Stuffed

Leave a comment August 14, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

Although a satire, The Stuff has a serious message. This horror comedy from the eighties bears some similarities to The Substance, but in a more comic and environmentally conscious way. The eponymous stuff is edible and discovered at a mining site in Georgia. Its good taste soon challenges ice cream and millions become addicted to it. The problem is, it takes over people’s minds. Soon they will eat nothing else. Some industrialists in the ice cream industry reluctantly hire a specialist in industrial espionage to learn what The Stuff is. They engage Mo Rutherford, who, although crooked, is quite likable. The film follows him as he investigates. He eventually finds Jason, a young boy whose family has been taken over by The Stuff. Jason saw it moving and knows it’s alive. Mo rescues Jason and teams up with Nicole, an advertising executive who’s been marketing The Stuff. Together, and with “Chocolate Chip Charlie” Hobbs, they decide to expose that The Stuff is animated by an alien life form and is dangerous.

There’s a lot of madcap stuff here. The horror element comes from what happens to “Stuffies”—those addicted to The Stuff. It hollows them out, eating them from the inside. They’re left as hollow shells. When shot they leak the white Stuff. This leads an Army colonel who is also trying to stop it to his classic line, “I kinda like the sight of blood… but this is disgusting!” There are so many corny lines that it’s no wonder that the movie has a cult following. It’s also a parody of how industrialists will stop at nothing to get money, even when they know what they sell is dangerous.

Watching the movie, which wasn’t half bad, I wondered at how I’d never heard of it before. There are so many movies out there and now with the internet so many websites. Classic TMI. I only found it by scrolling through a streaming service after a night of very little sleep when something kind of silly sounded appealing. Comedy horror is a genre that can produce some good results. This movie also made me think of The Blob, another shapeless monster that critics tend to dislike. The film had a decent budget for the time and the production values are generally good. The Stuff isn’t a great movie, but it’s a pretty good one. The social commentary that it packs is just as relevant now as it was forty years ago. It’s a satire worth seeing.

Humanity Wrought

Leave a comment August 10, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

“What hath God wrought?” So the first telegraph message read. There was a wonderment and fear of technology in 1844. Although at today’s rate of change, to us tech seemed to crawl back then, but it was changing rapidly. What strikes me as I think about AI is that we’ve lost our humility. “What hath humans wrought?” is the new motto, and one that presumes it can only be good. How easily we forget Thoreau, even as we valorize him. He feared that machines would end humanity, and in a way they have. Fearing that trains would mean that schedules would be determined by clocks rather than human lives, he understood something that we’re still missing. He feared trains would make humans in their own image. And so they did. We live by a 9-2-5 schedule, no matter how dehumanizing.

“What hath God wrought?” With confident, angry atheists telling us there is no god, and that there is nothing more amazing than human intellect, we now see what we’ve wrought. Many people object to AI. They don’t want their power centers in their neighborhoods. They don’t want the cost of electricity to rise just so Silicon Valley technocrats can get richer. They know that as wildfires burn American cities, huge amounts of water are required for running data centers. Even Three Mile Island is being restarted to help supply the electrical power they require. Protest as loudly as you can, it will not stop them. God is no longer in the equation. God has left the building. This is the age of humanity. No, a very small segment of humanity. A segment that thinks it’s god.

Technology is good if it serves to make our situation better. AI is now starting, according to the New York Times, to both lie and cheat. It is made in the image of humans, so of course it does. Look at the White House and try to protest. No longer does the imago dei hold any meaning. We no longer aspire to that image of God in which we once could see reflected in our better natures. No; we can so we do. Even as Frankenstein keeps lumbering back to the screen, and new versions roll off the presses, we simply don’t get the message. We have no time to stop and glance—no, stare—out over Walden Pond for hours at a time. We must work so that our fellow humans can be put out of work. What hath humanity wrought?

Nextdoor

Leave a comment August 1, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

Eight years we’ve been in this house. In that time the only neighbor’s name we knew was the guy who owned the house immediately next door. He bought the house only a couple of months before we bought ours. We were sad to see him move out over the winter, but when I saw new folks milling about in the spring I went over and introduced myself. Thankfully, they’re nice folks. While I was talking to them a neighbor across the street who’d seen me hundreds of times without a word called out and introduced herself to them as well. She didn’t ask my name and apparently didn’t feel the need to know it. She did say that she grew up in the house on the other side of ours.

