Thursday, October 29, 2026
Political Mayhem Thursday: Oratory, once upon a time....
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners — an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional of candidates. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts — that out of many, we are truly one.
....
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy and, in some cases, pain. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in the church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely — just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's efforts to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems — two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change — problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all....
But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than 20 years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another, to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a United States Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over 30 years has led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth — by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I describe the experience of my first service at Trinity:
"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters. And in that single note — hope! — I heard something else: At the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories — of survival and freedom and hope — became our stories, my story. The blood that spilled was our blood, the tears our tears, until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black. In chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a meaning to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about — memories that all people might study and cherish, and with which we could start to rebuild."
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety — the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing and clapping and screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and biases that make up the black experience in America.
As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions — the good and the bad — of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her by on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are part of America, this country that I love.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
What makes a place home?
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
2008=2028
That's what Abraham Lincoln understood. He had his doubts. He had his defeats. He had his setbacks. But through his will and his words, he moved a nation and helped free a people. It is because of the millions who rallied to his cause that we are no longer divided, North and South, slave and free. It is because men and women of every race, from every walk of life, continued to march for freedom long after Lincoln was laid to rest, that today we have the chance to face the challenges of this millennium together, as one people - as Americans.
All of us know what those challenges are today - a war with no end, a dependence on oil that threatens our future, schools where too many children aren't learning, and families struggling paycheck to paycheck despite working as hard as they can. We know the challenges. We've heard them. We've talked about them for years.
What's stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans. What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics - the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.
For the last six years we've been told that our mounting debts don't matter, we've been told that the anxiety Americans feel about rising health care costs and stagnant wages are an illusion, we've been told that climate change is a hoax, and that tough talk and an ill-conceived war can replace diplomacy, and strategy, and foresight.
Monday, October 26, 2026
Spooky! Scary!
Thought the Manson Family
Was coming for him.
Who and what: Is it going
To pounce in the dark?
Crack, thump, groan, bump, creak, whack, pop,
Just old boards groaning.
Climate, Iran, Election
A season of fear.
When plane starts to rock and shake
Convinced we will crash!
Was that i was going blind!
Kept light on at night.
Sunday, October 25, 2026
Sunday Reflection: How do you feel coming out of church?
Saturday, October 24, 2026
From 1975....
Friday, October 23, 2026
Haiku Friday: What is really scary?
Thursday, October 22, 2026
PMT: The Last Desperate Moments
Wednesday, October 21, 2026
Oops
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
College football update
Monday, October 19, 2026
On the plane
Chocolate chip cookies and
Served meals: the best!
lounge seats. Facing your friends and
talking through the flight.
Scottish bagpiper played tune
Up and down the aisle.
For years, throwing up likely
Dramamine works, phew!
in Peru, everyone claps!
More jobs need applause!
Turbulence sent trays skyward
Eek! Saying prayers.
Puked as we landed; lovely
They lost our luggage
Return flight, mom left purse
On airport transport, oh shit
Passports in London.
Sunday, October 18, 2026
Sunday Reflection: On the water
Saturday, October 17, 2026
Perhaps the most informative opening sequences ever...
Friday, October 16, 2026
Haiku Friday: Memorable airlines/flights
Thursday, October 15, 2026
PMT: Is She a Lawyer?
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Socialist Bear
The Hundred-Acre Wood: Socialist Hellhole
By Mark Osler
I believe it was the great Lee Greenwood who taught us an important lesson in song: “Children are the future/teach them well/and let them lead the way.” It is certainly true that there is no future if our children are misled! That is why I was so shocked to find that my grandson had come home from public school with a book about a character I will refer to here only as “Socialist Bear” (the name used in the book is disgustingly scatological and I refuse to repeat it in print).
Almost the first thing we learn about Socialist Bear is that he is an avid follower of Communist Godfather Bernie Sanders. An illustration shows the bear sitting idly (no doubt waiting for a welfare check) in front of his home below a large sign simply reading “Sanders.” And if we missed the point the text accompanying the simplistic drawing reveals that Socialist Bear “lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders.” At this point I had a pretty good idea of where things were going—straight to some kind of idealized Bernie-delusional Communist/Socialist society. I was right.
