Let's Play...Why's My Bookbag or E-Reader Equivalent So Heavy?

...from The Map and the Territory by that Michael H. guy:

The Sushi Warehouse in Roissy 2E offered an exceptional range of Norwegian mineral waters. Jed opted for the Husqvarna, a water from the center of Norway, which sparkled discreetly.

*
he smiled with that cretinous enthusiasm and optimism which is difficult for non-Americans to counterfeit.

*

"Do you know why you’re attractive to women?” He muttered an inaudible reply. “I suppose you’ve had the opportunity to notice it. You’re rather cute, but it’s not that, beauty’s almost a detail. No, it’s something else.” “Tell me.” “It’s very simple: it’s because you have an intense look in your eyes. A passionate look. And it’s that, above all, that women are looking for. If they can read in the eyes of a man an energy, a passion, then they find him attractive.”

And City Boy by E. White:

I’d go to the Gotham Book Mart down on Forty-seventh, where I’d slump to the floor and read the books that were too expensive for me to buy. The Gotham was the ideal bookstore with dozens of literary magazines stacked on the counter up close to the front door beside the cash register and, halfway back on the right, a big table full of the newest books of poetry. On the walls were pictures of all the greats who’d read at the Gotham, including Marianne Moore and Cocteau and Dylan Thomas, some of them perched high up on a library ladder, posing above the elegant Frances Steloff (who died at 101 in 1989). Although she sold the “shop,” as she called it, to Andreas Brown in 1967, she was always prowling around, sometimes urging customers to buy.

*

I still idolized difficult modernist poets such as Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens, and I listened with solemn but uncomprehending seriousness to the music of Schoenberg. Later I would learn to pick and choose my idiosyncratic way through the ranks of canonical writers, composers, artists, and filmmakers, but in my twenties I still had an unquestioning admiration for the Great—who were Great precisely because they were Great. Only later would I begin to see the selling of high art as just one more form of commercialism.

Diaristic Wanderings

Had a strong hankering yesterday for Thomas Mallon's Watergate and consumed about an hour's worth. Surprising, because I'm really not that interested in that dismal presidential period. And yet I must be interested given how many Watergate-related books I've read over the years. Also Mark Steyn's book America Alone is riveting. The guy can write. Especially telling was how England went from an empire to modesty: the U.S. during the Suez Canal crisis threatened to shed Britain's war bonds, which would cause great fiscal consternation. Britain buckled under quick. Similarly we're getting into huge debt and I don't see what good can come of it, mutually assured financial destruction with China aside.

*

Planning a short trip next week. Sure, I'm tempted to look down my nose at the relatively nouveau Midwestern city, but I looked at pictures of the hotel I'll be staying at and the area seems of pleasing density, with old buildings and a promising plenty of old churches. Also there's the art museum of course.

Cities exhilarate, and if London was so inspirational to the great Samuel Johnson then Indy should be the same to me. If Indy's no London, well, I'm no Samuel Johnson. I shouldn't expect the same level of cultural enrichment as a genius.

*

It's past time for my annual "State of the Blog" address. Here's my speech:

The era of the blog feels in declination, at least as far as the original stalwarts go.

I blog less frequently and really have only one, called M & M, that feels extant. But I was there, I can tell my grandchildren, at the start of it all! I got linked from National Review once! And was asked by the editor of First Things to write something for the magazine! I was like a lifetime .230 minor-leaguer invited to the majors for a cup of coffee, and I wrote of Norman V. Peale and Pelagianism but lacked the research effort, fatally lapsing into the self-indulgent personal even while knowing I was doing so. And not getting published. I prided myself on my lack of sentiment while at the same time evincing it. I think I got the First Things nod simply on the basis of once saying something like, "maintenance of society is not job one," meaning that our first job is to build the Kingdom. Swiftly closes the window of opportunity! That heady time of so many links and mentions on other blogs, oh the star power we felt in our headstrong blog youth. Such responsibility I felt! For the first time in my life I was acquiring a small patina of fame - call it my fifteen minutes (Warhol was at least 15 minutes ahead of his time on that). I was being taken seriously by strangers in faraway cities and countries by folks far brainier than me.