That is the house we see from all our south-facing windows. Four different sets of people have lived there in eight years. Only the second set ever told us their names and talked with us. To be fair, it is a rental property, owned by the real estate agent who sold us this house. All day long at work I can see the tenants coming and going. A married couple maybe a decade younger than us was there first. Then a couple in their twenties/thirties—the friendly ones. Then another couple with a couple of kids. From overheard observations I gathered he worked in recruitment for Binghamton University (where my daughter went) and Rutgers (the last school at which I taught). We have both Binghamton and Rutgers swag, but that never spurred any interest on their part. Now I can’t figure out the renters. They look like students to me, maybe from nearby Lehigh University. There’s two men and two women (I think) but they never act like couples. Who knows?

The other day I was out fighting the weeds when another neighbor across the street was outside. She asked my name and this led to a conversation and learning, after all these years, hers and her husband’s names. All of this brought to mind something I learned as a candidate for the ministry in the United Methodist Church. Methodists practice itineracy—bishops move ministers every few years so that a “permanent” minister doesn’t become too settled. It was then that I learned most congregations (neighborhoods?) don’t really feel comfortable with a minister until after about seven years, I think it was. Seems like our timing is about right. For the first time in eight years we know the names of two sets of homeowners in our immediate vicinity. Welcome to the neighborhood.

Scary Scripture

Leave a comment July 5, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

The question’s not as simple as whether chocolate and peanut butter go together. What is it with horror and the Bible? A number of us have explored that question in book form, but probably the most prolific is Brandon R. Grafius. His Scared by the Bible is a mapping through terrain that will feel foreign to some: if you live for the beach in summer, why would you fly to Antarctica to visit the South Pole instead? Part of the reason is clearly that the Bible isn’t the rainbow-and-unicorn book that it’s often made out to be. Some parts—not a few—are pretty scary. That’s Grafius’ entry point into how horror and the Bible are surprisingly compatible. Interestingly, we had similar starts down this path. A Bible given to us by a grandmother when we were a child, and the determination to read it. My world was a bit more hellfire and brimstone than Grafius’ but we’ve ended up near the same place.

Often I thought, as I was reading it, “Are people going to get both these references?” (i.e., both the biblical story and the horror movie being cited). After all, many Christian denominations still teach that horror is not helpful at best, and satanic at worst. I just wonder how many of us there are who never found watching horror a spiritual problem. I grew up thinking about death a lot. Part of this was because Evangelical children’s literature raised the question of where would you spend eternity if you died today. Seriously, some of the stories I read, along with Dick and Jane, still scare me today. Religion often uses fear for its own purposes. So does the Bible. Grafius comes down to this at the end, asking if it’s intentional on the Bible’s part.

It seems to me that this is an important question to explore. Religion has been weaponized through fear since at least the Reagan years. More recently it has been aimed specifically at us “evil” liberals and our “culture of death” even as conservatives rain bombs on Iran. We desperately need to understand religion’s now very intentional use of fear to retain power. People are afraid. They have reason to be. Generally it’s not the emotional issues politicians hand-pick to garner votes. Yes, the Bible is a source of fear. Horror films are often also a source of scary thoughts. They do have a lot in common. We just need someone to come along with an open jar of peanut butter to run into someone eating a chocolate bar.

250 Years

Leave a comment July 4, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

America doesn’t seem to be in a partying mood. With more than the usual inanity coming from Foggy Bottom, and hot air being added to this heat dome, well, it might just be best to keep it simple. Algae will grow, no matter what the self-appointed-divine say. I remember a half century ago. America seemed optimistic at its bicentennial. Nixon was safely gone and Reagan hadn’t reared his fanged head yet. It seemed like the country had a future. These days, with more than regressive rhetoric, when emails from the Social Security Administration go out of their way to say how great Trump is, well, I think I’ll just stay home and watch a horror movie. It’s less traumatic.

