Fine Art Friday

Via MamaT     

Why? For the symbolism in it... For the fact that the glorifying rays surrounding Mary have not changed her attitude of supplication to God (downward cast of head, hands folded in prayer)...For the miraculous fact that an image made on a tilma - a "poor quality catcus-cloth" - has survived five centuries...

Columbus Pics

Okay, so if whoever had taken that picture of the Convention Center had merely changed their camera angle, they would've had this glorious eye feast:



Perspective is everything, 'eh? Well, seriously there is at least this park (five minute walk from Convention Center):

   

More pics:



 

Ohio: Not As Bad As You Think

I'm hyp-mo-tized at seeing familiar landmarks on the blog of a UK Times blogger, way o'er there in the England. It just doesn't happen too often.

For example, that depicted is the Convention Center, in which I've eaten many times and have walked by countless times. You can imagine the doubletake I did when I found it in this context.(Cue "It's a Small World After All" music.)

Of course all this comes not without snark. You don't post a picture like that for its sex appeal.

There are some beautiful blogs coming out of GenCon...I am going to post from time to time some extracts from the ones that amuse or inform. But you can see why Americans blog so much. This picture shows the Columbus Convention Centre where it is all happening. It's not much like Church House in Westminster, surrounded by Starbucks, bookshops, churches and even an Abbey to tempt one into realtime gossip, literature and spirituality. I suddenly have a new compassion for The Episcopal Church and its delegates. What suffering, nine days in a building like that. No wonder they're all surfing off into cyberspace.

It looks a lot better from the inside. Maybe if I'm supremely motivated I'll bring my camera tomorrow and prove it. Certainly Ham o' Bone can vouch for it. Yes, the more I think about it, the more I think Ohio's sacred honor has been impugned! This shall not stand! I shall bring my camera tomorrow!
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Update: Re-reading her, I do have to concur that the neighborhood can't compete with Westminster, but there are microbreweries nearby that help make up for the bad view!

The Convention

I have been remarkably remiss in my bloggerly duty. There's this Episcopalian convention just two minutes from my place of work and I've not spent one lunch hour there for porpoises of live-blogging. (And no I did not pay Gregg for the Welbornian Haloscan link. Nice of him though.)

I meant to rectify that matter today and so I wandered o'er there about 11:30am. I felt the excitement that conventions naturally confer, representative as they are of fascinating little subcultures with their own tics and language and rituals. This one is interesting on its own merits because the issue is of a titanic kind: the clash between those for whom Scripture is relevant and for those whom it is not. (If you think I'm kidding, read this.) What makes it so fascinating is that this is not a debate between atheists and believers, but between self-professed believers within the same communion.

During my fifteen minute sojourn I saw many Episcopalian priestly types. I also saw two who looked exactly like Franciscan monks. One of them turned left and stood in a line for internet access. Would've made a good picture.

A sign notes that former U.S. Senator J. Danforth is speaking here tonight. His journey has been an interesting one. My understanding is that he was one of the most influential senators in seeing that Judge Clarence Thomas, a proponent of natural law, made it to the Supreme Court. But Danforth has gone all NY Times on us, denouncing religious conservatives in that paper. Which reminds me of something. I noticed a university parking lot the other day with a tremendous number of handicapped spaces. And I experienced a cognitive dissonance in seeing a culture (ours) that thoughtfully provides handicapped people with mandated spaces close to buildings but which also allows the killing of unborn life in the womb. What's going on?

What's going on is that we are in favor of doing good as long as it costs us nothing or little. For the ambulatory, it costs nothing to walk a few extra steps. But to save a child's life, it costs a woman nine months of labor. And while a handicapped person didn't choose to be handicapped, a pregant woman chose to get pregant by having sex. But this is our culture in a nutshell - one that will do the right thing if it's costless. One that will go to war if it costs few American lives or doesn't drag on too long. One that will be pro-life as long as there are no ramifications to - i.e. if cloning could save a life than cloning is okay. One that will produce an Episcopalian church that might fracture over the issue of the biblical injunction against gay sex because that costs. (Gosh that was preachy. And certainly a self-indictment besides given that often I take the easy way out.)

