1. I went to the funeral of Herbert Mohler this week. He was probably my Dad's closest cousin, at least in the last decades of my Dad's life. I remember my Dad being very fond of his German Baptist cousin Mary Louise as well. I seem to remember "favorite cousin" being said of her at one point.
Herbert was just a good guy. Witty like my Dad's Miller cousins in general. Faithful. Calm. Accepting of his lot and fate. An unsung hero. Wild secretary skills -- again, like many of the Millers and my father and grandmother Esther included. I met Herbert for coffee at Richard's several times when I was working at IWU.
The funeral was well-attended for a 96-year-old man. Good old Indiana folk.
2. Anderson University was downgraded by Fitch to a B- last week. Sharply declining enrollment. Very significant deficits. Probably dramatic moves are in order. Rough days are ahead as we hit the demographic cliff of 2026 we've been talking about now for several years.
Campus Edu is a potential Hail Mary for institutions like these. They could effectively "insource" their gen eds through us. I don't know enough about their situation to do precise math, but I figure we could save Anderson over 2 million dollars a year.
3. I was thinking this week about the brief South Korean attempt to invoke martial law. I'm sure that was scary for the South Koreans. It reminded me of some ideas I remember floating around in my teens and early 20s.
After my mother died a couple months ago, we went through her library, and I was reminded of some of the books that were hot in certain circles in the late 80s/early 90s. The Unseen Hand in 1985. Constance Cumbey's, A Planned Deception in 1985. A little earlier in 1971, None Dare Call It Conspiracy. These books were a bit scary to me back in the day.
The idea was that there were elite groups secretly meeting behind the scenes plotting to take-over the country and the world. For example, I remember the idea of creating a crisis so they could call a new Constitutional convention to rewrite the Constitution. I remember hearing the concept of "change agents." You manufacture a crisis and then use the crisis to bring in your solution (that your cabal had preplanned).
Of course this wasn't a new concept. Hitler may have set fire to the Reichstag so he would have an excuse to accuse and arrest his opponents. Not too long thereafter, he effectively dismissed the Parliament. South Korean's failed move by the president this week reminded me of the conspiracy literature I grew up with.
Anyway, I'm glad none of those things actually happened so many decades ago.
4. The CEO of United Health was assassinated this week. One theory is that he hired his own killer. The response has been intriguing. Let's just say there wasn't a lot of public sadness or sympathy.
The state of American culture is a matter of great sadness to me. We are being swept away by a river of hate, misinformation, and genuine malintent, and there seems like nothing a person like me can do about it. It feels like we are self-destructing from within. God will let us self-destruct.
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