For me, as a kid, the Fourth of July was all about sparklers, black snakes, smoke bombs, and staying up late for fireworks. Black snakes were these black discs about the size of a button coin battery that you lit with a match and the ash would fizz out the top into a “snake.” It was an ephemeral thrill. What we called “smoke bombs” were small colorful spheres that gushed colored smoke when you lit them. We never played with anything explosive, but even the thought of these simple pleasures still brings a smile. I haven’t seen anything like these trinkets (except sparklers) for many decades now. I see from YouTube that they’re still being sold. Almost as if the past fifty years never happened. And staying up late to see fireworks only means being excessively sleepy at work on Monday morning.

I won’t be around for the tricentennial, presuming we survive what the Republican Party has up its sleeves. I do hope things are more optimistic then. I’ve been around long enough to notice the distinct difference in national outlook a mere fifty years can make. I was born less than twenty years after the Second World War when everyone knew fascists were an evil to be avoided. In just the last decade that has done a 180. And we see what it’s like. Our grocery bills are double what they were before our fearless leader took his post, claiming to make things better. If I’m to believe the propaganda from the Social Security Administration things would be just rosy, could I afford to retire. So our social experiment in democracy seems to have lasted only about two-hundred and fifty years. Hopefully in another fifty what’s left of the United States will have come back to its senses or will have come up with something better than we have today.

Remembering Downtown

2 Comments July 2, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

Monroeville Mall. Even those who’ve never been to Pittsburgh may recognize it as the site of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. I have to confess that, although living in Pittsburgh for a little while I never got there myself. It has nevertheless been a pilgrimage site for fans of the movie, but, according to the New York Times, the mall has been purchased by Walmart. Their plans? Tear it down. No empathy. No sense of decorum. Just cheap prices and sub-par goods. I recently had to go to a Walmart. It had literally been perhaps a decade since I entered one. I dislike their business practices and they have ruined many a small town downtown area as well as many a mall. In fact, the one I’d be in prior to this recent trip was the store located in Seneca, Pennsylvania.

Across from that giant Walmart stands the husk of the once trendy Cranberry Mall. Not far away is the struggling downtown of Oil City. My aging mother lived in Seneca—had once worked in the mall—but getting down the hill into Oil City was more difficult than nipping over to the super Walmart for groceries or other necessities. Prices were cheap and she wasn’t flush with cash. The same applied to many of her neighbors. Walmart exploits such situations, becoming the only show in town. Mom and pop stores can’t compete with their prices. Malls, although many affluent specimens still exist, have struggled in working-class areas. They served for more than shopping, however. They were meeting places. They too contributed to the troubles downtown.

Monroeville Mall never went upscale enough to survive. Ironically, it was the message that shopping had become a source of meaning that was critiqued by Romero’s movie. It’s that same corporate greed for more and more market share that will be the eventual death-knell of capitalism. Any system founded on greed is the same thing as “might makes right.” We’re seeing that in the politics of our own day. The paradox of this ouroboros will become clear eventually, if our species survives long enough to observe. We become attached to places. While not all movie props can be preserved, we’re compelled toward pilgrimage, and Pittsburgh is the home of the modern zombie. A message that may not always come through in Dawn of the Dead is that all of us are being made into zombies. Not by some satellite picking up something in space and then returning to earth, but by good old capitalism.

Freedom

2 Comments June 19, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

This year has been marked by small clusters of holidays. I wrote about Friday the 13^th, St. Valentine’s Day, and President’s Day occurring the same weekend back in February. Then in March, I noted we had a second Friday the 13^th, the weekend before St. Patrick’s Day. Here in June we find another cluster as today is Juneteenth—an important holiday finally recognized—and Sunday is both the summer solstice and Father’s Day. Now, Father’s Day is always a conflicted day for me. My father was largely absentee, and an alcoholic when present and accounted for. For many of my childhood years we didn’t know where he was. I always have difficulty feeling mad at him, though, because his self-sabotage wasn’t malicious in any way. He was a man overwhelmed by what life threw at him. Besides, mothers, it seems to me, give a lot more of themselves than fathers do. But today’s Juneteenth.

