“Our position is that American women are the most fortunate class of people who ever lived on the face of the earth. … We have every opportunity and they were not created by feminists.”

Throughout my career, I’ve had equal opportunities to men and I’ve seized them. Some men haven’t liked that, it’s true — but, to be honest, neither have some women.

So now when I read about the ‘new feminism’, as bandied about this week by the publishers of a new book, How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran, I find myself wondering: what new feminism?

In the Western world, the feminist argument has been definitively won — and all the silly and, frankly, somewhat pathetic ‘slut walks’ in the world won’t refute that.

As far as I can tell, the new feminism aims to make men share more of the childcare. And, of course, it’s true that children prevent many women from going further in their careers. But it’s also true that it’s usually the woman’s choice. The maternal instinct is so powerful that most mothers want to do a larger share of the childcare.

3. Joe Scarborough wins the hypocrite prize for the day. He penned an op-ed in Politico making the startling pronouncement that the media is “obsessed” with Palin and it’s “downright creepy.”

Hmm… so in order to write this, Scarborough hasn’t spent much on Palin? That’s the only thing that makes sense after reading this graf, right?

There is a question of why is Palin is so loathed by the national press. She served only two years as governor of Alaska and hasn’t held political office since. She has not declared a run for president, and 42 percent of Republicans say they definitely would not vote for her if she were to run. She is an eccentric political celebrity of marginal relevance.

Perhaps if he’s tired of the media obsession, he should start with his own columns and TV show seeing how many times he’s talked or written about her.

Then a bunch of stuff happened including moving back to Tennessee, several trips and starting a new job. Hence the big gaps in blogging. The past few months have been a whirlwind.

Life has finally settled down (I think), so I’m hoping to return to full CosmoCon duty. Don’t be surprised if you see a few changes around here aside from the recent makeover.

Now back to women in the news.

1. Dana Loesch investigates how the lefty gals have “justified” the disgusting actions of Anthony Weiner at Big Journalism. Fess up people. Defending a creep, no matter how much you love the way he votes, just makes you look like a bigger fraud. This is not the side that feminists want to be defending. Time to give up, ladies.

2. Amanda Marcotte somehow claims that women are suffering the “latest backlash” from our horrible, patriarchal society for dressing like sluts. I think. It really doesn’t make that much sense and somehow involves Bristol Palin. Marcotte is nearly obsessed with her in the same way that Andrew Sullivan is obsessed with Trig. If Marcotte is using her bully pulpit to defend that important “right” to wear a miniskirt, we really have come a long way, baby.

3. Finally some common sense regarding Slut Walks from across the pond. I’m not that familiar with Melanie Phillips, but she nails it in the Daily Mail:

The insistence that women’s behaviour never contributes to any harm that may befall them is profoundly anti-feminist — and indeed, anti-human. This is because it robs women of that responsibility for their own actions which lies at the heart of what it is to be a human being.

And it betrays feminism in other ways, too. The feminist pioneers battled to obtain political representation, equality in education and the workplace and in other areas of public life.

These truly heroic struggles against real, tangible discrimination are belittled and mocked by the vacuous, self-indulgent and self-defeating posturing of Slut Walks.

But there’s an even deeper betrayal. For those pioneering feminists believed that women represented moral values superior to those of men. If women ended up merely behaving like men, they argue, that would negate everything they were fighting for.

Alas, this is precisely what has happened. By claiming that degraded behaviour empowers women, these Slut Walkers are turning back the feminist clock. If women claim to be sluts, that’s how they will be seen.

We live in a society which has degraded the whole notion of human sexuality. It has voided it of spirituality or love, and turned it instead into little more than a heartless and even predatory means of self-gratification.

And modern feminism has been a powerful factor in that dismal process.

Feminism has evolved into a movement of crybaby women who insist on doing whatever they want and then refusing to take responsibility for those actions.

They leave out that in order to pass the school lunch bill, they had to make sizable cuts to SNAP, the new name for food stamps, so this was a situation of “cutting off your nose to spite your face.” However, Mrs. O wanted legislation passed to give her ridiculous “Let’s Move” program some cover and to be known for something more than hula hooping on the White House lawn. The President didn’t want to spend the holidays sleeping on the couch, so arms were twisted, nonprofits dealing with food and hunger issues were told to shut up, and the bill passed as Democrats wound down their majority before Christmas.

It’s almost funny how Mrs. Obama is much more in the Laura Bush style than Hillary (at least in public). After she got her hand slapped from her “I’m now proud to be an American comments,” she hasn’t ventured out of the First Lady mold very much. That must be such a disappointment for progressives.

