State of the Weather

A man-bites-dog viewpoint:

Why I Love Catholic infighting

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I think it's high time for the annual State of the Weather address.

The state of the weather is... tenuous. We recently broke a ridiculously long string of beautiful days which apparently will end in a week-long bacchanal of rain and clouds. “Make Cloudumbus cloudy again” is Mother Nature’s new catchphrase. But what a run it’s been. We’ll not see her like again. A long, quenching crest of summer days post-summer, a late harvest that only serves to remind me how much I’ve missed a long stretch of summer-like days.

I made a fire and prolong the goodness; the perfume of the flame comes and goes with the sublime breeze. I read of the “roulette of the season”; autumn is bittersweet, borrowed time.

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Interesting on the power of language, from the book Cheap Sex:

....when we name something in the social world—unlike in the natural world—we are not only mentally mapping it, but we are also providing the idea with a reality that allows it to then act back upon us (and the wider social world), altering how we then must subsequently navigate it. Thus the world after something has been named is not as malleable as it was before it. To identify something socially is to give it life and power, not just a name. It’s been occurring for decades already in the study of sexuality.

Sociologist James Davison Hunter asserts similarly when he defines culture as the power of legitimate naming.  That is, to classify something in the social world is to penetrate the imagination, to alter our frameworks of knowledge and discussion, and to shift the perception of everyday reality. In the domain of sexuality—fraught as it is with great moral valence—this can make all the difference. It’s why there is often poignant and bitter struggle over words and terms around sex, and the politics of using them or avoiding them. We tend to move, albeit slowly, from the “urban dictionary” to the everyday lexicon.

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Part of the thrill of having a digital WSJ subscription is simply being able to blast beyond the paywall. Years of butting my head against it, if only very occasionally, makes the forbidden fruit more tasty. I’m surprised at how much satisfaction I take in simply signing in to their website.  Silly. Cue the Doors.  I could only justify it by virtue of the fact that it's not the NY Times or the Washington Post. And journalism outfits are now, sadly, charitable institutions given the lack of ad revenue due to the rise of the 'net and "free" news.

Seven Quick Takes, as Inspired by Jennifer Fulwiler

Visited the Columbus Museum of Art and showed off my newly purchased CMA membership which allowed free entree into said establishment and free Russian exhibition. It was larger than I expected, rooms full of art and photos from the old Soviet Union, mainly 1970 through 1993. Another world it 'twas. I especially wished I'd have snapped a pic of a homely group next to the Cyrllic letters of a billboard outside a bar. So, so foreign. Instead took a pic of a painting of Lenin as Jesus Christ with the legend: "The Anti-Christ".

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I'm noticing a subprime sun length, like Trump's fingers, these days.  By the time I get home walk the dogs, water the grass, and eat, the sun is on the downward spiral. Like Trump ten minutes after the election.

I still find it slightly incredible that his war with the media began literally the day after the election, over crowd size.

Still, they can't take election night away from him or Republicans. For one brief shining moment Hillary was defeated and there was a glimmer of hope that Trump might sober up and fly right. I would pay good money for a DVD of the election night coverage, to see again the crestfallen faces of the liberal anchors and pundits, to experience again the "Do You Believe in Miracles?" Al Michaels moment. The biggest underdog in the history of underdogs won the election. Unfortunately, it looks like that was the high water mark of his presidency. Or un-presidency.

Possibly voters will learn from the Trump experience that politics and policies ain't so easy, and that there's no such thing as a free lunch. It seems like it could be damaging to a potential Bernie Sanders run given people might - *might* - be more in contact with reality. Not holding my breath since the Savior Obama should've already sent that message. You'd think after Obama people would want experience and competence, like a John Kasich.....

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One of the things I most crave about retirement is sucking in the savor of summer. Nowadays it's hit or miss - mostly miss. Not even a Shakespeare play at the park. Wicked fast went the past two months. A blur. The antithesis of lazy days drinking lemonade on a hammock.

So for healing purposes took a German Village bike ride on the visually dulcet day. Had a hot dog and donut at the wonderfully Teutonic Jeurgens .

I rode down south to "Hungarian Village" (a village I knew not existed in Columbus), then off to the Parsons Avenue borderlands. Danger Will Robinson.

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I've been pondering the words from Genesis 3, regarding the fall, on the nature of the apple and how Christ became that apple. It's almost like a perverse/reverse Communion in Gen 3:6:

"So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate."

Jesus became the apple in that he is a delight to our spiritual eyes and makes us spiritually wise. Then Eve shared the food, shades of "take this, Adam, and eat of it...".

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Decided to hit home for lunch because of the big celestial show, the eclipse.  With eclipses, I think there's the scarcity principle at work. If peanut butter was scarce, everyone would crave it. I think a partial eclipse is like a limited edition modern artwork - few would want it except that it's rare and assigned value by many. But skepticism aside, I wanted to give it a good try.

