Christmas has never been one of my favorite holidays. I think it’s because of the combination of too much religion and too much commercialism. Giving gifts should not give one anxiety and spending time with friends and loved ones shouldn’t be filled with dread as it is with me sometimes. I can appreciate the trappings and vibe but in the end it taxes me emotionally and I always look forward to December 26th and beyond.

I watched a video the other day where David Letterman and Paul Shafer are with singer Darlene Love reminiscing about her singing the song “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” on his last show before they went on holiday break each year. She was explaining she was happy to have sung during the Christmas in Rockefeller Center show on NBC and how they never hired her to sing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” but had other singers sing it. Letterman blurted out, “That’s bullshit!”. Then he sat back and said that if he just ruined anyone’s Christmas he was sorry. That’s exactly how I feel. By expressing my view on the holiday I hope I don’t ruin it for others, that isn’t my intent.

I think one prime reason I am not a fan of Christmas is the expectation of giving gifts. I get so intimidated not only by getting the “perfect” gift for someone but making sure buying it doesn’t make me more poor than I am. One Christmas my girlfriend got me a two volume set of detailed notes on some of Paul McCartney’s songs he wrote. The title was “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present”. I love the backstage kind of stuff artists tend to talk about and I loved the book. I got my girlfriend some random tool. She loved tools but compared to the gift she got me it paled in comparison and don’t get me started about the replica Jim Brown jersey she got me last year. She just knows how to get the perfect gift for people. I suck!

I think the epitome of my anxiety with gift giving was years ago I was working some job in Columbus barely making enough for rent and my bills and I was expected home for Christmas with the family and of course a gift exchange. I dreaded it. I had no money and I knew any gift would suck. I told my Mom and she suggested I go to a dollar store. She said the items there were fine and my lack of funds would stretch farther. That’s what I did. I bought one or two things for each family members and the whole bill was less than $30.

That weight was lifted off my shoulders and I felt better about being with my family that year for the first time in several years. We go to open gifts and my sister comments about the gift I got her. She asks if I bought it at the Dollar store. I tried to play it off but then she said she saw the exact same item at the dollar store in her town. That deflated me. She could have not said anything because she knew I was not making a lot of money. She could have not said anything since the point of the holiday isn’t the gifts in the first place.

Our society seems to be setup like how my sister reacted. Instead of appreciating the thought in the end she was offended by getting a cheap thing that was worthless to her.

So now I go through this roller coaster of emotions each holiday where I have no idea what I will get someone and 2nd guess myself if it’s worthy ie. valuable gift not from a dollar store.

This year I decided to change the narrative and I told my Mom that I am not expecting a gift and don’t want one. She still got me something so I had to scramble to find something for her and the coaster has left the launch building….

A minor holiday annoyance is decorating. Again, I get it and I enjoy it when others go all out with the tree and the lights and the stockings etc… but personally I don’t see the point. I guess it’s something more for families or loved ones to do together. Helping my Mom or my girlfriend was fun and touched me with the “spirit” of the season but left to my own devices I won’t do it for the simple reason I will just have to take it all down in January or by Valentines Day. Putting stuff away always seems to take more time and effort than putting the stuff up.

Being an atheist, the religious part of Christmas never took with me, never meant anything to me. I would be concerned about violations of the separation of church and state where some local town would get in trouble for having a nativity scene on the lawn of their city hall. The religious people would cry and gnash their teeth at the thought of the “War on Christmas” forgetting the fact that not everyone is Christian and that Christmas and especially the nativity scene is not generic. Of course I can’t escape the religious aspects of the holiday since I am a philosophical minority and it would be a waste of time to explain how much fiction is included in their “true” story about the birth of Jesus starting with the fact that Jesus may never have existed and how many parts of Christmas like the tree and lights are co-opted from Paganism or that the Puritans banned Christmas when they setup shop in Plymouth in the 1600s.

Growing up I’ve sang all the religious holiday songs and I didn’t explode but if I my way school children would not be singing the religious holiday songs. One time in elementary school I played Father Joseph Mohr, the man who wrote the words to “Silent Night”. It was an odd holiday play. In order to get as many kids involved as possible, even though I played Father Mohr another kid was his speaking voice and we weren’t allowed to mime the words. It was like watching a school play with ESP.

I think you can enjoy the holidays without having to include the religious bits. Getting together with friends and loved ones is a highlight for me as is any gathering. I miss not doing it any more. After my grandmother passed away in 2008 our extended family stopped gathering for the holiday. Part of that is a whole different story of dysfunction.

