On June 14, Iranians will go to the polls to elect a president who will replace President Ahmadinejad – or, as some Iranians call him, President Idiotson (AhmaGH-inejad).

That’s the good news. The so-so news is that there isn’t an awfully diverse field running this time, unlike last time. And no moderates, who have all been disqualified or harassed into not putting their name in. More »

Just my luck. Now that people are hyperventilating over something else, I get material from two different 501(c)(3) groups, that put some perspective on the IRS “scandal.” Now I’m wondering why the president, the Congress and the IRS were cowering like whupped puppies.

One missive was from The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), a Quaker group, and one was from the Faith and Freedom Coalition, also a Christian organization. Both mailings were unapologetically religious in tone. The similarity ends there. More »

As a little kid, I wasn’t too discriminating on the subject of cookies. Like the Cookie Monster, I presumed the best cookie in the world was the cookie I was eating right that minute. As a pre-teen, I got a bit more sophisticated, recognizing that some of my friends’ parents had special cookies they made better than anyone else. Mrs. Richardson’s Peanut Butter Cookies, Mrs. Lietz’s Hermits, and so on. And no one matched my own Mom for her Chocolate Chip Cookies. More »

In the hoo-hah over the 2014 budget, and whether seniors, who are mostly middle class, or poor, should lose some of their Social Security in order for us not to have to tax the top 1%, I have to wonder: Who actually deserves to fork over a bit more of their money?

Middle-class people generally work a full job, pay taxes on what they earn, and spend most of their money in ways that support the American economy: for housing, cars, groceries, movies or whatnot. (Poor people often work hard or even harder, but one of the definitions of “poor” is that they don’t get a living wage, so they don’t have a big tax imprint.) More »

When I lived in Iran, the biggest event of the year was “Now Ruz,” the Iranian New Year, which occurs on the Spring Equinox, March 20. The entire festival season goes on for a couple weeks.

The first day of the event is called “Chahar Shambe Suri,” or “Red Wednesday.” On that day people shoot off fireworks and build bonfires in the streets. They jump over the fires while shouting, “My yellow to you, your red to me!” Yellow signifies sickness, red signifies health.

Before Iran became a Muslim country, they were Zoroastrians and believed that fire was a holy purifying element, so it’s easy to see that Chahar Shambe Suri has Zoroastrian roots. In the early days of the Revolutionary government there was an attempt to quash the Persian New Year celebrations, and the fire-jumping in particular, but the people loved it too much — it would be like trying to stop Christmas, for us. More »

Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) may be coming to Crawford County, and residents are unsure how to assess the potential dangers of it. On the one hand you have a mixture of different scientific reports, and on the other hand you have the gas companies putting happy ads on TV showing clean, healthy-looking actors in green landscapes telling us fracking is good for us.

By “us” I’m presuming they mean good for “them,” the gas companies’ profits. That part is really, really true. More »

The following blog was written when the movie “2012″ came out in 2009. However, as Dec. 21, 2012, is upon us, it seemed irresistible to take another bite of the apple:

I understand some people are getting a mite worried about the world ending on Dec. 21, 2012, when according to the Mayan Calendar, it’ll be destroyed, and a new world put in place. More »

As I wait for the cookies to bake, I got to thinking of all the good eating I enjoyed this summer. I gorged on so many tasty local specialties, great restaurant meals and wonderful home-cooked food that for the first few weeks I was back in Grayling I actually enjoyed not eating much. (That phase didn’t last.) More »

I used to call my old car the “Wonderful One-Hoss Shay” after the horse-drawn buggy in the poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., in which the shay “ran a hundred years to a day, and then, of a sudden, it – ah, but stay! I’ll tell you the story without delay!”

When I came back to the USA to take care of my Mom, I told her she could afford a new car instead of the 1987 Toyota Camry hatchback she had. She replied serenely, “This one will last me out.” More »

Take heart, Americans. It may be easier to keep Iran from having nuclear weapons than the Israelis are letting on. We’ve heard that Iran is an existential danger so many times we don’t stop to question it, but there’s a fair possibility Iran doesn’t want a bomb that badly.

First of all, as I pointed out before, they know that using a bomb would be suicidal. Ahmadinejad even admitted, “What intelligent person would fight 5,000 American bombs with one bomb?” More »