I went on a four mile walk after dinner. I didn't really intend to. It just sort of happened. I headed out just to sort of amble around. I came close to hopping the bus to go downtown, to hang out either by Fountain Square to wander down to the Serpentine Wall and watch the Ohio river slowly ooze its way under the bridges connecting Ohio to Kentucky. But I didn't know how late the bus service runs on a Friday night and I didn't want to be stuck with a six mile hike uphill if I missed the last one.

So I kept marching past the bus stop, through the shopping center to behind the grocery store where the warm summer breeze carried the scent of rotten food straight from the dumpsters to me. That was an unpleasant experience.

I kept going, past the rich folks' houses, past the pawn shop, past the tenements, turn right on the major artery and I find myself inside my favorite independent book store chain. Once inside, though, I find that most of the interesting sections (political theory, history, sociology, etc.) have been roped off in expectation of countless hordes of Harry Potter seeking book buyers.

One interesting section that was still open was the magazine rack. Browsing through the titles, I stumbled across a copy of Policy Review with Mary Eberstadt's How the West Really Lost God. Her thesis is interesing:

[W]hat secularization theory assumes is that religious belief comes ontologically first for people and that it goes on to determine or shape other things they do — including such elemental personal decisions as whether they marry and have children or not. Implied here is a striking, albeit widely assumed, view of how one social phenenomenon powers another: that religious believers are more likely to produce families because religious belief somehow comes first.

...

In brief, it is not only possible but highly plausible that many Western European Christians did not just stop having children and families because they became secular. At least some of the time, the record suggests, they also became secular because they stopped having children and families.

Then I walked the two miles back to home. And, of course, I forgot about the warm wind carrying the scent of the dumpsters far and away from the back of the grocer's. Once I was directly downwind, I quickly remembered.

Also, once I got halfway back home, I'd remembered that I was within spitting distance of a store that sells decent beer. I could be drinking a freshly uncorked bottle of Ommegang's 3 Philosophers ale as I type this. But I'm not because I am so absent minded.