I just hope you don’t have pets.

Recently, we learned that Americans spent $51 billion on pets in 2011. Dog food ate up 65 percent of that. But the fastest growing categories are grooming, boarding, pet-sitting, pet hotels and day care.

I’m contributing to those growing categories, but I finally invested in my own grooming table and professional clippers, which paid for themselves in the very first grooming session (or rather, disaster) at home. I’ve had dogs all my life, most of whom shed profusely. Now, I care for two poodle mixes who don’t shed but whose coats grow at an amazing clip. Grooming, I’ve found, does take some practice and lots of patience.

Around the time we learned of the billions lavished on pets, another Associated Press story revealed that custody cases involving pets are on the rise. That story reported that pets are considered property in every state in the U.S. In divorce cases in the past, they’ve been divvied up like pieces of furniture.

Not so much anymore.

Ken Altshuler, a divorce attorney and president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, said that “judges are viewing them more akin to children than dining room sets. They are recognizing that people have an emotional attachment to their animals.”

No kidding. Sounds like another multibillion-dollar lawyering industry in the making.

I’ve recently purchased a subscription to Skeptic magazine. In an article sent through the online version of the magazine, I learned that zootherapy had been debunked. I didn’t even know what zootherapy was. (It’s not found in the dictionaries I checked, nor is there a Wikipedia entry for it.)

Zootherapy (the first part is pronounced ZOE-uh) is a term designating the positive effect of animals on people.

Skeptic is all about putting commonly held beliefs to the test to see if they hold water. The article on zootherapy says that an American psychiatrist, Boris Levinson, considered the father of animal-assisted therapy, put forth ideas in the 1960s and ’70s about the contributions animals can make in people’s lives. These ideas were widely accepted into pop culture to the point that zootherapy “is now a modern institution.”

“Zootherapy supposedly contributes to better health, stimulates good conduct in children, redeems delinquents, helps autistic and disabled children improve, increases the survival rate of cancer patients, facilitates social interactions [and] relieves loneliness,” not to mention that it helps animals improve their lot in life.

But the article points out that the research used to make these claims are of the “weakest form of medical evidence” — anecdotal reports. And unless they are documented by hard facts, they’re not scientific.

“One must consider the quality of the scientific methodology used, the source of research funding as well as the affiliations of the researchers,” the article states.

Now, I walk my dogs almost every day. If it’s raining or bitterly cold (or miserably hot), then, no, I don’t take them on a walk, but probably 325 out of the 365 days of the year, we’re out roaming the neighborhood or at one of the city parks. I figure that’s one of the things that’s good about having a dog — the need to get out and exercise them, which results in exercise for yourself. But a Greenwich University study showed that walking without a dog is far healthier than walking with one, because of the numerous “pit stops” the dogs make along the way.

Still, I tell myself, I just probably wouldn’t get out and walk if I didn’t have my dogs. On the other hand, I probably could pay for three gym memberships with the amount of money I spend on vet visits, dog food and treats, beds, crates, grooming and sitting.

On the other other hand, I like walking better than going to a gym.

Another study, published in 2006, surveyed 21,000 Finnish adults and found that pet owners were sick more often and got a below-average amount of exercise compared with nonpet owners.

The risk of having health problems was 10 to 20 percent higher in pet owners than nonpet owners.

It’s often thought that children who are raised with pets have a greater sense of empathy and compassion. The eSkeptic article said that this isn’t true at all. In fact, it was reported that the Nazis were quite fond of pets and animals and had the strictest animal protection laws ever written. That sense of compassion didn’t keep them from exterminating millions of people.

“After more than 50 years of intense ‘research’ and countless articles published there is no evidence to this day that animal therapy works to combat any form of disability, disease or condition, psychological or otherwise,” the article states.

As with so many other people who want to perpetuate the idea that pets are good for us, I’ll put forth my own observation: For better or worse, I have these two dogs, who eat up a lot of my time and money, and have, on a number of occasions, flummoxed me when they’ve strewn trash around the house or chomped on a $300 pair of glasses.

But they’re awfully cute and wonderful company, and they give me lots of sloppy affection. They also get me out to walk on days I probably wouldn’t otherwise.

I’m not sure what to do about Skeptic, but the doggies get to stay.

— This column first appeared in the Salina Journal on April 7, 2012.

I am writing this column before my departure.

