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What Is So Wrong With “Happily Ever After”?

what is so wrong with happily ever after

Happily Ever After- it’s what we are looking for. We might scorn the idea, make fun of it, even not want to admit it- but, deep down, somewhere in you, if you are brutally honest with yourself- happily ever after is what you want. It might not look like what anyone elses will look like- and it’s probably not a romance’s idea of “happily ever after”- but, your idea- you and the man- living a life together, living a life that you want.

So, if we all desire the “happily ever after” why, oh why do we scorn the idea so much? Make fun of it?

I think a lot has to do with how easy it is to make fun of romance books/chick flicks. And don’t get me wrong- it is easy to make fun of those books/movies- the girl and the boy cutely meet- instant sparks/attraction. But something keeps them from being together- maybe it’s a boyfriend, or a bad past relationship. Maybe they want to make it in the big city before a relationship. But, like magnets, they keep being drawn together- until the romance happens and the happily ever after is in sight.

Some argue that this kind of scenario is setting people up for disappointment. Disappointment in relationships because no real life, flesh and blood man can live up to fictional book/movie man. Characters such as Mr. Darcy set a certain expectation- an expectation that can disappoint if you think the man in your life is going to be Mr. Darcy/the hot cowboy/the sexy millionaire.

Some would even argue that for single ladies, romance is setting us up for further disappointment- because the “cute meet” stories do not happen in real life (or at least not as how they are portrayed in the books). There isn’t going to be the sexy cop, the Army man with a past, the millionaire, the hot cowboy.  There’s not going to be the case of the gym Adonis who meets the ugly duckling and realizes she’s a swan. The sexy carpenter with the really good hands is not going to wind up at your house looking to fix anything that needs to be fixing, And one could argue that with each book read, the grip on reality of love situations gets a bit hazy.

Full disclosure: I am single. I am a few years past college age. I am a girl who is caught between two worlds- I’m really too old to be a party all night type of girl and I’m too young to be a stay in all night in my flannel pj’s type of lady. I’m caught between a rock and a hard place with friendships- the majority of my friends are at that stage in life where they are married, having babies, worrying about having kids, and focused on careers and the life they are building. My older friends have already done these things- and yet, I don’t completely fit in with them, either.

For me, I am aware that you don’t “cutely meet” the love of your life. The man of your dreams is not going to bump into you while you are rushing to a meeting carrying every file in the world and help you pick them up when you inevitably drop them. The millionaire with the heart of gold is not going to think I’m librarian-sexy when he sees me with my glasses on and the sexy doctor is going to give me a piece of paper with numbers on it- the bill, not his number.

But romance and the thrill of happily ever after appeals to me- as a way to escape the day to day life. The world is filled with hard truths- disappointments, let-downs, pains and hurts. So, is it really so bad to want to read a sweet book- whether it’s a romance or a cozy mystery- where there is some “happily ever after”?

I think not. As long as you keep your head in reality- enjoy the book- but do not think that the man in the book is how the men in real life are supposed to act. Prince Charming is not going to ride up on the horse to whisk you away. However, with a romance book- you can escape for a few hours- enjoy the glass of wine and just take a break.

For 2 different viewpoints on romance books- the good side and bad side- visit The Book Wheel’s “Why Romance Novels Ruin Romance” and Patience Bloom’s “10 Differences Between Finding Love In Real Life and a Romance Novel”. And while you are checking out links- an article I wrote last week “Why I Love (and Dislike) Valentine’s Day” might be worth a read.

Happily Ever After may not happen in real life, but there is nothing wrong with enjoying it via the book or the movie. Just keep it in perspective.

What do you think of Happily Ever After? Tell me in the comments!

Happy Reading and Bookishly Yours,

T @ Traveling With T

T Traveling With T pic sign off

13 thoughts on “What Is So Wrong With “Happily Ever After”?

  1. Professor VJ Duke says:

    It’s an absolute must! What other options are there? I mean who wants sadly ever after anyway? No, the best ending is a happy one and Punchyish too right?

  2. Psh!!! Ok look…I don’t read romance novels but I am 100% in favor of happily ever after and you DO “cutely meet” people. I once dated a man I met while grocery shopping. He commented on my Claddagh ring (that he noticed while I was picking up apples) and showed me the Claddagh tattoo on his upper arm. We chatted about Irish heritage and dated for a year. I also once dated a man I met at the gas station. Apparently he was trying to get my attention while we were both pumping gas but I didn’t notice him. When I got in my car and turned out onto the highway he got in his car and started honking his horn while waving his arm for me to “come back.” I turned around (curiosity…you know) and parked next to him. He said he thought I was really pretty and just wanted to say hello. Lol. We dated for two years. I met my husband on Facebook. 😀

    • 🙂 I stand corrected. Maybe I should have phrased it “I don’t “cutely meet” people & just because I enjoy reading about “happily ever after” I don’t expect to “cutely meet” the love of my life” And I could write a series on THAT, but I’d rather not share those tales!

      I just think it’s so easy to beat up on the romance books. The easy reads. And why? Why? You can be all serious and respected and still like to enjoy some light, fluffy reading.

      • Of course you can. Every now and again even I indulge in light fluffy reading. I do it when my brain needs a break. The college courses and government work takes a toll on me sometimes and I need an easy book to relax with to settle down at night.

        I think a lot of people “cutely meet” people but just don’t see it all the way through. Like what if I had just thanked the claddagh guy and moved on or not turned my car around? There would be no story.

      • YES! Ever since I began reviewing- my book taste has expanded, but I still love curling up with that easy read book! Especially when stressed!

        Maybe so. 🙂 🙂 It’s a nice thought!

  3. What serendipitous timing! I was just writing a book review today and one of the things that I liked about the book was that it was a more realistic “happily ever after”, because I guess I’m a little skeptical. Then it made me laugh because “Skeptical about happy endings” sounds like an all girl metal band. Do you want to play drums? Tambourine?

    I think there’s definitely a place for happy endings, who doesn’t want to be happy?

    • I’m a total tambourine girl!
      Thank you! This post has been in my head for some time- bits and pieces and I finally just had enough time to put the fingers to the keyboard!

      I think it’s so easy to be skeptical (hello reality TV) and all this Facebook posing- so that is why I like the idea of the happily ever after- it’s what keeps me from turning super skeptical which is near the town of jaded and cynical.

      Thanks for stopping by!

  4. Although I don’t read romance and I tend to read books that don’t end 100% happily, I still think a book can be “happily ever after” and be well written. In fact, for me, I think that’s the main point: If I enjoy the writing style and the plot, it’s OK if certain books might end in a way that isn’t extremely likely in real life. It is fiction and it is entertainment, after all. The most important thing is to enjoy what you read!

  5. I agree with Adrio completely! I mostly am not reading romance books, but I still love a nice, neatly tied up, happy ending. I’m not above admitting that my reading is slightly escapist and so I’m alright with it not being perfectly realistic all the time.

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Who were they?

I took this photograph in 1976. My memory about the location is faded, but I’m pretty sure it was in Turkey. I presumed the couple were a father and daughter, though maybe he is her grandfather. Hopefully not her husband! They were farmers, and I’d taken an earlier photograph of her playing with younger children in the fields. They seem relaxed and happy.

In that photo, I think he is sitting under a tree. I do clearly remember him approaching me and indicating that he’d like me to take a photograph of himself with her.

He didn’t ask to be photographed with any of the other younger children who were there. Nor did he want a photo of just himself.

I remember sensing pride and dignity about him.

There was no internet in those days, so I couldn’t offer to email the photo to him. And it was long before digital photographs, so I couldn’t show them the photo on the camera viewer. So they never saw this photographic portrait of themselves. They did not speak English, and I did not speak their language. Nor was there an interpreter available.

His jacket is interesting. It seems to be an old army woollen shirt that has been well kept. It’s double breasted, so it may give a clue for those who know about old army jackets. He has quite long hair. You can see his ‘pony tail’ to the right of his face, curling down below his collar. It’s not grey hair, so maybe he isn’t as old as he looks?

She is very colourfully dressed with big hoop earrings in her ears. Possibly they were Kurdish?

I know so little about these people – but they remain in my photo collection, and my brief meeting with them was one of those encounters in life that you never forget.

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Garden View

Garden View
Photo Information
Copyright: Andriy Bartkiv (UkeTex) Silver Star Critiquer [C: 11 W: 0 N: 9] (277)
Genre: Places
Medium: Color
Date Taken: 2008-08-10
Categories: Nature, Architecture
Camera: Nikon D70, Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AFS DX VR, 72mm UV
Exposure: f/11, 1/500 seconds
More Photo Info: [view]
Photo Version: Original Version
Travelogue: Hola, Mexico!
Date Submitted: 2008-09-17 8:28
Viewed: 2756
Points: 0
[Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note
Usually hotel rooms have a classification as "Ocean view", "Golf course view", etc. that effectively inpacts their rates.

So people staying in these hotels will have "Garden view" from their rooms. It's kind of funny to call a collection of cactus a garden. But you get what you paid for, right?

On the other hand it is still a nice view...

