The persistent blog.

About nine degrees above zero Fahrenheit out there at sunset today, with the promise of a deeper freeze in the wee hours. Orion dominated the southeast of an absolutely clear sky when I took the trash out. January rolls on. At least the streets and sidewalks are more or less free of ice. For now.

Someone, somewhere, is sponsoring billboards that promote various virtues. Or what they intend to promote as virtues. It’s hard to know what they're thinking, since the billboards are unsigned. Anyway, I remember seeing one or two on I-94 to Detroit last spring, and last week I saw another on I-80/94 in the southern reaches of metro Chicago. The advertised virtue was “Persistence.” Illustrated by one of the famed portraits of the presidential (that is, bearded) Lincoln, the text was something like this: “He failed, and failed, and failed, and failed… and then…. PERSISTENCE. Pass it on.”

Well… persistence definitely amounts to a virtue. Unless it doesn’t. Ask anyone who’s been stalked. And, while one should use Hitler as an example sparingly, since there are so few in his league, the exact same billboard, with the same text, could be illustrated with his picture.