The Strange Halloween Death Of Houdini

I first became familiar with name Harry Houdini when I caught the Tony Curtis movie about his life on one of the many nightly network movies that were a staple of prime-time television when I was a child. On a whim I looked him up in our school's World Book Encyclopedia, a tad surprised he was important enough to be there. From there I was off to the public library to read every book about him I could find. He became a childhood hero of mine, and the inspiration for another childhood hobby, magic.

Magic aside, I learned of his great interest the possibility of communication with dead. Devastated emotionally by the death of his beloved mother, Houdini began frequenting mediums in an effort to contact her. He found himself disappointed repeatedly. The heyday of Spiritualism was in the past, but, then as now, interest in communicating with the dead was a popular idea. If mediums today are more sophisticated, and much less inclined to rely on the psychic stunts of the mediums of yesteryear, their overall popularity is not diminished.

Houdini, through his growing anger after repeated failures to contact his mother via mediumship, eventually became the Amazing Randi of his day, an arch skeptic. He set out to investigate and expose the fraudulent methods of these mediums, whom he considered nothing more than bunco artists. He wrote a book, A Magician Among The Spirits (still in print today), dedicated to that effort. Being the shrewd business man he was, he incorporated his exposures into his full evening magic show. His frequent investigations of mediums provided him the best publicity, and he remained extremely popular right up until his death. And his very coincidental death is the real subject of this post.

First, for those who find the subject of curses interesting (as I do), it seems that Houdini was the subject of a curse by at least some in the Spiritualist community who were greatly angered by his campaign against them. In Ruth Brandon's book The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini, he is quoted as saying "I get letters from ardent believers in Spiritualism who prophesy I am going to meet a violent death soon as a fitting punishment for my nefarious work."

True enough, his campaign against crooked mediums was cut short by his death. Whether one considers it a violent death or not is a matter of opinion. He died of advanced peritonitis, due to a ruptured appendix, after days of suffering and struggling to stay alive. It has been suggested that the contributing factor in his death was a series of blows delivered to his stomach by a young college student days before he was taken ill. Okay, that probably qualifies as violence, although the student had Houdini's permission to test his stomach strength; through a misunderstanding, however, he struck the blows before Houdini had braced himself. Less certain is that the blows caused the fatal damage to the magician's appendix.

I guess if you are inclined to believe in curses, this might fill the bill.

But there is another thing I find curious and coincidental. Houdini died on Halloween day in 1926. At the very least we can say it was appropriate that a man so interested in reaching those who are supposedly on the other side of the veil would die on the very day that veil is at its thinnest. Was this an example of Jung's Synchronicity? Was it just a strange coincidence? Truth indeed is sometimes stranger than fiction in this strange universe of ours.

Halloween: A Season of Ghosts

A crazily hectic work schedule has all but derailed my plans to spend time blogging about Halloween. Some of you may find that a small loss, but I love the fall season, it's significance in the cycle of life, and the rich and varied history of harvest festivals and autumnal celebrations. Halloween and Thanksgiving give us ample opportunity to meditate on all that.

According to ancient Irish lore, Samhain (or summer's end). which corresponds with our modern Halloween, was a time when death was brought to the forefront. It was all around as the leaves fell, the grass withered, and the landscape became barren. Farmers took note of their flocks and decided which and how many animals would be slaughtered and preserved to nourish their families through the long winter ahead, along with the grains and produce that had been harvested.

Also there was the matter of the veil between the living and dead among humanity that was perceived to be especially thin at this time of year. Towards that end, Samhain feasts were held and places set for deceased loved ones. Stories were exchanged about the dead. These departed ones, it was believed, could reach across the divide and touch their surviving loved ones.

Personally, I have somewhat different ideas about death and survival of death. I agree with fellow pantheist John Toland, who wrote:

"Nothing dies totally, the death of one thing brings the birth of another, by a universally reciprocal exchange, and everything contributes necessarily to the preservation and welfare of the Whole by a continual change of forms and a marvelous variation which forms an eternal cycle.”

Our departed loved ones live on, I believe, in our hearts and minds. Death is too much feared and not enough understood in the context of the cycles of life. This problem mainly is due to our personal egos. We tend to view the universe as outside and apart from us, ignoring the fact that we are only an infinitesimally small particle in the Cosmos as a whole.

