Sun-fueled Wanderings

A Sudden Right-brain Coup

Songs with tunes that sound so fine
when lyric matters not, but rhyme.
And poems with words of dressy bliss,
who cares if they and meaning kiss?


* * *

Missing Sarton Time

"Die to self" the saying goes
'tis easier in practice,
For if in reverie it grows --
at the time it tastes like catcus.

A Flannery O'Connor Blog for Spanish Readers

is here.

A graphic found there:

It's Early But....

...sometimes the paranoids are wrong. At least so far Obama doesn't seem to be interested in limiting freedom of speech or religion.

Wake the Kids, Phone the Neighbors

In what might be the first documented case anyone changed their mind about anything after debating it on the Internet, we have this surprising case (in the thread, not the post).

The general rule in Internet debate is that the vitriol slung against the side you were leaning towards only solidifies that side for you.

I'd felt sure that Zippy's "Jonathan: This is the part where you say 'OK, that seals it.'" would be sufficient to provoke a negative reaction in Jonathon, but lo & behold the latter had enough humility and respect for the truth that it allowed him to say:

OK, that seals it, at least with respect to Fr. Harrison's argument, which is all I had in mind. I don't see how his position can be saved if he doesn't make the distinction between ancient practices and medieval practices, because I can't make out any coherent distinction on his account between confession-extracting torture and information-extracting torture... On the Catechism alone, one could make the distinction that I have outlined, but given Fr. Harrison's take on the Catechism, I can't see any consistent way for him to make it out.

I'm convinced. Fr. Harrison appears to me to be relying on special pleading.

Humility is sort of charismatic.

High-larity Ensues

Examples of editorials masquerading as news items are legion, especially in a left-wing organ like the LA Times, but you have to almost laugh at this piquant bit of bias:

President Truman signed the first declaration of an annual National Day of Prayer, and President Reagan established it as the first Thursday in May.

Under Bush, the day was a political event, confirming that religion was a core tenet of Republican politics.

It reads like parody; I must've missed the headline back in '01 or '02: "Bush Declares National Day of Prayer is Now Political and Confirms that Religion is Core Tenet of Republican Party".

Say It Is So, Manny!

[Update: Okay so I feel guilty now in my haughty assumption as to what Manny did or didn't know. Innocent before proven guilty, yada, yada. It's possible that Manny wasn't aware it was a banned drug.]
____

I'm always fascinated - in this age of science - how it is that folks like Manny Ramierez, Bill Clinton, Roger Clemens and the like deny culpability when there's a stained dress or a positive drug test.

It's seems a sign of contempt. It's gotten so it's almost refreshing when someone actually admits they did steroids. You want to praise someone, anyone, for admitting they did anything wrong when caught red-handed, or in this case syrnge-handed.

Most come up with wild excuses such as "the butler did it!", er, I mean "the doctor did it!", or, in Clinton's case, parsing the word "is".

Maybe the root of it is the lawyering of America. Rich ballplayers can easily afford to hire agents and lawyers and the mindset of the lawyer begins to rub off (very easy in Clinton's case, being a lawyer himself).

The attorney mindset - the equivalent of their Boy Scout oath - is this: admit nothing and offer possible explanations other than the truth. Sow reasonable doubt because, you know, in the legal system truth is an ancillary player. If truth were a ballplayer he'd be hitting .202. In double-A. Not exactly an impact player.

"Doctor error" seems the hot new excuse. Perhaps part of Obama's stimulus package should've been a bail-out of poorly performing sports doctors. Banks and car companies make mistakes and they get all the money.

It's funny how the doctors never error on the side of hurting the ballplayer's performance. Which might be by prescribing estrogen by mistake. We'd sure hear about that pronto. That doctor would have a lawsuit slapped on him faster than the player could grow breasts.

Why Did God Command Evil Deeds?

From Michael Novak in The Catholic Thing:

I have always read the stories of the Jewish testament – from the polygamy of Abraham to the commands of Yahweh to bash the heads of captured infants against stones – as a description of the way things once were on earth, everywhere, whereas in the Bible there was a slow unfolding of humane, even godly, values. This unfolding was slow, although not nearly so slow as the eons of Darwinian evolution so many enlightened people today find acceptable...

