Dis 'n Dat

Maestro, strike up the band!



And remember: friends don't let friends drink and record themselves. Here we see the effects of too much alcohol. *grin*.

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Sad to report that Friday Night Lights, once one of the brighter lights on the television dial, has fallen badly in its second season. In a bid to appeal to women, there is much less football now on FNL, which was once its raison d'etra. The storyline also seems repetitive and there's more arguing between characters than between hosts during the waning days of Crossfire. As is the de rigeur these days (two French phrases in a single post?), there is more cleavage on FNL than gun racks at a Texas barbecue.

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Comely Fox news anchor Martha MacCallum recently referred to bloggers as "political writers and reporters." Can't you just imagine the cringing of the MSM types at that? Though if she called us "journalists" then they'd REALLY see red.


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Today's sign that I'm OD'ing on the political:

I Be the Change Candidate/Blogger!

I've been blogging since 2001, which gives me a lot of blogging experience. But experience and change are not exclusive. I have been and will continue to be a change agent in the blogosphere...

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How important is experience for a president? Here's my real rough stab at recent history. All opinions 100% half-assed:

Eisenhower...medium experience...good president
JFK... little experience... average president
LBJ... much experience... lousy president
Nixon... much experience... lousy president
Carter... little experience... lousy president
Reagan... medium experience... good president
Bush I... much experience... average president
Clinton... little experience... average president

______UPDATE: Kudos to the Anchoress. I didn't see it coming.

Zechariah's Prayer

The parallels and different behaviors between Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, and Mary the Mother of God are interesting. Mary's prayer strikes me as one mostly, though obviously not exclusively, of justice, of the oppressed finally being relieved: "He has shown strength with his arm / and has scattered the proud in their conceit, Casting down the mighty from their thrones and lifting up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good thing and sent the rich away empty."

Zechariah's song strikes me as being mostly (though again not exclusively) about mercy, of the how even sinners can be be numbered among the righteous: "to enable us to serve him without fear...to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God."

That seems reasonable given how in response to the angel Gabriel Mary was without sin and trusted God while Zechariah did not.

Pope Benedict wrote in his latest encyclical of justice and mercy being linked* and it seems they would have to be merely because there are sinners and those sinned against and how could God ignore one or the other? I think it was Chesterton who said that children thirst after justice and adults after mercy; perhaps that is what is meant by Christ's word that we become as little children - that we might begin to desire justice instead of merely mercy for ourselves. Still, His mercy is the draw. Devotions flow to mercy as water seeks the lowest level. Protestants often address their prayer far more to Jesus than the Father, or to the Holy Spirit, one might think for reasons of mercy and gratitude. And tis true that there is the temptation for Catholics is to see Mary or the saints as "more merciful" than Jesus.

I once hoped - and felt self-righteous at the thought - that Hitler was in Heaven, not out of any concern for Hitler but because it would improve my chances. But I'm beginning to realize that the standard against which to measure whether something is good or bad is not my own but God's. (Although you can't slip into the mindset that God is arbitrary and that he could call something bad 'good' and it would by His decree.)
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* - The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two together—judgement and grace—that justice is firmly established: we all work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our “advocate”, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).

National Review Snippets

Is Obama the Next Jimmy Carter? (Rich Lowry column):

Personal charm is the very basis of Obama’s candidacy; without it — given his lack of accomplishments, experience, and defining issues — he wouldn’t be running. He’s undeniably a winsome guy, smart and smooth: the coolest major politician in recent memory. His candidacy is given a special frisson of excitement because he’s the first-ever black candidate who has a real chance of winning the White House. If the size of his events precludes him from having a Carter-like laying of hands on children, the press corps has swooned into his arms like those kids into Carter’s. One of the strongest arguments he makes in behalf of his candidacy is essentially that he’s more likable than Hillary and therefore won’t engender the fierce opposition of the other side.

Carter didn’t get by on charm alone. His theme of hope and change hit exactly the right notes in a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America yearning for a fresh start. His mantra, repeated over and over again, was, “I want a government that is as good, and honest, and decent, and truthful, and fair, and competent, and idealistic, and compassionate, and as filled with love as are the American people.” He would achieve it partly through his own qualities as a person and a candidate. He said in one of his commercials, “There are lots of things I would not do to be elected. Listen to me: I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence any of you has in me.”

Of course, Obama talks about hope so often he could almost trademark the word. And he speaks of change just as much, trying to tap into a public feeling of discontent running nearly as deep as when Carter ran. In his Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner speech in Iowa, Obama advocated “a party that doesn’t just offer change as a slogan, but real, meaningful change — change that America can believe in,” adding — in case someone didn’t get the point — “that’s why I am running for the Presidency of the United States of America: to offer change that we can believe in.” Like Carter, Obama offers himself as the embodiment of this kind of change, the new bottle into which to pour a new politics beyond the tired baby-boomer conflicts and the acrimony of the Bush-Clinton-Bush years.

Carter in 1976 and Obama today present themselves as non-politician politicians willing to trample on political conventions. Carter aide Hamilton Jordan told Witcover the idea was “for somebody to stand up and tell the American people to do the things that were unpopular, a feeling that if politicians dealt more openly with the electorate that they would respond well.” In his Jefferson-Jackson Day speech, Obama said almost exactly the same thing. There is an opportunity to bring the country together, according to Obama, “and that is why the same old Washington textbook campaign just won’t do in this election. That’s why not answering questions ’cause we are afraid our answers won’t be popular just won’t do. That’s why telling the American people what we think they want to hear instead of telling the American people what they need to hear just won’t do.”

This all tends to run to vaporous abstraction. When the media tried to pin Carter down on issues, Witcover writes, “he dismissed the insistence on clear-cut responses by saying that reporters asked him ‘frivolous’ questions that the public really didn’t care about.” Earlier in Obama’s campaign, before he saw opportunity in attacking Hillary Clinton for not being specific enough, he struck the same note. At a meeting of the Democratic National Committee he said, “There are those who don’t believe in talking about hope. They say, ‘Well, we want specifics; we want details; and we want white papers; we want plans.’ We’ve had a lot of plans, Democrats. What we’ve had is a shortage of hope.”