By 1:30 it was already starting to occlude but no visible difference in sun. By 2pm, it's darkened, like before you get a rainstorm. When you look through the protective glasses you see partial sun, making it appear similar to a partial moon.

Sunlover that I am, I'm not necessarily a fan of any celestial object getting between me and the sun. Mostly I'm coming away shocked that the moon can cover 85% of the sun and the power of the latter is still enough to see things outdoors easily.

God-willing I'll see the total eclipse in 7 years. 

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Spent an hour last night watching Raymond Arroyo's fine interview with Jerry Lewis on YouTube. Lewis called Raymond the best interviewer he's ever had, which is saying something. He said Arroyo actually listens, and that's what sets him apart.

Very touching interview that made me feel small given the largeness of the comic's spirit. When asked why his endless toiling for MDA telethon, he said simply that that was the only way to raise that kind of money. Shades of be careful what you're good at, because then you'll be irreplaceable more or less.

His work ethic was tremendous. My slothful thought is that a comedian can "phone it in" since no one lives or dies during a show, but Lewis was cannier than me. God recognizes the last shall be first; perhaps the comedians before the surgeons. Arroyo mentioned how healing laughter can be, and Lewis mentioned how after a show a lady was crying, and Lewis admitted her to his dressing room, and she said that his show was the first time she'd laughed in 7 years, since her son was killed in Vietnam. And he was bowled over and remembered that every time he wanted to do less than his all. He said out of a crowd of hundreds there are always 4 or 5 individuals who need his gift. Very moving.

I suspect part of Arroyo's gift as an interviewer and his ability to connect with Lewis was the fact they are simpatico spiritually, both more evolved than the average joe or jane.

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On a day offering a perfect blend of summer and fall, the sort of day presaging new beginnings, of college day move-ins during those eventful early '80s years, we gathered at the funeral home for a death in the family.

The song "Magic" by Olivia Newton-John came to my mind unbidden. "Have to believe we are magic" she sings, and indeed we have to believe we are magical beings in the sense of having everlasting life with future fairytale bodies. A good reminder during a time of sorrow. 

Who Needs a Segue When You've Got a Segway?

Fun to see at a tech site a picture of the author's Kindle screen with a quote rather than something banal like "Joe's Kindle": 

My Kindle screen shot from last eve:

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Prairie Oaks, the lake with white caps….ahhhh. What is better than a sunny (if chilly) day in Spring walking a modest 1.7 miles around the lake with Maris and Steph? There's just something about water that heals the soul. Makes me want to go to Hilton Head.  Makes Steph want to go to Camp Creek, WV.

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Climate change makes for freakish weather, and today we had gusts exceeding 50mph that, incredibly, took the top half of one of the evergreens in the backyard down. It's a tree planted 18 years ago, and now it's suddenly half as high as it used to be. The tree seems pretty young in tree terms, still green and vibrant. Amazing the power of that wind.

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Can MLB's spring training season be over already? I'm not sure I'm ready for the real thing. I was enjoying - via the MLB app - all the “meaningless” games, only I didn't see them as meaningless. For one thing, they're certainly meaningful for up-and-comers who are trying to make the major league roster (much like Columbus Clipper games are meaningful). For another thing, the Reds are already mathematically eliminated from the 2016 race, if by “mathematically” one means the career statistics of the players they'll be fielding. And finally, I enjoyed the unfailingly sunny climes the spring training games issued from: Arizona, Florida - and mostly day games. Who needs the regular season given these circumstances? The MLB app has effectively made late February the opening day of baseball for me. I get to watch games, read the baseball book guides on individual players and not have losses mean anything. That's not bad actually.

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I wonder sometimes if I expected too little of myself.  It's easy to say that on the cusp of the end of a career, like how that 50-something who hired me confessed he'd wished he'd worked for a small company. Viva le difference. Or, you could say, success is proof you underachieved and maybe in the spiritual life as well. Imagine Peter, Paul and Mary (Magdalene) without their failures. They failed upward. It breeds humility.

In the business sense it's the Peter Principle; you ain't really trying if you haven't been promoted to the place where you're incompetent.

I can think of times in my life I was overly bold: joining the fraternity which is something on paper I wasn't suited for. Or was I insufficiently bold by virtue of my unwillingness to cut the umbilical cord to my childhood friend? As it played out, that cord would be severed nonetheless proving you can't go home again. Nolo tangeliere.

It's easy to look back after having had a successful career (one defined as not having been fired, in my low expectations) that maybe despite appearances I was smarter and played the game better than I thought. Perhaps you only get the confidence after the game is done, the retirement money in the bank.

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I liked this commentary:

“Raymond Brown suggests that today’s Gospel may be Luke’s answer to those folks in his community—and ours—who look back with nostalgia to the first generation of Jesus’ followers. They imagine that their faith would be stronger had they seen the risen Lord with their own eyes. Luke’s story aims to show them otherwise. The two disciples walk and talk with Jesus on the road to Emmaus. But reflecting on the Scriptures makes their hearts burn, and they only recognize the risen Jesus in the breaking of the bread. Luke’s point is that those same means of knowing the Lord—the Scriptures and the breaking of bread—are available to Christians of every generation in the life and liturgy of the Church.”

