Saturday in Review

Saturday was magical from start to finish, embodied physically by the breath of the cottonwoods in the backyard, white whispers floating in the wind.

There was therapeutic gardening aplenty, the ultimate anti-"head work", and all meals were taken outdoors. The day was made better by the anticipation that Sunday would be busy - that drew taut the weekend laxity and caused me to stack pleasurable activities with the benign side effect of an uplifting cumulativism. Nothing unpleasant was scheduled Saturday, though I took it to an extreme, as I am wont to do, by closing the garage door after us as we prepared our sacred Saturday date night dinner for fear that we'd be interrupted again by our intrusive neighbor. She was out in her yard so the signal was unfortunately less than subtle, as we never close our garage door when home.

There's nothing quite as civilized as eating on our patio and then retiring to comfortable chairs two feet away from the table. Once seated, we were not easily moved; I read "like the wind" while my wife fell asleep. I consumed a prior age, the Civil War era, and was cheered by the excellence of Stonewall Jackson's generalship. There is something consoling in excellence, about witnessing a bit of perfection on this imperfect earth. It's a feeling likewise replicated by visits to the symphony.

I read until the light died, which took a long while given the approaching summer equinox until a reading light extended the magic. There was a fine broth of Seamus Heaney's poetry (including the haunting "The Afterwards") followed by a chaser of William Least Heat Moon's "Prairie Erth", with its vivid description of the caginess of foxes fooling the hounds. Wildness over domesticity was Heat Moon's conclusion. (Aside: I've mentally nicknamed Bill Luse "William Least Heat Luse", though I haven't shared that with him or anybody else before this. Bill, like the original American Indians, has a fierceness and lack of domesticity. His fierceness is both polemical (see his defense of Terri Schiavo back in the day) and physical (see this and this)).

While walking to Communion the next day I see the cherubic figure of co-worker Kim's baby over her shoulder, a classic Madonna & child, and later while walking out Kim says, "don't paint Mary!" and it took a second to register, forgetting, as I do, that she reads the blog. Alluding to today's gospel ("Not everyone who says, 'Lord, Lord' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven") she asked how can I quit Bingo after that, but upon reflection that gospel seems pretty neutral on the subject of bingo volunteerism given that it's not our works that can comfort us, but only the hope that Jesus will claim us.

Hodge Podge of Discontinued Items

A midge-madge of various thoughts to short to garner their own post,..

I began re-reading Walker Percy's The Last Gentleman and I'm amazed by how this single modern fiction author, almost alone (in my experience at least), has such a perfectly pleasant voice. The prose is not self-aggrandizing and is lyrical without being cloying. The tone and pitch is just...well, he could flat out write.

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It's not often I agree with liberal pundit Michael Kinsley, but he was dead-on when he says that a gaffe in Washington is speaking the truth. Why Hillary should be pounded for saying white voters vote for her in large numbers, or that tragic events such as assassinations do happen, is beyond me. It's a measure of her desperation that she mentions these things, but still they are just facts.

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I've not been following the polygamist sect story too closely, although it's one of those battles where you wish BOTH would lose - the government and the cultists. Both are bullies to my mind. I'm guessing that although it's called a polygamist sect it's not really since marriage to more than one person is against the law, last time I checked. So I'm thinking that they are just 'shacking up'. Which is interesting in that it describes how much the word marriage has already been devalued. If marriage was this devalued back in, say, the 1800s, then I suppose the Mormons could still have their polygamy although the marriages would be recognized only by the Mormon church rather than the state?

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Given a choice of liberal pro-abort Democrats with limited experience (Hillary & Obama), Obama seemed the more interesting presidential candidate before the Rev. Wright stuff came out. The idea of someone "transcending race" was heady stuff but it turned out Obama no more transcends race than any of us. That he could hang with Rev. Wright for 20 years would be understandable if it was about influencing Wright for the better, as Victorian British Prime Minister Gladwell was said to frequent prostitutes in order to preach Christianity to them. (There's no evidence that he did anything other than talk to them, by the way.)

