I’m in Atlanta, traveling for work, which, ironically, gives me more time to blog since I’m sitting here in a hotel room by myself with nothing to do. Interestingly, I seem to be here at the same time that this is going on, so my hotel is full of well-scrubbed Baptist kids walking around with Bibles. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; it’s just kind of surreal – no one in the northeast walks around carrying a Bible. But if any of them try to evangelize me I’ll just brandish my Book of Common Prayer to ward them off.

On the plane I started reading P.D. James’s The Children of Men. Very gripping and full of Christian themes. Dystopian science fiction is my favorite variety. It’s the first book of hers I’ve read, but I think I recall reading somewhere that James is an Anglican; she certainly takes some shots at modern watered-down versions of Christianity. And some of the heroes are explicitly Christian in their motivation. I wonder how much of that the new movie retains.

We don’t have cable tv, so whenever I’m staying in a hotel I’m always astonished at how shallow and sensationalistic cable news is. I watched about 5 minutes of the Lou Dobbs show, which seems to be an extended exercise in xenophobia; all of America’s problems, it seems, are caused by foreigners – foreigners overseas who want to take our jobs, or foreigners coming here. Then the inevitable Wolf Blitzer’s show came on. The one spot of serious analysis was when Blitzer had the NYT’s John Burns reporting from Iraq on what a mess the whole Saddam execution debacle has become. Regardless of your views on the death penalty, it’s pretty hard at this point to see it as a victory for democracy or the rule of law, much less a victory for the U.S.

I also watched a bit of the Gerald Ford funeral coverage. Interesting that he and Jimmy Carter became such close friends (at least to hear President Carter tell it). It’s pretty hard to imagine that happening now – Carter said that he used to give Ford regular briefings on his foreign and domestic policy! I’m not one to get sentimental about presidents or the pomp of our civil quasi-religion, but Ford seems like he was a pretty decent guy. RIP.

Not much else to report. I think I’m going to raid the mini-bar and get back to The Children of Men.

P.S. For the record, no Gideon’s Bible in the rooms in the Atlanta Westin. I actually didn’t pack a Bible because I wanted to pack lightly and figured there’d be one in the room. I actually thought hotel-room Bibles were universal. Or is this just cut-rate chains? (Also for the record, hotels in Utah have Bibles and copies of the Book of Mormon.) Maybe I should track down one of those Baptist kids…