The once tight community of bloggers included Steven Riddle and Dylan and Tom of Disputations and Amy Welborn and Kathy the Carmelite and Zippy Catholic and Bill Luse and Bill of Summa Minutiae and Mary Herboth and the Summa Mamas and the Philipino Catholic girl whose name escapes me now and The Mighty Barrister and on and on... Most of the original bloggers are doing so in greatly reduced straits. Steven started a literary blog, Amy a travel blog, Zippy and Kathy quit altogether, Tom and Bill L. & Bill W. post very infrequently. Part of me wishes I'd kept the tradition of the weekly "Spanning the Globe" post just for the sake of tradition, for the sake of continuity, to create a tiny island of stability, something seemingly changeless in this change-filled world.

Certainly Facebook picked off some people, especially the bloggers who were there less to write treatises and more for the social aspects. And FB puts the "social" in social media: you broadcast to a public who accepted one friend request. With blogs, at least before the ubiquity of RSS feeds, you weren't really foisting your stuff on anybody because they had to make the effort to go to your website each and every time they wanted to read something you had to say. And because of that you felt less guarded and also felt less guilty for potentially wasting their time. And why post kid and pet photos on your blog when you can more easily post them on FB?

Then too Twitter cut out a lot of the reason for blogging. Blogging is at least 50% linking, and what is Twitter but a far more efficient linking service?

Cut out links and pictures and you've narrowed the thirst for blogging. Mainly for argument, verse and fiction, the latter two not too common in bloglands. And I've become far less interested in argument, be it in politics or theology.

There are of course some diehard bloggers who seem immune to change or burnout. Eve Tushnet comes to mind - I'm not sure I could tell one of her 2004 posts from a 2012 one, although I don't read her enough to make sharp distinctions.

There were mysteries in the Catlick blog world, such as where "Maine Catholic" disappeared to (turns out he went to jail, for what I know not). There was the scandal in the past of the dearly departed Gerard S. which only came to light towards the end of his blogging life but which, oddly, made his blog more interesting. I'd initially taken him for a goody-two shoes who spoke intensely of mercy and love for pious and overly devotional reasons but who turned out to have had a personal experience of mercy and love.

And of the blogworld one can say there have been new*, bright lights coming to replace some of the oldtimer's: Jennifer of "Conversion Diary", the Darwins, Betty U.S. Duffy and Heather King among others!
___

* - where "new" is relatively new to me, in that I started following them after my 2002-2007 intense blog period.

NR Review

Interesting review in National Review of Ross Douthat's new book Bad Religion:

Douthat concludes his book by expressing hope for a renewal of traditional Christian faith — of an orthodoxy that will chasten not only a rising secular tide, but also the dominant forms of heresy. His practical advice, however, is modest. One of his main recommendations is for Christians to exercise “the Benedict Option,” a monasticism-inspired withdrawal from a dominant culture that appears incapable of correction and that increasingly appears to view orthodox faith with hostility. While this may be a long-term strategy for the restoration of a healthy Christian culture, it might take as many centuries for such a movement to influence the nation as it took the monasteries to foster Christendom following the fall of the Roman Empire. Implicitly, Douthat seems to acknowledge that hope for renewal must be chastened, even minimal.

...

A further troubling note lurks beneath his efforts to encourage “good religion.” While he attributes the decline of orthodoxy after 1963 to a series of discrete historical causes, ranging from the Vietnam War and the sexual revolution to globalization and rising economic prosperity, on a broader view of American history it might be more correct to note that orthodoxy has always been the exception rather than the rule in the American setting — that America, in a certain sense, has always been a magnet for heresy. After all, the phrase “city upon a hill” was invested with political import by John Winthrop already in 1630, intimating that from the very outset America understood itself to be the New Zion. The heresies of self-creation, moral perfectibility, progressivism, and millenarianism are hardly new on the American scene in the post-Sixties era, but rather are continuations of a longstanding rejection of Christian orthodoxy, expressed variously by American high priests ranging from Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, through Emerson and Whitman, down to John Dewey. America was the child born of rebellion against orthodoxy, and a major national storyline has been one that equates democracy’s advance with liberation from doctrine — from Roger Williams to Dan Brown.

Douthat makes a bold and compelling argument that what is needed on the American scene today is a renewal of good religion. But his book cannot dispel the gnawing worry that, in America, good religion has been the exception, and that the growing dominance of bad religion is not something recent and reversible, but the culmination of a long national story.

