Ale Friday: Chesterton on Dickens on Drinking

Many modern people, chiefly women, have been heard to object to the Bacchic element in the books of Dickens, that celebration of social drinking as a supreme symbol of social living, which those books share with almost all the great literature of mankind, including the New Testament. Undoubtedly there is an abnormal amount of drinking in a page of Dickens, as there is an abnormal amount of fighting, say, in a page of Dumas. If you reckon up the beers and brandies of Mr. Bob Sawyer, with the care of an arithmetician and the deductions of a pathologist, they rise alarmingly like a rising tide at sea. Dickens did defend drink clamorously, praised it with passion, and described whole orgies of it with enormous gusto. Yet it is wonderfully typical of his prompt and impatient nature that he himself drank comparatively little. He was the type of man who could be so eager in praising the cup that he left the cup untasted. It was a part of his active and feverish temperament that he did not drink wine very much. But it was a part of his humane philosophy, of his religion, that he did drink wine. To healthy European philosophy wine is a symbol; to European religion it is a sacrament. Dickens approved it because it was a great human institution, one of the rites of civilisation, and this it certainly is. The teetotaller who stands outside it may have perfectly clear ethical reasons of his own, as a man may have who stands outside education or nationality, who refuses to go to a University...But he is neglecting one of the great social things that man has added to nature.

--Charles Dickens by GK Chesterton

More Catholic than the Pope

Maggie Gallagher reports:

18 Catholic House Democrats, including Reps. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), Patrick J. Kennedy (R.I.) and Carolyn McCarthy (N.Y.) publicly rebuked Pope Benedict XVI for reaffirming during a recent Mexico City trip that legislators who vote to permit the killing of the unborn have excommunicated themselves and may be refused communion during Mass...

Part of the problem seems to be that every American feels he or she can or should be allowed to do or be anything. "When I grow up, I want to be..." where "...." is literally anything, including President of the United States.

We see this far more tragically reflected in the oxymoronic "gay marriage", where folks who cannot be married still want to be married. That's obviously a gigantically bigger sacrifice than any politican's career.

Politicians who say they can't be elected if they're not pro-abortion should realize that not everybody can be anything. In some districts you probably can't be a Catholic AND a politician due to your stance on the life issues. Live with it. Many homosexuals live chastely and many former politicians actually live meaningful lives without holding office.
____

Parody blog updated:

Utilitarian Dreams

You know you're way too much into blogging when you're in your boss's office and you have to stifle the impulse to ask him to repeat what he just said for bloggadocia purposes. My wife says I should start carrying a tape recorder.

He's telling me about his stressful work week and suddenly - so suddenly that I was taken off guard and thus am not able to quote him directly - said he had a strange dream the previous night in which Spongebob Squarepants figured prominently. Spongebob was gesticulating wildly and saying something which I'm now unable to recall because I was laughing at the abrupt mention of Spongebob in a business setting.

We're talking a 50-something year old never-been-married man with no children and no family in the form of nieces or nephews in town. If I had any reportorial (or psychiatric) skills I would've asked him: "How do you even know what SpongeBob looks like?"



My boss is the anti-"grey flannel man" of the '50s. There is nothing grey or flannel about him. He's good at reading body language so I hope I was able to cover my momentary cringe at his declaration (during the same meeting) of being a "Presbyterian predestinationist". In these cases I always have to go through the mental arithmetic of reminding myself that Christians have far more in common rather than what they differ on, but I always skip a beat in the meantime. He dropped the subject quickly enough to suggest he noticed my reaction.

Anyway, I was momentarily jealous of his dreams. Mine seem more functionary and gritty to the extent they are remembered at all. Sometimes I'm laboring under a deadline, trying to solve a work problem. (I once joked to my boss that I should get paid time and a half for last night.) There's usually nothing light or cartoonish, and never anything like Steven Riddle's recent spiritual confection (though Guinness helps me fly there).

Sometimes I dream in words, not pictures, in neatly organized paragraphs. An editor comes around afterwards striking sentences and changing word choices. (I hate the editor guy, though not at the time because at the time I think he's engaging in useful work. After all, I think I'm actually writing, presumably for the blog.) The one time I remembered the dream in the morning I found the writing wasn't even usable.