While I liked my old template, this week I noticed that it was broken in the new version of Firefox. Since it’s never worked correctly in Chrome, I decided it was time to give up on it.

This theme came from Organic Themes, one of my favorite WordPress skin designers. I’ve used Organic for a few professional projects, and I’ve always been happy with how the skins were built.

There are a few more tweaks to make, but I’m happy.

Generally, a farmers market is not something that would be associated with Hixson, one of Chattanooga’s suburbs in Hamilton County.

Seeing a need in the community, Dee Clark decided to start the St. Alban’s Farmers Market. Getting permission from her church, St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, to use their property on Saturday mornings, the market launched last August and recently opened for its second season.

“I’ve always had a backyard garden and believed in local food,” said Clark, who voluntarily manages the Hixson market. “I saw that the Brainerd market worked. I work full-time, and sometimes it’s hard to get downtown.”

Local Hixson resident, Vickie DeRight agreed. After moving to Chattanooga from Atlanta 18 months ago, she generally goes garage sale shopping on Saturday mornings.

“I always stop by to see what they have,” she explained since the market is located near her house.

Located on Hixson Pike near Chester Frost Park, the market maintains 10 to 12 vendors each week and offers fresh and locally grown produce, eggs, poultry, red meat, honey, hand-woven baskets, soap, handmade reusable totes, embroidery, and other items typically associated with farmers markets.

Like other markets in the area, Clark has some requirements for vendors.

In order to participate, vendors must have local produce. Any processed foods must meet USDA standards, and she encourages vendors to use recycled materials as much as possible. While St. Alban’s doesn’t charge for the use of their property, vendors independently voted to donate 5 percent of their sales, not to exceed $10, to the church for the use of their property.

Most of the vendors at the Hixson market are small business owners, and many of them turned to selling at regional farmers markets to cope with the challenging economy.

Barb Smrcina and her husband, Brad, decided to focus on their business after they both lost their jobs in the past year. After years of making steak jerky for friends and family, the couple launched Buffalo Brad’s Steak Jerky. Using steak and high-quality meats and seasoning with natural ingredients, they set out to sell more of this niche product. The Smrcinas see it as the perfect snack for outdoor enthusiasts in Chattanooga since the jerky maintains long shelf life, is rich in protein, and is easy to eat while hiking or rock climbing.

Walter Bates, another Hixson market vendor, got into his business of selling organic, GMO-free chickens and eggs in order to be a stay-at-home dad at Hoe Hop Valley Farm in Parksville, Tenn.

“My wife is a school teacher,” he said. “I’m a stay-at-home dad, which is how I got into it.”

Bates produces Parksville Pastured Poultry in addition to having fresh eggs year round. He maintains a small processing facility on his property that allows him to sell free-range whole and half chickens directly to the public.

As a small business owner, he was the first person in the state of Tennessee to open a home-based processing facility. Under USDA regulations, he can operate as long as he processes fewer than 20,000 birds per year. He describes his services as “baby chick to the Ziploc bag.”

Between the Main Street Market on Wednesdays and the Hixson market, Bates generally sells out of his product and views the Hixson market as a success.

Brady’s Farm Direct Meat has also found success from the Hixson market. Run by the father and son team of Curtis and Stanley Brady, the small farmers sell locally grown beef and hogs at the market each Saturday.

“All my advertising is done by word of mouth,” said Curtis Brady. “I’m really picking up more customers each week.”

Located in Dayton, the Brady’s started their business last year and partner with neighbors to provide pork products.

The St. Alban’s Farmers Market also features local artisans like Bill Haley, who makes one-of-a-kind baskets from natural local products such as kudzoo, vinca, wisteria, mulberry bark, grapevine and honeysuckle.

After getting laid off from work 26 years ago at Christmas time, he decided to experiment in order to make Christmas presents.

“I found a magazine [article] called, ‘Weave a honeysuckle basket,’” Haley said. “It was the worst basket you’ve ever seen, but I kept making them.”

Now employed at the Tennessee Aquarium, Haley also sells his handmade baskets at the Brainerd market for $25 to $100 apiece.

With the market’s second season underway, Dee Clark is working with other organizers of local farmers markets and local food enthusiasts to improve the St. Alban’s location. In the coming months, she hopes to find vendors specializing in coffee, cheese, bread and jam, as well as participate in other local food initiatives. Every week, she posts updates about the Hixson market on the Chattanooga Farmers Market Facebook group and emails local residents to alert them to specials.