Only registered TrekLens members may rate photo notes.
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Critiques [Translate]

  • harpya Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Star Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 6058 W: 174 N: 1935] (7534)
  • [2009-04-11 6:41]

Ciao Andriy

A beautiful shot,
beautiful colors of this place,
help in decorating the cactus,
and a beautiful sky adds life

Calibration Check


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A sitemap is a special file which includes a list of all pages on a particular Internet site. It allows both visitors and search engines to locate content faster and easier, so it will boost the popularity of any kind of site. When visitors are looking for a particular page, the sitemap will help them to locate it and the upgraded user experience raises the possibility for them to revisit this website eventually or to recommend it to other people. Search engines also search for a sitemap on every site they crawl as such a file makes it possible to index the content better and to monitor modifications on various pages which will later be displayed in the search results, thus a sitemap can increase the ranking of a certain website. As the total number of sites keeps growing every day, using a sitemap is needed if you want your website to be more popular.

SiteMap Generator in Cloud Hosting

In case you host your sites in a cloud hosting account from our company, you will have a very easy-to-work-with sitemap generator readily available. This tool can be accessed via the Hepsia Control Panel and it will enable you to select any one of your domains or subdomains, so the sitemap file will be made in the website directory where you want it. The straightforward interface will allow you to select the total number of links that have to be indexed and how deep the indexing has to go. As a more advanced feature, you could also pick the file extensions that should be included inside the sitemap - you may use the standard ones which include all most popular extensions a website uses like php, html, etcetera, but if your site includes more diverse content, you will be able to enter or delete an extension before you make the sitemap for a particular website.


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By Guest Blogger Carrie Sockwell, author of Our Carolina Home

Over the past week, the effects of COVID-19 have taken a toll on all of us one way or another. Then the closing of schools and daycares left many wondering what we’re going to do for the two or possibly more weeks at home with our kids. I know this can be stressful for all, but when we look on the bright side, some time at home getting back to basics might not be so bad. It might be the way to force us to slow down and focus on family.

Here are some ideas I have gathered to aid and support the extra time at home with young kids:

Play outside! Aren’t you glad it is starting to warm up and we can shift all that energy into a wide open space? My girls spent hours outside yesterday playing and it was the easiest and most calming spot at our house. Play with bubbles, chalk, bikes or balls. Something to get them outside. Also while you are outside, work together to clean out garden and flower beds, plant some seeds or flowers. Have an outdoor scavenger hunt. There are so many options but whatever it is, get outside. Vitamin D is good for all of us.

Game Night can consist of so many different things. Think board games, karaoke, card games, competitions. All of these things are good for the soul and develop many skills in our kids. Board games are great for our young kids learning one to one counting. Some of our favorites in a household with kids age 2-6 are Candyland, Chutes and Ladders (Frozen Themed of course), Go Fish, and Trouble.

Cook and Bake with your kids. Try a new recipe or make a simple pizza. They will love this one and it works on many math skills like fractions, counting, telling time, adding, multiplying, dividing, etc.

Puzzles are by far one of the best but rarely used indoor activities. I remember spending days and hours working on a family puzzle. Not only are we spending a ton of time working together but it also supports so many social and emotional skills. Don’t have any, check out Amazon and get them in your house ASAP.

Have a Read-In daily at home. Set aside 15 minutes to an hour (depending on your kids age) to find a cozy spot, with lots of books, maybe a little snack and just read. Slow the mind down and indulge in some books. Some of you are thinking, “My kids don’t even read yet.” But all kids can read pictures and work on simple print concepts skills like how to turn the page and hold a book. Or maybe you sit down and read with them. If you don’t have many books at home on your child’s reading level check out these sites for free online read-alouds and books.These sites are either already free or are offering free services to families.

Storyline Online
-Reading A-Z
Story Time from Space

Make a collage or a vision board and use some those old magazines. Then have your kids hang them in their room to remind them of their dreams and aspirations. Consider sharing these with friends and family through facetime, skype or email. This is a fun activity that we don’t think of doing a lot but can be so meaningful to our kids.

Write cards to grandparents or local nursing homes. Our senior citizens are at risk the most during this time. They cant get out, are not having many visitors and a simple gesture like receiving a card could make their day and week. Have kids pull out the paper, markers, glitter and glue to construct a sweet and loving note or picture. Throw it in the mail and share some kindness.

Learn at home! With schools being out there has been a slight panic of students missing so much instruction. Schools are sending home worksheet packets, books and opting for remote learning. While all these things are good and are being done with the best intentions during a stressful time, sometimes these things can be overwhelming to parents. As an educator I am telling you not to stress your kids or yourself out daily with a pile of worksheets. Everything I mentioned above works on learning, social or emotional skills. So do a mix of the school work being sent home and things listed above to make learning fun at home.

I hope these ideas have been helpful and will support your kids time at home. However, know that whatever you choose to do is perfectly fine. We are in this together and it will all be okay. So keep calm and carry on mama!

Want to see more blogs like this and get notifications on local events and happenings? Subscribe to Triad Moms on Main’s free weekly newsletters here.


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Palopaa Destination Guide

Touring Palopaa in Finland

Palopaa in the region of Province of Eastern Finland is located in Finland - some 218 mi or ( 351 km ) North-East of Helsinki , the country's capital city .

Interactive map of Palopaa

Time in Palopaa is now 04:58 AM (Tuesday) . The local timezone is named " Europe/Helsinki " with a UTC offset of 2 hours. Depending on your budget, these more prominent places might be interesting for you: Leningrad, Viuruniemi, Varkaus, Valkeavaara, and Sysmajarvi. Being here already, consider visiting Leningrad . We collected some hobby film on the internet . Scroll down to see the most favourite one or select the video collection in the navigation. Check out our recomendations for Palopaa ? We have collected some references on our attractions page.

Finland Suomi - Sibelius Karelia

4:21 min by Seppo Rynein
Views: 1870 Rating: 4.71

Mainly filmed in North Karelia; Juojärvi, Heinävesi and Koli. ..

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Interesting facts about this location

Juojärvi is a lake in Finland. It is considered as one of the cleanest lakes of the country. New Valamo monastery is located on the shore of Juojärvi.

More reading: Wikipedia Article
Located at 62.65 28.72 (Lat./Long.); Less than 10 km away
Tags: Lakes of Finland, Neva basin

Rikkavesi is a lake in eastern Finland. At approximately 63 square kilometres (24 sq mi), it is the 66th largest lake in Finland. Rikkavesi is situated in the municipalities of Kaavi, Outokumpu and Tuusniemi. Rikkavesi is 101 metres (331 ft) above the sea level. Kaavinjärvi and Rikkavesi are connected by the Kaavinkoski Canal. Ohtaansalmi strait flows from Rikkavesi to Juojärvi. There is a marked shipping route from Saimaa to Rikkavesi.

More reading: Wikipedia Article
Located at 62.82 28.75 (Lat./Long.); Less than 13 km away
Tags: Lakes of Finland

New Valamo

New Valamo or New Valaam is an Orthodox monastery in Heinävesi, Finland. The monastery was established in its present location in 1940.

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Located at 62.56 28.79 (Lat./Long.); Less than 17 km away
Tags: 20th-century Christian monasteries, Buildings and structures in Southern Savonia, Eastern Orthodox monasteries in Finland, Heinävesi, Museums in Southern Savonia, Neoclassical architecture in Finland, Religious museums in Finland

Petruma is a lake and a village in the municipality of Heinävesi in Finland.

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Located at 62.50 28.81 (Lat./Long.); Less than 24 km away
Tags: Lakes of Finland


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Vilulahti Destination Guide

Delve into Vilulahti in Finland

Vilulahti in the region of Province of Eastern Finland is a city in Finland - some 236 mi or ( 379 km ) North-East of Helsinki , the country's capital .

Interactive map of Vilulahti

Current time in Vilulahti is now 05:16 AM (Tuesday) . The local timezone is named " Europe/Helsinki " with a UTC offset of 2 hours. Depending on your travel modalities, these larger destinations might be interesting for you: Leningrad, Valtimo, Vaivio, Suopolvi, and Sola. While being here, make sure to check out Leningrad . We encountered some video on the web . Scroll down to see the most favourite one or select the video collection in the navigation. Are you curious about the possible sightsseing spots and facts in Vilulahti ? We have collected some references on our attractions page.

Islaja - Vika

2:06 min by DogFlavor
Views: 752 Rating: 5.00

Came across this bug while living in the forest in Finland. ..

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Interesting facts about this location

Viinijärvi is a lake of Finland.

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Located at 62.73 29.28 (Lat./Long.); Less than 13 km away
Tags: Lakes of Finland

Lake Pohjalampi

Lake Pohjalampi is a lake in eastern Finland. The lake has a surface area of 61 hectares, and the mean and maximum depth are 3.2 meters and 5.3 meters, respectively. The lake was used to study the effects of biomanipulation on a small, mesotrophic lake. From 1993 to 1997, over 200 kilograms per hectare of fish, mainly roach (Rutilus rutilus) and bream (Abramis brama) were caught and removed. This resulted in a reduction of nearly 80% of fish biomass.

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Located at 62.67 29.55 (Lat./Long.); Less than 17 km away
Tags: Ecological experiments, Lakes of Finland


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Touring Hamina in Finland

Hamina in the region of Province of Southern Finland is located in Finland - some 47 mi or ( 76 km ) North of Helsinki , the country's capital city .

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Time in Hamina is now 03:16 AM (Tuesday) . The local timezone is named " Europe/Helsinki " with a UTC offset of 2 hours. Depending on your budget, these more prominent places might be interesting for you: Riga, Pskov, Tartu, Tallinn, and Turku. Being here already, consider visiting Riga . We collected some hobby film on the internet . Scroll down to see the most favourite one or select the video collection in the navigation. Check out our recomendations for Hamina ? We have collected some references on our attractions page.

