The world is still flat (in Iowa) and other thoughts on our time

I had three thoughts. Not ten or ten thousand. Not bigly or big league or very enormous thoughts. Not crooked, or disgusting or way overrated thoughts. Just three pleasantly average thoughts.

Or three observations, really. They surfaced in my spongy 59-year-old brain as I walked through our little suburban town yesterday. Given the depth of the chaos and uncertainty and anger that we live in, I was seeking three things on the hourlong walk: enlightenment in the woods, some strong coffee at Starbucks and a refill of my Zoloft at Walgreens.

Observation #1: Fudge is not like politics or religion.

Grandma Google IS a know-it-all. GiGi, as I like to call her, is a bottomless sea of information. And if you search long enough, and with enough blind faith, I guarantee you can find, and believe, absolutely anything. It's all about the searching and the searcher.

Example A: Yesterday, I thought I typed our church acronym into the Google box. That is First Congregational Church of Glen Ellyn, or FCCGE. Don't ask me why, but I was thinking "First United Church of Glen Ellyn," and so I typed FUC into the search box, and then GE: FUCGE. How do you think GiGi responded? She replaced the C with a D, and turned up 493 Fudge recipes. But I learned that Fudge is NOT like politics, and religion. There are only two kinds: Easy and Old Fashioned.

Observation 2: The world is still flat (in Iowa).

Grandma Google Does NOT know what a Christian is. I know because I asked. This was after someone on Facebook told me I was not a Christian because I wouldn't denounce the Black Lives Matter organization, because two of its leaders are "radical organizers and Marxists." This Iowa person also posted a bunch of videos about BLM that I assume were factual, or alternatively factual, or once factual, or, as I like to say: whatever ...

Which leads me to a fact: The world is flat. Or it was in the 15th century. So it was a fact then. Right? Is it a fact now? Yes. The world is STILL flat - in Iowa. And I'm from Iowa, so I should know. I baled hay and walked beans and castrated pigs and detasseled corn - all on the good green, and very flat, earth. Central and southern Illinois are also pretty flat. So, yes, I would say that it's a fact: the world is still flat at times, in places. As the election approaches, I'm thinking this might be a provocative bumper sticker: "The World is Still Flat, in Places, at Times." Who would like one? Please contact me.

Observation 3: I'm right about everything.

I just got off a wild four-hour stint on Facebook straightening everyone out when I had this amazing epiphany: It's really hard to be right all of the time. But thankfully, so far, I have been. And about everything: Trump, Biden, Racism, Rioting, the RNC and DNC, Portland, Kenosha, Christianity, Kneeling, etc.

But now my wife and I are bickering about whether to bring a cast iron Dutch oven (her) or a small aluminum frying pan (me) on our weeklong camping trip. And gosh darn it, she was right. Again. This hurts.

I always tell my freshman composition students to never write "In conclusion ..."

So I'm not going to do that. But I'm not sure how to end ... this op-ed, COVID-19, the swirling forest fires, nor the hurricanes of hate swirling around the election.

How does this end? What is the answer?

I think we are too serious. And not serious enough. We are too political. And not political enough. We are too personal. And not personal enough. We are too religious. And not religious enough. We care too much. And we don't care at all. We listen too much. And we don't ...

No, wait, that last one's not true, which means I'm wrong again.

We really don't listen -- at all. Right? We stopped listening a long time ago. That's a fact.

Can we at least agree on that?

• Tom Montgomery Fate is a professor emeritus at College of DuPage, and the author of five books of nonfiction. The most recent is Cabin Fever, a nature memoir (Beacon Press).