Before leaving, as has happened every time I go to China (this was my fourth trip), I thought about my potential imminent demise.

Why is it that we think these things just before we go on a trip? Is the world really so much more dangerous “out there”?

The first time I visited, in 2003, was the first time I had left U.S. soil. I was convinced that the plane I was to fly in would crash in the Atlantic.

I practiced treading water for weeks beforehand.

I’ve written wills and left them sitting out on the dining room table just in case — not official, notarized, witnessed wills, just a “Please accept this in lieu of a legal document, as it contains my last wishes” kind of will.

I now have a legal will in place, just so you know.

A couple of weeks before leaving for this trip, I started mentioning the possibility of a tsunami to my friends and co-workers, as my son wanted to take my sister and me to an island in Thailand to “chill out on the beach” for a few days.

Journal graphic designer Richae Morrow would chime in, “If you see the water recede, run for the hills!”

“I will!” I’d say, picturing the disasters we’ve seen in the press in the past few years, when the ocean has taken over an entire coastline, killing thousands in roiling water, cars and trucks and ships banging against buildings in the water’s path.

I’d tell my boss, Ben Wearing, “If there’s a tsunami, just forget about me,” with a little glint in my eye — just in case there is a tsunami, and I don’t happen to get swept away in it, I could secretly live the rest of my life on the aforementioned Thai island.

“Oh, we could never forget you,” he’d say.

Just a couple of nights before leaving for this trip, I realized I’d forgotten to get any shots or malaria pills from the health department.

Too late now!

And I’m going to rural Thailand, where my son warned me about swarms of mosquitoes. So now I’m thinking if the tsunami doesn’t get me, the malaria will.

Then, I’d realize, oh, my gosh, if

I die on this trip, this will be my

last column.

You know, you have to be pretty full of yourself to have that kind of thought; but I did.

So, just in case, I should make this one my best.

No pressure, though.

If I die, I don’t expect to see my family and friends in a hereafter. I’m content that my physical body will be absorbed into the earth (or devoured by the sea), and whatever it is that animates me — makes  my heart beat and my brain think and every atom in my body buzz with electricity — will become part of the current that is vibrating in all the molecules, all the atoms in the seemingly empty spaces of our universe.

That’s good enough for me.

And people will say nice things about me, and people will talk about who should take care of my dogs. I sure hope they get a nice home. I’ve designated money in my will for them.

And my sister and my son, if they survive the tsunami or whatever calamity may befall us, will spend a lot of time at my house going through all my stuff — a thankless, tiresome job, to be sure.

That’s how I see it playing out.

But should I return from my travels, I’ll tell you all about it next week.

— This column first appeared in the Salina Journal on April 14, 2012.

The cover of the DVD sports numerous international “Winner” declarations. Online, the website (www.thehappymovie.com) promotes a happiness movement, with lots of resources for making happiness a priority in one’s life. I already ordered my “Happy” T-shirt.

The film starts out at dawn, as we see a man come out of his home carrying a bucket of water, with which he washes his feet and hands and face.

“My home is good,” he says, as the camera passes over his dilapidated shack, plastic tarps gently blowing in the breeze.

“There’s good airflow here,” he says. “One side has a window.

“During the monsoon, we sometimes have trouble keeping the rain out.”

The camera follows him to his job, in the streets of Kolkatta (previously Calcutta), pulling a rickshaw, running through puddles and trash in the street with his flip-flops. He says it can be very hot in the summer, and the sun literally hurts his face, but when it rains, he doesn’t mind because he knows he’ll dry off quickly while he runs.

“When I return home in the afternoon, my son is sitting at that tea shop waiting for me to return,” he says, his face brightening. “And when he calls out to me, ‘Baba!’ I am full of joy.

“When I see my child’s face, I feel very happy. I feel that I am not poor, but I am the richest person.

“Sometimes we eat only rice and salt, but we are happy,” he says. “My neighbors are good. We stay together. We are all friends!”

Thus begins a feature-length documentary that focuses on happiness in places we wouldn’t expect. According to the movie, happiness boils down to:

•  Friendship and community

•  Caring and doing for others

•  Involvement in nature

•  A balanced life, with plenty of leisure time

•  Engaging in activities you enjoy

A day or two after I’d watched the “Happy” movie, I happened upon a TED talk called “How to buy happiness” by Michael Norton, an associate professor of business administration and a Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School. He holds a B.A. in psychology and English and a Ph.D. in psychology.

