The next time your wee one says, "Dad, why should I learn how to spell? I want to be a career criminal!" you can pull out this example. (click to enlarge):
Phish scams won't work too often if you can't spell "refused".
There's a simple solution to this. I don't know why the Republican candidates don't boycott CNN and MSNBC. FOX News gets much better ratings and yet the Dems don't have their debates on FOX. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, especially because primary candidates have to appeal primarily (that's why we call it a 'primary', ha) to their base. This will often turn off independents and swing voters. So why not just "narrow-cast" directly to your base, which for CNN is the Democratic party and for FOX is the Republican party? Just have the debates on your particular venue, until the general election when each candidate will be forced to have a debate on the opposition media. Now that's fair and balanced...
Via fairpress.org
pinhead: a foolish person, but redemption is always possible: "you can be a pinhead one day and a patriot the next," sayeth Bill on a recent show.O'Reilly is relentlessly anti-ideological. You could say that he is, above all practical. He never takes a drop of liquor, let alone drugs, because, Aquinas-like, he doesn't like to step an inch from reality. The downside of a very practical nature is that it seems nonsensical to him that a bad guy not be tortured in order to protect the lives of innocent citizens. But his list of favorite charities seems spot on. The homeless, children, wounded military, and even the missionary Columban fathers. I expected only corporal works of mercy, and only those with a practical bent that aim towards not just feeding the person but helping the person feed himself. But O'Reilly even covered the spiritual with the Columban Fathers, who serve in such places as unstable Pakistan.
the Deity: Bill will bend over backwards not to use the familiar word "God" when "the Deity" will do. Your guess as to why the constant preference for four syllables instead of one. Possible suggestions include:chaos: In Bill-speak, this isn't merely disorder but malignant disorder. For example, if parents are doing drugs and neglecting & abusing children this is often referred to as "chaos" or a "chaotic situation".Bill thinks it is more respectful. Bill is part-Jewish & doesn't want to use the word G-d. Bill not on a first-name basis with "the Deity" due to his wild disco dancing past. Bill sounds smarter saying it. He likes to hear himself talk and "the Deity" is more syllables.
koolaid driner: Anyone who follows an ideology slavishly, ala those who drank the poison'd drink at Jonestown.
hiding under his/her desk: Anyone who won't come on the Factor
smear site: A website that engages in falsely smearing reputations, such as Daily Kos.
no spin: a point-of-view unaffected by ideology.
Like ships in a squall we rise and we fall
We're plotting our course through waves
Some masts are tall with sails so strong
Others are tossed in the gale
We try to stay dry with salt in our eyes
No moment to rest or complain
The moon isn't far or clear sky and stars
Red sky at morn on your tail
REF: I'm not going to stand on the end of the pier
I'm not going to let you go down with the ship
Raise up your anchor it's time to set sail
And I'm not going to let you go down
Like ships we were made to dance o'er our graves
One false move and we could be thrown
Buried alive before our due time
To rest at sixty below
So jibe while you can if there's danger ahead
Stay on your course if you will
I'll throw you a line as waves start to rise
Bail as your ship starts to fill
Mary is wholly enclosed within the biblical narrative of God’s dispensation to his people, an insight deftly caught by Dante when he places on the lips of St. Bernard of Clairvaux this address to Mary: “Virgin Mother, daughter of your Son” (Paradiso)...
The juxtaposition of these two titles points to an important feature of all authentic Mariology: the circularity of cause and effect in the dispensation of salvation. By that I mean, Mary could not be kept free from sin except by the merits of Christ won on the cross; but of course Christ could not have entered history to save us by dying on the cross except by the free consent of Mary, whose free assent to the angel was a truly graced assent vouchsafed by the future death of her Son._____
Yet [St. Thomas] did not think through fully the implications of what kind of consent Mary could give if it had been, however slightly, affected/infected by original sin. But if, as part of its logic, the cross itself is made possible only through Mary’s consent at the Annunciation (which Luke clearly holds), then the implications of the denial of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception should become clear. For such a denial would then make our very salvation dependent on Mary’s free will operating independent of grace. Her Yes to God would have had to have been made, even if ever so slightly, under her own power, which would have the intolerable implication of making the entire drama of salvation hinge on a human work—the very apogee of Pelagianism._____
Just as Mary’s free consent to the angel Gabriel begins the great fulcrum-shift in the drama of salvation, so too she expresses what a saved and redeemed humanity can be once it has been purged of sin and washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb: Here in Mary consent is truly free because truly graced, totally graced. Here we see what it means to be saved sola gratia, a doctrine so radiantly beautiful that it also captured the imagination of that great Protestant Romantic William Wordsworth and which he expressed in his lovely poem to Mary, “The Virgin”:Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrossed
With the least shade of thought to sin allied;
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.
