Sun Worshippers. New-age cults. Mainstream mega-churches. Many of these groups were founded in the American West, and for good reason. The west has always been a place of escape and individualism, and religious freedoms were always part of the equation.

California and The Source

People’s Temple and Heaven’s Gate are some of the most prominent of California’s cults, but they are certainly just a snapshot of the religious fervor that has always proliferated in the west.

Take, for instance, The Source.

The group was founded in Los Angeles in the 1960s and was an early example of the counterculture surge that would cap the decade. It was led by a man named Father Yod, a native son of Ohio who moved to California to become a Hollywood stuntman sometime after World War II. He was influenced by Sikh spirituality and yogic principles and merged those concepts with the Beat counterculture movement. …

Today’s the 33rd anniversary of my mum’s death. I have now lived longer than she did, and boy does it seem weird.

When you are a kid, the age of 40 seems so… old. Impossible that people can still do the things they want to do. Forty seems blandly middle aged. My mum was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer at age 39, and it is a miracle she lived to 40. I don’t remember much of her illness because childhood trauma has a way of blocking out details. Hell, I don’t remember much of her life, to be honest. I remember her being ill, being in the hospital, and not seeing her again. …

Imagine the perfect food. Some may envision beer or bread, but for Indigenous North American tribes and early Colonial immigrants, the perfect food was the chestnut. Stories tell of early American settlers feasting on the fruit of the “bread tree,” as well as document the various uses that they acquired from Native tribal people. The American Chestnut was an incredibly important crop to all mammalian life on North America, but it almost seems like a thing of folklore today. We sing holiday songs about roasting chestnuts on an open fire, but how many of us have actually eaten chestnuts? …

On the day I was born, my father left for a 9 month tour on a Navy ship. Imagine, watching your child being born at 5:30 am and reporting to duty at 8am, leaving behind a newly postpartum wife and four children (the eldest being just 8 years old.) My dad often tells the story of coming back into port, looking for his family, and seeing my gleaming ginger hair through the array of excited Navy families. Redheads are a truly recognizable bunch.

Throughout my life, I have always been The Red Head. In school, I was teased as the girl with the red hair. In my time in the Army, I was the soldier with the ginger locks. In my married life, my husband and I are quite recognizable — he has a long beard, I am The Red Head. I’m staring down my mid 40s, and still holding on to an identity as a redhead, knowing that the days are numbered. …

Picture this: November, 2004. The Iraq War had been raging for a year and a half. Operation Enduring Freedom was entering it’s fourth year, despite “Mission Accomplished” being infamously declared the previous year. 2004 is when the war crimes at Abu Ghraib were exposed, the year that Reagan died. The year the Red Sox FINALLY regained a World Series pennant. Through these monumental events, a little show about a family from Texas took a major shift in tone to reflect the changing times.

“King of the Hill” was a half-hour animated comedy television show by Mike Judge — the animator and writer who created the inane antics of “Beavis and Butthead.” Launched in 1997, the show chronicles the life of the Hill family, their neighbors, and life in the fictional suburban town of Arlen, Texas. The every-man protagonist is Hank Hill. He is portrayed as patriarchal, stubborn, hard working, surprisingly understanding and especially loyal. He is an old-school Republican who proudly voted for Reagan, but as a Texan has an unending appreciation for former Democratic governor Ann Richards. His wife, Peggy, is a transplant from Montana, a substitute teacher and Boggle champion, egotistical and kind all at the same time. Their son, Bobby, is an aspiring comedian with a heart of gold. His father, Cotton, is a disabled vet who often boasts of killing fifty men. He is a misogynist and a bad father, but Hank respects his service to America. Hank has the same friends since childhood, and they all live on the same block: Bill Dauterive, barber in the Army Reserves; Dale Gribble, exterminator and conspiracy theorist; and (Jeff) Boomhauer, ladies’ man and Texas Ranger (although the details are sketchy… some suspect he is an undercover agent, although there is an early episode where he mentions that he got a disability settlement.) The men drink beers in the alley every day and have many adventures and life lessons together. …

It happened. AGAIN. Another white academic was outed as misidentifying their race.

Kelly Kean Sharp of Furman University was an assistant professor of African American history and self identified as Chicana. That is, up until today when her elaborate lies were exposed. In fact, she isn’t a Person of Color at all… she is an upper-class suburban white woman with no Hispanic or Latino roots. (She was anonymously outed here on Medium, with receipts.) Just last month, another professor of African American history at George Washington University who masqueraded as a Black Latina was exposed as a white woman. (And, no, I won’t link the Medium article she wrote to justify and explain her behavior.) Of course, many remember the explosive case of Rachel Dolezal, another white professor who self-identified as a Black woman. She executed her identity so expertly that she become a leader of the NAACP in Spokane. …

How could the world’s most far reaching empire — an empire that was propelled by the quest for richness— be the birthplace of some of the most uninspired food on Earth? The answer is part of a complex history of class, social mobility, and money.

The Roman influence

By many accounts, Britain was a quiet agricultural outpost in the Roman empire. The native inhabitants had a well-established growing system that prioritized crops such as broad beans, barley, oats, and wheat. Needless to say, Britons ate a lot of bread and drank a lot of beer. Their livestock consisted of the usual range of domesticated animals: cattle, sheep, chicken, and pigs. Foraged foods included mushrooms, wild onions, and herbs such as mustard. Those who lived near the coast enjoyed seaweed, fish, and oysters. In fact, the Romans considered British oysters as some of the best in their empire. …

Maybe this sounds cynical, but I truly believe we are conditioned to ask for and offer forgiveness far too often. What is the end goal of forgiveness? For us to personally feel better? Or, is it to make the offender feel better? Offering forgiveness can be emotional abuse. Asking someone else to forgive you can be manipulation. This is especially true when there is lack of action to go along with the words of forgiveness.

When my kids were little, there were many sibling arguments. Who took whose cookie, why someone smacked someone else. The traditional parenting method would include me or my husband stepping in, encouraging the kids to talk through the problem, and finish with saying “sorry.” Everyone knows that child probably isn’t sorry: they felt justified in their anger or felt that they were somehow righting a wrong. What does that sorry really mean? To the kid who is forced to offer an apology, it means “I’m sorry you got upset, but not sorry for my actions.” Is this truly an apology? No. Children go through the motions to placate others without feeling real remorse for their actions. My or my husband’s insistence on “saying sorry” perpetuates the problem. …