Perhaps the veil is only apparent. So long as we are alive, those we loved and can't forget live on. In the same way we will live on after our deaths in the memories of those whose lives we touched. The thinning of the veil is just another way of noting that autumn signals the fast approach of winter. But then, after a while, it is spring again, and life bursts forth anew as the cycle continues.

Ghosts of departed spirits are real, I believe, at least in the sense that our psyches are haunted by them. The dead aren't fully departed, but still very much with us. Autumn and winter are only symbolically about approaching death and death. Halloween is a fine time for us to think about these things.

Our Local Halloween Controversy

Well, Satan's holiday, commonly called by its religious name, Halloween (derived from All Hallows Even, or evening), has created controversy where I live, because it falls on Sunday. That happens to be church night, although I've noticed that many of our area churches have adopted the Trunk or Treat program. That is a safe (less Pagan) alternative, where the church folk fill their trunks with goodies, dress in costumes (or not), and let the kiddies make the rounds from trunk to trunk to trunk. If I were I kid, I think I would find that about as exciting as fishing in a washtub.

Several local governments have officially recognized Saturday as trick-or-treat night in order to avoid conflicting with church services. Others, such as the city of Chattanooga, have left it up to the individuals. That probably means some attempted double-dipping. Others have yet to announce their plans.

I was one of the many children who were and are deprived of the innocent fun of the Halloween tradition because of the religious principles and general ignorance of their parents. What could have been a really fun family evening had my parents chosen to participate was turned into another example of why fundamentalist Christians are "strangers in a strange land." There is a rich history of this particular day, a veritable lesson in comparative religion and mythology (like all the other "Christian" holidays) that could have been explored and, I think, would have been healthy for us.

That is the aspect that has caused me to fall in love with Halloween and all its lore, for that matter, all of the religious holidays. Christians greatly misunderstand the origins of Halloween ... for that matter, just about every religious holiday. And perhaps no misunderstanding of theirs is greater than their equating of Paganism with Satanism.

About all that was left of the Halloween season for me as a child were the television specials. I won't say that it stunted my intellectual growth, but it could have been so much more.

Nature's Windy Ways

Stormy skies have been in the news this week for some of our nation. My little corner of the US has certainly had its gusts the past couple of days, with several tornadoes in my old home town of Chattanooga, Tennessee and surrounding areas.

Growing up in Chattanooga I was exposed to a popular myth around there. Chattanooga is beautiful city, a valley surrounded by hilly terrain, the historic Lookout Mountain, scenic Signal Mountain, and other smaller and lesser-known mountains. The myth was that all these mountains surrounding the area protected it from tornadoes.

Wrong.

Tornadoes can drop down from the sky pretty much anywhere, and just about any time of the year when the atmospheric conditions are right.

Last evening our local news gave continuous coverage of the severe weather. Television weather and meteorology in general have come so far from my childhood remembrance. Storm chasers are getting quite common, and just about everyone (but not I) has camcorders, so we are now regularly treated to incredible coverage of these terrible storms.

Northern Georgia, my current home, has had a goodly amount of wind damage and tornadic activity the past two days. Monday I was forced to take a detour when I came upon a large tree that had fallen across the road along my normal route to work. One of my coworkers had a tree fall on her home, her daughter's bedroom to be specific. She had just gotten her daughter out of bed to get her ready for school about ten minutes before it fell.

The believers in a personal deity will of course find meaning and faith affirmation in that. However, in fairness, I note that Monday's tornado north of Chattanooga did some significant damage to at least one area church, which would suggest to me that this God must have a mischievous streak.

Would it not be an extraordinary coincidence if every time a natural disaster, a storm, flood or earthquake, struck all the churches were spared? Now if I noticed such a trend, it might begin to make a believer out of me.

Instead I see only nature's god, that gives no special treatment to any person or group of people in meting out adversity and suffering. Faith gets you no farther, secures you no better treatment, than simple acceptance of life as it is.

Sounds fair to me.

An Uncanny Dream

Maybe. Odd, perhaps. Explicable? Again, maybe. I love unusual things. Of course I've mentioned here my fascination about dreams. Let me tell you about this strange and coincidental dream I had Thursday night.

