Keith Ward interview

I liked that last lecture by Keith Ward that I posted the other day and so decided to look for more about him. I found this video interview of him by Robert Wright at Slate magazine. He talks about world religions, religion and science, and the problem of evil (hs take on this last point I found less than convincing) .... pretty interesting. The page at Slate where the video lives is here, where you can also find a link to a transcript.

Thomas Reese SJ on Lefebvre ....

...... from 1988, which is historically interesting as it's just when the founder of the SSPX was about to consecrate four bishops against the will of the Vatican, one of whom was the Holocaust-denier Richard Williamson. Here's a little of what Fr. Reese wrote, from Archbishop Lefebvre: Moving Toward Schism? .....

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Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre is threatening to ordain three bishops this June, a move that will put him in formal schism with the Roman Catholic Church. The ordination of bishops is the act of rebellion most feared by the Vatican because it would provide episcopal successors to the 82-year-old Archbishop. Without bishops, the movement will eventually wither away after his death since there will be no one to ordain new priests and bishops. If he does ordain a bishop without Vatican approval, he will be automatically excommunicated under the Code of Canon Law .....

Marcel Lefebvre was raised in a conservative French family by an industrialist father who longed for the return of the monarchy. Both father and son believed all of France's problems (liberalism, modernism, socialism and Communism) originated in the French Revolution. In the Archbishop's mind, the council presided over the marriage of the church and the revolution. "The union of Church and Revolution is adulterous. And from such an adulterous union, nothing but bastards can come forth. And who or what are the bastards? Our rites. The rite of the Mass is a bastard rite!"

Archbishop Lefebvre is known most widely for his support of the Tridentine liturgy and his attacks on the liturgical changes initiated by Vatican II. But his complaints against Vatican II go far beyond liturgical reforms. He also rejects conciliar developments in collegiality, religious liberty and ecumenism. These are seen by him as corresponding to the Revolution's égalité, liberté and fraternité.

At the Vatican Council, he even refused to sign the final versions of "The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church," "The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World" and "The Declaration on Religious Liberty." In his view, "The council has allowed those professing errors and tendencies condemned by the popes...to believe in good faith that their teachings are now approved."

Archbishop Lefebvre was suspended from priestly functions in July of 1976 after ordaining priests against the direct order of Pope Paul VI. He has continued to ordain priests against papal orders. These priests, and others who have joined him, do not recognize the authority of the Pope or of local bishops. They have sown confusion among the faithful by constantly reviling the council and attacking local bishops as heretics. In a 1970 profession of faith, he rejected "the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant leanings that clearly manifested itself in the Second Vatican Council and after the council in the reforms issuing from it." .....

In Archbishop Lefebvre's view, "Not we are in schism, the conciliar church is!" He has vowed that "no authority--not even the highest authority in the hierarchy--can compel us to depart from our Catholic faith as it has been taught for 19 centuries." (See Bede Lackner, "Archbishop Lefebvre and His Rebellion Today," America, July 13, 1985) ....... Despite this mud slinging by the Archbishop, the Pope has continued trying to bring the Archbishop back into the church. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has met repeatedly with the Archbishop .....

The day of reckoning between Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and John Paul II is fast approaching. Up until now, the Vatican has followed the same strategy one would use with hijackers or terrorists. Vatican officials have kept talking in the hopes that the Archbishop would be reconciled or die before he ordained a bishop. Archbishop Lefebvre says, "I've already pushed the date back four times, and I cannot delay the ordinations another time." Unless the Archbishop once again postpones the ordination of new bishops, the Pope must give in to the Archbishop or acknowledge his excommunication.

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Keith Ward lecture

- Keith Ward

Today I listened to a fun lecture (mp3 or video, about 1 hour length) from last month by fellow of the British Academy and Anglican priest Keith Ward, entitled God, Science and the New Atheism at Cambridge. Early on in the lecture, he mentions the Flying Spaghetti Monster :) ......

Ash Wednesday

- Ash Wednesday by Roger Wagner

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Roger Wagner's Visionary Landscapes, Image Journal

[...] An elegiac note is also struck in one of Wagner's earliest compositions, entitled Ash Wednesday. In it, he has translated an enigmatic section from T. S. Eliot's Ash-Wednesday into pictorial form. The section begins:

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? .....

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What Rilke meant

I've started a Lenten audio retreat given by Creighton University. The first installment (of eleven mp3 files) began with a poem by Mary Oliver .....