Kudos to the Committee

Heartened by the stones of the Pulitzer committee in not awarding a prize for fiction. If there were no worthy entrants, and the three works nominated seemed dubious to me, then it's sort of refreshing in the way it's always refreshing to see standards upheld. In our intensely consumeristic society awards tend towards becoming mere marketing tools.  Major league baseball, for example, used to actually have years when no one was inducted in the Hall of Fame.  Now that's pretty much unthinkable. No way they pass up the money and free advertising.  The standard is bent to the talent available, rather than the talent bent to the standard. That, in a nutshell, is the story the last forty years across the board. 

Some are labasting the committee for failing to "do their job" but I say they did their job. To be deadlocked is a judgment in itself and ought be respected. I'd prefer they stand their ground and have a hung jury rather than someone capitulate just for the sake of promoting a book.

Instagramification

My minor obsession Saturday was "Instagram", as mentioned in the Dispatch. It's an app that allows you to take photos and instantly nostalgia-ize them by applying filters that make them black and white or like 1977-era Polaroids, or whatnot. Harkens back to my youth carrying a Kodak instamatic, trying to make art out of the commonplace using a commonplace instrument. The article claimed it made even banal pictures interesting, so I put it to the test by taking random photos of the traffic in front of me on a city road. It did seem to make them a bit more interesting. Modern art-ish, and with modern art you never need apologize for not having a point (or a lack of beauty).

Took pictures in the bookroom, of course, and of Sam, and of the dog. My usual pictorial subjects. "Instagram" could be of the devil, of course, given the inauthenticity. Suddenly modern things get that unearned patina of 1970s-era grace.

Everything looks "serious" and artsy-fartsy in black and white. View from patio.




Testing the limits of picture material. A drive in the rain, a city street, a perfectly banal transportational situation.




This was a picture taken of a picture. From a book on libraries, this one in Rhode Island.



Our dog, through the filter of the '70s imagery.



Cat scratch fever.



The boys in their colors.



In the bookroom.



Sam, arriving.



Wagon pulling.


Indoor wagon racing


Ready for action.


Looking at a book!



Our dog in black & white.



And with that '70s glow.

This & That....

Beautiful, freshly ladled sun streams in through the company lobby window. I'm in that New Grange-ian, equinoxical spot where the sun is at the perfect angle to fully bathe my face and body. Soon it will traverse behind another building and fractionalize. The strong sun (if not cool temps) presages the coming summer, with all its contrasting summery moods. If the summer casts down greater light it also, at the same time, casts greater shadow.... Perhaps a good time for a vacation is when, unbidden, one recalls the previous one with nostalgia and longing. I was thinking today about Sanibel and the meals at Jerry's and the windblown air and the James Wolcott memoir on the sun-glinting beach. I also think about that contractor fellow in Cancun who said he goes for a week at that resort every three months. Now that's a schedule I could live with. It's going on five months since I last had one of those charismatical 7-day beach vacations.

*

Really liking Fr. Gaitley's Consoling the Heart of Jesus. The Good News is good indeed.  Catch more bees with honey, and so I'm counting it as coming from God despite the risks inherent in emphasizing mercy (i.e. the risk of a lukewarmness towards sin).  It sort of rearranges one's mental furniture: Gaitley argues his case like a efficient lawyer, carefully laying down the principle that Christ, though in Heaven, is still somehow able to receive and even "need" consolation.  Gaitley's brilliant in explaining that it's about Him, about how God really wants our trust. Instead of thinking I must trust God for my own sake, he turns it around and says we should trust God for His!

Gaitley doesn't ignore the cross, but sees it as more bittersweet than simply bitter (with trust in God and his help). We need not be petrified of suffering. Certainly he "sells" Christianity much more than, say, Flannery O'Connor, who scoffed about those who look at Christianity as an "insurance policy". I am very much attracted to the Divine Mercy and so I should go with that, just as before I was more attracted to a certain tough-minded Christianity exemplified by Cardinal Ratzinger and Flannery O'Connor.

