Did you know that most cars in the U.S. sit unused 23 hours a day? And that our nation has more cars than licensed drivers, at immense cost to both their owners and the environment?

Enter Getaround. If you or I own a car, we can choose to rent it out by the hour — when and to whom we like — for whatever price we choose above $5/hour. Getaround keeps 40%, we keep the other 60%.  Here in Portland my pal Steve is making about $300/month from renting his car to his neighbors and friends through Getaround. It’s his household’s only car, and they’re a family of four. (They live near a frequent transit line, and do lots of biking, too.)

While you can do Getaround and rent your car out wherever you live, it generally works best where there is density (lots of people living in close proximity). One constraint is that a person has to have a fancy phone in order to handle the communications. Thor and I are so interested in sharing/renting our single car when we’re not using it that I am even considering upgrading from my beloved dumb phone in order to do that.

What I love about this concept is that it uses existing resources rather than brand-new ones, and encourages people to share with each other rather than keep buying new stuff. If Getaround ‘gets big’, it could significantly reduce the number of cars owned in the U.S., and since cars depreciate so rapidly and are such money-sinks, increase the average citizen’s solvency.

By the way, I’m not being paid anything to endorse Getaround (Diamond-Cut Life has a no-advertising policy).

I truly am convinced that how we live our daily lives is more powerful than which leaders we put into office. Each of us can be a leader,  influencing those around us and also the earth we all share by consuming mindfully and making people more important than possessions. Getaround can help us do those things.

• We’re Seeking A Housemate!
• The Real Cost Of Gas: $15/gallon
• Top Ten Tips For Living With Others, Part II
• Seeking The Win-Win Again
• The Win-Win Of A Work-For-Rent Arrangement

Thank you, I thought.

I kept listening, and learned that Andrew Sullivan, a gay journalist, was flooded by tears when he heard the news. He himself was surprised by the intensity of his reaction. “There’s something about the president of your country . . . when he affirms your humanity like that, it’s a powerful thing.” Mr. Sullivan is married – but in a country that doesn’t yet believe, or acknowledge, he is married.

Can we inhabit his shoes for a minute? For example, how would it work for me for others to not believe or acknowledge that I am married to Thor? How painful and alienating it would be for me if anyone, let alone my nation, refused to acknowledge my commitment to my husband.

A core theme in Diamond-Cut Life is joy, and the fact it typically comes from relationships (and right livelihood, and connection to nature) rather than from lots of material stuff. President Obama has affirmed that relationships between gay folks are just as worthy as the relationships between straight folks. We should have come to believe this some time ago, but nevertheless, this is a watershed. In effect, gay marriage  is a continuation of the civil rights movement that started decades ago. Even though the right to marry is decided by each state rather than by the federal government, the president’s coming out, so to speak, with support of gay marriage is a powerful form of leadership.

Another theme in my blog is the necessity of growth and change. We don’t have to stay stuck in old patterns, especially when they are are hurting us or others (and it does hurt gay people to deny them the right to marry). We can evolve, whether from experience, from reading, or from friends, family and colleagues. We can learn new attitudes and behaviors, whether it’s being less sedentary, conserving electricity,  or being a better spouse.

I love that President Obama has come to believe something different than he used to believe. Politicians should visibly evolve their beliefs more often. Loving, committed relationships are precious things, both to the individuals in them and to the larger culture around them. They add to the love and stability in our world. I agree with Mr. Sullivan that our president has affirmed humanity with his support of gay marriage.

• More Than One Kind Of Refugee
• Who To Marry?
• Oregon’s Popularity: Be A Giver Rather Than A Taker
• Martin Luther King Day and Inauguration Eve
• John Edwards Endorses Obama: Yes

My short report? This book feeds us a richly informative meal, in prose crisp as a Gravenstein apple at the height of autumn. Yet, it leaves us bereft of the harder-to-find nutrients that we need the most from nonfiction books. Let me explain, first with examples about Private Empire’s feast of information.

In 1998 a coalition of 17 Indonesian human rights groups reported that Mobil Oil had provided crucial logistic support to the Indonesian (T.N.I.) army in Aceh that tortured and buried at least two thousand victims in secret graves. For example, Mobil’s bulldozers had been used to dig mass graves (Mobil said this was done unbeknownst to them). Fully known to them, though, was that they routinely paid the salaries of T.N.I. soldiers. That’s because the T.N.I. soldiers, in addition to their robust activities that violated human rights, also protected Mobil’s oil fields.

