I understand there is a GOP memo in my inbox,

 
and I will probably make myself look at it, but here are five things I decided to read first this morning:

A PBS NewsHour piece truth-checking the notion that immigrants bring crime with them when they come to our country: “The most striking finding from our research is that for murder, robbery, burglary and larceny, as immigration increased, crime decreased, on average, in American metropolitan areas. The only crime that immigration had no impact on was aggravated assault. These associations are strong and stable evidence that immigration does not cause crime to increase in U.S. metropolitan areas, and may even help reduce it.”

Betty Crocker’s recipe for peanut brittle: “Cook, stirring constantly, to 300 degrees (or until a small amount of mixture dropped into very cold water separates into threads.”

A Religion News Service piece by Peter Gyves, a Jesuit priest and physician, under the headline "January was tough on the poor. And so was tax reform:" “It is time for people of faith to reclaim their compelling voice by bringing awareness to the poverty suffered by those less fortunate, and by creating opportunities for those more fortunate to walk in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in need. Sadly, over the past several decades, some prominent voices have aligned themselves with the powerful rather than the marginalized. Their support allowed this recent tax legislation to gain tax cuts for the wealthy by eliminating health care insurance for as many as 13 million individuals.”

A Sojourners piece titled, “The State of Religion and Politics in 2018 -- and Why It Gives Me Hope,” by Cassandra Lawrence : “We’ve seen religion at work in all the people who are reaching out to one another in quieter ways, gathering in living rooms and in houses of worship across the country to make efforts to get to know one another better.” Lawrence mentions specific programs and events worth noting.

And, finally, the last chapter of Christopher Fowler’s Ten Second Staircase, in which aging academics dig into the past to solve modern crimes in London: “‘England has the most contemporary spiritual landscape in Europe. The meaningful aesthetics of family and religion have fallen by the wayside. We have tribalism, but no belief system against which we can measure ourselves on this wonderful blank canvas, to finally prove responsible for our own destinies, international corporations are busy trying to fill the void. What could be more grotesque than companies behaving like vengeful deities by copyrighting the genetic code, or stopping seeds from producing? So someone must remain behind to remember the past, and I’ve appointed myself for the task. Do you want tea?’”

I know, I know, there’s a GOP memo in my inbox. But right now, I’m heading out for a run.

​