FROM THE ICE AGE TO THE DOLE AGE, THERE IS BUT ONE CONCERN: Well, the National Catholic Register, that excellent but somewhat Luddite newspaper, has not yet posted my most recent column, so I think it’s okay for me to print it here. It ran a while ago but I’m not sure when (nor do I know what title they used, or how it was edited from my draft) because somewhere in the Register/Post Office/my apartment building sequence all of my copies of the paper seem to vanish. Anyway! Onward and upward. Here is my piece about gender, poetry, and the Creator God.

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In 1972, the Pioneer 10 space probe ventured out, bearing images from Earth to distant galaxies. To convey a sense of who humans are, we sent up a map showing our location in the galaxy, and drawings of a man and a woman.

Apparently, we thought it important that the aliens know that human beings come in two kinds. And not just any two kinds: We didn’t send drawings of a fat man and a thin man, or a tall woman and a short woman. Nor did we attempt to send one androgynous silhouette, like those eerie sexless mannequins at some of the artier clothing stores.

If any aliens have received those images by now, they know more about humans than many of us know about ourselves! [clipped]