The other night there was a "dream first" - I went to Confession. See, I just end up dreaming what I do during the day. I work, I write, I go to Confession, I dream about those things. No creativity or imagination at all. Meanwhile Steven has his L.S.D. dreams, my wife dreams of little doggies and kittens, and my boss of cartoon characters...

Keep Your Bible Handy

It came.

You know what "it" is.

Only that motu thing has been more breathlessly awaited.

I started reading it - the Pope's Jesus book - and I can say already it's best to have a bible handy. I think I've referred to Scriptures thrice in twenty pages.

I got sidetracked by a few powerful lines he wrote about that tragic Old Testament figure Saul. I got out my bible dictionaries & commentaries and it's a fascinating if discombobulating exercise to read everyone's take.

The New American Bible Dictionary is very sympathetic. They say, basically, you knew it wasn't going to end well right from the very beginning since the monarchy wasn't God's idea. With an eye towards the history and not what we can learn from Saul's mistakes, the dictionary explains how he had a very difficult task of trying to unite the sacred traditions of the North or something like that.

The Haydock Douay-Rheims was all fire and brimstone. Merciless. The others are somewhere in between...

Für Hambone

In latest National Review on author Philip K. Dick:

If only Dick, born in 1928, had lived to 78 instead of just 53. A quarter-century after his death, he is finally considered not just a serious American writer but one of the century’s greatest. At least, that’s one conclusion to be drawn from Dick’s inclusion in the Library of America: the first science-fiction writer to be so canonized in what is the closest thing to secular sainthood in American letters. Best known for collecting the works of such titans as James and Faulkner, the Library of America presents “America’s best and most significant writing in authoritative editions.” And Dick has been included not for his realist books, which finally started appearing in print posthumously, but for some of his most outlandish sci-fi creations...

His books are filled with learning; this college dropout effortlessly references Shakespeare, the Bible, and the I Ching. (Novelist Jonathan Lethem has written endnotes that could have been a bit more extensive.)

Fortunately, Dick used his gifts to speak eloquently about the dominant themes of the 20th century. His books offer hope, reminding us that, mistake-prone though we are, free will means we have at least the means of making the right decisions. As a character in Palmer Eldritch asks, “Isn’t a miserable reality better than the most interesting illusion?”

It Cain't Get Much Worse

Our speed is suspect
and power, at best, sporadic.
From the cellar the sky is far away
and possibly false, the mound so high
who can help from falling awkward off?
The arms and hands have no control
and the eye wanders, unfocused
anywhere but home...

What can we do
but keep playing, playing
look to the sky, to the sun, a white blur
and pray that the rain comes, that summer is wrong?  
                                           --by Glenn Stout
__________________________________________

Stephen Porter versifies better days, while Daedalus imagines (photo at left) a long overdue bullpen exorcism.



Advice from Kierkegaard:

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.

~Soren Kierkegaard (HT: Summas)

(Note to bullpen: Walking is good. Walking batters is bad.)

Tell me, who in the know can I go to
Who'll explain this mysterious "motu"?
Is it blue? Is it green?
Is it clean, or obscene?
Does it taste more like chocolate, or tofu? - Bob of "Trousered Ape"

Griswold vs. Connecticut wasn't about Griswold's private acts. It was about Griswold being able to buy his pack of publicly-marketed rubbers and strut around with them in public. If his acts were private we wouldn't even know about them. It isn't "private" unless you keep it in the closet. Once you make it public it is, well, public. - Zippy of "What's Wrong With the World"

When I was younger, I could watch TV, read a magazine article, ponder a moral conundrum, consider how to make the pizza dough crispier and chewier, entertain a sexual fantasy, and carry on a conversation with my wife all at the same time. - Bill Luse of Apologia; I could do all of the above while riding a unicycle

In case you were planning to watch this PBS special and didn't get to, I'll sum up the first hour for you: Cathars = good. Catholics = bad. History is easy, once you know the trick! - Maclin Horton on PBS special on the Inquisition

