The first Corner Booth of the new year! We were tonight, on a frigid January eve, Bob, Dean, John T., Ferne, Don, Lindsay, Jeff, Alex, Adrian, John L., and myself — Tomek. We kicked off by discussing sports — most importantly, the Bills didn’t completely suck in last week’s game — but then wandered into religion, and the religious mindset. This topic absorbed a lot of time, as we meditated on Quakers, Mormons, Congregationalists, Catholics, the Cathars, the Manichaeism heresy, the Inquisition, (and the Inquisition’s interrogations at Montaillou), Thomas Reid, and what we termed the magical mindset. Dean mentioned Netflix’s series Cadfael, and Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror got some love, and indeed we spent some moments admiring Barbara’s work in general — World War I was a favorite target. Alas, we mourned the passing of the Enlightenment — but hey, it kept us off politics. As always, a good time was had by all.