I ultimately found little I could report, being that I did not have credentials, media or otherwise. There was a guard posted outside the door of one large gathering and I felt the sting of discrimination as I didn't have one of those convention badges around my neck. I saw people in groups of two or three or four and had a sudden urge to eavesdrop.

There was one venue without a guard posted. It was a woman's conference and the speaker was deriding the lack of presence of 'women at the table' in our country. She said, "My first question with respect to the war would've been: 'How many will die?'". (I hope Condie Rice counted as a woman at the table.) I listened for about five minutes and it was all a call for more earthly power for women and I was not the least bothered by it because this is truth in advertising. If you're an Episcopalian woman this is likely what you believe. (What's interesting is how the whole thing has changed over the years. From an interest in the outcome in the issues to an an interest in who is making the call on issues. It's become more a naked interest in power than merely to do good. Power acquired not as a means to an end but an end itself. Of course, they would say that they can't accomplish the ends without themselves because women see the world differently (well, isn't that gender discrimination?).)

But I expected that. This where disaffected Catholics can and probably should go. As one commenter said on Amy Welborn's blog: "The 'liberal' wing of the Catholic Church will often claim they have no home in the Church. Well, they do have a home and it is called the Episcopal Church." In the end, people who are interested in power for power's sake will not be interested in Catholicism because the Church is not for that purpose. As then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:

There is an ideology that fundamentally traces all existing institutions back to power politics. And this ideology corrupts humanity and also destroys the Church. Here is a concrete example: If I see the Church only under the aspect of power, then it follows that everyone who doesn't hold an office is oppressed. And then the question of, for example, women's ordination, as an issue of power, becomes imperative. I think this ideology produces a totally false point of view, as if power were the only category for explaining the world and the communion present in it. If belonging to the Church has any meaning at all, then the meaning can only be that it gives us eternal life. We are not in the Church in order to exercise power as if in some kind of association.

O'Rama's Recipes

  <-- Satisfied customers!

Every few months or so I try to share one of my mouth-watering recipes and today is no exception. What follows is something I call Toast with a Twist or sometimes Toast with a Kick. Feel free to use either term. You'll need two pieces of bread, either white or the funny-looking brown kind. You'll also need JIF chunky peanut butter and milk.

Acquire loaf of bread from refrigerator. Examine individual slices for mold; if moldy, give to dog. Experience has shown that it won't hurt him.

Place two slices into what I call a toaster. Snooty types may refer to this useful appliance as a "toaster oven" but be not fooled as I think it's the same thing. Press down on button using thumb or index finger until it locks into place. This begins the toasting process.

If you own a mixer, now's a good time to throw stuff in it and watch it mix! This is an entertaining sideshow while waiting for the bread to heat. You can throw fruit, milk and whatever in it but I recommend milk and Hershey's chocolate syrup. Hmmmm hmmm good!

Remove bread from toaster after two minutes or until they pop up, whichever comes first.

Remove pieces carefully (they will be hot - no lawsuits please!) and then take Jif^TM peanut butter and apply liberally to the toast.

Serve with apertif of chilled chocolate milk. Bon Appetit!

Still not convinced? Not sure if you want to incur the cost or time for this recipe? Take not my word for it. Here is what one erudite soul wrote of Toast with a Kick or a variant thereof:

"I introduced Auberon Waugh to [it] ten years ago when he first visited America..It quite changed his writing style: for about ten months he was at peace with the world. I think that was the time he said something pleasant about Harold Wilson. In the eleventh month, it was easy to tell that he had run out. It quite changes your disposition and your view of the world if you cannot have peanut butter every day." - William F. Buckley

Stay tuned for next month's recipe when I'll be featuring something I call La' Chef Boye Ardee served with Al fresco!

You've Probably Already Seen It...

...since Julie has a large audience, but there's a good discussion
going on there about the term "charismatic Catholic".

