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(OT) Gas and Diesel
prices are too high.I Believe in parking all vehicles (including my own
vehicles) and SHUTTING DOWN! AMERICA! cuhulin |
Awwww Hell! $2.75 a gallon and your bitchin?
I'll park my big old gas sucking SUV when it hits 20$ a gallon! Will still drive my Lexus! Jack wrote in message ... prices are too high.I Believe in parking all vehicles (including my own vehicles) and SHUTTING DOWN! AMERICA! cuhulin |
wrote in message ... prices are too high.I Believe in parking all vehicles (including my own vehicles) and SHUTTING DOWN! AMERICA! That's easy for you to say. Out of the two dozen, how many actually run? Two? Three? |
My two Jeeps need a complete rebuild from the ground up,I paid $300.00
for each of them,go figure. www.jeepdoc.com www.willystech.com (parts board) My other vehicles that wont run,only need a tune up and brakes work,which is no problem for me to do.I have been working on cars and trucks since 1957. cuhulin |
All of my girlfriends need a "tune up".
cuhulin |
wrote in message ... (parts board) My other vehicles that wont run,only need a tune up and I have been working on cars and trucks since 1957. You keep at it, cuhulin. One of these days, you'll get one to turn over. But after all this time, you should probably put some fresh gas in the tank. That old stuff probably won't work. |
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About a week ago,I had asked that married Irish woman (she is from
Caherconlish,Ireland,her hubby is from Fethard,Ireland www.fethard.com) wayyyy over yonder across the big pond in Bognor Regis,England about the price of gasoline over there.She said to check www.house.co.uk England is a smaller in square miles (I dont do kilometers) area than Oregon. cuhulin |
"Andrew Oakley" wrote in message ... On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 17:02:00 -0500, wrote: prices are too high.I Believe in parking all vehicles (including my own vehicles) and SHUTTING DOWN! AMERICA! Well, in the UK we pay 91p a litre (US$6.17 per gallon) and our economy is doing just fine. Then again, our biggest island is only 700 miles long, so you run out of land to drive on after two tanks of petrol (gasoline). There's also differences as far as public transportation usage as well. As the suburbs developed with the help of the car, it's become harder to backfill the suburbs with public transportation like light rail. The suburbs were designed with the car in mind, not with rail or other forms of mass transportation. Going back on-topic, being on an island only 700 miles long makes radio transmissions a lot easier - for instance, we can have one transmitter covering the entire nation (eg. BBC Radio 4 on 198kHz AM Long Wave). It must be quite odd living somewhere where you have to re-tune AM depending on where you are. What about FM?? Is it strictly local, or do some BBC stations occupy the same part of the dial all over the place?? Then again, I guess the US sees itself as more of a federation of states rather than one big country, so maybe you don't see that as odd. Depends on who's doing the thinking. The ACW got rid of a lot of the federation of states' idea. Out of interest, does the US have the RDS system whereby FM radios retune themselves automatically as you drive around different areas? Does such a system exist for AM when you drive really long distances? In the UK that obviously isn't a requirement... ;-) RDS here is more of a cutsie thing, where the station's id or some other message pops up on screen. You can use ye olde scan and seek functions to find new stations as you travel, however. For travelling long distances, people I know tend to bring CDs/MP3s, or use videos or DVDs to placate the little ones. I'm still holding out on the latter two, because I had to watch out the window if I was bored, and I'm not going to blow several hundred dollars just to install a video unit in my car. --Mike L. |
The prices of gasoline in U.S.A.is artificially set by the big oil/gas
companies.The prices are not directly tied to the price per barrel of crude oil.Oil which is pumped from oil wells in U.S.A.is lower in price than oil which comes from foreign countries.I dont really want to shut down America,but I say folks should park their gasoline and diesel engine vehicles at least one day,same day each week untill the prices of gasoline and diesel fuel come down,wayyyyyy down. cuhulin |
"John S." wrote:
wrote: prices are too high.I Believe in parking all vehicles (including my own vehicles) and SHUTTING DOWN! AMERICA! Why would you want to shut down america. Because his IQ has dropped another 10 points and he doesn't realize there will be no food, water or electricity in very short order. Not to mention that all he wants is attention. -- Link to my "Computers for disabled Veterans" project website deleted after threats were telephoned to my church. Michael A. Terrell Central Florida |
