While we were in Wyoming, I discovered that the 28 degree morning temperatures really required a scarf to keep me warm, and I had neglected to bring a scarf (Gloves, yes. Hat, yes. Scarf, no.) So we ended up wandering around Jackson looking for a scarf.

I wanted to spend my money at a local business, but figured I’d end up taking what I could get, since Jackson is very much a tourist trap. Not only did I find a local business, but I found an organic and fair trade scarf there!

Although Whyoming Outfitters where I bought the scarf does not seem to be on line, the company that made the scarf is: Indigenous Fair trade + Organic. I figure that as someone with disposable income, I really should support fair trade and organic products whenever possible, and the higher prices reflect the true costs of the products as opposed to the prices at chains and superstores that are subsidized or bought at the price of paying employees a living wage.

Do I do this all the time? Of course not. I have a minimal amount of disposable income, I’m not rich. But it’s nice to know that when I am able to make those choices, there are companies that allow me to do so.

If you are confused, see here and here.

So those of you who don’t read this by RSS feed have seen how I’ve personalized Word Press, but believe it or not, there is more to this site than my blog.

Really!

I’ve maintained a personal website since 1998. Initially on Labyrinth, then on Earthlink, and then on various web hosting services. I started my weblog in February of 2002.

Why yes, I did all the coding my hand, thank you. All my web design was done in Arachnophilia, which was a code editor. So no permalinks or anything like that in the early years.

If you go back, what you’ll discover is that since I was writing for myself and sometimes erin (hi erin!), I wrote whatever came to mind. In essence it was to replace the paper journals that I was never capable of keeping up.

Obviously it worked in that I’ve been at this for over six years, but somewhere along the way I seem to have lost that sense of fearlessness about my writing I had then. For example, I can’t remember the last time I wrote about religion, and my posts about politics are few and far between.

Still, that’s a lot of words I’ve written.

I also have a section of writing in general, that contains links to short stories that came from my dreams (I have exceedingly weird dreams, and I sometimes used them as a writing exercise in coherency), and a couple of papers I wrote for school. Those were actually fun. There’s something about a good research paper…

Er… never mind.

OK. So, this somehow ended up being all about the blog anyway. Fine. Tomorrow then.

Here is something I will never understand…

Well, let’s take this back a bit first.

I’m a Democrat with a big D. Have been most of my life, although I admit to Libertarian tendencies. But the why is what I want to address here for a moment. I’m a Democrat because the Democratic party is the major party that aligns most with what I believe and hold to be most important.

First and foremost I believe it is my responsibility to care for others. That means it is our responsibility as a country to care for those in need, regardless of who they are. To me, that means providing health health care to those who can’t afford it. It means providing a safety net to keep children and other at risk individuals from slipping through the cracks. It means providing a living wage for all workers. It means providing a quality education for all children, not just the children of the rich who can afford private school. It means preserving our forests and our wildlife for future generations, not just because so future generations can see trees and animals, but because I believe that biodiversity will be critical to the survival of our species. It means protecting the environment, not just for ourselves and our future generations, but for the entire world.

It means that it is our responsibility for look out for those who are most vulnerable, and if that means that some people game the system and take advantage, so be it. We cannot allow the actions of a handful individuals to become an excuse not to care for those in need.

And I believe that the policies of the Democrats are most in-line with these strongly held personal beliefs.

(Don’t even talk to me about the Green Party or any other “third” party. The US is a two party system. That’s the way it is. In order to affect change, at least for now, we have to work within the system. I won’t waste my vote on a third party candidate unless I am opposed to both candidates.)

So where am I going with this?

Where I am going is my disbelief at the rabid Hillary “supporters” who say they refuse to vote for Barak Obama.

Did they not listen to a word she said during her campaign?

Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama hold many similar beliefs, and the differences between them are minimal compared to the difference between them and John McCain. If they truly believed as she did, if they truly felt that her beliefs were their beliefs, then there is no way they could vote for John McCain.

John McCain does not stand for the things that Hillary Clinton finds important. And so to claim that one would prefer to vote for McCain over Obama means to me that these individuals never truly listed to a single word she said. It means they saw her as the flavor of the month and wanted to jump on her bandwagon, but never understood in the slightest what was important to her and what is important to the Democratic Party.

No, I was not a Clinton supporter. I have been saying for years that she has too many liabilities to be elected. But if she had won the primary, you can be damned sure I would have rallied behind her.

