Storm damage – our power lines
Originally uploaded by Allen Gathman.
Big storm came through yesterday, and knocked out power to most of Pocahontas. Our power lines were pulled away from the side of the house. We took our frozen food in to Cape Girardeau, where some friends had freezer space. Meanwhile we’ve been using candles and flashlights.
Originally uploaded by Allen Gathman.
We have owlets in our porch. This hole in the porch post has been inhabited over the years by bees, starlings, maybe squirrels, but this year it’s a family of Eastern Screech Owls (Otus asio).
They’re very cute. At night the mother flies up a couple of times a minute with some tidbit for baby — I’m guessing bugs, and I heartily encourage them to eat those up. The mother is maybe 8 inches tall, and the hole is around 3″ in diameter — not big.
This post is just outside the windows in the hallway. Every time I walk by in the evening there’s a cat on the table by one window and a cat on the stool by the other one, rapt. It’s better than Tivo, apparently.
Considering the baby snake Sophie almost stepped on in the living room doorway the other night, it’s like living in frigging Wild Kingdom here.
The Pew Research Center just published this study showing the relationship between religion and agreement with the statement that torture should be used on suspected terrorists.
It’s no big surprise; the people I know who would approve of torture are mostly white evangelicals. But why is this? What’s the connection between, say, a belief that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that all who believe in him might not perish, but have eternal life, and the belief that it’s okay to torture people? I’m just having trouble finding the path that connects these views.
In other Pew Center news, over 10% of Americans still think Obama is a Muslim, and about 20% of white evangelicals do. Hmmm. Are evangelicals thinking that “terrorist” and “Muslim” are synonyms, and that’s why they’re ready to torture them? What proportion of church-goers are ready to torture Obama?
In their defense, I should point out that the church in which I was raised, the Episcopalians, were among the least likely to approve of torture — almost as opposed to it as atheists are.