An old friend sent this observing how it provides “The intersection of two great icons, Tom Waits and Cookie Monster.” True. And somehow, it seems, strangely appropriate to the moment… Read more

Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time on this day in 1956. Well, maybe not his hips… Special thanks to the reader who caught that I had a wrong clip originally. This one is from his third appearance… Read more

I’ve been vaguely aware of a movement within the Christian community called New Monasticism or Neo-monasticism for a while now. But I’m finding it floating to my mind and touching my heart much more frequently of late. Wikipedia has a pretty good short summary of what they’re about. What attracts me to them is how they’re engaging full spiritual lives, in a sense reclaiming that generally rejected term “religious,” in its richest sense. As a Western Buddhist ordained in the... Read more

Here’s a lovely snapshot of the Toledo Zen Center run by Boundless Way priests Karen & Jay Weik by Sweeping Zen’s Adam Tebbe. They’re doing some great work for the Dharma and community in Ohio. If you find yourself in their neighborhood you might want to stop by. Adam did, and here’s what he had to say about it… “I was up in Toledo, Ohio this weekend to visit my sister and I stopped in at the Toledo Zen Center... Read more

Woody Guthrie saw John Ford’s powerful 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s amazing novel published the previous year, The Grapes of Wrath, and felt people needed to hear the story who didn’t have the price of a ticket to get into a movie theater much less able to buy the book. Feels the right thing to recall on this Labor Day in 2011… Tom Joad got out of that old McAlester pen Was there that he got his parole After four... Read more

Bob Newhart turns 82 today. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy… Read more

Hanging Separately, Hanging Together A Labor Day Reflection James Ishmael Ford 4 September 2011 First Unitarian Church Providence, Rhode Island            Text “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” Martin Luther King, Jr. “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Benjamin Franklin Let me tell you a story. George Pullman was born in 1831. He was an inventor and eventually an industrialist. His most famous and... Read more

On this day in 1838 Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery. A friend Jacqui Williams wrote me when she saw I was posting about Douglass but as she was on the road couldn’t see what the text was, noted, “I was struck at the title and hope what you shared credits his mother for instilling the desire for freedom, the free blacks of Baltimore who invited him to vigilance meetings and the friendship which grew into love of Anna Murray. She... Read more

On this day in 1777 during the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge, the Flag of the United States is flown in battle for the first time. Read more

I’m working on my Labor Day sermon and when pushed on what I would address said offhandedly, oh, about revolution. A friend sent some interesting links. It felt a waste not to share ’em… And, a classic… And, of course, that made me think of other views… And then Facebook’s computer threw this one up… Ironic… Read more