Those with skin darker than pink folk have a more difficult time in the society we’ve built. With open racism in the White House the struggle has been set back many years. One thing I sometimes feel personally, having grown up poor, is that disadvantage of any kind is difficult to overcome. Who, after all, seeks to make friends with someone who’s poor? What’s the advantage in that? Sometimes capitalism seems to be the ultimate evil where even people are commodities to be sold. Human Resources, we call it. Human capital. Human assets. Meanwhile our economic system has birthed us all a new trillionaire just a few days ago. Juneteenth is an important reminder. Human beings are not chattels to be bought and sold. How people who’d ever read the gospels could allow that, I simply can’t fathom.

These holiday clusters occur now and again, like the alignment of the planets along the ecliptic. They give us time to pause and ponder. Are we really going the right direction? Are we lost and unwilling to admit it? Deep down, all but sociopaths know that all people deserve fair treatment. Some people are unable to take care of themselves. Juneteenth reminds us that simply seeing them as some “other,” some “not me,” and steeling ourselves against their needs is a high moral infraction. It’s close kin to murder. We are the ones who built this system. We have the power to change it. Juneteenth reminds us that anyone who openly, or even discreetly, believes that one race is better than another has no business telling others what to do. The longest day is coming, if only we’d use it to consider what we’re doing.

Field Hockey

Leave a comment June 7, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

Friends recommended We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry. I’m glad they did. A woman-empowering novel, it ties together so many important things: what it’s like to grow up as a girl, what it means to trust other people, and the importance of believing in yourself. My experience of reading it as a man at times made me want to apologize for my sex. So many guys have trouble reining it in and that leads many women to feeling uncomfortable, or even threatened. The book’s also a great story of awakening to who you really are. Set in Danvers, Massachusetts in the late 1980s, it’s the tale of the girl’s field hockey team and their “deal with the devil” to win the state championship after being a team having a reputation for losing. The eleven players on the team are sketched so wonderfully that you get a good idea of that many distinct protagonists.

There is a tie-in with the Salem Witch Trials—much of which actually played out in Danvers. Although the assumed implication is that the girls begin winning because they’ve made a pact with the darkness, the story doesn’t give it up that easily. There’s a subtlety at play here and even if you’ve never been on a sports team, the sense of camaraderie is palpable. The real magic comes in believing in yourself. Barry is eloquent about such life and how it can change you during the difficult period of adolescence. I’m always impressed with adult writers who can capture so well what coming-of-age feels like. For many of us, I expect, there is a trauma associated with it. Cultural expectations on young women are burdensome in so many ways. At the same time this story is so well written that you hesitate to put it down.

While I never participated in high school or collegiate sports—I have no particular gifts in that regard—regular readers may find it difficult to believe that I played on the Nashotah House football team for a couple of years. Lest you get the wrong idea, the seminary played one annual game of flag football against Seabury-Western Seminary in Chicago, styled as conservative vs. liberals. I was younger, and in better physical shape than many of my students, so I made a team effort for a couple of years. Still, the team spirit demonstrated in We Ride Upon Sticks is of an altogether different sort. Fun and thoughtful at the same time. It’s the kind of book I’m glad to have pointed out to me.

Jurassic Horror

Leave a comment May 29, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

We recently decided to watch Jurassic Park again. When I was younger, I often wondered why Stephen Spielberg was passed over for academy awards. His movies always seem to be popular and they’re well made. I think now that I’m starting to get a better sense of the subtleties that award juries use. In any case, Jurassic Park still holds up remarkably well. The reason I raise it here, however, is that I was wondering if it could be considered a horror movie. Casting about for weekend viewing, I see that various streaming services list the available Jurassic franchise films as horror. And there are certainly horror elements to the original. Dinosaurs in a modern setting have been used as a horror formula before, and a PG rating isn’t sufficient to disqualify a film as horror. Is Jurassic Park horror?

It certainly has the Frankensteinian mad scientist element. The decision to clone dinosaurs without sufficient consideration of how they might interact with/destroy modern humans and ecosystems has horror undertones. More directly, a t-rex, and in the movie, velociraptors, are portrayed as monsters. Don’t dinosaurs qualify as monsters, almost by definition? The scenes of them stalking and pursuing kids, as well as adults, and the fear reaction shots suggest we’re going for the horror aspect of movies. The film includes dismemberment, dark corners, and screams. Typically it’s considered an adventure film, or science fiction. The science in it, however, isn’t too far advanced from where things stood in the nineties. Horror is a genre with indistinct borders. Even as an adult who’s seen it several times, Jurassic Park still scares me.