Excerpt from Havighurst's The Miami Years

On the 1920s poet-in-residence Percy MacKaye:

...it was natural that [university] President Hughes should think of establishing an artist's fellowship at Miami. When he asked where he might find the right artist, the Stillman-Kelleys had the answer. Soon Percy MacKaye and his family arrived in Oxford.

A house was ready for them, on the site of present Hamilton Hall, but MacKaye looked doubtfully at an airless work room on the balcony of the Library, with a row of windows just under the high ceiling. What he wanted was a low roof and a fireplace. Three months later he moved into a studio cabin--the students called it "the poet's shack"--in the deep woods of the lower campus. That winter at a plank table beside the broad fireplace he began writing a long narrative poem.

Inland among the lonely cedar dells
Of old Cape Ann, near Gloucester by the sea,
Still live the dead in homes that used to be.

When Dogtown Common was finished in March 1921, MacKaye read it to a group in the Stillman-Kelley studio. He had a cold that evening. Coming in out of the raw night he looked both drawn and swollen. When he took off his coat there was a hot water bottle, slung around his neck. But in the swing of his reading--

There lie the lonely commons of the dead--
The houseless homes of Dogtown. Still their souls
Tenant the black doorsteps and the cellar holes. . . .

...he forgot his distress. Warmed by his own voice he threw off the hot water bottle and gave himself to the spectral tale of witchcraft in colonial New England. A few nights later he read the poem to an audience of students and faculty in Benton Hall. He was a slender, intense and lonely figure on the wide platform, a hand darting up to push back his loose shock of hair, his voice rising and falling like the sea-surge of Cape Ann.


"the poet's shack"
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Occasionally MacKaye left the campus for a lecture trip or a visit to his publishers. During this first Ohio winter he met Robert Frost in New York. Frost: "Percy, where are you living now?" MacKaye: "I'm at a college. In Ohio." Frost: "What are you doing there?" MacKaye: "Just living, writing. Robert, you ought to get a college to support you." Frost: "How can I get one?" MacKaye: "I'll talk to President Hughes. He'll have an idea." A few months later Robert Frost became poet-in-residence at the University of Michigan.

Meanwhile Frost had written to MacKaye in Oxford: "The arts seem to have to depend on favor more or less. In the old days it was the favor of kings and courts. In our day far better your solution, that it should be colleges, if the colleges could be brought to see their responsibility in the matter. We are sure to be great in the world for power and wealth. . . . But someone who has time will have to take thought that we shall be remembered five thousand years from now for more than success in war and trade. Someone will have to feel that it would be the ultimate shame if we were to pass like Carthage (great in war and trade) and leave no trace of spirit."

Saw a bumpersticker the other day that said, "Don't Believe Everything You Think". I believe I'll have to think about that one.
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I liked this photo via Barbara Nicolosi of her trip to Spain of this guy taking a cigarette break. He hangs out in the square of Santiago Del Compostello dressed like St. James the Apostle and poses for pictures with the tourists for tips.
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The temptation to snark is always with me, especially where the Kos-a-nostras are concerned. For example, I recently tried to imagine how it would be if one of the conventioneers live-blogged the Yearlykos convention:

4:35pm: Arrive at the Las Vegas hotel and the room isn't ready. Front desk apologizes, says the maid will be there shortly. So the front desk is in on this too? An obvious Bush attempt to ruin the experience of Kos-goers. Sickening. The right wing conspiracy is powerful but will not triumph.

5:15pm: Finally able to get in the room. I tell the maid I'm for raising the minimum wage.

5:42pm: After donning my "Buck Fush!" shirt I head out to the lobby in hopes of seeing my hero. He served our country you know unlike those chickens--t hawks...