One holiday religious part I don’t mind is one I came across by accident. I’ve always been a bit of night owl and so I watch the late night shows like Jimmy Fallon, Colbert, and Seth Meyers. Years ago at 11:30 PM on Christmas Eve I turned on the TV to watch the Tonight Show when Jay Leno was the host and instead I saw the Pope at the time walking into his church in Rome to give the Christmas Mass. I was fascinated by the Pope walking down the aisle flanked by alter boys and very rough looking security people. Parishioners trying to reach out and touch him. One year someone actually jumped the barricade and security had to subdue the person. Found out later the person was just a really a big fan of the Pope and wanted to touch him. The next Christmas the aisle was wider so people could not even get within arms length to him. I don’t stay for the mass just the entrance like it’s from one of the WWE shows.

Of course I have my own rituals I perform during the holidays. I watch “A Christmas Story” at least once when they show it as a marathon on one of the cable channels. As I mentioned earlier, I would watch the last Letterman show before the Christmas break to hear Darlene Love sing and hear Jay Thomas’ Lone Ranger Story. I still watch it on Youtube.

Oh, one note about Love’s song. What I enjoyed about watching it on Letterman each year was the spectacle. They usually had a small orchestra, several back up singers, fake snow falling, and David Sanborn playing the sax solo break. Love also would appear each year in the spring to sing “River Deep – Mountain High” with the same setup of orchestra and backup singers.

I also try to watch all the classic holiday cartoons I grew up on even though the Charlie Brown Christmas is more religious than my current tastes. I also like the Christmas episodes of favorite TV shows like Saturday Night Live.

My favorite holiday movies are Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, Die Hard and Die Hard II, Miracle on 34th Street (the 1947 original and the 1973 made for TV version that starred Sebastian Cabot, Jane Alexander and David Hartman), and Bad Santa.

A lot of the things I do is left over from when I was a kid and the holiday seem to mean more – mostly for the gifts and cash given as a gift. Going to the mall with my Christmas cash and returning clothes that didn’t fit on the 26th was fun for me.

Even though I still partake in some of the festivities I wouldn’t be sad if Christmas went away but I don’t fault people who love the holiday and all the trappings and giving gifts. Just be mindful that not everyone feels the same way. You can enjoy the holiday without having to say Merry Christmas or have a government sponsored nativity scene.

And if you get a gift that seems cheap and worthless to you, check your privilege. Appreciate the thought that went into it and the fact someone gave you a gift.

Born Merl Macklin Megley, he became a vaudeville circuit head for RKO Studios and a theatrical producer who staged shows around the world. According to news reports at the time of his death he handled personal appearances for such stars as Jack Benny, Danny Kaye, Betty Hutton, and Spike Jones. He was born in Findlay and lived many years in Toledo.

Special Note My fiancee is a descendant of Macklin.

I’m not really sure when I started this list. I know it was before 2010. The WayBack Machine has a page capture from February 2005! Wow! In fact I think that was when I still had a website on Geocities.

Why did I start it?

I’ve always been into history and I love learning about the history of my hometown. Then I knew of a few famous people had been from Findlay like Ben Rothlisberger, Tell Taylor, and Gavin Creel. Then one day I was searching through the Internet Movie Database and put in Findlay as a search term and one of the names that popped up was Mark Metcalf, the actor who played Doug Neidermeyer in the classic comedy National Lampoon’s Animal House. Of course I was a bit disappointed to learn he had only been born in Findlay and didn’t grow up there.

I started doing more internet searches like in Wikipedia and search engines like Google.

The initial criteria to be included was you had to be born or live in Findlay or Hancock county. I also insisted that the claim had to be verified by an online method.

I wanted to include a photo of the person so if I couldn’t find one to use online, I still included the person but put their listing further down the page after the ones with photos.

The first version had 16 people. With the update today, the page now includes 57 total individuals (54 with photos), 6 Medal of Honor Winners, and 5 additional people who served in Congress over the years. The listing includes two sets of siblings and while there is a heavy number of sports people, many vocations are represented.

I got many suggestions over the years and many of those were added in this update and I have several people needing more information to verify. For example, someone suggested a current TV actor but I couldn’t actually verify that they were born or lived in Hancock county. The person’s family did but I couldn’t find any information where they or some media report said they were born or lived in the area. For another person I did add, I found a transcript of a podcast they were a guest on where they talked about living in the “small town” of Findlay. If you have a suggestion or a corrections, feel free to send it my way.