A lot of 18 wheelers aren't making a profit nowdays because of high
diesel fuel prices.I wouldn't blame them at all if they parked their trucks.I have a big back yard,(and a big front yard and a half acre in another state) I can always grow a garden for food.Plenty of water too for gardens around here.I am not a vegetarian,but there are a lot of great hunting and fishing places in Mississippi.I am not going to starve. www.devilfinder.com Felder Rushing and www.gardenmama.com cuhulin |
In article ,
Andrew Oakley wrote: .... Then again, I guess the US sees itself as more of a federation of states rather than one big country, so maybe you don't see that as odd. Out of interest, does the US have No, radio broadcasting came into existance at a point where the government philosophy was much more Federal. (Largely to keep the Navy from running it all). Radio waves cross state boundries, so regulation is on the national level. (There are many places where large population centers are on state boundries). the RDS system whereby FM radios retune themselves automatically as you drive around different areas? Unlike, as I understand it, the UK where you have multiple transmitters for nationawide and regional "channels" or "programmes" or whatever you call them, the stucture here is "independent" stations with one transmitter on one frequency with unique call letters. Programs can be provided to each station by a network, but most stations are only a franchise, not owned by the network. (Until about 15-20 years ago when they allowed large operations to consolidate the industry). So there was little or no reason to have the radio switch to another transmitter with the same program, but most likely owned by a competitor. Does such a system exist for AM when you drive really long distances? In the UK that obviously isn't a requirement... ;-) At night time, there are the clear channel stations, with maximum power (50 kW) and only one or two stations on that frequency in the country. Now there are the two satellite operations, XM and Sirius, running in the 1.5? GHz band. Mark Zenier Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com) |
On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 09:26:04 -0400, "Michael Lawson"
wrote: "Andrew Oakley" wrote in message ... On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 17:02:00 -0500, wrote: prices are too high.I Believe in parking all vehicles (including my Well, in the UK we pay 91p a litre (US$6.17 per gallon) and our economy is doing just fine. Then again, our biggest island is only 700 miles long, so you run out of land to drive on after two tanks of petrol (gasoline). There's also differences as far as public transportation usage as well. As the suburbs developed with the help of the car, it's become harder to backfill the suburbs with public transportation like light rail. The suburbs were designed with the car in mind, not with rail or other forms of mass transportation. Yeah. Our main problem isn't suburbs (which in our case were generally built in the early 1900s when rail was the most common mass transport), but historic towns. Pretty much anywhere you build in a town, there's at least a thousand years of historic buildings you've got to bulldoze; sometimes two thousand years. For towns such as London or Cirencester which were built by the Romans around 200AD, the Romans put in a pretty good trunk road network, with roads hundreds of miles long and straight as a die. These Roman roads have remained pretty much unbuilt-on and these routes form several trunk road / motorway (expressway/interstate) and rail lines today. For towns such as Birmingham or Bristol, which were built mainly during the Industrial revolution of the 1600-1800s, it's a mess. New road and rail links have to go in via tortuorous winding routes in order to preserve historic buildings or parkland. There's also a problem that a lot of towns were built in the Medieval and Dark Ages periods, for defensive capability, such as upon steep hills. These towns are almost impossible to plan around (you can't just move six hills) and many of them are depopulating due to lack of good transport links. In the 1960s and 1970s we did have a go at building new towns such as Milton Keynes and Telford. Milton Keynes (1960s) was considered a failure because of overuse of concrete and loss of countryside, despite good road and rail links. Telford (1970s) was more of a success because it incorporated several