Tis the Season

In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus:
Eins, zwei, g'suffa ...
Da läuft so manches Fäßchen aus:
Eins, zwei, g'suffa ...
Da hat so mancher brave Mann:
Eins, zwei, g'suffa ...
Gezeigt was er so vertragen kann
Schon früh am Morgen fing er an
Und spät am Abend kam er heraus
So schön ist's im Hofbräuhaus.


1. Da, wo die grüne Isar fließt,
Wo man mit "Grüß Gott" dich grüßt,
Liegt meine schöne Münch'ner Stadt,
Die ihresgleichen nicht hat.
Wasser ist billig, rein und gut,
Nur verdünnt es unser Blut,
Schöner sind Tropfen gold'nen Wein's,
Aber am schönsten ist eins:


In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus ...


2. Da trinkt man Bier nicht aus dem Glas,
Da gibt's nur "die große Maß!"
Und wenn der erste Maßkrug leer,
Bringt dir die Reserl bald mehr.
Oft kriegt zu Haus die Frau 'nen Schreck,
Bleibt der Mann mal länger weg.
Aber die braven Nachbarsleut',
Die wissen besser Bescheid!


In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus ...


3. Wenn auch so manche schöne Stadt
Sehenswürdigkeiten hat,
Eins gibt es nirgendwo wie hier:
Das ist das Münchener Bier.
Wer dieses kleine Lied erdacht
Hat so manche lange Nacht
Über dem Münchener Bier studiert
Und hat es gründlich probiert.


In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus ...

Beware Amazon's Coming Monopoly

A commenter on Steven Riddle's blog and nails a larger trend:

This seems to be the general trend among US companies today. Instead of looking for ways of delivering a better product more efficiently or for other ways reducing costs, companies, banks, etc. are now looking for new fees to charge customers.

I see it as a penalty for doing business with them. Consequently, I try to avoid doing business with them.

Voices Carry

Feel gratitude this morning for the simple delights of cereal upon waking, conversation with my wife, coffee freshly brewed, and the not-so-simple delight of having RSS feeds on my iPod.

Where I used to enjoy organizing my books, now I enjoy organizing my iPod, putting the apps in most-used order, putting my RSS feeds from within that app in most-read order. On a sunny if slightly cool Saturday morning I can read vicariously and enviously of Heather King's trip to Manhattan, I can enjoy the now all-too-rare Amy Welborn post, I can read about the Amish in Betty Duffy's blog. In my pocket, so many voices! How inconceivable such a thing a few years ago. And how handsome and impressive their posts look on the shiny Apple interface and attractive feeds app. Even Twitter, the media that I thought was represented by the William Hurt character in "Broadcast News", the app that I thought was all that was wrong with the world, turned out to be a pleasant news gathering vehicle and quote generator (I follow Archbishop Sheen, Curt Jester & Chesterton among others). Now I mostly save quotes to my iPod instead of in "Spanning the Globe".

Various thoughts: Heather King's humility is personally humbling. Betty Duffy said that she desires not only unconditional safety for her children but unconditional community (it always seems to me that the closer the community, the more conditional it tends to be). Amy talks frankly about blogging and Steven Riddle writes poems cathartic to read (let alone write). Much to reflect on!

Poetry of the Sidebar, or "Who Said What?"

Longtime readers will recall that occasionally I like to combine the first sentence from each of the most recent posts from the links on my left sidebar in order to see what happenstance may happen. In this case we'll make a game where you can guess who said what.

First here are the first lines in the exact order they appeared:

As Dan says, the testimony given by Coates
via Happy Catholic *Nightlife of the Gods*
It's amazing what one thin line can convey.
A new children's cartoon in Ireland
Well, I have been so busy lately
I'm starting to get back into a reading habit again,
author libraries: Conor Friedersdorf sends me
The motto of contemporary Catholic Pharisees
I sewed 40 yarmulkes for my cousin's wedding!

I'm just sorry I couldn't use Aliens in This World's, "Apparently, for adults, the doctors have decided it’s better to get the blood moving again." Or, for that matter, Anecdotal Evidence's "When it comes to architecture I’m with the third of the Three Little Pigs: brick is best." But I felt something about "yarmulke" says fini.

Now, the lines above were said by the following blogs, in no particular order:

Back Bay View, Catholic Media Review, The Corner, Pansy and Peony, A Momentary Taste of Being, Kindle Helpdesk, more than 95 theses, Disputations, a musing.

More Chesterton...

I realize that a Catlick blogger admiring Chesterton is the ultimate cliche but it is what it is. I realize why I'm so fond of Chesterton. In a word: hope.