The point of horror need not be to scare, of course. I keep coming back to Edgar Allan Poe’s idea of effect. It’s mood that makes horror, in my opinion. One of those moods may be fear, but it isn’t necessarily the main, or even primary effect sought. Believability is another of the moods. I’m sure we’ve all seen movies that we simply can’t accept and that makes them less of whatever genre they happen to be. Jurassic Park, apart from the usual leaps in any speculative story, is believable. People do try to game the system. As both the internet and AI teach us, people do release untested inventions on the public, sometimes with tragic results. And while cloning remains controversial, is it difficult to believe that there might be scientists somewhere who wouldn’t love to clone dinosaurs, if they could actually get viable DNA? To me this all says horror.

Old Passion

Leave a comment May 27, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

Something I find inherently fascinating revolves around used books. I buy used books and I always examine the overlooked scraps of paper that get left between the pages. Mostly it’s random ephemera, but it is the window into a stranger’s life. They had this bit of paper lying around to mark their place. Had I the time I’d piece together the puzzle. Recently, while preparing to donate some books to the local AAUW book sale, I found a scrap of paper in one of my own books. This was from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, based on the date in my wife’s handwriting: 3-19-04. It’s an Associated Press story from Statesboro, Georgia, involving a dust-up between a married couple after watching The Passion of the Christ. That makes it interesting in its own right, but what’s especially striking is the couple battled, including a pair of scissors, over whether “God the Father in the Holy Trinity was human or symbolic.” Things got out of hand.

For context, I was still teaching at Nashotah House at the time. Theological debates, sometimes heated, took place there on a regular basis. People get very fired up over what they believe. This may set our species apart from other thinking animals, or perhaps it’s part of the price we pay for abstract thought. You almost want to step between the warring spouses and say, “let us handle this, we’re professionals.” Of course, the species of specialist that has studied theology is dying out. Universities are cutting religious studies departments. Churches are losing members. Better hide the scissors.

“Passion” is the operative word here. We get quite attached to our views. So much so that no amount of logic or rational discourse can dislodge them. We see this with the utter devotion to political leaders and on-screen personalities as well as to religious beliefs. Some of us were curious enough to study where these ideas came from and how we know that they’re “true.” This is not for the faint of heart. Testing your core assumptions can lead you into some very unfamiliar, unmapped territories. And since religion deals with ultimate concerns, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Our couple felt silly after the police had been called and the bail paid. Passion is very much what drives our species, and perhaps others as well. We feel we need what we believe to be true, and we’re willing to fight for it. Even if it means, as the chief sheriff’s deputy remarked, they seem to have missed the point of religion in the first place.

Sleepy Thoughts

1 Comment May 21, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

It happens as you age. Sleep patterns get disrupted. This is normal and expected by all. Except work. That 9-2-5 has no sympathy for the sometimes days in a row when you awake looking forward only to going back to bed. The day stretches out so long before you, many weary hours through which to slog, where younger employees wonder at your lack of energy. A good night’s sleep is a gift. One of the things I’ve observed about this is that poor sleep tends to occur in runs. Overall, I don’t have much trouble sleeping. I’m not in control of the quality of it, however. And that’s what makes all the difference. The mere handful of sick days won’t cover the inherent ageism of the few days off policy when poor sleep is the culprit. In the non-profit world early retirement isn’t really an option, so lots of yawns it is.

It’s amazing how much we take youth for granted. We could pull all-nighters in college and recover quickly. Eight or nine hours hardly seemed like anything for work. Then those hours begin to show their weight. You have a vast gulf of meetings and self-starter projects stretching in front of you even until supper time, let alone the chance to redeem that previous night’s poor slumber. I stopped caffeinating myself years ago. I reasoned that I didn’t need chemical assistance to remain awake. Was that self on coffee the same self as undrugged me? And besides, you can save a lot of money by not buying coffee (which is now a luxury item). So we pray to Morpheus and open our laptops.