Black Mirror II - Osa 12 - Finnish Commentary - [HD]

66:40 min by Amadeusss3
Views: 1718 Rating: 5.00

Darrenin ikuinen matka kohti orderin pesäluolaa jatkuu kun hän vihdoinkin menee pelin nimen mukaiseen linnaan, Black Mirroriin. Tässä linnassa tulee varmasti vastaan semmosia puzzleja joita ei välttäm ..

Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic - Finnish Commentary - [HD] - Part 49

11:00 min by Amadeusss3
Views: 966 Rating: 5.00

Päästään Arantirin temppelistä pois tosin Leanna kuolee matkalla portaliin, vähän turhan helposti kanssa kun en pitäny tästä parempaa huolta mutta sille ei nyt voi mitään. Jatketaan matkaa kohti kaupu ..

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Interesting facts about this location

Oitti railway station

Oitti railway station is a railway station in the village of Oitti in the municipality of Hausjärvi, Finland. The station is located along the Riihimäki–Lahti line, approximately 15 km away from Riihimäki railway station and approximately 44 km from Lahti railway station.

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Located at 60.79 25.02 (Lat./Long.); Less than 7 km away
Tags: Hausjärvi, Railway stations in Tavastia Proper

Oitti is a village in the municipality of Hausjärvi in Finland with approximately 2,416 residents as of December 31, 2005. Along with Hikiä and Ryttylä, it is one of the population centers of Hausjärvi. As the municipality’s administrative center, it is home to the municipal government office and the Hausjärvi Library. Oitti is also home to Hausjärvi’s only junior high school and high school. In addition, the village has an elementary school and two day-care centers.

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Located at 60.78 25.03 (Lat./Long.); Less than 7 km away
Tags: Hausjärvi, Villages in Finland

Pääjärvi (Lammi)

Pääjärvi is a lake in Finland. It is situated on the border between the city of Hämeenlinna (in the area of the former municipality of Lammi) in the Tavastia Proper region and the municipality of Hämeenkoski in the Päijänne Tavastia region.

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Located at 61.06 25.13 (Lat./Long.); Less than 24 km away
Tags: Geography of Tavastia Proper, Hämeenlinna, Kokemäenjoki basin, Lakes of Finland


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Sermon: The Road to The Gadfly Papers and Beyond

The Road to The Gadfly Papers and Beyond
By Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof
November 17, 2019
Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane

It’s difficult for me to pinpoint when my controversial book The Gadfly Papers began. In some ways, I think it goes back to the first time one person tried to forcefully prevent someone else from honestly expressing themselves. It surely goes back to the first self-proclaimed gadfly, Socrates, who made a life out of asking challenging questions, which eventually got him killed by the authorities.

It most certainly goes back to 1553 when Unitarianism’s founder, Michael Servetus was burned alive for questioning established church doctrine, his own heretical writings used to fuel the flames that took his life. It also goes back to 1568, when Hungarian King John Sigismund passed the Edict of Torda, humanity’s first religious toleration law, the first freedom of the pulpit law, guaranteeing…

…no one shall be reviled for his religion by anyone… and it is not permitted that anyone should threaten anyone else by imprisonment or by removal from his post for his teaching.

The Gadfly Papers also began in 1887, when the Spokane Unitarian Society was founded, adopting bylaws explicitly stating, “The authority of its belief is reason, the method of finding its beliefs is scientific. Its aim is to crush superstition and establish facts of religion,” and its, “First principle is freedom of opinion and is subject to no censure for heresy.” It began when this church called its first minister, Rev. Edwin Wheelock, who came with a bounty on his head, “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” by the State of Virginia for preaching favorably of abolition.

Michael Servetus
Michael Servetus

It began each time a heretical minister was welcomed into this pulpit, like John H. Dietrich, the father of religious humanism, who, in 1911, became our minister immediately after being convicted of heresy by the Dutch Reform Church. It began when his successor, M.M. Mangasarian, stepped into our pulpit, author of the controversial book, The Truth about Jesus, declaring him but a myth. A few years earlier, in 1900, Mangasarian, founder of the Rationalist movement, started the Independent Religious Society of Chicago, which had so much in common with Unitarianism that it joined the Western Unitarian Conference in 1922. That’s right, American rationalism merged with American Unitarianism 41 years before the Unitarians merged with the Universalists.

My own heretical book had another starting point each time our congregation has upheld its founding principle of inviting rationalist, humanistic, heretical ministers to occupy its pulpit, like humanist Rudy Gilbert, our minister from the late ’50s to early ’70s, who once said:

Freedom is, in theory and practice, basic to all other beliefs held by Unitarians, individually or in groups… A society, Church, state, or political party, may get a progressive idea or plan for the moment, but unless it incorporates the basic principle of freedom, it will sooner or later become an instrument of reaction….

It also began when another of our humanist ministers, Rev. William H. Houff, immediately following in Gilbert’s footsteps, dared to take on the Federal Government to prove the Hanford Nuclear Reactor was leaking radiation. In a 1998 sermon, Rev. Houff pointed out that when the American Unitarian Association was founded in 1825, “the great majority of Unitarians… generally accepted that reason, not emotion or sentiment, would be used to test all religious beliefs and practices.” (I appreciate the spirits of Rudy and Bill serendipitously butting in this week while preparing my sermon.)

The Gadfly Papers began in 1980 through the decade that followed, as I watched my former religious organization, the Southern Baptist Convention, go through what the Unitarian Universalist Association is going through today, the takeover of its institutions by authoritarianism and extremism. Just this week I received a communication from another UU minister who was a Southern Baptist during the takeover:

Given our backgrounds, I think we can appreciate more than many UUs the dangerous road we are headed down. It feels all too familiar… It feels like the Twilight Zone… I find myself in agreement with much of the content of our current anti-racism talk, but the harsh, condemning, blaming, calling-out tone of the White Supremacy Culture feels like I’m back in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Most importantly, it began when I became an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister in 1999, and in 2011 when I was called to be your minister, which partly means upholding and protecting our liberal religious tradition by promoting reason, freedom of conscience, and humanistic ethics, no matter who disapproves of it. So, as far as I’m concerned, in so boldly standing up for our faith and the future of our church, writing and distributing The Gadfly Papers was part of my responsibility as your minister.

Indeed, I’ve been expressing my growing alarm over the abandonment of our traditional Unitarian values ever since I came here, like in 2013 when I said:

…at some point during the past 50 years we’ve come to define Unitarian Universalism mostly by its inclusivity, while often forgetting that we are primarily heretics and that our openness and inclusivity is born of our heresy…

In this sermon, entitled A Tale of Two Heresies: 50 Years of Learning to Keep Our Opinions to Ourselves, or Not, I went on to say:

And in the confusion of our identity with a muddled, diluted, preposterous concoction of all faiths, our tolerant religion seems more an idolatrous religion of Tolerance. Too often we sacrifice reason and honesty upon the altar of this peculiar fetish in the holy name of not offending others. For tolerance, in our age of political correctness, has been spun on its head to mean we mustn’t say anything others might disagree with. Although ours is no longer a theocracy that outlaws and burns heretics, too many treat those they disagree with as if they are disagreeable. They blame those they don’t wish to tolerate as if they are intolerant.

I’ve repeated this concern many times over the years, including in my 2017 sermon, It’s Not the Thought that Counts, in which I said:

…the culture of Political Correctness, a philosophy of some social progressives who think nobody should get away with saying things they find offensive… [is] a philosophy akin to that of people like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck, who seem to think they have a right not to have to listen to opinions they disagree with, that they have every right to publicly demonize, humiliate, and silence anyone who says something they don’t like.

And in my 2018 sermon, Protest and the Measure of All Things, I said:

I disagree that it’s okay to silence or drown out the speech of my adversaries, a tactic deployed alike by rightwing pundits on Fox News and progressive protesters on our streets and college campuses… To me, banishing one from my community, saying they don’t belong, that they have no right to be seen or heard, is to protest their very existence, their right to live and be, which violates the law of love in every way.

Some may recall the sermon I gave just prior to the 2017 General Assembly, entitled, Chilled: PC, Misappropriation, Microaggressions, and Other Forms of Neo-Fascism, during which I broke down trying to explain, “Tomorrow I will be heading to New Orleans to attend the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Annual Meeting, and I leave with a heavy heart.” This was so, I said, because I had been part of the Assembly’s Worship Arts Team, an endeavor that ended up being one of the most soulless and stifling experiences of my life. The hymns I wanted to use in the service I was responsible for were forbidden, like, “One More Step,” because it’s considered ableist by some, or, “We’ll Build a Land,” because it might be offensive to Native Americans, even though it’s based upon the Hebrew scripture, “Come build a land where sisters and brothers, anointed by God, may then create peace: where justice shall roll down like waters, and peace like an ever flowing stream.”

That’s when I also learned white males aren’t allowed to discuss social justice issues on UUA stages because it’s not possible for them to relate to injustice. But the most heartbreaking experience of all was when, even after assigning the participants I had been instructed to include, I was still told, “Your service is the whitest of them all. What can we do about that?” I was dumbfounded and began listing the different ethnicities of my seven participants, only one of whom was a white male. Upon doing so, I explained:

I found myself becoming sick to my stomach, for I am not accustomed to speaking of human beings in these terms, as numbers and colors, yet realized, by making sure I had three African American participants and a Latino teenager, that I had let this process cause me to tokenize others based on their race.

