Okay, let me climb up on my soapbox... Welcome, one and all, to the holiday season. Not the Christmas season, not the Hannukah season, not even Kwanzaa... but the holiday season, since so many celebrations closely coincide at the winter solstice. And in case you haven't guessed - no, I'm NOT offended when it's called a holiday tree, even though I consider myself to be Christian. Yes, I call it a Christmas tree when I see a picture of one. But I find it hard to believe the fundamentalists are getting their drawers in a bunch over what to call an object that is essentially a pagan relic that got melded into our Christmas celebration. I know it must come as a shock to my Baptist brethren, but there was no decorated Douglas fir at the the manger - no, not even so much as a cedar shrub. No holly, no mistletoe, no poinsettias. So why insist on making it a Christian symbol? It's not, folks - never was, and never will be, no matter how hard we try. It belonged to the Egyptians, the Romans, even the druids centuries before the birth of Christ. Let's just accept that fact; accept that this nation of ours, founded on religious freedoms, is the home to many, many faiths; and move on to the celebration part of this season. Happy Holidays!
There are certain things about Nashville which would drive a Baptist minister to drink - in public. One of these things is the entity known as NES. Whenever NES isn't out butchering trees, apparently they're arbitrarily turning off power to entire city blocks. Granted, we had a storm the other night. Granted, there were a lot of people without power, and there was a transformer damaged. But notifying Vanderbilt 15 minutes after you've already done it that there will be "intermittent" power outages, then leaving the power off for an hour and a half, just doesn't seem Kosher to me. Blakemore is very busy street, as is 21st. I know that the traffic lights on Blakemore between Natchez and 21st were out, no police presence, just reliance that folks driving in Nashville would know to treat the intersections as 4-way stops. Since I swear two-thirds of the population doesn't understand the concept of a 4-way stop, this was a bad idea. Meanwhile, back at the ranc...
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