Interesting talk this week for the thinkers among us: University of Arizona philosophy professor Shaun Nichols will be speaking Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the St. Thomas More Catholic Newman Center on the topic of free will. His talk is titled Our belief in free will: Why we have it and what if we lose it? and is part of the St. Albert the Great Forum on Science and Theology.

These talks draw a wide variety of people, many of them brainiacs, but I’ve been assured by a friend that Prof. Nichols’ talk will be accessible to non-eggheads as well. They are fun, even if most of the theory goes over one’s head, if only to show folks how little they really know about the intersection of philosophy, ancient thought, science and theology. A good time is usually had by all at these free talk/discussions, which are held downstairs in the Center, located on the northwest corner of 2nd Street and Cherry on the UA campus.

And then, next month, we have the 7th Annual Muslim-Jewish Peacewalk. This gathering is open to people of all faiths and traditions who share a “vision of coexistence and mutual understanding,” according to this year’s flyer of the event. The 2-mile walk starts at 2:30 p.m. at the Al Huda Islamic School on River Road, and ends about 4:30 p.m. at Congregation Ner Tamid on Allen Road. There’s a mid-walk rest break at St. Philips in the Hills on the corner of River and Campbell so the Episcopalians can show off their great hospitality to all walkers.

While the walk doesn’t start until 2:30, people are encouraged to arrive at 1:30 for some welcoming events and snacks to fuel their peaceful endeavor. So, if you’ve never seen Jews and Muslims side by side, join in on the walk. You’ll spend a peaceful Sunday afternoon having your mind opened a little bit. For more specifics on the walk, go to www.peacewalktucson.org.

More on the superbowl ad featuring the Tebow family over here at the WPost, written by pro-abortion-rights writer Sally Jenkins. She’s on fire this morning! I’ve got too much classwork to comment on this all, but wanted to bring it to readers’ attention. Have a great Thursday!

The LA Times buried the lede in this story, putting it in the second to the last paragraph, which makes critical minds wonder, “Is it true what they say about the media having a bias?” But for those who stuck it out through the whole story, the news is this: In a two-year study among 662 black sixth-and seventh-graders in four low-income Northeastern schools, it was discovered that abstinence-only sex education taught without moral hectoring proved to be more successful in delaying the onset of first sexual activity than three other methods.

The students were divided randomly into four groups, according to the story, one receiving an eight-hour abstinence-only class “focusing on the risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.” Researchers emphasized that that class did not use a “moralistic tone o portray sex in a negative light.” A second group of kids got eight-hours of “safe sex” education, a third received comprehensive eight to 12 hour class emphasizing both aspects of sex education – what some call “abstinence plus.” The fourth group – the control for the study – received only healthy living education.

And here are the stats: During the two-year period following those classes, only 33.5 percent of the kids who got the no-morals-but-all-abstinence message had sex, compared to 48.5 percent in the control group and, get this, 52 percent of those taught only the “safe sex” message. About 42 percent of those in the abstinence plus group reported having sex in those two years.

Unfortunately, none of the classes appeared to influence the use of condoms or other birth control when the students did have sex. This should be no surprise to anyone who has ever been a teenager, nor anyone who studies the influence of abject poverty on the decision-making ability of adolescents, but it seems to continue to surprise researchers and pro-sex-ed forces who moan, “We told them to use birth control! They had all the information, why didn’t they use it?”

They didn’t use it because they’re children! They may have the ability to have sex, and they’re bodies may be driving them toward it much like their mouths drive them to eat junk food, but they don’t have the ability to think further than tomorrow or, if you’re lucky, next week. What this study shows is that teaching kids that there is such a thing as “safe” (or, as some refer to it, “safer”)  sex appears to give them the idea that sometimes teenage sex is safe, and won’t harm them so they might as well.

On the other hand, focusing on the facts — sex as a teenager is playing with fire because of the high risk of disease and pregnancy – - seems to lead fewer teens to take that risk.

This isn’t a moral argument, it is an economic one. We can’t afford the economic toll that comes with teen motherhood and we can’t afford the economic tolls that comes with an increase in STDs among people who either lack health care or have their health care paid for by others’ taxes. So, maybe we should pay attention to this study (reported Monday in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine), and consider the facts: No matter how many condoms you offer for free, teens don’t seem to use them because most teens don’t think that far in advance, but apparently, if you offer them a clear picture of STDs and the risk of teen pregnancy – no moralizing allowed – fewer teens will step off that ledge.

So, any thoughts about why the numbers were so low in the story?