I allowed myself to go along to get along, demeaning the personhoods of others in the process. That’s also when Let’s Be Reasonable was born, the third essay in my controversial book, though the first written. The idea came against the backdrop of a hiring decision that resulted in widespread accusations Unitarian Universalism is a white supremacist organization, which the UUA leadership then took for granted, and is, for all practical purposes, all the Assembly focused on, even though it was occurring only a few months past Trump’s election, and many of us had additional concerns, like global warming, we wished were also addressed.

I reasoned — because Unitarian Universalists claim, as is written in our sssociational bylaws, since reason is one of our major sources of inspiration, to help us avoid, “idolatries of the mind and spirit” — that by modeling its use in response to this difficult issue, we might use it to be more honest, understanding, and compassionate with each other.

Boy did I ever get that wrong! You can imagine my shock when less than 24 hours after giving my book away a letter signed by over 300 of my colleagues condemned it, stating, “zealous commitment to ‘logic’ and ‘reason’ over all forms of knowing is one of the foundational stones of White Supremacy Culture,” and when, two months later, the UU Ministers Association’s censured me, similarly claiming, “we cannot ignore the fact that logic has often been employed in white supremacy culture to stifle dissent, minimize expressions of harm, and to require those who suffer to prove the harm by that culture’s standards.”

Stamped from the BeginningAlthough I don’t fully disagree and would encourage you to read Ibram X. Kendi’s remarkable 500-year history of white supremacy, Stamped from the Beginning, for solid examples of how logic, as well as science and philosophy, have been used to uphold racist beliefs, the UUMA’s letter of censure gave no examples of how my use of logic has done so. I suppose, having no commitment to using reason at all, its emotionally reactive members don’t recognize the most common fallacy in their thinking, affirming the consequent. It’s like saying all rainbows contain the color purple. The bouquet contains the color purple. Therefore, the bouquet is a rainbow. Using logic isn’t necessarily racist any more than using ships or roadways is racist, though both were used in the slave trade.

What’s not to be missed, however, more so than the unsoundness of this surprising claim that any use of logic is a form of racism, is that we now have two historic documents in existence, one signed by hundreds of UU ministers, and the other a letter of censure from the UU Ministers Association, both explicitly renouncing the use of reason, that which our associational bylaws still lists as a source of our spiritual growth, and that the founders of our own congregation established as the “Authority of its belief.”

The essay, placed first in my book, The Coddling of the Unitarian Universalist Mind, was inspired by the 2018 book, of similar title, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, critiquing safetyism, the belief ideas can be harmful and are, therefore, dangerous, and it’s our moral obligation to protect others from hearing things they disagree with, sometimes violently, but always by sacrificing free speech. No wonder the ministers’ letter also makes the astonishing claim that freedom of speech is itself a form of oppression.

When I read Coddling, I realized what it described happening on college campuses these days, in the name of protecting students from harmful ideas, is precisely what I’ve seen going on in the UUA. I won’t go into my essay’s content now, but I will mention some of the questions I hope its content provokes.

For instance, are all the white males in our congregations, and all over the world for that matter, really the embodiment of white supremacy and patriarchy, as the UUA now seems to believe? If so, were they destined to be so before conception? The moment of conception? At birth? In kindergarten when they began being enculturated? What is the age of accountability for this new form of original sin? Are their mere images really so offensive that we are not to even allow their pictures to appear in our publications and promotional materials anymore? Is it true they can’t empathize with others or understand injustice?

And what of the use of language as metaphor? If we can no longer use “stand,” or “blinded,” what of words like see, and hear, and walk? Is “Let it be a Dance We Do,” now on our banned list of hymns? What’s next? Who decides? Who will let us know?

I heard of one greeter at the General Assembly here in Spokane, an older volunteer who was “called out” simply for using the word “welcome,” accused of implying those she greeted needed her welcome because they weren’t welcome to begin with. Must we now be afraid to speak to each other for fear of “harming” someone with the smallest unintentional slight? Must we fear even saying, “welcome?”

Has the use of reason, once fundamental to Unitarianism, really become anathema in our association? Is truth really culturally relative? Is there nothing objective about it? Is truth private and personal? Does tolerance mean not saying things others disagree with, or does it still mean having the ability to hear things we disagree with? I can tell you, if the new definition safety means never hearing things we disagree with, then nobody is safe in this church as long as I’m its minister, nor safe anywhere else in the world for that matter.

The second chapter of my book, I Want a Divorce: A Case for Splitting the Unitarian Universalist Association, speaks of the identity crisis I believe has plagued us since the merger of Unitarians and Universalists in 1961. As I point out earlier in the book, humanism, like reason and freedom, has always been foundational to the Unitarian side of our tradition, beginning with the earliest Unitarians who, though still theists, held a humanistic Christology, the belief Jesus was only human.

Just five years after the 1961 merger, the new association surveyed its members to identify their typical profile. Of the 12,000 members surveyed, from 800 congregations, less than 3 percent claimed to believe in a “supernatural being,” 28 percent considered God “an irrelevant concept,” 57 percent did not consider theirs a “Christian” religion, and 52 percent preferred “a distinctive humanistic religion.”

When a similar study was conducted more recently, in 2005, UUA members no longer had a clue what our religion is about. One claimed, “It’s the support network.” Another saw “the UU movement as an interreligious dialogue,” Another said it’s comprised of “people who didn’t fit in,” while others complained its members share little in common. “This is where the UUA falls down,” one said, “and why you have CUUPS and the Buddhists and the Christians and all these little subgroups — because we offer the hope of a spiritual journey, and we offer no tools to do it with.” The report on the survey concluded, “Despite consensus within the church that the liberal message of Unitarian Universalism is important in this troubled world, we find it difficult to articulate that message clearly.”

This identity crisis in our religion, I argue, is the result of unresolved tensions between Unitarianism and Universalism. In his previously mentioned 1998 sermon, The Struggle for the Soul of our Movement, Rev. Bill Houff said we can view this “as a power struggle for dominance. Or we can view it as an opportunity to come up with a new and more creative synthesis.” I hope so, but he also warned that we…

…never forget that humanism’s emphasis on human experience and rationality is essential to living in a sane world. Emotional experience and religious enthusiasm are essential to a moral and rich world, but divorced from reason, they easily run amok, leading to error and even barbarism.

This, in my opinion, is what’s happening now, the complete abandonment of our traditional Unitarian principles — reason, freedom, and humanism. Consider this, during a 2012 UU ministerial conference, keynote speaker Rev. Frederic Muir referred to the “trinity of errors” he believes is stymying our religion: “a persistent, pervasive, disturbing and disruptive commitment to individualism… Unitarian Universalist exceptionalism that is often insulting to others and undermines our good news… [and] our allergy to authority and power.”

Muir goes on to say we need to establish “something that has eluded Unitarian Universalism: a doctrine of church,” that, “We cannot do both covenant and individualism,” that we must move beyond the concept of an “iChurch,” that the four pillars of the new church doctrine must be, “Multiculturalism, environmental justice, sexual and family values, right relationships,” and that Unitarianism’s humanistic turn has “arrested” our “theological creativity.”

In a 2019 UU World article entitled The Power of We, just prior to the recent General Assembly, our association’s current president cited Muir’s trinity of errors — individualism, exceptionalism, and our allergy to authority — repeating his blueprint forward, that we need to move from an iChurch to a beloved community, from individualism to interdependence. Most recently, in October, a Pacific Northwest UU Region newsletter was sent out with an article further promoting the shift in our congregations from “I” to “We.”

I think all three articles make some good points and are well-meaning, but they also create a false dichotomy, that there’s either “I” or “we,” either the “individual” or the “community,” when both must exist for humans and societies to be healthy. Without the strong commitment to individuality, we easily succumb to the kind of groupthink and fascism overtaking our entire nation today, which is why UU leaders disparaging exceptionalism and antiauthoritarianism trouble me.

If we see equality as meaning that we must all think, and speak, and act alike, without exception, without freedom, we end up like the former USSR, where everyone is equally miserable. And it is only by eliminating individualism, without exception, as the UUA is now suggesting, that authoritarianism can thrive. If this is what Unitarian Universalism now means, I can’t be a part of it, because I consider individualism, exceptionalism, and our aversion to authority our strengths, not our errors.

Last year, prior to my book, another UU minister wrote a Facebook post stating, in part:

I have reservations about current UU racial-justice ideology, and would like to find a place to discuss them with colleagues (of all races). I can’t imagine that our moderators would allow such a discussion here. Can anyone suggest a place?

For this, he too was censured by the UU Ministers Association, accusing him of violating our Covenant and Code of Conduct. I knew, because of the “cancel culture” now amok in the UUA, there was no way I could openly talk about my concerns either, or get “permission” to give my book away, not that I needed it. So here I am now, the hero of a story to some and its villain to others. I hope it’s worth it when the story ends.

As I see it, our turmoiled religion now has three options:

  • We can continue down the course we’re on, watching our traditional Unitarian values evaporate into oblivion.
  • We can split, as I say in my book may be inevitable if we’re not allowed to talk about our concerns.
  • Or we can have genuine, respectful, open dialogue about what’s going on and figure out a way to move forward together, maintaining our common values and shared goals, including the goals of ending racism and other forms of oppression everywhere.

I’ll end this longer than usual sermon as Bill Houff ended his 1998 sermon about this mounting conflict,:

Maybe this time around, we can have a continuing and creative dialogue instead of a divisive and destructive struggle for dominance. But we need to keep the dialogue open and civil! And we need to get started pronto!