All this information was coming out during the merger process. Exxon bought and merged with Mobil regardless. More than a decade later, ExxonMobil was still refusing to take any responsibility for its role in the atrocities and human rights violations. The stonewall approach is EM’s trademark.

Moreover, the above exemplifies the global oil situation. The bulk of the world’s remaining oil lies in poor, unstable countries. Chad, like Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria and most oil-rich countries, is run by a dictatorship that abuses its own people (another definition for a bad human rights record). The oil industry ends up supporting those exact regimes. For instance, the language in EM’s oil contract with Chad meant essentially that Chad could be prohibited from broadening its civic freedoms or permitting unions to organize if those things would raise EM’s costs. Much research points to oil actually being one of the causes of these countries’ ongoing poverty and instability. This syndrome is called the resource curse, and has multiple faces. For example, Saudi Arabia is awash in oil money, yet has millions of people teeming around without jobs. They lack employment  — but they’ve got plenty of anger at the U.S.

The hostility between the U.S. and the oil-rich countries it depends on has led to the notion of  energy independence.  But unfortunately, the feel-good idea of energy independence has no grounding in reality. Almost no electricity in the U.S. is produced by oil any more. Yet, renewable energy sources like wind and solar are heralded by many as the road to energy independence. That would only be true if the U.S. were willing and able to stop driving, flying and delivering its goods via trucks. We do need lots of renewable energy – but oil is a different matter.

President Bush in his second term stated the (inconvenient) truth that the U.S. is addicted to oil. But, like other presidents of both parties before him, he neither addressed that problem nor developed a coherent national energy policy. Mr. Coll notes that our culture depends about equally on electric power and oil (gasoline), both of which pollute heavily and pose environmental threats. Yet, the power industry is regulated by the government, while the oil industry is not. What is wrong with this picture? Mr. Coll stays mute.

We learn that in EM’s spill response plans, the media management section is four times longer than the section on oil removal (cleanup) and eight times longer than its material on resource protection. What are the implications of a corporation obsessing about image management (surface) at the expense of taking actual responsibility for the damages it inflicts (substance)? Mr. Coll declines to address that question.

A high-level EM employee reported that its system for maintaining confidential information was far more severe than anything she had seen while previously holding a top secret clearance at the White House. The ExxonMobil culture is safety-obsessed and hyperdisciplined. It worships profit – as do stockholders and much of  U.S. culture, despite the appalling prices often paid for those profits. The worst of those prices is EM’s long  denial of global warming and aggressive disinformation campaign that prevented early action.

Steve Coll

Mr. Coll’s investigative journalism and writing are impartial as Jack Webb in Dragnet: ‘just the facts’. This style wins him steady access to interviews with heavyweights like Lee Raymond, the retired long-time CEO of EM. However, facts are static of themselves. They don’t lead to transformation. An example of a transformative nonfiction book was Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring. Ms. Carson updated our culture’s mental maps and created an awakened population which eventually insisted on governmental reforms in pesticide use – and a significantly healthier country.

Mr. Coll swallows assumptions that should be pulled from our collective mouths and examined with hard eyes. Yes, we are oil-addicted. Therefore, what about living differently than we’re living now, using less oil and gasoline? Humans have changed their lifestyles throughout their entire history, adapting to innumerable changes, and managing to thrive.  Mr. Coll assumes that is out of the question, while all the science on global warming makes clear that our world will experience massive disruptions as temperatures and oceans rise. We will have to change. Mr. Coll doesn’t address that. He is facing the past, not the future.

Mr. Coll closes his massive work with a comparison/contrast of EM’s and the U.S.’s financial profiles. In 1999 they were both solvent, with revenues larger than expenditures [this was at the close of Clinton’s eight years of presidency]. By  August 2012, the net cash flow of the US was negative 5.7 trillion. EM’s net cash flow was positive 493 billion. Important information. But, what are its implications? How should responsible citizens respond to a corporation that dwarfs their own government in strength? Mr. Coll declines to give us any ideas.

Private Empire gives us a feast of data. But it doesn’t offer us vision or leadership — and those are the nutrients that our global-warming-imperiled world sorely lacks. I know Mr. Coll didn’t set out to write a visionary book.   But I suggest that, having already won two Pulitzers for ‘just the facts’ books, that his fellow citizens need him to travel outside that box. I challenge Mr. Coll, whom I sincerely respect, to stretch beyond fact-based, traditional journalism into writing that gives us visionary leadership.

