The largest Cicada to appear in Cincinnati is shown above causing several hours of downtown traffic congestion... - via Cicadaville.com
Shout the word semiotics across a room today, and the room will very likely shout back at you, "What do you mean, semiotics?" It is a good question and at the same time, according to semiotics, a uselessly subjective question, for semiotics is the study of meaning itself -- or rather how images and words (like semiotics, for example) come to mean anything at all...Put another way, semiotics is about how we derive meaning from context.
On a personal level, too, art is life intensified: it delights more deeply, consumes more rapidly; it engraves the traces of imaginary and intellectual adventure on the countenance of its servant and in the long run, for all the monastic calm of his eternal existence, leads to self-indulgence, over-refinement, lethargy, and a restless curiosity that a lifetime of wild passions and pleasures could scarcely engender. -- Thomas Mann, Death in Venice...via a fellow Columbus Ohioian at Collected Miscellany
1) Phantastes by George MacDonald
2) The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton
3) The Aeneid by Virgil
4) The Temple by George Herbert
5) The Prelude by William Wordsworth
6) The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto
7) The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
8) The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
9) Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams
10) Theism and Humanism by A. J. Balfour
Dear Bookcase Store to Remain Unnamed:
Four weeks? Are you kidding me? I was all ready to hand over a full two week unemployment check for you to make my apartment into one giant library, but then you told me it would take four weeks minimum to fulfill my order. I nearly cancelled on CB2 when they told me it would take them four days to deliver my dining room table. There's just no way I'm going to spend that much money without instant gratification. But your bookcases are very pretty. You make me sad.
RC VOTING GUIDES [Dave Kopel]
Whether or not Bishop Sheridan's edict about the voting duties of Catholics is wise, it is not unprecedented. In July 1949, Pope Pius XII declared that any person who consciously advanced Communism was “without question excommunicated.” The declaration was consistent with the 1937 statement of Pope Pius XI that any form of support for Communism was sinful. Voting for a Communist Party candidate would obviously be a form of conscious support for Communism.
We offer ourselves to God, good and bad. We leave it up to God to decide which of our defects of character need to be removed. And God is the one who will remove them, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.- from "A Seeker's Dozen: The 12 Steps for Everyone Else"
Given our limited human perspective, it is usually unwise to embark on a self-propelled project to "make ourselves over." Traits that we think of as flaws may be necessary for us to keep, as part of God's overall plan for our lives, and the lives of others. (What if Oskar Schindler had decided to give up his slick, conniving, worldly ways, and become a cloistered monk..?)
The key word is "humbly." As Bill Wilson liked to say, "Humility has a hard time of it in our world." Many people confuse it with humiliation or obsequiousness....But humility is about being realistic. Humility is not about thinking very little of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less...Notice that the worst defects are those that interfere with our usefulness to God and our neighbors.
General irregularities are known in time to remedy themselves. By the constitution of ancient Egypt, the priesthood was continually increasing, till at length there was no people beside themselves; the establishment was then dissolved, and the number of priests was reduced and limited. Thus among us, writers will, perhaps, be multiplied, till no readers will be found, and then the ambition of writing must necessarily cease." -Johnson: Adventurer #115 (December 11, 1753)
Literature is a kind of intellectual light which, like the light of the sun, enables us to see what we do not like; but who would wish to escape unpleasing objects, by condemning himself to perpetual darkness?
BY THE MARK
When I cross over
I will shout and sing
I will know my Savior
By the mark where the nails have been
Chorus:
By the mark where the nails have been
By the sign upon his precious skin
I will know my Savior when I come to him
By the mark where the nails have been
A man of riches
May claim a crown of jewels
But the King of Heaven
Can be told from the prince of fools
CHORUS
On Calvary Mountain
Where they made him suffer so
All my sin was paid for
A long, long time ago
CHORUS --Gillian Welch