In case you didn’t know, this is a day of celebration. One could say one of the Feast Days of the Church of Film. It was on this day in 1902 that Thomas Lincoln Tally opened his Electric Theatre in Los Angeles. While movies had been made and then projected onto various kinds of screens at an assortment of venues for a while by then, this was the very first theater to be built exclusively to show movies. Mr Tally... Read more

Be careful out there! Read more

In 1901 Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, and, significantly, to survive. It was her sixty-third birthday. A long time widow whose only child died in infancy, Annie worked mostly as a teacher, although she tried her hand at a number of enterprises, none with great success. Facing old age and penury, and desperately wanting to avoid the Poorhouse, she took this gamble hoping it would lead to a steady living.... Read more

Eating the living germs of grasses Eating the ova of large birds the fleshy sweetness packed around the sperm of swaying trees The muscles of the flanks and thighs of soft-voiced cows the bounce in the lamb’s leap the swish in the ox’s tail Eating roots grown swoll inside the soil Drawing on life of living clustered points of light spun out of space hidden in the grape. Eating each other’s seed eating ah, each other. Kissing the lover in... Read more

I was, as is my wont, looking through Wikipedia’s holidays for today, the 30th of March, when I saw that today is marked as Spiritual Baptist/Shouter Liberation Day in Trinidad and Tobago. And, how could I not follow that thread, at least a little ways? Turns out there is a syncretic thing going on in that part of the world birthing in the meeting, perhaps the clash of a type of pentecostal Baptists and Shango, a variation on Yoruba religion.... Read more

Eric Idle was born on this day in 1943, in Harton, near South Shields in County Durham in England. He has been many things in the course of his life, actor, author, singer-songwriter, musician, comedian, and, of course, member of Monty Python. Glad he’s been around. Hope he sticks around for a bit more. We need the laughs… Read more

Yesterday, Jan & I went to our local art theater, the Art Theater in Retro Row on Fourth Street in Long Beach, and saw City of Gold. City of Gold is Laura Gabbart’s documentary about the Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold. As it turns out the film is about a lot more than food. Not that food is ignored in the slightest. As Molly Eichel writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer, “It’s a documentary that is ostensibly a profile of... Read more

There is no “mere materialism” to declare. We need nothing extra. The universe is wondrous and alive. That is enough. It is a great dance. That is enough. All things creating all things. Intimate. Birthing. Living. Dying. Intimate. So sad, so lovely. Does it need to be known? I don’t think so. But. And. Gloriously. For no good reason it is known. By us… (And who knows who others in this vast universe…) For us The mystery of knowing this... Read more

MYSTERY PILED UPON MYSTERY A Zen Buddhist Meditation on Easter James Ishmael Ford 27 March 2016 Pacific Unitarian Church Rancho Palos Verdes, California Today is Easter. Easter. That most holy of Christian holy days. The Gospel of Mark is generally considered the oldest of the canonical gospels, the time-hallowed stories of Jesus and his ministry. The sixteenth chapter of Mark tells the story of Easter in its most unelaborated version. And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary... Read more

In response to something I wrote in my last post to this blog someone thinking the Book of Enoch was in the Catholic canon objected to it being cited as a source for something being “Christian.” Setting aside that wasn’t a position in my post, in fact Enoch is considered canonical only by the Ethiopian church, it raised a host of questions. I wasn’t sure if the writer thought Catholics were not Christians, as in the old American Protestant canard,... Read more