Along the same sex lines, we have this editorial from the NYTimes supporting the right of Focus on the family to air an ad during the Super Bowl, and a discussion of a disturbing new Web “reality” show where viewers get to vote on if a woman should have an abortion or not. And completely off the sex line, is this very interesting investigation out of Pocono Record explaining why public education costs have continued to rise in Pennsylvania even as enrollment has gone down. It would be revealing to see something similar done in regard to TUSD.

Thinking of particular folks in the comments section with this brief post directing everyone over to John Allen’s blog at National Catholic Reporter. It points out the nuances of the evangelical trend that is occuring in various faiths, including Catholicism. Read it here.

I blogged about an assignment we had in teacher certification classes over here today, if anyone is interested in joining the convo or passing on the link to teachers you may know. Have to go get the rest of my classwork done, but before I do, want to send a shout out to some former Citizen colleagues who are doing a soft-launch of the TucsonSentinel, a “news, info and commentary” site of the non-profit, new media model.

They are hoping for some major donors and until they get that they won’t be able to bust out like investigative reporting award-winning voiceofsandiego, but with funding – and thus the ability to pay some young {e.g. willing to work for less than $25,000}, hungry, kick-butt journalists – they very well could be. They’ve already been smarter than many of these online news launchups by partnering with GlobalPost, ProPublica and Cronkite News Service out of ASU. (You GO, boys!)

The site is nicely designed, easy to navigate and last night, after less than a week in operation, it held a live chat of the State of the Union address that worked better than any live chat I participated in held by the AZ Star or the Citizen when it was operating as a print paper. Of course, few people know about the Sentinel yet, so perhaps their server just wasn’t overloaded with a million comments, but still, it was impressive. So…. if you care about the future of news in Tucson, check ‘em out. Here’s their “Hello World” post.

Pope Benedict XVI

On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI offered a new command to the world’s priests: Thou Shalt Blog. It was in the Pope’s message for the 44th World Communications Day that priests and others read B16’s take on preaching the gospel in the digital age:

Responding adequately to this challenge amid today’s cultural shifts, to which young people are especially sensitive, necessarily involves using new communications technologies. The world of digital communication, with its almost limitless expressive capacity, makes us appreciate all the more Saint Paul’s exclamation: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor 9:16)

Keep in mind that the almost 83-year-old pontiff is the man of Pope2you and his own YouTube channel. As Mashable mused a few days ago, the pope “gets it” more than many of his younger clergy when it comes to reaching Catholic youth. It isn’t enough to have a parish web site; the pastor should be blogging, and tweeting and preaching the Good News out there on the Internet to combat the less positive messages infecting cyberspace. But, as Faith and Reason pointed out, they need to remember it isn’t their tech prowess they are showing off but rather, faith in JC.

The two priests at my parish are both on Facebook, although each uses it differently. One tends to write brief movie reviews and the other promotes events such as the Walk for Life. But both have a presence. One tried blogging last summer, but his posts were very long, something that most bloggers will tell you is a cardinal sin. Neither of them use Twitter, but that’s OK because so far, neither does the Pope.

There are a number of priests and nuns out in the blogosphere, including him, him and her, as well as plenty of non-ordained Christians, Jews and Muslims sharing faith, inspiration, commentary and all manner of takes on the world. As someone once said, “Here comes everybody.” I love it.

Courtesy of the wonderful Linda Perlstein over at The Educated Reporter comes a little post about an anonymous teacher (Mrs. Q) who is eating her school’s lunch every day and blogging about it. Linda references a USA Today story that says fast-food standards for meat are higher than that at most school cafeterias. If so, we have to worry about the teacher eating that food and, obviously, a millions of school kids on the free-and-reduced lunch program who have no option but to eat what is served. Today, Mrs. Q. ate a bagel dog, six tater tots, mixed fruit cup and chocolate chip cookie. She declined the offer of milk.

I made my kids’ lunches and when they were old enough to handle knife and peanut butter, they started making their own. Once a week they got to buy lunch – more often if they had a job and their own money. They ate crap those days, and I knew it would be thus, but I figured because they ate healthy home-cooked (and often home-grown) food the rest of the time and snacks like this ….and this never darkened the door of our home, they’d survive. When they went to college they binged on all sorts of junk for a few months then returned to the “I need some veggies” mantra of home.

But the problem is, some kids – most notably the poorest among us – don’t have those options. For some of them, school lunch is all there is for that day. Shouldn’t we, as a nation then, be more concerned about what we offer in school cafeterias?