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Mrs. Darwin wins today's "honesty in blogging" (shortened to 'blogesty') award. I feel a twinge of guilt as we (my brother & sister and I) often drove my mother to sheer lunacy. We didn't understand it at the time, but now we do, at least to some extent. The post certainly put me right there and I experienced it vicariously such that I wanted to beat the 4-year old. Tangentially related, I'm sort of hyp-mo-tized by the thought of a 5-yr old being precocious enough to tape record his teacher. I can't even remember when I was five years old.

Read at Work.

I think Excel might be a better camouflage than PowerPoint but nevertheless am impressed by the ingenuity proffered. To look like you're working takes a lot of work.

Phi Beta Beta Suspended from OU Campus for Reading Violations


PARODY, OR--The Phi Beta Beta fraternity was put on an indefinite suspension by the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon yesterday.

The fraternity violated school anti-hazing laws by force-feeding pledges Emily Dickinson poems and making them recite lengthy Ovid passages from memory.

"Reading fraternities" such as Phi Beta Beta are increasingly popular on college campuses today in an environment in which binge reading continues to be a problem.

"You walk by many of the reading fraternity houses and hear 'Drop and give me 20!' only then you hear the pledge having to recite twenty lines from the Iliad," said Sheriff P. Coltrane, who is investigating excessive reading at many fraternity houses. "It's gonna make these kids go blind, 'cuz they're reading ten, sometimes twenty hours a day in addition to their school work."

Some concerned parents have instituted a policy such that whenever, wherever their kid is, they will pick them up if they are too drunk on reading.

"They don't want their child taking a cab, because he might read in transit. I've heard of kids slumped over from reading-exhaustion and parents come and get them and prop them immediately in front of a television. The kids are unable to even ride a bike," said Deputy Sheriff Malarkey.

Diet Recommendation

Too often this blog fails to offer practical advice. To remedy this, I bring to your attention my favorite diet.

I call it a "modified Zone diet". The Zone diet is, if you recall, a modified Atkins diet. The Atkins plan allows unlimited proteins but almost no carbohydrate. The Zone diet allows protein, but limited carbohydrate. My modified Zone diet allows unlimited carbohydrate along with unlimited protein. This is a diet you can live with.

It can be further modified with the beer diet, although I don't recommend this tweak to, say, professional ballet dancers.

Faustina & Lucia

"My meetings with Sister Lucia greatly reinforced my conviction that it's the simple people who are closest to the heart of God. They're the ones who intercede with God to make the world a better place. If men act humanely...it's thanks to the prayers of the simple."

- Cardinal Bertone on meeting Sr. Lucia of the Fatima apparition
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"Taking advantage of the intimacy to which the Lord was admitting me, I interceded before Him for the whole world. At such moments I have the feeling that the whole world is depending on me."

- Saint Faustina, diary paragraph #870

Various

Long weekends sometimes vaguely remind me of... college days. Those bygone years contained two seemingly disparate things – a great sense of leisure with all the sensation of getting things done. Quantifiable things too, such as a college degree. I was like Huck Finn floating down the river – all the movement but also all the restfulness. It was like being both Pelagian and Augustinian.

Of course that is nostalgia talking. It wasn't that easy. (Was it?)

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There’s a sort of comely humility in many of the pagan back-to-nature folks because even if they don’t believe in God, their belief in evolution means they believe they were formed in a certain way (over time) and it’s best to conform to that. Some people refuse to conform to anyone or anything; they think they can be whoever they want to be (Michael Jackson comes to mind).

The nature folks say we have evolved over the millenia to either farm or hunt and gather and it’s best we get back to that. Or that we evolved to run long distances and that we should thus do that today. In one sense the Christian is not so different from the nature-worshipper in that both have discovered a blueprint. The nature-lover sees nature as guide and teacher and that we are happiest when in communion with it. The Christian sees Christ as guide and teacher and that we are happiest when in communion with Him.

Since grace builds on nature, the Catholic accepts that nature is also guide and teacher (small 'g' and 't') since we don't throw out reason with faith. (Think: "Two great tastes in one candy bar".) Reason strongly suggests that evolution in some fashion is true, though obviously involving a Creator. But I don't think I'll quit my day job and hunt & gather anytime soon although I hear the hours are decent.

