Romney Round-Up

I haven't made much secret of being a Romney supporter for 2008, but the spate of stories in the news are making him look better, if only because the MSM is trying to undercut him where they can.

Ann Romney donated to Planned Parenthood. She gave them $150 thirteen years ago, when her husband was still pro-choice. Wooptie-frimpin'-doo. Last year (before he was even considering a presidential run) he gave Massachusetts Right to Life fifteen grand.

There's a new movie coming out about the Mountain Meadows massacre that may taint Romney with guilt by association. Oy! Nobody connects John Kerry with the Spanish Inquisition, or John McCain with the burning of Servetus. To the best of my knowledge, Mitt Romney was nowhere near Mountain Meadows in 1857.

Al Sharpton spews bigotry. In other news, water is wet and the sun rises in the east.

Sharpton told CNN's Paula Zahn on Wednesday evening he was responding to Hitchens' claim that Mormons are an example of how religion promotes racism because the church had excluded blacks.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints did not grant the priesthood to males of all races until 1978.
Sharpton said if Mormons did not in the past see blacks as equal, they're not "real worshippers of God because I do not believe God distinguishes between people. That is not bigotry. That's responding to their beliefs."
It was Hitchens who "attacked the Mormons," not him, Sharpton said. "I'm the one that belongs to a race that couldn't join the Mormons and I'm the one that's the bigot," he said, calling on Romney to explain his views on his church's position on blacks.

Okay, let's take this a step at a time. First, God distinguishes between people all the time, although I doubt he uses ethnic criteria nearly as much as Sharpton. (We are talking about the same God that chose one particular race for several millennia, aren't we?) It wasn't all that long ago, though, that Protestant churches were de facto segregated, and in some places, de jure as well. Sharpton was ordained in the Church of God in Christ, and now serves at Bethany Baptist Church in New York. I don't know what the affiliation of BBC is, but if it's Baptist, it probably either started out segregated or sprang from a church that was. The COGIC is historically a mostly-black denomination. Neither one currently has official rules regarding the color of its members, but rules aren't always official, either. Sometimes it's just attitude. I can't find any pictures of Bethany Baptist, but I'll bet you wouldn't find a whole lot of white faecs in the crowd. Exclusive, no. But not integrated, either.

But the Mormon Church's rule was official, says Sharpton. No, not necessarily. It's a matter of much debate whether the ban on blacks in the priesthood was ever part of an actual revelation from God, or just sort of a concensus among leaders that were in step with the racial attitudes of the 19th century. In general, in fact, the Mormon Church was way ahead of the Protestant establishment that Sharpton espouses.

Sharpton shows a lot more ignorance when he says ""I'm the one that belongs to a race that couldn't join the Mormons..." No, Al, you're not. There has never been a race that couldn't join the Mormon Church. There was a race that couldn't be ordained as priests in the LDS Church. Huge difference there. By your logic, the Catholic Church should consist only of unmarried men. (Yes, I know priesthood isn't quite the same thing for Mormons. But it's not an automatic benefit of membership, either.) Outside of priesthood, blacks could do anything that whites of comparable ability and sex could do. Even in the Temple at Kirtland, they were specifically welcomed. Sharpton couldn't attend a Temple ceremony even today, but then, neither could I. (And somehow I doubt that a guy who was "ordained" at the age of ten takes ordination all that seriously anyway.)

When the ban on black ordination was lifted, Mitt Romney was 30 years old. How many under-30-year-olds are in a position to make sweeping changes in even a local church, let alone one that counts its members in the millions? And although switching churches based on those policies might be feasible for someone like Sharpton, Mormons are more like Catholics in that regard. They stick with the Church they believe Christ founded, whether they like everything about it or not. It's "The Church."

So is it bigotry? Well, that's kind of a fluid term, but a safe rule of thumb is to reverse it. If Romney had said, "I won't support Al Sharpton for office, because his church is anti-white and Tawana Brawley is the proof," there would be such a firestorm unleashed that Jesse Jackson would go blind from all the photo flashes. I won't pick on him for saying that Mormons don't believe in God; that was just sloppy phrasing. (Although I do think he was subtly trying to remind Catholics and Evangelicals of the theological divide.)

But he was attempting to tar Romney with a racist brush for policies he had no control over, which are no longer in place. There are only two possibilities: either Sharpton is so pig-ignorant that he shouldn't be allowed in front of a live microphone without a muzzle, or he was deliberately lying. Given Sharpton's history, I tend to lean toward the latter.

Yes, Al Sharpton is a bigot. So what's new?

And finally, Romney is making a good showing in the polls. Aaaahhh. That's what this is all about. The MSM is scared loose-boweled that a Republican who is pro-life, faithfully married to one woman, proven capable of handling a budget, and telegenic on top of it might have a chance. When the media are forced to beat up on a candidate for his virtues beause they can't find enough vices, then that says a lot about the man.

No sneers, just prayers...

... for Tammy Faye. The poor woman's been mocked enough in her life. I hope if this is the end of it, God will take her with the dignity she didn't have on earth.