It brought to mind the disportionate media attention that is given to the Spanish Inquisition. This can be documented if you compare Google hits for the Spanish Inquisition and Google hits for La Vendee. Henry Kamen, a Jewish historian, estimates I believe that in the Spanish Inquisition 3,000 or so people were put to death, and this was over more than a century. In less then a year, in what was essentially the first modern genocide, the Jacobins killed approximately 300,000 innocent Catholics in La Vendee for their loyalty to priests approved by Rome. Google "Spanish Inquisition and Catholic" and you get 228,000 hits -- 76 hits for every person killed. Google "La Vendee and Catholic" and you get 14,000 hits -- 1/5 of 1 hit for every person killed. What this tranlates to is 380 times more attention given to the Spanish Inquistion than La Vendee, when adjusted for number of dead, and 16 times more attention without even considered the relative number of people killed. - Commenter on "Open Book" regarding recent PBS special on the Inquisition

“The first requirement,” continues the Archbishop, “in regaining human freedom is to regain human history, to tell the human story as a chronicle of free will.” We are losing a truly human history, submerged under the waves of academic fashion and the technological mania that Chaput also mentions. The loss of this history — a chronicle of human choices and their consequences — deprives us of internal order, of the form and fixity of a historical identity. A man bereft of historical identity is indeed mere flotsam on the waves of vast inanimate forces; his life must only be frustration and despair. He can never perceive the awesome irrefragable contingency of history. He cannot feel the rush of exhilaration when he learns, for instance, that had General Lee heeded the repeated counsel of General Longstreet before sending Pickett on his celebrated Charge, the whole course of American history might have gone quite differently. - Paul Cella quoting Archbishop Chaput

You can imagine my surprise to find that some people, including some people whom I generally admire in the intellect department, appear to be endorsing the idea that Cho Seung-Hui, the young man who murdered more than 30 people at Virginia Tech before killing himself, did what he did because he was possessed by a demon...First, it is unscriptural. The cases of demon possession in the New Testament are exclusively cases in which a demon is tormenting a person internally, not driving a person to commit evil acts against his will. Second, speaking of acting against one’s will, the idea that demons can, by means of possession, drive people to commit evil acts, destroys the notion of free will and takes away individual autonomy and moral responsibility. Third, demon possession is explanatorily otiose in cases such as this. Cho’s behavior can be fully explained in terms of perfectly ordinary human motivations, mental illness, and other mundane concepts....Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not claiming that there is not now, nor has there ever been any such thing as demon possession. But I don’t see any reason to think that demon possession is what we see in the case of a person like Cho, or Stalin, or Hitler, and any such folks. - blogger at "An Examined Life"

His thinking began to change, he said, as he read more deeply into Catholic theology, including works by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. After studying Ratzinger's book "Truth and Tolerance"last year, he said, he called a prominent evangelical philosopher, read him a passage about whether theology is really knowledge, and asked him to guess the author. "He reeled off the names of a bunch of evangelical theologians," Beckwith recalled. "I said, 'No, it's Ratzinger!' And he said, 'So he's one of us!'" - Washington Post article on Francis Beckwith conversion

Minutes away from having the abortion she thought she wanted, each second felt like a second closer to murder rather than the blessed relief she had imagined. Overwhelmed with guilt and fighting back tears, she was led by two nurses into the operating theatre. The doctor, a fatherly-looking man in his 50s, was sitting waiting for her. He was kind, reassuring. "Anna," he said. "Are you ready? If so, we will give you a little injection in the back of your hand and transfer you to the table. Is there anything you would like to say?" "Yes," replied Anna. "I'm really sorry, but I've changed my mind." But instead of being annoyed with her for wasting their time, the medical team seemed to be overcome with a sudden, unexpected euphoria. The doctor broke out into a huge smile, grabbed her shoulder and laughed "Congratulations! Well done, you won't regret it." - from the newspaper the Daily Mail via the Corner

[E]ven true ideology has the tendency to place abstract truth above the actual incarnate world. And that is backwards in terms of priority, turning the truth into a lie: truth at bottom isn't about What, it is about Who. - Zippy of Zippy Catholic

Pope Benedict & Capitalism

The quote going around from the Pope's recent address, at least concerning the negatives of capitalism, is this:

And we can also see the same thing happening in the West, where the distance between rich and poor is growing constantly, and giving rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness.

I haven't read the whole critique yet, which is admittedly a disadvantage in commenting on it. But my main question is whether he considers the personal dignity clause of his statement to be caused by the distance between the rich & poor?

