I continue my quest to be your sole source not only for political and religious viewpoints, but movies, operas, restaurants, and travel destinations.  Now you can concentrate on your job and family, and leave all that other stuff — like thinking — to me.   After all, I’m a blogger.  I’m online.  Isn’t that all the qualification I need?   So, on to business:   Today was an excellent day for food.   Santa Fe has some fine eateries…. Read more

    When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.  (Georgia O’Keeffe)   Posted from Santa Fe, New Mexico     Read more

    It’s wonderful to be able to see these.  Our ancestors, even a mere generation back, could only imagine and dream of such things:   http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/07/16/nasa-releases-first-pluto-flyby-images/?intcmp=sbox23_science   Posted from Santa Fe, New Mexico     Read more

      Luke 12:35-48 Compare Matthew 24:42-51; 25:1-13; Mark 13:33-37; John 13:4-5   To paraphrase a common saying, “When the time for action arrives, the time for preparation is past,” or “When the time of judgment arrives, the time for preparation is past.”   We lull ourselves into a state of comfortable complacency, assuming that everything will continue as it has long gone, that we have lots of time, that tomorrow will be just like today.   And then… Read more

    This is troubling:   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3163910/Terror-high-seas-Egyptian-navy-vessel-erupts-huge-fireball-ISIS-carry-rocket-strike-patrol-ship-Mediterranean.html   “We will degrade and ultimately destroy” the military capacity of ISIS, President Obama declared back in September of 2014.   I’m puzzled about the meaning of the word ultimately in that statement.   Posted from Santa Fe, New Mexico   Read more

    Visiting Santa Fe, I’m reminded yet again of how very Arab the American Southwest sometimes feels.   There’s a lot of Arabic influence around these parts.  Even the name of the city of Albuquerque, the etymology of which is in some dispute, has been argued to come from Arabic.  (Many Spanish and English words beginning with the element al-, which is the Arabic definite article, indisputably do — e.g., algorithm, algebra, alcohol, the star-name Aldebaran, the palace of… Read more

    This week’s Deseret News column is a brief and hasty attempt to lay out what I see as one of the chief misconceptions held by a certain breed of critics of the Book of Mormon:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865632671/Book-of-Mormon-apologetics-and-scholarship.html   Posted from Santa Fe, New Mexico Read more

      An interesting article on the perceived monochrome whiteness of Mormonism:   http://blog.oup.com/2015/07/history-black-mormonism/   Paul Reeve was in the small day-long gathering up in Park City in which I participated last week.  So were two black LDS women, one of whom coincidentally commented that, while Sunday mornings are the most segregated time of the week in contemporary American life, Mormons have no racially-based or racially-segregated congregations.  Our image notwithstanding, we never have.   But, of course, that remains very… Read more

    To no informed observer’s particular surprise in the wake of the deaths, first, of Elder L. Tom Perry and, then, President Boyd K. Packer, Elder Russell M. Nelson, who is now the senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has been set apart as the president of that Quorum:   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/russell-m-nelson-new-president-of-the-quorum-of-the-twelve-apostles   I’ve been somewhat acquainted with Elder — now President — Nelson over a number of years… Read more

    I’ve already noted that we spent a fair amount of time early today in the Georgia O’Keefe Museum.   After that we all went to Baja Tacos for lunch.  Excellent.  No atmosphere at all.  In fact, no place to sit inside.  Drive-through and some tables and benches out in front.  But the food is well worth blogging about.  (Incidentally, the sit-down restaurant where we ate lunch yesterday is called The Shed, and it too provided some really good… Read more