million years later, perhaps more, the inhabitants of one planet in the galaxy were returned by a probe that was supposed to bring back samples of material from some very distant asteroid that was once highly radioactive, and which was thought to have passed enough time to explore.

The probe brought only a small pile of some material, which was sent to the appropriate institution for analysis. The material was highly radioactive, and the analysis was entrusted to a scientist who, thanks to its insect origin, was relatively resistant to radioactivity.

The scientist, looking not unlike today's ladybugs, used all the tools at his disposal, from illumination to automatic drills, chisels, hammers and excavators. In the middle of various insignificant sand, he bulged a kind of ball of unknown material. After being illuminated, it seemed to him that there was some kind of structure in the ball. There is no need to stretch the esteemed readers: the structure began to remind him of some kind of creature on the three-dimensional screen! And the creature began to remind the scientist-beetle of some of his co-workers. The scientist-ladybug came to the inevitable conclusion: the ancient inhabitants of that unexplored planet were at the level of civilization when they were already burying their dead in several sarcophagi, and each of them was from a different hitherto unexplored matter!

When he published his discovery, and received the Christmasbeetle Prize for outstanding scientific work, the public finally learned about it from the local press. And one old beetle (or perhaps a fungus) remembered an ancient fable, according to which something full of some kind of deformed porridge or a slime crashed on their planet, and from which all their ancestors allegedly flew out: fleas, flies, fungi, bacteria, animals... That the creature in that scientific work was one of their great-great-ancestors???