We’ve heard many times that money can’t buy love or happiness, but Norton points out that if we do the right things with money, it can indeed buy happiness. And he’s got the research to prove it.

Norton says we usually spend money on the wrong things in pursuit of happiness — that we spend it on ourselves.

Not surprisingly, he pointed out that the U.S. is among the world’s wealthiest nations, yet nowhere near the happiest.

“What if you were a little more prosocial with your money?” he asks.

He formulated an experiment to see what would happen.

“One Vancouver morning,” he explains, “we went out on the campus at University of British Columbia and we approached people and said, ‘Do you want to be in an experiment?’ They said, ‘Yes.’

“We asked them how happy they were, and then we gave them an envelope. And one of the envelopes had things in it that said, ‘By 5 p.m. today, spend this money on yourself.’ Other people in the morning got a slip of paper that said, ‘By 5 p.m. today, spend this money on somebody else.’

“Also inside the envelope was money. … So some people got this slip of paper and $5. Some people got this slip of paper and $20. … We called them up at night and asked them, ‘What’d you spend it on, and how happy do you feel now?’ ”

“People who spent money on other people got happier. People who spent money on themselves, nothing happened. It didn’t make them less happy, it just didn’t do much for them.”

The other thing he found was that the amount of money didn’t matter much.

Norton went on to run the same experiment in Uganda, with the same results.

Not satisfied with just two countries’ findings, Norton got data from the Gallup Organization, which has asked people about charity donations. Gallup has also asked, “How happy are you with your life in general?”

Turns out, those who give, throughout the world, are happier than people who don’t give money to charity.

Norton went on to do similar experiments with sales teams in Belgium.

“Some teams, we give people money for themselves and say, ‘Spend it however you want on yourself,’ just like we did with the undergrads in Canada. But other teams we say, ‘Here’s 15 euro. Spend it on one of your teammates this week. Buy them something as a gift or a present and give it to them.’ ”

It turned out, again, the teams that were prosocial, spending it on each other, made more sales, and the teams that spent the money on themselves had no difference in their sales.

So, does this work with sports teams? Well, yes, indeed it does. Norton tried it with dodgeball teams.

“The teams that spend money on themselves (have) just the same winning percentages as they were before,” he said. “The teams that we give the money to spend on each other, they become different teams and, in fact, they dominate the league by the time they’re done.”

After watching this talk, I made a sign with big, bold letters: “Give something to someone every day.”

So far, I’ve kept this promise to myself, and I have to say, this is an excellent ongoing experiment.

— This column first appeared in the Salina Journal on May 5, 2012.

Well, my column is officially named.

Thanks for all the votes! It was fun playing the name game for a couple of weeks. I hadn’t realized my name lent itself so easily to puns and wordplay.

Final tally: “Ariel View” got 39 percent of the vote, “Out of my Mind” got 23 percent, “Ariel Dynamics” got 15 percent and the rest fell below that. There were 224 votes.

Now that that’s taken care of, we can move on to higher matters.

Speaking of which, I was happily surprised to learn a couple of weeks ago that former presidential candidate and TV show host Pat Robertson came out in favor of legalizing marijuana. That’s something I can wholeheartedly agree with him about.

“I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Robertson said. “I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think … this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.”

According to the Drug Policy Alliance, “police prosecuted 858,408 persons for marijuana violations in 2009. … Approximately 46 percent of all drug prosecutions nationwide are for marijuana possession. Of those charged with marijuana violations, approximately 88 percent (758,593 Americans) were charged with possession only.”

“I believe in working with the hearts of people, and not locking them up,” Robertson said, about those incarcerated for possession of marijuana.

“If people can go into a liquor store and buy a bottle of alcohol and drink it at home legally, then why do we say that the use of this other substance is somehow criminal?” he said.

I couldn’t agree with him more.

Worse than the ridiculous waste of incarcerating people for marijuana possession is the abhorrent loss of life. In January, the Los Angeles Times reported this incredible drug war result: “By unofficial count, at least 50,000 people are believed to have been killed since (Mexican President Felipe) Calderón deployed the military in the first days of his presidency in December 2006.”

On top of that is the utter waste of money — in a down economy! DrugSense.org has a war-on-drugs clock that shows how much money we’re spending on this craziness: about $500 a second! According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the U.S. federal government spent more than $15 billion dollars in 2010 on the war on drugs.