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Sleep, like sex and prayer, abhors self-consciousness. Self-awareness, in each case, destroys what is meant to be a entrustment to something other than self. But sometimes sleep is short-circuited for reasons far from self-consciousness. Sometimes just by pure anxiety, as in my co-worker.

He's freak of nature as it is, sleeping 3-4 hours a night. This has advantages he tells me and I believe him. He wakes up before 5am and arrives at work at 6am, allowing him to leave, if he takes no lunch, at the delightfully hour of 2pm. He has so much more free time than the average person that it beggars the imagination. His energy level is somewhat uneven: either full bore with great intensity or, as was the case in a training class, a lot of sleeping.

But all of that was put aside when I learned that his insomnia had increased dramatically and he was at rest two hours a night for the past couple weeks. Great domestic difficulties; a sudden change in his wife’s nephew’s family has presented the opportunity of taking on a 8-year old. Fights have ensued, his wife insisting they take in the child. If you can spare a prayer for him and his wife and the proper outcome I'm sure he'd appreciate it.

Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories. - John Wilmot

Philip understood that it wasn't enough to tell young people not to do something -- you had to give them something to do in its place. So at Carnival time, when the worst excesses were encouraged, Philip organized a pilgrimage to the Seven Churches with a picnic accompanied by instrumental music for the mid-day break. After walking twelve miles in one day everyone was too tired to be tempted! - the Philip is St. Philip Neri, via "Ten Reasons"

Mrs. Clinton's supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors. - Peggy Noonan

[Jim] Wallis is, of course, a key player in the Democratic party’s “religious outreach” efforts. He modestly describes his political preferences as—in a book by that title—God’s Politics. So much for depoliticizing religion. - Fr. Neuhaus of "First Things"

Alert readers will notice that I studiously avoid current events, mostly because I have no great insights to add to what I hear on NPR or read in the New York Times... - Francis X. Clooney, S.J., at "America" magazine blog, humorously (albeit unintentionally) illustrating the Left's embrace of all forms of diversity except diversity of opinion (nominated by Terrence Berres)

You can't vote for Obama unless you hate him --- You don't hand a suicidal man a loaded revolver unless you hate him. You don't give a thief the combination of the bank safe unless you hate him. You don't give an angry cuckold a knife and access to his wife's tied-up lover unless you hate him: unless what you will for him is damnation. You don't turn a bunch of Jews over to the Nazis unless you hate not only the Jews, but the Nazis too. And you don't turn over executive power in America to a man whom you know with moral certainty will unilaterally issue executive orders authorizing particular abortions which are now illegal unless you hate both the children he is about to kill and yes, the man himself. - Zippy of Zippy Catholic

The death-toll keeps climbing and the images that are coming back from the devastation in Myanmar are heart-wrenching. The only thing that could make this worse is to have a country run by paranoid generals who won’t allow much aid to reach the victims. Sadly this is happening...This puts President Bush’s lackluster response to Hurricane Katrina in perspective...I am amazed at the 9/11 conspiracy nuts who think the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon were an administrative plot. This White House couldn’t get ice to New Orleans. - Phil of "Please Hold Your Applause'

There are certainly precarious or non-sustainable (in the sense of centuries) things about our modern economy -- but then, there were precarious and non-sustainable things about the Western economy of two hundred years ago, and the result was that it changed, not that it collapsed..The new Cuban agriculture is clearly taking a lot more work by more people in order to produce the same amount of food (though using less oil, chemicals and machinery) and that is pretty much the economic definition of becoming poorer. Many environmentalists are [negative on large scale world farming], but when talking to my co-workers from countries like India and Sri Lanka, the green revolution (in all its chemical-using and oil-burning glory) marked the point where their families began to be able to get as much food as they needed, and their parents no longer had to stand in line for a few hours to get the weekly ration of rice. - Darwin Catholic

Theocoid --- you understood my book precisely. The Lord is putting aside His Divine knowledge in order to "pitch His tent with us" as John puts it. He could draw on His omniscience any time but He chooses to experience things with us. The Gospel of Mark is filled with passages that indicate that this was the Lord's choice while on Earth. And also we have the Letter of the Hebrews describing in beautiful words how He was tempted in every way as we are, except that He did not sin. Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated. Anne Rice, Rancho Mirage, California. - Anne Rice commenting on the humorously titled "Is My Phylactery Showing?" blog

Various

Wow, so far it's unaminous: everyone is against the re-painting. The artistically-minded Dylan's nay especially holds sway (rhyme unintended).