spread-out villages mixing with countryside - kind of like a collection of small suburbs linked via trunk roads / expressways, rather than a solid town, with plenty of space for new roads and rail. However even this was considered a waste of green countryside, and with land being a scarce resource on a 700-mile long island, these kinds of projects were abandoned in favour of "filling in" disused gaps in existing towns, called "brown field sites". That new policy of "brown field sites" is also now coming under attack since many of these sites are old industrial sites which are heavily polluted. Basically we've run out of land in the South East of England and people are too scared to build on the rest of the country in case it all gets swallowed up too. Going back on-topic, being on an island only 700 miles long makes radio transmissions a lot easier - for instance, we can have one transmitter covering the entire nation (eg. BBC Radio 4 on 198kHz AM Long Wave). It must be quite odd living somewhere where you have to re-tune AM depending on where you are. What about FM?? Is it strictly local, or do some BBC stations occupy the same part of the dial all over the place?? Generally it works like this: 87.5-88MHz - Commercial event stations 88 - 95MHz - BBC national stations (Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4) 95 - 98MHz - Mostly BBC local, some Commercial local 98 - 99MHz - BBC national station (Radio 1) 100-102MHz - "Classic FM" national commercial radio station 102-104MHz - Mostly Commercial local, some BBC local 104-105MHz - Mostly BBC local, some Commercial local 106-108MHz - Mostly Commercial regional and event stations In large cities with more stations, especially London, these rules are frequently not observed. Typically the national stations will have twenty or thirty different transmitters and frequencies within their band. Using RDS your car radio retunes automatically (and usually unnoticably) as you drive around. For instance, I drive 25 miles to work down a valley; listening to BBC Radio 4, my RDS car radio retunes three times (92.7 / 93.4 / 93.0 MHz). You have to remember that most of the UK is a pretty hilly place, but well populated enough to make the transmitter infrastructure worth the money. BBC local stations are generally based on counties and may have several studios with one main studio in the county capital (usually the "cathedral city", ie. administrative town, often only 50-100k residents). Commercial local stations are generally based on large urban cities and usually only have one studio, although there are a handful of rural stations which have been set up by enthusiasts (often more an eccentric ego trip than a profitable business, but they make for truly *fascinating* listening). Some commercial stations join together at various times of day for regional output, notably overnight, but this isn't as common as it is in the US. Overnight on BBC local radio stations there is either regional output for speciality music (eg. Folk, Jazz, South Asian music) or a stereo rebroadcast of the otherwise mono MW station BBC Radio 5 (a rolling news/sport station). In general there is more local news on the BBC than on commercial radio. Also you are more likely to get live outside broadcasts on the BBC than on commercial; although commercial local stations are well known for providing huge mobile trucks which act as both stage and mobile studio for large events such as fireworks, exhibitions etc, whereas the BBC generally have several smaller LandRover/Jeep type vehicles. Examples of BBC and commercial stations covering the same area: http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/radioshropshire/ -- very obvious community/news link to rural county of Shropshire -- "fill-in" FM transmitters on seperate frequencies for areas with poor reception such as Ludlow which is behind a huge hill http://beaconshropshire.musicradio.com/homepage.jsp -- much more music oriented, tied to the more urban town of Telford -- does not even attempt to cover poor reception areas, ignores Ludlow "Event" stations are things like a radio station covering the Cheltenham Gold Cup horse race, Silverstone Formula 1 motor racing - typically these stations broadcast for only one or two weeks per year and have a range of only 1-2 miles (although they are pretty easy to pick up from further afield using a decent directional antenna). The kit for these can be rented as a complete package, with mobile studio, transmitter, engineers, delivery etc. included. "Regional" stations are a pretty new idea. The first one is Kerrang!, a heavy metal radio station from the industrial city of Birmingham which has an extremely powerful transmitter