Reason is our soul's left hand; Faith her right.

-- John Donne

We really will have a left-leaning White House beginning next year.

President-elect Barack Obama is left-handed and will join a recent southpaw surge of chief executives, including Gerald Ford, George Bush (the dad) and Bill Clinton.

Don't think it's a trend? John McCain is left-handed, too.

For that matter, so is former presidential candidate Ross Perot.

Is something going on?

Is there some secret left-handed political conspiracy at work?

If so, I was left in the dark.

But I'm not worried. If the right half of the brain controls the left half of the body, that means that only left-handed people are in their right mind.

OLD TESTAMENT: Speaking of lefties, the Bible tells us that members of the Hebrew tribe of Benjamin had a tendency to be left-handed. They were good shots with slings, too.

Feel free to use that sometime to entertain your Sunday school class.

MORE MAIL: Speaking of the Holy Land, Rhea Markowitz and Bill Dynan send a postcard from Israel, where they are "visiting ... where our 16-year-old son, Ben Dynan, is studying for 10 weeks. We have seen Roman ruins in Tiberias, floated in the Dead Sea, prayed at the Kotel (The Wall), explored Safed and Jerusalem and took a side trip through the desert to Sinai Peninsula and Red Sea. Amazing land."

GAS GUESSES: Don't forget to send me an e-mail on how low you think the price of gas will fall between now and Christmas Day.

That's bill.kirby@augustachronicle.com. (Hint: So far, everyone is guessing pretty low.)

JUST SHARING: An anonymous reader passes this along.

"My neighbor's 5-year-old daughter was invited to attend vacation Bible school for a week at the First Christian Church. At the end of the week, the teacher was asking each child, 'Honey, are you a Christian?'

When she asked her neighbor's daughter, she said, 'No, ma'am. I am a Methodist.' "

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Scott Gay, of Waynesboro, Ga., points out that cleaning your house while the kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.

TODAY'S JOKE: Several women appeared in court, each accusing the others of causing the trouble they were having in the apartment building where they lived. The women were arguing noisily even in the court.

The judge, banging his gavel to quiet them, said: "We are going to do this in an orderly manner. I can't listen to all of you at once. I'll hear the oldest first."

The case was dismissed for lack of testimony.