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Also I should mention that in the "Mainlining Kindle" post, it is not me shown in the photograph, but someone using drugs - don't try that at home. (To find the photo, I googled images for "drug user" or something like that.)

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I came across a delightful passage from Isak Dinesen's "Out of Africa" that describes a farmer who came to Dinesen's ranch and who sounds like he would've been an avid blogger had he lived in our era (click to enlarge.):

To Paint or Not to Paint...

I'm thinking my outdoor Blessed Mother statue would look better if painted a solid color - perhaps the multi-colors look a bit kitsch-y. I bought some tan paint (see log colored with it). I'm not sure the statue would look better or not after painting.

  

Airport Conversion Story

It's not every day I read a conversion story in the Columbus Dispatch, but here's a snippet I found in today's edition concerning the Cleveland airport's chapel:

"It's a family, a community of faith," said Diane Doerpers, Charles' wife, who volunteers at the chapel.

Eric Riggs is part of that family.

The aircraft mechanic for Continental Airlines works on Sundays.

Raised a Presbyterian but never baptized, Riggs said he used to go to the chapel on breaks "for some quiet and meditation. One day, I heard the door close and the bells ring, and I realized that Mass was beginning. I was nervous; I didn't know what was going on. But I stayed."

And listened.

And later spoke with Doerpers.

On Easter 2007, Riggs joined the Catholic Church. These days, the Olmsted Township man reads Scripture for those at the Sunday Communion service.

"If no airplanes are calling, I have another calling," he said.

Ah, June...


The ideal vacation is one in which you’ve spent so much time upfront dreaming of it that it cannot disappoint. It’s been “paid forward” – the mere anticipation is the greatest delight. If the June trip to NY were to be cancelled and our flight unrefunded I can’t say that we hadn’t gotten my money’s worth.

The joy is in the research, the poring over the luscious pictures in the Frommer’s Travel Guide, the reading of evocative histories like Hamil’s “Downtown” and Tyler Anbinder’s “Five Points”, the inspection of detailed city maps. All of it burnishes proto-memories of the Reds at Yankee Stadium, Strand Books, and hearing Fr. Neuhaus say Mass. I haven’t felt this way since seven years ago, since Rome, which I’d thought in its beauty and spirit had ruined all other destinations foreign and domestic as the girl-next-door suffers by comparison to Sophia Loren.

For the Ireland trip I’d studied for months, immersing in Irish poetry and Celtic mythology, and reading a leisurely fable of medieval Ireland titled “Sun Dancing”. I can’t imagine reading of medieval Ireland or the Celtic myths but for the self-assignment under the deadline of an upcoming trip yet I’m much the richer for it.

It feels like the return of a friend, this pang of vacation anticipation. I didn’t think I’d feel this way about a U.S. city again. Apparently I’d waited long enough between trips, a decade a sufficient interlude to re-awaken the hunger. Beach vacations are well and good but they don’t have the promise of shocking the synapses but instead bathe them in a return to the body in the form of exercise and drinking and sun. If the beach re-awakens the body, New York awakens the mind with its museums and architecture and diverse multitudes. (There’s something ironic that in an age with such accessibility to the greatest writings – witness the Gutenberg site – and the greatest art we seem ever more resistant to the classics and great art, and I recognize my role as a blog-writer as part of the problem.)

I haven’t entirely deserted my suspicion of the truth of Viktor Shklosvsky’s assertion that literature is all about defamiliarization and that habit “devours objects, clothes, furniture, one's wife and the fear of war..[and that] art exists to help us recover the sensation of life.” On a purely natural level indeed, but the saints refuted the hell out of it, living highly sensate lives in the midst of the desert or the sparest monastery.