The Hixson Farmers Market is open every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and is located at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church at 7514 Hixson Pike.

Cross-posted at Chattarati.

Admittedly, I’m a museum nerd, especially with art museums. This was one of the best exhibitions that I’ve seen. Between the displays of the clothes, lighting, music and backdrops, you felt as though you had entered the world of Alexander McQueen. The New Yorker commented:

While McQueen had many anxieties, running dry wasn’t among them. He was supremely confident of his instincts and his virtuosity. That ballast freed him to improvise, to take wild chances, and to jettison received ideas about what clothing should be made of (why not seashells or dead birds?), what it should look like (Renaissance court dress, galactic disco wear, the skins of a mutant species), and, above all, how much it could mean. The designer who creates a dress rarely invests it with as much feeling as the woman who wears it, and couture is not an obvious medium for self-revelation, but in McQueen’s case it was. His work was a form of confessional poetry.

Overall, this exhibition was hauntingly beautiful. When his clothes are seen in one space, it made McQueen’s suicide last year seem inevitable. While whimsical, inventive, ironic and beautifully made, there was a darkness present in all of his designs.

Savage Beauty framed the collection from the perspective of Romanticism. I’m not sure if McQueen thought of himself in that light, but it fit perfectly. The romanticism of the 18th had dark and menacing elements to it. Look at all of the gothic romances that were written during that period. His collection as a graduate student was based on Jack the Ripper.

Creative types generally have dark sides. As the expression goes, there’s a thin line between genius and insanity. The artists who influence are usually the ones who aren’t afraid to embrace this darkness and channel it for their work. Andrew Bolton, the curator of the exhibition noted:

For McQueen the runway was primarily a vehicle to express his imagination. He was very dark. That darkness came from a deep romanticism—the darkest side of the nineteenth century—and that’s what I always felt when I saw his collections. He was deeply political as a designer and I think one of the reasons why McQueen’s collections often were so hard to watch is that they often channeled our cultural anxieties and uncertainties, and that was very much part of his raison d’être.

As a retrospective, Savage Beauty also focused on McQueens marriage of technology with his runway presentations. It was exciting to watch the famous Kate Moss hologram and look over to study the dress at the same time.

Looking back at his work, it’s easy to see that McQueen was a visionary. His clothes were less fashion and more works of art. His runway shows were performance art. Will the fashion industry ever encounter another designer with the same combination of skills and imagination that McQueen had?

As I’ve said before, the organization I choose to support is the local Salvation Army since 100% of donations made during disasters go to that fund.

I intend to write a long post about the storms and tornados that ripped across the South last night, but I’m still gathering my thoughts and information.

I’ve been back in Chattanooga for a few days and experienced the storm at my parents house in Hixson, a suburb  of Chattanooga. We were basically in the center of it.

Even though I’ve lived through tornadoes (one of my earliest memories is of a tornado we lived through in Oklahoma when I was 2), yesterday was one of the scariest days of my life. I’ve never seen a day of storms that was so unrelenting. It was almost as though we were experiencing a hurricane without the storm surge.

For my friends and readers outside of this area, I’m safe. My parents and their dogs are safe. We didn’t experience as much damage in this part of Hamilton County. Even my entire extended family, which is scattered around northern Alabama is safe. Praise God for that.

My father was in northern Alabama for his job yesterday and had to hunker down in a concrete building in Boaz. Since he was getting the weather about an hour before us, he kept us updated with what to expect. Every time we talked to him, he said a tornado siren was going off, and tornadoes were within five miles of his location.

There are number of sobering videos and pictures. Ringgold, Georgia and Apison, Tennessee — two communities right outside of Chattanooga, were devastated. Ringgold is actually closed at the city limits. They took the brunt of the storm. Below is a video of the tornado that hit Ringgold.

It’s almost numbing to look at pictures and footage. This wasn’t some far away natural disaster. This happened in my backyard and the community where I grew up. My friends and family could have easily been hurt or killed since there’s no easy way to protect yourself against a tornado aside from taking shelter. I think a lot of us in the area are shell-shocked.

At the time that I write this, the AP has reported fatalities throughout the South: Alabama: 131 dead, Mississippi: 32 dead, Tennessee: 24 dead, Georgia: 13 dead, Virginia: 8 dead, Kentucky: 1 dead. As the Weather Channel noted last night, this was a historic series of tornadoes.