From the Center forInquiry of Southern Arizona comes another interesting lecture for those who lean to the atheist/agnostic side of things. The lecture is called “Subjection and Escape” and deals with a young woman’s journey from atheism to Roman Catholicism to Islam back to atheism. Most of the press release is below, but it sounds like Lisa Bauer suffered abuse in the name of religion, which is heartbreaking, and possibly came from not the most stable family situation. I won’t be able to go, but if any God Blogging readers go, come back here Monday and post your experience. It is Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon in the DuVal Auditorium at University Medical Center on Campbell Avenue. The last CFI event I attended cost $5 or $10, so be prepared to pay a fee.

A young woman describes her lifelong journey from atheism to her family’s Roman Catholicism to Islam, and finally back to atheism. It is a long and often treacherous journey, emotionally painful and often self-destructive, extending to sexual as well as emotional submission to a trusted authority figure. In the end, though, and with the help of some trusted friends, she managed to break free of her largely self-imposed mental shackles and was able to examine her former religions and attempts at belief, clearly and unsparingly.

Lisa Bauer has described her experience with Islam and religion generally in the October/November 2009 and December/January 2010 issues of Free Inquiry magazine, with an introduction by Richard Dawkins, whom she assisted with research duties for his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth. The final installment coming out in the February/March 2010 issue. She is currently a graduate student in Information Resources and Library Science at the University of Arizona. In the past two years, she has made great strides towards overcoming both religion and her own social phobia, and has become involved in various atheist and humanist groups.

The education world is all a-Twitter this morning with reports of 40 states applying for the $4.35 billion in competitive education reform grants being funded through the U.S. Department of Education as part of the $787 billion economic stimulus program – American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – that President Barack Obama signed into law soon after taking office. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is asking for a cool $250 million in her application, which can be found in its 345-page glory here. If you just want what the governor’s office considers the highlights, you can find those in yesterday’s press release.

There are two rounds of competition for the grants, the deadline for the first being yesterday. Awards for that round will be announced in April and the application deadline for the second round is June 1. For the past two weeks, the listserv for the Education Writers Association was full of questions asking if anyone knew if their state had filed for the RTTT funds and/or when states planned to do so. Ironically for anyone who has sat through a teacher lecturing them on getting your work done early, most of the 40 states who applied did as Arizona did – wait until the deadline to turn the application in.

Now the talk on the listserv is about the states who are not posting their applications online, which is a no-no since there was much lipservice given to “transparency” when the stimulus dollars were first announced as part of the ARRA. The bloggers over at the newly launched edmoney.org – which has been set up specifically to track the spending of stimulus funds by state and school district – are calling out the slackers over here, if you want to see which states are dragging their feet in telling the public how public money is being spent in public schools.

For those not up with education stimulus funding, here’s a little background on the RTTT, courtesy of the governor’s office:

With Race to the Top, the U.S. Department of Education is asking states to build comprehensive and
coherent plans built around the four areas of reform outlined in ARRA, including: aid to struggling schools, improving data quality, supporting effective teachers and bettering standards and assessments. Race to the Top will reward states that have demonstrated success in raising student achievement and have the best plans to accelerate reforms in the future. The goal is for states to offer models for others to follow to spread the best reform ideas across the country. The application requires states to document their past success and outline their plans to extend their reforms by using college- and career-ready standards and assessments, building a workforce of highly effective educators, creating educational data systems to support student achievement, and turning around their lowest-performing schools.

Brewer’s office said her application noted the intent to increase and support more options for alternative certification to “attract the most qualified teachers” as well as creating a data system that would allow the public to be able to monitor student academic progress at various schools and adding a strong reading component through third grade and ending social promotion, among other plans. According to this story, John Wright, president of the state’s teachers union, decries alternative certification plans, saying more than 800 education majors graduated from the state’s three university teaching preparation programs in December “and we don’t have jobs for them.”

That’s discouraging news for the hundreds of laid-off workers like yours truly who’ve entered teacher certification programs this year, hoping for jobs in a year when we graduate. As for attracting the most qualified teachers, I still think hiking the base pay for teachers in this state would go a long way toward that. Just sayin’.

If the Times’ headline writers are accurate and Scott Brown’s Senate win in arguably the most liberal state in the Union “stunned” Democrats, then all I can say is the party I’ve voted with most of my life has just not been paying attention. And like Brown said last night in his victory speech, if the Dems have trouble in Mass., they’ve got trouble everywhere.

Remember how Pat “I call myself a Christian but just can’t act like one” Robertson blamed the tragedy in Haiti on a pact with the devil? Well, Lily Coyle took offense and decided to pen a response in the personal of Satan. She sent it to the Minneapolis Star Tribune and it’s starting to go viral on the Internet. You can read the whole thing here, but for myself, I’d like to say thanks to Ms. Coyle for using the letters to the editors page to correct Roberson’s really horrible theology. Here’s a tidbit from Satan’s screed:

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher.