Carter tried to have a trans-ideological appeal. Witcover writes, “Why should a candidate be liberal or conservative down the line, [Carter] argued, when most of the American people were not?” Obama made much the same case in his book The Audacity of Hope. He has quoted Martin Luther King for the proposition, “It’s not either/or, it’s both/and.” On Meet the Press recently, he rued the fact that people tend “to argue along the spectrum of you’re either a hawk or a dove.” He also touted his “ability to focus on getting the job done, as opposed to getting embroiled in ideological arguments.”

Both Carter and Obama clothe their appeals to trans-ideological change in Christian religiosity... Obama is running in an environment inured to candidates talking about their faith. But part of his appeal as a Democrat is how effortlessly he talks about religion. In his famous 2004 convention speech, he used Biblical imagery to powerful effect. He too invokes love, if not as frequently as Carter. At a church service in South Carolina, he told the congregation, “I am confident that we can create a kingdom right here on earth.”

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The danger in a candidate who runs against the political system on the basis of his ability to embody and deliver change sold in religion-infused terms is a massive self-regard. Carter demonstrated it at every turn. Witcover writes, “Carter had a distinct way of converting his every act, even a refusal to give a plain answer to a plain question, into an act of political morality. This pretension in him often rankled, but he never hesitated to invoke it if it served his purpose.” Obama has the same tendency. He has been intensely focused on the ethics and processes of his own campaign and deflects criticisms of him as the old politics and the status quo biting back at him because of his unique righteousness.

Obama’s attack on Hillary Clinton is instructive. She has said she wants a bipartisan commission to examine the financing of Social Security before she commits herself to anything. Obama criticizes this as unacceptable politics as usual. What’s his alternative? Well, as he told Tim Russert, “I will convene a meeting as president where we discuss all of the options that are available.” Obama speaks more favorably of increased payroll taxes than Hillary, but otherwise there’s not much daylight between them. He nonetheless inflates this into a yawning difference of principle because if he holds a position it, ipso facto, is part of the new politics; if someone else holds it, it’s the grubby politics of old. Obama can’t help, by the very nature of his candidacy, believing in a self-centered Obama-ism above all else.

Comparing anyone to Jimmy Carter feels like an attack because Carter was a failed president who went on to a post-presidential career of great obnoxiousness. But Carter, obviously, won his party’s nomination and the general election. Obama could do the same. One difference between the mood among Democrats in 1976 and now is that back then the dragon had been slain in the form of Richard Nixon. Today’s dragon, George W. Bush, still lives, so the Democratic base hungers less for Jimmy Carter–like national healing than for Howard Dean–like recrimination. As Obama has begun to pick up a little against Hillary, his message has taken on an angrier edge, while — somewhat discordantly — he has preserved old lines about uniting the country.

Would Obama be as ineffectual a president as Carter? There’s no way to know. He needn’t, obviously, have Carter’s managerial weaknesses, or his poisoned relations with Congress. But there was something inherent in Carter’s campaign, and the conceit behind it, that played into his failure. Theodore White notes, “He arrived in Washington having won both his nomination and his election on personality alone.” He got stiffed legislatively, having, in White’s words, “ignored his Congress, as sinners and politicians.”

All presidential candidates think highly of themselves. The personal messianism of a Carter or Obama, though, sets them up to divide the world into acolytes and enemies — Carter’s undoing. Obama would feel the same pull. He would be positioned as the self-anointed savior of Washington, an act that would quickly wear thin on Capitol Hill, especially if — as he probably would — Obama takes it seriously.

Carter’s signal failures were in foreign affairs. So much of foreign policy is judgment and execution, there’s no way to know in advance how Obama would perform. But he seems to have Carter’s foreign-policy DNA. Carter saw hostility directed at the United States around the world — even by our sworn enemies — as the result of our own actions, and thought he could lure the Soviet Union out of its aggression through self-abasing gestures and reassuring diplomatic patter. On Iran, Obama has all the same instincts, blaming its aggression around the Middle East on our bullying behavior, forswearing the use of our troops in Iraq to try to check Iranian ambitions within that country, and promising unconditional talks from which the Iranians would surely grab ever more “carrots” because none of Obama’s “sticks” would be plausible. Carter complained of our “inordinate fear of Communism”; does Obama believe we have an inordinate fear of Islamofascism?

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From editorial supporting Romney:

Two other major candidates would be able to keep the coalition together, but have drawbacks of their own. John McCain is not as conservative as Romney. He sponsored and still champions a campaign-finance law that impinged on fundamental rights of political speech; he voted against the Bush tax cuts; he supported this year’s amnesty bill, although he now says he understands the need to control the border before doing anything else.

Despite all that and more, he is a hero with a record that is far more good than bad. He has been a strong and farsighted supporter of the Iraq War, and, in a trying political season for him, he has preserved and even enhanced his reputation for dignity and seriousness. There would be worse nominees for the GOP (see above). But McCain ran an ineffectual campaign for most of the year and is still paying for it.

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From Kate O’Beirne's "A Second Look at McCain":

A veteran GOP congressional aide who has been a critic of McCain, most recently on the issue of immigration, recently surprised himself by concluding that the Arizona senator would be the best general-election candidate. This strategist seeks a nominee who will unify and energize the base, who has the potential to win, and who makes fellow Republicans competitive. He notes that McCain is pro-life and strong on national security, and has long been in favor of fiscal restraint. In addition to unifying social, economic, and national-security conservatives, he argues, McCain has a maverick image that can appeal to the independent voters who abandoned the GOP in droves in 2006.

....

Republicans are also being told that during these perilous times they should be willing to prioritize a concern with national security over social issues. Voters need not make that tradeoff if they support McCain, who has both a pro-life record and more national-security experience than Giuliani.

McCain is a conservative whose heterodox views on campaign-finance reform and immigration are shared by the more liberal Giuliani. With the defeat of the “comprehensive” immigration bill he championed, McCain recognizes that the public demands concrete enforcement measures — and he now pledges to secure the border before pressing for the legalization of illegal aliens. (He will, of course, have to convince conservatives that he is a genuinely reformed reformer committed to an “enforcement first” agenda.)