And according to “The Budgetary Impact of Drug Prohibition,” a white paper produced by the Cato Institute, state and local governments spend at least another $25 billion a year.

Robertson sums it up well: “We’ve said, ‘We’re conservatives. We’re tough on crime.’ That’s baloney. It’s costing us billions and billions of dollars. Now, think of California. California is spending more money on prisons than it spends on schools. I mean, there’s something wrong about that equation, you know? There’s something wrong. I think we need to scrub the federal code and the state codes and take away these criminal penalties.”

Enough said. This is the stupidest war ever. Now that an evangelical leader has made his pronouncement, I hope this right thinking will permeate the religious community and the great political machine so we can put a stop to this incomprehensible waste.

Now I wish a highly respected evangelical figure would would weigh in on the Kansas Preservation of Religious Freedom Act, which passed in the House on Wednesday.

Perhaps not a religious figure, but our congressional representative Charlie Roth weighed in: “This bill is homophobic and makes Kansas exclusive, not inclusive,” he said during House debate before the vote. “This will be a negative economic development tool and sends a message that Kansas is not welcoming, but (is) the land of the pure, defined by the few.”

Unfortunately, Roth was the only local representative to vote against the bill.

One of the main arguments I’ve heard about the anti-discrimination bill we’ve been talking about here in Salina is from landlords who don’t want to have to rent to gays, who would be performing abominable acts in their property. They want to rent to good Christian people whenever possible.

I have this to say about that: Having been half of a “good Christian couple” in several rental homes over many years — I can assure you that you can’t control what’s going on in your rental property. All kinds of abominable practices can be happening — physical and sexual abuse, greed, jealousy, lust, lies, anger, rage … . You simply can’t keep bad things out of your rental homes no matter how well you scrutinize your renters. Heterosexuals, including Christians, do bad things. Consider Dennis Rader, or BTK, for one infamous example.

You might even have some kindness and compassion going on in your rental homes if you rent to gays. I’m just sayin’.

Mostly, I hear a lot of fear.

It took a long time to get rid of slavery, it took a long time before women got the vote, we’ve been through Prohibition and back. We’ve gone through a lot of difficulties in our state and our country, and we’ll get through this one and the ones after that. We just have to slog our way through until we find our way.

We will find our way; I’m confident about that.

— This column first appeared in the Salina Journal on March 28, 2012.

]]> http://www.roshanaariel.com/2012/04/30/taking-the-high-road/feed/ 0 http://www.roshanaariel.com/2012/04/28/food-phalluses-and-flushing/ http://www.roshanaariel.com/2012/04/28/food-phalluses-and-flushing/#comments Sat, 28 Apr 2012 17:46:02 +0000 admin http://www.roshanaariel.com/?p=125 Continue reading →]]> I’m still recovering from my recent trip to Thailand and China. I didn’t experience any jet lag over there, but when I got home, boom! I felt like I was walking through a haze for the first week … when I could keep my eyes open. I slept a lot. And I felt sad that my visit was over so quickly and I don’t know when I’ll see my son, Kris, again.

Kris lives in Kunming, China, a city of 6 million in Yunnan Province. The weather there, in southwest China, is beautiful, like the weather we’ve had for the past couple of weeks. It’s called the Spring City.

Food

The food in Thailand and China is as adventurous as it is delicious. We tasted flavors and textures of different ethnicities virtually every night.

My favorite restaurant in Kunming is Hot Pot, where each guest has a burner that’s built into the table. You order your broth of choice (I chose tomato), and you go to the spice bar, where you fill a small bowl with your choices of sesame seeds, cilantro, minced onions and garlic, finely chopped nuts, pastes, spices and oils. You stir all that up; it’s your dipping bowl. Then back at the table, you get your broth boiling and use your chopsticks to pick up all the goodies that have been delivered to your table — potatoes, turnips, several vegetables I don’t know the names of, noodles, seafood and meats. You put them in your broth to simmer, and as they are cooked, you pick them up with your chopsticks, dunk them in your dipping sauce and devour. Heaven.

Actually, I probably gained 10 pounds the first week, in Bangkok and in Krabi Province on the beach. I had to really pace myself the second week so I could fit into my clothes on the way home.