![]() | ![]() |
Who doesn't love this lovely ode to cheese?I've dined—but still I'm ill at ease—But I suppose it must get the blame for inspiring this epic in praise of pizza:
For why? my stomach lacks the cheese.
I try its cravings to appease,
But all won't do—I sigh for cheese.
A glass of port, sir?' If you please—
But what is port without the cheese!
The wine of life is on the lees,'
Unless a dinner ends with cheese!
I take a pinch, and loudly sneeze.
Sly madam Echo answers 'Cheese!'
I love a song—am fond of glees—
A song I'll write in praise of cheese....I've dined - but didn't get my fill of meat-sa,
For why? my stomach lacks more pizza!
Don't know why I'm not as slim as Condoleet-za,
But I tell my cravings "I will beats ya."
"Srebrenica" verbalized is "sre-bre-neet-sa"
it's included just because it rhymes with pizza.
This is one food that never cheats ya,
though this poem, it seems, is not quite Keats, uh...
“You spend your whole life looking for answers because you think the next answer will change something and make you a little less miserable and you know that when you run out of questions you just won't run out of answers, you run out of hope.”Meanwhile, the blogger at Compostela quotes a book on Flannery O’Conner:
“Meeks sees Flannery O’Connors works as being influenced by the cruel truth, in Dr. Johnson’s words, that ‘nothing so concentrates the mind as the verdict of death.’ The characters in O’Connor’s fiction are sick with sin and waiting, in Meeks’s words, for a “gesture of grace”.Dr. House is sick with sin and seeks a gesture of grace via his questions?
I take it personally since I was one of those who was confused by the heterodoxies of the '70s and '80s, so I wrote the editor, as all good cranks do - I feel more like Herzog of Saul Bellow fame everyday:
Some of Francie Orthmeyer's "resources to bring active Catholics up to speed on their religion" were of questionable orthodoxy and will likely confuse uninformed Catholics. (U.S. Catholic, for example, recently published an article titled "A Betrothal Proposal" that questioned the sinfulness of sex outside of marriage, specifically premarital cohabitation.)I probably wouldn't have written if she'd just tossed the more orthodox crowd a bone or two. Note to self: a semblance of impartiality can often prevent the obligatory backlash.
Helpful materials not listed by Orthmeyer include:U.S. Catholic Catechism for Adults
Study Guide for the U.S. Catholic Catechism
National Catholic Register
Fr. Benedict Groeschel
Coming Home Conference
First Things
Catholic.com
Christopher West
Scott Hahn's books
What’s troubling about The Man From Hope 2.0 is what he represents. Huckabee represents compassionate conservatism on steroids. A devout social conservative on issues such as abortion, school prayer, homosexuality and evolution, Huckabee’s a populist on economics, a fad-follower on the environment and an all-around do-gooder who believes that the biblical obligation to do “good works” extends to using government — and your tax dollars — to bring us closer to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.And here's a priceless bon mot from the "This Week" column in the latest National Review:
For example, Huckabee would support a nationwide ban on public smoking. Why? Because he’s on a health kick, thinks smoking is bad and believes the government should do the right thing.