There's much to explore here. Does the gap between the rich and poor automatically lead to a degradation of personal dignity? That was something I hadn't thought of before. Until now I viewed the gap between the rich and poor as irrelevant compared to the matter of the numbers of poor, i.e. whether an economic system gives the greatest welfare to the greatest number of people. Does the best economic system limit the total number of poor or is it one that narrows the gap between the rich and poor? Does the fact that most people can't handle (due to jealousy) income differential, does that mean that society should arrange itself with that (very human tendency) in mind?

This is that difficult line-drawing between individual freedom and good of society. If a drug is abused by 90% of people, it will be prohibited. At 50% probably. At 20%? Maybe not. There's some percentage at which it will, but it surely varies by drug depending on factors like tradition and how powerful the lobbies defending it are.

The Pope's statement reminds me of Russia, and their current internal combustion. Given the control of thugs and monopolies, I'm not sure how capitalistic Russia is. But it is obviously more so now than under Communism -- has the resulting disaster (skyrocketing alcohol abuse and mortality) there been due to the introduction of capitalism?

Does the mere fact of someone having much more than the next person result in a feeling of degradation of personal dignity, as in the lower middle class versus the super rich? Does that gap so impact the sense of the lower middle class person's sense of dignity that he resorts to escape through drugs and alcohol?

Or, is it this - the fact that one of the key components of capitalism is marketing. Is advertising the evil, in that it creates, in consumer goods, the promise of happiness, a happiness goods can't satisfy?

A quick search of Catholic blogdom reveals other posts that I'll read more thoroughly as I get time, after reading all of the Pope's remarks:

From Dumb Ox Daily News.

Eric Scheske implies that Russia's problems are temporary, displaying the growing pains that all economies going to capitalism experience:

Has anyone else noticed that it seems like a disproportionate number of bizarre stories like these are coming out of former Soviet bloc countries? I assume it’s because they’re schizoid countries: old country/modern world, poor but capitalism coming to make ‘em rich, socialism to free market. Tough growing pains, but humor fodder for the rest of us. If you feel guilty, ship money to the Church in Eastern Europe. I think it’s one of the best charitable causes in the world right now.

Evangelical Catholicism takes a dimmer view of capitalism.

Rerum Novarum writes:

There is no problem with Capitalism that a good dose of authentic Christian morality cannot solve. Capitalism produces wealth like no other economic system. But it is a mirror of the values of the society that employs it. [Michael Forrest]

A post from Detente.

Barnum was Right; Case #38,674

I listen to a country music radio station and every couple months or so they have a "psychic" on, and let me tell you it is painful on the ears.

The callers say more about themselves (by virtue of calling a psychic) than the psychic is ever going to say about the caller. Is it sexist to notice that it's normally the fairer sex on the phone? (Answer: Yes, in today's society it's not sexist to notice male flaws, only female ones - just as it's okay for Imus to get canned but not million dollar rappers. But I digress...)

So the caller asks if she & her husband will ever have children:

"Psychic": "Oh that's a tough one. Let me tell you why it's tough. It's tough because your physicality changes over the years [Me: uh, I thought you were supposed to be able to predict change. Isn't that the whole point?] I see two children in your energy field but I'm...I'm not sure whether they'll be natural or adopted."

Caller: "Do you think my husband will ever want to have children?"

[Doh! It's the case where the husband doesn't want them, not that they can't have them! I can feel - dare I say predict - the psychic's pain!]

Psychic: "Oh...uh, does he play golf?"

[Hey-ho, somebody sound the non-sequitor alarm!]

Caller: "Yes, he does."

Psychic: "I thought so. He's also narcissistic."

Caller: "Yes!"

New information: it does a psychic good.
_______

Update: The radio show host responds:

Sorry you don't enjoy K. on the Show - most DO, however, or I wouldn't book her, obviously. You wouldn't believe the response she gets. And furthermore, despite what you think, the feedback I get from people who've actually had a "session" with her would blow your mind.

You either believe in this kind of stuff or you don't ... it's really as simple as that. But despite what I think you think, she's the real deal.