As I read the Old Testament, it consists of books that tell the history of the education of a privileged part of the human race in the Creator’s high standards for all of humanity. Not all is revealed at once. Many existing evils are not immediately uprooted. Slowly and spiraling up and down through the centuries, though on a slightly upward tendency, Israel is taught that God wishes to be approached not in subservience but in friendship, and that our proper approach to Him is not self-abasement but love.

____
My sincere and respectful questioner has helped me catch sight of a profound irony. Now that he has learned from the Bible a very high standard of virtue, conscience, judgment and aspiration, he rejects the Author Who taught him those moral advantages. Why? Because that Author did not reveal everything at once.

Update Note

The Parody blog updated with a potential interloper on the way to global warming, Angels and Demons-ology, and the outsourcing of Miss USA to India.

Another Darwin Meet-up

Entertaining write-up from Betty Duffy:

It's all part of the fun, or at least, part of the genre. We get to be whomever we want to be. Or we get to be wholely ourselves, but protected.

The Darwins and I had a laugh today about the idea of "making connections in the modern world." So many modern story-tellers are fond of waxing philosophical about it (as I seem to be doing right now). Have you ever read any of Miranda July's short stories? I like one or two of them. I liked her movie, "You Me and Everyone We Know." The rest of her stories made me want to poke my eye out. There's something really corny about getting too complex on the issue. It's just meeting people. It used to happen all the time.

And maybe because there's so much history already aquired by reading one another's lives, things feel instantaneously intimate, even when they're not. How can I look Mr. Darwin in the eye when he knows I posed in the buff? Well, it wasn't that difficult. The Darwins don't make pretenses of being anyone other than who they are.

I think one of the interesting dynamics of meet-ups is how it reverses the "natural" order. Usually you meet someone and get to know them, here you get to know them then you meet them.

Paltry Thanks

So...social conservatives voted for McCain, even though he wasn't the most socially conservative presidential candidate available by any stretch of the imaginatory system, and what thanks do we get?

No thanks, only blame. For the loss I guess. I'm getting the distinct impression some are trying to ditch social conservatives from the party for that reason. Karl Rove addressed that yesterday saying, "Politics works by addition, not subtraction." He said that it's not wise to "read social conservatives out of the party" but rather the idea is to expand the issue base.

I heard it too at a family gathering recently where it was mentioned how the Republican party needs to be the party of civil liberties, and I was okay with that, thinking he meant the tendency of government to spy on its citizens. Big Bro will get out of hand and terrorism can be a convenient excuse. But instead he was talking about gay rights, which means, I presume, gay marriage.

When I was younger, I used to naively think that if conservatives gave up their support of the death penalty, then the Left would give up its support of abortion.

But was it ever really about the death penalty? Didn't Democrats embrace Bill Clinton despite his support of it? In the end the social issues are simply a convenient way to make the conservatives look heartless and cold, nevermind the insanity of trying to frame abortion as other than heartless and cold.

So I can't believe a unilateral disarmament by Republicans on issues like gay marriage would suddenly make limited government more appealing to the American voter. The cold hard fact that libertarians miss is that Americans don't want limited government and low taxes right now. For example, the majority simply don't care about a flat tax. Do you know any politician who has ever won a campaign on the flat tax in the past decade? Ever? Americans want entitlements and safety nets, especially if only the rich pay. I don't see what that has to do with the price of abortion in China.

Fiction for a Wednesday

It's been far too long since the last installment of "Fiction for a..." where the dot-dot-dot happens to be the day of the week it gets posted.
_____

It was at the very height of the Disco Era, 1978, when a sloe gin fog loomed over the land and obscured his town's Mona Lisa, Molly Malone and Venus de Milo: a statue called The Genius of Water.

Her hair flowed like lyrics, pausing only in the fitful crescendo of curve. Her nose was strong and Roman and her eyes and mien conveyed the rare and almost paradoxical aspect of wise mercy. It was like magic to watch from her hands fall glistening water. Movement, life, motherhood. The idylls of spring.

The genius of it had mostly been lost on Stan since its only representation came on a tiny screen on the side of a small box accompanied by the triteness of the theme from the television show WKRP in Cincinnati.

Week in, week out, the Great Fountain began and ended the show in the familiar if impoverishing montage: shown from the same angle, from the same height, in the same season, in the same light, soon it held no magic for Stan reduced as it were to the cheap totem of the everyday.