and a very well positioned antenna, covering the whole of the centre of England (the "Midlands") with one frequency (105.7MHz). There is also commercial local radio on AM-MW but this is increasingly rare. BBC local radio on AM-MW has almost died out entirely - I can only think of one BBC local station still on MW in my area, and this is to fill a specific FM reception blackspot. Generally the commercial MW stations are "goldien oldies" stations. What I found really different about radio in the UK to the US is that US MW stations seem to be mostly single-point-of-view politics. In the UK you are not allowed to present a political show from only one point of view, you have to provide "balance" or you loose your licence. The problem is that a lot of UK political shows become very bland as a result, I actually found the US political radio shows much more interesting listening because they actually discussed one point of view in *depth*, rather than having to cut over to the other side all the time. Most UK political shows degenerate into a shouting match between the two sides within a few minutes, whereas US political presenters have the power to just cut troublemakers off. -- Andrew Oakley |
On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 09:26:04 -0400, "Michael Lawson"
wrote: What about FM?? Is it strictly local, or do some BBC stations occupy the same part of the dial all over the place?? I forgot to ask - What's with 75-87.5MHz being able to hear TV audio in the US? When I visited New York on honeymoon last month, I bought myself a Sony ICF-35 as a second SW radio. It covered FM down to 75MHz which was completely new to me. Also I discovered that I could hear TV stations on this lower band! Do some TV stations specifically rebroadcast their audio for radio listeners in this frequency, or is this just a happy side-effect of still using the VHF band for TV? (All UK terrestrial TV is UHF nowadays IIRC). It's a rather lovely feature and a shame we don't do it in the UK. -- Andrew Oakley |
Dear Mr. Andrew Oakley:
TV Channels 5 and 6 broadcast in the 76-88 MHz band. 75 MHz exactly is an aircraft beacon frequency and some land mobile is distributed either side of 75 MHz. TV channels 2-4 extend from 54 MHz to 72 MHz. TV channel 1 does not exist. The sound channel for a broadcast TV is at the upper end of its 6 MHz wide allocation. Thus most FM broadcast receivers are able to hear channel 6's audio. Thanks for the extensive review of how broadcast frequencies are distributed in UK. Being a Midwesterner, it is a mystery why one would wish to have a honeymoon in NYC. Next time, see the real USA. Mac -- J. Mc Laughlin; Michigan U.S.A. Home: "Andrew Oakley" wrote in message ... On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 09:26:04 -0400, "Michael Lawson" wrote: What about FM?? Is it strictly local, or do some BBC stations occupy the same part of the dial all over the place?? I forgot to ask - What's with 75-87.5MHz being able to hear TV audio in the US? When I visited New York on honeymoon last month, I bought myself a Sony ICF-35 as a second SW radio. It covered FM down to 75MHz which was completely new to me. Also I discovered that I could hear TV stations on this lower band! Do some TV stations specifically rebroadcast their audio for radio listeners in this frequency, or is this just a happy side-effect of still using the VHF band for TV? (All UK terrestrial TV is UHF nowadays IIRC). It's a rather lovely feature and a shame we don't do it in the UK. -- Andrew Oakley |
On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 08:49:28 -0400, "J. Mc Laughlin"
wrote: TV Channels 5 and 6 broadcast in the 76-88 MHz band. 75 MHz exactly is an aircraft beacon frequency and some land mobile is distributed either side of 75 MHz. TV channels 2-4 extend from 54 MHz to 72 MHz. TV channel 1 does not exist. The sound channel for a broadcast TV is at the upper end of its 6 MHz wide allocation. Thus most FM broadcast receivers are able to hear channel 6's audio. Ah! Now it makes sense. Thanks for the details. Being a Midwesterner, it is a mystery why one would wish to have a honeymoon in NYC. Next time, see the real USA. Wife's choice, and not a bad one really. NY was sort of like Paris but much more conservative. I also spent a week's holiday (vacation) driving through California in January, sticking to the rural areas and avoiding SF/LA. Drove through the central valley and headed up through the hills towards Leavitt Peak which was breathtaking. Was also nice to chat to people who, like me, were country folk. Mind you, they do like their Christianity there, don't they? -- Andrew Oakley |
.... One of these days, you'll get one to turn over....