The demand to be “on” for eight or nine hours a day, pretty much unbroken, for five successive days each week, wears a soul down. And a body. How I long to take a walk on a lovely spring day, only to be reminded that my lack of engagement online is noted. I even receive work emails after 5 p.m. telling me something has to be done that night. What I plan to do that night is sleep. Make up for lost time. Be human in an aging body. The thirty-something that sent that email will understand. Some day. Age used to be equated with wisdom. Now, it seems, it is considered lack of productivity. It comes for everyone, if they survive that long. No, I’m not ready for the ice floe just yet. A good night’s sleep will set me straight.

Thorough

2 Comments May 15, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

It was a warm summer’s day, sometime in the mid-eighties. I was living in Boston and some friends asked if I’d like to go to Walden Pond, outside Concord. I’d read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, so yes, please. I knew Thoreau was an early Massachusetts Transcendentalist, mystic, and nature lover. That particular day we were the only ones at the site where his cabin in the woods once stood. I suspect that, being there with friends, it wasn’t as contemplative a trip as it would’ve been had I made it alone. Still, here we were, nearing a century-and-a-half after his death, remembering him. My wife and I recently watched the PBS three-part documentary on Thoreau, and I learned a lot about him. He was admirable in a way that few public figures are today. What’s more, it’s clear that he’s widely appreciated as a visionary and believer in freedom.

Image credit: Benjamin D. Maxham, public domain (via Wikimedia Commons)

Writing in the nineteenth century, it seems, got you noticed much more than it does now. Thoreau had profound things to say. He had strong convictions about abolition and being shuffled into an existence of work, forced from being free. He was able to live the way he did largely because he didn’t need many things. He also had famous friends, Ralph Waldo Emerson, for one, who gave him a place to stay when he had none of his own. The documentary makes the point that, despite being a hero to many, we’ve gone ahead and built the world Thoreau most feared. Few, or at least a few of us, find that work doesn’t define us. Writing, it seems, still helps with that. Those of us born to write do so, and long days “in the office” must be endured to come to life when writing is again possible.

If you think deeply about it you start to realize that we’ve allowed ourselves to be hoodwinked by economics. If you have a mortgage you know this to be true. Or if you have a medical condition—you can’t afford not to have a job without insurance. Thoreau, it seems, lived with the tuberculosis that ultimately killed him pretty much all of his life. And he died too young, we feel, because he had so much to say. So much to say that was worth listening to. Such writers are rare today because, like everything else, writing has become a business and some readers even prefer things “written” by AI. And yet I remember that warm summer’s day and think of a placid time still earlier when one might’ve met Henry David Thoreau in the woods.

An Education

Leave a comment May 14, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

The point of education is to improve life for people. Reading and studying and listening, we learn. Travel is often an educational experience. We gain knowledge, but it does no good if we hoard it. That’s why some become teachers. In a society that undervalues education, a self-fulfilling prophecy sets in. Just look around you. The usual path into becoming a teacher is education in education. You can major in it. You don’t have to be wise necessarily, since, like all things capitalistic, choice of career is economic. You pick something for which you feel suited. If you’re lucky, you get a job doing it. For “higher education” it’s a bit different. First of all, you need not study education at all. You choose a field in which to become a specialist and, if you’re lucky, get a job teaching it. And those jobs are dependent on, of course, the dismal science.

This is one of the main reasons I write. When your intention is to be a lifelong learner, you know that if you don’t share what you’ve picked up over the years, it will simply be lost. As a society, we really don’t encourage sages. The motivation is to make money, to look out for yourself. Education becomes a means for self-promotion rather than for sharing what you’ve learned. In my case, I sometimes feel guilty for writing about horror. Is it really helping anyone? I have to believe that it might be. A certain segment of the population finds horror therapeutic. Psychologists are starting to explore how it’s actually good for your mentality. I can only hope that if it means something to me, it will mean something to some others. And I want to share it.

Religion, at least among the non-cynical, is meant to improve people’s lives. There is a reason that I wanted to be a religion professor, as I was for a few short years. My circumstances steered me toward horror as a form of self-care, and I think there’s something much deeper here that has to be mined. Writing the books I do is more like speculating or prospecting rather than staking a claim and digging tunnels. If they were causing more harm than good I wouldn’t publish them (or try to). Life is an educational opportunity. And if we learn from those who care for other people we might have a chance of improving the lot of many. Look around you. Is that where we are today?

