bierkergaard

    We got a lot of little teenage blue eyed groupies who'll do anything we say We got a genuine Indian guru, who's teachin' us a better way We got all the friends, that money can buy, so we'll never have to be alone And we keep gettin' richer but we can't get our picture on the cover of The Rolling Stone   This lyric, written by Shel Silverstein, is from an early 1970's song by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. There has been a good deal of wrath directed towards Rolling Stone for putting Boston Marathon Bomber the Younger (who shall remain nameless to honor the dead and wounded) on the cover of their mag. Rolling Stone used to be front and center of the counter-culture. But, the counter-culture won the war and Rolling Stone , at best, is now a sideshow or one of a 1,000 voices vying  for attention in Pop Swamp. And if was attention that it wanted, well it got it.   The picture of Bomber the Younger looks Jim Morrison-like...

Hmmm. I am going to have something to say about the Rolling Stone cover but want to ruminate over my thoughts more before writing. I read the article in R.S.. Yet, after jumping into the fray of the Trayvon Martin case yesterday, I need to alternate to something less flammable. Maybe odd/even days on controversial versus merely observational. When in Niagara Falls, I saw many families with kids in strollers. Young families with infants and toddlers seemed to be the main demographic. There were some families with teens--and their bored looks around...like  "OK, we have seen the Falls. Can I now do something interesting like text my friends OMG?" Another demographic were Indian and Chinese families. Indians tend to bring all of the generations together as a group and what appear to be relatives. Grandfather, Grandmother, Aunts, Uncles, and etc. A contingent. A caravan. Apparently the Japanese used to come in droves but now with the Japanese economy ...

Photo from here One of the great struggles in the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman incident is distilling a moral lesson takeaway that all sides and perspectives can walk away with. The tug-of-war of who did what frays the civic rope. How can we pull in the same direction, against a common enemy, no matter our view of what went down and who was at fault? For the record, I think Zimmerman was a cop-wannabe with a gun itching to make an example to the thieves in his neighborhood, Martin a teenager who didn't appreciate being stalked and let his fists speak. But, whatever, no one else was there and dead kid's don't testify. No doubt if Travon was a white boy, things would have played differently. Here is the essential message. Zimmerman was protecting stuff by his vigilante vigilance. There was a warping of the importance of people versus things. People are eternal, things are passing. The Bible is remarkably simplistic about the mechanics of the creation of the un...

While in Niagara Falls, Canada, my Dad and I did a ride on the bikes. After going through the pain of stuffing the bikes into his back seat Toyota Camry, it felt compulsory to ride. So, we did. A beautiful day in Canada. Warm and sunny with a misty breeze. On the way back, we rode through the grounds of this Buddhist Temple. As I pedaled by the entrance to the sanctuary, the smell of incense wafting in the wind enchanted me. It was a brief moment full of transcendence. We pedaled on and away. The transitory nature of life.  

Niagara Falls from about 20 stories up. My brother, wife, and their kids stayed in this room during the family reunion of sorts in Niagara Falls, Canadian side. The panoramic view is hardly captured in this picture. The room facing the Falls was a semi-circle of a wall of glass. Remarkable. Made me think of the verse: Ecclesiastes 1:6-7  The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.   Each individual snow flake or rain drop becoming ultimately the massive waterfall. 3,160 tons of water flows over Niagara Falls every second. Only to become a rain drop or a snow flake again. Humbling. God in the big and the small.