The Eagle & Child

via Darren Barefoot, here’s a video shot across the bay from a public broadcast in Vancouver of Sunday’s Olympic gold medal hockey game.  Everything is normal until just past the one minute mark… And there was much rejoicing.

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I miss the Olympics already.  It was fun to have an “event” that warranted having the TV on during supper.  Not that it’s something to be desired, to have the TV on during supper, but it’s the kind of thing that children remember.  ”When the Olympics were on we would watch them during supper.”  Plus, [...]

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Dixie taped me walking home from the library this afternoon.  By that time the snow had stopped blowing around, but the wind was still high.  This video gives you an idea of the drifts that have grown on the road in front of our trailer.  The drift I pat near the end is sitting on [...]

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The word of the day is “Hunkered”, as I have been hunkered down in a private study room in the library for most of the day.  I’m working on a paper for Christian Ethics. Actually, it’s a letter written to my church tradition (which happens to be a a mutt) as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, drawing exclusively [...]

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I noticed today that next semester’s textbooks are starting to arrive at the college bookstore on campus.  I had considered buying them from Amazon–mostly because I wasn’t sure if the texts would be available before Christmas, but also because I could, in some cases, save up to 50% of the cover price by purchasing through [...]

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I received in the mail today a book entitled The Culture of Fear.  Its subtitle is, “Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things,” and its sub-subtitle (following the colon after the subtitle), “Crime, Drugs, Minorities, Teen Moms, Killer Kids, Mutant Microbes, Plan Crashes, Road Rage, & So Much More”.  A veritable mouthful. The book has [...]

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Steve Bell has written a thoughtful post about Halloween, concluding with this: Personally, it makes me sad that the Church (in part) seems to have retreated into the very fear-based isolation St. Patrick’s lively faith contradicted. So sadly ironic. And we have done this in so many areas of common life.  It seems to me [...]

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I read a remarkable essay by William T. Cavanaugh for my Ethics class: “Discerning: Politics and Reconciliation“.  As it happens, that entire essay is available for preview at Google Books (it’s found in The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics).  That’s not the best format for reading the essay, but it’s the only online version I [...]

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Another one I stumbled upon while browsing through Bill Bryson’s fabulous book, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America: In the evening I sat in Hal and Lucia’s house, eating their food, drinking their wine, admiring their children and their house and furniture and possessions, their easy wealth and comfort, and felt a sap for ever [...]

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Just over a week ago I discovered that on the ground floor of the school buildings they have set up a couple of prayer rooms, one larger and two smaller.  They have chairs and pillows and some Christian symbols–the large room has a window with a stained-glass cross hanging in it and has a cross [...]

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