In the most recent Nancy Brown Uncommon Sense podcast, she says how Chesterton gives her a "vision of hope". And a recent link on one of the Catholic blogs said that the Russians called Chesterton "the teacher of hope." The poet Paul Claudell said of him, "he keeps always bringing us back to that infallible promise of Christ -- And I will refresh you. Et ego reficiam vos."

Of democracy G.K. said, "the difficulty of believing in democracy is that it is so hard to believe - like God and most other good things. The he difficulty of disbelieving in democracy is that there is nothing else to believe in. I mean there is nothing else on earth or in earthly politics."

He writes in a similar hopeful vein that "There is at the back of all our lives an abyss of light, more blinding and unfathomable than any abyss of darkness, and it is the abyss of actuality, of existence, of the fact that things truly are, and that we ourselves are incredibly and sometimes almost incredulously real."

Finally, as a postscript, a quote from Albert Einstein sounds positively Chestertonian: "There are two kinds of people in this world: those to whom everything is a miracle, and those to whom nothing is a miracle."

On the Decline of Education

Was listening to a little of MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning and it dawned on me how the teaching profession has experienced a "perfect storm" over the past few decades.

First, as Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out, forty or fifty years ago women didn't have a lot of options in the workplace. So instead of becoming lawyers or physicians you'd have these ridiculously overqualified teachers. Second, on the parochial front you had all these dedicated nuns teaching. Third, there was the breakdown of the family resulting in kids not having parental pressure to do their homework. Fourth you had the unionization of teachers in the '40s and '50s, which were designed to look after themselves and not the children.

Put all those together and voila, it's no wonder we're in the fix we're in today.

Thomas Merton Puts the Smack Down

...on Louisville:

"I renew my respect for the beauty and character of Cincinnati, its wide river, its hills, its misty views, its sudden corners. It is a good and real city, not a shadow of a city like Louisville."

--Thomas Merton, Turning Toward the World: The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Four, 1960-1963 (HarperCollins, 1997), p. 61, entry for October 28, 1960

Oktoberfest in the South

Hey, who knew you didn't have to go to Oktoberfest in Munich to experience Oktoberfest? Well, it may not be the same thing but it looks cool nonetheless.

Thomas Hardy, Chesterton & the Cleveland Browns

Been consuming a lot of Chestertonia, like his essay on Thomas Hardy which was found quite serendipitously. My interest in old familiar Chesterton has grown keen. Who was this man? Joseph Pearce has written biographies of Belloc, Lewis, Chesterton and Tolkien and I've read half of them but think I might've chosen the wrong half. If I can relate more easily to Belloc, it's Chesterton whom I think I most need to emulate and learn from.

So I picked up the Pearce biography and randomly turned to the pages on Chesterton's essays "Generally Speaking", which I'd serendipitously found on the shelves of a bookstore in Cincinnati. And in it Pearce suggests reading the essay on Thomas Hardy, which I did. Chesterton opines that Hardy's world view stemmed from industrialization's killing off of the rural ideal and by a pessimism brought about by a too Calvinistic vision that suggested a lack of belief in free will ("the most Christian thing in all of Christian theology."). Hardy blamed every negative event on God, which Chesterton memorably calls a "demonic Monism". He said the author had charity towards others though not towards God.

On the drive to church Sunday I saw a car with a Cleveland Brows flag flying from a window and thought "isn't that ridiculous? The Browns suck." But then I immediately realized that wasn't the lesson of Chesterton. I've always justified my greater interest in the Reds this season as an "appreciation for excellence," much as I'd support the Columbus Symphony more if they were known as an excellent orchestra. But that's not the approach of Chesterton towards life or country. To be a patriot is to be love a thing out of loyalty rather than for any intrinsic merit. Even to love America for her Constitution, her ideals, is to introduce a tainting utility. Patriotism has to have an irrational streak, and as a youth I prided myself on my "realism", "practicality" and "rationality". But those aren't the traits that God necessarily desires.

Chesterton writes "we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them." In that Chesterton succinctly points to the source of our goods, to have gratitude to him, and to thank him by being balanced.

I read Orthodoxy about ten years ago, out of duty to general Catlick opinion, but I didn't get out of it what I am this time:

The assumption of it is that a man criticises this world as if he were house-hunting, as if he were being shown over a new suite of apartments....But no man is in that position. A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential matter, he has a loyalty long before he has any admiration.

...it seemed and still seems to me that our attitude towards life can be better expressed in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of criticism and approval. My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more. All optimistic thoughts about England and all pessimistic thoughts about her are alike reasons for the English patriot. Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike arguments for the cosmic patriot.

