A Different Street

If you Google “my worst fear is,” these are some of what results:

Failure
That we will make the same mistake we did before
Rejection
Sadness
Miscarriage
Tornadoes
That there is no existence after death
To be surrounded by cockroaches
Drowning
Something happening to my kids
Bugs, especially spiders
Forgetting
Dolls
Getting into a car wreck
Someone close to me dying suddenly
Heights
Judgment day
Knives
Not accomplishing my goals
Throwing up
Looking down and seeing [...]

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I heard this yesterday on the Writer’s Almanac and enjoyed it very much. I often try to visualize what the world would look like if the money and energy that are devoted to college and pro sports were instead devoted to the arts; this is much wittier.
“Man Writes Poem” by Jay Leeming, from Dynamite [...]

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Maggie Ross writes, on Voice in the Wilderness:
If you wonder why your work isn’t going well, why you feel anxious, why emotional pain guts you and seems to go on forever, why you seem to have two left feet, and most of all, why you seek a way to blot it all out, then the [...]

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Tom Tomorrow. I heard some clips of this exchange on Thom Hartmann’s show today and was appalled.
I often hope that Dave Neiwert is wrong when he writes about the eliminationist tendencies of the American right wing, but stuff like this suggests that he was ahead of the curve.

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I’ve had the opportunity lately to spend a lot of time with my mom, who is 83, and my spouse’s grandmother, who will be 90 this year.  They both like to tell stories, and I’ve noticed lately that the stories of each tend to coalesce around a theme.
My mom’s theme is, roughly, I Was a [...]

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… who is even now undergoing a difficult and delicate surgery to remove a kidney tumor and the surrounding lymph nodes, prayers for successful surgery, an easy and painless recovery, and full remission of the Stage IV cancer.

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A record-breaking experiment with 1500 bottles of Diet Coke and some unspecified number of Mentos:

What’s even cooler is that the ponchos make them look like monks, or maybe hobbits.
Via Slashfood.

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I have a problem with the concept of “enough.” I usually don’t trust that enough is REALLY enough — as an old friend put it, “Only too much is enough.”
However, that doesn’t seem to be the way it works in God’s economy. The Israelites in the desert couldn’t warehouse the manna — they [...]

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Or, the first time I’ve laughed in days. (Tried to embed the video … ??)
Via BoingBoing.

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Today, I chatted with a UMC pastor friend who is active in the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) and is anticipating some actions that might take place at the UMC’s General Conference, being held in Fort Worth even as I type. The UMC, like many mainline denominations, continues to struggle with formulating an [...]

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