The Nature of Things

How did it happen that we came to celebrate July 4 as our nation's Independence Day? The Second Continental Congress actually voted to approve a resolution of independence on July 2, 1776. After making the decision to separate themselves from England, the Congress then set about writing a declaration to set out their reasons for taking this action. They debated and revised the wording of the document for a couple of days, finally agreeing to the wording that has come down to us on July 4. But it seems that the more important date would have been the date that they actually decided on independence, July 2. John Adams certainly thought that was the important date. He wrote his wife Abigail: The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. ...

Native Americans of what is now the northern and eastern United States historically had special names to identify the full moon of each month of the year. Each of the names was related to an event in Nature that occurred around that time. January, for example, was the Wolf Moon, February the Snow Moon, March the Worm Moon and so on through the year. Tonight marks July's full moon which actually had more than one name, but the most frequently used was Buck Moon. It was called that because this was the month when the new antlers of buck deer normally emerged. But some also referred to it as the Thunder Moon because thunderstorms frequently occurred around this time. Now, August will be a very interesting month for moon watchers like myself because it will feature TWO full moons, the first on August 1 and the second on August 31. The one on August 31 will be the third full moon of the season and is what is referred to as a "Blue Moon."  The "normal" August full ...

The Kaiser Family Foundation has been polling the public regarding reaction to last week's Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of  the Affordable Care Act. Guess what they found? It seems that most people (56%) are ready to move on .  They believe that opponents of the law should stop trying to overturn it and start addressing other burning issues facing the country. (Click on image to enlarge it.) So now I guess we can expect the Republican Tea Party to stop throwing its hissy fit and move on to things like shoring up our decaying infrastructure; creating jobs to help pull the economy out of its depression; finally acknowledging and taking steps to slow the heating up of the planet; creating more effective oversight of Wall Street and financial institutions; working to make sure that the food and drugs consumed by Americans are safe; providing more and better support for the public school system in this country; working to protect the rights of voters and to ensure ...

Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian readers!   This is for you.

"I don't have a plan," Elvis volunteers. "I just have a feel. Trying to get a better understanding of myself. The mistakes I make always come back around.  Truth is like the sun, isn't it?  You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away." That snippet from a conversation between Roger Morgan and Elvis Presley in September 1962 gives Jim Lynch's novel its title and is a quick summation of the plot. Indeed, it could be the summation of the plot of many novels and many lives. The mistakes that we make always seem to come back around, often when we least expect them. The place is Seattle. The novel switches back and forth between the time of the World's Fair that took place there in 1962 and the year 2001, a time of other momentous events. The man most responsible for the Fair's success was Roger Morgan, the mastermind of it all. It was an event that transformed the city from a sleepy outpost of the past to a place that embraced the futu...

Just because you've been so good this week, here is some Friday cat frivolity for you.

The Supreme Court of the United States has appeared less and less supreme in recent years. Not that its power to interpret the Constitution has been impaired but that its interpretations have seemed more and more politically partisan and less and less actually based on the rule of law. Two high points of this politically partisan court are usually cited by its critics as evidence of its right-wing bias. The first, of course, was the Bush v. Gore decision in 2000 that stopped the count of votes in Florida and substituted the Court's own vote for the popular vote of the people in that year's presidential election. The reasoning behind this decision was so flawed and convoluted that even those who wrote it (Scalia) stipulated that it could not be cited as precedent in any other case. The second was the notorious Citizens United decision which declared that corporations have the same rights as people! In fact, in the view of the Court, they have even more rights than people becaus...