• From Gardening To The Grand Canyon
• A Shout-Out For Senator Biden
• The Psychology Of Naysayers On Global Warming
• Fate of the Automakers: The Lady Or The Tiger?
• Secret Lover, Secret Watchdog

Bell Rock, Sedona, Arizona

so hard, and my thigh muscles so flooded with lactic acid that I had to walk,  because the altitude here in Sedona Arizona is 4,500 feet. Oxygen is scarcer than I’m used to in Portland, Oregon. My run turned into a half-hike, half-run, and the stunning beauty of the Upper Sonoran red-rock desert became even more apparent as my slowed-down pace let me observe everything more closely.

Without planning it this way, it turns out that on this vacation, my husband and I are staying a stone’s throw from what’s considered one of the spiritual vortex centers in Sedona. It’s a striking red-rock formation in the above photo that reaches from the desert floor toward the sky: Bell Rock.

As I ran and hiked in the slanting golden light, I thought about vortexes and mysticism. Mystical experiences are encounters with the divine, and people from almost all times and places have reported having them. The mystical experience is sometimes ecstatic, always  moving, and it takes different shapes depending on the time and place the person is living in. For example, many indigenous cultures have shamans that travel in the spirit world. Catholicism has nurtured many mystics such as Saint Theresa of Avila. And astronauts like Neil Armstrong who have regarded our planet earth from space have reported extraordinary moments of transcendence, a conviction of the unity of all peoples.

I know what you may be wondering. Could I sense yesterday afternoon while at Bell Rock that I was in a spiritual vortex? Did I have a mystical experience? Well, here is the deal. In my life, I actually have had a number of mystical experiences, moments when I unexpectedly encountered Spirit, and felt united with creation. The natural world has often been a catalyst. When I was younger, these experiences were intense — but in the months and sometimes years between them, I tended to feel separate, even alone and confused. Now at 51, I feel connected to  Spirit and creation (my fellow humans and other species) most of the time — but I have fewer of the intense moments, what we could maybe call the vortex moments. Maybe we could say that deep into mid-life, I’m blessed to be living at a somewhat higher altitude in general than I used to.

To answer the question: no, I could not discern yesterday that I was in a spiritual vortex at Bell Rock. But to borrow a term from the Navajo nation of the Southwest, I was walking in beauty. That much I knew in my bones.

Thor and I are leaving in a few minutes to attend a Unitarian Universalist service. When it cools off in the late afternoon, we’ll hike and run the Bell Rock path, together, in this stunningly clear-aired altitude of 4,500 feet.

Photo courtesy of b3nd3r

On May 3 I’ll publish my review of the Pulitzer prize winning author Steven Coll’s new book  Private Empire.

• The Inconvenient Truth of the Diamond-Cut Life
• In The Southwest Desert
• Happiness In The High Desert
• Spiritual But Not Religious? Tell Me More.
• Midwifery: The Reverse Journey

What helps you to come from your heart? It’s a more risky place to live than the head, because our hearts can get broken. Focusing on rules and laws and who’s in and who’s out of the group can feel safer than being vulnerable. Maybe that helps to explain why Christianity has changed so much in 2,000 years from the disposition of the heart that Jesus intended it to be. For example, it’s become huge, and mainstream. But Christianity started out tiny, a little group that dissented from the legalistic religion of its day. And, it was sharply delineated from the mainstream Roman culture, which was power-hungry, materialistic, brutal (something like The Hunger Games, actually — here is my non-mainstream review of that film).

Jesus was a non-mainstream, from-the-heart fellow. He built community among his followers. He treated low-status people as if they had high status. He swam in an internal sea of love — not a sappy, sentimental love, but a gritty, tough love that was willing to sacrifice. Sacrificial love is in scarce supply these days. But it’s a disposition of the heart. Jesus was about turning the world upside down.

It is so much easier to swim with the mainstream culture than to think critically about it, and live from a different place. In an hour I’ll leave for church, a small,warm, neighborhood church that has lots of happy children running around. My church helps me live from my heart, and remember I’m not part of the mainstream, materialistic culture. Four years ago I posted Confession: I Love Church. I talked about how it’s hard to be a ‘public Christian’ in a liberal environment like Portland. In my town, many people come from the heart — but they distrust Christianity, and don’t associate it with love. Of course, Christians like me would like to change that understanding. I’ve become a somewhat more public Christian since 2008 — but ‘coming out’ still comes hard to me. The associations of Christianity with judgment, and hypocrisy, and who’s in and who’s out, are hard to shake. I don’t want to be pigeonholed or dismissed.

