My Blog

Watching the Obama and McCain event at the Saddleback Church on television Saturday night, I was reminded how much male testosterone infuses the political landscape these days. CNN chief political correspondent John King several times referred to the pre-game coverage (it was held in a church for Christ’s sake, John, not the Giant’s stadium) and old John McCain couldn’t open his mouth without

I have to take a break from my normal musings on politics, the environment, etc. to talk about SPAM. I’m old enough to remember SPAM 1.0, immortalized by Monty Python in their Viking canteen song and consisting of canned animal parts not dissimilar in nature to the Cream song “Pressed Rat and Warthog”. When I was at high school in England we were served spam deep fried in batter for lunch which

I was sitting in Charlie’s basement the other day discussing one world government. Charlie (not his real name but, trust me, the name works fine) is a rancher out west. Getting on in years, he likes to spend his days holed up in his machine shop chewing tobacco, taking a few sips of Kentucky’s best rye, and pondering the machinations of big government.

Like many independent spirits out west,

I’ve always wondered where the phrase “God-fearing” came from and why it should be so commonly used in this country as term of respect. To me, the last thing we need to be afraid of is the Divine, which, according to almost every spiritual tradition, is the source of universal love, and so ought to be experienced as the most nourishing and compassionate force in our lives.

But then this

There is a line from an old Simon and Garfunkel song called The Boxer (supposedly about Bob Dylan) that has forever stuck in my head: “…a man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.” There are many versions of this popular truth in use, such as “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” or “The world is as we see it,” or perhaps even Descartes’ philosophical koan, “I think, therefore I