Because what is truly important is the system of beliefs for which she stands, and that they match the system of beliefs for which I stand.

hello
1883, alt. of hallo (1840), itself an alt. of holla, hollo, a shout to attract attention, first recorded 1588. Perhaps from holla! “stop, cease.” Popularity as a greeting coincides with use of the telephone, where it won out over Alexander Graham Bell’s suggestion, ahoy. Central telephone exchange operators were known as hello-girls (1889).

“Hello, formerly an Americanism, is now nearly as common as hullo in Britain (Say who you are; do not just say ‘hello’ is the warning given in our telephone directories) and the Englishman cannot be expected to give up the right to say hello if he likes it better than his native hullo. [H.W. Fowler, "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage," 1926]

Why am I sharing this?

Because Shawn somehow managed to remind me of this:

‘Heaveno’ has received one heck of a response

KINGSVILLE, Texas (AP) - A South Texas man who campaigned to replace ”hello” with ”heaveno” has had plenty of opportunities to use his new greeting.

Kingsville resident Leonso Canales Jr. has been inundated with telephone calls since he successfully lobbied Kleberg County commissioners last month to designate ”heaveno” as the county’s official greeting.
…
Still, Matthews said, he wants recognition as a pioneer in taking ”hell” out of ”hello.”

Which led to the discovery of this.

Which lead to this comment by Shawn:

I’m like, “I already read this, HeavenO…”

The subject of gossip came up today, and I realized that gossip seems to be like pornography: I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it when I hear it.

Specifically, my friend and I were considering several cases.

If you pass along something that has happened to someone so others may know, such as a death in the family, a serious illness, or along happier lines an engagement, we don’t think that’s gossip. You’re sharing the news because you care about either the person to whom the incident happened, or you think the news will affect the person you are telling.

If your sharing information that may relate directly to you or your friends, I don’t think that’s gossip. I think this falls under the category of worrying about the future/bitching about the present.

The case that I wasn’t sure about was talking about your enemies and people you don’t like. If I gloat to my friend about something bad that happened to someone I don’t like, does this qualify as gossip? I’m not telling her so she’ll tell anyone else, I’m telling her because it makes my bitter little soul happy when bad things happen to bad people.

It seems to me that gossip primarily falls under the category of telling anyone who will listen news you know about other people. i.e. it isn’t personal in that you aren’t happy for the person, you aren’t worried about the person, the news does not affect you or the person you are telling directly, you’re just talking because you like talking about other people.

But I could be wrong. Maybe what I do falls into the category of gossip. If gossip is based upon intent, then I think I’m ok. But if it’s based solely upon talking about other people? Well, then I’m not so much of a good person.

An e-mail conversation got me thinking again about a subject I’ve been considering off and on for several years now, and that’s the change in attitudes in the United States towards multiculturalism.

My grandmother talks about how she regrets her parents never taught her Polish and Lithuanian. I have friends my age who speak only English, despite having a parent for whom English is not their first language.

Yet when I look at friends my own age with children, there is a push for the child to be bilingual, to speak the native languages of both parents (or of a grandparent in one case.)

It seems to me that between there is something profoundly different about my generation and those who are having kids now, and that is those my age want their children to be aware of their ancestry, their history, and the language and stories from which they descend.

So what changed between my parent’s generation and my generation? Well, the big thing that comes to mind is Civil Rights. The country had a radical shift from separate but equal to equality for all in the eyes of the law. And I think that profoundly changed the way my generation and those after me think.

In my grandmother’s time, having an accent meant that you dealt primarily with other immigrants. And I have to admit that until the great-depression, this worked very well for my great-grandfather. But I imagine that he came across prejudice for the way he spoke, and wanted to make sure his children would not suffer the same prejudice.

That doesn’t mean accents are acceptable across the US now. Unfortunately, there is still plenty of prejudice for those who speak with an accent of any sort. But being bilingual and fluent in more than one language is seen as something else entirely.

But even more than that I think there is a difference in how multi racial children are treated. Remember, it has been only 40 years since the Loving Decision. Only two years before I was born it was illegal in many states for interracial couples to get married. In such an atmosphere, is it a surprise that parents of a multiracial child would want to protect their child from the racism they may well have experienced in their daily lives?

But now such prejudices, although they still exist, are hidden away for the most part. There is no more rock throwing or name calling.