“Lamentably, I killed your cat while trying just to sting it. It was crouched, as usual, under one of our bird feeders & I fired from some distance with bird shot. It may ease your grief somewhat to know that the cat was buried properly with a prayer & that I’ll be glad to get you another of your choice.” Only one person in the U.S., perhaps in the world, could have written those words. That person is Jimmy Carter, the words contained in a letter, recently come to light, that he wrote to his sister-in-law Sybil in 1990. Note the procedural punctiliousness in that word “properly”; the sanctimony in “lamentably”; most revealing of all, the veiled accusation and self-justification in “as usual.” Carter is not a wholly bad man; in some ways he is an admirable man. It is only that everything he does and says is marred and stained somehow by his irrepressible flaws of character. Though he was an awful president, Jimmy Carter remains a strange and fascinating study. There is a Ph.D. thesis to be written just on his dealings with small quadrupeds.
"O humility, lovely flower, I see how few souls possess you. Is it because you are so beautiful and at the same time so difficult to attain? O yes, it is both the one and the other. Even God takes great pleasure in her." - excerpt from St. Faustina's diary"It's like Princess Diana around here."
Catholic and Protestant alike have the same destination in mind, although they take different routes. Steeped in his Bible, the Protestant discovers that his efforts to find the Spirit of God are baulked by the barriers of technical analysis and private interpretation. He seems to make the Bible his prayer and is unwittingly led to the prayer of the Church. His movement was originally biblical but now has become liturgical. The Catholic on the other hand starts off with the liturgy. He finds his prayer right at the heart of the Church, in the Missal. The liturgy gives him an appetite for the whole Bible of which the Missal gives him only samples. Furthermore he realizes that if he is to live the liturgy he must do more than merely follow his Missal. The strange atmosphere which it exhales is altogether different from what he has been used to. If he is to enjoy it in all its richness he must sooner or later go to the Bible.____
Spurred on by their reading of the Bible, sincere Protestants are beginning to realize the value of the unity and liturgy of the true Church. The ecclesiastical awakening in Sweden, the Cluny community, writers like Cullman and de Dietrich, all these are furthering the findings of K. Barth and Kierkegaard. They are realizing that the Bible cannot live or give life unless it is seen in its proper context, the Church. At one end of the scale Protestants are finding through the Bible a tradition; at the other end Catholics are being led back to the Bible through the liturgy.
For a devout Puritan to adopt a traditionally Catholic tool of self-mortification seems surprising given the Puritans' suspicion of Rome and the history of mistrust between American Protestants and Catholics. Yet scholars have found remarkable links between seventeenth century Puritan (Reformation) and Catholic (Counter-Reformation) devotional practices...the scholar Charles Hambrick-Stowe concluded that..."To a large extent the Puritan devotional writing that blossomed in the early seventeenth century was modeled on earlier Roman Catholic devotional literature."I thought so. I liked those old Puritans too much. Certainly I can empathize with them. We Catholics come by our "Catholic guilt" honestly, given the famous Jewish guilt, so it's not too surprising Puritan guilt comes by it honestly too, getting it from Catholicism!
In the seventeenth century, strikingly, both Puritans and Catholics looked back to the fourth-century writings of Augustine of Hippo. "The tradition was passed to all parties in the seventeenth century through the writings of medieval Catholic mystics, which...were increasingly available in England. Saint Teresa of Avila...acknowledged her debt to Augustine in a passage that a Puritan could easily have penned: 'Scarcely had I begun to read the Confessions of Saint Augustine than I seemed to have discovered myself [and my] frivolous and dissipated life.." Just as Saint Teresa can seem Puritan, Cotton Mather can seem Catholic. He periodically fasted and denied himself sleep, like medieval mystics.