I remember well that it was Thursday, because that was the evening I had made plans with my mother to bring over dinner and spend some time with her. I had to be at work earlier than usual the next morning, so I was later than normal getting home and kind of rushed. I hurried home and in my haste to get inside my house in order to prepare for getting a good night's sleep, I clumsily brushed up against the dial control for the dash lights in my old Chevy pickup truck. When dialed all the way to the right, it turns on my dome light. I never remember that. However, it must have rattled around a bit in my subconscious mind, because:

That night I dreamed of being out someplace and my truck not starting because of a low battery. I tried and tried to crank her up, but only got a slow groans. I thought that perhaps if I held off for a couple of minutes, it might build up enough juice for one more effort that would start my truck. And it did! That was just one element of an extended dream, the rest of which I have now forgotten - and, actually, I started forgetting the other elements almost right away upon wakening.

Well, about the first thing I do upon arising (after taking a leak and combing my hair) is go outside to feed the cats that have gathered on my front deck awaiting breakfast. But the first thing I noticed after the cats milling around my feet was that the dome light in my truck was on and obviously had been all night. Panic set in as I rehearsed in my mind the possibility of my dream coming true and how difficult of a time I would have had getting a boost at 4 a. m.

I went back inside the house and got my keys, and, to my relief, found that my reliable old truck started right up, no groaning whatsoever.

So there you have it. Not exactly a premonition dream, because what I dreamed wasn't what happened. But still it was close enough to cue up the Twilight Zone theme in my mind, if only briefly. As I suggested earlier, this probably was due to my barely noticed at the time brushing against the light switch and my overactive mind. At least I think that's it.

The truth is, I think our senses are busier than our conscious mind is often aware. I believe we take in literally realms of data, and that our subconscious minds, during our less ego-overriden dream state, often puts some of this data to work for us in interesting ways.

Say I were not in the habit of going out to spend a few minutes with my cats. Would I have mulled over the part of the dream about the truck starting and - just for the heck of it - checked on it anyway? Who knows for sure? But likely I would have. I've analyzed my dreams long enough to know that most of them mean something. Most of them have a basis in my recent thoughts and life incidents.

I'm fascinated with the idea that dreams can be predictive. I don't exactly know how that could be true. Perhaps in some way everything is interconnected in a profound way. That is almost a conviction of mine. I'm open minded on the point.

I know I've dreamed some things that came to pass. For example, awhile back I dreamed that President Ford died. When I awoke and got online, I found that he indeed had died. That was rather unexpected, so far as I remember I had not been thinking of Ford, nor was I aware he was near death (aside from his being 93 years old). Just a bizarre coincidence? Perhaps.

It goes without saying, of course, that have been many, many, many times I've dreamed things that seemed significant but which didn't come to pass (often to my great relief).

Another idea that has kicked around inside my head for years now is that maybe, just maybe, mind is all there is. Maybe matter and reality itself are illusions (albeit very convincing!) and manifestations of mind. Again, I don't know how that would work, but still there is a nagging feeling inside me that it might be true.

And yet again, there is often a nagging feeling inside me that maybe I am full of that brown stuff!

The Hundred Who Were Left Behind

Okay, I've been following this bit of lunacy at my blog of late, guess I can't stop now. It was customary for many of our local high schools to blare out over the public address system the leading of prayers before football games on Friday nights. Finally at least one student has complained, has enlisted the aid of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and has forced Hamilton County School Superintendent Jim Scales to order these schools to cease and desist.

And then all hell broke loose around here. You would have thought Scales had announced he was posting armed guards at the various events for the purpose of rounding up and arresting anyone suspected of saying a prayer during the games. Why, you would have the ol' Devil himself was walking about here in our beloved Bible Belt, poking folks with his pitchfork!

The local news outlets kept feeding us stories about the persecuted prayer warriors, so we all were waiting on the edge of our seats to find out what would happen at this week's games.

Here's the way it played out. According to Chattanoogan.com, prayer "broke out" at the Soddy Daisy High School game. According to "A fan," after a brief recap of the situation by the public address announcer:

Both sides of the stadium emptied and joined the teams, bands and cheerleaders for a heart-felt prayer led by a female student from Rhea County High School.

These folks all gathered at the 50-yard line for a public display of their piety.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported that "the pregame prayer ... left both stands empty except for about 100 or so people who remained behind."

Ah, the hundred or so who would not bow knee to the God of the Hamilton County School Board. Who were they? Maybe a few rank unbelievers, maybe some Pagans, Jews, Muslims or other religious minority. Maybe some of them where good old-fashioned Southern Baptists who still see the value and wisdom of the wall of separation between church and state. I suppose some just may have come to watch the game and wondered what the hell prayer has to do with that.