In conformity to the general rule, he had to move away to appreciate her. It took time, indeed years, but wonder returned to the Prodigal's eyes.

It was the water, naturally, that did it.

 

From the latest Christendom Review...

 




Found at Christendom Review, paintings by Timothy Jones.

Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

If you're against capital punishment, you must be more against capital punishment against babies, which is carried out without trial or jury or appeal or court-appointed lawyer.

If you're against war, you must be more against war conducted against babies by their parents and doctors, since unborn babies are the ultimate defenseless pacifists, only wanting to go about their own business of growing and living.

If you're against poverty, you must be more against babies being deprived of their only property, their own lives and bodies.

If you're for social justice, you must be more in favor of justice for babies as an integral part of religion and society.

There is no social ill, no injustice, no horror that is not intensified when it involves the unborn, for they have the least power and the most need. If we don't protect our young, we don't protect anyone.
- Maureen of "Aliens in this World"

At the very least, Notre Dame's actions suggest that, unlike a beauty queen from California, it lacks the courage of its convictions. - Bishop Wenski's homily at the Mass of Reparation

Again and again, Nevin nicely draws out what he calls “an engaging two-sidedness” in Thérèse’s spiritual life: a fierce determination to suffer all for the sake of Christ in concert with an almost whimsical and playful intimacy with Christ. Moreover, Nevin also shows how the two sides belong together in Thérèse’s great, unifying vision of divine love. Love brings the anguish of self-abandonment—and it brings the often silly but fragrant, cherished moments of intimacy. This young girl’s imaginative zeal for grand gesture of service to Christ—torments! sacrifice! martyrdom!—along with her gauzy images of sporting with the Christ-child in the embrace of love was realized in her slow and painful death. It turned out that Thérèse would not become a famous missionary, boldly preaching to the heathens, nor would she submit her lovely neck to the executioner’s sword as crowds gathered to watch, nor would she become a modern day Joan of Arc. Instead, in the hidden world of the cloister, far from the public eye, entirely removed from the great events of the day, a slow-moving disease patiently, relentlessly killed her. As the tuberculosis advanced, Thérèse had to abandon the élan and spiritual drama she might have imagined in l’abandon. In her suffering, the smiling baby Jesus did not play with her in the afternoon sunshine. He was only able to be with her in the dark, blind silence of the death he endured for our sake. What God asked of Thérèse was only to die: the utterly banal, empty, and universal destiny we all share. It was the fulfillment of her “little way.” - R. Reno of "First Things"

Today is Earth day,
Let us pray,
With Al Gore and all his ken,
That the prophet need
No more bemoan
Depletion of the sacred ozone,
That air be once more clean and pure,
Car fumes replaced by horse manure,
That an ice age soon
Will come again,
But not before our last Amen.

© 2009 and following unto the end of Time, by William Luse

[My cousin] would joke about ordering Charles Dickens martinis -- "no olive or twist". - Dylan of "Dark October"

Two decades ago, when I was involved in college Republican politics years ago, I saw several seriously Christian college students get involved because of their belief in the pro-life cause. They knew very little about other issues. Within six months, they were gung-ho for tax cuts, aid to the Contras, and missile defense. A similar process occurs when women who begin with a love for feminism join the Left... they end up being fervently pro-choice even though they might not have felt that way originally. As long as our two-party system works this way, I can't see this changing. - Commenter on Amy Welborn's blog

American Randall Thompson does beautiful things with "O fons Bandusiae": you can just feel the burning sun at "atrox hora Caniculae," and you can positively splash around in the cascading music of "unde loquaces lymphae desiliunt tuae." I should say that the last three tracks weren't to my taste: "Eheu fugaces" and "Tu ne quaesieris" were murky and strange, which was an especially sad fate for "Tu ne quaesieris," with its intoxicating rhythm. The last track is a Latin version of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm," which I found extremely quaint. - Meredith of "For Keats' Sake"