Further updates will include adding more people, including more women and people of color. I also want to create a database of all the info I have so it can help in what info I still need and I can do a print out of the list should there me a point where I lose my website.

So, check out my updated Famous Findlayian page:

Famous Findlayians and others from Hancock County Ohio

Most of us were secular humanists and we occasionally got into debates with religious humanists about which one was the correct humanism… really (OMG). We even had the founder Jeffery Jay Lowder come onto the list to tamp down several flame wars from time to time. Finally the Infidels had enough of us and set us adrift.

The list landed at OneList, soon to be rebranded eGroups in 1999, still called Human_ism. eGroups was bought by Yahoo in 2000. Before Yahoo wiped all the list website content last year you could see hundreds of messages posted each month for may years. Sometimes we spiked into the thousands when we had a passive aggressive moderator who liked to stir up crap. I remember using the search function to prove someone arguing with me held my view two years before… ahhhh memories.

We also had two moderators who, due to some existing medical and mental health issues ended their lives.

The list was heavily moderated. New people had to have their first posts approved and we had rules for discussion. Here is a bit of the rules as revised years ago when Dasha Marshall was moderator:

“Secular Humanism is understood to be the default point-of-view. We don’t debate the existence of god or argue with theists here. Human_ism is a virtual meeting place where secular humanists express themselves without having to make allowances for theistic sensitivities. Members from outside the USA are encouraged to introduce topics and ideas whether Americans are familiar with them or not. We’re here to educate ourselves and increase understanding, as well as to make friends with Humanists wherever they may be. Critical thinking skills are a must; vigorous debate is the norm. Civilized behavior is expected: trolls will be unsubscribed. Announcements will not be accepted from those who do not participate in discussions on the list.

Secular Humanism as defined by this group: Humanism is a philosophy, world view, or life stance based on naturalism–the conviction that the universe or nature is all that exists or is real. Humanism serves, for many humanists, some of the psychological and social functions of a religion, but without belief in deities, transcendental entities, miracles, life after death, and the supernatural. Humanists seek to understand the universe by using science and its methods of critical inquiry–logical reasoning, empirical evidence, and skeptical evaluation of conjectures and conclusions–to obtain reliable knowledge. Humanists affirm that humans have the freedom to give meaning, value, and purpose to their lives by their own independent thought, free inquiry, and responsible, creative activity. Humanists stand for the building of a more humane, just, compassionate, and democratic society using a pragmatic ethics based on human reason, experience, and reliable knowledge–an ethics that judges the consequences of human actions by the well-being of all life on Earth. (def. assembled by Steve Schafersman)”

I’m not sure when I took over as moderator from Dasha but in the last ten or 15 years the level of activity has dropped way off to where we are lucky to get a message a day. There are other avenues to debate and discuss secular humanism. According to Yahoo people want premium email lists – aka as not free – which I don’t buy for a second. Verizon just didn’t want to spend the money to modernize the product.

I had a feeling this was coming when they wiped user generated content last December but they probably wanted as much ad dollars as possible before shutting it down.

The reason I stumbled across the announcement was I was going to announce the shut down of the Human_ism list at the end of the year. Yahoo beat me to the punch.

I also am of the mind that arguing is passe. We shouldn’t have to debate the existence of our beliefs all the time, especially to those with like minds. Debate and rebuttals are for school debate teams not adult conversations looking for a way through this world of ours.

Bashing religion is boring, as boring as the religion itself. I prefer to solve human problems to help as many people as we can.

We could move the list to another host but I think the time for Human_ism has passed. If others want to take it on they should feel free but I won’t be joining it. I’ve moved on.

What is your story? Share it with other secular people and the world.

Feel free to express yourself in words about your experiences during the pandemic. You can submit stories using the form at the link below or email them to covidstories {[AT]} dougberger.net

I will be collecting stories for the duration of the public health emergency so feel free to submit more than one story.

Add Your Covid-19 Story

Here is my story, written this week:

I am middle age and the median age of the people who have died from complications of COVID-19. So I am scared. I haven’t left my house in at least a week and I’m too afraid to go to the store.

I don’t have any major health issues but I am susceptible to some leg infections and have spent time in the hospital for them.

I believe in medical science so when they say they have no cure or treatment for the virus I am scared to get it. I don’t want to be on a ventilator. I’ve had a Pulmonary Embolism so I know what it is like to have extreme trouble breathing and I am scared now.