But I really don't want to turn into an anti-anti-Bush person to the extent that's possible. There's a tissue-thin difference between merely savoring their foilbles and being mean-spirited and patronizing and I constantly aerate that border. So how does one appreciate and honor the loony left? Perhaps by calling them artists, medieval craftsmen? So writes Joseph Bottum here.
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The Drudge Report seems a bit lame compared to say five or ten years ago. Here are some recent headlines that seem remarkably news-free: "Redford Joins Climate Fight..." / "Progressives Gather in DC" / "DNC Chairman Dean: Rove Has Real Sin...". All of these are dog-bites-man stories.
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Thought I'd take this opportunity to include a little story my wife experienced many years ago. (Originally posted as a comment on Jeff Culbreath's blog.) She (hereafter referred to as "S.") lived on a farm and one of the cows had a bull calf which was raised around the milk cows & around people and so didn't have a fear of people. Started getting bigger and became real protective of the herd. So S. goes out and the cow had had a calf and didn't want to come in to the barn to get milked, so she took a hollow pipe with her, about 18inches long, 2 1/2 inches in diameter just to be on the safe side since sometimes mothers are a little protective of the calf. The pipe probably saved her life as a Mennonite farmer only two weeks later and less than five miles away got gored in the spine and died.

The 3,000 lb bull was in the barn. The cow and calf were in a 5 or 10 acre field, surrounded by an electric fence, and about 2/3rds of the way in. She checks the bull and he is totally unconcerned with her as she walks out of the barn. Doesn't even look at her. Walks half-way out and happens to look at the barn and sees the bull in the doorway who is beginning to bellow and move his head from side to side. He's got a bead on her and starts coming towards her. She had about as much acreage to cover to get back to safety as he had to get to her.

The bull charged her and she did a smart thing in hindsight. She started charging him, waving her arms and screaming. He stopped dead in his tracks. Then he starts up again, though more slowly. When he gets there she clubs him on the nose with the pipe and he backs away and shakes his head. She takes a step to the side, toward the fence. She does this over and over, each time making her way closer to the fence. Then it started raining and she dropped the pipe! She retrieved it, which was almost beneath the brute's legs. She continued smacking him on the snout until she got under the electric fence, receiving a jolt herself. He followed and bellowed at her the whole way as she walked around the fence...
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And finally, my sis-in-law offers this visual joke:

Library Things Review

Here:

With due diligence and an open mind, I gave it a whirl. And wouldn’t you know, I was converted. LibraryThing is one of those tools you never know you need until you use it. Knowing which book is where is useful enough to justify it, but there are subtler joys too..."Tag" each book with your own searchable keywords. This is great for locating books you’ve lent out, moved into a box in the basement, or taken to work. If there’s a fire or a flood, you’ll know which books to replace. You can tag books you should return to friends. You can catalogue books you don’t own, but want to remember to buy or borrow.

You can also rate and review your own books. That doesn’t appeal to me. I know which books of mine are good. I was tempted to assign a nasty tag word to a bad airport novel, but I removed it when I recognized my own vanity at work. I suppose I hadn’t wanted some other user seeing it in my collection without comment....But what I’ve found most interesting is seeing the patterns in my own shelves: the archaeology of my life so far. This could be called navel-gazing, or a waste of time. I’m starting to think of it as an effort to understand my own soul.

Truly American

Do you remember that theme song "Truly American" from the old Letterman skits? That should be the background music for this post which is prompted by the meeting of ECUSA in my town and by something Neuhaus wrote at First Things :

Schoenborn observes: “The Church can never identify herself with any one nation. She is not a national Church. And yet the unmistakable features of the Church can be discerned within the different nations. This is never more luminously expressed than in the saints. Who could be more French than Therese, more English than Thomas More, more Spanish than Ignatius, more Italian than Catherine and Francis? And yet none of them is just a national saint, and any attempt to misuse the saints in the cause of nationalism (as has happened, for example, in the case of Saint Joan of Arc) totally misses the point of their lives.” Which prompts the question: Who could be more American than . . . ?

What would a truly American saint look like? What are American characteristics? Though some of these are a bit trivial, we are seen by Europe as more laid back and enterpreneurial, more violent, more emotional and into self-help (re: Oprah), more hardworking, and more puritanical when it comes to smoking and drinking.