Invitation

Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude—
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in this broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

Paul Touvier and the SSPX

I've just begun reading a new audio book I got by chance at the library yesterday. I only picked it out because there was a picture of Michael Cain on the cover :) but it's weird how the story it tells turned out to relate to recent events - the furor over the Pope de-excommunicating the SSPX bishops.

The book is The Statement by Brian Moore and is a fictional mystery but is based on the the real-life case of Paul Touvier, A French Vichy era war criminal who was long protected by government officials and the Catholic Church. He was found guilty of treason and collusion with the Nazis, and was also later charged with crimes against humanity for the deportation of Jews and the murder of seven Jewish hostages at Rillieux-la-Pape, near Lyon, on 29 June 1944. He was sentenced to death in absentia because he was on the run and never caught until 1989 when he was found hiding with the SSPX. Here's some of what Wikipedia has on this ....

It was not until 1989 that Touvier was found hiding in the Society of Saint Pius X Priory in Nice. The SSPX stated at the time that Touvier had been allowed to live in the Priory as "an act of charity to a homeless man."

After his arrest, further allegations appeared in print, stating that he had been aided for years by the Catholic Church hierarchy in Lyon and later by members of the Traditionalist Catholic movement. He was defended by the monarchist lawyer Jacques Tremollet de Villers, who later became president of the Traditionalist Catholic organization La Cité Catholique ....

Paul Touvier was granted provisional release in July 1991 and his trial for complicity in crimes against humanity only began on March 17, 1994. He expressed remorse for his actions, saying that he thought of the seven Jewish victims of Rillieux-la-Pape every day. A Traditionalist Catholic priest of the Society of Saint Pius X sat beside him at the defense table, acting as his spiritual advisor. On April 20, a nine-person jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to life imprisonment .... On July 17, 1996, Paul Touvier died of prostate cancer in Fresnes prison near Paris. A Tridentine Requiem Mass was offered for the repose of his soul at St Nicolas du Chardonnet, the Society of St. Pius X chapel in Paris.

Steinbeck on Positano

The picture in my calendar for today is of Positano. Here's a little about it from Wikipedia ....

Positano is a small town on the Amalfi Coast (Costiera Amalfitana), in Campania, Italy .... Positano was a port of the Amalfi Republic in medieval times, and prospered in the 16th and 17th centuries. But by the mid-19th century, the town had fallen on hard times. More than half the population emigrated, mostly to Australia.

Positano was a relatively poor fishing village during the first half of the 20th century. It began to attract large numbers of tourists in the 1950s, especially after John Steinbeck published his essay about Positano in Harper's Bazaar in May, 1953: "Positano bites deep", Steinbeck wrote. "It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone."

As it turns out, you can read what Steinbeck had to say online here. Here's just a bit of it .....

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[...] Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone. Its houses climb a hill so steep it would be a cliff except that stairs are cut in it. I believe that whereas most house foundations are vertical, in Positano they are horizontal. The small curving bay of unbelievably blue and green water lips gently on a beach of small pebbles. There is only one narrow street and it does not come down to the water. Everything else is stairs, some of them as steep as ladders. You do not walk to visit a friend, you either climb or slide.

Nearly always when you find a place as beautiful as Positano, your impulse is to conceal it. You think, " If I tell, it will be crowded with tourists and they will ruin it, turn it into a honky-tonk and then the local people will get touristy and there’s your lovely place gone to hell. " There isn’t the slightest chance of this in Positano. In the first place there is no room. There are about two thousand inhabitants in Positano and there is room for about five hundred visitors, no more. The cliffs are all taken. Except for the half ruinous houses very high up, all space is utilized. And the Positanese invariably refuse to sell. They are curious people. I will go into that later.

Again, Positano is never likely to attract the organdie-and-white linen tourist. It would be impossible to dress as a languid tourist-lady-crisp, cool white dress, sandals as white and light as little clouds, picture hat of arrogant nonsense, and one red rose held in a listless whitegloved pinky. I dare any dame to dress like this and climb the Positano stairs for a cocktail. She will arrive looking like a washcloth at a boys’ camp. There no way for her to get anywhere except by climbing. This alone eliminates one kind of tourist, the show tourist. The third deterrent to a great influx of tourists lies in the nature of the Posianese themselves. They just don’t give a damn. They have been living here since before recorded history and they don’t intend to change now. They don’t have much but they like what they have and will not move over for a buck .....

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Naked is good ....