It's easy, for me at least, to pit these two experiences against one another. To see Catholics as primarily about the sacraments and Protestants as primarily about the Bible. These two things should be in balance, it seems, or both reinforcing one another in a “virtuous cycle”. We read the Scriptures to burn with hunger for the consummation of Communion.

I considered how Christ was more identifiable by his wounds than even his face given the many “I didn't recognize him” in the Resurrection accounts. It's notable that Thomas the Apostle didn't say, “I won't believe it unless I see his face myself.” What symbolism is there in that? That Christ wanted to be remembered for his wounds for us and by us?

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Amused to see my old hometown southwest Ohio paper use the word “loose” for “lose” in one of the articles. The Journal is famous for mistakes, and I wondered if times had changed.

Watched some Reds-Phillies opener and saw Reds overcame a 2-1 deficit enroute to a 6-2 win. Especially good to see Joey Votto, who inexplicably didn't come out when announced at game time and struck out ugly three straight times, hit a big single up the middle for a couple ribbies. Hoover tried to lose it (or loose it) in the 9th by giving up two extra base hits except the Reds fielders refused by making a couple highlight reel catches. So a very satisfying 8th and 9th. Reds could finish at .500! All they have to do is go 80-81 from here on out…

Various Thoughts Conjoined by Helpful Asterisks

So A.L.S. has raised $100 million dollars due to the ice bucket challenge, showing the power of a virility, or viral-ality. The Catholic diocese of Cincy banned it from Catholic schools since ALS group involves in /advocates embryonic cell stem research. Steven Riddle had a good graphic on FB that pointed out how the amount of money we raise for illnesses is different from what actually kills us. For example, breast cancer raises by far the most despite being relatively low on the kill list.

There may be a certain illogic to over-funding causes that kill fewer people but we're not Spocks, not reducible to numbers, and it's understandable. Breast cancer disproportionately affects women and it's a honorable thing to respect women, to put them first. Disease also differs not just in mortality rate but in the fear associated around it. Alzheimer's, for example, may not kill as many as other diseases but its horrific nature makes it more fearsome than almost any. Similarly A.L.S., which is the opposite of Alzheimer's in that it takes the body and leaves the mind intact.

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I often get enthused over trivia. Take this morning. I was uplifted by the utterly inconsequential event of selling my OSU laptop sleeve for $15. Since I haven't used the sleeve in years, this was roughly equivalent to finding $15 in the street. With the added benefit of removing clutter from the house. One man's junk is another man's treasure, as they say. My immediate reaction was to think of spending the found money on a book instead of giving it to the poor like Pope Francis would! Alas and alas.

I found it while going through my desk looking for documentation concerning a genealogy question. I showed it to my wife, who said, “no one will want that. Throw it away.” Instead I took it to work, published a description on the classified website and within 20 minutes had two people saying, “I want it!”. Obviously $15 was too cheap, ha. As I told Steph, if you put an OSU logo on manure, people would want it. It was originally $39, so for $15 used I suppose it was a deal. One thing's for sure, folks watch that classified site like a hawk. Second thing I've sold there of three I've tried. (Only a Civil War history book didn't sell, alas. Didn't have OSU logo on it.)

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I had this sudden desire to bring a Bible to work, to put in my cubical. I want the words of comfort and correction near me. Just knowing they're there, even if I never pick it up (which I likely won't). I 'spect I have enough Bibles to spare one towards this purpose. In fact, I've pre-ordered another one, a $57 list price Ignatius press offering called The Didache Bible. Comes out in October. Was pleased to get it for $35 on amazon a month ago since it's now $41.

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So I'm also mesmerized by another ridiculously banal earthly good, that of growlers at the new grocery store. It just opened today and so I called and found they sell fresh draught craft (pardon the rhyme) beer in the growler size. So tomorrow I'm going to have some giddyup and get over there and explore the world of growlers for the first time. They say growlers only stay fresh for about 7-10 days though. Not sure how it compares expense-wise versus bottles either.

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I'm underwhelmed by the summer forecast from the Old Farmer's Almanac. Said our region would receive above average summer temps when, of course, we ended with below average temps. Weather forecasting is no more accurate than astrological predictions.

Little Deutschland

Did my annual German Village tour the other day since the weather was supposed to be picture-perfect (it was). I set out belatedly at 1:30pm, driving south a mile and then taking the bike out of the trunk and traveling down the cobblestone roads that lead to all kinds of visual (and olfactory!) treasures. German Village is a treat, a hideaway, a foreign land of beauty right in our own neck of the woods. Who needs Savannah or Beacon Hill when you have these sublime visions of quaint brick houses and rich drapery in the form of trees, bush and flower?