Some people think the media is hyping the danger but all the thousands of dead bodies around the world tell the truth… and I am scared.

I get my flu shot each year and wiped down shopping carts before the pandemic. I’ve never washed my hands as much as I have the past few weeks. I’m scared.

I try to keep my fears out of my head and not think of them constantly but it is hard. Luckily I am not alone at home but I feel for people who are. At least I can get some distraction when I need it.

This pandemic seems to be dragging on but I know it will end. I just hope I make it out the other side alive and well.

I’m scared.

After Super Tuesday, my Facebook and Twitter feed was a cacophony of gnashing teeth and abject depression. Most of the people in my feeds support Bernie Sanders and he got pummeled on Tuesday by Joe Biden. Most of the complaints began and ended with the Democratic National Committee putting a thumb on the scale and that they never liked him. The DNC is evil but Bernie’s performance at the polls on Tuesday was the old school lack of votes.

One group that came out in droves for Biden was African Americans:

He talked about the massive African-American vote totals Biden won.

“It’s not just a great sign for Biden that was happening, it’s a terrible sign for Sanders. Why? Because the number is so low. And also because this is exactly what happened to Bernie Sanders in 2016. He actually ran even with Hillary Clinton in 2016 with white voters, but he got blown out with black voters. He was getting in the mid teens in 2016. He spent four years trying to improve that, make inroads, and here he is at 15% again, getting crushed by Joe Biden.

“What that means when you go to the results map and look at what happened last night, I say the southeast, it’s a reason why Biden didn’t just win these states, Biden ran up the score in these states. Look at this, a 30-point win last night for Joe Biden in Virginia. We thought Biden had a chance to win Virginia, nobody thought it was going to be 30 points.

“You go to the state of Alabama, look at this margin, 63 to 17. Joe Biden won this state by nearly 50 points. Bernie Sanders barely got past 15%. That’s the delegate threshold. These are crushing margins and they mean lots of delegates.”

Steve Kornacki Explains The Coalition That Put Biden Across The Top

We were told that Bernie would bring the young people to the polls in droves. His rallies before Tuesday looked fantastic in numbers and enthusiasm. The problem is polls and rallies don’t always equal votes.

Young people failed to show up at the voting booth again:

“For example, in North Carolina, overall turnout was up 17 percent — youth turnout was down 9 percent,” John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Institute of politics told Power Up. “There’s not evidence to suggest that Sanders has expanded the electorate among young people in important ways.”

Power Up: Young voters are turning out in lower numbers than Bernie Sanders expected

It is also true that establishment Dems and the DNC hate Bernie and don’t want him to get the nomination and Biden is as establishment as you can get in 2020. They have done all they can to stand in the way of a Bernie revolution – claiming he is not a Democrat and calling out his plans as being too socialist (parroting the Republican talking points), and punishing campaign consultants that work for progressive candidates.

All that would be moot had people voted for Bernie but they didn’t in enough numbers to best Biden. That isn’t the DNC fault.

Unless there is more than conjecture and biased thinking, there is no conspiracy against Bernie. They can’t hide votes – he simply got fewer votes than Biden in many states.

I like Bernie and want to vote for him but then I’m a CIS gendered old white guy so either Biden or Sanders works for me. I am more than willing to fight Biden to pull him more left and stop his previous work to keep the status quo.

I wish Bernie had done better on Tuesday but I can only deal with reality – he didn’t do better.

This month I attended a secular conference. While I enjoyed myself, learned some new things, and met some new people, one conference speaker almost spoiled the whole thing for me.

This conference was right in my wheel house. It focused on being a secular person and on social justice. It definitely had a liberal bent which I rarely have a problem with.

One issue that did come up was the conference was scheduled to fall on the anniversary of the day an unarmed black man was murdered by a white police officer in a town close to the conference host city. The conference failed to acknowledge the anniversary until people complained.

I was concerned but it didn’t derail my interest in the conference and the various workshops and speakers.

A conference speaker on the main stage did almost spoil the weekend for me.

The topic of the talk originally was going to be about social justice in the secular community but the speaker and her co-speaker decided to talk about the negative police relationship with the African-American community as a whole. Both speakers were women but neither speaker was black – one was south Asian and the other white. The white woman was the one I had an issue with.

I’m a white cis gendered male so I go to these events and listen. I want to be a better ally to people of color and learn how I can use my privilege to open doors for others to come through. I do have to hear a lot of complaints about my privilege and how we cause a lot of the problems for people of color and other marginalized groups. I’m fine with that. I want to be better.