Another for My Archives - Smock's Movie Reviews

Smock generally has the same taste in movies as I do, so this will be a handy reference tool. The trick with movies is to find someone who sees a lot more than you do and yet has similar tastes as you do. Not too easy to find!

The Dems' Big Decision

My pessimistic streak thinks that given the political headwind, the Republicans could well be nominating a Washington General to the Democrats' Harlem Globetrotter, which means that it becomes very important which Harlem Globetrotter gets nominated.

That's not to say that the general election will be lopsided either way, but much does ride on the Democratic primary-goer's decision and a very difficult one it is. I have difficulty choosing between Obama and Clinton - do you go with a known quantity (Clinton) who is running as a grown-up concerning defending America? Or do you go with the unknown quantity who seemingly has so much more potential than Clinton?

Obama reminds me of a 1991 Bill Clinton in terms of charisma. I recall thinking very early on, before the primaries, while watching C-Span: "Gees, I hope the Dems don't nominate that Bill Clinton fellow. Even I like him."

Indeed, a good test for a candidate is whether someone on the other side can stand to listen to him or her. I could listen to Obama indefintely now, just as I could Bill Clinton in 1992 (by '95 that was all over).

So who could a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat listen to without barfing? McCain surely. Giuliani maybe. Huckabee probably. I would say those three are the most electable based on this crude test - even though it's unreliable since I can hardly imagine what a liberal Democrat thinks of the Republican candidates. It's not that you'll ever get those votes - as Bill Clinton never got mine - but the moderates, the people sway-able, will go for them.

It just seems like you get so much more with Obama. You get a fresh start. You get a chance to symbolically put a wooden stake in the great vampire of our country: racism. It's heady stuff. As David Brooks writes:

Barack Obama has won the Iowa caucuses. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to feel moved by this. An African-American man wins a closely fought campaign in a pivotal state. He beats two strong opponents, including the mighty Clinton machine. He does it in a system that favors rural voters. He does it by getting young voters to come out to the caucuses.

This is a huge moment. It’s one of those times when a movement that seemed ethereal and idealistic became a reality and took on political substance.

Iowa won’t settle the race, but the rest of the primary season is going to be colored by the glow of this result. Whatever their political affiliations, Americans are going to feel good about the Obama victory, which is a story of youth, possibility and unity through diversity — the primordial themes of the American experience.

And Americans are not going to want to see this stopped. When an African-American man is leading a juggernaut to the White House, do you want to be the one to stand up and say No?

Obama has achieved something remarkable. At first blush, his speeches are abstract, secular sermons of personal uplift — filled with disquisitions on the nature of hope and the contours of change.

He talks about erasing old categories like red and blue (and implicitly, black and white) and replacing them with new categories, of which the most important are new and old. He seems at first more preoccupied with changing thinking than changing legislation.

Yet over the course of his speeches and over the course of this campaign, he has persuaded many Iowans that there is substance here as well. He built a great organization and produced a tangible victory.

He’s made Hillary Clinton, with her wonkish, pragmatic approach to politics, seem uninspired. He’s made John Edwards, with his angry cries that “corporate greed is killing your children’s future,” seem old-fashioned. Edwards’s political career is probably over.

Obama is changing the tone of American liberalism, and maybe American politics, too.

From my limited knowledge, Huckabee and Obama seem very similar, except Obama would appoint much worse judges. Both have no foreign policy experience and both govern mainly by feelings.

Not that Huckabee will get the Republican nomination - I don't believe he will. But if Huckabee won that and the general you wouldn't get the benefit of feeling to right an ancient wrong, that being slavery. I'm probably naive in thinking that an Obama presidency would end the bitterness, end the calls for slavery reparations, end the whole "us versus them" of black/white relations. No one seems to care that Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powell or Clarence Thomas are in or have been in some of the most powerful positions in the country. But maybe it takes the top job to do it. Likely Obama would be called an Uncle Tom if he tried to bring us together. But you can hope, and you can not leave anything on the table in trying to bring about that hope.

Sure it's a huge risk to nominate someone so inexperienced. But anyone like Obama is like unrefrigerated milk - by nature they have a very short-shelf life. You simply can't wait for them to gain experience because experience will harden them. It will make them ideologues, or it will allow them to make mistakes for which the other side won't forgive them for. Not that it's better to make those mistakes as president, but I think the Iowa choices of Obama and Huckabee say one big thing: "Experience is overrated. We had eight years of experience in the form of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and look what it got us."

Of course Obama and Huckabee would be in exactly the same position as George Bush eight years ago. They'd be forced to pick very experienced advisors. So, paradoxically, by choosing inexperience we're actually voting for experience.

Will Democrats have the guts to roll the dice? That's what is so interesting. No once can accuse Democratic primary goers of being able to read the electorate very well: I couldn't stand Gore or Kerry which, to use myself as an indicator, means that a majority of the nation either disliked them or were indifferent to them. But I liked Clinton in '91 and I like Obama now.

The Dems played it safe the last two elections but this election they really can't do so. Obama's best friend is Hillary, since Democrats have to trust the country to elect a minority this time (thank God John Edwards is pretty much out, proving the Democratic party is at least sane). So will they nominate a black man whose middle name is "Hussein"? Since they tend to see everything in terms of race and gender, you can imagine what's going through their minds: is America more gynophobic or blackophobic?

My gut tells me they should go with Obama, but because his candidacy is something of a Rorschach test my brain isn't so sure.

In Praise of One Hundred Watt Bulbs

Today’s Andy Rooney query: I don’t understand the concept of a 60 watt bulb, or at least I don’t understand why we have five hundred and eight-six sixty-watt bulbs in the storage closet of our house and nary a 100-watt bulb.

A 60-watt bulb is good for little in the winter, when it’s dark as Hades, and good for less in the summer, when we fall asleep an hour or two after nightfall.

