Last Saturday morning my wife Holly and I drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to attend the Pagan Pride day celebration. It was small, but diverse, and there were some great workshops. The area was covered for shade, but still hot and very dry. I hope next year the attendance will be even better. After the event my wife and I went to a party being held by some friends we hadn't seen in years. Sunday morning we got up early and took the drive home. As I wrote, the weather was incredibly hot and dry, and with stops (such as in the city of Baker where one shop is decorated in an alien—from outer space, not terrestrials from outside the U.S. borders—motif and they sell a wide variety of

On Monday, September 10, 2012, the Dalai Lama wrote the following to his friends on Facebook(!): All the world's major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether. Wow! The 14th Dalai Lama Many, if not most of you reading this were brought up in a religion. Most of you were brought up within some sect of Christianity. A few of you were brought up Jewish. And since

One of the things I rarely see discussed is the fact that books—fiction and non-fiction—are products of the times in which they were written. Well, that's not completely true. Literary criticism often discusses the milieu in which a book was written if the book is fairly recent. This is true even for books a few hundred years old. Perhaps the reason for this is that we know more about the environment of recent times than we do of ancient times. 'Twas the Night Before Poverty… In a few months, many of us will either be reading Dickens' A Christmas Carol or watching one of its numerous versions being replayed on TV. The focus of the story is rightfully on the rebirth and redemption of

Be alert. We need more lerts! <snark>Last week I had the honor of performing a civic service: jury duty. For the massive time of one day I was required by law to wait in a big room, doing nothing, hoping to be called to serve on a trial. I wasn't, and I went home filled with feelings of civic pride and responsibility.</snark> I brought with me a couple of books, and during the day I was able to start and finish an odd little self-published book entitled Cult Control: The Building of a Cult by Dantalion Jones. As I read it I was drawn to recall the saying above. I don't know who came up with the saying first. I do remember the first time I heard it: I was living in