One of the ways I’ve been coming out as a liberal Christian is through my novel that I recently finished, Revelle, Like Gazelle. I’m self-publishing it later this spring; the cover is currently under design.  Here is the first chapter.  It’s about two roller-coaster years in the life of a young woman who believes in God and lives from the heart.If you resonate to Diamond-Cut Life, you’ll probably resonate to Revelle.

Photo courtesy of Paul Schultz

• Happy Hybrid Easter!
• Confession: I Love Church
• The Anti-Christian Stance Of Mitt Romney
• Biodiesel, Carpooling and Happiness
• Consuming Jesus

“Overwhelmed and isolated,” Sandy said. I was reminded of the poverty of hyperindividualism, one of my most-read blog posts.

Now, the eight members of Sandy’s church who happened to be in our training group got up and stood in a friendly circle around her. We did the exercise again, throwing paper-wad balls of problems at her from around the room. But now they were deflected in part by her group’s members. How did Sandy feel this time?

“Not nearly as bad,” she smiled.

Sandy and I and three dozen others were at a leadership training put on by  Metropolitan Alliance for the Common Good (MACG, pronounced mack-gee). But it’s shared leadership, peer-to-peer leadership, not traditional top-down leadership. The goal is to create positive change in our communities where it’s needed. For example, MACG recently led a successful project that helped chilly people in the Cully neighborhood stay warm via energy conservation measures (their older homes have oil heaters, and high oil prices had led many to go without heat this past winter). MACG had to engage key people in Portland’s city government in discussions over months and persuade them – in the face of much resistance — to collaborate on this project. Otherwise, homes would have stayed cold and unheated. That engagement and persuasion takes leadership skills. Those are the skills MACG is building in its volunteers.

When life’s problems hit us these days, most people feel like Sandy initially did when we pelted her with paper-balls: isolated and overwhelmed. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Earlier in our country’s history, the majority of people belonged to one or more groups, largely peer-led (today, it’s a minority). These groups form civil society, and in these groups, people get to know each other and form a sense of community. They have a shared focus of concern. They take turns being leaders.  Churches, unions, Girl and Boy Scouts, gardening clubs, non-profits, and Twelve-Step groups are some examples of these groups. Besides accomplishing good things, civil society helps people feel supported in hard times. And, everybody has hard times eventually.

Civil society is good at addressing the problems shared by the private and public spheres. Unemployment is a prime example of the intersection between the private and public spheres: it’s a problem for both the individual and the society. Homes that cannot be affordably heated are another example: it’s both a personal issue and an issue shared by the community.  

But here’s the thing: civil society in the 1800′s was approximately as strong as the marketplace and the government. It provided a check and balance on both those things, and the U.S. was envied by much of the world for having such a balanced, democratic society. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French writer, famouly articulated the vitality and strength of the United States’ civil society. But now, the marketplace — commercialism — is an enormous presence relative to civil society, in effect dwarfing it.  In our current culture, people tend to see themselves as consumers, rather than citizens.  We clearly have to consume in order to live. But, I’d venture to say that being a consumer first makes people passive and weak. And often obese. Plus, overconsuming ravages our environment.

I — and the folks at MACG — think it’s more joyful and empowering to be a citizen first. Diamond-Cut Life, in fact, is predicated on living joyfully while consuming only what we need. Civil society breeds good citizens, people who can step up into leadership when there are problems that need to be solved. I want to become a stronger citizen leader. I’m eager for this coming Sunday afternoon, when my husband I’ll attend the second of our leadership trainings from Metropolitan Alliance for the Common Good (MACG).

• Needing Leadership, Not Entertainment
• Christmas As Community (Not Stuff)
• Two Birds, One Beautiful Stone
• Of Health Care And Rideshare
• Why Bother? Three Great Reasons

We planted our pathway garden over the  gloriously sunny Easter weekend with our friend Scott Schreiner. He’s a former housemate, the second of  three good people in our lives who have worked for rent. Scott drove his truck across the Cascade range from Bend, where he lives, first finding a carpool partner from Craigslist who shared gas costs and conversation with him. Scott’s good at community

• Mahamudi, our Somalian friend who’s turning 17 this month, also helped build the garden. We and our friends Colleen and Thad paid his family’s green card fees last year, and this spring the family is reciprocating by giving both households a hand with outdoor projects. Mutual benefit! Community!