Indeed, one of life’s little mysteries is the ubiquity, let alone existence, of the 60-watt bulb.

And so a candle burns in the bookroom. The fragranced flame flickers, casts a gleam off the covers of so many books – too many books. Since the advent of Amazon.com their multiplication has made them seem vaguely accusatory: “have you read me?“ Yet the sheen of so many covers makes me appreciate the human labor that oversaw the production of so many handsome books. I imagine myself a farmer looking over a field of flourishing corn at the end of the day.

End of the day - or beginning of the year? I’m trying to determine the over/under line on how long I’ll be writing “2007” on my checks. I’m guessing early March since I didn’t watch the ball drop in the Big Apple and imprint upon my brain “hey, it’s 2008!”. Nor did I spend time thinking back on the old year or making new resolutions for the new one. Instead I’d rather ponder why something once so important – the turning of the year – has become so unimportant. It seems somehow un-Catholic (where festival and interval is marked) or at least unsentimental to ignore such milestones. It seems ringing in the New Year has gone the way of kissing under the mistletoe and watching fireworks on the 4th ; surely I’m too young to be indifferent to such things.

Is it related to my reaction to The Bucket List, a new movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman? My sister-in-law and her husband are dying to see that movie, no pun intended. Me? I’d seriously have to be paid about $30 to sit through it. This, I think, is some sort of symptom, some sort of interesting divergence that would have meaning beyond just different tastes in movies. From the trailers I’ve seen, the movie is about two old men, one about to die, who go around acting like teenagers. A lifetime of accumulated wisdom culminates in the jumping out of airplanes (no pilgrimages or soup kitchens to be sure). I might be a pedant, someone whose idea of fun is discussing Tennyson, but you can’t lose your enthusiasm for the little things as Chesterton said. It's said that you stay young by hanging with the young though I’m not entirely convinced of the worthiness of that goal.

Fred has been recently posting on the necessity of avoiding seeing everything in ideological terms. So true. I believe it was Walt Whitman who said “I contain multitudes”, but the value of containing multitudes has been devalued lately. Ol’ Walt seemed a solid enough citizen until I learned I wasn’t supposed to like him, for millions of reasons, though I suppose it started when Monica bought Bill "Leaves of Grass". Then too I learned Whitman was self-indulgent and wrote free verse and might’ve been reckless in his moral life and … well, life was simpler when I didn’t know ‘back stories’. When I was a kid anyone famous was defacto worthy of honor, or certainly anyone in print so long. Now anyone famous is to be regarded with suspicion. But there is something lost and something gained --- oh no! did I really just quote "Both Sides Now"?!

I remember hearing one college fraternity member singing "Think of Laura" without irony - that most syrupy of songs as recorded by Christopher Cross and made famous by the soap General Hospital. Hell I liked the song too if not brave enough to sing it. Sentiment was in the air then. Perhaps literally – how much of an era is defined by its drugs? Weren’t the ‘70s the era of marijuana (reverie) and the ‘80s the era of cocaine (speed)? Aren’t the 2000s the era of Starbucks, and manic levels of caffeine?

I was looking at the “favorite book and movie list” of a guy about ten years older than me and it was the quintessential list of the baby boomer. Vonnegut, Asimov, Adams’s The Hitchhiker's Guides, Zepplin. We can’t escape our influences can we? How can I cringe at his list and not my own? It’s funny how I remember a mostly forgettable show – “The Monarch of the Glen” – for reasons not readily at hand. I’d love to see it again - it used to be on BBC America – but I’m not sure whether I’d enjoy it. “Ballykissangel”, the BBC show set in Ireland, also creates a pine. Ach!, Assumpta!
I was so smitten by Ireland then that even in her ugliest guises - i.e. in McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes” - she transfixed.
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Listening to one of John Denver’s old albums, the thought suddenly occurred to me that he is dead - the pole star of sentimentality is gone! Maybe I lost some of my sentimentality with him; it’s shocking to think I’m at 1987 in Denver years. His peak music-making years were far behind at that point.

For all the faults of the ‘70s there was an innocence. How can you hear John Denver’s “Calypso” and not feel it? Bill O’Reilly had the girl who played the niece of Captain Steubing on his show tonight. They played excerpts of “The Love Boat” and that show wouldn’t last a minute on today’s television simply for its sweetness and absence of cynicism. Everything takes place so much more slowly - the dialogue, the meaningful glances, the lingering smiles.

But I digress. It’s 2008, and time passes so speedily that there’s no time for digressions. It’s the age of microprocessors, the Internet age, the email age. It’s the age in which we shrink our IQs via the the powerful combination of a derelict school system and a short attention span.

I’m still inspired by the little ember at Hambone’s site in which he wrote tightly in that nearly infinitely private space (only one reader there he says, i.e. me). There’s a straight-aheadness to his writing, like a half-back through the line. While jogging around the rabbit track at the fitness center, I was reminded of the similarities between good writing and good running – both involve an eager, no-wasted-motion form of concentration. A professional writer once said it was like “swimming underwater” and I’ve yet to hear a better description of writing: so private and so breathless.

Want to Get These in My Archives

Blogs of movie reviews: Catholic Media Review

     &

Love2Learn at the Movies.

Exceeded Expectations

Jim Curley of Bethune Catholic recently re-read Great Expectations, the classic Dickens work described by Chesterton as a “study in human weakness and the slow human surrender.” Jim writes of the remarkable impact the book, with the help of grace, had in his life:

"Early in the book when Pip is still a boy and first meets the beautiful Estella his life is changed forever. Her beauty, combined with her contempt for his lowliness (destined to become a blacksmith) forever changes his life - making him dissatisfied forever with what he was content with before. Pip recognizes this change-but seemingly can't do anything about it - even if makes him miserable.

Everyone has moments or events that change their lives for better or worse. Sometimes we can point to the moment like Pip could. Sometimes we can't. My reading (and subsequent re-reading) of Great Expectations was such a live-changing experience for me - and as I recall, it was intimately tied in with my Confirmation.

