On the Road Again

Nik & Jer have returned, so we're on the road again. First stop will be Memphis to visit with good friends and former pastor colleague from Sioux City. He pastors a church in Memphis so we'll worship with them on Sunday. After that we'll follow the Great River Road north into Iowa. (We've already traveled …

Dog Trot House with Cedar Shakes

While here in Port Gibson we went out to the Grand Gulf battle site, museum, and historic town that the park service is busy recreating. One of the buildings that is nearing restoration is the Dog Trot house. Dog trot houses have an open central breezeway (which a dog can trot through) with rooms on …

Médaille: Now He’s Just Meddling

John Médaille, in a recent Front Porch Republic article, is asking hard questions. Why is it "90% of all economists missed the coming of the current disaster"? He admits everyone makes the occasional mistake. The problem, however, is that the same 90% of all economists also missed the last crises [sic], and the one before …

I’m Not (Necessarily) Accusing Anybody

When we arrived in Port Gibson we were greeted with the following scene. The church in the background is the Presbyterian Church, by the way. Brenda had a friend, and fellow Presbyterian pastor's wife, who threatened (privately) to burn down the manse which was rife with problems, so when we saw this we chuckled. And …

Cola, 7-Up, and other cokes

There's an old internet discussion (almost pre-internet – I'm talking about EcuNet when it was a dial-up ListServe, before the worldwide web was even functional) about regional names for carbonated beverages. If I remember correctly they are referred to as "soda" in the East and "pop" in the Midwest, and "sodypop" (or "sasparilla") in Hollywood, …

But for a Name

Natural England (an organization in England) recently had a competition to name ten endangered species. (Here are the ten species in pictures from the BBC.) Prior to the competition these species only had Latin names. Evidently it was felt that if the creatures had common names rather than just the Latin terms, it would help …

On Protests

John Gilstrap on professional protest organizations: Protesting others' decisions is always easier than making one of your own.

This Blog Post Began as a Meditation on Psalm 104, but somehow managed to wander far away from its proper place into something rather more silly, which is not unlike this title and the poor bear that prompted these thoughts in the first place.

My brother Marc, who is a faithful reader of the Billings Gazette, ran across this article the other day about grizzly bears moving out of the Rocky Mountains into the plains between Great Falls and Fort Benton, MT. These two bears weren't causing any problems, but this bear wandering east of Ft. Benton (that's farther …

Psalm 90, Adam, and the Wrath of God

I've been catching up on my reading while I'm in Mississippi. As often happens, reading theology leads me to write. In this case, during my devotions I noticed a striking connection between Psalm 90 and the story of God expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. At the same time I was reading …

The Family Jewels

Back on this post I erroneously claimed that I had given two items, currently on my sister's desk (and one underneath), to my mother as Christmas presents. I assumed that my sister had rescued them from a trip to the Goodwill store or some worse fate when we moved dad out of his apartment. If …