Malcolm Cutchins: Time to read the road signs ahead

In Sunday’s snowstorm, I photographed a stop sign whose surface was totally obliterated with horizontally blown snow. Symbolically, there are other obscured signs that may not warn us of dangerous situations ahead unless we become much more observant.

Some of them are:

Signs in the economy: From a current think tank Web site describing our economy of just a year ago, “The United States has the most productive economy in history and leads the world with fast growth, rising real incomes, and wealth creation for all citizens. These are the fruits of the American institutions of limited government, individual rights, and a culture of innovation.”
So have we negated the accuracy of this description just within one year, or is it just fear gone wild? Obviously, “limited government” has been shattered, temporarily.
Both Democrat and Republican earmarks need to become a thing of the past. Even worse than earmarks, U.S. tax policy has terrible consequences. “The U.S. maintains the second highest corporate tax rate among industrialized countries, limiting the international competitiveness of American business. In addition, the federal income tax often punishes many forms of saving by taxing the returns to saving at high marginal rates.”

Signs in the language: The Oxford Junior Dictionary drops some words each year. One of them dropped in 2008 is the word, “sin.”
A report notes, “academics and head-teachers said the changes to the 10,000-entry volume aimed at over-sevens would deprive a new generation of links with their heritage.

“The changes were highlighted by a mother-of-four who noticed that words like moss and fern had vanished from the latest edition while helping her son with his homework. Lisa Saunders from Northern Ireland compared six editions since the 1970s and was horrified to discover that a whole range of words relating to Christianity, nature and British history had been axed over the years.

“‘The Christian faith still has a strong following,’ she said. ‘To eradicate so many words associated with Christianity will have a big effect on the numerous primary schools that use it.’”
Chuck Colson of the highly successful Prison Fellowship, indicated the other day that most of the problems we see now in the U.S. are related to ethical and behavioral shortcomings, i.e., sin. What shall we call it now?

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Not one squirrel was seen in my yard Sunday. Normally there are five or six trying to steal bird food. A small hawk successfully got his dove-lunch during our lunchtime by the large window looking out at the birdfeeders. We would have preferred the hawk get a squirrel!

There were humorous “signs” like the neighbor’s puppy looking for the “ball” when the snowball exploded on the driveway, and restaurants closing because of our slight dusting. The stark white snow probably caused all but our most liberal area pastors to note the Biblical significance of “white as snow.” (See signs of the language above).

Dr. Malcolm Cutchins is an emeritus professor of engineering of Auburn and writes a column for the Opelika-Auburn News.