I biked about six miles, just going up and down the European blocks, exploring. I came across the famous Schmidt's Sausage Haus, which always looks to me like a movie set. Later I came across an even more quaint German restaurant (“Jurgen's”). Stained glass windows of lederhosen men and dirndl-clad gals. I thought: “why can't it be my birthday soon and why can't we go there for it?” Alas my birthday always seems to be smack in the land of Busy, and usually it's all I can do but to get us to nearby Nasty's, an anondyne sports bar with loud rock and fried food.

There are a few eccentric yards, with cryptic outdoor statuary or, in one case, a chicken amid the sunflowers. (Sunflowers seem to be especially popular down there.) Schiller Park exuded it's usual charm. A huge phalanx of flowers along the main throughway. And this year I noticed something I'd never seen before: a fountain of a girl carrying an umbrella, the water weeping over the sides of the 'brella. Nice touch, added in 1993.

Another cool find was a tiny little nook of a park, near the corner of 5th and Berger, that was once called “Dog @$*@ Park” when it was a dismal bedraggled lot. Then one year a green-thumbed volunteer turned that space into a glorious space to behold, “Frank Fetch Park” it's now known as, full of flowers and bushes, fountain and paver stones. I read briefly there on one of the benches as a way of prolonging the beauty.

Then wanted to see St. Mary's church but, unfortunately, it was locked up tighter than Shiite chastity belt. So sad, the end of an era. Used to be ever open, like a gushing stream. They do have noon Mass there though so maybe if I'd gotten there earlier I could've inhaled the spirituality and refreshment. A visit to German Village without St. Mary's is definitely not the same.

Headed to the Book Loft, 32 rooms of books (but who's counting?) as well...

Stuff

Read more of Jack Gilbert's poetry. Oh but I'm going to be powerful sad when the book is done, as it shortly will be. For whatever reason I seem to have lost the Cummings bug, at least momentarily. Just a bit too cryptic and “cute” for me, the punctuation feels a bit gimmicky over time and it just makes me appreciate Gilbert's no nonsense, more prose-y approach more. I like that Gilbert brings up religious subjects.

Some excerpts from this a.m:

There is a film on water which permits a glass to hold more than it can hold. If probed, the water breaks. Before and after, both are truly water. But only one will support swans.

Deep, man.

And in its entirety (without line breaks unfortunately since this is a cut & paste from Kindle):

THE RING

They have Mary’s wedding ring in the Cathedral. I was eager to see it, but learned it is kept fastened in a box which requires keys carried by the district’s three main officials. The box is locked seven times in a chest and the keys held by their chief guilds. The chest is sealed in the wall of the nave, thirty feet in the air. Stairs are built to it just once a year. It is a very holy relic, and I assumed they feared thieves. Today, when I asked of it, I learned it is magic. The color changes according to the soul before it. Then I understood about the locks. The ring is not being protected. It is locked in.

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So we're right in the sweet ache of summer, smack dab. It's still early July or at least mid-July, and I take comfort in that even though in the back of my mind I think it's never quite the same after the Fourth of July. It's that tissue thin difference between a woman of, say, 24 and one of 30. There's never enough summer (or youth) unless you live in L.A., and even some of those folks think they have seasons.

Jogged the Goodale route this time, around the park and the large pond with the spouting elephants. The beauty of the fountain in the sun, the statuary of the elephants, their trunks jaunty in the air, made for a breathtaking scene. Reminds me of some of the great shots of Fountain Square in Cincy as shown before some Reds games. Who does not love a fountain in summer? Certainly everyone in Rome…

Later I headed out to the local bike path where I had one of those old-fashioned long (for me) bike rides. Took the trail to the beautiful white farm house, turned right and took the next left, onto the quintessential rural road. Squint your eyes and you'd swear you were in Glynnwood, Ohio, aka God's country. I rolled down the road listening to music on the headphones, including a satisfyingly country/drinking (redundant?) song.

Then took our dog Buddy on a quick ten-minute walk at the park after confronting an orange traffic barrier with a sign saying Beware Aggressive Bird. Wow, that's something I've never seen before in my whole life. I guess if you live long enough you'll see everything. The bird ended up being less aggressive than advertised; with that announcement I was expecting, and half-hoping, to get dive-bombed. I was ready for battle; I would take on any bird using my comparatively large size to my advantage.

The red-winged blackbird was certainly loud and obnoxious, cackling overhead loudly and “escorting” me along the bridge but it wasn't exactly out of Hitchcock's The Birds and no humans (or dogs) were harmed during the walk.

It's funny to see how presumably a fear of lawsuits or safety-mania now involves putting up a sign to warn of a bird (maybe it's a terrorist bird?). I think with safety, as with wealth, (or the welfare state) there seems no natural stopping point: you're never rich or safe enough. It's also partly generational since each generation has an expectation of greater safety and wealth. Certainly I expect safer working conditions than were prevalent in the early 1900s, and no doubt my grandchildren will expect their children to wear not just helmets but full football-gear/pads for a bike or car ride. And no doubt their houses will likely be a lot bigger than mine.

