The Zippy Crew returns, speeding through musings about the Winter Olympics and its controversies, the boys’ Wordle-playing, the worrisome military buildup by Russia, Damon Albarn’s attack on Taylor Swift and the hope we find in the Resurrection.
Joe Manchin and Krystin Sinema are due a heap of gratitude by all of us. Personally, I prefer a government that is stable and seeks to represent the whole of the country and not a specific subset and it is those two, and not figures I’d probably have been more inclined to elect, that are holding to the esoteric parliamentary rule — the filibuster — that offers us such stability.
This is unrelenting. It’s been going on for two weeks that seem like two months, and there’s no end in sight. And while I’m a little spacey and shell shocked, I’m hoping I can tell the story.
Over the next few months and years, I will have the opportunity to write about faith and disability, and how those experiences connect with my personal story. I want to say that it is against my nature to embrace too heartily any set of ideas that magnifies differences and distinctions for political gain. I don’t even really want to make anyone feel guilty, at least unnecessarily, so the stories I tell are my own. If a particular feeling or experience of mine doesn’t seem fair as a criticism, you’re free to let it go, and to pay it no heed.
Today is Groundhog Day. Yesterday marked 17 years since I moved from the Eastern wasteland to the hallowed hills of Ohio. I’ve always liked Groundhog Day, and as a child I could not understand why we did not get it off from school (though given its location in the calendar we occasionally did for other reasons, but not often because in my district school was canceled only when it was certain that no buses could complete their routes).
The Fastest of Snails serves up a mix of lighthearted and pressing topics in our second episode of ‘22. The boys discuss Faye Webster’s new single and shopping via Instacart before turning to issues of human rights in China and the call for Christians to preach with boldness.
This is getting uglier and uglier. The evidence continues to mount that in the early days of the current pandemic Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Francis Collins, at the time the director of the National Institutes of Health, took extraordinary action to suppress the idea that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a Chinese laboratory.
The St. Louis Cardinals have a defensive dynamo at third base, the perennial Gold Glove winner, who also provides middle of the order punch to the offense, and makes them a yearly threat to be world champions. His name is Scott Rolen.
Do you know your blood type? Some of us do. I’d hazard that most of us don’t. It’s not something that comes up, and when it is a matter of medical importance it can be determined quickly enough. But there are people who consider it almost as important as one’s age or educational achievements.