Calling all in transit … "Racing in the Street," Bruce Springsteen "Radio Caroline," Green "Radio Free Europe," R.E.M. "Radio, Radio," Elvis Costello & The Attractions "Rain," Patty Griffin "Rain," Wally Badarou "Rain King," Counting Crows "Rainbows in the Dark," Tilly & the Wall "Raining in Baltimore," Counting Crows "Rainy Season," Aztec Camera "Rapture," Pedro the Lion Read more
The paper started something called "Story Chat" — adding the option of reader comments to every story in the online edition. After reading these comments over the past few months, let me just say again that David Neiwert's Orcinus is Really Important. * * * * * I've gotten a bit distracted from it, but I'm working my way through David Kuo's Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. The latter half of the book contains the juicy insider... Read more
In the post-election excitement, I neglected to mention Return Day — the Sussex County, Del., tradition that dates back to 1792. Every two years, two days after Election Day, Delawareans gather on The Circle in Georgetown to hear the official reading of the election returns. That's anachronistic these days, with the results available online as soon as the votes are counted, but the event has come to serve another function. Candidates — winners and losers — ride together in a... Read more
Went to a wedding (nobody you know — at least, I don't think so — that would be something). The New Testament reading was from 1 Corinthians 13, prompting the following thoughts. 1. Reading this passage is one of the things we get right in Christian weddings. Weddings are one of those times when we have company — lots of people come who otherwise probably wouldn't walk through the doors of the church. When you have company at home, you... Read more
Both Patrick Nielsen Hayden and tristero have noted the post-election sermonette from Jim Wallis in which he claims that Tuesday was somehow "A defeat for the religious right and the secular left." In this election, both the Religious Right and the secular Left were defeated, and the voice of the moral center was heard. … It is clear from the election results that moderate, and some conservative, Christians — especially evangelicals and Catholics — want a moral agenda that is... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 231-233 Buck Williams is traveling incognito, under a pseudonym, desperately trying to keep one step ahead of the seemingly all-powerful international conspiracy that he knows has already taken control of the British government. So we find him on page 231, sitting out in the open at a busy airport, next to a newsstand full of papers that feature his picture, waiting for his closest friend and coworker to arrive for a ride back to town. His friend... Read more
Watching CNN before heading in to work early (Election Night at the paper = free pizza!) and feeling grateful that I don't work for a TV station where I would have to: A) talk about the election all day even though, B) there'd be little actual election news until polls closed. They could've spent the day talking about things like the robo-calling voter suppression scheme Josh Marshall has been all over, but instead they've spent the day talking about what... Read more
The Saddam verdict and sentence aren't a surprise. The former dictator's crimes were not a secret, but a source of sick pride. He ordered the death of more than a hundred villagers to make an example out of them — so at the time he carried out the slaughter with as much attention-grabbing publicity as he could muster. And it's not like he was claiming innocence (When? I was out of town then — and Mrs. Saddam and I went... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 228-231 Chloe Steele got up and walked out during the middle of the meeting for "the disenchanted and the skeptics" at New Hope Village Church. "Do you wonder why I walked out?" Chloe asks. And, yes. Yes I do. "I figured it was because the questions and answers were hitting a little too close to home," Rayford says, and I wish he hadn't because it only reminds me that LaHaye and Jenkins frustratingly chose to omit that... Read more
OK, apparently this is true. And this is big. Really big. "I did not have a homosexual relationship with a man in Denver," Ted Haggard said with a calm specificity during an interview with a Denver TV reporter on Wednesday night as controversy broke around him. "I am steady with my wife. I'm faithful to my wife." Nevertheless, the pastor of one of the most prominent mega-churches in the country — and one of President George W. Bush's advisors on... Read more
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