One of his cars, or one of his girlfriends? |
At least they are all Ameican.That's a heck of a lot more than you can
say.They do all turn over too.I just now fired one of them up. cuhulin |
I have been to Paris twice before.Paris,Texas that is.No need to avoid
Paris,Texas.Paris,Texas is a heck of a lot better than paris,Frogland can ever hope to be.No doubt there were some guys from Paris,Texas in World War Two who helped liberate paris,Frogland. cuhulin |
In article ,
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote: "John S." wrote: wrote: prices are too high.I Believe in parking all vehicles (including my own vehicles) and SHUTTING DOWN! AMERICA! Why would you want to shut down america. Because his IQ has dropped another 10 points and he doesn't realize there will be no food, water or electricity in very short order. Not to mention that all he wants is attention. Why is the hell is everyone responding to this idiot? The freak is in most of the on topic threads now not just the off topic crap. I'll give kill filling any reference to him in an article header next to get rid of him but if that does not work I'll just start kill filling anyone that responds to him. -- Telamon Ventura, California |
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Dear Mr. Andrew Oakley:
It was a pleasure. It seems to me that in Japan the FM broadcast band extends down towards 75 MHz. Please file away in your mind the fact that you have experienced two atypical areas of the Republic. I have lived in, or visited, many places - especially in my early days when I was working in radio astronomy. SW was important during those travels. Consider a vacation to coincide with the great Dayton, Ohio radio show in the Spring. Drive on into Indiana and see some of the most productive farms in the world. Take the long drive north to Michigan's UP with lots to see on the way - a state with as much coastline as the island of Great Britain. You could return through Canada on the east side of the lakes. There are areas where one religion predominates. However, within six miles of where I live, on an antenna farm well into the country, there is a Mosque, at least two Synagogues, a couple of temples of Indian religions, and many, very-different-from-each-other Christian churches. Come visit the Hartland. Bring a radio. If you have a radio amateur license, it will be even more fun and interesting. If you do not have a license, take the very easy exam and get one while at Dayton. Warm regards, Mac .... who once had a G5 call -- J. Mc Laughlin; Michigan U.S.A. Home: "Andrew Oakley" wrote in message ... On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 08:49:28 -0400, "J. Mc Laughlin" wrote: TV Channels 5 and 6 broadcast in the 76-88 MHz band. 75 MHz exactly is an aircraft beacon frequency and some land mobile is distributed either side of 75 MHz. TV channels 2-4 extend from 54 MHz to 72 MHz. TV channel 1 does not exist. The sound channel for a broadcast TV is at the upper end of its 6 MHz wide allocation. Thus most FM broadcast receivers are able to hear channel 6's audio. Ah! Now it makes sense. Thanks for the details. Being a Midwesterner, it is a mystery why one would wish to have a honeymoon in NYC. Next time, see the real USA. Wife's choice, and not a bad one really. NY was sort of like Paris but much more conservative. I also spent a week's holiday (vacation) driving through California in January, sticking to the rural areas and avoiding SF/LA. Drove through the central valley and headed up through the hills towards Leavitt Peak which was breathtaking. Was also nice to chat to people who, like me, were country folk. Mind you, they do like their Christianity there, don't they? -- Andrew Oakley |
wrote in message oups.com... ... One of these days, you'll get one to turn over.... One of his cars, or one of his girlfriends? One of his cars, obviously. In the context of his girlfriends the appropriate phrase would be "roll" over. |
On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 09:51:07 +0100, Andrew Oakley
