My brother-in-law sent me a text tonight as he was reading Lord of the Rings. Tolkien, a devout Catholic who played an integral role in CS Lewis’s conversion to Christianity (and whose works were rife with Christian motifs) wrote in one scene: “Faithless is he who says farewell when the road darkens.” What a beautiful [...]

First and foremost I am thankful for my Creator,  the God of the universe from who all good things come. I don’t care how old the planet is; it’s amazing and I’m thankful for having had the chance to freely experience it as a conscious life form with the miraculous ability to discern its beauty [...]

Univ of the Pacific has posted some 6,500 letters written by John Muir. The Bee reported this today but their link was broken and they didn’t provide any insight as to how the letters could be accessed. Since I consider John Muir one of the great men of the 19th century (he is oft referred [...]

So I hear the panel commissioned to explore charter reform for the mayor’s seat has determined it’s a good idea to give the mayor a few more goats, but not the deed to the farm. That will apparently be the topic of a two hour agenda item in tonight’s session. Sounds reasonable to me.
After the [...]

Last Sunday was a day of reckoning for this Joe. Shortly after breakfast I felt a sharp pain in my upper abdomen. Unrelenting. Highly uncomfortable. This was about the third or fourth time I had experienced this exact sort of pain in the past year. I knew its pattern by now: all day steady pain, [...]

Why do we call stormy days “gloomy”? Have we heard too many songs that associate love with sunshine, and heartbreak with rain? Too many movies about perfect storms? Too many media accounts of flooding and disaster? Or maybe it’s the sun’s fault; perhaps we have become too drunk on its brilliance to appreciate the beauty [...]