November 29th, 2017
What happens when the eight richest men in the world possess wealth equal to the bottom half of the entire world population?
There I was, in a pew at Cormorant Lutheran Church on Sunday morning, when I got the Christian view of acquiring wealth in a Christian country. A quote from the gospel of Matthew makes the point: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on the earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in…
November 24th, 2017
The blonde guy with the “Comb-back” Will Make Everybody Rich
Practically everyone in the United States knows the essentials of the Brothers Grimm fairytale “Rumplestiltskin” where the poor miller’s daughter with the beautiful, long blonde hair, with the help of a mysterious imp, spins straw into gold. Her father has told the King his daughter is capable of this magnificent act. After the daughter and the imp spin straw into gold for the third time, the king asks her to be his…
November 15th, 2017
The thoughts and prayers of politicians will finally be answered
We have had 307 mass shootings (four kills or more) so far in 2017, including the last one in Sutherland Springs, Texas, where 26 mortals attending church, aged 18 months to 77 years, were blasted into Heaven and 20 were sent to hospitals by assault rifle fire.
I am pleased to learn from certain voices that God is going to celebrate a Firearm Resurrection Day, where the 33,000 mortals killed by firearms this year will…
November 8th, 2017
We might be entering the worst of times: the wackification of America
I listened to a fascinating National Public Radio interview the other night of a second tier comedian who plays small casinos, nightclubs, and theaters around the country trying to make a living.
He is totally frustrated by his present-day audiences because they are so politically and socially polarized. Telling jokes for a living is a very tough business even in good times.
He said audiences now are so polarized that…
November 1st, 2017
The Sacklers: America’s biggest and richest ‘legal’ drug pushers
The first record of humans using drugs to give themselves highs during their humdrum lives is a 7,000-year-old account of Babylonian Sumerians using opium. The Lake Dwellers of Switzerland ate poppy seeds 4,500 years ago according to historian Ashley Montagu in a book about gaining euphoria over the doldrums.
Records about the brewing of alcohol and its potency started about 2,350 years ago in Proverbs 31:6-7: “Give…
October 25th, 2017
The madness and sins of the world’s seven ’great’ religions
Robert Bolt’s play “A Man For All Seasons” covers the true story of a principled and religious chancellor of England named Sir Thomas More who eventually lost his head because he refused to approve the divorce of King Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn (who later also lost her head), the sister of his former mistress. Henry wanted a son from Catherine but she didn’t deliver.
The…
October 18th, 2017
God didn’t save six million Jews from the Holocaust either
We have become so used to mass killings by firearms in the “United” States that they are generally ignored, except for the really unusual or big ones like Texas Tower, San Ysidro McDonald’s, Luby’s Cafeteria, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Aurora Theater, Orlando, and now Las Vegas.
Then the politicians hit the radio and TV with their very old designed talking points starting with “our thoughts and prayers are…
October 11th, 2017
I’m a white son-of-a-bitch who will always take a knee for M/Sgt McNair
In 1938 I entered First Grade in District 54 in Morrison County, Minnesota, a little white country school with a total of 23 students in eight grades and two two-holers out back.
That’s where I was first introduced to white history, not real history. For the next 18 years, through high school, college, and graduate school I was exposed to white history in various courses, never getting a taste of real history…
October 4th, 2017
Norwegians know how to govern -- just ask Ole and Lena
Sometimes we get the idea from Norwegian Ole and Lena jokes that “Norvegians” play with only 39 cards.
There’s the one about Ole calling the airlines and asking how long it takes to fly from Minneapolis to Fargo. “Just a minute,” said the busy and rather irritated desk clerk. Ole says, “Vell , if it goes that fast, I tink I’ll just take a bus.”
Or there’s the one about Ole talking to his brother Svenn, who lived…
September 27th, 2017
A mixture of despair, extortion, life-saving treatments, and inequality
Fifty-four-year-old Antony Marino of Wise, Virginia keeps a pair of needle-nosed pliers handy so he can pull out a rotting tooth that’s bothering him. He has never been to a dentist. Forty-nine-year-old Joyce Bays tenderizes the meat she eats with a hammer, and cuts it into small pieces because she has no teeth.
Forklift driver Robin Neal has had Type 1 diabetes since age 10 and has pancreatitis, but her…
By Josette Ciceronunapologeticallyanxiousme@gmail.com What does it mean to truly live in a community —or should I say, among community? It’s a question I have been wrestling with since I moved to Fargo-Moorhead in February 2022.…