WWI & WWII Military Deaths

Although the numbers are debated and very rough, I used the statistics from Wikipedia and found the number of military dead as a percentage of population for each of the two world wars. I then averaged those percentages to come up with a combined "misery index" by country:

Germany 5.5%
Serbia 4.5%
Russia 3.6%
Austria-Hungary 2.7%
France 2.0%
Japan 1.4%
United Kingdom 1.4%
Italy 1.3%
Australia 1.0%

Everyone who had terrible casualties in WW I (arbitrarily defined as greater than 1.2% casualties) had much lower casualty rates in WWII except for one country: Germany. Germany went from 3.1% to 7.9%.

Being able to accept those sort of casualties is just unbelieveable, especially just 20 years after the end of the first. How militaristic Germany must have been, and how willing the citizens to die!

Most countries who suffered extreme casualities during the first war did not in the second; France (surely in recoil from WWI casualties) basically bowed out of WWII. The opposite also happened in some cases, such as with Russia where the death rate when from around 1% to 6%. But in Germany there was the high death rate in both. (For Serbia, I lumped WWII's Yugoslavia in with them. For Austria-Hungary, WWII I lumped in only Hungary.)

That's What I Say

...or rather that's what she said* - Kathleen Parker homers to right with this column:

In the "gotcha" question of the first GOP debate, journalist Jim VandeHei asked John McCain: "Do you believe in evolution?" A natural response might have been, "Well, that depends on how you define evolution."...

On its surface, the question seems simple enough -- if oddly out of century. Darwin's theory of evolution isn't exactly hot off the presses.

But it remains controversial among some people of faith -- including some respected scientists -- for whom evolutionary theory reduces man's world to a godless accident bereft of moral meaning or structure.

To the faithful, in other words, it is not such a simple question. It also was not a fair question under the circumstances. Yes or no doesn't quite cover the complex issues implicit in any mention of Darwin these days.

In a conversation after the debate, Huckabee said, "I wish life were so simple. If it were, we'd be in a game show and not running a presidential campaign. ... If I'd had time, I would have asked whether he meant macro or micro evolution?''

That's a different sort of answer than what is inferred from a simple "no'' forced by the manic pace of a 90-minute "debate'' among 10 candidates, none of whom is qualified to seriously debate scientific theory. Nor, as president, should they try. In fact, Huckabee says he does believe in evolution (with qualifications) and thinks Darwin's theory should be taught in schools.

"I do know that species do, in fact, adapt and there are many instances of adaptation and mutation,'' he said, "but I still believe that the design has a designer and the creation has a creator. I wouldn't pretend to fill in the blanks between what God created and what is today."

* - today's homage to The Office

The 2008 Perfect Candidate....

The perfect candidate would have:

the leadership abilities of Giulliani and Romney

the policy positions and worldview of Brownback

the discipline of Hillary Clinton

the eloquence of O'Bama

the hair of Edwards

the courage of McCain

But alas each has either a fatal flaw or is unelectable. Tis true that most presidential candidates (including the eventual winner) have fatal flaws, but the difference is that usually we don't know it in advance of the election.

More Reads...

From Alterman's biography of Bruce Springsteen:

[In Tunnel of Love]...the themes of rebellion and escape are not merely absent, but repudiated...in an explicit rejection of the romantic view taken in Born to Run, the road now turns out not to contain the possibility of escape and refuge, but rather offers only false promises and misplaced hopes...The road, Bruce sings, is 'nothing but road'; it is at home that one finally finds God's grace. The album is conspicuous in its use of Catholic imagery.
__

Walker Percy, who was undergoing radiation treatments at the time, was moved to write Springsteen in 1989: "I've always been an admirer of yours, for your musicianship, and for being one of the few sane guys in your field. The two of us are rarities in our professions," he continued, speaking of their shared faith, "you as a postmodern musician and I as a writer, novelist, and philosopher."... Years later, after Percy's death, Springsteen read his novel The Moviegoer and admired its lasting "toughness and beauty." He wrote Percy's widow: "The loss and search for faith and meaning have been at the core of my own work for most of my adult life. I'd like to think that perhaps that is what Dr. Percy heard and was what moved him to write me."