In the book’s first lesson, Socialist Bear gets busy grabbing free stuff. He climbs a tree and steals some honey and acts as if he is somehow entitled to it—because of course the world owes him free food! In what could be a credo for the Dumbocratic elites, Socialist Bear concludes ”The only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey… And the only reason for making honey is so as I can eat it." [emphasis in the original] Getting stuff for free—the essence of socialism!
Then, of course, we meet his comrades, each of whom exemplifies a socialist “virtue.” One, fittingly, is identified only as “Piglet.” This character really hits all the marks for our burgeoning American socialists. Piglet appears to be gender non-binary, parading around in a striped onesie-style outfit in the style of Taylor Swift. The aptly named “Piglet” seems to represent the immature socialist-voting population, as the young animal worshipfully follows Socialist Bear wherever he goes, with great enthusiasm.
Predictably, another of Socialist Bear’s buddies seems tailor-built to mock the idea of the traditional family. She is a single mother who keeps her child (“Roo”) jammed into a pocket all day. There is no sign of a father or any type of employment. Yet, like “Piglet,’ she seems to live off whatever she can cadge from those doing actual work. And that pocket must smell terrible!
Finally, there is a donkey character that clearly represents the mainstream Democrats who are now feeling threatened by Democratic Socialists—the donkey even looks like Chuck Schumer. The Donkey complains constantly about everything, just the way Schumer and his minions constantly complain about America. Whining is somehow portrayed as endearing, just as we see among the American leftist community.
The cast of characters in whole are portrayed as a warped DEI assemblage who lack any kind of cultural coherence. Apparently as a result of some kind of Biden-esque open borders policy, animals native to five different continents populate this patch of the woods: Socialist Bear is from North America, the kangaroo is from Australia, piglets are from Europe, tigers (there is a tiger) are from Africa, and woozles are from Asia. The costs of this unbridled invasion from foreign lands in terms of crime, etc. are, of course, never addressed.
The whole lot of them follow Socialist Bear as he completes absurd tasks which include finding the donkey’s tail, getting unstuck from a window after attempting to break into someone’s house to take their food, and aimlessly walking towards the North Pole (the location of all this appears to be Communist Vermont). The whole thing seems intended to train kids to believe that hard work is unnecessary and that the state will take care of everything. It is a world unencumbered by capitalism where no one has an actual job, seemingly making the “Hundred-Acre Wood” some kind of socialist nirvana.
In the end, Socialist Bear is revealed to be completely controlled by a European, which is of course one of the true goals of American socialism. He is even shown being dragged by one foot up the stairway to socialized medicine.
As a good grandfather, I threw the book in the trash and made my grandson promise that instead of reading that kind of nonsense he would come over after school and watch television with me. That way he can at least learn what is really going on in the world.
We must be vigilant; creeping socialism is everywhere. We just need to educate ourselves and look for it!
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
5 Big Post-Trump Questions
Monday, October 12, 2026
Book recs via haiku
to pay attention and to
walk with awareness.
“Trudeau and Doonesbury”
A walk through my high school and
college years, laughing.
Ask, “Is a River
Alive?” Yes, without question.
A wisdom Koan!
“Theo of Golden,”
A great beach read adventure
Revealed in the end!
It is a Catch-22 see,
So crazy you fly.
disappoints. Bean trees, Pigs in
Heaven start us off.
The Book Woman of
Troublesome Creek — good and bad in Appalachia.
“And the creator
loves pizzazz” Annie Dillard
shares her world with us.
Of Golden ... now I'm reading
Calamity Club.
Sigurd O's Listening Point
Pine trees, lakes, blue skies, forests.
Best stunning book club surprise
Spare, deep, eloquent.
Sunday, October 11, 2026
Sunday Reflection: Government Killing
“What we’re seeing is the brutality of the institution of the death penalty coming back into public focus,” said Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis who has studied the death penalty. “Tennessee didn’t intend to do that; the federal government does.”
“Given that there has been a rise in executions,” he added, “it’s a good time to have that debate.”
Josh Howerton, the pastor of Lakepointe Church, an evangelical congregation with locations in and around Dallas, argued on social media that executions in the Bible were carried out publicly as deterrents.
“I do not think you can say it’s unbiblical or automatically wrong,” he said of public executions, noting passages that described public stonings.