• Our solar panels are now up on our west-facing roof. But we couldn’t start harvesting energy over the sunny weekend — the city has to inspect them before the system gets turned on. People are naturally asking about the payback period, so here’s the deal we got: the $5,900 we’ve invested is coming back to us in four years’ worth of tax credits. The actual payback period on our residential solar, though, is shorter than four years, because our energy bills will go down by about 78%. Solar energy reduces the greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming, and is also a true investment.

• And speaking of solar-blessed, sun-drenched places, Thor and I are taking a trip to the Grand Canyon on April 28th. I’m returning for my third visit as an adult, I love this sacred place so much. But it’ll be Thor’s first time. I’m bubbling with the excitement you feel when you get to share something beautiful with someone you love.

• I’m reviewing Private Empire: ExxonMobil And American Power by Steve Coll, a two-time Pulitzer prize-winner. His publicist sent me an advance copy — the book’s release date is May 1st. I’ll post my review on May 3rd, while I’m at the Grand Canyon. That writing location will surely give me a perspective both broad and deep.

• Back From New Year’s Retreat
• More Tips On Working For Rent
• Better Than Disneyland
• Checking In: On Joyful Sabbatical
• We’re Getting Solar!

This happened in our neighborhood yesterday. I had already made plans to take my beloved neighbors to Burgerville for dinner, so I wasn’t forced to cook with no water. And this morning our faucets are back to behaving calmly and amicably, praise God, praise the Goddess. But, our H20 interruptus experience on Mt. Tabor reminded me that it’s impossible to live without water. And much of the world, including the vast, arid western U.S., is drought-ridden, sometimes permanently.  Here are seven ways to conserve water (I originally published these in 2010).

• Use low-flow showerheads, also known as aerators, which create the same water pressure with sharply less water. They cost just $5-$10 and pay for themselves in a few months with lower energy bills (less hot water used) as well as lower water bills. The Energy Trust of Oregon gave us ours — even installed them — at no cost. Check with your local water and/or power utility for free conservation resources.
• Consider no lawn, but rather, plants — vibrant, colorful ones — that need little water. See Top Ten Tips On Xeroscape Gardening. When we used to have a lawn, we let it go brown in the summertime. (OK, I’ll admit that the fact our lawn sported more weeds than grass was one of the motivators to replace it with drought-tolerant plants).

• Our toilets are low-flow, using 1.6 gallons per flush, rather than the 3.5 gallons of water that standard toilets use. While we flush ‘solid waste’  immediately, we let our toilets gather several rounds of liquid waste before flushing. Maybe that grosses you out; maybe it’s the hippie in me that insists on doing that. But, our low-flow toilets and low-flush habits save at least two thousand gallons of water annually. More info here.

• I take sponge baths rather than showers. While my husband and our guests make good use of our low-flow showerheads, I often bathe by rubbing myself all over with a moist washcloth. My skin and body feel great afterward, and air-drying is simpler and more pleasing to me than getting dripping wet, dealing with towels, and then having to squee-gee the shower walls to prevent mildew. While I love an occasional hot bath, especially in winter, I keep the water level in the tub low when I have a bath.
• Our washing machine is Energy Star, using minimal amounts of water as well as energy. It almost seems to splash the clothes it washes, rather than immerse them. They come out at the end clean yet not very wet, needing little drying.
• I leave the water faucet turned off when washing my hands, except to wet them at the beginning, and rinse them at the end. The washing is all about the soap and my energetic hand motions. And the only water I use when brushing my teeth is to rinse the toothbrush at the end. I estimate these habits save more than 500 gallons of water annually (based on conservative assumptions of six hand-washings daily that each save one-quarter gallon).
• We hang and re-wear clothes until they truly need washing, rather than tossing them into the laundry basket just because we’ve worn them. After using washcloths and bath towels, we hang them to dry, using them again and again before we wash them.  While underwear gets washed after every use, running socks don’t — rather, I shake them vigorously in the air for half a minute to evaporate the sweat. The fewer loads of laundry we need to do, the less water we use — and the more time we have for fun things like friends, writing, etc.

photo courtesy of Tanya Puntii

• Seven Easy Ways To Conserve Water
• Top Ten Tips On Xeroscape Gardening
• Making The Ocean Drinkable, Part II
• Making The Ocean Drinkable, Part I
• How To Save Five Hours A Week

Whether from a Christian perspective or any reasonably humane perspective, this national budget, which the House has approved but the Senate has not yet considered, is morally wrong because it increases human suffering – by choice.  Some suffering, like that caused by tsunamis and tornadoes, we can’t prevent. Other suffering, like hunger and lack of medical care in a nation awash in food, nurses and doctors, is completely preventable.

