The Bully Pulpit

I have a wife that I love to death, and Lord knows she puts up with more faults from me than I could attach to every finger and toe on my body. In other words, she puts up with a lot.

But I put up with my share, too, and that is the nature of a marriage. But how could any person, male or female, want more than one spouse? As if the one isn't enough to keep you on your toes.

But I have to say that if it were up to me, I don't know that there would be laws written to outlaw such a practice. As long as the decision to enter into a marriage was made by consenting adults, and not by parents seeking to offload noisy teenagers, why should the state intervene?

Posted by James Faulk at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Seven a.m. wake-up and the kids scramble down the long halls of the house, looking wildly for their Easter baskets. Candy, stuffed animals, toys — the Easter Bunny always brings the works. He/She/It is a kind of Santa Claus Lite, without the red suit or the stretch marks.

For me, the first order of business is to check the weather ... Mostly sunny first thing in the morning, contrary to the forecast, which calls for mostly cloudy skies today leading into rain tonight. Maybe the egg hunt will be on after all.

Of course, I am firm believer (as all Humboldters must be) in getting the hunt on no matter what. As a child, I remember one particularly wet Easter when my brother and I, with some cousins, spent Easter afternoon in the dirty and oily garage, crawling around on our hands and knees, looking for eggs amongst burnt out carburetors and old weed whackers.

It was a white trash Easter, for sure. But as kids we felt we were getting something over on Mother Nature. Give us your best, Ma Earth, and we'll still find a way to conduct this silly tradition of ours.

Question of the Day: How did the story of Christ's resurrection evolve into a giant bunny hopping around the planet and giving away old boiled eggs?

The answer, of course, lays in marketing. Early Christians realized that the best way to convert the pagans was to adopt their rituals and holidays and adapt them to the Christian tradition.

"In second century Europe, the predominate spring festival was a raucous Saxon fertility celebration in honor of the Saxon Goddess Eastre (Ostara), whose sacred animal was a hare," says the article. "The colored eggs associated with the bunny are of another, even more ancient origin. The eggs associated with this and other Vernal festivals have been symbols of rebirth and fertility for so long the precise roots of the tradition are unknown, and may date to the beginning of human civilization."

Posted by James Faulk at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My wife and I, with two of our three children, recently made a trek up to Seattle to visit one of my best friends on his 30th Birthday. For the most part, while long, the drive was pleasant and comfortable in our eggplant minivan.

But after a few short hours on the road, one thing became clear — Oregon is a waste of real estate. Rude people, angry looks from regular Joes who couldn't have read my lciense plate to know my state of origin, and an overall sense of WTF? makes Oregon chafe like yesterday's diaper.

I almost got into a scuffle with one gas station attendant. You know the program, Oregon's welfare system where they make every gas station hire some loser to pump gas. Self-serve is outlawed in the lovely state of Oregon.

Well, I ask this particular jerk where the restroom is, and he just gives me a blank stare. I ask him again, and after a painful and irritating pause, he responds that it is where the sign says it is. Stomping off, I fill the urinal to bursting and then go into the store, where said attendant is now working the register. I put a cup of coffee on the counter, ask how much it is.

Same blank stare. Now thoroughly enraged, I practically shout: How much is the coffee, friend-o? He frowns, then points at the digital display. I angrily toss two two dollars on the counter and proceed to lambaste the chubby SOB with every expletive I could think of in a short amount of time.

I then proceed to ask for the manager's name, the employee's badge number, and then take down a detailed description of his every identifying mark. I do nothing with the information, but for once I wanted to get a reaction out of the bum. It didn't work, and we left town and ultimately Oregon.

And as we soon discovered, people are a lot nicer in Washington. And I didn't even mention that on the way back we broke down outside Sutherlin, where a little community exists off the business from three commercial enterprises: a Chevron station; a small hotel with pink, A-frame cabins; and an adult store. We only frequented two of the establishments while waiting for Joe-Bob to fix the van. I'll let you guess which ones.

Posted by James Faulk at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The gifts have been given, the toys unwrapped, the childish exclamations of joy or disappointment sounded in the room full of relatives that you barely ever see, with good reason. All in all, it was a good Christmas around my house — all three kids got things they wanted, and the wife wasn't too angry with her small, but tasteful, gift of jewelry.

Thinking of Christmas reminds that we still have the mess to clean up — eegads to commercialism and all its associated packaging. Where DID I put that bottle of Peppermint Schnapps?

And now we get to anticipate the next major holiday — my birthday! As of Jan. 7, I will be 31 — two years away from the Jesus year when I hopefully find God, or spirituality, or something. Either that, or I build some mound out of potatoes, ala Close Encounters, and call it good.

Posted by James Faulk at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

My wife and I were so pleased with each other, having spent the grueling hours in debate only to emerge with a name for our new baby girl that we both, well, liked: Sophia Elizabeth Stem-Faulk.

Sophia was exotic, it seemed, while not being unusual enough to make future third grade teachers stumble over the syllables during roll call. It's classy, somehow, and reminds you of spending days on a yacht in the Mediterranean, sipping Seltzer and ruminating on Picasso.

After we made the decision, we heard that somehow a few others in our small world had settled on — or at least considered — the same name, but not enough to bother us.

Since Sophia's birth, we know we've made the right decision. She is a Sophia, in the way that kids in a short time come to assume their names as an actual identity, rather than just a label. She could be nothing but Sophia Elizabeth.

But I was still disappointed to learn recently that Sophia was the most popular girl's name for 2007.

Let's just recall that my name is James, and my wife is an Amy. Together, they are about as common as can be for American kids out of the 1970s generations. Along with the Jennifers and Mikes, our names are near the top of every list of names.

Sophia, we'd hoped, would be a bit more original. Alas for that.

But truthfully, it's no real loss. Watching the little three-month-old girl watch me, weighing the facts of a sudden existence and greeting it all with a smile that might just be passing gas, I have no doubt my little girl will make a unique enough mark to emerge from the vast herd of Sophias born in 2007.

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