And I think this is a very important thing.

Is everything perfect? Hell no. There are parts of the country where you can be arrested for driving while black, where someone with dark skin and an accent is assumed to be either an illegal immigrant or a terrorist.

But when I sit and think that just 40 years ago interracial marriages were illegal, it seems to me that even if we still have a ways to go, we have still come very far, and it is important to remember and celebrate that fact.

May it not take 40 more years for us to come the rest of the way.

Yes, Eric is a fan of the God of Tapeworms.

Please, ask him how much he adores tapeworms.

Everyone else has been saying it, so I wasn’t going to say anything, but then I realized that it’s important to say something, because silences can be taken as tacit approval or disapproval.

So here it is:

I am thrilled and delighted that California is allowing same sex couples to get married. I think this is one of the best things that has happened in years.

I’ve been married now for 9 1/2 years, and I think there is something awesome about standing up and saying, “I love this person! I want to spend the rest of my life with this person!”

Marriage is an amazing thing. It’s a way of saying before the world that this is the person I love. No matter what, I am going to stick with this person and they are going to stick with me, because we complete each other.

I think that the more people that can say this and mean it and stick with it, the better the world will be.

Because really, how can the world have too much love?

So the pope is in the US. And his visit is all over the news.

All of which has served to remind me of the many problems I have with the Catholic church.

Religion is a very difficult subject for me to discuss here, because my family is quite devout, so I feel as if my lack of faith is letting them down.

Actually to be more clear, it is not a subject I have discussed with my family, first and foremost because I don’t want to upset them. (And that right there may tell you all you a whole lot about me.)

I think the biggest problem for me is that I have no faith–to try and put it another way, when it comes to religion, I feel nothing. When people talk about their faith and how it makes them feel, I have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. It feels like I’m blind and someone is trying to explain color to me. I can accept the idea that such a thing exists, but I can’t imagine it myself.

From that stems all my other problems, I’d guess. Because since I lack faith, it fascinates me. I want to understand what other people think, why they feel the way they do, to see if I can figure out what is wrong with me that makes me different.

But I’ve found that this only makes things worse.

The more I read about religion, the less I understand it, and the more alien I feel from it.

Let’s take the Catholic Church for starters. Although there are some things I believe the church does right, there are many other things where I believe the church is mistake, and in their error are actually causing harm. Women in the priesthood. Birth control. Homosexuality. I think that by saying such things are wrong and unacceptable, the church is actually causing harm, not just to itself, but to the greater community.

These have long been issues for me, but the more I read and learned, the more areas of disagreement I found. Papal infallibility? Don’t accept it. Immaculate conception? That just seems like a really big fudge. And then there’s the creation of the New Testament. The Christian bible was created through years of what was essentially political wrangling. The idea that something was acceptable one year, and then suddenly out of the cannon seems ridiculous. And don’t even get me started on the translation errors and issues. You don’t like what the bible says? Just find another translation you like better.

Never mind the internal inconsistencies in the bible.

And then there’s the whole relativism thing. The pope is really big on telling us how bad relativism is. Well, guess what? I’m a huge relativist.

First and foremost, I don’t think God damns people for calling God by different names, or for worshiping in one manner over another. I also don’t think God is the sadist many make God out to be. I mean, the seven circles of hell? That sounds not like the God of loving kindness, but instead like a vengeful human hoping that his enemies get what’s coming to them.

Secondly, the more I read about different religions, the more similarities I see between them. Why allow humans to create different religions that are REALLY similar, but not QUITE the same, so these religions can all claim superiority and cause more war and suffering than any other subject in the history of humanity.

But putting all that aside, I don’t think the God described in these religions fits into the world today–or even the world of the past. Now before your head explodes, let me explain. American Christianity seems to have some bizarre focus upon a personal God. The God of healing and miracles. Well, when I look around the world I see absolutely no sign of that God. I see a world that continues on it’s merry way with no external intervention. Which is GREAT as far as I’m concerned, because I think a personal God counter-indicates free-will. And I’m an even bigger fan of free will than I am of relativism.

So I look at the world, with my lack of faith and my lack of belief. I see a world completely unlike the world described by so many religions.

But I don’t see a bad world. And I don’t see one in which God is absent. I simply see a world in which God exists in everything, and it is up to us to recognize that fact, and treat all other creatures accordingly.

