Cowboy Bob Sorensen

The way I've always understood it, a gift is something that is freely given. If you work to receive something, it is not a gift, but earned like wages or something. Children in many parts of the world are told about a being known by many names, including Father Christmas, Sinterklaas, Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus (see the pattern on the last three names?), and others. Credit: RGBStock / LUSI Way back yonder, Nicholas was a godly man who was also a giver of gifts. Legends built up, and today we have a recluse who lives at the North Pole, flying around the world with in a sleigh drawn by reindeer and giving gifts to all the good little girls and boys. Probably defies the laws of physics, as this internet legend indicates . Like many others, I believed in Santa Claus, but as I grew older, I realized that the storyline was impossible. The myth was shattered when I walked past my parents' bedroom, the door was wide open and a big box of unwrapped gifts was in the middle of

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Every once in a while, talk around the campfire turns away from strategies for riding herd and so forth to mythology. Some cowboys feel that they've talked wendigo or other scary native legends out, so they move on to myths of history. One that gets brought up every once in a while is the story of Great Britain. Amazingly, a few cowpokes actually believe it existed. Some self-styled intellectuals speculate that England (a part of the British Isles) exists in a parallel universe. The story goes that the British Isles (a few big ones and about six thousand smaller islands) were a popular place for commerce and some amount of science. Sadly, the Brits rejected the true God and indulged in paganism, especially evolutionism. Their paganism, surrender to Moslem influences, atheism, and unjustified intellectual arrogance led to the utter destruction of Britain. Yep, the whole shootin' match sank beneath the waves of the Atlantic, never to be seen again.

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Several things converged in my consciousness over the past several days, and I felt compelled to write about them. Someone made a post long ago suggesting new words for the times, one of which was blamestorming. (Apparently it was added to the dictionary in later years.) Essentially, blamestorming is where people try to find a way to assign blame instead of solving a problem. I believe that some jaspers will simply place blame for its own sake, often for the purpose of ridicule, and to build up their own egos at the expense of other people or concepts with which they disagree — often labeling them evil. Ships of Columbus , Ivan Aivazovsky, 1880 Blaming Christopher Columbus Relevant for today is the outrage from social justice warriors about Columbus Day. One particularly risible statement on the web is along the lines of, "You can celebrate Columbus Day by going to someone else's house and saying that you live there now". Some areas eve