Other thoughts this Monday: It was curious to read that Barack Obama said the following at a black Baptist Church over the weekend in celebration of Martin Luther King day:

“Sometimes I get a little frustrated “when folks just don’t want to see that even if we don’t get everything, we’re getting something.” (Full text of his speech here.)

Taken just as it is, it sounds like Obama – who is biracial but self-identifies as black and is accepted as so by most folks – is asking the black community to settle for baby steps instead of pushing hard for greater equality. That wasn’t the case of course, but he was emphasizing the need to celebrate (instead of bemoan) progress on our way to what we hope would be perfection.

It is true that some black advocacy groups deny any progress has been made among blacks simply because there is still inequity. And it is even truer still that some individuals use the lack of complete equality as an excuse to join gangs, drop out of school, and blame white society for their own poor choices. So, I agree with Obama that the excuse-making has to stop – among people of every color, every race, every age. We are, in most ways, masters of our own destiny. (For a cinematic illustration of that point, go see Precious or Invictus.)

Still, the road is much harder for some due to little more than the circumstance of their birth, the color of their skin or what sex organs they possess, and I admit to wondering if there will ever be full equality for minorites in a society where power is primarily focused in the hands of white, middle-class males. Then again, every time I read the words “Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton,” I get chills. We are making progress … it just seems so slow if you are part of a minority. and speaking of minorities…

Two of my favorite newspaper columnists did what they do best last week when pointing out the truth. Leonard J. Pitts Jr. wrote a column saying that Sen. Harry Reid may have been impolitic and out-of-touch when he used the word “Negro” during the 2007-08 presidential campaign, but he was also right. Yes, you read correctly, a black man said that a white man saying Barack Obama could get elected because he was “light-skinned” and didn’t speak with a “Negro dialect” was absolutely right. Read more here.

Also tackling a minority issue, Kathleen Parker had a fabulous (although painfully sad in a way) discussion last week about how people (and the press) treat male candidates one way and female candidates another – more hostile, patronizing – way. Because of that treatment, Parker mused, we may be a lot further away from having a female president than some would hope. Everyone should read it, but especially if you are the parent of daughters.

Tuesday’s magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Haiti has brought out the best in most people (although statements from both Pat Roberston and Rush Limbaugh show it brought out the worst in some). This urge to do good – something we always see in the aftermath of disasters – has me wondering what, exactly, is behind it.

Now, I’m not talking about the “We’re not really that bad” donations from the formerly bailed-out banks, nor the “Maybe we can make a little money off this” efforts by Web sites advertising that if you buy their product, they’ll donate some of the profit to the Haitian cause.

I’m mostly talking about the folks who called radio news talk shows Wednesday, their voices cracking, saying they wanted to go to Haiti, not just send money, that they felt the need to go help RIGHT NOW. They were told to send money because they would only be in the way of the already-there, already-trained relief and rescue workers and medical personnel. (Not to mention the fact that the people there don’t have water and why add your thirsty gullet to the demand?)

No, I’m talking about the common folk who are hosting “Haiti relief” dinners at their homes to collect water and the school children collecting pennies and nickels and the volunteers who are already there and stay to help when the urge surely must be to get the heck out of Dodge. Or even, perhaps, the celebrities starting telethons. What makes those people want to do good? Why do humans have empathy? What evolutionary purpose would it possibly serve if evolution is based primarily on the survival of the fittest? Why wouldn’t people in a poor country just turn on each other in disaster instead of primarily helping each other dig out the dead in hopes of finding the living?

Hauling out a load of someone's destroyed life in New Orleans

A year after Hurricane Katrina, myself and two other adults took a group of nine 16 to 19 year olds to New Orleans’ devastated Ninth Ward to gut two houses so those homes could be re-habitated by their displaced owners. It was like visiting a ghost town down there in the Lower Ninth, and the only other people we saw were groups like us – youth from various churches across the country who drove hundreds of miles in vans crowded with sweaty teenage flesh to spend a week or two up to their knees in rotten wood, roaches and mildew in the hopes of helping a stranger have a home again.

One evening, so sore from work I could only lift one arm, I called a friend and told him what was happening. I vented about how, a year after the hurricane, the worst-hit part of the city still looked as though Katrina had just hit. I told him what we’d been doing and described how the kids were so exhausted after work that after they “showered” in the water from a hose and changed close, they instantly fell asleep in the living room of the house where we stayed like an exhausted litter of puppies, deaf to the raucous kitchen work of a group of older black women who came to feed them gumbo and jambalya and Kings Cake.

