A Thaw In Winter's Grip

In my childhood I had several favorite foods. I loved pancakes with chocolate chips, very fond of spam sandwiches, spaghetti with garlic bread was another favorite but my all-time favorite food was cornbread. Cornbread with pinto beans, cornbread with chili, cornbread with spaghetti . . .

I also found it was the perfect food for those days when I couldn't seem to get warm, inside or out. But then I would catch a whiff of that smell and Boom! Starting to get warm in here just thinking out about those days . . .

Of course, it could also just be a southern thing . . .

Behind The Curtain

This story is from the illusionist Jim Munroe as published by the BGEA. 

"I’m a psychological illusionist. I spend hours thinking up ways to make people think something is happening when it really isn’t. So over time, I’ve developed a bit of skepticism about how things work.

When you’re a magician, you realize that most of what’s going on behind the scenes is fake. One famous magician said, “To become an illusionist is to give up wonder.”

To many, the idea of an all-powerful God seems silly, and as a teenager, when I would talk to people who would go to church, I remember thinking that they were just falling for a simple magic trick. They wanted it to be true because it gave them peace; it was a crutch for them.

When I went to college, I began to think about all of the different philosophies and ways that people believe, and I decided that I was going to answer “the God question” once and for all for myself. I majored in psychology, so I studied the brain and the mind. And I took religious studies courses from people who didn’t necessarily believe in God."

Click here to read the rest of the story . . . 

God Gave Them Over . . .

Moral nihilism, also known as ethical nihilism, is the meta-ethical view that morality does not exist as something inherent to objective reality; therefore no action is necessarily preferable to any other. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is not inherently right or wrong. - Wikipedia definition.

On the 46th anniversary of Roe V. Wade, New York state passed a law to protect women's access to abortion if the historic case is overturned. People in the chamber cheered, and national media rejoiced in this cultural victory that will ensure death over life in the name of self-freedom.

The Ernie and Bernie Show

In 1975 the Tennessee men's basketball team finally crashed the party. What made this team so exciting was the length of time since their last visit. Tennessee's last conference tournament championship in basketball was in 1949. Their last appearance in the NCAA tournament had been over nine years ago so the fans and program were hungry. They had a respected coach, Ray Mears, but the terms national basketball powerhouse and Tennessee still rarely found its way in the same sentence.

Then came 1974. Coach Mears had an assistant on his staff named, Stu Aberdeen. Stu recruited Ernie Grunfeld, (who lived in New York City) to play for Tennessee with the promise that he would institute a running offense and that Ernie would have the green light to shoot at will. This was an huge concession to the new recruit but Coach Mears was tired of losing. If it meant he needed to create a caste system for his basketball team, than a caste system it was. But Stu wasn't finished recruiting the New York area, and the following year he recruited Bernie King to play for the Tennessee Vols. The Ernie and Bernie show was born.