There is absolutely zero threat to religion - quite the contrary, actually - in the separation of church and state. There is no persecution of Christians here (there is a blatant disregard for the feelings of others, however). This is just another excuse for people to wear their religion on their sleeves. These shenanigans get me in the gut. So silly. So much ado about nothing.

Freethought Bullies?

A local pastor's wife wrote our major newspaper to weigh in on the controversy I blogged about yesterday. Go to this page and scroll down to Prayer foes should find way to do good to read her entire letter. Her first paragraph set the tone:

As a Christian, I am offended that the "Freedom from Religion Foundation" is taking it upon itself to bully people into believing in their "freethinking" ways.

She ends with this note: "In the words of my pastor husband, 'Can I get an amen?'"

Uh, no ma'am; not from this freethinker.

How in the name of common sense can a plea for neutrality be construed as bullying? Talk about your martyr complexes!

Freethought is not a philosophical position. It is a method of inquiry. Freethinkers don't stand as one in agreement on every issue. We just attempt to free ourselves from traditional and authoritarian ideas in order to investigate things and form opinions with an open mind.

Certainly I do not - and I think your average freethinker would not - consider the accusation of "prayer foe" accurate. Prayer, like free speech, is a basic right. No problem with that. But prayer isn't the issue here.

The only attempted bullying here is on the part of Christian extremists who want to force their religion on everyone else.

Now Here This (Whether You Want To Or Not)

How's this for a story? Hamilton County (in Tennessee) school superintendent Dr. Jim Scales was well aware of the practice of some its high schools of blasting out prayers over their loudspeakers before athletic events and did nothing about it until now that someone has complained. His reason for not banning such prayers before: "If I had, they (parents & voters) would have run me out of town on a rail. Let's face it, it's the real world we live in."

Of course we now have a big neighbor-dividing stink around here.

The mascot for Soddy Daisy High School, Chase Burnette, who is a senior there, explains that this type of prayer "sets more of a Christian tone" and makes the games less "less grr and in your face?" Yeah, sure it does.

Then Burnette goes on to explain: "The whole reason our forefathers came to America is for freedom of religion, and I think expressing it in a crowd is just better."

Um, Mr. Burnette, that isn't freedom of religion, but rather an attempt to impose your religion onto others.

Now the Freedom From Religion Foundation is involved on behalf of a student who has complained about this practice. One of its attorneys, Rebecca Market, explained: "It is illegal for a public school to organize, sponsor and lead prayers at public high school events and graduation ceremonies."

Okay, back to Dr. Scales. Isn't it sad that he felt that in order to keep his job secure rather than being "run out of town on a rail" he had to go against not only common sense but the law as well? He knew this was inappropriate, but allowed it to continue because those who might object were in the minority.

And this isn't about just about us damned unbelievers, either. Why should Jews, Muslims, or any other religious group be expected to be edified by a sporting event being conducted, as Chase Burnette suggests, with a "Christian tone"? Is it not possible to be religious without being rude?

This isn't about one's right to pray. It is about the attempt to force prayers on other people. That is plainly wrong and insincere.

The God Of The Falling Rock

This is, it would seem, a constant refrain here at my blog. Someone places God in the midst of some unusual event and it leads me to more questions about how people in general conceive God to be. It makes feel bad to come across so negatively on the subject. I just don't understand how people can believe the things they do sometimes.

Case in point: a toddler is injured near where I live when a rock falls on his head while he and his family visit Fall Creek Falls. This has been all over the local news the past few days. Here is a snippet from the report:

Parents Tim and Tiffany Brown said they took their two children to the bottom of the fall along the water's edge. Tiffany was holding Caleb when the peace and serenity was broken by the sound of a falling rock that hit the ground and then hit her 2-year-old.

“He went limp, and we thought he was dead at that point. There was an EMT down there who took his pulse and found he was still breathing,” said Tim Brown.

The family quickly tried to make it back to the top of trail to get help.

Tim made it halfway and ran into some of the people hiking the trail. One of the hikers was another EMT and grabbed Caleb. That man helped get him farther up the bluff and handed him off to a firefighter to get him the rest of the way to the top.

“God completely orchestrated that. By the time we got to the top of the hill, there was a pediatric nurse, a doctor, at least a couple of other nurses, a police officer and a firefighter. Everybody was surrounding him. They knew exactly what to. They were just hiking that day,” said Tim Brown.

