Somewhere in one of my undergrad history classes, the notion of the pendulum of history was discussed. The concept has stuck, and become part of my analysis of life and the world. As you know, the pendulum’s path is governed by three forces: gravity, momentum, and friction. There’s actually a fourth force -the rotation of…
As a lawyer, it pains me to mention such names as Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and John Eastman, the “lawyers” who propped up and promoted Donald Trump’s whacky stolen election theories. That one of them had been a famous mayor of New York and another was a well-regarded law teacher makes the pain more intense….
Amongst language snobs, “youse” is considered substandard and hickish. Maybe it’s time for reconsideration. Like “y’all” in Southern parlance, or “vous autres” in French, “youse” is a nice, cozy, all-inclusive, gender-neutral term to speak to a generic group of “others”. It already exists – why not legitimize it? Bad language? Only if we say so….
Lot, as you will recall, was the nephew of the patriarch Abraham. We don’t know much about him, except for a few sketchy stories which would get the Bible banned in Republican school libraries. If it weren’t the Bible. In any event, Lot decided to move to the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the…
Don’t know about you, but from time to time I like to browse Facebook Marketplace. Just recently an advert popped up for an engagement ring, “brand new in box”! What a story I’m sure it could tell. As sad as the circumstances probably were, it’s always good to reflect on the “almosts” and “might have…
Words aren’t just labels. They come loaded with emotional and historical baggage. Take, for example, “witches and wizards”. To be sure, both words probably come from similar if not the same proto-European roots, and have not always been gender-specific. There used to be male witches and female wizards, but fairy tales and Hollywood have pretty…
I recently replaced the battery in our bathroom scales. Not that the sleazy, lying device deserved any courtesy, but perhaps the dying coin battery lay at the root of the outrageous untruths the scales told every morning. Unfortunately, not the case. Must be some other malfunction. That said, it took a razor knife, considerable ingenuity,…
A cute story, and true, is told of a road sign in Swansea, Wales. As you know, Wales is an officially bilingual country, and signage must be shown in both Welsh and English. A fine ideal, but sometimes the best-laid plans go wrong in the hands of the careless. As it happened, the city council…
In an era when the “Christian Right” owns the mainstream dialogue about what it means to be a Christian and tries to define the place of followers of Jesus in the public forum, it’s time for a reset. If I may be so bold, perhaps we might want to see what Jesus himself had to…
Just a while ago I chanced down a road I had not seen in years, and not much had changed. Except the junkyard. The old junkyard, a dark legendary horror-show of a place with rusty hulks, piles of old tires, sketchy and decayed steel barrels, and of course, the proverbial junkyard dog. The junkyard was…