Copyright 2019 © Todd Eklof

  1. In order for three to happen, both sides must want to discuss. The letters and censures and cancel culture show that the ARAOMC types do not want to talk. That leaves one and two. Frankly, I am willing to join and pay dues to any new UU organization that forms. I will not continue on supporting the UUA however. Either way I’m still a Unitarian Universalist – just not approved by the UUA 🙂 So as a heretic or apostate I guess, historically, I’m in good company.

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  2. Thank you, again, Rev. Todd. I will never forget the tremendous sense of relief I felt on my second night at GA 2019. As a lifelong Unitarian (then UU) I found GA to be a nightmare, which I could not understand. I was grateful to have been given a copy of your book – it explained what I had been dumbfounded by. This essay, again, contains so much wisdom. I have stopped attending my local UU congregation (which congregation I had been president of), because I find all this new political correctness and ethnic silliness beyond anything I can tolerate. Edith Fletcher

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  3. Particularly liked: “…at some point during the past 50 years we’ve come to define Unitarian Universalism mostly by its inclusivity, while often forgetting that we are primarily heretics and that our openness and inclusivity is born of our heresy…”

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  4. This kind of jumped out at me: “Just five years after the 1961 merger, the new association surveyed its members to identify their typical profile. Of the 12,000 members surveyed, from 800 congregations, less than 3 percent claimed to believe in a “supernatural being,” 28 percent considered God “an irrelevant concept,” 57 percent did not consider theirs a “Christian” religion, and 52 percent preferred “a distinctive humanistic religion.”

  5. Seems like WordPress likes to use carriage return to enter a comment – hard to insert a line break. And there doesn’t seem to be a way to go back and delete or edit a comment. So… To finish my last comment:

    This jumped out at me: ‘Just five years after the 1961 merger, the new association surveyed its members to identify their typical profile. Of the 12,000 members surveyed, from 800 congregations, less than 3 percent claimed to believe in a “supernatural being,” 28 percent considered God “an irrelevant concept,” 57 percent did not consider theirs a “Christian” religion, and 52 percent preferred “a distinctive humanistic religion.”

    Is this really true? What about all the Buddhists, stoned hippie freaks (me), and others who have a more spiritual/mystical bent? Cosmic Consciousness. Higher power. Nature. Interdependent Web of all existence. I seem to run into a lot of folks who aren’t stark rationalists. If we’re really such a stodgy group, I think I might have been in the wrong place for the last 30 years. I kind of thought that we were a, you know, religion.

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  6. “I found myself becoming sick to my stomach, for I am not accustomed to speaking of human beings in these terms, as numbers and colors, yet realized, by making sure I had three African American participants and a Latino teenager, that I had let this process cause me to tokenize others based on their race.”

    Yeah. I’ve had that particular nausea. Not because I “made sure” to have people of color in my work/world (I don’t have that much control over who appears in my life or ministry!) but because I’ve found myself angrily totting up the friends, family members, colleagues and mentors of color …

    Perhaps “you’re a white supremacist no matter what you do” crowd would say that failing to think of my cousin as my Cousin-Of-Color was racism. Or maybe the UU has made me a racist by insisting that I “center” her because her skin is black?

    (Well, actually she’s dark brown, with a few zits that she’s fretful about, and she wants to get her unibrow waxed…whoops! I’m thinking about her as herself rather than as a Person of Color. Mea culpa. Maybe I need some sort of electric-shock therapy?)

    It makes me very, very grateful to be a law enforcement chaplain. Not only is my world very diverse (in every way, including politically and religiously) but I get to focus on human universals (grief, death) and therefore on actual human beings.

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    1. I don’t think the current UUA dogma believes or understands that a white heterosexual male can possibly be marginalized, when of course they can be and are. I noticed that a UUA list of marginalized groups (gender, race, etc.) for an education class didn’t include mentally ill and, considering the UUA’s current dogma, I had to seriously wonder if that group was explicitly excluded because that would thus include white heterosexual males.

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      1. Wow, David. Your anecdote about the list of marginalized groups is stunning for three reasons: 1) that the mentally ill are excluded, 2) that your imagined explanation seems possible, and 3) that the UUA sees a need to determine which groups are entitled to the designation. A love-based faith would recognize that any of us may have ways in which we feel marginalized. No one should need a group-based membership card to be a member of the club.

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      2. The irony (and some may say satire) in all this is that one of the main reasons throughout history that people have been marginalized and expelled from societies and persecuted, and in particular by religions, is for expressing views that don’t align with the required dogma.

        I’m pretty sure that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Michael Servetus didn’t consider themselves “centered.”

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      3. David Cycleback, the mentally ill would be included under people with disabilities, and in fact there has been plenty of discussion around the challenges of people with “invisible disabilities.” Mel Pine, feeling marginalized and being marginalized is not the same thing. The history of this country is what it is. The UUA didn’t invent racism, homophobia, etc. Regarding people with disabilities, I am truly surprised Rev. Eklof would suggest “One More Step” as a hymn for GA 2017, a year after a big blowup at Ministry Days 2016 over ableist language, where many of his colleagues with disabilities expressed how hurt and excluded they felt by the language used, including that hymn specifically. This was discussed in a 2016 letter from the UUMA Board that went out to all UUMA members. Was Rev. Eklof unaware of this? Was he asserting his right to not care about his colleagues? What did he think was going to be the response? Rev. Eklof saying he felt “stifled” by the need to consider the feelings and perspectives of people with different life experiences is one of the things people with privilege are being asked to examine in ourselves and rise above. Surely, for ministers this is a minimal ask. It is what we are supposed to do.

      4. Rev Hinson-Rieger, it’s true that the UUA didn’t invent racism, homophobia, etc. It also didn’t invent anti-semitism, fat-shaming, classism, romantic and professional advantages for tall males, prejudice against tall women, and on and on. The UUA didn’t invent the trauma, addiction, and poverty that can afflict white people as well as POC. Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems to me that religion needs to address everyone pain.

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      5. Also, you say “feeling marginalized and being marginalized is (sic) not the same.” That supposes that we do need someone to make the rules about who is in fact marginalized. So you’re willing to judge whether my sense of marginalization is valid, while I’m prevented from judging whether an officially marginalized person’s feeling of being hurt is valid. Kafka, where are you now that we need you?

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      6. Mel, you wrote: “the UUA didn’t invent racism, homophobia, etc. It also didn’t invent anti-semitism, fat-shaming, classism, romantic and professional advantages for tall males, prejudice against tall women, and on and on. The UUA didn’t invent the trauma, addiction, and poverty that can afflict white people as well as POC.” Am I understanding you to be suggesting the UUA doesn’t talk about these things because these are problems white people might also have, and the UUA is not interested in the problems of white people? The UUA talks about anti-semitism, fat-shaming, classism, and the economic impact of gender stereotyping all the time. It’s all over the UUA Facebook page. Also the problems of trauma, addiction, and poverty.

        I agree with you that religion needs to address everyone’s pain. Religion also needs to address institutional oppression and apply a power analysis to social problems. We need to do all these things. You can’t just say pain is pain is pain and stop there. I understand UU as calling us to work together to all get free together. But not everyone is unfree at the same time in the same way. Certainly, white heterosexual males can be marginalized for various reasons. At the same time, they are also privileged. Our institutions do not treat white people with drug addictions and black people with drug addictions the same way. Ditto mental illnesses and a million other things.

      7. From what I can tell, “mentally ill” is not a marginalized group; members of that group are in charge of the UUA.

    2. As someone who is bipolar (since I was a little kid) and open about it, I told someone who used a modern “politically correct” term that “mental illness” is a perfectly fine term with me and what I use, and that people using politically correct terms is what offends me.

      Not speaking for all and someone is free to personally disagree, but I’m not into language that treats me or others as if they’re in still in kindergarten. That’s what offends me.

      With some of what is going on with UUA adherents (“You difference of opinion harms me and cannot be spoken,” “My feelings must be accepted as fact even if I misheard what you said”), what I want to say in response is “What, are you people fricking five year olds?”

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      1. I’m a politically moderate UU member, so, as tests, I told about the “Standing on the Side of Love” to “Siding With Love” change to two very liberal, feminist friends of mine. One’s response was “You’re kidding” and the other’s was “That’s really stupid.” The former, who is the most liberal person I know in liberal Seattle and I know supports many PC terms, said it is dangerous. She said she found it so over the top and needlessly changing a non-offensive term that it goes against the genuine cause of changing terms for legitimate purposes. She said the word standing in the original slogan obviously is figurative, and asked if UUs are not allowed to say “I see what you mean,” because some people are blind.

        I told my liberal, Title IX-warrior mom that the Unitarian Universalist Association was changing their slogan “Standing on the Side of Love,” because they deemed it not inclusive of those who cannot physically stand. She said “No wonder the Republicans call us snowflakes.”

        I don’t think the UUA realizes that with some of their new dogma, theory and rules (“Hearing a difference of opinion causes me fear,” “My personal feeling is truth and you cannot question it,” “Standing on the Side of Love is offensive,”), they are performing their own Saturday Night Live skit of themselves, and I don’t think they realize how stupid and embarrassing they look to outsiders (and many on the inside), including even to the above-quoted liberals in liberal Seattle.

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  7. My parents experienced a church shunning for 10 years in their KY Disciples congregation before finally giving up and moving to another denomination. I discovered the Unitarian tradition in college in 1955 and treasured it because of both the rationality and the poetry I experienced. It was a welcomed contrast to the irrational segregated culture I had identified and struggled against. Maybe those of us from the southern part of the US are more tuned in to what has come to divide us and made us incapable of hearing the perspective of another person as anything but an attack. The good news for me on this day before Thanksgiving 2019, feeling alienated and discouraged is learning Todd Eklof is still thinking, writing and speaking out.

