Just before Yule, I happened to encounter a man I had not seen for some 40 years. He and I had been good friends when we were both undergraduates at the same university. But later, we had moved to different parts of the country and had lost touch with each other for many years. We had a lot of catching up to do. We told each other about our wives and children (and grandchildren), our careers (both now retired), and the places where we had lived. We reminisced about professors and parties and people we had known long ago. And then, somehow, the subject of religion cam up. My friend had been brought up in some generic Protestant Church, but had become agnostic before I first met him. Now in his 60's, he was still an agnostic but he was concerned about a nephew's child who was about to marry a Christian fundamentalist.

When I was at the Ostara gathering near San Francisco, I had lunch at a picnic-table with several others. One of them asked another: "What is the Asatru position on human genetic engineering?"