In excellent vacation fashion, we’d eat breakfast in an outdoor cafe with the ocean water lapping up close to our table. We’d start around 9 a.m. and continue on chatting pleasantly and taking in the tropical scene, getting another cup of syrupy black coffee and a few more bites of fresh fruit, until around 1 p.m., when it was time to think about lunch. We’d mosey on down the beach, choosing another cafe with exotic-looking dishes on the menu.

Phalluses

But I’m sure you’re just dying to hear about the phallus-filled cave.

On the beach in Krabi, after swimming in the warm water and gawking at a group of monkeys stealing all the food from a sack on the beach towel next to me, I was intrigued by a cave next to the swimming area. It looked like there were bright flags inside, and people kept going in, then coming out. I imagined that it was a beach toy or equipment rental place. We went over to check it out, and the closer we got to it, the more the picture came into focus: three large, wood phalluses — maybe 5 feet tall — stood just outside the cave and hundreds of smaller ones were inside, many of which were adorned with brightly colored fabric.

On a snorkeling trip later, our Australian guide told us about the legend of the Phra Nang (princess) Cave. She said fishermen believe the cave is home to a sea princess; they believe their carved phallic offerings will protect them and give them success in fishing. The carvings are also believed to help with fertility. She said that in this culture there is nothing funny or lecherous about the shrine; it’s considered sacred.

And flushing

I’m always curious about the toilets in Asia, and Thailand was particularly interesting. Even in the most Third World-ish places we visited, there was always a Western-style toilet (a “throne” rather than a ceramic hole in the floor). Some toilets didn’t have a flush mechanism, which led to long conversations about how primitive (and modern) toilets actually work. Some had large buckets of water next to the toilet, with a ladle of sorts, to facilitate the “flushing.”

What fascinated me most was a small hose installed next to each toilet with a spray nozzle — the poor man’s bidet! What a brilliant idea in such a sultry land … and why don’t we have those?

From what I saw in residential bathrooms, there’s no shower stall or curtain — you take a shower and the toilet and sink get wet, too. They’re reminiscent of what bathrooms used to be called: water closets.

As always in countries that aren’t as modern as ours, bring your own paper into the bathroom with you; and don’t flush it down — put it in the waste basket next to the toilet. And don’t walk around with a Kleenex pack in your pocket afterward — it’s considered uncultured.

In China, you’ll be squatting most times over a hole in the floor. Watch for signs that say “No pooping”; some pipes can’t handle anything but liquid waste. (In my son’s restaurant, you’ll be charged 50 RMB (about $8) if you’re caught breaking that rule.) I sometimes watch for KFCs or McDonald’s restaurants, where the plumbing is ample and the restrooms ultra-clean.

These are small distinctions in the grander scheme of things — all creatures in all the world must dispose of their waste — from single-celled amoebas to giant elephants — but none as ingeniously as we humans.

— This column first appeared in the Salina Journal on April 28, 2012

It wasn’t my fault I missed a flight April 1st out of Wichita; it was mechanical issues of some kind that delayed my flight by an hour.

Since I missed that flight to Denver, I missed my Denver flight to Los Angeles. Since I missed that flight, I missed my flight from L.A. to Beijing; and since I missed that flight, I missed my flight to Kunming, China, where my son, Kris, lives. I also missed the meal my son had planned with a bunch of his friends to celebrate my visit along with my sister Pris, who had gone to Japan a week earlier to visit a friend and would join us in Kunming.

And since I missed that flight to Kunming, I would also miss the flights my son had reserved to Bangkok and then to Krabi Province in Thailand, where the beaches awaited us.

Those disappointments, along with spending the night on a concrete bench in Beijing Capital International Airport, comprised the beginning of my best vacation ever.

As I realized that I wouldn’t make it to Kunming in time for our flight to Bangkok, I tried to follow directions for “Free Wi-Fi” in the Beijing airport to email my son using my iPod (I already knew my phone wouldn’t work there). Attempts to follow the translation-garbled instructions were futile. Seeing me struggle, a young Pakistani woman told me the Wi-Fi didn’t work and neither did the phone cards one could purchase. More about her later.

I walked up to a couple of 20-something Chinese guys and pantomimed the international sign for talking on a phone. A cellphone appeared, and I called my son to explain the situation to him. He convinced me to buy a ticket directly to Bangkok so we could make our flight to Krabi together. Ka-ching — China Eastern rings up a $440 ticket for me, and I look forward to spending the next 22 hours in the airport.