Mitt Romney is a Christian, specifically a Mormon. He should know that the Bible makes more than 300 references to the poor, and God’s concern for them. Jesus unequivocally preached compassion for the poor. Jesus never once said to make the rich yet wealthier. But somehow,  Christianity in the U.S. has been co-opted to mean triumphalism, and conservatism, and the championing of business interests. Rick Santorum, another avowed Christian and the other main candidate still in the Republican primary race, actually said the cuts into health care and food assistance for the poor didn’t go far enough. This is not the Christianity that Christ taught.  God’s Politics by Jim Wallis eloquently addresses this subject.

God willing, the Senate will not join the House in passing this budget. How do I think our national budget should be balanced? By taxing the rich more substantially. While it would inconvenience them, it would produce no suffering. Rather, it would relieve vast amounts of suffering caused by lack of medical care and sufficient food — in a nation that actually has more than enough to go around.

Time to post this and hike the mile on over to worship at Lincoln Street Church. My backpack is filled with peanut butter, raisins, tuna and tangerines for the Backpack Project. Caitlin Morrison, a teenager at Lincoln Street, organized the Backpack Project so that on Friday afternoons, low-income children who rely on school-sponsored breakfasts and lunches can take food home to see them through the weekend.

Our nation needs more Caitlin Morrisons. It also needs presidential candidates  who reduce human suffering instead of increasing it.   Especially if they call themselves Christians.

• Consuming Jesus
• A Disposition Of The Heart
• Happy Hybrid Easter!
• This & That In Mid-July
• Rich Half, Poor Half

From a mainstream perspective, it’s a ‘good’ movie. It has a compelling storyline, credible, sympathetic characters and strong production values. It’s riveting; once you start watching it, you’ve simply got to know how it will end. You lose yourself in the bizarre, corrupt world of Panem, set in the postapocalyptic future.

That’s the end of my mainstream report. Diamond-Cut Life isn’t mainstream.

How in the hell is it entertaining for short, spindly 12 year olds to be pitted in death fights against tall, muscular 17 and 18 year old males? And why the bleep did this film get rated PG-13? The film’s concept is so profoundly brutal that no young child should see it without their parent’s consent (which consenting parent would need to have their head examined, not to put too fine a point on it). But, an R rating would mean less tickets sold, and less profit for the filmmakers. How corrupt is that?

When I got home from watching The Hunger Games it was beautifully, deliriously sunny out. So my friends and next door neighbors Alayna and Jeremiah and I were compelled to go bike-riding in Mount Tabor Park. I got the loose straps on their helmets adjusted, and off we pedaled. We were very happy. Except that SE 72^nd has these speed bumps, and Alayna’s handlebars started wobbling crazily, like a penguin in a footrace. The next thing we knew she was sprawled in the street, her mouth a mass of bright red blood.

I picked her up and carried her the quarter-mile back home, almost running, like she weighed one pound instead of 50. Her mom Sarah and I soon had her at Columbia Urgent Care. Badly swollen lips, two missing teeth, but no broken bones. They were baby teeth, thank heavens – but she’ll need to see a dentist. We praised her courage, went home and ordered pizza from Pizzicato for everyone. Alayna got a chocolate milkshake, since she won’t be chewing for awhile. I changed out of my bloodied sweatshirt.

Note to self, note to the mainstream culture: there is nothing exciting, sexy or remotely entertaining about blood spurting from children. It’s bad enough when it’s accidental. To deliberately make children into murderers of each other is obscene as rape. Is doing that, even fictionally, entertaining? How desperate are we to be entertained?

Back to The Hunger Games. Gale, the best friend of the protagonist, said at the beginning of the movie, “The games are sick. If everybody refused to watch it, they wouldn’t be able to have the Hunger Games at all.”  That was the most engaging, provocative thought I’ve encountered about The Hunger Games.

• A Disposition Of The Heart
• The Peak Of Happiness
• Sex And The City: A Portland View
• The Right Calling For Sarah Palin
• Happy Summer Solstice! Unthreatened By Pagans