friday photos

Earlier this week, we went to the zoo in Syracuse, where my boys got some close-up views of some big cats:



The lion reminded me of something I overheard a woman saying at the Rochester zoo once; she was telling her friend that they must drug the animals, because they just lay around, they never do anything. That made me laugh at the time -- was she really expecting the Arctic wolves to entertain her on a 90-degree day in July? -- but with the lion at the Syracuse zoo, I wasn't so sure. She looked practically comatose, and despite James and other kids cavorting in front of her, I'm not sure I even saw her blink. But then, maybe she's just so used to kids cavorting in front of her window that it's just not all that interesting anymore. The other two lions in the enclosure were a bit more animated, however, with the male attempting to mate and the female crankily rebuffing him.

In other news, I got my first-ever door-to-door Jehovah's Witnesses today! This time, unlike with the Mormons who came to my door a few years ago, I did not allow them to enter my house or hypnotize me with their unblinking eyes. To their credit, these women were much more subtle -- and much less creepy -- than the Mormons; they never actually said they were Jehovah's Witnesses, and they didn't try to convert me. They were passing out literature -- interestingly, one of the women said they were mostly looking for Chinese-speaking residents to talk to -- but she gave me their booklets: one about evolution vs creation, and one about whether religion is good or bad. (Can you guess the conclusions of each of those topics?)

I perused the material, not because I was terribly interested in either one, but mostly because I don't know much about Jehovah's Witnesses. We have a few relatives who are Jehovah's Witnesses, and I have a friend who was raised as one but doesn't practice now, but I wouldn't have guessed that any of them were particularly religious had no one told me; they're not a very preachy bunch. Anyway, the only thing I was really surprised at was how many times the pamphlets made clear that Jehovah's Witnesses are not Fundamentalists ("We believe in the Bible! This is what the Bible really says!"). They also make sure to distance themselves from creationsists, because of the political implications of the term, though stating that "evolutionary theory and the teachings of Christ are incompatible" does, in fact, make them creationists. Other than these things, though, it was all pretty much as I expected.

So that's all the Friday fun around here. Busy weekend ahead, so you may not hear from me for a couple of days. Happy weekend, everyone.