Twenty-year-old Uroosh, the Pakistani woman, had also missed a connecting flight because of delays and was looking at spending the night in the airport on her first-ever trip anywhere. She was on her way to San Francisco to be with her new husband, whom she had met on the Internet. Her family had given their blessing, and her husband had recently visited Pakistan to meet his new bride and her family, say his “I do” during the nuptials and take his bride on a local honeymoon. Now he was back in San Francisco, and Uroosh had packed up all her worldly goods and was on her way to a new life in America.

Uroosh and I ate some rice and vegetables in an airport eatery; I had a beer, she drank tea. We talked politics for a while. (Her take: All politicians are bad.) I set her straight on American history; she thought “the blacks” were the first North Americans and thought President Obama shared her faith — Islam. She told me about the dangers of living in Pakistan — she had heard of girls being kidnapped off the streets, raped, killed and dismembered and tossed on the side of the road. (This explained why her parents were happy for her opportunity for new life in the U.S.)

We spent the night on adjoining benches, half-draped over our luggage, our arms laced through the bags’ handles. The chilly airport grew quiet as about 100 others who had been bumped from their itineraries set up camp on chairs and benches.

Amazingly, I found that stretching out on a concrete bench is not quite as bad as trying to sleep in a loud, cramped airplane.

At 5 a.m., the airport began to bustle again. As I walked laps around the perimeter the next day, I kept a good attitude, smiled at people and tried to spread some good ol’ American cheer.

My son and sister never looked so good as they did when I saw them in the Bangkok airport close to midnight that night — two and a half days after leaving my house in Salina.

Best vacation ever? Yes, but I’ve run out of room for today. Next week: Oh, the food! A phallus-filled cave! Adventures in toilets!

— This column first appeared in the Salina Journal on April 21, 2012.

On particularly cold days or nippy nights, there’s nothing I enjoy more than lighting a fire in my fireplace.

I love my hearth. My house came with an inefficient, ugly fireplace when I bought it. It featured fake brown brick faces, a couple of them missing. It was unappealing and did nothing but heat a couple of feet in front of it while it took all the warmth in the rest of my house and funneled it up the chimney.

When my parents died a few years ago, I got a small inheritance. The two things I was most interested in when I received it were paying off my car and having a new fireplace installed.

My new hearth is efficient, has real brickwork all around and it’s beautiful.

When I walk my dogs, I pick up kindling in the neighborhood. On an especially nice day, I might do a good cleanup of the city parks, stacking small branches and large sticks and twigs in my car; I’ve accumulated quite a collection on my front porch.

When it’s cold, I use my fireplace a lot. I love snuggling up in front of a hot blaze with tea or cocoa to watch “Downton Abbey” on my laptop (I’m a big fan) or read a good book or just gaze into the flames for a while.

For the most part, I keep my thermostat at 60-62 throughout the winter. I wear a heavy sweater or hoodie around the house, as well as a “gator” around my neck and warm, fuzzy slippers.

And when I don’t use my fireplace, I use space heaters so I warm only the rooms I’m in.

As a result, my gas bill has gone down by $12 a month from two years ago (I’m on the monthly averaging pay plan, so every year, they refigure my bill).

Great, right?

Wrong-o. Really bad.

My sister Kathy sent me a link to Sam Harris’ blog post of Feb. 3, which he titled “The Fireplace Delusion.” He noted that a well-tended fire is warm, beautiful and comforting and that most people consider them “to be one of the more wholesome pleasures that humanity has produced.”

And what could be more natural? We’ve been burning wood for heat and to cook for at least hundreds of thousands of years.

When I walk through my neighborhood and smell my neighbors’ burning wood, I close my eyes and smile. I love the scent of burning wood. I know some don’t share this penchant. (I used to love the smell of my dad’s pipe tobacco, too, but my mom found it intolerable.)

Harris points out that “there is no amount of wood smoke that is good to breathe.”

“It is at least as bad for you as cigarette smoke,” he points out, “and probably much worse. (One study found it to be 30 times more potent a carcinogen.) The smoke from an ordinary wood fire contains hundreds of compounds known to be carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic and irritating to the respiratory system. Most of the particles generated by burning wood are smaller than one micron — a size believed to be most damaging to our lungs. In fact, these particles are so fine that they can evade our mucociliary defenses and travel directly into the bloodstream, posing a risk to the heart.”