*

The Byzantine liturgy Sunday was pretty long, given a Baptism. A moment that lingers was the rolling out of the Shroud of Turin, actual-size, which is very big indeed. You look at the whole thing and think, "this really isn't of this earth, is it?"  Who would design such a thing? Especially given this? The pastor is a special fan of the Shroud and reminds us to remember it if we ever doubt like Doubting Thomas.  Seeing it, I recalled how Jesus said even if a man should rise some won't believe.  Even with this miraculous material cloth (like that of the Guadalupe tilma), some materialists won't believe. 

*

Oh it's been so long since I've been to what is infelicitously called a "brick and mortar" bookstore, as if what distinguished those marvelous places were the bricks and not the books.  Went to the Village Bookshop in quaint Linworth, where I drank in the restful atmospherics for an hour while tasting of a Samuel Johnson biography and ended up buying "Library: The Drama Within". It felt vacation-y to be among those rich stacks. Despite my conversion to the e-reading, I was determined to buy a couple and do my microscopic part to keep these sorts of bookstores in business. 

Excerpts from The Map and the Territory

...by Michael Houellebecq:

Jed catalogued them as semimodern gays who were careful to avoid the excesses and errors in taste classically associated with their community, but who all the same let themselves go a bit from time to time.


*

It was a [job] transfer that she could in no way refuse: in the eyes of top management, a refusal would have been not only incomprehensible but even criminal. A manager of a certain level has obligations not only in relation to the company but also to himself. He must look after and cherish his career like Christ does for the Church, or the wife for her husband.

*

Jed wasn’t young—strictly speaking he never had been—but he was a relatively inexperienced man.

*

to be an artist, in his view, was above all to be someone submissive. Someone who submitted himself to mysterious, unpredictable messages, that you would be led, for want of a better word and in the absence of any religious belief, to describe as intuitions, messages which nonetheless commanded you in an imperious and categorical manner, without leaving the slightest possibility of escape—except by losing any notion of integrity and self-respect.

*

“I read in an article that, since the end of the Second World War, eighty percent of the cafés have disappeared in France,” remarked Franz while looking around the place. Not far from them, four pensioners were silently pushing cards around on the Formica table, according to incomprehensible rules that seemed to belong to the prehistory of card games (belote? piquet?). Farther away, a fat woman with broken veins on her face downed her pastis in a single gulp. “People have begun to spend half an hour over lunch, to drink less alcohol as well; and then the coup de grâce was the smoking ban.” “I think it’ll come back, in different forms,” Jed said. “There has been a long historical phase of increased productivity, which is reaching an end, at least in the West.”

There's Gotta Be a Post In Here Somewhere

Sifting through the leavings of my private blog, I feel like there's a post in there somewhere, echoing the old story of the optimistic boy who wanted a horse for Christmas and found only manure but sifted through it, figuring where there's manure, there's got to be a hoss.

*

Driving into work this morning the downtown skyscrapers seemed protected by a bubble-wrap of clouds, with regularly positioned pinprick rays of light glinting from the eastern sun. At one point traffic slowed to a halt, so I closed my eyes while listening to the strains of Weber and basked in the heat of the seat warmer.

Later - beautiful, freshly ladled sun streams in through the company lobby window. I find that New Grange-ian, equinoxical spot where the sun is at the perfect angle to fully bathe my face and body. Soon it will traverse behind another building and fractionalize.

*

Read over the Easter vigil again today. I think part of the magic of the night was knowing its length one did not strain at gnats. There was no sense of hurry which is sort of counter-intuitive. But it seemed like we were outside time in the same way on a retreat you're not hustling anywhere. Another part of the magic was the deft handling of the readings and psalms. They had different readers for each and different instrumentation on the music.

Two things jumped out at me during the readings: one was how Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac and Isaac was given back to him. I've always tended to think that God didn't do the same with his Son - he sacrificed Christ. But the words to one of the prayers said the truth, that just as Isaac was given back to Abraham, Jesus was given back to God, whole and entire. I never looked at it that way before even though it should've been obvious. God didn't "lose" his Son. Christ's death was real but ineffective and so in that sense not real. Too often I tend to look at the Crucifixion as a tragedy when, in reality, it has a happy ending.

The second thing I noticed was how often I see we sinners in the role of Isaiah 54 and yet it could be about Christ, who took on our sin: "For a brief moment I abandoned you / but with great tenderness I will take you back." Isn't that the story of the Cross and Resurrection?