These also looked good to me though had no imprimaturs:The Cottage at Bantry Bay - Hilda Van Stockum; Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices - Paul Fleischman; The King of Ireland's Son - Padraic Colum; The Daring Book for Girls - Andrea J. Buchanan; Swan Town: The Secret Journal of Susanna Shakespeare - Ortiz Half Magic - Edward Eager The Borrowers - Mary Norton The Devil's Arithmetic - Jane Yolen The Rescuers - Margery Sharp Johnny Crow's Garden - L. Leslie Brooke Millions of Cats - Wanda Gag The Donkey & the Golden Light A Little History of the World - Ernst Hans Gombrich (nonfiction) The Miraculous Tale of Two Maries Little House in the Highlands - Mellisa Wiley American Born Chinese - a graphic novel by Gene Yang The Railway Children - E. Nesbit Outlaws of Ravenhurst - Sr. Imelda The Jesus Garden - Antoinette Bosco more gift ideas here
I probably could've saved time merely by polling Elena and Bill and Smock & Mama and Ham o' Bone, though the latter has all boys. (I did ask Steven.) It looks like the Catholic bookeater has something up too.Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine - S. Bartoletti Library Lion - Michelle Knudsen Maximilian Kolbe: Saint of Auschwitz - Elaine Murray Stone Fight for Life #1 (Vet Volunteers) - Laurie Halse Anderson
Art credit here; hope I don't get sued
The facility is one of five dreams for Nuxhall, and it will be paid for through contributions made to the Joe Nuxhall Hope Project. Its mission is "to inspire hope in the hearts of children and young people who've had it taken from them."May he rest in peace.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the time I'd just gotten used to my office, it was the time I was losing my office. Mornings I would huddle over my black mother's milk and cry:"Employer loves me,An office meant one thing: a door, which implied a hinge, which implied closure, which implied privacy. It inspired me sometimes to the point of uttering corporate buzzwords: "Metrics" I ticced, saying it every third word like someone suffering from a corporate Tourette syndrome.
this I know,
because this office
tells me so!"
The privacy was visual, not audial, and I sat next to someone who made Eliza Doolittle sound like Ella Fitzgerald. Like a super action figure, her body-made-for-sin would stun men (think Wonderwoman with her magic belt) before she slayed them with words. The perfect obverse of a phone sex operator, even earplugs could not din the cries of this banshee when something went wrong.
I was losing my office and going back to a roofless cube clochán because the guy at the top of the hierarchy eschewed hierarchy and wanted a flatter, more democratic organization on the ground if not on the org chart. He'd also read in a management book that workers were more productive if there was more light, so all offices next to windows were torn down, as well as those which lacked a view, and I lived in hope that some day beer-drinking would be found a productivity aid.
My office functioned as a womb. Hot coffee attended me, her hot breath on my face just before I drank. I usually picked up a cinamon roll from the cafeteria, lacivious with frosting. On special days I'd buy Kellogg's Corn Pops, with its single-serving cylindrical package, and pour the milk in and eat it sans spoon. A picture of my wife and children sat to the left of the computer screen. Earphones were handy for symphonic inspiration while I "added value", as the term went, by creating print advertisements which would hopefully induce more people to buy more product.
Often I'd have to go to meetings at Jason's office where after fifteen minutes his screen-saver of family vacation photos kicked on. In other settings interest in that would quickly flag, but here it became very distracting. Jason's glasses were so crisp and new-fashioned that I'd alternate between eyeing the glasses holding in his bald dome and his children playing with the dog.
Once I was asked to give a presentation on the fall campaign, something I hadn't fleshed out yet, and while groping for words Stan said, "Don't stop."
I had the punchline ready.
"To quote Michael Scott, "That's what she said!"
Grandma reaches forward to pull her homemade quilt to my chin. After she settles herself again, she begins to whisper, “Our Father, who art in heaven.” Taking my cue, I join her in prayer. After we reach “forever and ever, Amen,” we breathe together in the silence. Then Grandma begins the prayer that she learned from her German parents, Ich bin klein, mein Herz ist rein, soll niemand drin wohnen, als Jesus allein. I know what it means: “I am small, my heart is pure. No one lives in my heart, but Jesus alone.” Some nights, Grandma offers a different prayer: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
This is why it is vital that we uphold our leaders in prayer. Most of us are ordinary citizens, yet we have more power over our leaders than we may realize. Our words, our judgments, our willingness or unwillingness to forgive and bless do have power in the spiritual realm (see Proverbs 18:21). With them, we commend our leaders to the Lord, or to the powers of evil. Does this sound far-fetched? Think of how a harsh and judgmental husband can sour the atmosphere at home with his wife and children...
We all contribute to creating a climate that affects our leaders. Surely, we want to sow blessings, mercy, and forgiveness rather than judgment, criticism, and condemnation. Every day, pray for school principals and church pastors, mayors and governors, presidents, the pope, and all world leaders. Foster compassion in your thoughts and words. Let it overflow to the men and women who hold power, for in the end, they will be judged strictly.