And, of course, I’m not the only one being exposed to the smoke — far from it. It’s going out my chimney and exposing my neighbors. I take some comfort in the fact that I almost always light fires at night, when most everyone is indoors. Unfortunately, Harris reports, “Particles this size also resist gravitational settling, remaining airborne for weeks at a time.”

Oops.

Harris also points out that in the developing world today, the World Health Organization has estimated that it causes almost 2 million premature deaths each year. Burning wood may be natural, but it’s not good for us.

By lighting a fire in my living room, I’m creating pollution. At the most, burning unnecessary fires should be illegal, he suggests, and at the least penalized or taxed.

If there were a way I could pay for the pollution I’m creating in my neighborhood, I would. But we don’t have a provision for that in our society.

Harris paints a dreadful picture: “The sight of a glowing hearth should be about as comforting as the sight of a diesel engine idling in your living room.”

Yet, when I watched the flames dancing in my hearth last night, I still considered them lovely, still enjoyed the warmth, still delighted in tending the fire.

Those of you who recognize Harris’ name know that he is well-known as an atheist — a term he rejects; no one is called an avegetablist if he doesn’t like vegetables or a nonastrologer if he doesn’t believe in astrology.

He wrote “The Fireplace Delusion” to illustrate how difficult it is for us to give up what we strongly believe.

To my neighbors, I apologize if you dislike the smell of my smoke, and while I will be more mindful of the toxins I’m spreading, I can’t promise that I’ll forego fires for as long as I own that house.

And to those of you who hold beliefs that I consider irrational, I have a clearer understanding of how wrong I can be and how hard it is to give up the way I feel in regard to something that has always been a comfort to me.

Homosexuality is only “an unfortunate affliction” because of people like Wetter who think gays are “deviant” and “to be deplored and minimized.” Personally, I think people with big ears that stick out, like Wetter, should be deplored and minimized. Those shameful ears are just unnatural; they shouldn’t be seen in public. At the very least, he should wear a hat.

Sorry for the sarcasm; he can’t do anything about his ears. (Well, he could have corrective surgery.) But neither can a person change his or her sexual orientation (even with surgery). It’s hard-wired. Wetter should know that, but he chooses to ignore the science.

Moving on …

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column called “Death to the demagogues.” Unfortunately, the hyperbolic rants got worse, if that were possible. Newt Gingrich declared that, if re-elected, President Obama would declare all-out war on Catholics on Day 1 of his second term.

Please, sir, do remember that we’ve indeed been in two wars over the past 10 years. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands are maimed for life. Trillions of dollars spent. Millions of children in Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.S. are orphaned.

What an insult to those who have fought and died or been forever maimed in real wars to compare that reality to our president, who, from a more reasonable perspective, is giving all women equal access to birth control and medical care, regardless of whom they work for. Let’s remember, too, that we’re talking about religious-affiliated organizations that have their doors open to the public, both in serving clients and in hiring employees. One might suggest that a public company owned by a religious organization play by public rules or that those institutions close their doors to non-Catholic clients and employees. Hire and serve Catholics only if you want to play by Catholic rules.

And let’s not forget that unlike a war foe, the Catholic church, like all other churches in the U.S., operates tax-free, even when its ideologies promote something that millions of Catholic women ignore because we live in a nonagrarian society in which scads of children aren’t needed to do chores — in a resource-strained world that already holds 7 billion people.

It’s been interesting to see the panels of Catholic clergy and other religious leaders expressing outrage about this “war” against religious freedom in regard to access to birth control. Women have been almost nonexistent in these talks. Why is that?

I grew up in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood in St. Paul, Minn., in the ’60s. It wasn’t unusual for the Catholic families to have 10 to 14 kids each. You don’t hear too often anymore about super-large families. I wonder if birth control has had anything to do with that.

And on the campaign trail …

Last week, presidential candidate Rick Santorum questioned Obama’s worldview about how the Earth should be treated, calling it “phony theology.”

“We’re not here to serve the Earth,” Santorum said. “The Earth is not the objective. Man is the objective.”

Santorum doesn’t seem to realize that the Earth is our collective home. He may not care if his home is stinking, polluted and blighted, and that would be fine if he confined the pollution and destruction to his home alone. But the Earth is home to all of us, and most of us want to live in a home that is well-cared-for and cherished.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Tuesday said that Obama seeks to substitute a “secular” agenda for one grounded in faith. I hope so! I don’t want a Taliban- or sharia-law-type country in which we follow doctrines written thousands of years ago in a “holy book.”