Equal Women

Leave a comment May 10, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

It’s been so busy this year that Mother’s Day crept up on me. We have a lot of spring birthdays in our extended family, and what with the weird weather this year and unexpected household expenses, it just kept slipping my mind. I like to commemorate the day on this blog because I’ve considered myself a feminist for many years. I’m very distraught that women still aren’t treated as equals to men. This should’ve been a no-brainer over a century ago. (Having an historian’s outlook, I realize that in the days when women tended to die young, in childbirth, it was difficult for many to rise to positions of social prominence. Once we got to the stage that most women survived the experience, and then to the point that economics drove us to two-income families, the male-superiority charade should’ve been dropped.) The fact is none of us would be here without our mothers. Father’s day has never been a big deal for me, but Mother’s Day is important.

I did manage to remember to get my wife a card in advance, but this year the day itself kept slipping my mind. Ironically, my wife and I had watched a biopic of Mother Ann Lee last night—I’ll post on that tomorrow—and it was only as I was preparing to write about it for today’s post that I thought, “Wait. It’s Mother’s Day.” (We do have plans for the day; I’m not a complete barbarian.) My excuse is that we were set off yesterday by an early encounter with a brusque and condescending Verizon employee who would not help set up a new phone purchased elsewhere. I hadn’t slept well the night before and it rained all day, none of which made for a productive Saturday. The movie (tomorrow’s post) was longer than anticipated, keeping me up late. Movies, strangely enough, are now starting to really influence my dreams.

My dream for today, however, is that women’s equality will become a reality rather than something we just keep talking about. There can be little doubt that we’d be better off with a woman president than with the alternative. A woman has traveled further from the earth than many billions of men have. My doctor and dentist are both women. They can do anything men in their professions can. They are university presidents and CEOs. Pilots, both civilian and military. They are religious leaders. And many of them do the job on top of being mothers. I consider it a personal failing that it was only as I was about to post about Mother Ann Lee (tomorrow) that I finally realized today is a very important day. Let’s make Mother’s Day count!

Eh Aye Jesus

Leave a comment May 2, 2026 Steve A. Wiggins

Have you ever wondered just how bizarre it can get? At work I’ve been receiving push notifications for AI Jesus. This is a software platform for exploring “the Bible,” “life questions,” and “guided reflection or therapy.” No Jesus required. Apparently tech has evolved to the point of addressing spiritual questions. This is ironic since one thing AI simply doesn’t, and can’t, understand is religion. Religion is not exactly a rational response to the world. Often emotion is deeply, deeply involved. Emotion is something AI knows nothing about. I recently sat through a webinar promoting AI with the presenter listing problem after serious problem that AI poses. The presenter optimistically saw no problem with continuing to use a flawed tool. I would never advise crowdsourcing spiritual guidance. Those of us who’ve spent lifetimes exploring it hesitate to put ourselves out there as experts.

The problem with AI is that we’re no longer being given a choice about it. If you buy a new device, AI is there waiting for you. If you do a web search, AI will offer the first answer, even if it’s often wrong. Some of us with very human jobs are being told that we should be exploring how to use AI for efficiencies. As if none of us were really doing a good job before. I’m personally insulted. What can AI know about how Jesus thought? We have four gospels with sometimes contradictory sayings. And it seems likely that the Gospel of Thomas has legitimate sayings as well. Even so, that’s not enough data for an LLM (large language model, which is what generative AI tends to be). They need massive amounts of information.

The human mind conjures its own image of Jesus. Some think of a mild and meek shepherd of souls while others see a political firebrand with hopes of breaking the Roman hold on Judea. Some think of Trump. And everything in-between. And how we think of Jesus informs the way that we interpret the sayings attributed to him. I studied Bible in college for just this reason. In seminary, aware of what textual criticism could do, I focused on the Hebrew Bible instead. I grew up with the Doobie Brothers telling me that “Jesus is just alright with me.” I’ve lived long enough to see a sitting president present himself as the parousia (look it up). And now I’m being told that AI can subvert the carpenter from Galilee. Just how strange can it get?