One acute insight that may be attributed to bohemia is that one's ability to maintain confidence in a way of life at odds with the mainstream culture will be greatly dependent on the operative value system of one's immediate environment, on the kinds of people one mixes with socially and on what one reads and listens to....to Christine Rosen's thoughts on the new online gathering places:
In this context it is worth considering an observation that Stanley Milgram made in 1974, regarding his experiments with obedience: “The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson,” he wrote. “Often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.”(Which reminds me of the cynical Bill Mahrer who contends that men are only as faithful to their wives as circumstances allow.) Rosen continues:
These virtual networks greatly expand our opportunities to meet others, but they might also result in our valuing less the capacity for genuine connection. As the young woman writing in the Times admitted, “I consistently trade actual human contact for the more reliable high of smiles on MySpace, winks on Match.com, and pokes on Facebook.” That she finds these online relationships more reliable is telling: it shows a desire to avoid the vulnerability and uncertainty that true friendship entails.... de Botton writes:
A mature solution to status anxiety may be said to begin with the recognition that status is available from, and awarded by, a variety of different audiences - industrialists, bohemians, families, philosophers - and that our choice among them may be free and willed.Thus one can easily understand the popularity of social networks given that it provides a partial relief from status anxiety without much risk.
However unpleasant anxieties over status may be, it is difficult to imagine a good life entirely free of them, for the fear of failing and disgracing oneself in the eyes of others is an inevitable consequence of harbouring ambitions, of favouring one set of outcomes over another and of having regard for individuals beyond oneself. Status anxiety is the price we pay for acknowledging that there is a public distinction between a successful and an unsuccessful life.
This leaves the GOP field without a real anti-abortion leader since the withdrawal of Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). Some pro-lifers trust the conversion of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), but many doubt it. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has a 100 percent pro-life record, but he has never been a leader on the issue, though he did pick up a Brownback endorsement this week. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), a doctor, has also consistently voted against abortion, but to date, he hasn't made it much of an issue. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) has assuaged the fears of some pro-life voters, but he will never win over the hard-core abortion foes who go to church parking lots on the Sunday before Election Day campaigning for Republicans in many races. The most pro-life candidate remaining may be former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), possibly the least broadly conservative candidate in the field.
It is true that the evangelicals exert a strong influence; but that is what democracy is about. There are, after all, a lot of them in the country and they cannot be disenfranchised. No doubt they have a moral vision that they wish to impose on the country, but so does everybody else. To argue that a woman has a right to an abortion because she is sovereign over her own body is no less a moral position than that to kill a conceptus is ethically equivalent to shooting a man in cold blood in the street...But evangelical Christian political influence in a democracy in which there are millions of evangelicals is perfectly normal, and implies no slide into theocracy; and it is worth remembering that the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.(Hat tip: Bill of Summa Minutiae)
![]() | ![]() |
Therapeutic Massage- Curt Jester; craniosacral therapy!? :-)
La Stone Therapy
Craniosacral Therapy
Maya Abdominal Self-Care Workshops
Australian Bush Flower Essence Practitioner...
Yup there's that iconic cover from the heady days of the late '60s and early '70s when "Peoples" was a good word because, after all, there was "The Peoples Republic of China" and "Peoples Republic of North Korea" and Communism was hot back then.
I bumped into a colleague out at school...who asked me if I was prepared to vote for Rudy, apparently on the assumption that he will be the Republican nominee. I said no. He accused me of being a "purist" and further announced that I would be personally responsible for electing Hillary and the havoc she was sure to wreak on the Republic. I said that, no, Rudy would be responsible, and told him how I'd come to this conclusion. Some days ago Paul Cella sent me a link to a magazine article in another Leading Conservative Voice, the American Spectator, in which the author's thesis is that Roe v. Wade is still law today because, in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, Anthony Kennedy was there to cast the deciding vote and Robert Bork was not; and that Bork was not there because of a 1986 election in which a number of Republican congressmen and senators did not get re-elected; and that they did not get re-elected because certain conservatives among us did not turn out in sufficient numbers, the relevance of it all being that if we behave similarly in this coming election - as James Dobson has threatened to do if someone like Giuliani is nominated - we will be responsible for cementing Roe into American law unto perpetuity. As the author puts it: "An amazing thought, no? Roe v. Wade: the conservative legacy."Steven Riddle has some good thoughts here. My voting weltanschauung (that's for Bill White) is thus far this:
So I wrote a letter to the editor:It's interesting that Mr. Lord would require a certain brand of conservative voter to shoulder the blame for the persistence of Roe v. Wade in law. His counsel is that it is not wise to be too "pure". We must sacrifice a principle here and there for the greater good.