Yesterday we had an inch of snow and the temperature didn’t get about 35 (however, this was limited to this area, as it was in the upper 40s at Parkersburg). Today the temperature got up to the low 60s and was sunny.

Hurrah for layers!

We all went out to lunch today, which is a good thing, because my grandmother doesn’t really like to go out that much, but my house is so small, she doesn’t get enough walking around here, even when she walks back and forth through the house. Of course since she’s out at least once a week for doctor appointments, I suppose she’s getting her exercise there.

But back to lunch. We went her new favorite restaurant, Cheddar’s, which she likes because the food is very good and very inexpensive. (Three of us ate lunch and shared a dessert for $25.) But as it is Sunday, it was incredibly busy (And there’s something I don’t get either. How come all these “Christians” who think that homosexuality is EVIL because the bible says so, have no problem ignoring the command to keep the sabbath holy by forcing minimum wage workers to work long shifts on Sunday and be away from their families? There’s a long rant for another time.) so we had to wait half an hour for a table, which I was expecting (having worked food service for years myself. [Are you still with me here? Not to many parenthetical asides for you? Good.]) What was interesting to notice which customers paid attention to others in the waiting area.

By the time I had parked the car, my grandmother was seated on one of the benches and Michael was standing in front of her chatting. After a brief moment, the mother and daughter who were sitting beside her got up so Michael and I could have their seats. I protested, but they left, so we sat. As we waited, I paid attention to who sat and who stood, and who offered their seats to others.

After one white haired couple put their name on the list, they turned around and there were no seats, so they stood in the middle of the lobby, right in front of us and two college students (a young couple). After a minute, when the college students didn’t get up to offer their seats, I got up and offered them my seat (and Michael’s seat).

It just leads me to wonder, what people are thinking (or not) as they wait. When we’ve got (without my grandmother) to restaurants where there is a long wait, I inevitably give up my seat for older customers or pregnant women (especially the ones who like they’re about 10 months pregnant and about to fall over). Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely don’t mind doing this, but as there are other able bodied men and women in the lobby, I wonder why no one else ever offers their seat to someone else? Is this common elsewhere or just here? Or do I spent more time people watching and am just more likely to notice older couples and pregnant women who need to get off their feet?

John Scalzi finally went to the Creation Museum. Essay AND a photo set with snarky comments!

My favorite part is “vegetarian dinosaurs.”

I read a fascinating article this morning on the Amish and forgiveness.

Really, it’s interesting. Go read it.

Back? Good.

First of all, I find it astounding that they are able to forgive so quickly and seemingly easily. That has to be very, very hard. But it also gives me great hope, to know that human beings are actually capable of forgiveness, even under such terrible circumstances. Maybe the human race isn’t completely doomed after all.

I also note that they separate forgiveness from grief. Because you have forgive someone, it doesn’t seem to mean that you don’t still feel grief for the loss. That’s kinda important. You can still feel pain about a situation, but it doesn’t necessarily help to feel anger as well as pain.

But forgiveness is a very hard thing. It’s something that comes up sometimes when you’re dealing with depression. Even if your depression isn’t caused by something that someone did to you, it may be caused by an inability to forgive yourself.

My depression falls into the later category. For the most part, I can get beyond things that people do to me (I do tech support. If I took everything personally my head would have exploded years ago.) but I find it far harder to forgive similar lapses in myself. After all, I did some pretty stupid stuff when I was younger, so it’s easy for me to see where other people are coming from. It’s far harder to accept stupidity from myself, after all, I should have known better, right?

Not really. But that doesn’t always stop me.

So maybe I need to take a lesson from the Amish and forgive. Forgive those who have hurt me, but also forgive myself, because I am just as deserving of my own forgiveness as anyone else.

It’s Banned Book Week.

Go read something subversive.

Here are the most frequently challenged books for 2006:

1. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
2. Gossip Girls series by Cecily Von Ziegesar
3, Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
4. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
5. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
6. Scary Stories  series by Alvin Schwartz
7. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
8. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
9. Beloved by Toni Morrison
10. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Here are the most challenged books for the first half of this decade:

Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
“The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier
Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck
“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou
“Fallen Angels” by Walter Dean Myers
“It’s Perfectly Normal” by Robie Harris
Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz
Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey
“Forever” by Judy Blume

Me? I just finished catching up on an excellent comic series, and am now reading some supernatural fiction and trying to figure out what else I want to be reading (aside from everything listed in the sidebar.)