* * *
I'd picked up the Springsteen book at one of those $3-a-bag booksales at the local library. Another I'd picked up was a book about one person's journey through faith and how books affected that. She seems to go from one extreme to the other - from basing her faith wholly on facts received from others to making herself the sole "judge and jury". She was initially thrilled by Josh McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict because it gave her faith an intellectual backing to what had been only an emotional experience. Marcia Ford writes,

"Like a true modernist, in the 1970s I was addicted to proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Bible was true! That Jesus rose from the dead! That every single doctrine was based on verifiable fact!"

But later she read the egregious Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the book that Dan Brown borrowed heavily from for The Da Vinci Code. Her faith was greatly shaken. She renounced the intellect & things historical (but what about "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind?"), shrugging:

"I knew, I knew that no research, no theory, no archeological finding, no indisputable evidence would ever shake my belief and faith in Christ. Because my faith and trust was not based on provable fact...my personal experience with God carried more weight than all the facts and documentation and arguments for or against the existence of God combined. I had made the leap from Evidence that Demands a Verdict to a judge and jury of one. Me."

I found her back and forth interesting in light of Tom of Disputations' recent post about how too many people want faith in science rather than "faith in faith". But on the other hand, her leap suggests no need for anybody but herself. Just "me and Jesus" as Tom T. Hall once sang. There seems to be nothing to keep her from becoming a Mormon, given the right circumstances, or a Jehovah Witness. There's no longer Truth, just "my truth".

* * *
On a lighter note, I see that the local Other Paper has jumped on the parody bandwagon concerning our local news weather "storm team" (which is too close to 'Storm Troopers' and with similar tactics - breaking in and bullying television shows minding their own business).

Immediately after writing my parody, I sent it to the editor over there hoping they'd have a little fun too.

I'd written:

NBC-4's Storm Team 4 is on the scene for you, covering rogue gusts of wind that are traveling at speeds up to 12mph.

They wrote:

Jym: “We interrupt The Office for this Storm Team 4 bulletin. There is a stiff-breeze warning—that’s a warning, not a watch—in Franklin County. You’re advised to…”

Dave: “Jym? Jym? I’m sorry to butt in, but we just had a gust of 12 miles per hour in Obetz. And remember, people: Don’t try to photograph the breeze—just seek shelter.”

Coincidence? I report, you decide...

* * *
Other books picked up "almost free" but to go through a lengthy process to determine their savability (since shelf space is always at a premium): The 9/11 Commission Report, The Seventh Winter by Hal Borland, Toplin's Ken Burns's The Civil War: Historians Respond, Dean Koontz's Mr. Murder, Henry Thomas's Living Biographies of the Great Poets, Davis's Don't Know Much About the Civil War, Bentley's The Brontes and Their World. Reader comments always welcome, such as this comment from a fellow Ohioan concerning the German spike helmets:

There are stories told about how the Luxembourgers delighted in tormenting their German neighbors by calling the Germans "pickles." The term referred to the Pickel or spike on the top of the German Army helmet that was known as the Pickelhaube.

UPDATE: So far: 9/11 Commission = KEEP, The Seventh Winter = KEEP, Toplin's "Ken Burns's..." REJECT, Mr. Murder = KEEP, Thomas's "Living Biographies..." - consign to basement, Davis's "Don't Know Much.." = KEEP, Bentley's "The Brontes..." - consign to basement.

Dogs, Baseball & Memory Lane (and a whole lot mo')

Bill Luse sent me an attaboy concerning this pic of our dog. I like it too. I like it not only because he has such a winsome expression on his face (kind eyes) but also because there was a subtle "halo" effect made by the fact that the background is lighter around him - the trees a lighter green. The halo effect is more obvious in this smaller shot.

* * *
Sometimes the “Other” is closer than you think.

I grew up with Germans next door. Not the Hun kind, but gentle, gemütlichkeit folks with a home full of tasteful tokens from the old world.

They were second generation and their house was so redolent of Deutschland that you could almost smell it when you came in.

Music, sure. And a cellar full of homemade wines from which we took tiny sips after his parents went to bed in order to stay awake during late night baseball card trading sessions. A little statue of “Perkeo”, a goat-herder of myth and legend who is the yin to Heidi's yang. There was that scary pointed helmet used by troops in the Great War, complete with a scary story of a relative who survived a battle and intolerable heat only to die from the shock of the cold water of a shower afterwards.