And then I wondered: why must it be this way? Why can't (just for example) Rudy Giuliani sacrifice his principles. Why can't he chuck his pro-choice stance and claim conversion to the pro-life cause? Others have done it before him and gotten away with it. Why can't he let go of his pro-gay marriage position and get behind the Federal Marriage Amendment? Well, because it would be too obviously opportunistic, and voters value honesty above all in their candidates. (But, apparently, not in themselves.) Better that the voter be a hypocrite, so that his candidate need not be.
Another implication of Mr. Lord's argument is that what we are really voting for when we enter the polling place is not a candidate, but a judge, someone who doesn't even hold elective office. If we must lie to our conscience to vote for a candidate who will then appoint a judge who will then rule over us as Mr. Lord sees fit, something's badly wrong. Constitutionally, you might say.
Sincerely, etc.
All their lives they had linked the material and spiritual world in odd and delightful ways that made one as attractive as the other in what amounted to a mutually dependent relationship…[One] belief was that the dead of one parish graveyard competed with the dead of another parish graveyard in the old Irish game of hurling. Each parish team had a living man from its parish to keep the goal, and when the teams met, always under a full moon, at one or the other of the graveyards, the two live goalkeepers had to be, and always were, present…Sam Sweep’s burial at sea prevented the steerage passengers from putting these benign superstitions to any imaginative use. In the middle of the Atlantic, the idea of two graveyards competing with each other in the game of hurling became even in their eyes a meaningless museum piece.I can’t even begin to get my head around how terrifying burial-at-sea was to these 1840-era Irish. It was perceived so horrible a fate that a great many of them died immediately upon reaching land – which is to say the only thing keeping them alive was the horror of being buried in water rather than land. They were so close to their God-given bodies! They didn’t live in our Gnostic age when sacraments are seen as superstitions and when we think only the spirit matters, despite the clear evidence of the Bible to the contrary. We’re now okay with cremation or our bones “floating on the ocean”, as so horrified those Irish.
The British sailors never ceased to be amazed by this harmlessly fierce competition among the famine Irish, who seemed as willing to gamble away their last farthing as they were baffled by what to do with their winnings. The sailors could not understand why the prize, once won, became so sharable. Nor could the Irish, whose attitude towards beggars was equally mysterious to the sailors, have explained. For them it was a mode of thinking never questioned or challenged, a folkway twined with their pagan past as with the oppression they’d suffered for so long. With good reason they believed that good luck carried with it dangers as well as responsibilities: when it paid you a visit, you had to share that visit with someone or risk never being visited again.
Doesn't he have anything better to do?After learning that The Office has stopped production:
Go Bill, go!
Even Whittaker Chambers finally judged Atlas Shrugged to be harmless enough, comparing it to a patent medicine: “Some may like the flavor. In any case, the brew is probably without lasting ill effects. But it is not a cure for anything.” That seems to me about right — but not quite. Not only did my 16-year-old self quaff Dr. Rand’s Miracle Elixir without any lasting ill effects, but he actually grew up to be a healthy, sensible adult who knows that you don’t have to sell all the lighthouses to have a proper respect for the virtues of free minds and free markets. And therein lies the paradoxical virtue of philosophical extremism: Sometimes it can help you figure out what you really think. As the libertarian blogger Megan McArdle recently observed, “Models and thought experiments are designed to illuminate principles, not mirror the real world. We already have something that looks and works exactly like the actual world: that is, the world. However, if you want to learn much about that world beyond ‘Water is wet’ and ‘Fire burns,’ you need to simplify in order to see deep truths more clearly.”