However, we will survive. This part of the country takes care of it’s own. Last year, I wrote about the historic floods that hit Nashville:

We didn’t get the name Volunteer State because of football. Tennessee has a legacy of stepping up and quietly taking care of problems as they arise. We’re a strong and determined people, and Tennesseans will rally around the middle part of our state to help them rebuild. Communities are coming together, and neighbors are helping neighbors. While it would be nice to get national attention to help raise funds to rebuild and help the thousands of families who are now homeless, I’m proud of the independence of my state.

I was correct. Nashville recovered without ever even an acknowledgement of the diaster from the White House. The damage in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee will be the same. We’ll band together as communities and help each other out.

Already, there are ways that you can help. You can donate to the local Salvation Army here. You can also text the word “Give” to 80888.

If you want to keep up with what’s going on here and in the region, I highly recommend following my Twitter friend, Dan Lehr at @public_interest. Dan works for the local ABC affiliate, News Channel 9, (which did an amazing job of local coverage yesterday), and is constantly putting out information that you can trust.

When I was 15, I read The Fountainhead and loved it. That book has had a huge influence on my life, and I’ve read it several times since then. However, I could never get into Atlas Shrugged. No matter how many times I tried picking it up, I lost interest. Why did I care about trains and industry? Did I really need to care who John Galt was?

At a friend’s house about a month ago, we were discussing the movie version, and I realized it’s now or never. Watching the movie first always ruins books, so I had a deadline: April 15.

Over the course of five late, late nights in March, I read the tome. Once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down. I plowed through a 1,000+ page novel in less than a week. That’s a feat I haven’t accomplished since high school.

My biggest regret is waiting 10 years. Had I finished it at 19 rather than 29, I would have marveled at the philosophy of the novel, but it would have remained a fictional story about a dystopian future.

Now, I read the book and realized that much of it has become reality, as I explained on Friday.

Ayn Rand realized in 1957 that America was on a road towards socialism, long before almost anyone else. Most of us didn’t wake up to see this until after TARP was passed, which explains why the book is enjoying a resurgence in popularity. The book is currently #4 on both Amazon and iTunes. Rather impressive for a 55-year-old book with clunky dialogue.

What surprised me was how realistic this slide towards socialism was in the novel. There was no revolution, no coup and no military takeover. The America in Atlas Shrugged hurtled towards destruction by passing an endless series of government reforms and regulations aimed at “helping the little guy” and making things more fair.

Sound familiar?

Government bailouts of industries, nationalized medicine, expansion of “rights”, persecution of those who work hard and make money and the demonization of the wealthy are all themes that we echoed in sound bites on every cable station in this country.

Upon reading The Fountainhead for the first time, I remember intensely disliking the characters. While the novel was influential, I really didn’t like anyone in the novel. Atlas Shrugged was very different. I admired the characters. While rigid and ideologues, they all wanted to pursue their lines of work, succeed and be left the alone by the government. Any conservative or libertarian can identify.

While I could never be a full Objectivist because of Rand’s atheism, I believe she left out a critical difference between aid from a private nonprofit and government aid that’s very noticeable in Atlas Shrugged.

This subject could launch a series of blog posts since I’m passionate about it and have worked in philanthropy. There’s a difference between helping those around you out of compassion for their needs versus helping others through government programs funded by compulsory taxes. Rand never seemed to understand helping others out of compassion, which I find to be a failure of Objectivism.

I have no issue with private charity. In fact, I firmly believe that a number of government programs (AmeriCorps) would be wildly successful if managed by private foundations and nonprofit. However, public entitlement programs (WIC, SNAP, Section 8, etc.) are actually hurting people, and in my opinion have enslaved generations in an endless cycle of poverty or “working poor” conditions.

Poverty must be fought on a person-by-person level through unique programs created by states and communities. Massive one-size-fits-all government programs with endless layers of bureaucracy and equally endless paperwork (seriously, look into the summer lunch program at SNAP.) don’t work, and there’s evidence they make the problems worse, especially when private charities take government aid.

As we see in Atlas Shrugged, once you take away a man’s ability to stand on his own, he’s reduced to an empty shell and capable of very little. Once you destroy the intrinsic pride of working hard and accomplishing something for yourself, that person feels useless. That uselessness and hopelessness driven by entitlement programs have multiplier effects across communities. The effects of which, we’ve seen highlighted most recently in films like Waiting for Superman.

The novel made me feel guilty that my involuntary tax dollars are enabling others to waste away their lives rather than understand what is achievable through education and hard work.