wrote: On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 09:26:04 -0400, "Michael Lawson" wrote: What about FM?? Is it strictly local, or do some BBC stations occupy the same part of the dial all over the place?? I forgot to ask - What's with 75-87.5MHz being able to hear TV audio in the US? When I visited New York on honeymoon last month, I bought myself a Sony ICF-35 as a second SW radio. It covered FM down to 75MHz which was completely new to me. Also I discovered that I could hear TV stations on this lower band! Do some TV stations specifically rebroadcast their audio for radio listeners in this frequency, or is this just a happy side-effect of still using the VHF band for TV? (All UK terrestrial TV is UHF nowadays IIRC). It's a rather lovely feature and a shame we don't do it in the UK. There are a number of radios that have been built that support FM from 76-108 Mhz, so they will work anywyhere in the world. You have one. In some parts of the world (like Japan), the FM band is roughly 76-90Mhz. In most of the world, the space between 75 and 88 Mhz is assigned to VHF television. VHF channel 5 is 76-82Mhz, and VHF channel 6 is 82-88 Mhz. |
On Sat, 20 Aug 2005 16:14:24 GMT, "-=jd=-"
wrote: On Sat 20 Aug 2005 11:00:38a, Andrew Oakley wrote in message : Wife's choice, and not a bad one really. NY was sort of like Paris but much more conservative. {THUD!!} That was my jaw impacting the floor. Note to self: avoid Paris like the "plague"... Oh, Paris is lovely. It could, of course, just be that I just know Paris better, but I found NY a bit... well, quiet. I'm not one for nightlife (I don't drink alcohol, for one thing), but in Paris (or any European town, including London etc) you can't avoid the nightlife; every street has a pub/bar/cafe and in the evenings the entire city centre is heaving with people. In New York everything outside Times Square seemed dead after 8pm. I'm not complaining, since I actually enjoyed being able to walk around without lots of drunk people hassling me, but it was so very different from the European experience. For instance, in my nearby town of Cheltenham (which has a reputation for being "posh") I just wouldn't walk around in town after 10pm because of all the drunk people. For instance, in NY after spending an entire week walking around the city I can only remember noticing ONE bar/pub. In any European town it would be amazing if you found one street without one bar/pub! Maybe NY bars blend in to the background? Or maybe there are specific nightlife districts such as Times Square - maybe it's just planned better compared to the historical higgledy-piggledy nature of European towns? What I found similar between NY and Paris was the architecture and the landmark monuments. Paris and NY both have a large number of modern-era landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, or the Grand Arch of the Defence and the Empire State Building. London is a lot older, the landmark buildings are things like the Tower of London (a medium sized medieval castle). Peak which was breathtaking. Was also nice to chat to people who, like me, were country folk. Mind you, they do like their Christianity there, don't they? Ehhh... something like that. What I found really odd everywhere I've been in the USA (Huston, NY, Boston and California) is that there is virtually no pagan/wiccan culture. In the UK there is this underlying understanding that Christianity is a "new" religion introduced only two thousand years ago and which only really got going about a thousand years ago. For instance, the church in the village where I grew up is only nine hundred years old. Whereas there are pagan standing stones which are three or four thousand years old, and the local government council in my parent's village recently gave a grant to rebuild the pagan meeting place in the forest (really nicely done, with seven tree stumps encircling a wooden stage platform, and six rows of benches up along the hillside- can be used for all kinds of outdoor performances, but essentially it's a coven ground). What this means is that in the UK you get a lot of shops selling pagan trinkets, such as pentacle jewellery, wickerwork, crystals, alternative medicene, incense, that kind of thing. These shops are not at all difficult to find, they tend to be busy giftshops in prime tourist areas. Additionally in older towns you get dedicated witchcraft shops, selling books, ingredients, and a larger range of trinkets. The only places in the UK you'll find selling Christian artifacts (crucifixes, rosaries, scrolls with passages from the Bible etc) are shops right next to, or inside, cathedrals, or dedicated Christian bookshops, maybe only one per large town. Now I've never found ONE shop in the USA selling pagan gifts. Whereas lots of tourist shops seem to sell crucifix jewellery or small statues of the virgin Mary or Jesus, for instance. Also my wife is really into pagan crystals, and I could only find one shop in the whole week I was driving through California which sold crystals, and that was a geology shop, not a witchcraft shop. It was just kind of spooky to see that the USA seemed to take Christianity so seriously, even in tourist areas, even in modern cities such as New York. Maybe this is the Catholic influence? But there are lots of European countries which are predominantly Catholic too, such as France, and they don't have this huge imbalance between paganism and new religions. -- Andrew Oakley andrew/atsymbol/aoakley/stop/com Gloucestershire, UK |