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Arguably these are the stages of enlightenment -- in order of increasing difficulty for people to believe --:  a) there is a God, b) He loves us c) He's still with us in Communion, really present and d) his Spirit is within us and our neighbor.

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Watched the action-packed finale of 24. Tight season with a sad, heart-rending ending: President Heller, diagnosed with Alzheimer's, comes to terms with the tragic death of his daughter by realizing pretty soon he would forget her death or that he even had a daughter. Alzheimer's has about it a special cruelty of loss, though in one sense it just makes God that much more amazing given that He's going to make it right, and not just make it right but bring some spectacular good out of it. I suppose if we didn't see the depths of earth how would we know the heights of God?  A rescue is no rescue if it's not from danger.

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Enraptured by a picture taken of our glorious backyard during the sun-zenith, and realized just how rare a feeling it is, to be out in the yard under those circumstances. Definitionally it can only happen on weekends and holidays, and most holidays seem to be occluded with social or other obligations. So that leaves just Saturdays in June, July and August and naturally it'll be cloudy or rainy for some of them (at least in "Cloudumbus"). So out of 365 days there are maybe twelve max non-vacation days I'm appreciating full sun at some point between 10am and 2pm in our backyard.

Ha, from Life of Johnson (I beg to differ!):

[Johnson] again advised me to keep a journal fully and minutely, but not to mention such trifles as, the meat was too much or too little done, or that the weather was fair or rainy. He had, till very near his death, a contempt for the notion that the weather affects the human frame.

Sevenish Quickish Takes

On Friday I felt out of breath, work-speaking, if vaguely inspired by the amount of grind I covered in a relatively short span of time. (Intentional sic, as all my sics are. jk.) Couldn't quite get it done without some drama, i.e. a leap year error, but such is life in these United States.

Surpassing warmth for October. I spend a minute outdoors under a pleasant sky. Cloudy, but that's all for the good given that I lack sunglasses. The overcast afternoon lends a lull to things while at the same time offering a a vibrant undercurrent of electricity. (Am I drunk?) Now raindrops are fallin' on my head and I must head in. Maybe in just a bit…

Lovely little stream, manufactured though it might be, out in the landscape bed. A corporate stream, which makes it fake but anyway, still….I can smell the freshness of the water, or maybe that's the chlorine. Took a picture because, as Pee Wee Herman used to say, it'll last longer.

Sittin' in the lush
of tropical hush
abounds le' thrush
where nature feels plush.

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Oh row a tree!
There's not a rhyme for “poetry”?

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I made a picture out of a humble thing: tall ornamental grass growing at a 45 degree angle over the pink and gray granite with a maple seed showcased front and central.

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Saturday was a fine young cannibal sort of day. The morning was typically filled up with "fiddling", as in fiddling around the house, reading the paper, getting McDs, etc…Planted one of the new peach trees then starting digging a hole for a second one, out front, when pain shot up my back and I instantly hit the ground. From upright to fetal in less than half a second. Lower back spasm which put my tree-planting to a sudden end. Fortunately residual effects seem small. A bit sore, but no serious pain. In fact, with the help of my magic magnetic belt, I was able to complete a desperately needed 2.7 mile run.  Then took Buddy to the park for a walk but the rains came. I do feel it incumbent to take him on a walk at least once a week. His life consists of 85% sleeping and it seems like he needs to get excited (by smells) once in a while.

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Mahler's 2nd, the Resurrection Symphony, begins the Columbus Symphony season tonight. At 8pm. People sure must have a lot of energy to want to get all dressed up and drive a half-hour downtown and listen to music. God bless 'em.

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Love that Psalm 92 (morning prayer Lit of Hours), especially:

To proclaim your love at daybreak,
your truth in the night.

This line always hits me so powerfully, and I searched high and low for commentary on it that says what I always think about it, and finally I did from Keil:

Loving-kindness is designedly connected with the dawn of the morning, for it is morning light itself, which breaks through the night (Ps. 30:6; 59:17), and faithfulness with the nights, for in the perils of the loneliness of the night it is the best companion, and nights of affliction are the “foil of its verification.”

Beautiful!

Also mesmerized by the energy (and devotional energy) of this blogger:

http://marymission.blogspot.com/2013/10/how-reading-bible-changed-my-life-and.html

Carumba! Her relentlessness comes through, relentless pursuit of God and virtue. Fanatical, one could say, but then that's how the saints were, and that childlike intensity I think is what God expects of us. I think of the Beatitude: “blessed are they who hunger and thirst after holiness, for they shall be satisfied.” Her love of Scripture, shall I say adoration of Scripture, comes through, and it's interesting that she sees now that even that has to be moderated, that one can't simply read Scripture and not work and serve.