This may be harsh to some of my readers, but remember that I’ve served as an AmeriCorps VISTA “fighting” poverty and spent a number of years in nonprofit programming, communications and fundraising on hunger, education an public health issues. I’ve seen what’s going on and what’s working. I can say that about 98% of what’s working has nothing to do with government programs. Want to understand poverty thoroughly? Go write a federal grant on an issue relating to it and then come back and talk to me.

Given my interest in philanthropy and nonprofit work, this angle of the book stood out. The obvious tie-ins with high gas prices, decline of personal freedom and the over-reach of government are almost too scary to think about. As Ed Morrissey noted:

It occurred to me last night that this film wouldn’t have resonated nearly as well three years ago, or ten years ago, or perhaps not any time in the 54 years since Rand published the novel. The sense of crisis in the movie would have seemed too far from the experience of most Americans; likewise, the sense of aggressive, populist redistributionism would have looked hyperbolic and contrived. If this isn’t the perfect moment for this film, then it’s as close as I’d like to see it in my lifetime.

This movie is less Hollywood escapism and more of a docudrama that could easily air on TLC. I was happy to see that it’s showing in Chattanooga at the Rave (I’m in Tennessee for the next few days), so I plan on seeing it tomorrow.

Atlas Shrugged is a book that will stay with me for a long time and should be one that I re-read every five years. If you are a conservative, you really should make the effort to read it. It’s intimidating, but readable. Unfortunately, recent events and legislation make it far more understandable than even a decade ago.

**Spoiler Alert**

Aside from the clunky dialogue and length, my main criticism of the book was the tendency of every male character to fall in love with Dagny Taggert. While I like Dagny and can relate to her, did Rand really have to make Francisco d’Aconia, Hank Rearden and John Galt fall in love with her? It just seemed excessive. The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo series also had this problem with every female character falling for Mikael Blomkvist. I get that Dagny and John Galt have some kind of soulmate component (if Rand was romantic enough to believe in soulmates), but it seemed unfair to Francisco and Rearden.

After 10 years of trying to read the book, I finally finished it about a month ago.  Since then, I’ve noticed the eerie similarities between the book and current events.

It seems that I’m not the only one. FreedomWorks put together a mashup of footage from recent years and the movie. Try to see if you can tell where reality ends and Rand’s dystopian future begins.

Also, if you’ve read the book, take the quiz to see if it’s a real sound bite or a line from the novel. It’s harder than you think. Even though I’m a news junkie and just finished the novel, I only scored a 75.

If you don’t understand the significance, you’re probably wasting your time reading the rest of this post.

I was born in the Deep South in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My ancestors on both sides of the family have lived in Southern Louisiana since around 1764 after they were kicked out of Acadia by the British in present-day Nova Scotia.

After my faith and family, I’d mark my Southern heritage as one of the most important things about my life. If you aren’t from the South, you just can’t understand it. If you are, you’re probably nodding your head in agreement.

The Civil War (or The War of Northern Aggression pronounced with drawn-out Rs), fundamentally changed Southern culture. Even 150 years later, our food, politics, language, and culture are still influenced by those four years.

To this day, the terms “yankee,” “cracker,” “white trash,” and “carpetbagger” are derogatory terms. All of them have roots in the Civil War, and yankee refers to anyone born above the Mason-Dixon line. I think my father was only half-way joking when he said I would be disowned if I went to college outside of the Southeastern Conference and to a “damn yankee school.”

In Tennessee, the War deeply affected politics. It was only this past election — 149 years later — that political divisions from the Civil War ended. (Watch Senator Lamar Alexander explain it here.) Generations after the War, East Tennessee remains a Republican stronghold. Why? Because the terrain wasn’t suitable for growing cotton, so East Tennesseans sided with the Union.

Growing up in Chattanooga, the site of three major battles that arguably changed the course of the War,* this fact was only emphasized. In Downtown Chattanooga, you can’t spit without practically hitting marker, plaque or commemorative statue.

I never questioned this way of life until I was 17. That summer, I worked for Rock City, where several days a week, I worked the ice cream bar at Battles for Chattanooga. While scooping ice cream, I was frequently challenged to answer Civil War trivia and facts by tourists in Dixie Outfitter’s tshirts. As a history buff, and aficionado of Civil War-era clothing (seriously, my knowledge of hoop-skirt era clothing is astounding), I did pretty well. That summer made me realize how profoundly, the War affected people generations after it ended.