Okay. Did you get that? God "orchestrated" the rescue help that was nearby - you might say they were all in the right place at the right time. I'm not trying to be mean or mock anyone, but does that question not invite the further question: Why did God not orchestrate the rock missing the child in the first place?

I put that exact question to several of my religious friends and pretty much got the same answer: We can't say; but God has reasons for what he does.

That answer is so far from satisfying to me. The child is still in the hospital in grave danger. I really hope he pulls through this with no long-lasting ill effects. Meanwhile, his parents are asking that we pray to the same God who evidently allowed this tragedy in the first place. My religious friends that I asked about this have no problem whatsoever with the idea that God might have created or "allowed" this situation in order to teach the parents some valuable lesson about faith and trust or some such. Can God really be this way?

Ghost Train

My now deceased older brother was six years my senior. He had a gifted imagination, wrote a bit of fiction in his spare time, and loved tales of the supernatural. It was he who turned me on to horror comics and magazines. He also introduced me to the old Native American legend of the Wendigo, once telling me the story shortly before my bedtime. I was so frightened I ended up spending that night with him in his bed rather than going to my own room to sleep. Yes, my brother Earl certainly had a way with a tale!

Today I'm going to pass along a story he used to tell me about the cemetery that was down the hill from the house we grew up in. This is Chattanooga's National Cemetery, a government military cemetery with graves dating all the way back to the Civil War. I heard this story many times in my youth, and he always maintained that it really happened. As I got older I came up with another possible explanation, but it was always a fun tale I enjoyed hearing.

If you know a little bit about the Civil War, you might be familiar with or have heard about the thrilling exploits of Andrew's Raiders, also known as the Great Locomotive Chase. Wikidpedia has an article that explains it this way:

The Great Locomotive Chase or Andrews' Raid was a military raid that occurred April 12, 1862, in northern Georgia during the American Civil War. Volunteers from the Union Army commandeered a train and took it northwards toward Chattanooga, Tennessee, doing as much damage as possible to the vital Western & Atlantic Railroad (W&A) from Atlanta, Georgia to Chattanooga as they went, pursued by other locomotives. Because they had cut the telegraph wires, no warning could be sent to Confederate forces along their route. The raiders were eventually captured and some were executed as spies. Some of Andrews' Raiders became the first recipients of the Medal of Honor.

The bodies of James Andrews and those executed along with him are buried in the National Cemetery. Their graves form a semicircle around a monument of the General, the train they captured (that is its picture above).

I visited their graves many times as youth as I searched out the graves of two of my dad's brothers, who were veterans of W.W.II. I never found the graves and memorial spooky, but I was fascinated by it. So I went to the library to learn more about this matter. The monument itself dates back to 1890, and was a gift from the state of Ohio.

Anyway, as regards my brother's story of The General, when he was in his late teens he was accustomed to spending the weekends drinking and partying with his other mischievous friends. The street which ran parallel to the cemetery was closed to through traffic for a number of years back then, and it made a handy place for us kids to play (and for the older kids to go get drunk).

One dark night with a full moon shining behind the hilly terrain of the cemetery, my brother and his friends kept hearing a moaning sound in the distance, and then saw the old General chugging over the largest of the hills. The pedestal on which it stood was empty. "Are you sure?" I asked him. He always maintained it was so. The last thing he and his friends saw as they ran for home was that empty pedestal. At least that is what he always maintained.

I loved to hear him tell about this, and to imagine the train traveling over the hills in the moonlight, perhaps reenacting its famous historical journey. But now older, and knowing what a bit of alcohol and some recreational drugs can do to the mind, I suspect this story was their imagination run wild.

You could see this cemetery clearly from my bedroom window, and I often watched for strange goings on there. I never saw a thing other than the peaceful repose of the dead. My relating this incident from my bother's youth doesn't do justice to the way he told it, of course. He had much imagination for such things, and with that gift a simple idea can be made into something quite wonderful.

Oh, Bury Me Not

I love people who think outside the box. And here is a story of one such person, a lady who has decided to pay tribute to her late husband's memory by building an outhouse in which to store his cremains. Lovely. This story was shown repeatedly yesterday by this local television station's news department.

At first you might think this was a matter of disrespect, but no, there is more to the story. Feeling a bit guilty for once having not rushed out to get an outhouse her husband had seen and wanted, she wanted to make it up to him in this way.

