I saw a bi-plane today, taking off from Santa Monica airport. I was, at first, enthralled and joyful and then suddenly I found myself in tears, missing my father so acutely that it was a physical pain. He died many years ago, and according to conventional wisdom I should have gotten… Read full post »

I have been pondering the role of anarchists, punks, and all of the other fringe folk in our society. I think like shamans, minstrels, jesters, et al throughout history, they are necessary. In Anthropology there is a term called "Cultural Release Valve". Certain times and places, certain situations a… Read full post »

So, I study religions, for fun even. I read books on religion, I read the original documents themselves, The Torah, the Bible, The Koran, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Spiral Dance, etc, etc. I have made myself an amateur theologian through thirty years of study, to the point where I… Read full post »

I sometimes wonder when manufacturing got a bad reputation. When did we go from thinking that building a car, or plowing a field was somehow inferior to sitting in a cubicle?

Why do we think that gross imcompetance, greed, and ego-centrist insensitivity to the rest of the world should be… Read full post »

I hate to celebrate before the returns are in, so I won’t, but I am feeling a glimmer of hopefulness as the polls come out. Watching the Republican pundits scream and weep (metaphorically, of course) also makes my head poke up a little higher from behind my bunker of self-protective ennui.… Read full post »

Do you think that John McCain has ever changed a diaper? I suspect that he would have a far better sense of humor had he been subjected to the daily round of feces and urine that so many of us have to go through.

 Obama looks like a man who has… Read full post »

My father, a history teacher for a local high school, raised me with a sense of the different levels of history, the personal, group, and societal struggles. I was taught the real American history, the stuff the school board thought was too "controversial" or that the textbooks didn't cover… Read full post »