Tell you a coupla stories:
When I was about 16, I worked part-time as a stock boy and gofer at the central office of a chain of health clubs in Houston.
One of my not-quite-co-workers was Bobby, a big black guy who was the right-hand man of the distribution director. The performance of our duties would normally almost never put Bobby and I in the same room together, but I saw him everyday anyway. Continue reading “The Funny Thing About Sexual Harassment. And Then the Unfunny Thing.”
Nothing to do with atheism here — this is me being rustic.
Bishop, California, a town on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada (a range of mountains that runs north-south through the heart of California), has a big Memorial Day weekend bash every year called Mule Days. Mules have been a part of the local scene for … well, a damned long time, having long been used as cargo carriers for people interested in seven-elephants camping in the John Muir Wilderness. Continue reading “Brushing Up My Redneck Credentials”
A long one, here. Sorry.
I’d like to revisit my recent post, Reason Not to Rest, in which I touched on the idea “We won and we can relax now.” I want to expand on that, to look at it from a slightly different angle, and basically reinforce my own conviction that now is definitely NOT the time to relax. So: Continue reading “Lifeboat of Knowledge, Dinghy of Power”
Memorial Day. The Internet is ablaze with it. All the proper things are being said, all the good, right sentiments are being expressed.
Yes, we – and I include myself – love our war heroes. My adopted Dad was a medic in the Navy, my two brothers were in Vietnam, and I have plenty of friends whom I truly respect for their service. I see the memorials and the fields of crosses – I made a point of visiting the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC two of the times I was there – and I feel genuinely sad and angry about it all.
But since junior high school, I’ve had this thing for pep rallies. Or against them, I guess I should say. Because it worries me when people are driven together by the spur of strong emotions. It worries me even more when I can’t see who’s wearing the spurs. Continue reading “Oh, Jeez. Memorial Day.”
Al Stefanelli of A Voice of Reason says some flattering (and totally true) stuff about my book, Red Neck, Blue Collar, Atheist: Simple Thoughts About Reason, Gods & Faith.
Packed into twenty-five chapters is the wisdom of a lifetime and proves you do not have to be a great thinker to think great things. The foreword begins not with a treatise on astrophysics, molecular biology or archaeology. It starts with, “My dog died,” and flows into life in the Eastern Sierra’s of California, dealing with grief, loss and time it takes to understand the impact of life on mere humanity. It ends with a realization of enlightenment, then contentment and the lightness of no longer being afraid to live without the shackles of religion hindering ones self.
The best parts come at the beginning …
“Hank Fox wrote a book. You should read it” – Me
… and the end:
I strongly recommend you buy this book and read it from cover to cover.
Atheism is not all I do. It’s sort of my curse that most things interest me. Used to be, EVERYTHING interested me, but I’ve gotten more conservative in my old age. The uncool part of the condition is that it’s been hard to focus on any one thing, and actually make a good living at it. The cool part is, it’s been (is being) a fun ride.
One of my things is adventuring. Doing stuff for the fun of it. I would actually like to make a living at it, and have been working, at a glacial pace, to develop a website — AdventYear — of “Outdoor Adventures for Fat Old People.” Continue reading “My Wonderful, Fabulous Life, or, Why You Should (Should Not) Envy Me”
Sometimes you read something you wrote or said sometime back, and you go “Damn! That was me? This is some really good stuff!” That was my reaction to this post on my old site, shortly after the publication of my book.
Anyway, I’m reposting it.
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I wrote a piece for my local newspaper some weeks back, and it came out today in the Times Union newspaper of Albany, New York: Atheists Aim for Goodness.
Anytime you have a letter or an opinion piece on atheism in your local paper — something well worth doing, by the way — you get a storm of letters in response. Nice Christians diligently explain why you can’t possibly be right, and how you have no logical basis for your atheism, and even how there are no such things as real atheists.
The following week, some nice local priest, or a nice rabbi — both sure to have actual college degrees in the finer points of religion — point out the desperate flaws in atheism, which is, after all, a religion just like any other. Besides which, Hitler and Stalin.
But meanwhile, if you’ve done it right, somewhere out there a 15-year-old girl reads it, or a 19-year-old guy, or a 35-year-old mother of two, and goes, “Exactly what I was thinking! I’m not alone!”
Or at least “Hey … um. I never thought of that. Hmm.”
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By the way: If you’re a Schenectady or Albany resident and got here via the link at the end of the article, you may want to know about these three local organizations:
Capital Region Atheists & Agnostics
Capital District Humanist Society
Each of these groups is filled with bright, kind, interesting, involved people who can answer questions, tell you more about what they do, or help you get involved at the local level in helping us make a better world.
Kudos to the lot of you! I’m more than a little pleased with how the discussion worked out in comments to my Liberal Knees post about the burkha.
All of the comments were thoughtful, most were lengthy, and none of them were flames against me or the other readers/commenters.
Best of all, I learned some stuff, and I hope others did too. There were more nuances in the issue than my simple formulation of “I don’t get to wear a mask in public; I don’t think anyone else should.”
Most telling was the argument that Muslim women, arguably already suffering the repression of being forced to wear the burkha in the first place, were the ones being legally penalized for … well, wearing the burkha. Definitely something worth considering. Continue reading “In Which I Admit to Being Wrong”
Look at this picture (click to embiggen) of a woman arrested in France for refusing to remove her veil. A tiny, defenseless woman, a plucky warrior for the rights of a minority to live and breathe free, is manhandled by racist government thugs.
It came up on my Facebook wall recently, from a group called the Muslim Defense League (MDL) United We Stand, Divided We Fall (“Fighting against racism, fascism and oppression”).
The photo caption was “A Muslima is arrested in France for refusing to remove the veil! If you are against this act then Share it everywhere!” Continue reading “Stilling the Jerk of My Liberal Knees”