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  8. I think the “evils of logic” line of reasoning of the UUA and UUMA is so laughable on its face that it should not even need to be addressed. However, as a professional philosopher, I will point out that, quite to the contrary, it is the lack of logic that is beyond historical racism and similar bigotry. The problem in this world and history has included the lack of the use of logic.

    It’s also silly in that other cultures and races have used and use logic. I in part study the philosophy and history of mathematics (and thus mathematical logic and scientific logic), and the Persians, Indians, Mayans, Sumerians, Khmer and East-Asians were at the forefront of mathematics and logic long before it caught on in the West with folks like Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. The fact that our (and Newton’s and Leibniz’s) numeration system is Hindu-Arabic (Hindu decimal system with Arabic symbols) speaks volumes. Further, Leibniz reintroduced the binary system, which he got from reading the I Ching (and binary systems also used earlier by the Egyptians and Indians).

    Does logic have its limits and are there other worthwhile and ways of thinking and considering? Of course. But this “throw away logic” line of reasoning is an example of how the UUA is embarrassing itself. It’s grasping at straws.

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    1. I would also note that the many remarkably similar mathematical logic systems, and that the concept and use of the logic of the zero symbols and concept, appeared independently of each other at a different times in history (a zero symbol were first independently used by the Mayans in Mexico and the Khmer in Cambodia who had no contact with each other, then further developed elsewhere by the Hindus in India) demonstrates that logic isn’t a particular invention of one culture or race (and certainly of the white West), but one of the universal ways humans cognitively think.

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      1. It reminds me of a number of years ago when US News and World Report came up with a new sophisticated and carefully studied computer calculation to pick the best schools. The problem was the result of the calculations was the top school was Cal Tech. US News and World Report thought that Cal Tech was fine school, but they thought the top should be a Harvard, Princeton or MIT. So they scrapped that system and went back to the one the produced the schools they preferred.

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  9. Jaimie Hinson-Rieger I am handicapped in a number of ways including difficulty standing up and pain when I stand too long. I have other disabilities as do most of my family members. None of us has ever been offended by any of the UU hymns. I am offended that people would trivialize our real concerns in this way. If the folks who are making a big deal about hymns don’t have any more important to complain about than metaphors in poetry, they are privileged indeed. I find it insulting that UU’s think most disabled people are concerned about things like that and that you have chosen to listen to a few fanatics over the overwhelming majority of us who would like to be able to get into every room in our church easily, have places to sit that are appropriate for us, doors we can open, refreshments we can access, great sound systems that are modern, training in speaking into microphones, access for those who don’t drive and parking for those who must drive, lighting strong enough for the visually impaired, speakers who enunciate and have vocal training, fall prevention measures, attention to background and ambient noise, attention to things from weeds on sidewalks to people in the aisle to storing things in turnaround spaces which block access for people in wheelchairs, with walkers, children running around in spaces where there are also frail adults who fall easily, website information for the handicapped so we know how to get into the building and what assistance we will find there. I remember visiting a UU congregation with no info on the website nor outside the building as to where the unlocked accessible entrance was (not near the sanctuary nor the door everyone else uses) and where best to park. After locating it on the third try — not so easy when you can’t walk — I went in the door but there were no signs or maps that told me how to get to the sanctuary or which floor to get off on the elevator. When, with the help of someone wandering around I found the sanctuary, the seating was not very accessible and I was not sure whether to sit in a flimsy chair with no armrests or to go home. So I was more than a little grumpy when the PC minister proudly announced that they had changed the words to a hymn tune to better welcome people like me. Also, no bar ($20) to help you get up from the toilet in the bathroom — perhaps there was one somewhere — but how would I know?

    Liked by 4 people

    1. krohde2014, I’m sorry you had that experience. As someone who leads worship it is my job to think about how the language of hymns impacts different people in the space. I don’t expect everyone to feel the same or for everyone to share the same concerns. I see the conversation about ableist language in worship as an entry point into a much deeper conversation about how we talk about and think about bodies and which bodies are valued in our culture, which is a profoundly religious conversation and central to our work in living out the 1st Principle. It’s not an easy conversation, but I’m grateful to be part of a religious community which is having it. At the same time, the conversation around ableism is spurring congregations and the denomination as a whole to examine all those issues around access you mentioned. There is now EqUUal Access to educate congregations on these issues, the UUMA has done a deep dive on this, and congregations are working to get accessibility certified in the same way they can become Welcoming Congregations and Green Sanctuaries. It’s not either or. The conversation around language and the work on physical accessibility are happening at the same time. I know we’re looking at all these concerns top to bottom in my own church and making real changes to our facilities and our processes, and that is a direct result of UUs who raised this issue so prominently in 2016, starting with questions about worship AND problems with accessibility at GA and similar events. The conversation has always been about both. But absolutely, I agree, no one should change a hymn lyric and think they’ve done the work. That’s not the point at all.

      1. Sorry, clarification needed, EqUUal Access has been around since 2008. The AIM certification program is new (launched 2015.) And now I am going to bow out and go be with my family. Blessings to you all.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. No, Jamie, the conversation has not always been about both accessibility and language, and the conversation about accessibility started long before 2016. Each of the four congregations I’ve been part of since the mid-1980s struggled with access and would have been delighted to get some actual help from the UUA — like maybe some funding. Many things are not either/or, but unfortunately money is, and the UUA has not been as generous toward existing congregations struggling with growth and accessibility as it has toward newer special interest groups.

        Liked by 2 people

      3. Jamie, IS there a bona fide, back-and-forth conversation, when we see that people who promote “hurtful” ideas being censured under the authority of the governing body? The “conversation” is restricted to vetted ideas — i.e., no one who is part of a marginalized group has their feelings hurt. But I don’t see hurtfulness in sincere, respectfully presented ideas; I see speaking truth to power (though here “power” may be the UUA).

        When there’s a predetermined “right answer,” how can there be a conversation? We’re trying to give status, power, and resources to historically oppressed people, but the way we’re doing it is to promote a one-way sensitivity culture: one set of people is encouraged to express feelings and reactions, and another set of people is expected to be meek and docile. I appreciate the former but stubbornly refuse to abide by the latter. (To be fair, I may express Woman and Childfree feelings and opinions, but not feelings and opinions that are informed by Higher Education or a Caucasian background.)

        One writer in our most recent UU World suggests that I cannot claim to be a UU because I’m not following the specific action agenda that they believe is implied by the Seven Principles. To which I say, baloney, followed with a strong dose of Congregational Polity.

        One of my congregants once spoke passionately against inviting the congregation to stand (“in body or in spirit”) for hymns during worship services, because she could stand only for very short periods of time. She couldn’t see over people, and she didn’t want to sit at the front. She wanted people to show sensitivity and inclusion by mimicking her limitations. She also objected to “Standing on the Side of Love” for similar reasons. (I object to the slogan because of it’s embedded self-righteousness and divisiveness, but that’s another story.)

        Her vision of inclusivity [though to be uber-progressive, we shouldn’t use “vision” either] reminded me of the 1961 Kurt Vonnegut short story “Harrison Bergeron,” set in 2081, when everyone has become equal through enforced limitations that equalize abilities and attributes.

        You can read the story here:
        from Wikipedia:
        Like his great-grandfather Clemens, Vonnegut was a freethinker. He occasionally attended a Unitarian church, but with little consistency. In his autobiographical work Palm Sunday, Vonnegut says he is a “Christ-worshipping agnostic”; in a speech to the Unitarian Universalist Association, he called himself a “Christ-loving atheist.” However, he was keen to stress that he was not a Christian.

        Liked by 4 people

  10. And, Jamie, I just noticed your question to me about ignoring problems of white men. In the abstract, the UUA is not ignoring the problems, but it fails to understand the impact of it’s labeling.

    I’m a 73-year-old while man who, yes, is likely to be treated better than a black counterpart in many situations. But I’ve experienced more than my share of traumas and disadvantages. In the privilege walk, I score minus four steps. Two of my friends (one black) from the 1960s are serving life terms without the possibility of parole and another served a shorter term for murder. One close friend (a black woman) was stabbed to death, and my aunt and uncle were shot to death. I lost two other aunts, two other uncles, and five first cousins in the holocaust before I was born. My son died in a skateboarding accident and my sister in an auto accident. I survived an FALN building bombing, and there’s lots more.

    So when the UUA designates some groups as marginalized and tells me I need to shut up to listen to their painful stories because I’ve been hogging the “center,” I wonder why we can’t just listen to each other’s stories — why any group needs to be centered. And I don’t feel welcome (especially after my work was expunged from the Worship Web because I won’t apologize for being white, but that’s another story.