For a Trappist monk, familiarization is embraced in the most radical way and for some of them habit devours nothing (“habit, where is thy sting!?”) but instead enhances, when marinated with grace, as you can plainly see in the faces of the aged monks at the end of the film “Into Great Silence”.

Mainlining Kindle


I admit I’ve been protesting too much concerning the Amazon Kindle e-reader. My rebuffs and insults (i.e. “it's a Faberge egg”) were half-hearted attempts to stiff-arm overwhelming feelings. This post is part of my Twelve Step program (i.e. "I admit I am powerless over my addiction to Kindle..."). The awful truth is once you go Kindle, you never go back: I can no more imagine returning the replacement in these waning days of the 30-day return period than I can imagine returning a cold Beck’s Dark on a Friday night. My wife can well attest my addiction by my maniacal strategies to protect it from harm. (Think fire-proof steel.)

There’s little to say other than that little device is like crack cocaine and my urgent advice is to avoid it like the plague. (Don’t start with Starbucks coffee either – I think they put something addictive in it.) The Kindle is the closest thing I’ve seen to the “ultimate entertainment” depicted in David Foster Wallace’s novel “Infinite Jest”. Downright scary. I think the pivotal moment came last week just before it broke - God’s none-too-subtle way of explaining to me the foreign concept of ‘detachment’ - when I downloaded the Complete Works of GK Chesterton for $4. Searchable, no less! This felt utterly magical; it was something of a long-felt dream to have the complete works of Chesterton in my library. I immediately searched for Shakespeare and was able to read everything Chesterton said about the Bard.

The whiff of danger expressed concerning the Kindle was mirrored by no less than Ham of Bone, who surprised me yet again. In Wall Street parlance, a high beta stock is one with the capacity to surprise. Ham, even after knowing him all these years, still has a high beta. He objected to Kindle not on expense grounds (he is to frugality what Audubon was to painting birds), but for a more obscure and metaphysical reason. Ham said he recoils at the thought of having his whole reading life mapped out before him. I’m not sure I fully understand what he meant; perhaps it was merely that it would remind him of his mortality too much, as if you had in front of you every beer you’d ever drink and were saddened by knowing it was finite. Given Bone’s frugality he would feel constrained to never buy another physical book but I have no such compunction.

Ham said this will lead to the scenario played out in a sci-fi book he read in which chips were embedded into human brains giving access to Wikipedia such that if we’re on a sinking boat we can get instructions to save our life in real-time. Something like that, I may be mischaracterizing it. I told him that personally I’m not too fond of physical invasions, which is why I’ve successfully avoided laser eye surgery all these years despite everybody and their brother having had it done.

If the Kindle made available only the complete works of Chesterton and Shakespeare I’m tempted to think it would be worth it. Poetry, plays, fiction, memoir, apologetic, biography, literary criticism..the sheer literary biodiversity spun off by those two is stunning. I read, transfixed, sonnets before and after number 63, where I landed by chance. As one Kindle forum member said, Kindle inspires you to read more.

The Kindle forums themselves are a wonder to behold. It's a sad commentary illustrating the drug-like effect of Kindle. The 900+ discussions seem indicative of the logophilliac diarrhea of the new convert. Full disclosure demands that I admit that I, of course, chimed in.

The truth is I thought I was immune to Kindle because I've always been addicted to physicality of books. (I sent Jonah Goldberg an email praising the smell of his book, for heaven's sake.) But I find that even more addicting than the font and glue and paper and binding are the words and ideas, especially words I would not otherwise have fully usable access to (such as Chesterton's complete works).

Kim: "It was Bingo Hell"

"Bingo Hell" is somewhat redundant ("bingo Purgatory" perfectly so). Out of sympathy, I pass this along to bingo co-worker Kim:


Good for birthdays, anniversaries, Arbor Day...She writes,

"That was the worst Bingo night ever... It was Mom, me and Matthew selling instants when Larry’s trade was calling. 3 people selling tickets and a lot of nasty customers to deal with. To add insult to injury they didn’t even order us pizza."