... if you're a mole rat :)

One of the pages I visit is New Scientist's news page. Their stories can be very interesting, like this one about Beauty - Map-reading skills change how we view beauty.

But my favorite recent story was about naked mole rats and the possible clue they may have to longevity. I came upon these little guys a few years ago when researching a story about zoos and thought they were wonderful. Here's a short video of them from the Oregon Zoo ...

Piteşti prison

Paula sent me a note about a place I'd never heard of before - Piteşti prison. This from Wikipedia ....

The Piteşti prison (Romanian: Închisoarea Piteşti) was a penal facility in Piteşti, Romania, best remembered for the brainwashing experiment carried out by Communist authorities in 1949-1952 (also known as Experimentul Piteşti - the "Piteşti Experiment" or Fenomenul Piteşti - the "Piteşti Phenomenon"). The latter was designed as an attempt at violently "reeducating" the mostly young political prisoners, male members of banned groupings such as the National Peasants' and National Liberal parties, as well as those who claimed inspiration from the fascist Iron Guard or Zionist members of the Romanian Jewish community .....

I have to admit I don't know much about communism in Europe back in the 50s. If anything, I was pretty desensitized to the subject as a kid by the anti-communist ferver of my great aunt Alberta, a member of the John Birch Society. Reading about Piteşti prison was really sobering, though.

You can read a little more about it at the Wikipedia page and also at another site - The Memorial of the Victims of Communism

Lent and baptism

- is Lent all about eating gruel? :)

What's Lent about? I realized I don't really know. I had a nagging feeling that it's more than just not eating meat .... I'm already a vegetarian ... so I decided to look for some online info. Usually I look at Creighton University and get the Jesuit take on things (their Lent page), but today instead I went to American Catholic to see what the Franciscans had to say (their Lent page). There I found a short video on Lent with Fr. Greg Friedman, O.F.M. who tells how the Vatican II Council looked back to the origins of Lent and saw it as a preparation for baptism. It reminded me of my RCIA journey. For those interested, here's the video ....

Ivanhoe

- Rebecca and Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert by Léon Cogniet

My latest book from the library is Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. It's set in England in 1194 during the reign of Richard the Lionheart, though when it begins, he's not yet back in England after the third crusade in the Holy Land. Prince John is regent and portrayed as pretty awful (I think he gets too much bad press) and Richard is being waited for with the combination of reverence and hope one associates with the second coming (I believe he was actually a pretty bad king, all in all). The Normans are top dogs, the Saxons are put upon, and the Jews are terribly used.

The main characters are Cedric the Saxon, a direct descendant of Harold II and one of the few Saxon thanes still holding on to a bit of property and power, his ward Rowena, mostly known for her beauty, and Cedric's son Ivanhoe, who loves Rowena and is incognito, just back from fighting in the crusade under Richard.

Other characters - the Jewish moneylender, Isaac of York, his beautiful daughter Rebecca, and a Knight Templar named Brian de Bois-Guilbert who falls for Rebecca. Oh, and Robin Hood too :)

There's a tournament, a castle seige, and combat between Ivanhoe and the Templar, with the heart of Rowena and the life of Rebecca hanging in the balance. All is saved in the end by the appearance of King Richard.

The book has been made into movies a number of times and you can read it online here

Greg Boyle SJ

I noticed today that Creighton University has a page with a story about Jesuit Greg Boyle, with a video and also an audio file (mp3) of a talk given by him on February 10th at St. John's Church ..... Finding Christ in the Suffering of our Cities. It's worth listening to.

Here's a little about Fr. Boyle from Wikipedia ...

Father Gregory "Greg" Joseph Boyle, S.J. is a Jesuit priest. He is the director and founder of Homeboy Industries and former pastor of Dolores Mission Church ..... Father Boyle began his work at Dolores Mission organizing the parish around Christian base communities and following Liberation Theology principles. With his support and guidance, the base communities began developing different programs to help the working poor in their community: a shelter for homeless immigrants; a cooperative daycare; a community organizing program; a school; and a jobs program for gang members, the latter being the precursor of Homeboy Industries. In 1986, Father Boyle declared Dolores Mission a sanctuary for all immigrants. His motto is “Nothing Stops a Bullet Like a Job.”

Gary Wills at Grace Cathedral

I came across another video discussion from Grace Cathedral, this one with the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, Catholic writer Gary Wills, who discusses his latest book, Head and Heart: American Christianities, an examination of Christianity's place in American life across history, with mentions of the Deist Founding Fathers, The Great Awakening, the bloody religiosity of the Civil War, the Karl Rove era, and there's an interesting comment on present day Catholicism - I found it really interesting :) .....