I was doing Confirmation prep with an Opus Dei priest when I was in 7th grade. This was the first real Catholic experience/community I had outside the home (I went to Catholic school - but it was the 70's). I picked up Great Expectations around this time for some reason (probably I had some idea I was educating myself with classics or some other pompous idea - I was that kind of kid). I absolutely hated it and finished it only because it was against my principles to do otherwise. (And I probably didn't want to admit I hated Dickens.)

I was then confirmed later that year, and within days of my Confirmation I felt the urge to read Great Expectations again - a strange sentiment indeed. Yet when I read it again, I identified with the ungratefulness of Pip towards those who really loved him. That was me. I have always thought that it was the grace of Confirmation that helped me to see myself more clearly through, of all things, Great Expectations.

It did change my life (or philosophy) in a practical way. While I still had (and have) my faults, ungratefulness is usually no longer one of them. It is hard to explain clearly, but the change in me had to do with being grateful to God and my parents, (and to others, but especially them) and making a promise that I would never turn my back on them (God and my parents) no matter their (my parents) faults -not that they had too many as their love and gift to me overrides everything else. And I promised that I would never ignore them, no matter what else was going on in my life. (True to form, no matter how far I have strayed in the past during different parts of my life, I always have kept a daily connection with God out of this obligation (even if it seemed hypocritical at the time) - which He has used to keep track of me.)

I can clearly remember the revelation in my own mind during that second reading of GE. I remember wanting to weep over my own sins - this had never happened before."

Link O'rama


Curt Jester has an interesting post up on the favorite books of various presidential candidates.
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Catholic Bibliophagist on religious fiction.
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An Orthodox woman meets Padre Pio.
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Interesting post on Calvinism by Mark Shea here:

A non-Christian wrote in with a simple question: "Does God love me?" The rude primitive Papists who know nothing of the Bible or the TRVTH wrote back in their rough, theologically unlettered way and all said, "Hell yes!" The Calvinist guy, trying his best to remain true to the Calvinist diagram of reality, replied, "I don't know." He had to say this, because the Calvinist system demands it, and for a true Calvinist, the System trumps suspiciously touch-feely stuff like the Love of God...

This is, of course, a highly unecumenical assessment of Calvinism today and I must quickly add that, since becoming Catholic I have, as I mentioned above, gained a better appreciation of the many good things in Calvinism: it's commitment to truth, it's love of orderly thinking, it's emphasis on the grace and majesty of God. But I must add that, at the end of the day, what guys like Scott and Jimmy have helped me see is what the good things are that the Calvinist system is insane and inhuman about.

As someone naturally inclined towards systems (I was a Systems Analysis major in college after all) I can certainly see that part of the attraction of Calvinism. Interestingly, the evangelical at Internet Monk writes, "I’d far prefer the out and out Roman view of 'assurance,' plainly stated as something you can’t have with certainty, than the advice to look at my own life for evidence I’m a real Christian. As Catholic convert and commentator Mark Shea says, 'I became more secure in my relationship with God once I was no longer certain I was going to heaven.' This is where we end up when we self-reference assurance."
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Scipio says things in German here, like that he's greatly enjoying Lauren F. Winner's Girl meets God. "Excitingly, freshly, unorthodox." His favorite books of '07 include Benedict's "Jesus of Nazareth", Les Murray's Fredy Neptune and Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
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Lots of Spanish happening here. The blogger, ARP, had hoped to have coined a new term, meaning navel-gazing of the sorts bloggers are prone to called: onfalopsia. Leider (German word for 'unfortunately') it's already been coined. He also shares his favorite books of '07.

I had the chance to go to Barcelona last year, free lodging though my dime as far as the flight goes, but after looking at my wife's pictures (she was going there oftten on business trips) I couldn't pull the trigger. It seemed to me too...plastic? Too modern perhaps? Madrid would've been a different matter, I told my wife, and so it was interesting to see that the blogger at Compostela (in a review of "Poems of Province", provided through the fracturing lens of Babelfish) appears to confirm what was only an intuitive, uninformed hunch on my part:

The poems, as it could not have been otherwise, were written in Madrid, almost with nostalgia of that city of province that it despises...It is like the bucólico sort: they create those that no longer live in the province (or they want to escape of her) to apostatize of the opresivo atmosphere, although peculiarly is sometimes a tone of chose. In Spain the black province is associated (as it is seen in High street) with the clerical oscurantismo. As Madrid does not give the stature either - we have been in that manchega was a city -, the ideal is Barcelona, until it is discovered that everything was facade and that is a city that falls to pieces and that are most provincial than one can be found in Spain.

In the end, the solution is to transfer the ideal to Paris or London (without the malolientes alcoves nor the scent to curry) and to say to the goddess Reason so that san Zapatero brings the light to us of the dialogue.

And I, in the black province, enjoying Pimentel, Vighi and similars, when it would have to be reading the Encyclopédie, all illuminating by the electricity. Until I decide Jiménez Lozano to me, whose life and attitude remember to me that the important thing is not where, but how or why and that the all the others is secondary and desire to make cartoons.

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ARP also brings us a link to a researcher who is looking at "virgin", that is heretofore unpublished, Flannery O'Connor letters. Here is a picture of that researcher's goodies, these to Betty Hester:

Calgon Commercial

Parody is Therapy has been updated with a reading of Mr. Lee's will.

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Here's an old post from Parody is Therapy that is more timely now with the Iowa carcass (ht: Bill) tonight:

Most Ambitious Politicians - 2008 Candidate Edition

[Disclaimer: I like ambition when it's backed up by performance and experience. By that measure, Biden, Romney, McCain and Giuliani have earned the right to be ambitious. Romney & Giuliani were excellent in their former jobs while Biden and McCain have the experience and gravitas to be president.]

1) Hillary Clinton

Hillary regards office-holding the way most Americans regard breathing. Once referred to Lady MacBeth as insufficiently ruthless. Has bumper sticker that says, "Will Suffer Fools (that's you Bill) for Votes!" Once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Is so ambitious that it works in her favor since many think she comes by it honestly - it would take too much calculation to be so calculating. Liberal Democratic mogul David Geffen tells Maureen Dowd: "God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton?" The answer is...no.