It was ridiculously hard work, I said, but no one was complaining, which, to me, felt somewhat like a miracle. “You’re such a better person than me,” he said, adding that maybe I did good because I’m Catholic.

While its true my faith calls me to acts of mercy, I don’t think that is what made me go to NOLA. Although it cannot be denied that in times of disasters religious folk do seem to show up with water, bandages and homemade pie, I don’t think I went to New Orleans because I heard God’s voice telling me this was the right thing to do. The teens with me didn’t go because they thought God would be mad if they didn’t. We did it because we felt, deep inside, this urge TO GO HELP.

Does that urge only come from God? If you are not religious, do you have that urge to help? If so, how do you help out in your community and to what do you attribute that desire? Post your answers in the comments section. And for further study on the Haiti issue, there’s a pretty decent look at Haiti’s complicated history, at this Wiki, and if you want to know how much the U.S. gives to Haiti in a normal year (the unspoken we-already-do-enough thought behind the ignorant, hateful statements of Limbaugh and Robertson), Nicholas Kistoff has a nice post about that in his On The Ground blog over here.

Apparently televangelist Pat Robertson is blaming the natural disaster in Haiti on a decades old pact he says Haitians made with the devil to get out from under French colonial rule. What an embarrassment for thinking people, especially thinking evangelical Christians. Read about it here.

One of my favorite pages in Time Magazine is the “Verbatim” page, where some of the week’s most outrageous quotes are featured. In the Jan. 18 issue, Ramy Zamzam is quoted as saying, “We are not terrorists. We are jihadists and jihad is not terrorism.”

Right, and I’m the Pope. C’mon, enough with the semantics. You try to kill people because you think the world is attacking Islam, because you want to spread Muslim territories (although not necessarily Islamic faith), because you’ve misunderstood (or, some argue, understood all too well and thus taken ancient texts too literally) the Qu’ran’s call for jihad. But that killing of folks for being different, that qualifies as terrorism, buddy, no matter what you want to call it.

While the French often make me crazy, the fact that they keep their language so tight, allowing few, if any, synonyms for words, assures that people are precise in their use of words. It’s hard to misunderstand them because when they say cup, they mean cup. With Zamzam and his allies, we’ve got a problem of definition. Afterall, there are definitions of jihad here, here and here, and not all of them agree as to how this “holy war” should be carried out, if at all. But the fact remains that when it is carried out, it is an offensive (as opposed to defensive) act and it shoots to kill anyone who disagrees with it.

Likewise the word “terrorism,” defined here, here and here. You’ll notice the commonality in the definitions is the “use of terror” (fear) to control large swaths of folks. With that definition, one could argue that the U.S. acts like a terrorist when it foments fear among the general public to get us to give up some of our liberties, but I think most would agree that that kind of fear-making is not on the same level as a bomb-strapped crazyman (or woman) walking into a cafe and pressing a switch to blow up everyone within 25 feet.

So, Mr. Zamzam, say what you will, but you are a terrorist. It may make you feel better calling yourself a jihadist, but the end result is the same: You are a cold-blooded (wannabe) murderer. You can coat it in semantics, fiddling with the definitions for your acts, justifying your murderous plans by saying Allah requires it of you (doubtful), that only your one type of Muslim is truly Muslim and thus protected from attack (ridiculous) and/or that jihad isn’t terror because you’re just trying to protect Islam from attack by McDonald’s and P. Diddy (nothing more threatening than a BigMac and a rapper with questionable grammar).

But, really, don’t you think you could sleep better at night if you’d at least get a grip and accept that your form of jihad is terrorism? Go for it; be a man. Oh, I forgot, you can’t be a man – you’re a jihadist.

**** And from the other side of the news magazine aisle, and courtesy of a Face Book post from a former Tucson Citizen employee, comes this Newsweek essay by lawyer Ted Olson (who defines himself as “a politically active, lifelong Republican, a veteran of the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations…”) in support of gay marriage. He has decided to help in the legal fight to overturn California’s Proposition 8, which overturned California’s constitutional right ot gay marriage. A snip from the essay:

Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one’s own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society.

I’ve often argued that the reason we should accept gay marriage is because it would normalize what is already happening and encourage stability in gay relationships. I keep thinking of how I would feel if one of my children were gay. I would want him/her to settle down, just like I want my straight kids to. I want them to find that one person with whom to share life and get on with the lawn-mowing and taking out the trash and paying taxes and just, overall, move out of the college mind set of anyone, anytime, anywhere. So, congrats to a die hard conservative like Olson for sticking his neck out with this essay.

The beginning of a happiness journey.

