Douglas Whaley

As I explained in a prior blog post [“Goodbye to St. Paddy’s Day” at http://douglaswhaley.blogspot.com/2010/03/goodbye-to-st-paddys-day.html ] the legend in our family was that the Whaleys in this country came from Ireland in the 1800s during the potato famine which sent so many starving people here, and Noah Whaley, who fought for the Union Army in the Civil War, was one of these, a man who walked from Virginia to Indiana leading a horse on which his pregnant bride rode.  But my sister, Mary Beth Colpitts, became very interested in genealogy and began tracing back the Whaley line, and she promptly put an end to that legend.  “Yes, Douglas,” she told me on the phone, “there was a Noah Whaley, and he did fight in the Civil War, but he was born in Indiana, and as far as I can tell the entire Whaley line was either English or Scottish.”  That was a surprise, coming six years ago.  At that point she’d traced the Whaley line back to Nathaniel Whaley, born in ...

As readers of this blog may know, my husband David and I have two cats: Mama and Barney, both rescued from the wild, and each with amazing stories—for example, Mama Cat once saved my life, no exaggeration [see Related Posts below].  Neither one of us had had much experience with cats in our earlier lives, but we’ve learned fast.  Mama and Barney have been with me since shortly after my heart transplant in 2009, and David and I have been living with them together for over three years.   Barney, Mama, squirrel Mama is scary smart (we have to spell words like “food” in front of her, and we suspect she’s beginning to figure that out) and Barney, though small of brains, is very lovable.  He adores us both, but particularly David, who’s patsy enough to succumb to Barney’s loving bats on the nose each morning around sun-up when David, laughing, rises to feed the cats. Our happy home life changed dramatically last fall when I viewed a Face...

In Presidential politics the issue of whether an American citizen born in a foreign country is eligible to become President of the United States under our Constitution arises from time to time.   When George Romney (father of Mitt), who was born in Mexico, ran for President in 1968, and when John McCain (born in the Canal Zone) ran in 2008, and now as Ted Cruz (born in Canada) makes his attempt for the office in 2016, Americans (particularly the oh-so-worried Donald Trump) are asking whether the candidate qualifies under our law for this exalted position.   Article II, section 1 of the Constitution contains the relevant language: No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within...

After we had known each other about two years my husband David and I were talking about some minor news item and he commented, “I’ve ceased to care.”  That sounded familiar to me and I must have looked puzzled because he smiled and added, “You say that all the time.”  Hmm.  That must be why it sounded familiar. Since then I have noticed myself using it more and more, and it’s a handy little phrase to have at the ready whenever you realized you’re involved in something that’s a waste of time, no matter how promisingly it started.   Mutter “I’ve ceased to care” to yourself and you suddenly have the freedom to move on to something worth exploring. The problem is that in the 21 st century we’re constantly pounded by a blizzard of information in the form of social media, television, apps, news, printing on boxes, music, phone calls—the list is endless.  Much of this is fascinating and addictive.  Facebook, for example, which I us...

When I say “happy atheist” in the title of this post I don’t mean that all atheists are happy, but that most atheists are happy about being atheists.  Other than that attitude, atheists may be as happy or as miserable about the other aspects of their life as other human beings. If you ask the public at large what atheists’ lives are like, you will get a list of adjectives, but I would bet a large amount that “happy” wouldn’t be among them.  If you ask atheists themselves how they feel about being an atheists, most would smile and say they feel fine, and are . . . well, yes, “happy” about it. This might sound shocking or at least improbable to theists.  In the view of many religious people the only route to happiness is a firm belief in some sort of god or at least a spiritual existence beyond this world.  Asked what life would be like with no such belief, they usually envision bleak and sad drudgery. From the atheist’s viewpoint the...