Down town Jackson,Mississippi (I live in Jackson over on the West side
of Jackson,about four and a half miles West of down town Jackson,Hey,check out that down town sky cam at www.wapt.com if that stupid webcam is working) is deader than a door nail at night times every since they tore down all of the down town Jackson movie theaters and they made Capitol Street into a stupid one way street.There is sort of a move afoot by them d..n stupid bas...ds to sort of kind of "reverse" their DAMAGE to down town Jackson of since back in the 1960's.I doubt if it will work though.When meself and my family moved to Jackson in the 1940's,I thought Jackson was the biggest City in the World.Now,Jackson has gotten too d..n big! cuhulin |
The old paris,Frogland eiffel tower coffee shop is in
N'Awlins,Louisiana.It is a coffee shop (or something like that) in N'Awlins.I have driven right by it a few times before.I will be in N'Awlins next month visiting the D-Day Museum again and my cousins. www.ddaymuseum.org cuhulin |
You can take ALL of Frogland and SHOVE IT!
cuhulin |
"Andrew Oakley" wrote in message ... [snip] What I found really odd everywhere I've been in the USA (Huston, NY, Boston and California) is that there is virtually no pagan/wiccan culture. The majority of SW preachers would say that most US Christianity is paganism. Of course, these guys don't often have actual buildings for churches, and have to broadcast across the entire hemisphere in order to scrape up the meager contributions in order to buy one more day's SW time at about a dollar a minute. Brother Stair voices the Christianity/paganism viewpoint well. If you can hear him, I suggest you tune in the weeks before Halloween and Saturnalia (Christmas). and the local government council in my parent's village recently gave a grant to rebuild the pagan meeting place in the forest Wow. I wonder what the religious activists would say about that. On one hand, they're all for government subsidizing a religious interest. On the other hand, if they get school prayer, the kiddies might end up praying to the wrong God(s). Additionally in older towns you get dedicated witchcraft shops, selling books, ingredients, and a larger range of trinkets. I have to think there's something like that in Chicago, although I'm not sure. I have known people who've claimed to be pagans, but that was back in the 70s post hippie era. Also my wife is really into pagan crystals, and I could only find one shop in the whole week I was driving through California which sold crystals, and that was a geology shop, not a witchcraft shop. Were you in San Francisco? I have the impression that would be the most likely place for pagan stuff, at least the old world pagan stuff. I think a great many Americans who find themselves attracted to alternate religions look into Native American culture or Buddahism. Oh, yeah, let's not forget another favorite target of the SW preachers -- the Freemasons. I'll bet there's plenty of items of a Native American religious interest in the US Southwest. Maybe this is the Catholic influence? But there are lots of European countries which are predominantly Catholic too, such as France, and they don't have this huge imbalance between paganism and new religions. The Catholics often co-opt paganism. For example, Mexican Catholics celebrate "The Day of the Dead". This celebration goes way back to the Aztecs. The Mexican Americans I talked with said it's still more Aztec than Catholic. To a large degree, American culture was formed in the Colonial days by Protestants, particularly the then newest sort of Protestants such as the Puritians and other Reformed Christians. Purifying their church (and government!) from non-scripturial and pagan influences was a high priority. Frank Dresser |
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