-- Music. You know those "Pick of the Week" free songs for iTunes that you can pick up at Starbucks? Lori brought one home during the holidays that I set aside to download later. Finally, I got around to it -- Bob Dylan's "Must Be Santa" from his holiday albym "Christmas in the Heart" -- and I've gotta say it's pretty wretched. It's an upbeat, accordion-driven version that sounds like a cross between something you'd hear at a carnival and Lawrence Welk on crack. It's 2 minutes, 49 seconds of polka jam torture. What was he thinking?-- Religion. Tom Krattenmaker has a piece in The Sunday Oregonian "Adamant atheist is a hard-core believer," in which he takes readers behind the scenes to a dinner where author Christopher Hitchens engaged with some of Portland's progressive religious leaders. I can respect Hitchens for his willingness to against the grain on a number of issues, but he sounds pretty closed-minded on the topic of faith. As in... religion is all bad, all the time.
-- Religion, Take Two. The latest survey by the Pew Center on Religion and Public Life ranks Oregon No. 40 on the list of states when it comes to "the significance of religion in people's lives." According to the study, 46 percent of Oregonians said religion was "very important in their lives," while 63 percent believe in God "with absolute certainty." Read Nancy Haught's brief report that includes a link to the national study.
-- Journalism and true crime. Christian Longo is one of Oregon's most notorious killers. He was alternately unemployed or underemployed when, in 2001, he murdered his wife and three young children, then fled to Mexico, where he was posing as a New York Times reporter when authorities caught up to him in Cancun. Longo popped into the news recently when he made it known that he wanted to donate his body parts when and if he's ever put to death. A couple days later, I was startled to see he was the subject of a riveting piece in Esquire by Michael Finkel, the very same reporter Longo had pretended to be. Turns out Finkel has met with him several times and, in their final meeting, coaxed the details of the hideous crime out of Longo. The piece begins like this: "When Christian Longo asked if I wanted to watch him die, I told him I did."
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