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The novel My Struggle contains some arresting lines on death. The non-believer narrator/character calls it the thing that makes life meaningless (because nothing lasts) and meaningful (because it makes the days precious just by virtue of its brevity). Reminds me of how momento mori is taken so differently by Christian monks versus pagan Mardi Gras revelers. For the former, it's “remember you will die and be held accountable.” For the latter, it's “remember you will die, so eat, drink and be merry now!”

The novel also mentions how there is much “excitement and intensity” when we read of others dying in, say, a plane crash even though we don't know the victims because we identify with them:

“What was this? Were we living other people's lives? Yes, everything we didn't have and were not experiencing, we had and were experiencing even so, because we saw it and we took part in it without being there ourselves.”

Speaks to some innate sense that we are all one Body perhaps, and I think it also explains why I'm bothered by “outliers” and seeming unfairness, like those who did not get to know Jesus simply because they lived before Him. But perhaps this is majoring in minors since what we know of God now, even the saints among us, is likely an infinitesimal fragment of what we'll know of Him in Heaven.

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Quote below, written of the fifth century Germanic tribes reminds me of violent youth today:

“All the most brave, all the most warlike, apply to nothing at all…They themselves loiter. Such is the amazing diversity of their nature, that in the same men is found so much delight in sloth, with so much enmity to tranquillity and repose.“ Excerpt From: Tacitus, Cornelius. “Tacitus on Germany”.

There the similarities end and abruptly. Tacitus describes the Barbarians as having a lot of impressive qualities. Adultery is exceedingly rare. Reluctance to having children is shunned, and abortion considered evil. The hospitality and generosity is incredible - when someone runs out of food and drink they go to the neighbor's house and run them out of food and drink, and the neighbor is glad to accommodate them. And of course the bravery is exceptional.

There is something about some of these old societies that seems healthier than our current one. Brave and eminently hospitable, one could do worse than that.  These Germanic tribes who drank, drank, drank did so constantly but without it entering into the typical sexual debauchery of more advanced societies. The lack of pornography among some of the cave dwelling artists is a similar sign of restraint. They drew beautiful images of cattle, horses, but not of naked women.

Of course the Barbarians were hardly perfect, and I found this matter-of-fact verbiage unintentionally humorous:

“To continue drinking night and day without intermission, is a reproach to no man. Frequent then are their broils, as usual amongst men intoxicated with liquor; and such broils rarely terminate in angry words, but for the most part in maimings and slaughter.”

 Ouch.

Diaristic Wanderings

A single day off from exercising and my blood pressure bolted upwards and I was starving for the roads. Did a thirty minute run over lunch. Ran like the wind despite the heat - really shocked the heat didn't bother me given how insufferable it was Monday night, such that I elected to read inside rather than on the front porch.

Enjoyed the savor of quietude, the glory of books. Gosh this Neil Peart travelogue through Alaska, the “final frontier”, is a helluva good read. It's hard not to read the whole thing aloud to my Alaska-loving wife. I tend to think the reason so many books appeal to me nowadays is simply because it's my generation doing the writing. I share similar cultural influences with the 40-50 year old writers and thus they speak to me especially keenly.

A little rainstorm - oh so pleasant! - just ended. I read the Dispatch and avoid the Zimmerman stuff like the plague but find a delightful story of an experiment in which the famed  novelist J.K. Rowling was published incognito for a few weeks a novel under a fictitious name. How fun! It's sort of like how a king dresses like a peasant and visited the village to see what the folks really thought of him. Seems someone outed her via a tweet, after which he destroyed his/her account. Alas, secrets never last too long unless they're God's.

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Also came across an interesting couple paragraphs from columnist Froma Harrop:

But plenty of design, writing, computer programming and form-shuffling positions don’t require many hours in an office. And very competent employees often can do their real work in four hours. They sit around another four because … it’s an eight-hour job.

So they spend afternoons bored at their desks, playing video games or tooling around the Internet. They waste their time while providing no additional benefit for the employer.

She goes on to argue that the 40-hour work week is an anachronism and we would have more flexible work schedules if health care wasn't inextricably linked to full-time jobs.

Speaking of health care, I couldn't resist making a jibe at our new workplace policy. For those of us with a high blood pressure or BMI, we have to get lectured by a “wellness coach” in order to collect our HSA corporate kick-in. One lady said it's “very invasive.”   I chimed in sarcastically on the company Twitter site:

“I'm looking forward to the dental hygienist coaching next year, where we get called every day reminding us to floss.”

Probably didn't go over too well with the Health and Wellness czarina.

*

Read a good dollop of Mark Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah, the story of the Iranian hostage crisis. A bit hard to stomach; irritating, but interesting nevertheless. You know how excruciatingly long it will last and wish someone found a way to have avoided it. But this is no novel; these folks who have no clue how long it will last are going to find out, eventually, this wasn't going to be a three-day crisis.

Also read some Grace Slick autobiography. Not the most edifying of reading, although it's kind of interesting simply to see someone (anyone) eschew fame in order to wear “sweatshirts around the house.”

