This is, of course, Thanksgiving Day. I do indeed find myself thankful, for so much… And I’ve noticed today is also the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. I recall watching Supervisor Dianne Feinstein announcing the murders on the evening news that day, picturing her standing in front of the City Hall. In preparation for this entry I went looking for visuals and couldn’t find them, making me wonder if this... Read more

This is my contribution to a blog rally* in support of Engage With Grace. Thank you Paul, for the pointer… Engage With Grace By Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team. We make choices throughout our lives – where we want to live, what types of activities will fill our days, with whom we spend our time. These choices are often a balance between our desires and our means, but at the end of the day, they are decisions... Read more

Thomas Ahlburn was the fourteenth minister of the First Unitarian Church of Providence, which these days I have the honor to serve as the seventeenth minister. He continues to loom large in the life of the congregation now nearly a decade since his retirement and premature death. The following includes the “official” obituary from the Unitarian Universalist Association, a rather sweet remembrance of him published in the local newspaper after his retirement was announced, and what appears to be a... Read more

be warned… Read more

On this day in 1922, some three or so weeks after the steps to what seemed a possibly significant archaeological find were discovered, Howard Carter was able to create a “tiny breach in the top left hand corner” of what proved to be the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen. This would lead to the second great Egyptian fad in Western culture, at least equaling the first when Napoleon’s army brought back home literally tons upon tons of loot, including their... Read more

Thank you, Worst Horse! Read more

I notice today is Joe DiMaggio’s birthday. The way a monkey mind works, of course, this leads to Paul Simon’s tip of the hat to what he referred to as “heroes of the past.” Here is Mr Simon and a friend in Central Park… Read more

On this day in 1859, Charles Darwin published his seminal work, On the Origin of Species. Obviously the idea for what we call evolution was in the air. If you listen to the clip above you may notice he credits Alfred Russel Wallace with coming to nearly identical conclusions at roughly the same time. But this idea floating in the air contained within it a revolution. Its consequences in biological studies is incalculable. I’m mostly concerned with the religious and... Read more

Of course Thanksgiving has its shadows. I think it’s important to remember for some Native Americans this is a time of mourning. And we must not turn from the mixing of sorrow and joy that is our lives. There is a reason for this. If we face the world as it is, with its terrors and sadnesses, and its astonishing beauty, and out of that those ten thousand million acts of joy each and every day, most of us will... Read more

My recent posting dancing off of a reference to a Myers Briggs typology produced a couple of responses, both involving pointers to other online tests. The first of these pointed me to an Enneagram test. Of the currently faddish tests, this is one I rather enjoy the most. Mainly, I have to admit, because it has such mysterious origins. I gather in general people claim it is some sort of Sufi typology. Although near as I can tell the first... Read more