What if The Matrix ran on Windows ?

I'm always the last person to see these things, but here it is anyway .... as a mac user, I just couldn't resist :)

Kessler Syndrome

- The Kessler Syndrome is a scenario, proposed by NASA consultant Donald J. Kessler, in which the volume of space debris in Low Earth Orbit is so high that objects in orbit are frequently struck by debris, creating even more debris and a greater risk of further impacts. The implication of this scenario is that the escalating amount of debris in orbit could eventually render space exploration, and even the use of satellites, infeasible for many generations. - Wikipedia

When I read that two satellites had collided in space, I was not much surprised - the amount of stuff in orbit around the earth is huge - and I wondered why none of the neat ideas come up with over the years by science fiction writers to take care of the problem had never been explored :) Here's just the beginning of an article that shows what I mean .....

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Terminator Tether - EDT Solution To Space Debris Update

You wouldn't think that humanity has been this busy in space - but there are over nine thousand satellites and other large objects in orbit around the Earth, along with many smaller objects. These objects include spent vehicle upper stages, separation bolts, lens caps, momentum flywheels, nuclear reactor cores, auxiliary motors and launch vehicle fairings. Material degradation due to atomic oxygen, solar heating and solar radiation produces particulate matter. Solid rocket motors used to boost satellite orbits leave motor casings, nozzle slag, solid-fuel fragments and exhaust cone bits. More than 124 satellite breakups have been verified; many more are believed to have occurred; these are generally caused by explosions and collisions. Satellites or other objects in orbit higher than 700 kilometers will stay there for hundreds of years; LEO satellites have an average working life of just five years.

Studies have shown that low Earth orbit is not a limitless resource and should be managed more carefully. Some sort of debris-mitigation measures are needed to solve the problem of old, unusable satellites and space junk.

Arthur C. Clarke had exactly this problem when he was trying to build his fictional space elevator in his wonderful 1978 novel The Fountains of Paradise; he initiated Operation Cleanup:

For two hundred years, satellites of all shapes and sizes, from loose nuts and bolts to entire space villages, had been accumulating in Earth orbit. All that came below the extreme elevation of the Tower, at any time, now had to be accounted for, since they created a possible hazard...

Fortunately, the old orbital forts were superbly equipped for this task...
(Read more about Operation Cleanup) ..........

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Nothing says "forever" like a vacuum :)

Piazza della Signoria

One of the great things about the beginning of the year is that I get to have a new calendar. This year's is a small desk calendar with a new page for every day .... of Italy :) The one for yesterday has a photo of the statue of Neptune in Piazza della Signoria, Florence. Here's a little from Wikipedia ...

Piazza della Signoria is an L-shaped square in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy. It was named after the Palazzo della Signoria, also called Palazzo Vecchio.

It is the focal point of the origin and of the history of the Florentine Republic and still maintains its reputation as the political hub of the city. It is the meeting place of Florentines as well as the numerous tourists.

The impressive 14th century Palazzo Vecchio is still preeminent with its crenellated tower. The square is also shared with the Loggia della Signoria, the Uffizi Gallery, the Palace of the Tribunale della Mercanzia (1359) (now the Bureau of Agriculture), and the Uguccioni Palace (16th Century, with a facade probably by Raphael). Located in front of the Palazzo Vecchio is the Palace of the Assicurazioni Generali (1871, built in Renaissance style).

The square holds a lot of statues, including the one on my calendar page from the Fountain of Neptune by Bartolomeo Ammannati. It was commissioned for the wedding of Francesco I de' Medici with grand duchess Johanna of Austria in 1565.


- Neptune

Perhaps the most well known statue in the square is by Benvenuto Cellini - Perseus with the Head of Medusa ....



This one is my favorite as I like the Greek myth of Perseus and the Gorgon with her snakey hair, who could turn people to stone :)

Guy Consolmagno SJ

Here's a video of a discussion with Vatican astronomer and Jesuit Br. Guy Consolmagno from San Francisco's Grace Cathedral. It's pretty interesting :) .......

m

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Remember the future

I came across a homily given a few days ago by the Superior General of the Jesuits, Fr. Adolfo Nicolás SJ, at St. Ignatius Church on the campus of the University of San Francisco. It's about martyrdom and I thought it was very thoughtful. You can find an audio file of it on this page at sjweb, you can read about his visit to USF here, and you can see a video of the church service and of him giving the homily at St. Ignatius Church here.

