Building a Canoe #1

I've had enough feeling grouchy about the dismal state of America, so decided to do something positive for myself. I've decided to build a 16 1/2 foot Peterborough to use on the small streams of Northern Michigan. Here are the stations set up on the strongback, ready for the rest of the work. I've gotten some Northern White Cedar and am busy ripping strips and preparing them.

It's a great way to relieve stress, though right now I have a lot of sawdust and not much to show for it. And, like anything I imagine that there will be mistakes to be made that, as the builder, I'll be the only one to notice (I hope). Still, at the end of all the work it will be nice to be able to paddle a unique cedar-strip boat.

The prospect of enjoying the nice rivers we have around the Great Lakes is one reason that the inconvenience of having to keep my car out in the cold is only minor. But then, like building the boat itself, the experience-intensive act of canoeing makes this all worth it.

Outrage Just Isn't Enough Anymore

Haven't thought to write in a while since railing at the abuses of my government and the religious war on science just would add one more voice to the chorus. Then, Pat Robertson proclaimed that Ariel Sharon's stroke was a punishment by God. This is merely the latest in his hate-filled pronouncements of our creator's thoughts. Robertson has no proof that he knows the mind of God any more than he could prove me wrong when I say that I spoke to the creator today and she told me that Robertson is an unethical weasel destined for the 8'th ring of Hell. Anyway, I am disgusted by remarks that give voice to religious thought more in tune with our barbaric history than the ethics of human value.

It is sad that Robertson's remarks are not vigorously challenged except for a few tepid rebuttals that what he said was un-christian and a perversion of religion. That got my attention because Robertson has always been clear that his thoughts come from the Old Testament, the foundation of many religions. His pronouncements have always been christian and religious. I am convinced that his remarks, rather than a corruption of western religious thought, is precisely what religion is all about; hatred of nonbelievers, intolerance of non-religious thought, and a call to slavishly subjugation our thoughts to authority. Religion is profoundly moral in the sense that it makes judgements of right and wrong. What I object to is the debased, primitive, ethics of Robertson's religion. He sure likes those moral ten-commandments but doesn't say that the punishment for transgressing any of them is death. Ah, such a loving creator, to advance the cause of hatred in our world.

That is the problem when one really sees what serves as the foundation for Christianity, Judiasm, and Islam. Wow! Those books are chock full of hatred. After all we have the bible to thank for two millenia of atrocities against innocent people acused of being witches, heritics or scientists. The koran is even better, with a frenzied hatred of nonbelievers on nearly every page. It is unfortunate that in America we talk of a war on terror when in actuality it should be a war on an islam that seeks to kill all nonbelievers. But then to accept the reality that the islamic religion is at war with us we would need to examine our christian and judiac roots and I think people are afraid to confront the issue that all religions are about the hatred of outsiders. We would rather live under an umbrella of faux tolerance than recognize that Pat Robertson is indeed a very religious man.