February 2018 archive
cottontail, this morning
I remember my fifth grade class being herded into an auditorium
so we could watch Richard Nixon's inauguration on television.
Billy Graham spoke at the ceremony. About half the kids
in that school district were Jewish and didn't share Graham's theology.
I don't know how much I appreciated at the time how it felt for them
to be a religious minority in the USA.
No one today has a position like Billy Graham did in the '60s and '70s. He was to evangelism what IBM was to the computer industry: huge, ubiquitous. Presidents still invite clerics to their inaugurations but there is no preëminent go‑to preacher.
Graham's body will lie in repose in the US Capitol next week, an honor rarely bestowed on private citizens. The USA respects men and women of reason less than it does a Billy Graham whose sermons argued from authority, full of sentences starting with "The Bible says".
No one today has a position like Billy Graham did in the '60s and '70s. He was to evangelism what IBM was to the computer industry: huge, ubiquitous. Presidents still invite clerics to their inaugurations but there is no preëminent go‑to preacher.
Graham's body will lie in repose in the US Capitol next week, an honor rarely bestowed on private citizens. The USA respects men and women of reason less than it does a Billy Graham whose sermons argued from authority, full of sentences starting with "The Bible says".
Jackrabbit at the
Vegas airport,
one in a series of desert animal sculptures.
one in a series of desert animal sculptures.
Fred,
who needs no introduction
Fred the photogenic dog.