History of Niagara Falls

I was looking through the library's online catalogue of new books and saw Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power, and Lies. It's about the history of Niagara Falls (someplace I've actually visited :) and that led me to a Wikipedia page about The Human Drift.

The Human Drift was a book written by King Camp Gillette, a businessman most well known for having inventing the safety razor, but also a utopian socialist. Here's a bit from Wikipedia about the book, which was influenced by the work being done by Tesla and Westinghouse on electricity ......

Gillette .... published a book titled The Human Drift (1894), which advocated that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public, and that everyone in the US should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by Niagara Falls. A later book, World Corporation (1910), was a prospectus for a company set up to create this vision. He offered Theodore Roosevelt the presidency of the company, with a fee of one million dollars. (Roosevelt declined the offer.) ...

The title of the book, the human drift, was his term for the "chaos of contemporary existence" which he hoped his utopian city (named Metropolis :) would replace with predictable progress. One thing I found especially interesting, was his idea that the perfect society should be ruled by a corporate tycoon .... I can see Socrates rolling in his grave, and Agent Fox Mulder saying "See!?"


- Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to go over the Falls in a barrel

Anyway, the book, Inventing Niagara:: Beauty, Power, and Lies sounds pretty interesting, and I haven't even read yet about the missing mummy. You can read more about Niagara Falls and the book at the writer's website.

The Jolly Company

- Rupert Brooke

The stars, a jolly company,
I envied, straying late and lonely;
And cried upon their revelry:
"O white companionship! You only
In love, in faith unbroken dwell,
Friends radiant and inseparable!"

Light-heart and glad they seemed to me
And merry comrades (EVEN SO
GOD OUT OF HEAVEN MAY LAUGH TO SEE
THE HAPPY CROWDS; AND NEVER KNOW
THAT IN HIS LONE OBSCURE DISTRESS
EACH WALKETH IN A WILDERNESS).

But I, remembering, pitied well
And loved them, who, with lonely light,
In empty infinite spaces dwell,
Disconsolate. For, all the night,
I heard the thin gnat-voices cry,
Star to faint star, across the sky.

Not everything can be resolved

I'm on the eighth day of that audio retreat I mentioned and the speaker, Larry Gillick SJ, mentioned something that I looked up later - Keats' idea of negative capability. Though it's probably known to most, I hadn't heard of it before. Here's a bit about it from Wikipedia ....

Keats' theory of "negative capability" was expressed in his letter to George and Thomas Keats dated Sunday, 22 December 1817 ..... Keats believed that great people (especially poets) have the ability to accept that not everything can be resolved ..... Negative capability is a state of intentional open-mindedness paralleled in the literary and philosophic stances of other writers. Much has been written about this ..... In the 1930s, the American philosopher John Dewey cited Keatsian negative capability as having influenced his own philosophical pragmatism, and said of Keats' letter that it "contains more of the psychology of productive thought than many treatises." Additionally, Nathan Scott (author of a book titled Negative Capability), notes that negative capability has been compared to philosopher Martin Heidegger’s concept of Gelassenheit, “the spirit of disponibilité before What-Is which permits us simply to let things be in whatever may be their uncertainty and their mystery." Author Philip Pullman excerpts from Keats's letter and prominently incorporates the concept in his fantasy novel The Subtle Knife.

Here's the letter ......


Sunday [21 Dec. 1817]
Hampstead Sunday

MY DEAR BROTHERS,

I must crave your pardon for not having written ere this. ***

I saw Kean return to the public in 'Richard III.', and finely he did it, and, at the request of Reynolds, I went to criticize his Luke in Riches. The critique is in to-day's 'Champion', which I send you, with the Examiner, in which you will find very proper lamentation on the obsoletion of Christmas Gambols and pastimes: but it was mixed up with so much egotism of that drivelling nature that pleasure is entirely lost. Hone, the publisher's trial, you must find very amusing; and, as Englishmen, very encouraging-his Not Guilty is a thing, which not to have been, would have dulled still more Liberty's Emblazoning-Lord Ellenborough has been paid in his own coin-Wooler and Hone have done us an essential service-I have had two very pleasant evenings with Dilke, yesterday and to-day, and am at this moment just come from him, and feel in the humour to go on with this, began in the morning, and from which he came to fetch me. I spent Friday evening with Wells, and went next morning to see Death on the Pale Horse. It is a wonderful picture, when West's age is considered; But there is nothing to be intense upon; no woman one feels mad to kiss, no face swelling into reality-The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth. Examine 'King Lear', and you will find this exemplified throughout; but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depth of speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness-The picture is larger than 'Christ rejected'.

