My wife looked at me with an expression that was somewhere between horror and total disgust and told me a giant goober was hanging from my nose. I should have found the life preserver she threw me truly a socially life saving gesture.

Instead, I wondered why, goober or no goober, she had a look that said she was, at that moment, unable to lay a big wet kiss on my lips. She is also very quick to point o the fact that my zipper is down.

I think it is her attempt to steal my only hope for 15 minutes of fame.

King says "Yes, in my book I say that's a question I will not take up. I think my stance is rather beautiful because it's about "agnosis"; that means not knowing."

I am consumed with the notion of whether there is a God or whether there is not. I tend to the atheistic position, but really, agnosis may be the only rational way to view the matter with the beauty of wonderment and inquiry intact.

I read Dawkins and found some of his absolutes as dogmatic as those of Fundamentalist Christians (who scare me). "Not knowing" is the only answer with intellectual integrity. One may choose to examine or to make decisions based on faith, one way or the other. I just can't do that.

A theory that makes sense to me is one that says religion and deity is something our human minds have conjured, not from superstition or fear, but that religion is a product of the human ego designed to give us hope. We are so infatuated with our being that we cannot fathom the idea that we exist here only for a short time, regardless of the good we might do. We give ourselves a need to do right or even to simply go on because there is something out there for us that transcends our human frailty. I am nearly convinced this is true.

King is the most rational clear voice I have heard in a long time. I am thrilled she has something to say, and I will be reading it by the end of the day.

I am old enough to remember first hand my peasant grandparents who came here from Sicily at the beginning of the 20th century. So many of the dishes we ate as young American children were vegetarian.

In their pre-America days meat was a luxury that, hopefully, made it to the table on holidays. All other days were filled with delightful meals of greens, grains, legumes, veggies all spiced to perfection.

As they became wealthy here, meat became the norm. My grandfather succumbed to a heart attack at 78. My grandmother lived with vigorous health and completely independent into her mid 90's. She attributed her vigor to her preferred diet, that of a vegetarian.

I took up vegetarianism for 14 years for health reasons, just breaking that meat-fast this Christmas. Since returning to eating meat, my health has changed, and not for the better. I am going back, began it yesterday, in an effort to feel better. I have empirical evidence in my own body of the difference between the two.

It had nothing to do, for them or me, with higher morality. For them it was how peasants ate. For me, it is probably aligning my body with my genetic makeup.

Long live dandelions with olive oil and garlic!

The outrage sleeps behind emptiness that our culture has sown. "Hey, it isn't my kid..." You know the drill. You can say I am a cynic, but way back, Alex De tocqueville predicted that a democracy as open as this could breed an isolation and apathy among the people under the guise of individual freedom of choice.

It would be nice to regenerate community here, but it seems to deteriorate with each new assault of outrage. We simply turn our heads because we believe we can. We can't. And to make it worse, I believe the govt. know it and uses our collective apathy to their advantage.

Can we wake up? I agree that poets can say so much, express in such a compressed way the follies of our intent and the suffering of all victims of war. But, face it, we don't read much poetry or take poets all that seriously either.

The solution is probably to package it in sound bytes complete with musical preludes. Package it and sell it with a scratch off lottery ticket that promises the hope of instant wealth for those who read the message.