Gay Vegan Socialists Won’t Let Me Say Merry Christmas!

It was early 2017 when I saw a bumper sticker on a car in the parking lot of a business complex. It read: “We Can Finally Say Merry Christmas Again.” We know who had just taken office that January in Washington D.C., and any doubt as to if the bumper sticker was sarcasm or not, …

Forest Bathing

(Shinrin-Yoku) Shinrin-Yoku, which in English you’ll hear called Forest Bathing, is a practice of immersion in nature, and in particular in the forest. As one can see from the name, the term originated in Japan where the practice is a part of the culture. Studies have shown actual physical benefits from forest bathing beyond the …

The Leap

The leap refers to people mentally crossing the gap between what we can know and what we believe without knowing. What we can reason out to be true, versus what we must believe intuitively. All supernatural claims are leaps. In each case some assumption must be made that is outside of explanation within our natural …

Pepper

It’s in the shaker on your table next to the salt. Or maybe in a tall, wooden mill waiting to be ground onto a salad or into a dish. It is boringly commonplace, and often not even mentioned when people are listing the spices they use.  Pepper. As everyone but me already knew, pepper (piper …