Sometimes I think our bingo is less about the actual bingo game than about selling instant winner tickets. Isn't it sort of odd that over the course of 4 hours, 120 customers need more than three ticket sellers, if ticket-selling is just a mere add-on to the game itself?

Entering the Gag Me Political Season

I know it's boring. I know it's been done a thousand times before. I know complaining about the MSM is like complaining about the weather. But indulge this Rantasaurus Rex post if you will.

First, the power of the mainstream media is a wonder to behold; I see a bit of it in the reactions I get from Catholics and ex-Catholics concerning the Pope.

For example, whenever there's some egregious headline that twists Benedict's words I hear questioners accepting it at face value asking, "I heard the Pope said everyone who isn't Catholic is going to hell..." or "I hear the Church got seven new deadly sins and that now not recycling is like murder."

No wonder the view of these folks who don't read any Catholic media had a view of the Pope that was greatly distorted.

I could tell just how distorted by how amazed they were by the papal visit. With beaming faces I heard, "wow, the Pope had a great trip!"

I was frankly surprised by their reactions; I found the trip pretty much in line with what the Holy Father had been saying all along. It occurred to me that we Catlick bloggers already knew Benedict but most Catholics didn't. You can bet no one was reading his encyclicals. (I'd be surprised if 2% of American Catholics had read either one.) The public gets their papal news from the Associated Press.

Fortunately the Pope got good press while in America, probably in part because he didn't emphasize disciplinary measures. But I can't help wondering if the surprised reactions were along the lines of: because the MSM gave positive press coverage to the Pope, then it was a successful visit.

If so, it's amazing that the hermenuetic of suspicion applies to our Pope rather than the media. The Pope was guilty until proven innocent.

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I see that the MSM has officially kicked off their Obama for President general election campaign and so we've entered the "Full Gag Zone" when it comes to things political.

The fun part - the contested Democratic primaries - is over.

The gag me's are coming fast & furious. Five minutes of watching MSNBC's "Morning Joe" almost leads one quickly to the puke point.

For example, the banner below the screen is "McCain's Pastor Problem" and the conversation refers to something Hagee said. To equate Hagee with Rev. Wright in terms of the relationship they had with the candidate is simply mind-boggling. I've heard the media doesn't do nuance well, but this is ridiculous.

The next most amazing thing was when the commentators on the show marvelled at how adult and politically fresh Barack Obama was in magnanimously brushing off McCain's Hagee problem and switched to a clip in which Obama said it was wrong for McCain "to attribute every single thing my pastor said to me". Is this the new, fresh politics? I could've missed something huge, but that's one whopper of a misattribution since McCain never said he attributed what Wright said to Obama, let alone "every single thing". You can't make it up; it's like what a seven-year old telling on his brother and embroidering what his brother did to fantastical proportions.

The longer this campaign goes on the more I wonder: what is new and fresh about Obama besides his age? He sounds almost as insincere as any other politician and his policy positions are so old that they could've been handed down from 1972 and you wouldn't know a difference.

Polls have shown that young people are increasingly pro-life, but then why is his supposed "fresh face" completely under the thumb of the pro-abortion lobby?

The MSM loves Obama just like they once loved "the Hamlet of New York" - Mario Cuomo. Obama is Cuomo without the Hamlet part. Both are far left politically, both give off the sensation of warmth and goodness, and both give great speeches. That is the criteria for MSM-love: liberalness combined with articulateness (because media folks are articulate and worship themselves. A current New Yorker piece on Katie Couric mentioned that that "media people’s favorite subject [is] media people." The inarticulate Bush never had a chance.)

I miss the primaries already.

Still, now that my rant is over, I must recall and believe what Archbishop Nguyen van Thuan said in his book "Testimony of Hope", which is that love is even more powerful than the media. So I must pray for all of those whom I think are leading the country and our civilization astray and try to love them. I'm not sure if this post is too helpful in that regard but to ignore the media is like ignoring an 800-lb gorilla in your backyard.