SmokeSound

A Google Map of Norway Norway, up in the northwest corner of Europe, is shaped something like a long, raggedy teardrop.  The first time I ever visited Norway, arriving on a ferry from Denmark, I saw its southern coast, and I remember thinking:  "It's a damned rock!" My father, and my mother's parents, were born in Norway, rather to the left side of the wide bulge below the name, "Norway" on the map; my father, right on the coast, and my maternal grandparents a bit north and back from the coast. In the middle of the wide part of the country, and farther south, is a small town, Rjukan, up in the mountains, but deep down in a narrow valley; so deep that in the winter, the sun is too low in the sky to shine down on the town.  In winter, the people who live in Rjukan have to take a tram up the mountainside to see the sun.  Until recently. Recently, the town built a complex of computer-controlled mirrors up on the mountainside to reflect winter sunlig...

The Pew Research Center has been asking people all over the world about religion; in well-more than 200 countries.  More people say they are Christian than anything else, and Muslims are the second largest religious affiliation.  Third largest are the "Nones". "Which religious group do you belong to?" "None." That does not necessarily mean they are not religious:  they might just not belong to any commonly designated faith community.  There is some evidence, at least, that many of the "Nones" do  believe in a god, or gods, but that they do not belong to a traditional religious group.  There surely are, also, a considerable number of "Nones" who simply do not believe in gods, or heavens or hells, angels or demons, or any other non-natural entities. There is the nub!  If you read the Old Testament stories, which are at the root of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, you will recognize that much of the argument there is not about ...

In the late 1970s, my daughter, Gail, and I got into our Corvair, and drove to the American South, because she was interested in going to a college or university in that region of the nation.  (I had encouraged our children to carve out their own space--which included where they went to school--and not simply follow an older sibling to a university.)  We went to North Carolina, and Duke, Georgia, the University of the South, and other schools. To put the matter crudely, the trip scared the s**t out of me because we had a car radio.  I had never heard such blatent racism from local radio stations!  The Civil War, I decided, was not yet over! Gail did go to school, in North Carolina, for two years before transferring to the University of Arizona in Tucson.  But the Civil War is still not yet over, and in many ways, the same issues remain.  It is no longer legal to own slaves in the U.S., but attitudes of racial superiority are everywhere.  Whether...

There is no reason simply to suspect the Tea Party of racism.  They provide proof of it.   John Tanton, who has said that, "Black Americans are a 'retrograde species of humanity', organized the rally.  Ken Crow, once the president of Tea Party of America, now with Tea Party Community, spoke to the crowd of Black and White attendees.  He apparently had Hispanics in mind, maybe because of the Black people in attendance.  Senator Jeff Sessions was there, to speak about his opposition to the immigration bill.  Congressman Steve King was there, also as a speaker.  Senator Ted Cruz was also on the roster.  And Mr. Crow was there, to speak of breeding:   "From those incredible blood lines of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and John Smith.  And all these great Americans, Martin Luther King.  These great Americans who built this country.  You came from them," he said.   "And the unique thing about being from that par...

From the Tubac Presidio State Historic Park booklet on Letterpress Printing That's the first printing press in Arizona.  And that is Jim, coaxing it to do what it has done since 1859, doing what he has done more recently in more modern ways. The Washington Hand Press was built by the Cincinnati Type Foundry Company, and it came to Tubac--about an hour's drive south of Tucson--first by barge down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, by ship to Indianola, Texas, then by wagon train through San Antonio and Ft. Bliss, to Tubac, where it printed the first newspaper in Arizona:  The Weekly Arizonan. The press made its way to Tucson, to grander duties, eventually to the Arizona Historical Society, and is now on loan, back to Tubac, again, where Jim and Elizabeth Pagels--in period clothing--tell its story, and print occasional items. 1859:  Brahms First Piano Concerto was composed in 1859, and the French passed a law specifying that the A above Middle C shou...