    Liked by 4 people

  11. Jaimie, I have been around for a long time, and I frankly think you are talking (as Mom politely put it) through your hat. Literally not one of my disabled family or friends are worried about language when it comes to our disability. We don’t even think about it and we find it insulting that the UUA is pushing this so hard. Most of the things I reference above, are free or low cost. I have never seen them mentioned. I think all this language stuff is virtue signalling and a substitute for sensitivity and dialogue. It reminds me of the time nearly forty years ago when the UUA was all on board with changing sexist language while lots of the folks pushing it were male ministers abusing the women in their congregations (and ministers who assault people are not considered as big an issue as not hurting certain select people’s feelings even today — see the UUMA payoff of a serial sexual abuser just a couple of years ago, and the opportunity just a couple of months ago for a sexual misconduct perpetrator to tell his side of the story through UUA channels without the primary or secondary victims heard from. A department of ministry action, wasn’t it?). As a disabled person, I am tired of the able bodied talking about what I need or letting a token disabled person talk about what “we” need. I have never been invited into that conversation. I don’t blame people for being ignorant, but I do blame people for assuming they know what is important without asking. Maybe try out going through work beginning at home for a week on crutches and another week in a wheel chair.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. Mel, most congregations don’t know this, but although elevators and door openers and the like may cost something (although I think they would more than make up for themselves in funds from increased participation and are easy to fund raise for — I’ve served in churches and one time expenses are pretty easy to fund), lots of the things needed are free or very cheap. If a congregation wants to welcome the disabled and our elders as we become more frail and less able, it is far more about the will, the labor, and the training than it is about the money.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. When we first bought our our old movie-theater building in 2004, it was built to be accessible, including ramps to the chancel for wheelchair access, for example.

      The estimate for us to add a standard elevator is at $100,000 (one hundred thousand dollars). We also need a new capital campaign to develop our second floor (which contains the projection rooms).

      I don’t see an elevator as an easy upgrade that pays for itself. We still expect to do it eventually, but it’s an expense that will be paid for from the endowment fund, and not from fundraisers.

      1. While not meaning to take issue with Kate Rohde’s point about the will to do it, I still think that money helps, even if it’s just to raise awareness. Many of us who have worked on various problems in smaller churches learned quickly the UUA’s answer to requests to help congregations with funds for anything: “We don’t do that. No budget for it.” As one UU staffer told me when I asked for funding for an unexpected problem: “This is one instance when we actually do believe in congregational polity.” So when the UUA gave more that $300,000 to BLUU out of its general funds and earmarked $5 million from its endowment as a guarantee on fundraising, it came as a shock. If the UUA had ever done anything like that for other “marginalized” groups, like those with access problems, it might have made more sense to lay leaders.

        Liked by 1 person

  13. I’m familiar with many aspects of what you refer to as the rational / humanistic / heretic origins of traditional Unitarianism from my upbringing in New England UU congregations. But I disagree that those values are getting ousted, more that they are getting pulled into overdo and necessary balance with our other theological and historical roots (universalism, covenant, radical inclusivity, LOVE!) My experiences in the rational and intellectual debate-oriented corners of UU were cognitively stimulating, but not enough to sustain and nourish me as I grew older and experienced more hardship. It wasn’t enough to get me through my darkest times or to grapple seriously with the injustice outside my door. In my liberal city there are plenty of places I can express an opinion or reject traditional religious beliefs, like book clubs or a dinner party or the political campaign offices (this wasn’t true for our ancestors obviously). But I only know of one place where I can experience a beautiful community of diverse spiritual travelers trying to improve the world. If there wasn’t a UU congregation nearby, I would certainly try my best at another religious or spiritual setting, but the UU vision of covenant and wide circles feels really unique, as imperfectly and humanly as we enact this vision. Our source about heeding reason is only one source. When reason is balanced with the values of radical love and anti-oppression and a deep commitment to community covenant, we have the type of faith I could imagine my children finding a home in, whatever identities they might hold or hardships they might endure.

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Social Media Marketing Trends for 2015

Trumpeter Media uses affiliate marketing. An affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to this product and affiliated sites. Other affiliate links may be used in this article, but they do not impact on the price that you pay (in fact you get to use my discounts!) and they help me to get this information to you for free.

Social media is massively on the rise. Through our own social media usage and secondary research, here are our top 7 social media marketing trends for 2015.

7 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2015

#1 Mobile Usage Explodes

Mobile usage is on the increase for social media. In 2015, Facebook reached 1 billion active mobile users a month (Statistica). The increase in mobile usage goes hand in hand with Mobile specific apps, such as Snapchat.

In addition, if you have your own website, make sure that it is mobile responsive, otherwise, you could be missing out on traffic and sales.

Social Media Marketing Trends for 2015
Image Credit: Jason Howie on (Creative Commons)

#2 Social Media Sales Rising

We are seeing a massive rise in sales through social media, which means that it is no longer an option for businesses to ignore social media altogether. There is an increase in direct selling through third party apps such as Facebook shops, and it is predicted that this will continue to rise. According to Statista, by the end of 2015, social selling will amount to $30 billion worldwide, that’s a 50% increase over 2014’s $20 billion (Social Media Examiner).

#3 Growth of Instagram

We are directly seeing an increase in Instagram sales for several of the businesses we work with. Instagram is a great platform for images and ‘in the moment’ updates. Last year, Instagram reached 300 million active users, and that is still rising through 2015 (

Social Media Trends for 2015

#4 Podcast Increase

Along with an increase in Podcast users, audio platforms such as Soundcloud are also on the rise. 44% of Americans now listening to streaming audio such as Pandora or Spotify (Social Media Examiner).

Something that is working very well for our business is offering a free Podcast when people subscribe to our mailing list with Aweber. Podcasts are very popular with generation Y (the younger generation graduating from high school and college).

#5 Facebook still in the Lead on Social Media

There is evidence to show that Facebook still out-performs any other social media channel, with 1.44 billion users. Paid Facebook ad usage is also on the increase amongst Facebook business users.

#6 Increase in use of Social Media for Customer Service

Business are moving towards active engagement with their followers and use of social media for customer service. This is probably due to the ability to schedule content through platforms such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, which allows more of a focus on interactions.

#7 Brand interaction with Bloggers and Vloggers

Bloggers and Vloggers are also on the up, and this includes ‘sponsorship’ from brands and companies. There is a massive increase in bloggers, from beauty YouTubers like Zoella (below) who review make up to travel bloggers such as Globertrotterguru who get complimentary hotel stays. Brands are now recognising the need to work with bloggers and bloggers because of their massive influence and social media reach.

What do you think are the biggest Social Media trends of 2015?

I’d love to hear your feedback on these. What do you think is the biggest social media trend of 2015?

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Using your Knowledge Network to Win Federal Contracts

Learn how to leverage your knowledge network strategically to impact all the drivers of p-Win

About The Webinar

If you break down the drivers of the probability of winning (i.e. pWin); customer, competitor, capabilities, cost/value – they each require an incredible amount of human intelligence and expertise to win. A contractor’s knowledge network — the collection of relationships it can activate on-demand to supply these inputs – is vital to both selecting the right opportunities to pursue and to building a favored position on those captures.

In this webinar, we will break down the different drivers of pWin and how knowledge networks support each of these items. We’ll hear stories for our panelists about how their knowledge network has been important in achieving growth goals for the companies where they’ve worked and have helped them to win more federal contracts.

Key Learnings:

Customer - how to develop client intimacy
Competitors - how evaluate the strength of your network and whether your team is well placed for an opportunity
Capabilities - how experts "beyond the usual suspects" can help develop innovative solutions to please your clients
Cost/ Value - how cost and budgeting experts can help make sure your proposal is priced to win

Mark is the Managing Partner of Catapult Growth Partners which provides business development services for small and disadvantaged businesses to help accelerate revenue growth

Mark Johnson

Get The Webinar Content

If you missed the live webinar, you can view the recording here or download the free e-book

Previous feedback about OnFrontiers Knowledge Networks

Setting up our network has helped us to retain key experts and relationships regardless of staff turnover and maintain a cohesive capture strategy.
The ability to analyze  our Knowledge Network helps us to recognize very quickly which opportunities we're well-placed to pursue and where the gaps are to increase our pWin.
Having our network in place already meant we were able to move quickly to respond to an unexpected RFTOP and even win the award, despite being understaffed at the time.

Troy Wray

Troy is a Principal at Washington Business Dynamics, a veteran-owned management consulting firm specializing in acquisition, finance, and strategy and serving multiple federal agencies.

Brian Caouette

Brian is Co-founder and CEO of OnFrontiers, helping build knowledge networks for distributed businesses and federal contractors seeking to become more agile and competitive.

- IDIQ Capture Manager
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UK Tag Nationals 2021

UK Tag Nationals 2021

October 2 @ 11:00 am 6:00 pm BST

The UK Tag Nationals brings all the Try Tag Rugby regions together to battle it out to see who is crowned the UK Tag National Champions.

As this is a representative tournament, your selection into your region is not guaranteed. If you would like to be considered, nominate yourself now by registering via the links below. Application deadlines will be advertised locally. Check with local regional staff if you are unsure. Successful applications will be notified following closure of nominations in your region and no later than Tuesday 10th August.

Some regions will be holding trials to help managers select the teams. Although all players are encouraged to attend any trials being held in your region, people who do not attend the trials will still be considered for selection.

Teams will play in the 8-a-side format using Try Tag Rugby’s extended rules. Mixed Divisions require a minimum of 4 males on the pitch at any one time.

Each region will be able to enter any of the following categories;

– Mixed Open (Squads of 6 male and 6 female)

– Men’s Open (Squads of 12 male’s)

– Women’s Open (Squads of 12 female’s)

Try Tag Rugby reserve the right to move players between categories where required.

Selectors and regional playing requirements/opportunities may be different to those for Great Britain. Playing for Great Britain in a certain team or position does not guarantee you will command that position at regional level.

Players will be eligible for their region based on the league they played in during the Early Summer or Summer 2021 Seasons. Only players that have played in one of these seasons will be eligible for the UK Tag Nationals.

NOTE: If you are eligible for more than one region, you should choose which region you would like to play for and nominate yourself for that region. Players should not nominate themselves for more than one region.