Weird? Yeah. But so what? People request all kinds of things be done with their ashes when they are gone. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry actually had a portion of his cremains sent into orbit around the earth. Other people have theirs divided among loved ones. Cremains are routinely buried, scattered, dumped, stored on a mantle, you name it. I have my father's ashes here at my home on a shelf.

My instructions are that I be cremated when I die. But what to do with the ashes? If any of my immediate family survives me, I'll let them decide who gets what's left of me. I've thought about having them scattered someplace, but where? Some of my friends at work, who like to joke about my dedication to my job, sarcastically suggested having my ashes scattered on the grounds there. Ha ha. But then again....

I don't like the idea of this matter being left up in the air, but as of right now I'm undecided. Besides, there are so many other pressing matters. Guess I do sort of hope I don't end up in the toilet, however.

Thank You, Bishop Quintana

How wonderful that 33 trapped Chilean miners were rescued alive from what could have easily been their graves! And as is common in these things the word miracle is being tossed around loosely. The word seems to have acquired the meaning of that which is extremely unlikely rather than that which is contrary to the laws of nature. That's sort of a pet peeve of mine.

But in this Catholic News Service story, Bishop Gaspar Quintana of Chile stated the matter correctly: "Theologically, it can't be argued," Bishop Quintana told the press. It was a great event, "but not a miracle."

That shouldn't detract from the joy of this rescue; but I don't see a reason to get all religious over it. I hate it when the divine is seen in things like:

Daniel Sanderson, had one foot out the door before a gentle nudge from his wife convinced him to stay with the family instead of heading to the mine for work.

God? Luck? I read that another of the miners was tempted to lay out and spend the day with his family, but chose instead to not let down the others. He was among those trapped. So he didn't listen to God?

People accuse me of going overboard sometimes about God's intervention, but I swear: I'd scarcely say a thing except for everyone else bringing God into everything. I don't have a problem with discussing the matter. If indeed this is a privileged planet, and the universe a divine masterwork, I've no problem with the idea that God is sovereign over everything that takes place herein. But try to reconcile the enormous amount of evil and misfortune in this life with the idea of loving heavenly Father who has numbered the vary hairs on our heads and takes note of the fall of a tiny sparrow from its nest and the matter gets tenuous.

Now maybe there is a deistic God who is little concerned about all this. Maybe God set everything up in the beginning and is just allowing it to play out on its own. That preserves God as a First Cause, but I wonder how worthy of adoration and worship such a God is.

But most of the people I know hold out for a God who directs your life in every detail, yet somehow allows for individual freewill. I'm told that what most often happens is that people ignore that guiding and warning voice. God's sovereignty and individual freewill don't mix very well. One always gets shorted by the other.

Whatever one makes of all that, I believe the good bishop is correct here. A combination of a high-risk occupation and unsafe mining practice accounts for most mine disasters. And in this case the strength and incredible will of the miners to survive coupled with some downright determined innovativeness on the part of the rescuers made for a happy ending. Theologically speaking, this is not the stuff of miracles.

What I Like About The Tea Party Candidates

In a word, little.

Sure, as this Los Angeles Times article well documents, we are being treated to some loose cannons spouting out absurdities. But let's think about this thing a little deeper. Are these Tea Party gaffes representative of something the average conservative politician doesn't really feel? The main difference I see is that the pros know how to couch their obnoxiousness in slick professionalism.

Sure, I find offensive the positions these folks espouse. But their candor I find refreshing. I would much, much prefer to have the unvarnished truth, no matter how unpalatable or offensive, over a hypocritical lie. And let's not kid ourselves, that's what professional politicians do: lie to us about who they are what they really think.

If the political uncouthness of the Tea Partiers is hurting them, it doesn't appear to be showing up in the polls. That's surely because, in a nation infatuated with right-wing screwballs on talk radio and Fox News, there are more of them than us.

To me it seem these Tea Party gaffes just brings clarity to the whole mess. Not a big consolation I suppose, but at least it's entertaining.

A Brief Word

I haven't forgotten about my esteemed friends here at my blog. I felt compelled to take a few day off from blogging in order to clear my mind and relax a little. Been very busy with work and early hours there. Burnout can overtake you sometimes before you realize it has. But I plan on being back tomorrow with a new post. Until then, all of you are in my thoughts.

Doug

It's In The Cards For This City's Ordinance

Here is a tale appropriate for the Halloween season, from here in my own backyard where such trivial matters routinely become big deals.