I dined with Haydon the Sunday after you left, and bad a very pleasant day, I dined too (for I have been out too much lately) with Horace Smith, and met his two Brothers, with Hill and King ston, and one Du Bois. They only served to convince me, how superior humour is to wit in respect to enjoyment-These men say things which make one start, without making one feel; they are all alike; their manners are alike; they all know fashionables; they have a mannerism in their eating and drinking, in their mere handling a Decanter-They talked of Kean and his low company -Would I were with that Company instead of yours, said I to mvself! I know such like acquaintance will never do for me and yet I am going to Reynolds on Wednesday. Brown and Dilke walked with me and back from the Christmas pantomime. I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke on various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason-Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

Sbelley's poem is out, and there are words about its being obiected to as much as "Queen Mab" was. Poor Shelley, I think he has his Quota of good qualities, in sooth la!! Write soon to your most sincere friend and affectionate Brother

John [Keats]

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The Monastery

- Worth Abbey

I've always wondered what it would be like to live in a monastery .... now I can find out! :) I came across YouTube videos of a BBC tv series called The Monastery - the whole thing is there in 18 bits, and the first part is here below. I'd heard of the series but never saw it, if it did indeed end up on US tv. Here's what Wikipedia says of the show .....

The Monastery was a documentary television series made by Tiger Aspect Productions for BBC Two which aired in the UK in May 2005. The program follows five modern lay men as they embark into a 40 day and night introduction into Roman Catholic monastic life at Worth Abbey, West Sussex, England under the guidance of Abbott Christopher Jamison and the community of 22 Benedictine monks .....

I have been her kind

Saw this poem by Anne Sexton today ...

Her kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

Sherlock Holmes

- poster for The Seven Percent Solution by Richard Amsel

The latest audio book CD I've been listening to is The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It's not one story but a collection of a number of them, as told by Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes' friend, and detailing the detective cases he and Holmes worked on.

I'd never read the book before, though I knew of it, of course, and had seen the movie Young Sherlock Holmes (too much fun :), the film The Seven Percent Solution in which Holmes sees Sigmund Freud for help with his cocaine addiction, and a made for tv movie, Case of Evil, which starred James D'Arcy as Holmes and Vincent D'Onofrio as Professor Moriarty.

The book is worth a read!

Cat journal

- a old pic of Kermit, Spot, Grendel, and Data looking out the window

Tonight I decided to look for my internet connection information in case I'm able to revive my old computer and switch from this one back to that one. I didn't know where the info was, though, except in a closet with tons of other stuff. Once I started, that obsessive-compulsive part of me that wants to make everything neat and to throw away old stuff kicked in, so I was at it for hours.

I found old notes from the one (really bad) novel-length story I wrote, two old keyboards and mice, tarot cards, a sea shell, two cat restraining bags, books, CDs, photographs, watercolor paints/brushes and a block, and a health journal I kept about my four cats.

I looked at the journal, which was full of entries about fleas and medications and allergy tests and dietary suppliments - I had forgotten how anxious I was about being a cat parent. It reminded me that it's 10 weeks since Kermit died - still miss her.

EOTWAWKI

- from April 21, 1990, this is a photo of the last eruption by Redoubt Volcano. Photograph by R. Clucas. Courtesy of the Alaska Volcano Observatory website. Not related to my post, really, but nice photo :)

When I was a kid, I was always worrying about the end of the world as we knew it - I read post-apocalyptic novels (The Stand, Lucifer's Hammer, The Postman), saw the movies (On the Beach, The Omega Man, A Boy and his Dog). Those scenarios for the end of the world posited causal events as diverse as asteroid strikes, deadly contagions and global thermal nuclear war, but none of them foresaw a civilization doomed by cow flatulence and leaky refrigerant. Still, doomed is doomed, and I'm getting pretty depressed about it. I know some of you guys see global warming as nature's way, but even if our radical climate change isn't mostly due to the effects of man (and I think it is), the suffering of Earth's present inhabitants is going to be pretty awful. Here's the latest story I saw on the subject .... Global warming 'irreversible' for next 1000 years: study

And there's a thoughtful post on climate change at America magazine's blog - Global Warming 101