Thinking about the word “marriage”

With Friday’s ruling from the US Supreme Court that made same-sex marriage the law of the land there has been a lot of blowback, with a lot of it saying they were either changing the definition of the word “marriage,” something that’s been with us since time began, and/or saying the Bible says marriage is between a man and a woman. Except as I heard the ongoing coverage this morning it got  me to wondering about the etymology of the word “marriage.” And the more I look into it the more I realize that some of the claims about that word simply don’t hold water.

(Updated at 1350 ET to include the sources I used to write this, as I meant to do before I published it.)

Please note: I’m not looking at whether same-sex marriage is right or wrong. That’s a rabbit hole that I’m staying away from because of the passion on either side of the debate. I’m looking at the word itself and I hope we can have an adult, rational discussion on that level. more “Thinking about the word “marriage””

Top Ten Reasons We May Need New Car Talk Shows

I’ve long been a listener of the NPR show Car Talk, and with the retirement of Tom and Ray Magliozzi I’ve become a regular listener of The Best of Car Talk on WBUR (the show’s home station). For those unfamiliar with the show, every week they start with Tom reading something funny that a listener sent in. This weekend’s show, however, was very different. Tom didn’t have anything to read this week and begged listeners to send him something to read.
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TestPics: 2015 Franklin Park Coalition Kite and Bike Fest

The Playstead is getting fullThe Saturday following Mother’s Day every year the Franklin Park Coalition, Boston Parks & Recreation and Boston Bikes host a Kite and Bike Festival and this year they were joined by Discovery Roxbury as hosts for this year’s fest on the Playstead in Franklin Park. It was the second year on the Playstead after moving to the Shattuck Picnic Grounds on the Resting Place while the Playstead field got refurbished.

Full Disclosure: I filled my phone’s storage room taking these pictures. As I was trying to remove pictures I knew I wasn’t going to use I accidentally deleted all the images by mistake. I was able to retrieve copies of my pictures, but they were smaller than the original images and lost the notes I had included in the filenames. For some of the images I also lost some of the very bottom of a few pictures and had to crop it off. All of the images are the usual size I post here, but this time the source images I started with weren’t the full size images I prefer to work with. I decided I’d rather post the pictures with an explanation than not post the pictures at all.
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