We all know what happened to the American family.   I wonder how Congress is doing. Or, "I'm from your friendly neighborhood bank.  I'm here to help you invest your money."

Know Nothing,  or maybe Even Less! I do not know who said it, but this is what he said:  "Either the man is  stupid  or he is ignorant,  and we should hope it is the latter, but even a sinner may repent of his evil, but stupid is forever".   The Tea Party people are ignorant.  There is nothing to do for it.  They have been willing to push the whole nation into bankruptcy, and to waste its resources, caring not a damn about the people who have least and who will hurt most.  They do not care that the Republican Party, under whose umbrella they find shade, might even be destroyed.  They want Obama out of the White House, and they want our health care system destroyed.  They hate government, they hate taxes, they hate compromise, they hate facts, and they hate ice cream, apple pie, and Chevrolets.  I cannot believe they even like baseball and crackerjacks.   In the years just before the American Civil War--that is t...

Sports Illustrated, Aug. 26, 2013 Eric Black article in MinnPost It is official.  Michele Bachmann confirms the good news:  she is not running for re-election, and the end of the world is near.  In her own mysterious way, Michele does not explain what the connection is between her decision not to run for re-election and the imminent end of the world, although both events may have something to do with the ethics charges against her, which she prayerfully denies, although it is the case that the guy in Iowa who was said to be the recipient of her illegal distribution of funds has not only announced his decision not to run for his own re-election, but has decided to leave office now.   But let us be honest:  the signs of end-time activities are all around us.  For instance, Hillary Clinton appears to be considering a run for the Presidency.  That is the kind of things that could happen only  during the end-times.  Even Sarah Palin fin...

A Google Image I am sorry to say that what follows is a quote from Michele Bachmann.  I am sorry because she says that all Hell is about to break loose, or maybe it already has, and we do not have much time left.  The little red numbers are not in the original text:  I have added them, in the manner of the King James Version of the Other Holy Scripture, just to make it easier to find our places in the Writ.  So, for instance, we might call this End Warning.  End Warning 2 (or just EW2) would refer specifically to the sentence that begins, "Now what this says. . . ."  I am doing this as a public service, because we do not have much time to fool around looking for the place where everything becomes clear. "1 This happened, and as of today, the United States is willingly, knowingly, intentionally sending arms to terrorists.  2 Now what this says to me, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the ...

On the cover of Newsweek It is quite one thing to be alive in the year 13 A.D., and to believe that the end of the world will happen very soon, and quite another to be alive in the year 2013, and to believe that the world will end very soon.  In the year 13, in the Middle East, it was commonly understood--at least by some Semitic people--that the end times were near.  Good and Evil were at war.  God was in his heaven, and Satan was in his pit.  That was 2000 years ago. Jesus believed that he was a prophet of the end times, and that God was finally going to triumph over Evil, and the Roman Empire, and ghosties and ghoulies and three-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night (to quote the fine, old Book of Common Prayer).  He thundered against the money changers in the Temple, and called for repentence and a change of heart. It is a little absurd to continue to believe just exactly that for 2000 years, but there are people who say the same thin...

BEST FINAL EXAM EVER: "Describe the universe.  Give two examples." *   *   * OLD TRAVELING LECTURER STORY: The old lady in the back challenged the lecturer's theory about evolution and other new-fangled, so-called "scientific" notions about how the world works.  She insisted that the earth rested on the back of a turtle. "And what does the turtle stand on? " the lecturer asked.   "Oh, no, young man," she said.  "That won't work! It is turtles all the way down!" *   *   * Turtles are a great comfort against a damnably complex universe.  Have you ever tried to comprehend how mind-boggling, everlasting long 14 billion years is?  How many zeroes is that, again?  14,000,000,000: nine!  Why not make it twelve or fifteen?  Spend an evening, sometime, with a friend who has been to school too long, and ask her to explain quantum theory one more time.  Ask for two examples.   It won't work.  It is tur...