Finally these verses seem to apply well to the Resurrection: "O afflicted one, storm-battered and unconsoled, I lay your pavements in carnelians, and your foundations in sapphires; I will make your battlements of rubies, your gates of carbuncles, and all your walls of precious stones." That last clause, about your walls being made of precious stones, reminds me of how the temple of Christ's body, his walls being his body and blood, have become as precious stones for us.

I also loved the inclusion of verses from some of the great chapters in Isaiah as well as the more obscure book of Baruch. It was like a "greatest hits" collection of Scripture.

*

A post from another blog prompts this reverie: I wonder if it's presumptuous to presume that if I'm aware of the possibility of presumption then I'm not presumptuous.

*

Beginning of Donald Miller book:

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.


After that I liked jazz music.


Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.


I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened."

Shades of Love in the Ruins...

Riveting read in the NYT about the junglelands of parts of post-Katrina New Orleans:

To visualize how the Lower Ninth looked in September — before the city’s most recent campaign to reclaim the neighborhood — you have to understand that it no longer resembled an urban, or even suburban environment. Where once there stood orderly rows of single-family homes with driveways and front yards, there was jungle. The vegetation had all sprouted since Katrina. Trees that did not exist before the storm are now 30 feet high.

...

In the race between nature and man, nature has jumped out to an early lead. But the pattern of growth has been bizarre. The Lower Ninth has been besieged by a flora feeding frenzy. A chaotic mix of plant species, many of which have never existed on that land, are battling for dominance. Before the area was cleared for plantations in the mid-1700s, the Lower Ninth was divided into three ecosystems, depending on elevation. The riverfront was lined with reeds and brambles; behind that was a dense hardwood forest; and farthest back, where Mary Brock and Pee Wee live, lay a cypress swamp populated by stands of palmettos. Today there are very few species native to the land, other than several kinds of sedge and aquatic grass. Only a handful of palm, live oak, pine and bald cypress trees survived the storm.

A variety of species, some exotic, have moved in, among them crepe myrtle, black willow and golden rain trees laced with vines. The undergrowth is a chaotic mix of weeds as high as basketball hoops and flowering shrubs like lantana, oleander and oxalis. Invasive species have infiltrated the neighborhood from the major avenues, the seeds transported by the flatbed trucks that drive to the city. The plant and animal life varies quixotically from plot to plot, as the new species entrench themselves, mustering strength, before fighting for additional territory.

The ecological composition of the neighborhood may be diverse, but it is also extremely unstable. “It’s a very odd mix, one that you wouldn’t other­wise see in nature,” Blum says. “It’s a Frankenstein community.” Ecologically speaking, Katrina has created a monster.

Diaristic Wanderings

The highlight of Good Friday was going on pilgrimage in the bright sun to the old stone cathedral downtown and seeing our august bishop, successor to the apostles, presiding. I felt mixed emotions at feeling such pleasure during such a somber occasion, the pleasure of listening to the incredible singers and musicians. They were almost too good. The haunting, unearthly refrain, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" is to be heard to be believed. I felt as though I were witnessing the event of Jesus taking leave of his body. Certainly the quality of music and polyphonies stand so far above my own humble parish as to not seem to be in the same league.

The bishop mentioned in the brief homily about St. Bernard saying that there were any number of ways that God could've chosen to save us, but by sending his only Son to die He was, in fact, giving us hope by showing that our greatest sin as a race could be redeemed.

*
Earlier, there was an interesting payday-Friday radio show that featured the company archivist. She has a nice gig. She makes dioramas from old newsletters and enthusiastically propounds on company history. She's all of, say, 27. I guess the job was created around 2006. I wasn't informed nor asked to apply. I'm wondering if there's a job as a beer writer that I don't know about. I got a mention on the radio show (and a chuckle) when I IM'd: "What a cool job - making dioramas." Something like that. She agreed with my assessment. I also snuck in a question asking if it were true there's a camera in the infamous meditation room, due to the reports of amorous couplings in there. No reply on that one.

*

Disconcerted to hear that my sister-in-law's RCIA program (she became a Catholic on Easter weekend! Yay!) had a teacher who apparently digressed and went on so many tangents that he didn't have time to get to the Eucharist. Ay-yi-yi. "The source and summit" didn't get a mention.