There is a self-described spiritualist who runs a booth at a local flea market and was forced to close back in September due to a local ordinance against predicting the future for profit. She's back in business for now under an injunction, but she is determined, with the help of the ACLU, to rid the books of the law for good.

As far back as I can remember "fortune telling" was ill thought of in the surrounding communities. When I was a young child, this was usually the stray gypsy lady with her crystal ball. But an explosion in interest in New Age metaphysics starting in earnest back in the 70s brought the Tarot Card readers and palmistrists out of the woodwork.

Psychic Candice Wohlfeil, who reads people's future in her Tarot Cards, says that all she wants to do is practice her trade as a "spiritual counselor." “The government is not allowed to dictate what I can and can’t say and I look forward to this being resolved so that I can get back to helping people.”

This sounds more like a freedom of religion issue to me, but this does seem to fall under the First Amendment. And, yes, the main concern is the swindling often involved in this type of thing. But, hey, you aren't going to tell me that many churches don't cross this ethical line, are you? I don't see the logic of forbidding one and not the other.

Here in the United States you have a right to believe the heavens influence life here on earth in whatever manner you choose, and I suppose you can sell this belief to others as well. I predict the city of East Ridge is going to lose this one.

Obama's Omen

I saw this on the evening news the other night and got little more than a chuckle out of it. Our president was speaking at Fortune Magazine's "Most Powerful Women Summit" and had the awkward experience of the presidential seal falling noisily from the lectern during his talk. He brushed this little incident off with his trademark sense of humor and went on.

Now I notice Media Matters For America's story about how the right-wing media is finding an omen in this insignificant little event. Can these guys really be so superstitious as to ask if this is "a sign of the times for Obama"? Seriously?

Hopefully, no. At least for the most part. I think it was probably, as MMFA suggests, just another opportunity to attack. But in a nation filled with people who believe in the regular intrusion of cosmic forces into our daily lives, who knows?

If I were a believer is such things I would probably have seen significance in the way Chief Justice Roberts tripped up Obama as he mangled the presidential oath while administering it at the swearing-in ceremony. And the president's opponents have continued the attempt to trip him up ever since day one. Hey, how was that for a sign of things to come?

You Say God, I Say Odd

Jesus seems to keep popping up in the oddest places. This time he appears, crown of thorns and all, on the MRI of Tammie Cohrs of South Carolina. She is battling a rare form of oral cancer and apparently sees something meaningful and hope-inspiring in her MRI scan. See the image and read the story here.

Now I'm not going to poke fun at this. In fact, I think this thing is instructional. Personally I can't see Jesus there at all. (And really ... who know what Jesus actually looked like?). It's funny that the faithful look out at the world around us and see an intricate divine pattern. Others of us can look out and see only nature doing its thing.

Cohrs says it is "a reminder that He is with us through the hard times, not only the good times when everything is going great, but He is also with us when things get hard and difficult."

I look out at this troubled world of ours and think that if the hungry are to be fed, the naked clothed, the weak protected, it is up to us to do it. Sadly, it appears to be the case that there are more wounds to treat than hands willing to apply balm. Many who do apply balm do it in the name of the God they serve. Some of us do it in the name of humanity.

How I wish not that I could find it within myself to believe that a kind, loving Heavenly Father has the "Whole World In His Hands," but that it was so obviously true that it could not be denied. Instead we have the people of faith telling us to just close our eyes and believe really hard.

I wish Tammie Cohrs well and hope she has a good outcome in her illness. She sees Jesus in her MRI. All I see are varying shades of light and dark - and no point to the vast amount of suffering in this world.

USA Inc.

Are we a republic or a corporation? In yesterday's post I sarcastically noted that the media and our politicians are more and more shills for big business. Hey, let me give you a bit from Wikipedia on Shill:

A shill is a person who helps another person or organization to sell goods or services without disclosing their relationship with the seller. The shill pretends to have no association with the seller/group and gives onlookers the impression that he or she is an enthusiastic independent customer.

Is that not it?

After writing yesterday's post I read this piece from the New York Times on the Roberts Supreme Court. This puts it chillingly into perspective:

The kinds of petitioners favored say a lot about the court’s interests and biases. The Warren court, eager to champion individual rights, chose a large number of petitions from downtrodden people. The Rehnquist court, looking for opportunities to vindicate states’ rights, favored petitions from the states.