I still want speakers to make sense and be logical in their arguments.

One of the first things the white woman – who I will call Molly – said was she was an atheist but when she is protesting with the black community and a woman beside her, who has lost a child because the child was killed by the police and says that God is the only reason she can get out of bed in the morning, how can she tell the woman God doesn’t exist.

Well in that specific situation you DON’T.

Just because one is an atheist doesn’t mean one marches around and yells it at every opportunity. There is decorum and tact and reading an audience.

Atheists and believers can come together over the same issue without having to name check their beliefs at the same time.

It seems like common sense to me.

Molly, at a later point in her speech, said she lived in a major urban city on the east coast and was 42 years old. She said she didn’t know there was a problem with the police and the black community until Trayvon Martin was murdered.

What??? She’s 42 years old, lives in a major city, and only knew there was a problem of unarmed blacks being murdered by the police in 2012???

Wow… She’s woke now…

Maybe she meant to say she didn’t start protesting until then which would make sense. A white person can live in a major city and not really care something like that is happening. A lot of white people today do that or go so far as to say “All Lives Matter” to belittle the marginalized groups or bitch about being late for work when protesters block a major city street.

I will give Molly the benefit of the doubt but that day, during her speech I just remember thinking that she lost all credibility with me. It just seems completely wrong to accept advice from a middle age white person who, until recently, was clueless about the world outside their “colorblind” community.

Molly ultimately had something important to say so that’s why I am being vague on the personal details of the woman and the details of the speech. But I hope in the future white people talking to other white people about being better allies do a better job of expressing their expertise on the issue.

A few years back, I took the Pro-Truth Pledge (PTP). It is a group founded by a friend of mine to try and promote truth and facts in our civil discourse – including politics. It’s suppose to be non-partisan but it seems that truth and facts have a liberal bias if the content of a recent email I got is any indication.

Calling all of the conservative signers in America!

Often, the media stereotype conservatives as lacking in integrity and being unconcerned about facts.

They’re flat-out wrong.

Conservatives have a great deal of integrity. It’s time to prove it. It’s time for your fellow conservatives to take the Pro-Truth Pledge and become active in dispelling this public falsehood or myth.

ProTruth Newsletter April 2019 – Edition 19

UGH!

First of all, there are some conservatives – including the current occupant of the White House – who have serious issues with the truth and using facts.

There are some conservatives who have integrity but complaining about being called out for lies and not using facts and calling a stereotype doesn’t make it so. Do a Google search on “conservative lies” and you can find a large list.

Yes, someone will comment you can do that for liberals and yes there will be some but not as large as conservatives.

Conservatives started the birther movement, the conspiracy about a pedophile ring at a pizza restaurant, and claiming Trump won a mandate in 2016. Just to name a few.

Liberal lies are but a tick on a dog compared to the current large conservative dung pile.

The email was PTP pandering to conservatives.

It’s telling that it has to pander since the truth is hard to find on the right. PTP is buying into the false idea that the Mainstream media is against conservatives in order to convert new people to PTP.

But if you have the idea the media is out to get you then you have violated the pledge.

This isn’t the first time I’ve come across this pandering to conservatives. I was part of a Facebook group called “Intentional Insights Insiders”. Intentional Insights is the parent group to PTP.

The Facebook group is moderated by a so-called Libertarian who is politically biased toward anyone and anything he didn’t agree with – no matter what the truth or facts stated. He would shout people down and bully them. He would use the pledge as a cudgel on others but ignore it when he would violate the pledge.

I complained to Intentional Insights about the moderator and was told he was conservative and there wasn’t any other conservatives willing to moderate the group – a non-partisan group. Intentional Insights needed to have the appearance of balance – even at the expense of the pledge.

I still think the idea of the ProTruth Pledge is needed in our fractured democracy but the pandering has to stop.

If you have to ignore your principles to appear balanced then what’s the point?

If I was writing the email I got today this is how I would start it:

Calling all of the conservative signers in America!

Often we see in the media some conservatives lacking in integrity and being unconcerned about facts including many serving in our national government.

Conservatives can restore the loss of integrity. It’s time for your fellow conservatives to take the Pro-Truth Pledge and become active in dispelling falsehoods and myths in public discourse.

And you know what? You can replace the word “conservative” with any other political label and it would still be useful as promotion without pandering.

Come on ProTruth Pledge, please do better.