2) Mitt Romney

Mitt studied chameleons in college in order to perfect his mirroring of the voter's stripes in a particular district or state. Like Edwards, perfectly coiffed hair is a symbol of his untrammelled ambition. Romney has yet to give up his Mormonism though, causing his 2nd place finish.

3) John Edwards

Here's a guy who was a centrist in '04 but in two years morphed into a Leftist Pander Bear. Desperation can make a politician seem more ambitious than he really is but Edwards's profile in cowardice by failing to fire anti-Christian bloggers speaks volumes. Attempting to win a few old Puritan voters in New Hampshire, changed his name to "Jonathan Edwards" on the '04 ballot and preached sermon entitled "Voters in the Hands of an Angry God".

4) Barack OBama

The wunderkid of American politics is 22 years old and has already written a book offering his prescription for improving America. Now that's chutzpah. OBama promises answers without actually offering any - always a sign of healthy ambition. Has signature line of clothing called "The Audacity of Audacity".

5) (Tied) Sen. Brownback, Sen. Chris Odd, that one guy from I forget where

You have $5 in the bank, eight people know your name, and there's a front-loaded primary system. Delusions of grandeur keep 'em going.

6) Rudolph "Valentino" Giuliani

Is running on competence, which means he doesn't have to be as ambitious as the next guy. Has proven to be as interested in wooing lovers as voters: reportedly has had more wives than all the other candidates combined.

7) John McCain

Straight talk? What is that? Not ambition in its usual flavor, although perhaps it's ambition by masking itself as unambition. Will have to do a lot more than talk in order to move to derail the O'Bama express, let alone challenge Edwards for most ambitious.

8) Dennis Kucinich

Only in it for the chicks and free vegan dinners. [Update: has married since this post first appeared.]

Opposites

It's not exactly lectio divina, but Montefiore's Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar has its moments. Reading the life of a saint can tempt one to despair, but reading of Stalin gives one an obverse-image of God: simply reverse the images in your mind you see what God is like, for whatever Stalin was, God is the opposite. By seeing the inexpressible weakness of man, you more easily see the grandeur of God.

Without belief in the Divine, man is ever ready to substitute an idol. Stalin took on a god-like role for the people of the Soviet Union. Consider:

Jesus was mentioned in half the Tribune editorials between 1933 and 1939...Articles appeared: "How I got acquainted with Jesus Christ." The planes that flew over the Chicago river formed the word "Jesus" in the skies. The Tribune declared: "Jesus's life is our life, our beautiful present and future."... A writer described the reaction as "love, devotion, selflessness." A female worker whispered: "How simple he is, how modest!"

That is taken verbatim from the book except that I substituted "Jesus" for "Stalin", "Tribune" for "Pravda" and "Chicago river" for "Red Square". Stalin said that the people need a Tsar "whom they can worship and for whom they can live and work."

So often with the saints, such as St. Faustina, the Blessed Virgin Mary is credited as their teacher. Stalin had a teacher too: "But he regarded Ivan the Terrible as his true alter ego, his 'teacher,' something he revealed constantly to comrades such as Molotov, Zhdanov and Mikoyan."

In this age where niceness is taken for holiness, it's also telling how Yezhov, one of Stalin's bloodiest henchmen, was liked by everyone. He was seen as "responsive, humane, gentle, tactful man" who tried to help with any "unpleasant personal matter." He turned out to be one of the least humane in the group, which is really saying something -- the folly again of men making judgments when God alone can be trusted in that capacity.

The inhumanity and irreligiosity is chilling. Stalin was the judge, wielding an anti-Christ version of justice, who determined sentences of innocence and guilt. His "show trials" were farcical. One who was put to death, a Jew, pleaded desperately for his life to no effect. Soon afterwards a play was put on for Stalin with a man named Pauker playing the part of the murdered Jew, depicting him as raising his hands to the Heavens and weeping for his life saying, "Hear oh Israel the Lord is our God, the Lord is one." And Stalin "laughed so much that Pauker repeated it. Stalin was almost sick with merriment and waved at Pauker to stop." Again and again throughout history the crucifixion of Christ is replayed.

How easy to trust God with matters of judgment and mercy given what men are capable of!

I have a pile of books in the basket by my bed, and at night, relish the process of deciding which will be granted the honor of selection. And yet, for those times when weariness or disappointment or sadness or arid apathy grip me, there is only one book that soothes, that gives peace, that orders my disordered world: the Book of Psalms. - Anna Benedetti on Culbreath's "Stony Creek Digest"

Common mistaken ideas about how to read poetry include the Hidden Meaning assumption, which directs one to more or less ignore the surface of the poem in a quest for some elusive and momentous significance that the poet has buried amid the words and music. This idea probably comes from the fact that, being moved by a poem, one assumes an important religious, philosophical, or historical cause for being moved and tries to find it hidden someplace in the poem; whereas in fact a few words rightly placed can be moving if they catch a moment of life -- almost any moment; if, amidst all the blather and babble of imprecise, uncertain language in which we live, there is something better, some undeniable little beautiful bit of light. This is given to us, of course, by the music, and the words, not [by] something that they conceal. - Kenneth Koch, via Dylan of "More Last than Star"

To be a friend to someone, it's not necessary that he discover that what you say is true, or that he come with you. It's not necessary. I go with him because of that little filing of truth that he has. "Only the certainty of truth makes us feel immediately fraternal, maternal, and fond of every fragment of truth that exists in each person; therefore, truth is the friend of everyone." Friendship is not rooted in common ideology or the dominance of one person, but in a relentless fidelity to truth wherever it can be found. It's also based on forgiveness due to forgetfulness of this fidelity. - Frederick of "Deep Furrows", quoting Fr. Giussani as quoted by Fr. Julián Carrón

Others, again, give way to rash judgments merely because they take pleasure in a philosophic analysis and dissection of their neighbours' characters; and if by ill luck they chance now and then to be right, their presumption and love of criticism strengthens almost incurably. - St. Francis de Sales