As promised, I’m going to blog my thoughts as I work my way through Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. I’m only through the first chapter, but I’ve already discovered my major problem where it comes to being happy: I am not really sure what makes me happy.

I know what brings me pleasure, and I can even point to moments of contentment, and the rush of uncovering something no other reporter knows and bringing it to light is freaking AMAZING … but are those things really happiness? I’ve passed on the wisdom before regarding the difference between happiness and pleasure (at least where moral issues are concerned), and if you ask 10 different people to define “happiness” you’d get 10 different answers, methinks. Hence the need for individual happiness projects; what rings my bells, may not ring yours. Yet, like folks who’ve said they know obscenity when they see it, Rubin says (and I agree) that we probably each know happiness when we see it. Problem is, at least for moi, I don’t pay close enough attention.

So, that’s the first step: Setting aside some time to think about what really TRULY makes me happy. And that thinking can make you a little crazy, Rubin writes. From the book:

“…as I thought about happiness, I kept running up against paradoxes. I wanted to change myself but accept myself. I wanted to take myself less seriously – and also more seriously. I wanted to use my time well, but I also wanted to wander, to play, to read at whim. … I was always on the edge of agitation; I wanted to let go of envy and anxiety about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition.”

“The laws of happiness are as fixed as the laws of chemistry,” Rubin writes, but even if one isn’t making up the laws from scratch, one needs to wrestle with those laws in light of one’s particular circumstance to develop a happiness plan and then figure out steps to implement that plan in one’s life. Use the research – i.e. one of the most important elements to happiness is social bonds – and find a way to apply that to your life. Then, baby stepping it, add something else that is particular to your happiness and figure out a plan to get more of that in your life.

For instance, I now know that work is key to my happiness; life after the closure of the Citizen has taught me that. But since I’ve not found fulltime employment, I’ve found that if I treat my training as “work” it increases my happiness as if it were a job. Not perfect, but in the right direction.

One of the best parts of Rubin’s first chapter was her list of Secrets to Adulthood. (Some of the secrets in the book are not included in the online link above and so I mention them here: Bring a sweater; do good, feel good; and people actually prefer that you buy wedding gifts from their registry.) Another great insight was her discovery that one goal of her happiness project was “to prepare for adversity – to develop the self-discipline and the mental habits to deal with a bad thing when it happened.” She didn’t want to wait for a crisis to remake her life. I think that’s great advice, although, for me, being unemployed has turned out to be more of a crisis than I imagined, so I’m going to start where I am.

If you’re wondering just how happy you might be, you can take the Authentic Happiness Inventory Questionnaire (you have to register online to take it), but keep in mind Rubin’s words: you don’t have to be unhappy to start a happiness project. You just have to want to make a change. And for me, for this week or so, I’m going to just focus on writing down the times I feel happy (and unhappy) and see if I can come up with a list of what makes me happy so I can move onto the next section of the book where resolutions are developed out of those happiness goals.

Hiking in Pima Canyon over Thanksgiving with family and friends

POSTSCRIPT: I just got back from riding seven miles on the Rillito River bike trail, something I’ve wanted to do ever since we moved to Tucson 10 years ago. I went with my rock-n-roll son, and at one point I heard myself say, “This is great, I’m so happy!” Upon reflection, I realized I am always happy when I’m enjoying outside exercise, if I’m with family or friends. So, that’s top of the aforementioned “What makes me happy” list: Exercising outside with family or friends.

That’s Nicholas Kristof’s argument today over at the New York Times. He thinks it is no coincidence that Costa Rica has the top ranking in the World Database of Happiness and is also one of very few countries to get by without a military force. Instead of spending money on bombs, the country wisely invests in education.

What Kristof fails to mention is that Costa Rica is at least partially able to do without a military force because it depends on someone else to provide one.

I know a little bit about this because my husband and I spent our 25th wedding anniversary in the fabulous Central

One of the beaches we visted in Costa Rica

American country a few years ago. During one of our many rides with our guide, we listened as he complained about the “rot” of illegal immigration from Nicaragua and Honduras, mentioning that those countries (particularly the former) at times seemed ready to invade Costa Rica militarily. My beloved, who does number crunching for a U.S. defense contractor, asked him who would provide protection for Costa Rica if that happened.

“The U.S., of course,” was the guide’s answer, with a chuckle.

I agree that the U.S. would do far better as a country if we spent more on education than on military might, but I’m not sure it is a fair comparison to say, “Hey, this gorgeous country with high literacy rates and no military is happier because they don’t fund their own military.”

One of the many species of flora in the jungle below Costa Rica's famed Arenal Volcano. So lucky to have seen it.