The Roberts court has championed corporations. The cases it has chosen for review this term suggest it will continue that trend. Of the 51 it has so far decided to hear, over 40 percent have a corporation on one side. The most far-reaching example of the Roberts court’s pro-business bias was Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. By a 5-to-4 vote, the conservative justices overturned a century of precedent to give corporations, along with labor unions, an unlimited right to spend money in politics.
Well, there you go. The old Republican philosophy that the business of the United States is business, as President Coolidge put it, is becoming more and more a truism.

However, I think the ruthlessness of the corporate ethic of profit over compassion is ill suited to a compassionate nation such as ours; or such as we like to think we are. These jobless recoveries that are becoming the norm - a result of the profit maximization strategy of shipping jobs overseas where the labor is cheap - is a manifestation of the business ethic. Big business, contrary to the Republican's "trickle down theory" is not the least bit interested in sharing their wealth, only ever increasing it.

The most frustrating thing to me is the way conservative politicians - Republican, Independent, and Democrat-in-name-only - effectively misdirect attention away and put the spotlight on the dangers of Big Government. A neat little strategy that apparently works.

Our media is a product of corporate interests, our politicians are hugely financed with (and therefore beholden to) Big Business money, even our nation's Supreme Court seems to be in their pocket ... who speaks to and for the common man anymore?

On Constructive Criticism In Politics

I have to say I got a kick out of most of the comments on my last post. Some of my blogger friends think it is silly for me to criticize our president and the Democrats in Congress. That seems to be the sticking point, even though the post was about how inept we as a people are at handling our affairs.

If you read the comments only rather than my post, you would think I launched a full frontal assault against the Democrats in Congress and our President. Instead I made two criticisms. One, that our president failed to use his Bully Pulpit to rally the people to put pressure on their representatives, and secondly that he and his party's leaders wasted time seeking bipartisanship.

Now as I pointed out in my post, I don't want us as a country to take a step backwards and return power to the very folks who helped to bring us down. But Fox News and right-wing Talk Radio manipulates a lot of people. They go straight for the gut and they are getting results.

Hey, I'm as dismayed as any liberal that the Tea Party is gaining so much ground. But here we are. You can blame the mainstream media if you choose. But the problem with the MSM is that it has become a corporate shill. For that matter, our politicians are leaning the same way.

But no, I lay most of the blame at the feet of the people. It is they who are too intellectually flabby to think their way through what is happening in our country, what has been happening for the better part of three decades.

That's why I ended my last post the way I did. God needs to bless us, because we are blithely heading down the road to destruction.

And I want the bar to be higher than the mediocrity we have seen during the past two years. Or must we wait for ruin and hope that something good will rise from the ashes?

Why We Need God To Bless America

I'm with all the voter frustration. For me it comes down to extreme disappointment with the Democrats and their performance. Some of that - but by no means all, in my opinion - goes to the leader of the pack, President Obama. He disappeared for long periods of time from public view, lost the edginess he displayed during the campaign when he was front and center, and spent far too much valuable time "playing nice" and searching for bipartisanship. Evidently that's just not the way it's done anymore.

Although I personally disagree almost totally with what the modern Republican party stands for, honesty compels to admit that - wrong as I feel they were - Bush and his enablers showed better leadership in getting their agenda accomplished than the Dems have in the past nearly two years.

Lots of folks just seem to be tired of the way Washington is not working for us. Of course a lot of it is that they wanted Obama to somehow magically end the suffering quickly and painlessly. People want quick fixes. They can't help it. In general the American people are so dumbed down, so accustomed to instant this and that, they don't seem to be able to understand that some things take time.

So now lots of these adult children are in temper tantrum mode and ready to go to the polls and send back to majority status the same folks who wrecked our economy, our infrastructure, and our prestige in the eyes of the world.

I'm getting where I couldn't care less. Obviously even the last election was really just a show of frustration with the party in power. It will be again this time. Back and forth like the weak-minded children we are.

Go ahead, I say, let the party of the wealthy finish the job they started three decades ago with the Reagan Revolution. Maybe then, once we are virtually in ashes, there will be the necessary voter resolve to support real and lasting change - not based on frustration alone, but rooted in the understanding of the true nature of the problems that threaten us. And the biggest threat is not fanatical terrorism. That is misdirection.

My vote counts for nothing where I live. This was solidly McCain country last election and will be GOP territory yet again in November. Even our Democrats are closet Republicans. Those of us who are of liberal persuasion have mostly become spectators. Style trumps substance these days.

So please, God, do bless America. Because we as a people don't seem to be competent to help ourselves.