(more…)

I think what I found most amusing, was that the last question was, “Do you read the bible” and my answer was “No.”

I just read a lot about religion is all.

Too bad it doesn’t tell me what I missed. I’m pretty sure it was one or both of the “which book follows which book” questions.
(more…)

If this isn’t a mistranslation, then the I must say that the pope is a true politician.

…I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.

Yes, I am quite certain that the pope is sorry that Muslims around the world reacted badly to his quotation of Emperor Manuel II Paleologos of the Byzantine Empire.

Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached

However, I’d rather read that he’s sorry for what he said. I find it difficult to believe that he didn’t consider the reaction of his words before he said them. After all, it’s not as if the Catholic church was a paragon of peace and human rights at that time. The Crusades stretched the thirteenth century, the Spanish Inquisition began in the fifteenth century.

I was initially going to ignore the remarks by the pope. After all, I don’t like him, so I know I’m likely to take things he says the wrong way. However, if he can’t even get an apology right, then I fear that my negative impressions of the head of the Catholic church may be well-founded.

There was a bit this morning, just as I woke up, on the health aspects of forgiveness.

One comment was that if you forgive someone, and they don’t apologize in response, then what’s the point?

The reply was (in essence) that forgiveness is not to get a response out of the other person who has hurt you, but for you yourself, so you can get on with your life.

It made me think about times I’ve seen, primarily from “evangelical Christians,” people who will often speak openly about “forgiving you” for your transgression/sin/whatever. They’re often quite blunt and in the face about it, stepping right up to get that other cheek slapped.

I don’t think they have it right any more that the person who wanted an apology in response to their forgiveness. From where I’m standing, they don’t look like they actually forgive. They’re just trying to look better than their transgressor. It comes across as “look what a good Christian I am! I’m forgiving my enemies, just like Jesus said!” Which seems to be missing the point entirely.

They are openly forgiving those who have trespassed against them, yet who quite obviously do not want or need to hear abot that forgiveness, and who in many cases see that “forgiveness” as yet another slap in the face; a part of the original argument.

If you forgive someone–truly forgive someone–who has hurt you or upset you, do you always need to tell that person you have forgiven them? Is that the only way for them to know that you have forgiven them?

It seems to me that the answer is no, you don’t, and in some cases, if make a point to tell the person that you are forgiving them, then you aren’t really forgiving them at all. Forgiveness is something that happens to you. Often something you have to work very hard to achieve. Forgiveness is not just something that occurs when you say the words.

“I forgive you.”

Sometimes, yes, you do need to say those words. To let the person know that enough water has passed under the bridge. To let them know (to quote Concrete Blonde), “I’m not angry anymore.”

But I don’t think that is the case for all situations. And I don’t think that in most cases when the words are still hot on your tongue–or hot in your ears–that forgiveness is what is called for.

Sometimes, when you think that you need to give forgiveness, maybe what you need to give is an apology. Or maybe you just need to step back from the situation, to give everyone room to breathe and room to consider. Then later, when you’ve come to terms with the situation, that is the time to forgive. That’s the time for you to move on with your life, to forgive, regardless of whether the other person knows or not.

Godchecker.com.

This is wonderful!
(via Making Light)

Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell and those who reside there.

I heard Bush on the news this morning, using terms like murder and destruction of life, when talking about stem cell research. Does he even understand what those terms mean?

It got me to thinking about the many inconsistencies in his policies of “life”. As I’ve said before, I don’t understand how anyone can keep a straight face while calling this president “pro-life” as his policies across the spectrum are some of the most anti-life I’ve seen since.

But even if we narrow the focus just to pregnancy and embroys and fetal life, there is still incredible hypocrisy. Why is it okay to create these embryos, and then leave them frozen until they lose viability, but not to use these embryos for research that may save countless lives?

If destroying embroys is wrong, then why is creating more embryos than can be implanted okay?

If the life in these embroys is so precious, then why are they allowed to sit in freezers?

It seems to me that the problem is not the destruction of embryos for stem cell research, but the creation of embryos that will be abandoned. If it’s wrong to take an embryo and use it to develop a treatment to save lives, then it is also wrong to take an embryo and leave it in cold storage until it is no longer viable.