This faith-and-governance ideology is frightening, precisely because the people who are calling for more “faith” are the ones who more strictly follow a book that was written by people who believed the world was flat, that the sun revolved around the Earth and that the Earth was the center of the universe. There were no microscopes to understand disease or telescopes to fathom the cosmos. No knowledge of people on the other side of the globe, let alone any inkling of evolutionary science. But this is the book relied on for direction.

Some friends of mine and I are meeting to explore evolutionary perspectives of things. Topics include: What are our responsibilities to our planet, other people, animals, etc.? What does brain science tell us about our instincts and proclivities? Where does religion fit in? What is evolutionary spirituality? Is there a direction to evolution, and if so, where are we headed?

If you’re interested in these kinds of topics, maybe you’ll join in discussing them among your own friends.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been working on putting together the annual Salina Edition — what we refer to in-house as “Progress.” During Progress, which also refers to the six weeks or so we work on the project, the reporters are busier than ever, the photographers have extra duties, the copy editors have lots more to proof and our graphic artist has section covers to design … and no one can take a vacation until it’s finished, in mid-March.

For me, it’s a chance to get away from the regular news of the day and dive into a substantial undertaking.

We have a tradition here at the Journal that when the final page is proofed, corrected and sent to press, the editor in charge of the project does a victory lap around the newsroom, preferably with a flag. I’ve been known to walk on my hands or do cartwheels instead.

I’ve laid out the Progress edition several times in my 10 years here at the Journal, and this, in my opinion, is the best yet.

The title for this year’s four-week endeavor is “Surviving and Thriving,” and in it, our reporters are digging deep into the archives to discover how Salina survived its early years and tease out why it continues to thrive.

Part 1 will be inserted in Sunday’s edition of the Journal and will include the town’s history from 1858 to 1940. Part 2 will be in next Sunday’s edition and will include stories about the town from 1941 to 1964. Part 3 will have stories from 1965 to 1985, and Part 4, published March 11, will have stories from 1986 to 2011.

Each edition will include a timeline of tidbits of our most newsworthy stories from 2011, in three-month increments.

Head Journal historian Gordon Fiedler starts us out in tomorrow’s edition with a rousing story of drunkenness and prostitution and the preacher who worked to tame the fledgling town. Spoiler alert: It seems the city jail had revolving doors, through which some ne’er-do-wells came and went, with cash changing hands in their nefarious comings and goings.

Then we’re taken back to previous decades, when Salina’s founding fathers decided to settle here. Did you know they were all related? Their profiles and the old photographs take us back to a time when life was truly arduous.

Speaking of photographs — many of which were found in the Kansas Research Campbell Room in Salina Public Library, some deep in the Journal’s archive cabinets — they are a delight! To see horses and wagons at the intersection of Santa Fe and Iron (which are yet to be paved, of course) is almost a profound experience. Along with the stories from Salina’s earliest days, it’s like reading the popular A Look Back (This Week in History) page in our Neighbors section, only on a grand scale.

Even in the late 1800s, neighborhoods were well-established. Some streets, though, have moved a bit — you’ll be able to see that in 1873 the railroad tracks now on Fourth Street were on Fifth Street back then.

I also learned why our city is so tall and skinny, rather than spreading out in all directions. Hint: It has to do with the flood of 1951 and the resulting levee system that was put in place a few years later — you’ll find that in the second edition, or, as we call it, “Prog 2.”

Reading about the ’51 flood had me glued to my computer screen as I imagined what my neighborhood must have looked like. Plenty of photographs from those days show the bizarre specter of boats in the streets, and the first-hand recollection of the awful smells seemed to carry me right to the scene.

Many of you have grown up here and know Salina’s history well. For a more recent transplant like me, this is riveting stuff.

Stories from the Great Depression, as told by your Salina neighbors, are precious and moving. Comparing what eighth-graders learned back in 1895 with what current eighth-graders are learning is fascinating.

And, as I’m working on Prog 2, I’m learning about Col. David Schilling, for whom the former Schilling Air Force Base was named, and delighting in stories about the early movie houses and community theater.

I hope you enjoy this year’s four-part Progress edition as much as I’m enjoying putting it together. It’s making this transplant feel all the more at home.

•  This column first appeared in the Salina Journal on Feb. 18, 2012.