If you’ve seen the movie Sweet Home Alabama, they do a decent job of capturing the culture and attitude around re-enactors. We may laugh at their quirkiness, but their knowledge and enjoyment of history is amazing. Because of their enthusiasm, kids across the South have an understanding of how terrible hardtack is and what it was like to march hundreds of miles in wool uniforms in 100% humidity. I still have nightmares about some of the stories I’ve heard from tours at the Chickamauga Battlefield. Most of them revolve around the primitive medical care on the battlefield. Also, what teenager growing up in the area hasn’t ventured out to see if Old Green Eyes really haunts the Battlefield?

The War even changed the way that we eat. On New Year’s Day, old Southern families eat a meal of black-eyed peas, cabbage or collard greens (my preference), cornbread and ham. Why? The typical answer is because our grandparents and great-grandparents did this. When you grow up in the South, this is not an unusual answer, and most people accept it.

Last year, I asked why. Since I despise cabbage, my mother has spent many New Years lamenting that I’ll never have money. The tradition holds that eating greens will bring you money and eating black-eyed peas will bring you coins. To some degree, this has been accurate in my finances.

When I questioned where the tradition came from, my mother replied, “Your Mamaw Pace made it.” If Mamaw Pace did it, it’s important. Her branch of the family had roots in the Old South from Mississippi. Mamaw Pace’s mother, Grandmother Carter, was a true Southern Belle, with a phenomenal life story that rivals Laura Ingalls Wilder. That branch of the family has more influence than any other.

My father nodded in agreement and replied that his family always did it. There’s no trace of Yankee blood in my family.

Google provided me a better answer. After Yankees raided farms and gardens for food, they left things they didn’t recognize like sweet potatoes, black eyed peas and collard greens. The tradition emerged to eat a meal on New Year’s Day of those survival foods to acknowledge what our ancestors went through. You can tell how Southern a person by the value they place on the New Year’s Day meal.

Culturally, the South is still changing, and in many ways for the better. Civil rights battles and racism still have footholds in dark corners of the South, and it’s important to remember how far things have come in a few decades. As someone born in the 1980s, it’s easy for me to lump racism and segregation in with the era immediately following the War. It’s something that ended long ago and can be forgotten.

However, it lasted much longer. Occasionally, my parents will shock me with random memories of seeing the Civil Rights struggles fought in Southern Louisiana. Despite being very young in the 50s and 60s, they still recall segregated bathrooms and water fountains. My mother remembers being bussed to elementary school in the 60s. My dad recalls spending summers on his grandparents’ farm, which was the remains of a rice plantation, and seeing ruins of sharecroppers’ houses. To me, those experiences seem like they were from a different era, and my parents are too young to have experienced them.

It’s easy to see today — the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War — as just another day in history. However, the Civil War forever changed the culture of the South. In our networked and technology-driven world, those differences are slowly fading, yet in order to appreciate and understand Southern culture, you need to fully grasp how the War Between the States forever changed things.

*Some historians argue that had the South won the Battles for Chattanooga, winning Gettysburg wouldn’t have been so critical. Chattanooga was the transportation hub of the railroads in the South (Think Chattanooga Choo Choo). Losing Chattanooga was the beginning of the end for Lee’s troops.

While on my way to work on Jefferson Davis Highway in Crystal City, I passed a caravan of these trucks, which were all wrapped with the same type of design declaring that the world will start to end on May 21, 2011.

Oddly enough, I had a conversation at church about this group. It was bizarre to then see them in person a few days later.

A truck in the front of the caravan had scriptures from Ezekiel and Romans 10 printed all over it.

I try not to hide that I’m a Christian. (I make many, many mistakes, but I am a Christian.) I was raised in a home of Believers, and I entered into a relationship with Christ when I was four years old.

Admittedly, if you aren’t a Believer, Christians have a weird language, and we do some strange things. I attended a Baptist elementary and secondary school that was affiliated with Bob Jones University. I’ll be the first one to acknowledge that Christ-followers can be a kooky lot. The blog Stuff Christians Like does an exemplary job of reminding us of this fact, and I have running jokes with many friends in ministry about the ridiculous aspects of church marketing.

People and groups like this make me cringe (the Westboro Baptist people are the worst). Well, after I’ve laughed at them, they make me cringe. Will anyone actually see these trucks and suddenly realize that they need to enter into a relationship with God? Will anyone take them seriously? Since the Bible is clear that no one, not even the angels, know the day or hour that Christ will return, why do this? Mark 13 is extremely clear on this principle.

How do you respond to sights like this? Laugh? Apologize? On behalf of Christians throughout the world, I apologize for the behavior of people like this.