If embryonic life is so valuable, then should we not place a moratorium upon creating it through artificial means because of the extra embryos created and then abandoned?

I find it unlikely, however, that Bush will come out in favor of such a policy. Fertility treatment is big business–and available only to the rich.

For the curious, the BBC has a nice article on the history of papal conclaves.

I kinda like the bread and water rations idea.

ADDENDUM the First:
I take it back. Give them yummy food and comfy chairs and maybe they’d have thought about things a bit longer.

Look! Stupidity!

Oddly enough I’ve been relatively silent on the Terri Schiavo case. Oddly, because end-of-life care has been a major focus of my studies.

First things first, I am morally and ethically opposed to euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. I am pro-life across the board (and in a way that the president and most conservatives most certainly are not).

I do, however, believe that what has been happening in the Terri Schiavo case is wrong. No one should be forced to live like that, when they are no longer living.

I also believe that what we should be learning from this is the importance of filling out a living will and a health care directive. If you are in WV, you can go to the WV Center for End of Life Care.

It is important, although it is very easy to put off–after all, despite all the time I have spent studying the issue, I still have not filled out the forms. But I will. This is my note to myself. It’s too important to keep putting off.

ADDENDUM the First
For some excellent posts, see:
Respectful of Otters for a medical opinion
Obsidian Wings for the opinion of a bioethicist

I’ve been thinking about the continual claims of the religious right, that America was founded on religion, and is a religious nation, and thus Christianity should be forced upon all Americans whether they like it or not. (There’s a disgusting billboard on University Avenue that claims that those who aren’t Christians are traitor to America, which is what got me fired up on the subject.)

I’ve always thought that the founding fathers were far more tolerant than, but I never had anything to back that up. So I decided to look for a list of the US presidents (especially the early presidents) and see what religious faith they were. Needless to say, I didn’t find everything I wanted in one place, and so compiled the information into a table that suited me.

It seems to me that several of the early presidents were either deists or of a more tolerant faith than most of the religious right. I mean, you don’t see a lot of evangelical Unitarians out there.

So I continue to doubt the claims of the religious right when it comes to the First Amendment.

However, compiling the list again reminded me of how little history I know. I’ve read books on Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, but I know so little about the rest of the founding fathers.

Sometimes I feel like there will never be enough time to learn everything I want to know.

Mental illness is infrequently presented well in books and TV, but there is one type of presentation that I’ve found fascinating.

The first time came across it was in the Margaret Weis and http://www.trhickman.com/ series “Death Gate Cycle”, where the wizard Zifnab (Zifnab is what brought this to mind. There’s just something pleasing about the name.) spouts off crazy ideas and concepts that are recognizable to the readers as quotes and ideas from modern books, movies and television. It was as if Zifnab couldn’t function well in his world, because he was channeling ours.

The second was in the Deep Space Nine episode, “Far Beyond the Stars“, where Sisko has an experience that displaces him in time and space. He is no longer Captain Benjamin Sisko in the 24th century, but is instead Benny Russell, a science fiction writer in the 1950s. Upon being given a picture of DS9, Benny begins to write the stories of Sisko’s experiences, and then begins to see flashes of Sisko’s world. These flashes, combined with the racial segregation of the 1950s,make it harder and harder for Benny to function in his own time. (If you’ve never seen “Far Beyond the Stars” I highly recommend it. Avery Brooks did an amazing job in both acting and directing.)

The third was an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Normal Again“, where Buffy is led to believe that the past six years of her life have been nothing but a schizophrenic episode. In that case, Buffy couldn’t function in the “real” world because she was entirely immersed in another world or reality. As with “Far Beyond the Stars” Buffy cannot function well in either world during the disruption. Although what I found most intriguing about this show was its ending, which left it open as to which reality was true.

Of course there are significant differences in the three examples. Zifnab was channeling the distant past, Benny was channeling the distant future, and Buffy an alternate reality, yet the idea behind each was the same: individuals tune into a reality other than ours, and it drives them mad.

It leads to the interesting idea that those who are classified as insane might simply be channeling other times, places, or realities. Like watching ‘General Hospital’, while getting the sound from ‘Days of Our Lives’. Of course for most people scizophrenia is a chemical disorder that for many can be treated with medication. But it’s intriguing to think that there are alternate realities, other worlds, and that there are people who are blessed or cursed with the ability to see through space and time, into those other realities.