An unexpected conversation at the new coffee shop ...

... here in Wilkesboro, the one I like to take my papers to grade in the afternoon. The last time I went there was a band performing for high school students ... loud but good I thought - whatever it was they were playing.

This time Carmen met me there after she was done in the library. My attention was caught by too young men in t-shirts and old jeans talking about writing a book when one of them said that the publisher would ordinarily pay an advance of $35,000. I must have misunderstood because they were talking about a text book one of them had agreed to write on the philosophy of ethics.

He was talking about the various sections he would have in the book, one on the value of existence and challenges to morality, a section explaining the three basic moral systems. Then he got an idea, "Ah! You know what? We can use Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics from I, Robot." He got excited about this idea and went on with it, citing other examples of Asimov stories that would work to explain principles of moral philosophy to students.

It was not quite the type of conversation I had expected down on the main street of Wilkesboro, the Not-Mayberry of the foothills. Perhaps we are a more sophisticated place than one might imagine.