Looking at those characteristics it seems the Evangelicals got 'em covered but for the violent part. Who is more laid back and hardworking than evangelicals, where even their small groups have small groups and the weekly activities of the typical megachurch require a directory the size of a small telephone book? Self-help? America's best-selling religious book is a self-help-by-helping-others book. (As an experiment I put "Christian self-help" in the subject box of the Amazon.com search engine. The number one result was "The Purpose Driven Life" audio book. How American is that?)

As far as enterpreneurial & puritanical, I think the LDS win hands down. Joe Smith started his own religion and now even coffee is banned. It's an export, not an import and has very spicy doctrine, like hot wings.

But for sheer unselfconscious Americanism it's hard to beat the ECUSA. They want to canonize Thurgood Marshall. I'm not making this up. Marshall wasn't big on going to church and liked his booze and women but he did serve at the Holy and August U.S. Supreme Court...

Founding father Alexander Hamilton...

...opines on the responsibility of the executive:

Having won re-election, the Mayor of New Orleans (so happily acquired by Mr. Jefferson) is planning for his new administration. His first term was defined, of course, by Hurricane Katrina...It is always needful...to fill the job with competent men--men who, like the Danish governor general, will take charge and do what is needful. This applies equally to executives at lower levels of government, when the problem to be dealt with is a matter concentrated in one locality. President Bush and Gov. Landrieu of Lousiana were not up for re-election last week, and so could not be judged for their omissions. If the people of New Orleans are satisfied with Mayor Nagin, then we may conclude that they deserve what they get.

(Hamilton as imagined by Richard Brookhiser.)

The Kos-inator

Funny. (Bad language alert.)

I keep coming back to my experiences standing in front of classrooms full of adolescents, all day, every day, for nine years. What did they need? What were they hungry and thirsty for? A strong dose of doctrine? "Catholic identity?" No - that is the fruit, the next stop along the road, or even simply a more formal articulation of the fundamental need. It all comes back to Christ. Some would like to pose a disconnect - for example, during the past forty years, the suggested disconnect has been that if you have "love" you don't need "Church" and all of its articulations and ritual. Benedict makes clear that the love of God is embodied in the Church, because the Church is the Body of Christ and Christ is the Way, is God's love enfleshed. Every step of the way he reminds us that we can't separate ourselves and our faith from the Church. - Amy Welborn

There is not a single nation or culture on the face of planet earth that voluntarily converted to Islam. Is it possible that the heritage of forced conversions has infected Islamic culture not with the zeal of true faith but with a psychological coping mechanism of self-justifying fanaticism? Not that this is conscious, but that there is a subconscious structure of distorted fanaticism based on a cultural remembrance of the initial forced conversion. If an entire culture is conquered and forced to adopt a religion it in no way believes, could the new believers create a mindset conducive to the kind of murderous fanaticism we see today? If the individual forced convert reacts in the ways [Eric] Hoffer describes, what would an entire culture do in the same situation? Quite frankly, this does make the Muslim world a lot more understandable than a strictly logical analyses does. - Lee Ann Morawski

The issue of theodicy comes up again and again: Where was God when the Jews were being murdered at Auschwitz? I am reminded of an evening many years ago, when I went to see the film of Sophie's Choice. As I walked home, I pondered this question and asked myself, "How could God permit such a thing as Auschwitz?" I felt the reply, "In the same way He permits the little Auschwitz in your heart." If men can turn their backs on God, and little sins are possible, then great sins are possible. And the answer to all of them is the same Cross of Christ. - Henry Dieterich of "A Plumbline in the Wind"

For years I thought art class and music classes were a waste of time. Maybe this was because they were regulated to once a week, Friday afternoon, and only were required in elementary school. How I now lament this folly, both in my own thought and in the school system I attended. God is most visible to us (or at least to some of us) in nature and in the arts. The true purpose of art is to help reveal God to man. - Jim Curley of "Bethune Catholic"