Says she wished the “White Rabbit” lyrics had made more clearly the fact that she thinks it's hypocritical that a generation who drank alcohol shamed those who did pot, acid, etc.. She sounds like a grind at Woodstock; less a party for her than a gig, staying clean. But of course that's probably what makes her performance of “White Rabbit” so mesmerizing, a rising to the moment.

She describes sex with Jim Morrison and I always wonder if he was possessed by the devil. The charisma of the Doors singer seems almost otherworldly, as if a Faustian bargain had been entered. The suicide-by-drugs certainly plays into it too. Morrison mirrors Christ in some respects: great following, charisma, a mystic, died young at the peak of his powers; he was a reverse-mirror in many ways: died for himself only, tried to transcend bodily limitations while Jesus grasped bodily limitations he did not naturally possess. Morrison died in the slumberous euphoria of a heroin overdose, Jesus in the drug-free torture of a Roman crucifixion.

*
 
I'm not sure I understand how God could've gotten across the idea of his love in a better way than the Cross, short of a St. Paul mystical experience for everyone individually.  If you're going to go the “one time for everybody route” then it would seem to have to be a pretty dramatic gesture. For me, the Crucifix is the quintessential emblem of love, and Jesus himself admits this when he says, “No greater love has this: than to lay down one's life for one's friends.”

I'll have to re-read a Heather King post in which she mentioned her loathing of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ because of the blood and gore. (And one could say, with some cheek, that it didn't seem particularly helpful to Gibson's spiritual life). The Cross is the best evidence of all time of God's love for us. What else comes close? God answers every prayer but usually not in a detectable fashion. He's given us the great gift of the Bible, but it's not easy to understand or synthesize given the great diversity within it. Ultimately the giving of His Blood is the greatest miracle of all-time and it's one that everyone can share - it's the one truly inclusive miracle. Not everyone is healed or sees visions, but everyone can participate in the preeminently democratic act of Christ offering Himself to all.

I used to think how awesome it was that Medjugorje, which I believed in rather firmly in 1998-ish and now I'm unsure of, was an on-going miracle. How incredible was it to not be limited to one or a dozen appearances, as was the typical Marian apparition. I felt the same about Our Lady of Guadalupe's tilma, which continues to exist despite being made of material that should have decayed years ago.

These sorts of miracles were very reassuring simply in their stability and dependability and indeed to this day many a morning I'll look at my Guadalupe image and think about how, down in Mexico City, that image which I saw a decade or more ago, still exists.

But now I think how we have a daily miracle, a minute-by-minute miracle, occurring on the church altars of the world in transubstantiation. That reassurance I looked to in miracles was ever before me and I rarely realized it.

*

As mediocre as much of Elton John's later work is, there's something to be said for giving the world what he did. Maybe you only have one or two of those songs in you to give through no fault of your own. An artist's decline is as precipitous as the athlete's and as understandable. Performing at the highest level is definitionally self-limiting. Only mediocrity can flourish across the relentless arc of time.

If everything feels anticlimactic after the peak you can say that that's the human condition, that even Jesus left the stage after the impossible-to-follow act of rising from the dead. He showed himself to a certain number of people and then - to avoid anticlimax? - ascended to Heaven where anticlimax doesn't exist, thank God.

*

Tonight, the Internet let me down (sing to tune "Tune, the Bottle Let Me Down").

Dad mentioned that when he was a kid they used to say “I finny that!” instead of “I got dibs!”. Basically I took it to mean when you reserve something first. My confidence in my accessory brain, the Internet, is stratospheric but sadly I could find nothing on finny or finney that resembled the meaning of “dibs”. Sad because I'd hoped to track down whether this came from his German or Irish side. I guess that's not of incredible importance but still….

Lamentations and Exaggerations

 

OR

Perhaps too few blogs complain about the weather, so I'm here to exploit the niche. 

This just in: we are officially getting ripped off weather-wise. The overcast and chill'd showers of July 3rd and 4th were tolerable, even if the weather from the 6/23 to 7/3 was likewise lame. This feels like weather we're never really going to get back; we've effectively shortened summer.  It's rending the fabric of what makes summer so special: that series, seemingly unending, of beautiful sunny days, one after another which coax one into a beautiful sense of denial that bad things, or bad weather, happen.

It's always the cumulative effect that tries one's patience, and the cumulative effect has really been effective in this case. It was bad enough to spend Memorial Day weekend in the 50 degree rains but then to have July 4th weekend destroyed by chill & rains?

The killer, as always, is a sense of feeling entitled. And in July, hell yes I feel entitled to good weather.

*
 

Back to Work
 
Grunting at sleep's descent
the bear brunt of gravity's fall
shaking the remnants of ashy dreams
before the mirror of thankless tasks:
shave, floss, shower, brush,
rinse and repeat,
the overhead costs of civilization.
Motivation spare, I pick up Inspiration
Song of Songs chapter three
tryin' to get that feeling again
to borrow from Barry.

