Rally to Restore Sanity

Posted on 17 September 2010 by Erik Hare | 11 Comments

Imagine a mob descending on the capitol. They aren’t armed with pitchforks and torches – no, many of them are holding the cotton candy they bought to keep the kids from getting too bored and whiny. They aren’t angry, except maybe at the sitter who canceled at the last minute to go play disk golf with her boyfriend. This is a concerned mob, a group of people who aren’t shouting slogans mostly because they find “Hey, Hey” chants to be a bit embarrassing. Their list of demands is not long – all they want is for people to think for a change.

This is the Rally to Restore Sanity. 30 October 2010. Be there – if it’s not too much trouble.

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Cities & the Future

Posted on 15 September 2010 by Erik Hare | 7 Comments

Cities mark the landscape across this nation and all others. Images of the handiwork of a culture often define the people who come to inherit the space and, in turns, mark it with their own generation’s values. Yet they are so much more than static collections of icons – they are where people come together and live their lives right now. They are always ultimately about the connections that make them alive.

Even the bricks and mortar or glass and steel is ultimately a connection across time to what made the city what it is today. Though it’s the stuff that makes up a city which gets photographed and noticed, they are much more than that.

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What’s It About?

Posted on 13 September 2010 by Erik Hare | 10 Comments

As the rain started to drip, we ducked into the little bar warmed by worn woodwork. It was my first chance in a long time to meet some of the people who write blogs for a living or fun, my work and family schedule being what it is. The mood was set perfectly by the scenery as we had to turn the coldness of unfamiliarity into the warmth of a common sense of purpose. It was good to meet everyone at the blogger gathering last Friday, but it raised a question I hate to answer – what is my blog about?

I thought this was a good time to summarize what I’ve been writing about lately as we all wade into the upcoming elections and some of the fine points get a bit soggy in our pockets.

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Anniversaries

Posted on 10 September 2010 by Erik Hare | 12 Comments

This is a time for important anniversaries. We’re looking straight into the heart of the 9/11 anniversary this year with terrible rumblings shaking the foundations of our free and open society. The earth itself is about to turn the northern part of our planet away from the sun and into winter. Lost in this reflective time is likely to be an anniversary that we might not want to remember or think comes close in the wash of time and history. This is the second anniversary of the meltdown on Wall Street that has defined our economy ever since.

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Pharisees

Posted on 8 September 2010 by Erik Hare | 14 Comments

Terry Jones is more than the Pastor of a small church in Gainesville, Florida. He is the man who can calmly look into the camera and explain why he intends to publicly burn a copy of the Koran in what he says is “… Not a message of hate. Our message is a message of warning to the radical element of Islam”. The constant attention of this incident and his bizarre inability to understand his own actions has made Jones into much more than just a Pastor. He has become a media darling, the center of attention – and it has given him the ignoble status of Pharisee.

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