Some people are never happy unless they're causing trouble. The sort my wife calls "a disturber". I read the most wonderful description of "disturbers" the other day: "she rolls like a pinless grenade through the rooms of other people's lives". Isn't that wonderful? - John of "The Inn at the End of the World"

The gender gap is not a distinctly American one but it is a Christian one, according to Murrow. The theology and practices of Judaism, Buddhism and Islam offer "uniquely masculine" experiences for men, he said. "Every Muslim man knows that he is locked in a great battle between good and evil, and although that was a prevalent teaching in Christianity until about 100 years ago, today it's primarily about having a relationship with a man who loves you unconditionally," Murrow said. "And if that's the punch line of the Gospel, then you're going to have a lot more women than men taking you up on your offer because women are interested in a personal relationship with a man who loves you unconditionally. Men, generally, are not." - WaPo story asking where the men are in churches

It seems to me that illegal immigration is a form of trespass. Trespassing can be minor, temporary, and incidental; or it can be ongoing, significant, and grave. Trespassing is something we may do licitly (even if not legally) when we are in immediate grave need. It is not something we may ever do licitly for the rest of our lives though. It is not something we may ever do merely to improve our station in life, even if our station in life is extremely modest. As soon as our grave need - that is, our literal starvation, etc - has been met, we must stop trespassing, and if possible make amends for it, or at least go back to the proper legal process. Whatever the merits (or detriments) of amnesty as a practical matter, it seems to me that it represents a basic distortion of the moral law....[It] doesn't represent mercy to the lawbreaker, it represents a dispensation to break the law. Granting an amnesty would do violence to the common good. Those who have made sacrifices to keep the law should be granted at least no lower a priority than those who have not done so. Any other path is a basic violation of justice. - Zippy of Zippy Catholic

The agrarian experience, even if only experienced short term can teach you something of salvation-that you work out your salvation with God one day at a time just as you live your life one day at a time. The long term vision of Heaven is worked on a daily basis, not quarterly etc. It is hard to put in words exactly what I mean: I will try again before this topic is over. Let's put it this way, simple traditional lifestyles are not very forgiving. If you don't work one day, you may just not eat. Yet at the same time, the rhythms of the seasons regulate your work, leisure, waking, sleeping.....Am reminded once again of the saying (paraphrasing) of Belloc: "It takes six months to turn a farmer into a city-boy; it takes 3 generations to turn a city boy into a farmer." - Jim of "Bethune Catholic"

If you have the misfortune to listen to NPR or read the New York Times, you'll hear wide-eyed self-important catechesis in the liberal's religion: politics. They report on the things that matter to them most - the travels of the president, political wrangling in congress, long analyses of legislation, all directed these past years at removing this heretic (Bush) who has assumed their papacy (White House). - Bill of "Summa Minutiae"

This guy became a Catholic because of Rosemary's Baby and Hammer Horror Films (you have to read it), and although he still seems to be in the familiar "I approve of Catholicism because of its pretty decorations & earthy acceptance of human frailty which implies I can still do whatever" phase, there's always hope for someone like that. At least he's in the door. - Kathy Shaidle of "Relapsed Catholic"

Who do you pray to if you have lost your St. Anthony of Padua statue? - Curt Jester

The First President Bush & Cardinal Law

Interesting letter from George Herbert Walker Bush to Cardinal Law. Bush here is responding to a letter Law wrote in which he tried to persuade the president to not force Hussein out of Kuwait.





More here and then here.

My 8-Hour Ohio Vacation

Never underestimate the aesthetic value of a quote at the beginning of piece of writing. --Anonymous

I’m stopped at a traffic light and got a lot on my mind. Like who would I choose if I had to choose between Gore and Kerry. It bothers me for some reason that I can’t form an opinion. Another thing that bothered me was the huge difference between hummus and humus. Lose an "m" and hurt someone's feelings. And finally I wondered why the lady with the Kerry/Edwards sticker in front of me chose to go 35 in 45mph zone thus assuring Mutually Assured Delay at this light.

