My First Post

My name is Matt Belden and this is my first post. You can see by the name of my blog that I have a daughter named Martha. She is a long - time blogger and her blog is called Notionsonbeing. She was an English major in college and is a brilliant and talented writer. I am neither but I will try to at least be coherent. Martha has a bit of a following and some of you may read this. I will try to make it worth your while.
If you read my profile you will see that I am a small-town veterinarian. I am proud of my profession and am deeply grateful for the opportunity to practice it. James Herriot's stories (All Creatures Great and Small) had a profound influence on me and I feel truly blessed to have been able to have a similar life. I hope to share some of my adventures here.
Those of you who have read my comments on Martha's blog know that I am pretty conservative and also pretty religious. I realize that neither of these things are very popular on the internet these days but there it is. I am what I am (Popeye). I have fairly strong opinions but I'll try not to beat anyone over the head with them. I genuinely despise what passes for political debate these days, namely childish name calling. It seems that if someone disagrees with you these days you just have to slap a name on them (Nazi, Fascist, Racist) and then you don't have to listen to them anymore. Or you can simply shout them down so that no one can hear them.
As for my faith, I am a practicing Catholic. My faith is very important to me, but I'm not interested in forcing it on anyone else. If you ask me about it I will tell you but otherwise I'll assume you don't want to hear about it. I will go so far to say that if you are not a believer then it doesn't really matter what you do or don't do. If there is no God, then nothing is forbidden.
I'd like to say that I don't hate anyone, but that would be a lie. I hate bullies. I hate the idea of the strong picking on the weak. I don't much care for politicians either, whatever their affiliation. I try to respect everyone's religious beliefs (or unbelief, for that matter), but I'm having a difficult time with Islam these days. I'd be a lot happier if more of them would speak up about the radicalism that is beginning to dominate their culture.
Well, that's all for now. I hope to have more soon.