Perhaps it is more likely that this gorgeous country of beautiful sunsets, beaches, jungles and people (which is racing to top economically in large part b/c of U.S. tourism and luring U.S. companies down there to develop land) has the luxury of not funding their own defense force because another country has its back that way. Just sayin’

Welcome to the first true God Blogging post of 2010. (An earlier brief post re: this doesn’t count.) It’s hard to believe an entire year has gone by since journalism as I knew it was blown to smithereens, via a business agreement between two media giants that resulted in Arizona’s oldest daily newspaper being replaced by this blog site cum citizen journalism venture. Like millions of other laid off workers in this country, I’m remaking myself at mid-life, plowing through a federally subsidized teacher certification program after finally accepting (most days) that there is Life After Journalism.

Which brings us to this blog. I neglected it in the latter months of 2009 because of an internal battle over my former identity (professional – read: paid – journalist) and my current writing options (unpaid blogging; barely-paid and unpredictable freelance reporting; better paid but sporadic and tedious PR writing). I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say I’ve come to an understanding with myself that, in spite of being unpaid, blogging aides my sanity while wrestling with school papers demanding MLA citations. This was the first insight I got when reading the just-published The Happiness Project, which author Gretchen Rubin defines as an approach to changing your life:

“First is the preparation stage, when you identify what brings you joy, satisfaction, and engagement, and also what brings you guilt, anger, boredom, and remorse. Second is the making of resolutions, when you identify the concrete actions that will boost your happiness. Then comes the interesting part: keeping your resolutions.”

I have yet to identify all might bring me joy, etc., or all that brings me guilt, etc., but I know that one joy builder is

Another joy builder is playing in the Flagstaff snow

blogging, so I’m resolving to do more of it, the short details of which you can read about here in the newly updated “About Me and God Blogging.”(Regular readers will recall that I tried to get a virtual Happiness Project group started last year but didn’t follow through. This year, I will blog my way through Gretchen’s book, which is a more reasonable goal for me considering my school requirements. I’m very much into setting reasonable goals this year.)

So, as promised in the “About” link, here’s some thoughts on God (and more) news of late: First, perhaps you heard that FOX News’ Brit Hume thinks Tiger Woods needs Jesus to stop philandering. I won’t add much to the cacophony, except to point you to Rabbi Brad Hirschfield’s interesting take over at Beliefnet and then, for LOL religious disrespect all around, John Stewart’s video on it here. (Yes, I do believe God has a sense of humor.)

Second, if you are interested in contributing to charities who do good out in the world, consider adding GoodSearch to your browser. In a few minutes, you can add it to your toolbar and then every time you use it to search the Web, money is donated to a charity of your choice. FAQs are here, but it seems a fairly painless way to get someone else’s money directed to good works in what sometimes seems like a hostile, selfish world.

And speaking of good, way back in September, Washington Monthly came out with college rankings of a different sort: They ranked 258 national universities for the amount of “public good” they provided based on three categories: Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country). University of Arizona got an overall score of 51 out of 100, with a ranking of 160 (out of the 258) in Social Mobility, 18 (!) in research expenditures and 36 in the “faculty in national academies” area (both part of the “Research” category), and a ranking of 97 in the number of graduates who head off to the Peace Corps. ASU, by comparison, got an overall score of 33 out of 100 in the rankings. For full detail, check out the interactive rating scale here.

If you’re interested in what one of the major go-to religion sites has to say about the top religion stories of the decade (including the rise and fall of the Religious Right and the rise of the New Atheists), check out Beliefnet’s multimedia article on that here, written by a reporter from Religion News Service. There is a great “related features” page at the end of the slides/article.

Finally, there are a couple of changes in the sidebars of God Blogging (and more). I deleted the “What I’m Reading” because, seriously, who really cares? I’ve added a “Let Us Pray” because at least some of the people who read this blog practice prayer and I wanted to offer the option for those wanting to share prayer needs a place to do that locally. Send your requests via the “Contact Me” button over on the right sidebar. And please, if you don’t practice or believe in prayer, practice kindness and don’t harass those who do. As This American Muslim says in his bio, if you don’t like what you read, close the browser.

The other blog change is that I’ve winnowed out links listed under “Stalking,” deleting those that have died or haven’t been updated for two months, and I added a couple new ones. I don’t agree with what is written on all of them, but think they make for a well-rounded short list of faith and religion writers (this being, after all, primarily a God blog), so check them out if you’re so inclined.

