Health care proved to be a significant issue in the 2018 midterm elections throughout the country. According to Annie Lowery, writing in The Atlantic in November, the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) “came up in more than half of Democratic ads and nearly a third of those for Republicans,” a much higher rate than in the […]
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Chanukah Observances in Southern Vermont With a Social Justice Focus
We are currently honoring the eight-day observance of the Jewish holiday, Chanukah (also spelled Hanukkah), December 2 through 9. Chanukah traces its history back to the second century Before the Common Era (BCE). At that time, the Jews were under the authority of Antiochus III, the Seleucid king of Syria. His son, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, […]
Giving Thanks
On this Thanksgiving weekend in the US, let us try to find things (and people, of course!) for which we are thankful. Living a life of gratitude is good for our health! Prayer for Thanksgiving Day (Book of Common Prayer, modified) Almighty and gracious God, we give you thanks for the fruits of the earth […]
The House is Blue
The midterm election is over, and the House of Representatives has turned blue. So have state legislatures and governorships around the country. What will we really do with this important change in our national make-up? We still have Donald Trump as President. But in many places throughout our country, especially in the districts where Democrats […]
Mary Magdalene, The First Apostle
As we saw earlier, Mary Magdalene is a figure in the New (Christian) Testament of the Bible worth considering by us moderns. She is significant, in part, because she is so prominent in the canonical Christian texts: she appears numerous times in the New Testament and in all four gospels: Mt 27.55-56, 61; 28.1; Mk […]
What Americans Want and the Importance of the Midterms
Let’s look at some recent polls about the state of our nation on a range of social, economic and political issues, taking the pulse of what most of us want as a society. If we know some of what we want, we can then examine which elected officials and/or political parties can best bring about […]
Index to the Third Year
Thank you as always for checking in with WisdomWordsPPF! Here is a guide to the past year of blog posts (note that some posts appear in several categories). If you want a guide to the first year (October 2015-October 2016), you can find it here, and a guide to the second year (October 2016-October 2017) […]
The Values Voter Summit 2018 and a Look at Mike Pence
As we learn more about Donald Trump, his family, his connections with Russians, his finances, the people around him who have been indicted, jailed, caught lying and who have pleaded guilty to federal crimes, the closer we might be getting to his no longer being President – whether by resignation, impeachment, enactment of the 25th […]
A Neolithic Site in Turkey, its Goddess and its Women
There is a strong possibility that in prehistory – in Old Europe and perhaps elsewhere – our ancestors lived for centuries in peaceful, matrilineal societies that revered an all-powerful Nature Goddess. To illustrate what life might have been like in such a Neolithic society, we can focus on an archaeological site called Çatal Hüyük (also […]
Hillary and Helen: Women “Deleted” by the Texas Board of Education
When a conservative Christian advocacy group cheers a decision, it is almost certain that progressives will shudder. This is the case with Texas Values, whose members are applauding “the majority of the [Texas] State Board of Education for doing the right thing” – by voting on September 14 to remove some historical figures, including Hillary […]