...This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

Cellphone Pics

Came across an old Orthodox church today. Doors were locked, another concession to the barbarians:

Animals and Kids

Our six-month old grandson is transfixed by our dog. I knew 2 and 3 yr olds loved animals but infants too?! Must be that animal magnetism.

Women and Pants

In the course of human events it becomes self-evident that women are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Pantsuits.

(There, now this blog will get more search hits.)

This & That

Surprised to learn that Dominican priest I know is going to go to East Africa and become a missionary. Surprising on the one hand but not the other since I always thought his assignment to a backwater Kentucky parish wasn't the best use of his talents. He has too much spiritual ambition for that and that's a bit too much hiding his light under a bushel basket. God had other plans for the near term - he busted his knee and will have to spend several months here convalescing.
____
Regarding the proposed perils of sugar and carbs: I see the ducks on Mirror Lake and despite the junk food given to them by students they seem calm and peaceful in the duck kind of way.
____
Kelly, a gal from my high school class, wants me to go to the 30th reunion. God willing, we'll all be reunited in Heaven, and with less baggage, spiritual and physical. 
____
Big government rears its ugly head again by outlawing the sale of incandescent bulbs in 2012. Only florescent now. Note to self: stock up on incandescent bulbs! 
____
Adam and Eve wanted to be as gods, wanting to be have been put in a more accommodating situation, one less wrought with physical and spiritual risk. Christ accepted the tree less climbed, not grasping at the attractive fruit of the tree of divinity, but accepting the tree of the cross and its bitter fruit. The humility of Jesus makes our own pride look silly. So much of religion comes down to the recognition of reality: that we are not as gods!  
____
Am pondering poll questions for the blog. Yesterday's was "Should Betty Duffy blog more?" and received a 50-50 split.  More potentials: Should Pope Benedict visit Columbus, Ohio? Have childhood organized sports gone too far? E-readers: yes or no? Beer or Wine or Neither? Alcohol, Nightly,  Weekend only, Other. Are Jesuits Catholic?  Enbrethiliel: More Punk Catholic posts or fewer? Favorite Catholic Writer,  Merton, O'Connor, Percy, Chesterton, Other.  Favorite Steven Riddle Blog...
____
From "History of the city of Columbus, capital of Ohio, Volume 2"
By Alfred Emory Lee (1892)

Dedicated to the Darwins, who are moving to Columbus!
____
Chesterton quote: "Life was an ecstasy because it was an an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity. The goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale. The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom."

On Sentiment

Been reading Chesterton's collection of essays titled "Generally Speaking" and he attempts to get at a definition of sentimentality:

It is sentimentalism to use words in order to confuse and weaken, when they ought to define and decide. It is not sentimental to deal with things of sentiment such as tone or melody or minor graces of life. It is not false to be sentimental about these things that are avowedly things of sentiment. The evil comes in when we waver about weighty matters; not when we allow gossamer and thistledown to follow their own nature, which is to waver...

I have always felt it in the conventionalized laxity of fashionable divorce; where people want to change their partners as rapidly as at a dance, and yet want again and again to thrill at the heroic finality of the sacramental vow, which like the sound of the trumpet. They want to eat their wedding cake and have it.

Telling the Old Story in a New Way

From an Eastern Africa mission newsletter:

In today’s society, what matters is an image; a musk one can put on; the crowd a politician can gather using false promises of building castles in the sky for each of his electorate. So too do the preachers; the miracles one can perform; the money one can extort from the faithful. The quality of a product does not matter these days as long as manufacturer has shrewd advertisers and marketers. This is the world we are in; the world that greedy economy and distorted media industry are dominating and shaping the society.

A lingering question to the minds of those who have risen above a normal dust market person is; what should be done! If one has asked such a question, it means that the person has recognized the impact of unfavorable and inaccurate depiction of media images. Possibly that person, might have realized the role of media images in influencing public ideas and attitude in shaping behavior.

Dominicans are called to preach the Gospel in the midst of modern crisis. At the foundation of the Order in the 13thc, the church was in crisis too. The faithful were almost without pastoral care and preaching. We were founded furnished with the view to meeting the various needs of the society at the time. In the midst of
modern crisis, Dominicans are challenged to move assertively toward new ways of telling the same old story which we have loved so much, “the Gospel.” The media industry is using new communication technology which God has made available to advance their material benefits, and they are doing it so well, so committed and so
creative. Shouldn’t we be committed; creative and zealous not only assiduously studying the impact of media in behavior change, in the hope of reversing the course of action if not building immunity to the faithful, but also using the same communication technology to telling our beloved Old Story?