According to Aristotle, comedy as a dramatic form "aims at representing men as worse... than in actual life": Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type -- not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive...if we have ludicrous characters who reach a happy ending, we have a comedy. Daily life provides the characters, Christian Revelation provides the ending. The conclusion is inescapable: The story of creation is a comedy. And yet... well, I mean, is this funny? Human defects and ugliness are all too often painful and destructive. Is it even meaningful to talk about representing men as worse than they are in real life? Maybe the way to keep the comedic perspective without denying the sorrow is by building the story around the most ludicrous joke imaginable: the Incarnation. How laughable, to see God Almighty as a human infant! That's even better than seeing the bank manager get a pussful of cream pie. Talk about imitating characters of a lower type. Christians can be too close to the Gospel -- can I say too reverent? -- to categorize it according to human experience. We might even be particularly resistant, since in recent times a lot of effort has been put into reducing the Gospel to just and merely a human experience. But while Christ's life, death, and resurrection are unique in all sorts of ways, they are still (though not merely) human experiences. In the interests of evangelization, we should be prepared to talk about them as such. - Tom of Disputations

What I find astonishing is that everyone seems to agree that Mr Pullman is an atheist. So far as I can see that is the last thing he should be called. Take a look at this piece from a recent number of The Atlantic, for instance. It does not describe an atheist. The man described there is clearly someone who believes in God; he just hates God. It seems to me that if a one-word description is needed, then "satanist" is a much better fit than "atheist". - John of "The Inn at the End of the World"

Today is the Feast of St. Stephen, incidentally. The good old Catholic Church loves its paradoxes: The day of intense joy followed by a day of sobering reality. Joy and martyrdom, love and hatred of love, Everlasting Life and grisly death. - Eric of "The Daily Eudemon"

Sunroof Accomplishes What Point-blank Pistol Shots Don't

More proof that real life is its own parody: how ridiculous is it that the Musharraf folks are putting out the ol' "she hit her head on the sunroof and died" routine? Given the ridiculous Three Stooges-quality cover-up, it does seem more credible that Musharraf had her killed, or at least that Al Qaida wasn't acting sans help. The very least you can ask of a cover-up is that it cover something up - Pakistanis have a right to be insulted at the level of intelligence their government attributes to them, and I feel insulted for them.

Most surprising too is how the October bombing didn't change Bhutto's security measures. It's said she'd listen to only actionable intelligence, which is understandable in the sense that the unactionable stuff must've been legion and our intelligence isn't given the greatest credibility after Iraq. The tragedy is that it seems such an eminently preventable tragedy, at least after the October bombing. It's as if the bad guys hosed their chance...but then got another one. But then destruction is easy, constructing is hard.

Week in Review

I’m in psuedo-shock at the coming end of vacation. Right now, writing this, I have all the sensations of being on vacation with little reality attending it, as I’ll report back to Routine in twelve hours. It feels like I could’ve used the time better, like I should’ve gotten more sleep or reading in, or at least visited the Dayton Art Institute and the glorious mosaics that Amy Welborn reported seeing. I was planning on going there Sunday but time got away from me and the museum is closed Monday & Tuesday. The Columbus Art Museum has a Monet exhibition going on, but it feels like Monet has been overexposed, such that I won’t appreciate it, as crazy as it sounds to say of such a great artist.

Vacations are precious times for refueling, for enrichment, for art, for history, for art history, for historical art, etc.. (Speaking of art, there’s a volume I’ve been stiff-arming due to its outrageous cost – “The Sistine Chapel” by an author named Pfeiffer – which promises a tour of the famous ceiling accompanied by the unveiling of the tremendous theological significances encoded in Michelanglo’s great work. That thirst for hidden knowledge still appeals to my inner gnostic even though it’s really just: “Love God and love your neighbor”.)

I suppose I can’t expect all that refueling to occur in five days, let alone engage in an elaborate art enrichment program or even quench the thirst of writing of a semi-decent page of fiction. Thru last Thursday there was a steady stream of family gatherings and visits, which is good and well. So there was mainly only Friday-thru-Tuesday for refueling, which is a small window indeed.

I’m hungry to write well, to write that sort of cryptically-pleasing line that Ham o’ Bone recently penned:

“I want to take this moment to thank you, gentle reader, for exploring the cliches of what passes as knowledge in the mind of a modern autodidact. The grave insights that we've explored over the last twelve months have been. I repeat, they have been. (Haven't they?)”

Besides liking any sentence with the word “autodidact” in it, I love the period after “have been”. A sort of winsome shorthand because yes, we know they have been. (Haven’t they?) A little thing, perhaps, but… You ignore poetry and novels and dreams and lost reveries and breakthrough learnings at your own risk. Man cannot exist without the pleasure of those sort of deeply Proustian thoughts. There is nothing I’ve written that was so revelatory as that old “Uncle Bud” writing.

Heard a bit of Gigi, and I don't understand The Parisians. The beginning sounds crassly materialistic, a sort of "everything is grace" transported to the earthly sphere, but then it gradually opens out from the carnal:

The Parisians
from the soundtrack of the muscial GIGI:

A necklace is love.
A ring is love.
A rock from some obnoxious little king is love.
A sapphire with a star is love.
An ugly black cigar is love.
Everything you are is love.
You would think it would embarrass
All the people here in Paris
To be thinking every minute of love.
I don't understand the Parisians
Making love every time they get the chance,
I don't understand the Parisians
Wasting every lovely night on romance.
Any time and under every tree in town,
They're in session two by two,
What a crime with all there is to see in town,
They can't find something else to do.
I don't understand how Parisians
Never tire of walking hand in hand,
They seem to love it,
And speak highly of it.
I don't understand the Parisians!

...

When it's warm, they take a carriage ride at night,
Close their eyes and hug and kiss.
When it's cold, they simply move inside at night,
There must be more to life than this!

The last quatrain says basically: when it's warm - who cares? They have love. When it's cold - who cares? They have love. Reminds me of a line from St. Padre Pio, paraphrased, "what do you care whether God leads you to Heaven through plentiful fields or through desert?"

