To the people who want to take “This land is your land, this land is my land” out of copyright: there’s really no need. I bet Woody’s heirs would be glad to let you use it if you just use ALL the verses he wrote:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn’t say ( Read more... )

I’ve just realized a corollary to the Sam Vimes theory of economic injustice. I don’t have a catchy name for it yet, but the gist is that having enough money - and being confident that you will have enough in the foreseeable future - saves you from making unnecessary purchases.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say you have three pair of jeans. That seems ( Read more... )

I heard a story the other day that made me sad. It’s not my story to tell so I won’t give details, but in summary, the guy wanted to buy something and was offered it at a price so low that it could have hurt the naive former owner (FO). He told the FO that he should be charging more, and left his card so the FO could call when he’d thought it over.
( Read more... )

It’s not that I haven’t blogged in the last week - but it was a work-related rant so I made it a private entry. Also, I spent last week on a work trip to Toledo, so I was mostly either at meetings or in transit. Landed back in Portland at 1, drove home (yay me - no issues or brain weirdness this time), transferred a few things to a backpak and ( Read more... )

Some days I’m amazed at how much Christians and Jews differ in their approach to theology. Some Christians, anyway.

I am not even talking about Indiana’s recent “religious freedom law” now (I’m embarrassed to see in the Indy Star that people present at the private signing of that bill include Orthodox Jews as well as Catholic monks and nuns, ( Read more... )

I post the lyrics to Peter Yarrow’s song Light One Candle every year at Chanukah, because I believe deeply in the message in it. It’s also relevant to a couple of articles I’ve recently read; one describes the song as being controversial because it’s “not Jewish enough”; in my opinion if that whole Chosen People idea means anything, it means that ( Read more... )

In honor of Curt Schilling, I’m going to ramble on about theology for a bit. I’m just noodling; the below is speculation, not to be construed as a statement of everything I believe and certainly not an attempt to convince others. But I do believe that if you’re going to espouse a faith, then you ought to examine it and yourself, and make sure that ( Read more... )

I have two injuries from last weekend. The scrape on my elbow from picking up a kayak seems like a reasonable one to have, even if I did scrape my left elbow while picking up the boat on my right side. The other injury, though, is much more ridiculous: I had a blister and then ripped the skin off from sweeping goose poop off our dock. The first ( Read more... )

Forgive me if this is long-winded and driveling; something just hit me but I’m not sure I’ll be able to explain it.

When I was a teenager in the 1980s, I was friends with some neighbors whose kids I babysat - still am friends, at least in a vague Facebook-and-holiday-card way. Obviously they were older, 30ish or so when I was sixteen. His parents ( Read more... )

Oddly, what brought me to tears over the three kidnapped Israeli boys is from another religious tradition already. John Gorka based his “Let Them in, Peter” on a poem found in a Philippine hospital during WWII:

Let them in, Peter
They are very tired
Give them couches where the angels sleep
And light those fires

Let them wake whole again
To brand new ( Read more... )