*

Wonderful Easter Vigil, my first, slaking a thirst for life that was triggered by seeing so much death at the grim Pompeii exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center. Seeing skeletons in disarray due to being instantly killed due to something like a 5000-degree cloud of gaseous ash is depressing, notwithstanding the fact of eternal life. What's occasionally disconcerting about the exhibit is how modern these people seem. If ancient Egypt seems so foreign, ancient Rome feels so familiar. The faces on busts are so recognizably modern that one wouldn't look twice if you passed them on the street today. The accoutrements of ancient life look familiar as well - they too played dice, and with remarkably similar looking dice. Gambling seems almost like sex - ingrained in us. And cheating wasn't unheard of since these were loaded dice. None of these strange Mayan temples here. They had pots and kettles, round coins and familiar jewelry. They loved wine, they had little Hindu-ish shrines to their gods, a favorite apparently being Bacchus, the deity of wine. Their homes were nicely decorated with beautiful frescoes. The architecture of many Pompeii houses was just splendid, pleasing to the modern eye, with gardens and pools of water.

On the Easter Vigil: First, I was surprised at how awake I felt. I'd worried I'd fall asleep, given the late hour and the general somnolence that prayer can trigger in me. But I was on the edge of my seat, constantly wondering what was next. It was a sort of "Catholic Disneyworld", with the shock of the new around every corner. When would they light the Easter candle? What was the ancient "Exsultet"? When would the adult baptisms happen? What would the next reading be? What Psalm would be paired with it and why?

I like the readings and Psalms the best, not surprising given how much I've grown to appreciate the Bible in recent years. But also part of the thrill was figuring how much thought went into it, how these readings weren't picked out of a hat but I assume were the result of eons of Catholic evolution aided and abetted by saints and pontiffs from long ago. And of course Scripture itself is the result of a centuries-long vetting, having been slowly determined by the early church.

Some people are more appreciative and attuned to material symbols than me. The Easter candle, the incense, the darkened church (fire laws spoil the effect) and the individual candles in everyone's hand - these things don't have as big an impact on me as does religious art (be it in the forms of statues, stained glass windows, vaulting gothic architecture, paintings, etc..) - or simply words, be they in the form of prayers or Scripture, which is not surprising in a lover of language. And music too, yes. But the other symbols that make the Easter Vigil special in many hearts - the flames and candles - don't do much for me. But then that's part of what makes the church catholic with the small 'c': the reaching out to everyone and to every sense, be it taste, smell, touch, sight and sound. God gave us five senses and the Church is wise to exploit them all in worship.

Silliness

"Inspiration by Dylan," sayeth my muse
all these lines without benefit of booze.

*

Wondering at the deaths of celebrities two
Mike Wallace himself and Thomas Kincaide too.

*

Alliteration with alacrity towards which I strive,
I'd better behave if I touch a beehive.

*

Alma mater dreams begot in the spring,
Red Georgian buildings are my kind of bling.

*

Hunger not I, for the "Hunger Games" hype,
Nor does my hair look very good on Skype.

*

Irish austerity plan seems not to be working,
sometimes my inner Keynes seems to be lurking.

*

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,
All play and no work makes Jack not a real joy.

*

My brain be tired from Words With Friends,
If I rise too fast I'll get the bends.

*

I shun the Daily Mail, one of those papers,
I don't need to see those bikini-clad gapers.

Weekend Pictures

Dusk in Cincy


Light and Dark


Roman fresco at the Pompeii Exhibit


View from Cincinnati Museum Center Parking Lot


Sam & Kite

Let's Play...Why's My Bookbag or E-Reader Equivalent So Heavy?

From Coming Apart by Charles Murray:

IN 1825, FRANCIS Grund wrote...

The American Constitution is remarkable for its simplicity; but it can only suffice a people habitually correct in their actions, and would be utterly inadequate to the wants of a different nation. Change the domestic habits of the Americans, their religious devotion, and their high respect for morality, and it will not be necessary to change a single letter of the Constitution in order to vary the whole form of their government.

*

Near the end of Democracy in America, [de Tocqueville] summarized his position with a remarkable passage. “If I were asked, now that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply—to the superiority of their women.”

From the novel The Map and the Territory:

...you might think that the need to express yourself, to leave a trace in the world, is a powerful force, yet in general that’s not enough. What works best, what pushes people most violently to surpass themselves, is still the pure and simple need for money.