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So what else is on the docket? Well, from our esteemed pastor, the learned and eurdite European history professor, came the dour one-liner concerning 2008, saying he felt we’re entering a trying period which would echo our Lord’s prediction of the Last Days – of famine and wars and rumors of wars and bad economic times and assassinations and… And I couldn’t help feeling that he wanted, somehow, for this to take place, in maybe the way Christ thirsted for his own Baptism of Fire, because it was if our pastor has become disgusted by the props of a sound economy and materialism and all the things of this world, tired of our leaning on them as our hope, and it was as if he wished away the faux stability of this great economic juggernaut called the U.S. economy. Still a scandal, it is, to wish away the good things just because they are so often misused.

The last day of 2007 was mild and sunny and pleasant. Was able to spend much of outside in only a t-shirt. (Well, and pants.) The object was to sand and stain a newly renovated bookcase. A small act of creation, and it felt satisfyingly productive. My wife actually did the creating part, by taking the 8ft wide by 4 foot high single-shelf bookcase and converting into a 2-shelf bookcase adorned with two new crown moldings using the new table saw I got her for Christmas. Under the ugly paint and scratched surface hid fine oak wood, and where once was an eyesore in the back of the bookroom is now in the process of holding its head up high.

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Watched Michigan defeat Florida in the bowl game today. Wow. Now that was a pleasant surprise. Heard my bleeds-Ohio-State-scarlet-blood (that doesn't work too well does it? It's a shame that teams with red colors can't bleed a different color blood as the Dodger fans do) father-in-law say "we" when talking about Michigan. That's unheard of, and is scary in that it's one of the signs of the Apocalypse. Our pastor might be right. He immediately apologized for it but the damage was done. It's one thing to root for Michigan, as we were all doing, but it's another to refer to the Maize & Blue under the personal pronoun.

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Supposedly it’s not always about me, so I let Mom choose the movie on her birthday (no applause, just throw money) and have to admit I liked “Enchantment” more than I let on. It was a tonic to “I am Legend” and after awhile Gizelle, the main character, grows on you. The meal at the Worthington Inn was astonishing in two ways: how great the food is and how high the price. But they are complementary: the food is so delicious it numbs the pain at the sight of the bill. I would rather go to the Worthington Inn for Mom’s birthday than anywhere. It fits us to a “T”: full of personal and historic tradition. We’ve haunted the old inn with its array of colorful, art-covered rooms for over twenty years and it packs more tradition than merely our own; the eldest part of it was built in 1835 and it began its life as an inn in 1854.

Authority, Generations, Etc...

Mom called me to complain about my comments about as written concerning an aunt (not on the blog). I did go over the line in the rash judgment category. I blamed it on my great interest in history, especially in the differences between “Baby Boomers” and the “Greatest Generation”. My aunt was a baby boomer, my grandmother a member of the greatest generation and as someone just outside the Baby Boomer generation, I can always pretend objectivity.

It could be utopianism, that is, the sort of "pox on both your houses" mentality that I generally abhor in the political sphere (until the Republicans took over and disappointed me so - perhaps an Independent is one who got mugged by reality?), but the qualities of both generations seem a bit unsatisfactory – the greatest generation was great indeed, but were they too mechanical somehow, too rule-based, too much of prose and not enough of poetry? To obey the Church without understanding, as many pre-Vatican II folks did, seems a lack. I’m allergic to the sentiment “ours is not to reason why, but just to do and die” even though it’s a noble sentiment and likely shows my own weaknesses. Of course the flaws of the baby boom generation are so well-known as to not warrant mention. They brought us the ‘60s & ‘70s. Their answer to the rule-based pre-Vatican II era was to break all the rules and to think that all the humans who came before us were stupid and had precious little wisdom to offer.

So I always feel between a rock and hard-place; in my heart I feel a mix of both generations, although I pray more "greatest generation". We live in an interesting Church age because John Paul II & Benedict understand that neither approach worked and thus have produced between them more books and encyclicals than the previous three or so popes together. (I'm guessing.) It’s no surprise that a new Catechism came out in the ‘90s - popes began to see that teaching was their main function. Simply explaining, even though explanations will never supplant the need for faith.

I heard a Catholic say they believe Jesus had brothers and sisters by the Virgin Mary. Which is a shame because they can't enjoy one of the greatest gifts the Catholic Church can offer - assurance. That assurance of truth for me is greatest in the Eucharist, since a God who isn't physically present in the Eucharist strikes me as colder than a God present in spirit only -- but the only way you know the Eucharist is true is by the testimony of the Church. Same too with the Bible - its truth is authenticated by the Church. The bible alone can't give faith, St. Thomas More argued. If you gave a young child, i.e. a blank slate, all the holy books - from the bible to the Koran to the Hindu scriptures to pagan literature, what is the likelihood the child would become Christian? He or she would likely become something else since the bible humbly carries the burden of history - that is it can seem contradictory because God condescends to us in history and over time. The bible was written over a period of a thousand years, not in the short period of the Koran, and thus will naturally seem more contradictory (just as the Catholic Church suffers in comparison to the newest denomination on the block which has no history). God always seems to pay a price for his being "little", for being humble, as Jesus did when he turned out to be not the violent figure who would make things right on earth in an immediately visible way. It's the saints, the apostles, and the martyrs - i.e. the Church that gives the Scriptures "proof" of their veracity.

In Grandma’s time, prayer was king. You prayed, you went to Mass, you said rosaries, you prayed novenas. In other words, you did invisible things which required faith. (And you did a lot of visible things since Grandma having six kids about killed her.) In my aunt's time there was a big reaction against that. Everything became more practical. Those things didn’t matter so much as what you did for people. Are you a nice person? Do you help people? The whole church focus went from vertical – between us & God – to horizontal – between us and other people. You can see it in the very architecture of churches in which the pews once all faced the altar but are now arranged in a more circular fashion so that some pews face other pews so that we can see our fellow parishioners instead of just God in the (now displaced) tabernacle. Of course it's not either/or, it's both - people & God, or rather the only way we can love people is thru God.