*

Colonoscopies are kind of interesting. Not the procedure itself, which looks from the outside to be hideously invasive, but the risk/reward ratio.  The chances of getting colon cancer are about 4%, and the chances of a colonoscopy "working" is about 50%.  So the 2% effective rate is an interesting over/under line - how much pain and inconvenience is worth avoiding a 2% risk? I've heard the procedure involves something like a 24-hour liquid fast and the downing laxatives like they were hotdogs at a hotdog eating contest.  Even the Church doesn't require any fasting for those over, what 55?  I kind of wonder if folks would put up with this back in the 1940s or '50s.

*

They drank more back then. And speaking of alcohol, some fun quotes from Kingsley Amis:

THE FIRST, INDEED the only, requirement of a diet is that it should lose you weight without reducing your alcoholic intake by the smallest degree. Well, and it should be simple: no charts, tables, menus, recipes. None of those pages of fusspottery which normally end—end, after you have wasted minutes ploughing your way through—“and, of course, no alcohol” in tones of fatuous apology for laying tongue to something so pikestaff-plain. Of course? No alcohol? What kind of people do they think we are?

Nearly all diets start with the exclusion of bread, potatoes and sugar. This one goes on to exclude vegetables and fruit as well, or nearly. But remember, remember that drink is in.
Alcohol science is full of crap. It will tell you, for instance, that drink does not really warm you up, it only makes you feel warm—oh, I see; and it will go on about alcohol being not a stimulant but a depressant, which turns out to mean that it depresses qualities like shyness and self-criticism, and so makes you behave as if you had been stimulated—thanks.

          Alcohol gives you energy, or, what is hard to distinguish from it, the illusion of energy. 

          Such power hath Beer.
The heart which grief hath canker’d
Hath one unfailing remedy—the Tankard.
—CHARLES STUART CALVERLEY

*

I felt connected, in communion, with my fellow Americans via communal rituals of parades and fireworks on Thursday. This was magnified by the thought of so many soldiers having given their lives for the freedom we now enjoy. I don't normally feel this way on Memorial Day, when there are no public, communal rituals. Some patriotic souls go to cemeteries to remember the fallen in battle, but July the 4th seems different because of the spectacle, the ritual.

And I thought of how wise it was for Jesus to institute a ritual, the Eucharist, in which we might feel similarly connected, and also via a sacrifice, in this case His on the Cross.


3-year old Sam memorably got up close and personal and asked if that was hair I had in my nose and I said yes and he wanted to “get it for me”. “Not necessary Sam”, ha! Reminds me I ought groom better before he comes over. We enjoyed the early afternoon in the hottub and little kiddie pool, then the eye-pad in the later afternoon (it rained again;  the sun is starting to feel revelatory). Sam watched cartoons and we rented Scooby Doo. Will was charming as the day is long, fascinated by my remote controls and a happy-go-lucky fellow who can go under in the pool and still not be afraid of the water. Nice quality to have!

*

My brother-in-law's nephew Luke and his retiring Japanese wife were at the party on the Fourth. An odd-seeming match, this blue collar worker at the beer plant and this rail-thin, shy but friendly Asian. Stereotypes usually have some bit of truth to them and the stereotype of Asian women as being very compliant seems to hold in this case.  She's pregnant, but offered her chair (the last available) to her husband! He laughed and said something like only she would offer her chair despite being pregnant.

I forget how they met, but their wedding in Japan a couple years ago turned into a mini-disaster. He noticed symptoms of H1N1 flu just as he arrived in the country and at a pre-wedding party ended up giving the flu to one of her co-workers. Japanese government workers locked him into quarantine, forbidding he leave where they were staying and following up with visits to check on compliance and symptoms.

At the party I asked what Japan was like and he was at a loss until saying, "lots of Japanese people" which sounds similar to how I described Mexico City ("lots of Mexicans").  It's impossible to get the feel of a country or a people when you're there a short time and you don't understand the language. So sounds like he didn't spend a lot of time indulging in Japanese cultural activities, ha.  Something tells me I'd be really bored in Japan. None of the cultural tropes interest me, not sushi or samurais or sumo wrestling. Not their art or music or sports, with the exception of baseball. The language barrier wouldn't help and I don't know that people go to Japan for the scenery or the sights too much, though I could be mistaken.  Countries I would like to visit come in one of two flavors: either they are industrially modernized but are culturally similar enough to America for me to be able to grasp, or they are in not quite fully modernized (China, old Soviet republics) and thus are interesting even with the language barrier and lack of a shared culture.   It still feels crazy I haven't been to Germany yet, a land of half my forebears.
*

More Kingsley Amis:

Reading must be combined with as much drinking experience as pocket and liver will allow.

It is the unbroken testimony of all history that alcoholic liquors have been used by the strongest, wisest, handomest, and in every way best races of all times.’ George Saintsbury.

I think Saintsbury must've been sloshed when he wrote that.