No sooner had I proudly written the column about the young boy who had named his new pet chicken after me than Ronda the Chicken proved to be as unpredictable as Ronda the writer.

An elderly man was sitting on a park bench in tears. A policeman came along and asked what was wrong.

“I’m 80 years old,” sobbed the man. “I have a 28-year-old wife at home. She’s beautiful, charming and madly in love with me.”

Bishop Rick Painter, rector of the Cathedral of Christ the King in Phoenix, Ariz., was recently arrested and twice convicted of a crime. His offense? What was it that would prompt law enforcement officials and the judicial system to focus on the 68-year-old bishop of a cathedral?

You know — you must — you can’t help it — aren’t you alive?! — that the marketplace isn’t perfect. Haven’t we all been told often enough, amid the political chatter concerning how to crack down on Wall Street?

Life would be rather boring if not for our hobbies. Would the world have remembered Michelangelo if he hadn’t taken up painting?

It is a good reflection on Americans that they tend to be on the side of the underdog. But it is often hard to tell who is in fact the underdog, or why.

Michael Moore’s new film, “Capitalism: A Love Story” will be released next month. I’ve neither seen nor read reviews of the film, except for a short piece in the London Telegraph (9/6/09) titled “Michael Moore film calls capitalism evil.”

Having been out of pocket, as they say, for 60 days, I may be a bit dated as to the newspaper changes. I know that we will walk into the house and find piles of dead bugs, so we’ll start our homecoming by cleaning up.

Those of us who cover elected officials for a living sometimes see things that others miss. It’s not because we’re smart. It’s simply due to the exhaustive number of meetings we cover. Numbering in the hundreds, we see the dynamics, the relationships and the various ways the public is treated.

If you have money to invest, I think that all of you would demand that anyone you have managing those funds would have to be someone you trust totally. Within some level of reasonableness, that should apply for any government as well.

When I was a kid, there was a bully in our neighborhood. He never picked on kids his own size and certainly not on anyone larger. Rather, he punched, pushed and kicked kids smaller and weaker than himself, especially those who refused to respond to his threats.

A dear friend of mine, bless his heart, has to work every major holiday. Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter are days on which he labors while his family celebrates without him.

The psalmist prays, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

Like most people growing up in America, when I thought of a cathedral, that which came to mind were those magnificent structures scattered around Europe that were constructed somewhere in the Middle Ages. If the building is huge and ornate, I reasoned, it must be a cathedral.

By SHELDON RICHMAN

Enough dithering! President Obama says it’s time to act on healthcare. I agree.

But act how? Are we really going to be happy with the pussy-footing proposals floating around Congress? All the so-called reformers want to do is tinker with insurance regulations. But how effective would that be, considering that the insurance companies themselves support the changes?

We have taken our eyes off the ball, people. Let’s get back to first principles. Obama’s premise is that we have a right to healthcare. A right.

Who wrote the following: “We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about ‘unthinkable things’ because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.”

I read in a recent news item that Pennsylvania is celebrating 150 years of extracting crude oil from the Allegheny foothills.

The French philosopher and author Voltaire was exactly right when he said, “Common sense is not so common.” He also said, “Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.”

I’m still laughing about it. Well, kinda. It’s one of those situations that you have to laugh about to keep from crying.

One of the great strengths of Americans is that we have historically been able to put the past behind us and move forward.

They’re all over him — swarms, flocks, flights of critics taking apart President Obama: his style, his motives, his modus operandi, assuming he has one.

Dad will be 83 at the end of this month. By anyone’s standards, that’s getting up there. Reaching such a lofty age not only poses certain problems for the senior citizen, but also for their children. Just what gift do you get someone who’s been around so long?

The most important thing about what anyone says are not the words themselves but the credibility of the person who says them.

With the massive increases in federal spending, inflation is one of the risks that awaits us. To protect us from the political demagoguery that will accompany that inflation, let’s now decide what is and what is not inflation.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard of New Portland, Maine, recently paid the ultimate price in Afghanistan.

Associated Press photographer Julie Jacobson, embedded with Bernard’s unit, was with them when they were ambushed by Taliban forces and Bernard was mortally wounded by an enemy rocket-propelled grenade.

If you woke up this morning healthy and of sound mind, thankful for your beautiful family, grateful that you live in the greatest nation in the world, I would like to ask a favor of you.

Despite their control of all three branches of government, this has not been a good summer for liberal Democrats.

Their health care “reform” bill, which has yet to be fully written, much less fully funded, has been exposed at town hall meetings as a power grab over life and death with the strong possibility that “do no harm” will be replaced by a utilitarian approach to treatment.

It’s sometimes amazing the coincidences that can bring a person into your life. How they can be plopped down into your life, just like they’ve always belonged there.

Answers to your questions about life, religion and the Bible

Pastors get some of the most interesting questions from people they meet and people in their congregations. Here are some questions that I have received during my years of ministry and via email for this column.

The aim of the wet projectile was perfect. Down the Street Bully Brad had taken almost everything into account. I say almost because his first spitball of the school year had missed its intended target by inches. Brad Macalister’s target was, of course, the back of my head.