Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

  • You should be mad at Joe Paterno. I wouldn’t be surprised if, when the whole Penn State child sexual abuse scandal is over, it is possible that he is at the center of a great-big cover-up. But Paterno shouldn’t be our scapegoat. And neither should the whole coaching staff. We can’t march these people out…

  • My least favorite part of any worship service is the announcement time.  There are so many things wrong with it and there are so few ways to actually fix it.  I’m starting to think we should do away with the whole enterprise. Many Episcopal churches place the announcements in the middle of the service.  Honestly,…

  • Growing up, my favorite people in church fell into the “senior” category.  They were the most engaged in my life and were so happy to see me.  I wasn’t a nuisance, even when I was incredibly embarrassing to my parents.  I was so profoundly loved by the seniors at Trinity Episcopal in Alpena, Michigan. This category,…

  • In the United States we have two politics. Competitive Politics The first, I’ll call “Competitive Politics,” is the two-party system of pugilism, evidenced by our incessant competitive metaphors.  We talk about horse races, boxing matches, and football.  So outdated is this vision of politics, that we even use war metaphors as evidence of only two…

  • In her post, “Why Ditch The Infant Cereals?” KristenM at Food Renegade makes a compelling case for not giving cereal to babies before they are one year-old.  The case is made of two important arguments: 1) What is developmentally and biologically appropriate and 2) There is no “traditional” basis for it. Against these two arguments,…

  • Matt’s Safe School Law, otherwise known as Michigan’s “anti-anti-bullying law” is an embarrassment and juvenile.  It is the pre-emptive self-defense of bigotry, and just like the nation’s first foray with the Bush Doctrine, this has a profound effect on people’s real lives.  It hurts people.  Real people.  Not mythical, hypothetical, potential people.  Real, living people…