Letters, We Get Letters, We Get Tons and Tons of Letters

Since I started this blogging nonsense, I have heard from many of you with comments on things I have written. Mucho appreciated. Some of you have used the comments feature on the blog. Most ohave gone the old fashioned routine of e-mail. Nobody has sent me a letter via the Post Office. First class stamps are going up to 41 cents next month. Nobody is worth that.

Some of your comments are worth re-commenting on. Let's touch on a few:

---A few of you wrote with dismay regarding my Baseball 2007 preview. How could I possibly root for the Dodgers since I had been a life-long Met fan? Well, read the title of this blog, Spunky. "Musings from a Bi-coastal Existence." I live on two coasts. I can easily root for both teams. Is there a rule written someplace that I can't? Some of the same people that posed that very query to me are the most notorious band wagon jumpers. "OMG, Glavine just walked somebody in the first inning. I am so done with this team." You know who you are. I am watching you.

---A couple of folks from the NY area mentioned they tried MapSexOffenders.com, only to discover that there are apparently no sex offenders in the NYC metropolitan area. Don't be so smug. They are there. I know one who lives down the hall in my Westchester residence. Indeed, the lack of NY-based perverts is probably more a result of the fact that they are making court records public. Now, what would you prefer? Knowing where they live...or be completely clueless about what's going through the mind of that guy next door innocently watering down his lawn. I still think it's an important website. If I was a Jehovah's Witness, I'd be checking it every Sunday before I head out with my latest edition of "Awake."

---One person told me that it was time to get off Rosie. Thinking about that in the most literal sense, I will do so gladly.

---One early opinion is that I apparently eat much better on the West Coast than I do on the East Coast. That is obvious to me. Here, I have a sous chef on staff---better known as my roommate. In NY, I have the Food Emporium's hot food counter.

---Thanks to all who comforted me regarding the news that Valerie Bertinelli is no longer on the market. I am still processing and taking it one day at a time.

---The post that sparked the most comments (pro and con) was my Good Friday piece on growing up Protestant in a Catholic neighborhood. I had one person tell me that he experienced the flip side of my dilemma. He went to a Catholic school, but had a best friend who was a Protestant. All of a sudden, he realized that his friend was going to hell, and that this was a shame because he was such a nice guy. So, I know I wasn't making it all up. But, I know that this was just a product of the times. In a lot of respects, we have all progressed so much further since then.

I'd like to clarify that I was not intimating that a Catholic school upbringing was what spurred my neighbor Monte to become a nutso koo-koo mountainman who has weeds all over his front yard. Monte's ultimate end result was probably more a product of acute family dysfunction. If I recall, his father drank. (I remember one night where he staggered into a backyard shack with a lit cigarette and almost burned down half the neighborhood). His mother was Jewish and two of his brothers wound up as born again Christians. I think the fourth brother went into dry cleaning, so he probably wound up with a benzene addiction. Who knows? The bottom line is that Monte was destined to be pretty fragmented with or without that goofy Catholic school workbook.

When I look at the group of people in my life, I realize that I run the gamut, religion-wise. Protestants, Jews, Catholics, born-again Christians, Atheists. And I know Protestants who have become Jewish, Catholics who have become Protestants and vice versa, and virtually every possible Rubix's Cube combination of the above. At least, people are looking, examining, and thinking.

At my church in LA, we had thirty people for Easter Sunday service. That is pitiful. But, at the same time, in any given week, there are over 500 hundred people filtering through the church premises as it provides the locale for AA and Al-anon meetings, yoga classes, spirituality music forums for the homeless, acting classes for kids with special needs, the local Cub Scouts, and karate matches. So, folks, while not worshipping per se, are clearly looking for answers. That's probably because the world asks so many questions.

So, Monte's nuns were wrong. Catholicism is not the one true religion. Neither is fundamentalism or Judaism or Lutheran or any other sect that can take out an ad in the Yellow Pages. So, what is the one true religion? It's mine. And it's yours. It's whatever grounds you and makes you take a regular daily examination of how you lead your life. Religion is personal in nature. Because it deals with your heart and your soul...which resides only in you.

Dinner last night: All Beef Super Dodger Dog and Fries