Religion Dispatches
…de of the road with a flat tire, or a broken down car, that help is just a phone call away. It also gives me discounts on lodging and other perks. My partner has a gold card with her name on it as well. The account number on both cards is the same. Years ago, when we signed up for the cards with the venerable roadside assistance company AAA, the woman at the counter smiled sweetly and never blinked an eye when we asked for the “family” plan. We we…
Read More
…descended from instant messaging of old (“lol,” etc.), distinct from cell phone text messaging only by the inclusion of tinyurl hyperlinks. The main feature of my experience of following the “service” was multitasking. Over the course of the three hours, I watched a lecture by Jared Diamond about the social functions of religion, cleaned up my kitchen, and did some transcribing for work. It allowed me, as Paul of Tarsus almost said, to check my e…
Read More…This went on for four years and then suddenly, in 2006, she picked up the phone. We began a relationship that was literally 40 years in the making. Too bad I had already made plans to move to California and once again I would be the prodigal sister. Still we made up for lost time and had a relationship like none I have ever had as an adult. I believe I already mentioned that my second of three grandsons was born on the 22nd of December. We shared…
Read More
…erything. So now if I’m trying to open up a bank account, I’m doing a cell phone application, or anything, that statement is there, it has just gone into everything, every aspect of one’s life, it’s there. It’s ridiculous to have that, but nonetheless it’s real. The problems are not just administrative: Ahmadis have a “glass ceiling” in the civil service, and discriminatory use of voter registration lists (Ahmadis are enrolled separately) keeps th…
Read More
…touch. Communal feeling, or feeling commune-ion, blackness is an alternate sanctum, an otherwise sanctuary, an ecology or constellation of joyous practices of re/assemblage-amid-disassemblage. Quantum communions, quantum solidarities. Orlando’s Pulse is this too. This is a moment for unequivocal black church and queer/ LGBT solidarity because antiblackness and homophobia and transphobia are interconnected. More still, in the face of Trump’s doubli…
Read More…eteorite? Bomb? End of the world? We were freaked out. No television, cell phone, internet service. There was no way to find out what happened. Later that night, in the Mayan village, the men gathered outside our hut, talking about it in hushed voices. Lacking any better answers, my husband offered the theory that perhaps it was from aliens. We learned the source of the explosion the next morning. At 8:59, the space shuttle, taking a detour due to…
Read More
…people to this moment in time. Some players will have seen the shaky cell phone videos of Qaddafi’s discovery now circulating, with all the bumps and blurs you’d expect from someone filming a violent attack close up. The horrifying footage shows the dictator’s last moments, complete with flashes of faces splattered with blood, punctuated with off-screen shouts of “Allahu Akbar,” and revealing glimpses of Qaddafi’s pummeled and resigned visage blu…
Read More
…to have to staff that administration. And in particular if you remove thousands, if not tens of thousands of career civil servants, somebody needs to fill those positions. And I think the first Trump administration did show pretty persuasively that a career national security official, a career neoconservative is not going to be as reliable in implementing, you know, Trump’s agenda either domestically or in foreign policy. And, you know, the Nazis…
Read More
…orced him to strip naked and interrogated him. His wife received harassing phone calls. Kaggwa appears to be the target of intimidation. Kaggwa is also the executive director of the Support Initiative For People With Atypical Sex Development, a group that advocates for the rights of intersex people in Uganda. Kaggwa was born intersex, and raised as a girl. He “became very Christian, turned to God a lot to see if there would be a miracle of some so…
Read More…f compassionate immigration reform. How has that impacted your work? I get phone calls from LDS people who would identify themselves as politically conservative, but they say, “There’s this guy I know . . . Can you help him? He’s a really good guy.” People need to remember that there are many “really good guys” out there waiting for immigration reform. People coming to the US for work get villainized. “Illegal alien” is one of the most unbelieva…
Read More