*

Geneviève was Malagasy, and had explained to him the curious exhumation customs practiced in her country. One week after the death, the corpse was dug up, the shroud was undone, and a meal was eaten in its presence, in the family’s dining room; then it was buried again. This was repeated after a month, then after three;...
This system of accepting death, and the physical reality of the corpse, went precisely against the modern Western sensibility.

*

Art should perhaps be like that, he occasionally told himself, an innocent and joyful, almost animalistic pastime; there had been opinions like that, “stupid like a painter” or “he paints like the bird sings,” and so on; perhaps that’s how art would be once man had got beyond the question of death, or maybe it had already been that way, in certain periods—for example, in the work of Fra Angelico, so close to paradise, so full of the idea that one’s time on earth was just a temporary and obscure preparation for eternal life by the side of Jesus the Lord. And now I am with you, every day, until the end of the world.

Kennedy's Dilemma

I can't think of a Supreme Court justice who, starting off a tad left of center, edged rightward over the course of a few terms. The reverse is often true of course, which makes one ask why. Perhaps after book and dinner parties with the liberal Georgetown set and media elite you start to take on the coloration of your companions' politics, unless you already have a reputation as firmly conservative. It's human nature. Thus it's going to be really, really tough for Justice Kennedy to reject Obamacare. It's such a high-profile case that Kennedy's legacy with the writers of history, mostly liberal academics, would be in jeopardy. What is needed is for the dinosaur media to come down hard on Kennedy, to overplay their hand (as they did with Justice Thomas). They need to be so heavy-handed that it pisses Kennedy off. Not likely to happen, as the wooing of moderate Republicans by the media is legendary.

Almost by definition if a case has reached the Supreme Court then it's a tough call. And Supreme Court justices are humans, not judicial robots. Some justices see themselves as independent, non-ideological judges -- beware the case that threatens to dismantle that reputation. And this time around, unlike with Bush v. Gore, Kennedy doesn't have O'Connor to give him non-ideological cover. It's going to be interesting.

Diaristic Wanderings from Sunday

Am becoming mildly obsessed with finding new Bible study accessories, which is sort of funny and ironic given my lack of holiness. Tempted by Eerdman's Bible Dictionary and the Harper Collins NSRV Study Bible. Found a website with samples of the NSRV study bible but I really think I'm overkilling with the study bibles. Ex-nay on it. I have copious notes already via the NABRE. So it's down to Eerdman's Bible Dictionary, 25% off this week at OliveTree.

*

Sunday morn I was off to church followed by eine kleine reading ("Coming Apart", presenting the present dystopia), followed by the unexpectedly early arrival of company and so instant flexibility was called for and the utopia of reading about dystopia was canned for a couple hours. I resumed the book later in the sunburn-capable sun. A 20-minute workout and a beer followed, after which an anchoring in the hammock. So now I recline, cocooned by a rural coventry of varied trees, of fine dark green pines and parrot-green shrubs. It's a good place to be, especially with a beer.

And the day is downright summery. The perfect blend of weekend is a blah-humbug chill Saturday followed by a sunny and effervescent Sunday. The best of both worlds. Surrendered to the peace and quiet, I look over the sun-spackled greens and feel a nostalgia for things I never experienced. Or maybe it's for half-experiences, for time spent in the haze of only semi-awareness, of only semi-presence.

*

Too often I think the key to life is to love reading, as if reading will save me. I look at it as a savior and crutch from boredom and loss. As a fine accompaniment to old age when you can't do anything else. And yet even reading can't be depended on - only God. God alone. Do I forget?

*

I love the dappled sun against the fence. If the fence serves little purpose now - no longer a hedge against the nosy neighbor who's since moved - it still serves as a fine backdrop on the occasion of tree-filtered sun. It still serves, like a Donald Hall book, as a delimiter of beauty.

A solitary beer sits in the prefiguring sun and I wonder how fast I must consume to avoid it getting warm. I overlook the svelte curve of the landscape bend, the rich allusive nature of the hammock strings, the craggy bark of the poplar. The grass is freshly mown, giving it an especial attractiveness, a gleamy Greenness. The hammock swings slightly, representing the siren song of comfort. No wonder Jesus often said, "Awake!", for we long to rest, to sleep instead of pilgrimage, to bend the elbow rather than the knee.