“Oh, what a world! What a world!

The sentiment was part of the death speech of The Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz”.

We all might be prompted to echo her sentiments with what we are seeing around us today. While the space for this column doesn’t allow me to mention all the wild and crazy happenings around us, there are three that have really caught my attention in the last week.

For several years Sports Illustrated magazine had a weekly feature with the intro “Signs of the Apocalypse” when something odd happened in the sports world. We are seeing signs of a of the apocalypse on a more serious nature all around us.

Last week a six-year-old boy in Newport News, Virginia ended an argument with his teacher by pulling out a gun and shooting her in the chest. The teacher was in critical condition but is improving. Whatever happened reading, writing and arithmetic and coloring with oversize crayons?

David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database, has reported there have been three previous school shootings by six-year-olds since 1970. Two of those incidents were accidental, but one involved the killing of a young girl.

Even in today’s troubled world the shooting of an elementary school teacher by one of her students is shocking. Will such shootings continue to be rare incidents, but is it a sign of things to come?

Another story I was awed by involves the composting of bodies. New York has become the sixth state to approve this way of dealing with a corpse. Not surprisingly, the State of Washington was the first.

Bodies are placed in a container with wood chips, straw or grass. Microbes go to work and in a matter of weeks or months the body is transformed into soil perfect for planting. It gives the saying, “we therefore commit this body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life” a meaning not expected when it was written for the Church of England’s “Book of Common Prayer”.

Instead of having flowers placed on your grave your body can be used to grow them. The morbid reality is we are all going to decompose, so I guess some people think this is decomposition with a purpose for a greener world.

On a more humorous note, I have been seeing promotions on television for a professional slapping league. It is about as basic as a competition can be with two people standing face-to-face and seeing who can slap the hardest.

And I thought a professional cornhole league was a sporting blasphemy. I guess a professional pinching league is next.

Yes, what a world indeed.