London regions consist of the following Early Summer and Summer Leagues:

North: Finsbury Park (Monday), Finsbury Park (Wednesday), Hackney (Tuesday), Highbury (Saturday – 6-a-side), Highbury (Thursday – 6-a-side), Highbury (Tuesday – 6-a-side), Regent’s Park (Friday), Shoreditch (Monday – Mixed), Shoreditch (Tuesday – Men’s), Shoreditch (Tuesday – Mixed).

South: Balham (Tuesday – Beginner only – 6-a-side), Balham (Tuesday), Brixton (Monday), Brixton (Wednesday), Clapham & Wandsworth Common (Monday), Clapham Common (Friday), Clapham Common (Sunday), Clapham Junction (Monday – 6-a-side), The Stoke Travel League at Clapham & Balham (Thursday), The Stoke Travel League at Clapham (Saturday).

East: Borough (Monday 6-a-side), Brockley – Lewisham, Canada Water (Monday), Canada Water (Thursday), Canada Water (Tuesday), Olympic Park South (Thursday 6-a-side), Peckham, Shoreditch East (Monday), Shoreditch East (Thursday), Shoreditch East (Wednesday), Victoria Park (Wednesday), Waterloo (Monday – Beginner Only – 6-a-side)

West: Fulham (Sunday), Fulham (Thursday), Fulham (Tuesday), Hyde Park (Monday – Men’s), Hyde Park (Monday – Women’s), Hyde Park (Thursday), Hyde Park (Tuesday), Kensal Green (Mixed), Property League (Hyde Park), Richmond, The Old Sergeant League at Wandsworth Town (Men’s), The Old Sergeant League at Wandsworth Town (Mixed), West London (Acton Wasps – Monday), West London (Acton Wasps – Wednesday).

Playing for your Region at the UK Tag Nationals is second only to playing for Great Britain. It is the second highest profile event on the Try Tag Rugby representative calendar. As such all regions are required to look the part and to play in their 2021 team kit.

Playing in the 2021 kit is compulsory and previous years playing kit will not be allowed. The cost of a pair of your regions shorts/tights and a singlet is included in the Entry Cost. Playing jerseys instead of singlets will also be available for a supplementary cost of £4.

Note: Please ensure you enter your kit preferences and sizing requirements by completing the 2nd part of the nomination process. The second part of the nomination process can be completed by clicking on the google forms link in the email received when nominating yourself via the links below.

All players selected to play for their region will receive a link with a fee of £49. This fee includes your choice of shorts/tights, singlet/jersey and includes your entry fee to the Nationals Tournament. This fee will need to be paid by 9am on August 17th.

This year’s event will be hosted at Kings House Sports Ground in Chiswick in London. The nearest train station is Barnes Bridge. On-site parking is available.

All teams and players will be required to arrive at the venue in order to register at least one hour before kick-off with the first games starting at 11:00am. Exact registration opening times will be confirmed in the welcome email. Play will be completed for 17:30 with the presentation will follow soon after. There will be an after-party with the details confirmed closer to the time dependent on COVID restrictions.

Nominating yourself is a two-part process:

Part 1: Click on the relevant link below.

Part 2: Once you have nominated yourself via the link below, you will receive an email containing a link to a registration form. To complete your nomination you must click on the link in the email and answer the required questions.

Coventry & Warwickshire:
East London:
North London:
South London:
Thames Valley:
West London:
Yorkshire **:

** Players from the new Sheffield region will be eligible to play for Yorkshire in 2021. From 2022 Sheffield will host their own teams.

Regional trial dates will be advertised locally via your regions.

Events will adhere to relevant Covid-19 guidelines. Details of Try Tag Rugby’s latest regulations will be circulated in the event welcome email which all players must familiarise themselves with. If any event has to be postponed or rescheduled, players will have the option to carry over their registration or be refunded.

Riverside Drive
Chiswick, W4 2SH United Kingdom
+ Google Map

Register using the region specific links above.


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You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Hoppiness’ tag.

This happens to be the 1953 Hobo, but any boat single, twin, triple, or quadruple looks like this when first hauled out.

And here . . . after a shave and haircut,and some good pomade.  She’s 38′ 12′.

The unicorn here is W. O. Decker, 1930, wooden-hulled. She’d been power washed but was waiting for more work.  The 52′ x 15′ tug would be out doing tours had it not been for COVID.

I leave this one as the quiz.  Name that single-screwed tugboat.  I realize there’s really no clues.  you just need to go through your list of single-screwed tugs working in the sixth boro.

The 66′ x 18′ 1940 Ireland is up on Lake Ontario, living under a new name . . . Hoppiness the Tug. The main engine has been pulled, and soon she’ll be high and dry up on the Great Lake.

This was assuredly the 1944 Capt. Mackintire‘s last haul out.  the 1944 tug was 80′ x 23′ hauled out here in Belfast ME.  She sank in 158’ of water three miles off Kennebunkport ME in February 2018.

The 1958 Margot is 85′ x 24′ and has been featured on this blog many times.

And that’s all I got.  Thanks to Donna for sending along the photos of Hobo.  All others, WVD.

And the mystery tug is Frances, a year older than Margot but with otherwise virtually the same dimensions.

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Graves of Arthur Kill

Click on image below to order your copy of Graves of Arthur Kill, by Gary Kane and Will Van Dorp. 3Fish Productions.

Seth Tane American Painting

Read my Iraq Hostage memoir online.

My Babylonian Captivity

Reflections of an American hostage in Iraq, 20 years later.

September 2021


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  • Return economy class flights from Johannesburg via Nairobi to Mombasa on Kenya Airways
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  • 4 nights accommodation in a standard room
  • Breakfast and dinner daily

Struggling to afford any of these packages? We have you covered!
Select the Layby or Credit payment option when you request your quote.

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  • Valid for departures during October 2021
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  • Yellow Fever Vaccinations are required for travel to Kenya
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  • Covid Tests are done at the Mombasa County Office at approximately USD120 per person (payable in cash)
  • In choosing to stay at the quoted hotels, you voluntarily assume all risk related to exposure to COVID-19

Welcome to the Diani Reef Beach Resort & Spa! Located by the world-renowned Diani beach over a sprawling and serene area of 34 acres, it is truly a paradise waiting for you with a magical experience. Offering world-class hospitality standards, this beach resort is the perfect destination for beach holidays, corporate and social events and grand weddings. With multi-cuisine dining outlets, bars, well-appointed rooms and suites, swimming pool and spa, it promises nothing but the ultimate holiday experience. It will be one decision that you will never regret!

We have three restaurants, Coral Rock Cafe which offers buffet services, Fins Seafood and Grill Restaurant for a la carte menus and Sake Oriental Restaurant for fine dining. Our four in-house bars are also well stocked with exceptional bartenders ready to serve you one of our signature Zuri cocktails.

As a resort, we have a go green initiative and a no plastic policy where we limit the use of single-use plastics and encourage guests to buy eco-friendly reusable bottles.

Diani Reef Beach Resort & Spa is the winner of many prestigious awards, the most recent being the 2015 Africa’s Leading Spa Resort and 2015 Kenya’s Leading Beach Resort awarded by the distinguished World Travel Awards.


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4.3 Anyone Can be SuedIntroduction and AlignmentSee the Workshop Four assignment Instruction.Upon successful completion of this assignment you should be able to:  See the Workshop Four Outcomes.Resources Textbook: Advanced practice nursing: Essentials for role development File: Anyone Can be Sued.docxInstructions After learning about the types of malpractice insurance available as well as the costs, in a three-four page paper (plus references) describe whether you think malpractice insurance is necessary and who should pay for it. When you have completed your assignment, save a copy for yourself and submit a copy to your instructor using the 4.3 Dropbox by day seven. Click here to access the Dropbox.Assessment Criteria    Assessed Item Points  Discussion of different types of malpractice insurance20 Discussion of costs of insurance, benefit of insurance, risk of not carrying coverage35 Is malpractice insurance necessary, if so who should pay for it?35 Accurate spelling, grammar; references (minimum of five) and  APA format10 Total Points100 ..

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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Mystery & Thriller
2h 7m
In 1970s England the head of MI6, Control (John Hurt), dispatches an agent (Mark Strong) to meet with a Hungarian general who knows the identity of a Soviet spy in the organization's ranks. However, the mission goes wrong, and the general dies before he can reveal the information. Undersecretary Oliver Lacon (Simon McBurney) calls veteran agent George Smiley (Gary Oldman) back from forced retirement to ferret out the mole and stop the flow of vital British secrets to the Russians.
Director(s): Tomas Alfredson
Poster for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Audience: 65%rottentomatoes rating
Critics: 83%rottentomatoes rating
Film certificate Not suitable for children under 15 years of age Rottentomatoes film page Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) on IMDb

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Show Menu

Watch Jungle Girl online

What is Jungle Girl about?
Dr John Meredith, ashamed at the crime spree of his twin, Bradley, travels with his daughter, Nyoka, to Africa. There his skills as a doctor displace Shamba, the resident Witch Doctor of the Masamba. Years later, Slick Latimer and Bradley Meredith arrive looking for a local diamond mine and team up with the disgruntled Shamba. Bradley kills his brother John and takes his place. Fortunately, they also brought along Jack Stanton and Curly Rogers, who promptly join Nyoka in trying to stop the villains.

Season 1 of Jungle Girl

    Episode 8: Man Trap
    Episode 12: Trapped
    Episode 13: Ambush
click here to see where to watch

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