First Monday with Characters

Edited by Morris Dean

The Rogers, staying close to home

Hello from Costa Rica!
    A certain part of our road has been washing out over the years. It became so bad they at last had to do something. They dumped a couple truckloads of rocks to fill the hole and covered it with dirt. I’m not saying they will not get around to fixing the road, but it took two years to get the rocks dumped.

Sunday Review: Last Tango in Halifax (TV serial)

By Morris Dean

The BBC's serial Last Tango in Halifax must have caught me in a stupor the first time I started to watch it, for I formed the superficial impression of a sappy love story involving a man and a woman even older than I am (Alan and Celia, played by Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid). I told my wife to go ahead and watch it, but I would skip.

First Saturday as the World Turns

Why have homes lost value?

By Ed Rogers

I had a thought the other day. It came to mind that house prices going up and down made no sense. If it cost you $100,000 to build a house today, and five years from now it cost $150,000 to build the same house; why would your house only be worth $75,000.
    The first answer I could come up with, in my mind, was it had to be the banks. I’ve always believed in the saying, “Follow the money.” In the past, as it is now, market value has little to do with what your house is worth. Before all the crooked dealing throughout the nineties, the cost of labor and material set the bottom line for value. These costs the bank covered by a building loan, which the contractor paid off from selling the house.

Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Arizona knows full well what the NFL isn't quite saying. "They're Coming For You...," on Madison Kimrey's blog. Excerpt

If the NFL's core values indeed "embrace tolerance, diversity, inclusiveness and prohibit discrimination," then it's time for the NFL to stand up and say they will impose a penalty on states that [officially] hate by not bringing the biggest event they have to those states, just like their Competition Committee is proposing a penalty for using the N-word on the field.

Thor's Day: What’s wrong with Mormonism?

Or Scientology?

By Paul Clark 
(aka motomynd)

Moristotle recently published an article on Mormonism that was so well written by an obviously devout and well-informed Mormon, that I emailed the link to several people with whom I regularly discuss various views on religion and philosophy. To my surprise, they responded with feedback that was far more strident and negative than I expected.
    When I offered what mild defense I can muster for any “official” religion, one of my friends asked “What next? Are you going to start defending Scientology?”
    Which made me stop to think: Why is Scientology any worse than any of the other religious contrivances?

Tuesday Voice: Guilt-free shopping guides

By Paul Clark 
(aka motomynd)

People of a save-the-earth mindset may or may not win their battle, but there are now a multitude of places where people can support their idealism while buying life's essentials.

Fourth Monday Susan Speaks: Adventures in volunteering

By Susan C. Price

I always read about retirees who volunteer a great deal and love it. So I figured i should.
    A friend who knew i was “art-inclined” had a friend who was the Operations Director of a local non-profit that uses art to help abused women and children heal. So, i ventured to one of their “volunteer open house” nights.
    The Director toured me through the facility. From what i could see and the little e-research i had done...i could tell that this was a grounded, 20-year “successful” non-profit, well-run, well-organized, with lots of community (read “money”) support. So what they do must be “working.” Good to know. Impressive.

Sunday Review: Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond (TV miniseries)

And already was

By Morris Dean

The Hollywood Reporter nails it when it comes to BBC America's recent TV miniseries Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond: "It's a fun romp that illustrates how desperately the dashing author wanted to live a large life – and tried his hardest." Fleming, of course, for those too young to have heard of him – even if they have seen any number of 007 James Bond movies and maybe even heard of Sean Connery – is author Ian Fleming.

Fourth Saturday's Loneliest Liberal: The things we worry about

Almost none of them will happen

By James Knudsen

Back when I was in high school, I received some of the best advice I would ever get. I think it was in Leadership class, definitely not the place for me as it was filled with student council types, and that wasn’t me. But my girlfriend was in the class, so what more reason could I need?
    One day one of the school counselors addressed us about stress. She said, “You know, 95% of the things you worry about never happen.”

Fish for Friday

By Morris Dean

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Is it any surprise that "In Black Men, Internalized Racism Speeds Up Aging"? Excerpt:

Racism is a powerful enough force that it can wear down a man’s body. Those are the findings, at once common-sense and groundbreaking, in a study led by University of Maryland epidemiologist David Chae which examines the relationship between white blood cell telomere lengths and experiences with racism.
   The study, “Discrimination, Racial Bias, and Telomere Length in African-American Men,” to be published in the February 2014 issue of the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, is the first of its kind to explicitly measure the role that racism-related factors play in the aging process.

Thor's Day: The faith that matters

It's never mentioned in religious tracts

By Morris Dean

The faith that matters to our daily acts,
is never mentioned in religious tracts,
    which only nod
    at faith in God
and never say be faithful to the facts.

Ask Wednesday: Ask Susan

How can someone who has withdrawn from a family be drawn back into it?

By Susan C. Price

[Questions are followed by answers and then, inevitably by ADVICE...you DID expect that...didn’t you?]

I know of several members of families who have isolated themselves from the rest of the family and seemed to become cold and hard toward other family members. I don’t know why the individuals withdrew, as no one seems to want to talk about whatever is at the root of their problems. (I am not one to pry.) But how do other members of a family deal with someone who has withdrawn? Of course, they can just let the person be. But if they’d like to try to draw him or her back “into the fold,” how might they go about it? –Jan

Tuesday Voice: Another red herring of the healthcare biz

Sugar

By Jim Rix

The healthcare biz does little to correct the common misperception that “sugar makes you fat” and identify the real culprit because it’s not profitable to do so. While sugar is not a health food and should not be the bulk of caloric intake, a little bit of sugar on oatmeal to make it more enjoyable does little harm, while a Diet Coke with a greasy cheeseburger does little good.

Third Monday Musing: Mashrabiyah

Exclusion

By Eric Meub

1. I’m writing this in Mecca. Let me clarify: I am sitting at a conference table in a university whose grounds lie within the metropolitan limits of Mecca. I am not, however, within the precinct of the Holy Capital, the spiritual center of Islam and the most important city in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where entrance is forbidden to non-Muslims. On all sides of the university campus, I can see the infrastructure and venues for the yearly hajj, the act of devotion each Muslim must make once in a lifetime, when over a million pilgrims flood the region for a week of fastidious following in the footsteps of the Prophet (‘alayhi s-salaam – or “Peace be upon him” – should be uttered after any mention of his name).

Sunday Review: Questioning Darwin (TV documentary)

Charles Darwin at about the age of
his voyage on The Beagle

Thinking they've answered Darwin, rather

By Morris Dean

The fact that Charles Darwin's birthday was this week (he was born on February 12, 1809) sparked HBO's airing of 73-year-old British filmmaker Antony Thomas's one-hour documentary Questioning Darwin, which adroitly gives about equal coverage (1) to scientists and biographers appreciating Darwin's discovery of biological evolution's mechanism of natural selection and (2) to folks like Ken Ham, a founder of the "Answers in Genesis Creation Museum" in Kentucky, who are questioning Darwin. Of course, the creationists aren’t just questioning Darwin; they think they have definitively answered him by opposing the established, proven science of evolution with something they like to call “creation science^*.”