The exceptions to “religion-blog-only” standard are three: Rubin’s Happiness Project; my personal blog about studying for teacher certification; and The Desert Lamp because the UA students who write it are intelligent, witty, ask questions about Arizona higher education that no one else appears to think of. For instance, check out this post noting that the “as nearly free as possible” chant re: state funding of education refers only to instruction, not the fancy-schmancy dorms and other accouterments University leaders

Our just-graduated mechanical engineer son (right) with one of his ME professors at NAU's December graduation ceremonies. No more tuition hikes for him, and our UA daughter has less than two years until graduation.

say they must have to attract students. Evan Lisull (he of chalking controversy) and co-blogger Conor Mendenhall follow the money and break it down for all to see. (They are damn good reporters, and neither is a j. major.) They should pair up with Arizona Board of Regents’ President Ernest Calderón in his look-see at UA/ASU athletics spending (and maybe ask why can’t UA’s estimated $2 million bowl take go to fund, oh, a break in yet another tuition hike?)

So, thanks for reading, thanks for commenting, Happy New Year and Happy Epiphany! Talk w/ you tomorrow.

Welcome to 2010. I’ll be posting a detailed blog about what will be up here at God Blogging this year later this morning, but wanted to notify interested readers that I’m the featured interview today over at Peace Garden Mama, discussing journalism, faith and parenting. Feel free to jump over here to read it, and thanks to blogger and author Roxane B. Salonen for seeking me out to interview.

You have to wait until minute 13 of this 18 minute video to hear it, but President Barack Obama, in a Dec. 21 visit to the Washington D.C. Boys and Girls Club, does a little evangelizing about the “reason we celebrate Christmas” after reading the Polar Express to the kids and listening to a litany of multimedia acronyms on their wish lists. He does a good job, and when one child talks about giving gifts instead of just receiving them, Obama delivers a little Three Wise Men theology. Anyone who still clings to the “he’s a Muslim in hiding” conspiracy theory would do well to check it out.

I love Christmas, and it isn’t because of the presents. It’s because of the story. (GodBlogging warning: If you’re not into Christmas, are a non-believer, or just Grinch, stop reading here.) Christmas is the theology of God loving us, nothing else. We didn’t (we don’t) have to do anything except accept that love and grace and love back. It is very hard to describe. I mean, I could tell you the story, connecting the verses in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, bringing the annunciation of Gabriel and the tax-registration in the City of David and the shepherds and the wise men and Joseph’s dream and the manger birth and the Wise Men’s visit as done in popular media, but I cannot express what happens deep within me when hearing the Biblical recitation or when setting up my family’s Nativity scene.

So, I offer you this article about having a Merry Christmas and, for clergy who might be wondering how they can make their Christmas eve and Christmas day sermons great, you could do far worse that take a page from this guy’s message.

In other news, the Vatican’s official paper gave props to The Simpsons on Tuesday, (continue reading…)

In June 2007, I wrote a column about a young Tucsonan who had come back from traveling the states to open a dance studio in Tucson’s South Park neighborhood. Joseph Rodgers had attended a Tucson Town Hall that summer where there was plenty of hand-wringing about what was wrong with Tucson but not a whole lot of people stepping up with concrete answers to the question, “What can YOU do to fix Tucson?”

Rodgers, a professional ballet dancer who had come home to Tucson to care for his elderly father, stood up, in a big way, and said he’d offer a year of free ballet lessons to any kid from the impoverished South Side. The 40-something African-American had no studio at the time and no business plan. What he had was gumption and a dream to help kids the way he had been helped by dance.

And now, receiving the Christmas letter from Dancing in the Streets Arizona, I just want to squeeze his cheeks and say, “You go!” Rodgers (who, with his wife Soleste, is still a volunteer with DISAZ) now has a dance studio, a board of directors, 141 students, and, I’m betting, lots of happiness. Next weekend, after your Christmas happenings, you can go see his troupe of youngsters perform at Pima Community College in the Nutcracker.

This is the thing that got me most in the letter: One of the current students came to DITSAZ to complete court-ordered community service. After helping last Christmas with the Nutcracker performance, he decided he wanted to dance, and began taking lessons. He follows the rules (discipline is a big part of dance, and a big part of Rodgers’ program), dances several days a week and is learning to lift weights so he can develop the strength to partner with female dancers safely (doing all those lifts and holds takes muscle). He got a job to pay for his ballet shoes and brought his grades up enough at school so he could join the band. He’s hooked on performing as a musician and a dancer – not hooked on drugs or performing as a gang member. He is succeeding, he will graduate high school, and maybe, with Rodgers’ mentorship, go to college.

All because one guy stood up and committed to making a tangible difference for a part of Tucson that normally only gets noticed for its crime rates. You go, Joey, and I hope to see the result of your love and dedication on Dec. 26!