Five years ago, today, this blog was born,
Named “Trousered Ape,” in self-directed scorn,
And launched out into cyberspace, although
It had no clear idea of where to go.
As time went by, this question was resolved,
For rapidly the blogosphere evolved:
By dozens, scores, and hundreds, blogs arose
On every side, practitioners of prose
Both eloquent and lively, each a source
Of wittily and wisely wrought discourse:
Of culture, politics, and family life;
Of movies, books, and theologic strife;
Some Helicon ascend and there make free
To dally with the Muse of poetry.
All this, I’ve learned, is far above my station:
My only gift is for versification.
I leave good writing to all those who can,
Forswear ambition to become a Man,
Pretend that Darwin’s Theory is a jape,
Write silly verses, and remain an Ape. - Bob of "Trousered Ape"

In case I haven't alerted you to the fact: you have a solemn duty to cast your vote for Sancta Sanctis in the Best Under-Appreciated Catholic Blog category of the Cannonball Awards...I'm sharing third place with the Catholic Cartoon Blog. So I'm going to swallow my pride and ask . . . What do I have to do to get you to vote for me??? - Enbrethilel's cri de coeur reminds me of the practice of praying for the most forgotten soul in Purgatory - if everyone's praying for him then he's no longer the most forgetten, and if Enbrethilel wins she'll no longer be the "best under-appreciated Catholic blogger"

Last night on TV...we saw Mel Gibson going the way of Solomon (...who wrote some of the Bible prior to falling from grace) holding hands with a much younger woman at some Hollywood event instead of his wife of 28 years and 7 children. These public falls from grace are meant to arouse the intercessory mode within us...we are a priestly people. It's our job not our option at least at the macro level of praying for all those upon whom the wrath of God rests in some sense... At minimum [we pray] that in their final moments if they do not change now, that they trust in Christ's forgiveness unlike Judas. - Bill Bannon commenting on "Via Media"

We need you and your strength
Because we feel small and fragile in the face of death;
Help us, we pray, because only your support
Can help us get up and, with trust, take each other's hands,
And start out again on the journey of life. - part of Pope Benedict prayer for Italy earthquake victims

I'm Personally Opposed to My Sins

I'm a collector of incidences of the "personally opposed" loophole, begun I believe by Mario Cumo and now increasingly snort-inducing. For example, from Joe Torre's The Yankee Years one of the major steriod distributors turns out to be against them!

"Go see Mac" and "The Program" became understood code for seeking out supplement options, legal or perhaps not. McNamee claims to be personally opposed to illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

But not personally opposed to dispensing them because, as he says, otherwise they're going to get it elsewhere. That sounds familiar.

Elsewhere, saw this amusing parody from a commenter on Amy's blogorhythm:

All of you commenters here who keep bringing up torture and going on and on about it:

You all are such simplistic one-issue voters on this torture issue. You're in such lockstep with the Vatican and the hierarchy that it's clear you have abandoned free thinking entirely.

I’m personally opposed to torture, but I don’t think I could ever impose that view on somebody else.

I’d rather see us have a President who works to reduce the need for torture. We need to get at the deeper issues here – it’s not just as black and white as you religious-types always say. We should work with torturers to support them, not criminalize them.

Your belief that torture is “wrong” is just that – a religious belief. Well, what about all of the people who don’t share that belief? We live in a diverse, pluralistic society. Get with the program.

How can you take what is a matter of faith for you and impose it upon another person who might not share that faith?

Did you know that the amount of torturing in this country actually went up during the Clinton presidency? It was lower under Republican presidencies.

Torture is a difficult issue, and people of good will can disagree about it. Ultimately, I think the torturer should be free to make that choice in consultation with his attending doctors, his field agents, and his God.

Besides, even if we made torture illegal, guess what? - there would still be people out there torturing. And they wouldn’t have access to all the sophisticated equipment that we have in modern torture chambers. They’d use whatever they could find – sticks, broken glass, even coat hangers.

Is that what you want? You want us to go back to the days of back-alley torturing with coat hangers?

A truly enlightened society would keep torture safe, legal, and rare.

Ohio Blogger Meet-Up

Had the pleasure of meeting some of those behind the "blogger curtain", in this case the the warm and witty Mrs. D, her cherubic infant son Jack, and the smart and sagacious Jay Anderson, Brendan, and Fr. Martin Fox.

Rich Leonardi, who they say is a live wire, couldn't make it due to a family commitment. Mrs. D had mentioned inviting any other local Catholic bloggers and now it occurs to me that I'd forgotten to ask Maureen in Dayton who blogs at Suburban Banshee.