But oh the pleasures of an olde-fashioned road trip! You can take your cruises and your flights to Florida or California just give me the wheel, some music and a ribbon o’ highway. On the way to my destination I alternate between some fine German ooom-pah music and Mike McConnell, a Cincinnati talk show host who makes Rush Limbaugh look like a amateur. McConnell made me sigh at the creativity of the young; it is only they (and maybe Lilek) who could come up with such colorful terms for those tattoos girls get on their lower backs: “Ass antlers” and “tramp stamps”. I could not have come up with those had I had all day. But people have different talents.

My first stop in this all inclusive, eight-hour vacation via Interstate 70 enroute to southwestern Ohio was the little town time forgot: Trenton, Ohio. (I think that was the name.) I stopped there on a whim because it looked interesting but sometimes looks are deceiving. From the roadway I saw enough similarities to my home town to provoke nostalgia and enough differences to provoke curiosity. In hindsight, my half hour was a bit long in the tooth.

But oh those old churches! Looked in the window of an old Mennonite chuch (the doors were locked of course – not having the Blessed Sacrament means Protestant churches are closed outside Sunday and/or Wednesday hours). There was a barrister-style bookcase with old books behind the glass. 'Bout gave me a woody. Later, in Oxford, Ohio I found an ancient looking Presbyterian church from the 1830s and to my surprise found the door unlocked. It soon became apparent why as this church was gutted. It was now apparently a parish center and as bland as a conference room. Only the deep dark wood banister remained. I went upstairs and found a basketball hoop, cheap carpet and a few old couches. Next door, it turned out, was where the new church was. I stopped by. It was locked.

Girls, Churches & Books

At Miami University I take a little bike trip before I run. And I see the different nicknames the boys and girls give their rented houses. One group of coeds named their house “Bikinis and Martinis”. This seemed to me rather blatant advertising to the op sex. At least the bikini part. What group of guys would name their house “Speedos and Beer”? Or, if salesmanship is the aim, even “Fat Wallets & Whiskey”? I don’t see it. I also sense some false advertising since weather during the Miami academic year (late Aug-May) affords surprisingly few opportunities for bikinis.

On to a less salacious topic. (Segue alert!). At the old Presbyterian-church-turned-gymnasium, I noted one fragment from yesteryear: a collage of photographs of past pastors (say that five times fast) from the founding to the 1960s. It reminded me of the old pictures of early fraternity classes except the pastors were older. How distinguished and sober they look! Hard-souled men from an age when men weren’t womanly. And the smell in the room was that of old books. Sort of musty and redolent of “old library”. It’s too bad men aren’t shoppers. If they were instead of having to choose from fresh lily scents and vanilla or apricot for your bathroom spray, there would be “Oil de Books”. I’d buy that. Beats lighting a match.
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The new dorms I see have large windows. We had small windows and we liked it, because it gave us something to look forward to when we were seniors.
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The “oil de books” lingers in my mind. I recall books I’ve been wanting for going on ten years now. Like the Miami poet Percy MacKaye’s work. And Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare and Chesterton on Shakespeare. One of the mysteries in life is why Chesterton’s book on the Bard is not only out-of-print but is like $175 for a copy. What are there, like three copies in the world of that book extant?

There are books every home library should have – a dictionary, the bible, Shakespeare’s works, etc..There are books every Catholic library should have: the Catechism, some Chesterton, Butler’s Lives of Saints. And there are books everyone named “TSO” should have: Johnson on Shakespeare, Chesterton on Shakespeare and MacKaye’s poems. Plus I’d like to get a book about the obscure French priest our high school was named after.

My church tour continued with the Catholic church in town which, predictably, was open. I’ve been in there hundreds of times, mostly as an undergrad of course, but the stained glass windows opened up for me today in a way they never had before. So odd! As much as I love and am partial to words it seems that art captures things in a way words can’t. There is no way to describe, for instance, the look on the face of the angel who was delivering the cup to Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane. Saddness, yes, but more. Jesus appears to receive it with the attitude that “this is good only because of He who gives it says it is”. He drank what looked to be poison except the Father said it was not, another case of the substance changed but the accidents not. A transubstantion.

