The Resurrection Of Wheat Field Jesus

Wheat Field Jesus was crouched down along the side of Main Street, also known as interstate 70. It was, in fact, western Kansas – near the edge of Russell County. Wheat Field Jesus was peering over the tops of wheat stalks and wearily watching over Kansans in their pick–up trucks and Chevy Malibus.

I had to stop, if only briefly, to explain to Wheat Field Jesus that it wasn't safe for him here. A short while ago I had traveled this way and Wheat Field Jesus was missing. I was looking for Him, expecting Him, fearing the worst had finally happened. Perhaps I had just lost vigilance on my previous trip and slipped by Wheat Field Jesus. Perhaps He was hiding. Either way, I was compelled to warn Him.

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The Haunting of 26th

Numbers haunt me. They always have. They take up real estate in my head and they burn synaptic pathways that never falter or weaken with age.

I can tell you that in 1976 I hit .427 for Norwood Sorrentos Baseball Club and that I didn’t commit a single error that season in center field. That same season Bob Crable, the former Notre Dame All-America and New York Jet stand out, embedded the number 500 in my head. At the time, Crable was playing for the Midland Cardinals baseball team in Cincinnati. He hit a ball so hard that by the time I chased it down and picked it up he was crossing home plate. The field we were playing on didn’t have a home-run fence. Crable didn’t need one. That ball traveled at least 500 feet before hitting a tree and coming to rest. It was too far to throw it back to the infield so I threw it to the kid in left field. As a number, I have nothing against 500. As a memory, 500 tastes like bile.

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Excuse Me, When Were You Ever Right?

They are so up in arms these days, aren't they? Our country is going to hell - literally, if you ask them. "Turrurists" are on the doorstep. The gays are cropping up all over the place, infesting us, making us unholy. And - GOD help us! - the fucking fascists and socialists are in office and marching right down Main Street, trying to steal your apple pie. You don't have to believe me. Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity: they know it. They're the watch dogs for everything anti-American and they say it's so.

Turn on the tele and you'll get a big spoonful about how it ain't right that America ain't "right", know what I mean? But, and I'm scratching my head here, have you ever asked yourself what the "right" has ever done that was actually right? No, I'm serious. Sit down and think about it.

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Chaos Theory and the Tea Party

The Tea Party movement - essentially a creation of Fox News that now is receiving corporate news coverage - is filled with individuals screaming for government to get out of their lives. They are staunch conservatives. They abhor socialism, government intervention, and taxation of any sort. They insist that this country, the United States of America, needs to return to its Founders' original vision and values, as they interpret them.

The Tea Partiers will scream at gatherings in every corner of america for lower taxes and less government control. They don't seem to understand that their current President - yes, the black man who really isn't an american - gave ninety-five percent of the populace (and almost all Tea Partiers) a significant tax break last year, thank you very much. Not one of the mainstream media outlets has run an article pointing out this very simple fact. The president has already cut taxes (to the poor and middle class).

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Fire and Ice: 2012

2012" hit theatres a short time ago and as movies go the story is idiotic, but the movie was fun. The roller coaster ride begins just after the opening credits and doesn’t stop until the end. Unfortunately, the story is just the opposite – it stops after the opening credits and picks up at the very end. In the middle is Hollywood’s best CGI effort at creating an edge of the seat thrill ride.

The problems with the story are many. Suffice it to say John Cusack and crew should have had the Superman 'S' emblazoned upon everything they wore. There were so many close escapes – and impossible escapes – that even Roger Moore’s James Bond would have been embarrassed (a difficult feat, to say the least). Worse yet, the story gets a lot of the facts wrong.

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Not Like Us

Jonathon Sachs, writing for the Times Online, recently wrote: "The real battle, and it applies to secular and religious alike, is: can we love, not hate, the people not like us?"

At first the question seems self-apparent in the issues it raises. But thinking deeper I realized that there was more, much more, to the query being posited and that the answers lie within the question itself.

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Building Walls

Now, it seems, we can bring peace to Baghdad by building a wall, or a series of walls. These walls, no doubt, will partition off an elite few from the violence that is ever-present in the Iraqi capital. No doubt this wall will create an oasis of peace amongst the hells of war. But we shouldn't too soon forget the sage advice of Robert Frost who penned:

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