Cold water could kill you. The sheer mundaneness of such a death (as well as National Enquirer reports of spontaneous human combustion) was somehow more terrifying than serial killers.

Naturally I felt an affinity for this German culture though I was Irish. And not having Irish as the foreign language option at high school meant German. But years later I learned the culture was not so foreign as I’d thought. Turns out a great-grandmother had come from southern Deutschland back in the 1880s. And so did another one. All the dee's and der's that Grandpa affected was legit, authentic, gotten from his mother and not from the local saloon!

* * *
Regarding idiotology, a subject of endless (some would say narcissistic) fascination to me, Tom of Disputations writes and says in the comment thread: I think the best coping mechanism is to keep one's idiocies to oneself.

And a chill fell over blogdom. *shivers*

Better to find a coping mechanism to deal with Tom's proposed coping mechanism than to quit blogging. Why should only Tom & Bill & Zippy et al have all the fun? Kreitzberg has a severe conflict of interest don't you think?

They say that it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to be prove it by speaking, and that reminds me of the days of summer, thick with cattails and goldenrod, back when I was a lad in the humid valleys just north of the Ohio river. 'Twas there that I first learned to apply the hardwood to the ol' horsehide, i.e. bat to ball, and became a feared walksman did despite the difficulties of being a slow grower and blind as a bat of the animal variety.

Being short gave me a small strike zone and being near-sighted gave me the opportunity to take a lot of pitches since you can't hit what you can't see. The combination of small size and bad eyesite was tailor-made for receiving base-on-balls. And walk I did! I took more pitches than Bill Clinton made passes during his Administration.

But sometimes you just want to get up there and swing the bat. As Joe Nuxhall says when pitchers come to the plate: "if you swing the bat you're dangerous". Dangerous in the sense that you might just hit a home run.

* * *
Been drowning in a sea of bad familial and friend news, all of a financial nature. My but they be risk-takers! They surf the high waters of high debt with a marvelous insouciance; they quit good jobs as if financially independent, they spend as if on a corporate expense account, they treat credit cards as manservants. I watch wide-eyed in childish wonder, their debt piling to the point of pecuniary pain, to the point of late fees and astronomical interest charges as they buy trifles down the home stretch to Misery. Surprisingly, I find my own peace destroyed as they strive towards losing their houses. ("It's all good till somebody loses an eye" went the childhood phrase; the adult equivalent is "It's all good 'till somebody loses their home".) I cannot shake them out of it since talking of financial matters directly is absurd, gauche, like asking if they masturbate. They recognize no personal sin and yet expect redemption. They would say, rightly, that it wasn't trifles exactly that got them into the mess. But it's somehow symptomatic.

* * *
It’s a seller's market for Beauty. Dreams, sentiment, trees, beaches - everybody wants more of it now that Politics is officially over. It's the classic tulip bulb crash with the conservative party playing the part of the tulip bulbs. Sell Ann Coulter, buy Gordon Lightfoot.

Conservatives are called reactionary for a reason. They are called upon only in reaction to dismal conditions. You couldn't get a French president like the one they just elected without the backdrop of thirty years of failed liberal ones. You don't get Ronald Reagan without Jimmy Carter. You don't get even a George Bush (and Roberts & Alito) without a Bill Clinton (and Bader Ginsburg). The default is liberalism. My dad says these things are cyclical, and they are. The question is whether the lows are lower and the highs not as high.

But the good news is beauty is back in style. Call your broker. I'm digging into Isak Dinesen and her dreamscape prose of Africa and Ehrengard. My foray did make “re-entry” more difficult, to borrow from Walker Percy. I guess it's been too long.

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Five years ago I think I would’ve greeted a website titled “What’s Wrong With the World” with much enthusiasm. But now I think the subject has jumped the shark, beaten to death by the good denizens of St. Blog’s. The natural contrarian in me would normally like such a title but now true contrarians would prefer the (sparser) site titled What’s Right With the World. But Bill & Zippy are contributors so I shall not despair at what promises to be despair-full posts. Still, sometimes I do miss ol’ Gerard. I'd say "I'm just sayin'" if it wasn't a cliche.

Wow


Some photos look photoshopped even when they are real. Source here, via Happy Catholic.