In another window, Joseph as a carpenter has an axe in his left hand for wood-chopping purposes and is holding his right hand out for Jesus to supply more wood. He is looking at Mary and Mary has a look difficult to describe again but it is both sad and knowing but also curious? She is looking intently at Jesus who is carrying the wood as he would later the Cross, over his shoulder. Jesus looks like Isaac and Joseph like Abraham.
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If It Ain’t Baroque, Don’t Fix It
      or Don't Anticipate Calvary

King Library is the king of periodicals; one could die happily in this full and eclectic collection. I happen across something called Paris Review and open at random to a letter written by Tennessee Williams counseling a would-be play writer, saying the writer should avoid all pain, suffering and doubt while producing that first draft. “Then comes Calvary – but not before.” It seemed a message that this life is a first draft and Purgatory will be our editing.

Perusing the periodical New Letters: A Magazine of Writing & Art I came upon the phrase “had to pee like a racehorse”. Gee whiz maybe I have a future in writing.

New Oxford Review and Commonweal represented Catholic interests, which is sort of like representing American liberalism and conservatism with Michael Moore's and Ann Coulter's books.

I headed to another building, the hall containing the Classics Department. There is an aura there that just isn’t present at say the Accounting Dep’t. Here in the Classics there are posted ads for overseas study but what really caught my eye were the free books. I now own Harold Segel’s “A Comparable Study of the Baroque Poem” which will grace my shelves unread until I die. But my slogan is, “if it’s free, it’s for me!”.

I made it my business to read the profferings posted outside the professor’s offices. And the first I came to had an anti-Bush cartoon complemented by a long, whiney quote from Thomas Jefferson written shortly after the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 was passed. Not exactly a motivator to become a classicist since the message seems to be "study the Classics and hate Bush" but you don’t have to do so to be anti-Bush. It seems to bespeak a poverty just as the Clinton haters displayed.

Blinded By the Light

Emerging from the library I felt my own sort of poverty as the day was sunny and beautiful and I’d just wasted a portion of it indoors. I had a sudden urge to read something scholarly under the shade of a papyrus tree. I briefly pondered going on a run but that would be borrowing tomorrow’s energy. So I found a spot next to a wall to sit and drink, beneath windows and across from a parking lot. But I can see an olde brick dorm (“dorm” sounds too coarse and ugly to describe what is a stately mansion gracefully accompanied by her maids of honor, her trees, growing ever bigger with every passing year…). Almost like Monticello, so fine are the columns and the tough of green of the porch awning, the color of rusted coins and old sea wrecks. Clover salts the mid-distance though the sky is cloudiferous though there is full sun.

I underestimate sweet Ohio. I sometimes think there is more to do here than anywhere in the U.S. That might sound provincial except for the fact that I’d rather visit Europe or Russia or South America or anywhere else in the world than Ohio. (And certainly Bill Luse’s snake-swallowing birds sound interesting.) But within the continental United States? Ohio has charms to soothe the savage beast. She is small towns, large towns, tranquil campuses (campii?), deep woods, flatlands, Appalachian hills, Great Lakes, great rivers…But there is also the sweet smell of asphalt and the intoxicating scent of new wood in construction sites and that reminds me of my youth…

There is more peace among the birds on a sunny, summer afternoon than in the softest bed at night. The press of so many clouds above while bathing in full sun only magnifies the grace. It comes to mind unbidden: we are eating dinner at that restaurant near the place we stay in Hilton Head. It’s late in the week and we are well-rested but for the adrenalin hangover caused by the two-hour nightly viewings of “24” on dvd. Oh how good a time that was! My favorite vacations are inevitably not cruises or trips to cities but those sweet weeks. It’s as deeply ingrained as the brief moments in the cabin in the Appalachian foothills where in the morning I’m reading in a rocking chair and the woods surround us and we're living the Little House on the Prairie dream except the chores are done and there are no phone calls, interruptions... just bliss.