Rite (r ī t), n. Any customary observance or practice. (Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary.) Rite, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it. (Ambrose Bierce – The Devil's dictionary.) The local newspaper recently announced that our district representative to Congress is scheduling a series of “town hall” meetings with his constituents in order to discuss his plans for creating jobs, and to listen to the participants' ideas on the subject. He holds these meetings several times throughout the year, so I feel justified in considering them “rites” under the first definition above, and it has been my experience that they also satisfy the second definition. His ideas for creating jobs are not really ideas - they are ideology: (1) cut taxes, particularly on higher income taxpayers, and (2) cut government spending. These are the same trite recommendations which he ma...
My alarm clock goes off every morning at eight, except for the few times when I have a breakfast date. Usually I wake up about an hour before that, or at least I partly wake up. It is important that I remain in a “not quite awake but not quite asleep” state, because I consider that time as the germination period for whatever seeds happen to have blown into my head.