Thanks, BC

I woke up this morning thinking of Oobleck. If you're not familiar with this particular substance, your study of the works of Dr. Seuss may need to go just a little deeper. Beyond the Green Eggs and Ham and Cats in Hats, there was Bartholomew Cubbins. He of the Five Hundred Hats. In addition to his seemingly endless collection of nearly identical red hats, Bartholomew encountered some pretty awful stuff falling from the sky, once upon a time. It seems that the king, the same one that was so mad for young Mister Cubbin's hat to come off, was bored with the traditional precipitation in his domain, so he ordered his court magicians to come up with something new. They did: Oobleck.
It was green, and sticky, and eventually it covered everything. Suddenly the kingdom is plunged into a devastating ecological crisis. The birds in the trees, the cows in the fields, the wagons in the street, all mired in a thick, green goo that keeps them from going anywhere. The stuff even begins to pour down through the chimneys and out of the faucets. There is no escape. No escape, that is, until Bartholomew Cubbins does what he does best: he brings conscience to the king. Spoiler Alert: The Oobleck goes away once the king says, "I'm sorry."
Why was I reflecting on this story at the start of my day? Was it a reaction to years of earthly abuse by multinational oil companies whose slime isn't green, but black as tar? Was it the metaphor the good Doctor came up with for global warming years before Al Gore? Or maybe it wasn't the ecological theme I was picking up on at all. I was impressed with the very visceral depiction of hubris. The king decides that his vision of the world is more important than that of anyone else under his rule, and he decides to spread his mess thickly across the land. It is not just his intimates who find themselves immersed in the muck, it eventually spreads to the innocent and the purely tangential.  We all spray Oobleck from time to time, and we don't notice it until someone bothers to point it out. We should all be so lucky to have a Bartholomew Cubbins in our midst. Otherwise we might all get mired in our own piles of sticky, green goo. Metaphorically speaking.