Prayers needed

For Dave and everyone in the path.

A/T to Ken and the other Pintsters.

Going where you're sent - on either side of the Tiber

I guess I should have more to say about the Frank Beckwith reversion than just a pile of links below. Actually, it's kind of fortuitous, as it ties in with a post I wanted to make anyway.

Back when I first reviewed his book, Michael Barrett said to me in an e-mail: "This may sound strange but I view that as joining the Mother Ship. I think we all report up through the Catholic church [as it was originally intended] whether we realize it or not." (Bracketed text added by Mike for clarification.) And recently, I've been having a conversation in the comboxes with Pastor Paul about Mary and the Church. (And I really, really need to pick back up on the conversation about the Sacraments as well. Bad Joel!)

All this is really something I enjoy a lot. Having been raised in a strongly Evangelical family (by a preacher's daughter), I love talking with pastors, as they usually have a theological understanding a long way beyond mine. I can learn a lot. One of the parts of my job at The Greatest Newspaper in the Northwest™ that I loved best was when I got to edit a monthly Christian magazine and get columns from local pastors. I got to know some brothers in Christ that strengthen my faith even after the magazine folded. Honestly, I'm a whole lot more comfortable around Protestant ministers than around priests. (You could count on your fingers the priests I've met in my life, which may have something to do with it. But mainly, I think I have more in common with Protestant pastors, theology aside. We speak the same language.)

One thing I don't want to do, though, is proselytize at them. With laymen, I might, although I'm not all that great a salesman. Mostly, with Protestant friends, I settle for explaining why I believe something that the Catholic Church teaches, not why they should. But I especially don't want to do that to pastor friends, and here's why:

I agree with Mike's analogy of the Mother Ship. The Protestant Reformation was a drastic thing, and I wish it hadn't happened, but frankly, as a Catholic, I don't think I have any right to bellyache or bloviate about it. If our leadership had removed its collective ecclesiastical head from its butt, Luther would never have had anything to nail to the door at Wittenburg. His original complaint was about simony and corruption; the theological schism came later, when the hierarchy wouldn't listen to him.

Be that as it may, the Reformation did happen, and the Lord brought good things out of it in the long run. Had there been no schism, would there have been a Bunyan, or a C. S. Lewis, or an Isaac Watt? Without the competition for converts, would the missions in the New World have been pursued so assiduously? The Protestant departure forced the Church to clean house then, and still keeps us on our toes today.

Alas, there are theological and ecclesiological issues that divide Catholic from Protestant, and I don't really think that we're going to see those resolved until the Lord comes back. Although we all pray for Christian unity, there's always an unspoken caveat that says "provided we're all united in my denomination." The Mother Ship is still there, but she's orbited by hundreds, maybe thousands, of smaller vessels, and always will be.

And those vessels need captains, and officers, and crew, just as much as the Mother Ship. Mike pastors a church that serves a specific need in the Body of Christ; he ministers to people whose church history has hitherto been, well... spotty, maybe. He's reaching out to people who perhaps don't feel the welcome in the Body that we want to extend to them. And people who would never approach a priest in a collar will talk to Mike in a T-shirt or a wetsuit without stammering.

Paul shepherds a small church in Montana. He's just getting started as an ordained pastor, after a career in youth work, and he's also being the voice of Jesus to kids who may not hear the Gospel anywhere else, at least not anywhere that they'd trust. Paul and Mike are filling a need, a desperate need, and they're making some serious sacrifices to do it. The Lord is using them.

Suppose I were a truly great apologist, so great that my scintillating arguments could usher these men into the Catholic Church. (Yes, and suppose I had X-ray vision and a Batmobile, while we're at it. I don't flatter myself that much.) Well, probably God would have some use for them there; He uses anybody who is willing to be used. But what kind of Christian would I be if I convinced them to leave the roles that God has placed them in? The people at Coast Vineyard Church and Lolo Community Church (have I got those names right, guys?) are Christians in need of leaders, and it's not right for us on the Mother Ship to try to get them to abandon those posts. I don't care for sheep-stealing, where one church tries to swell its numbers by luring away members from another. How much more distasteful is shepherd-stealing?

This is my problem with the Coming Home Network, and ministries like that. I don't want to run them down; ministers who do switch feet often pay a heavier price than laypeople, and desperately need support. But it seems to me that a lot of energy is spent targeting Protestant pastors, as though there were a bounty on each person led to Rome, and triple score for clergy. (Update: Patrick points out that Coming Home Network is a support group rather than an outreach ministry. I agree that support seems to be the focus, but looking at their site I also see some of what looks like dangling bait... "Psst! Hey, pastor! Check this out!" Maybe that's just general apologetics and I'm reading too much into it, I don't know.)

It looks as though the Lord has called Francis Beckwith back to the Mother Ship. I know He called me there. He may well be calling any number of Protestants across the Tiber, maybe even ones I know. If so, maybe He'll use me. But unless and until the Lord makes that call, it's our place as Catholics to share as much as we can with our non-Catholic brothers, not to maneuver them onto our side. There are few things I love more than talking about the things we believe that other Christians misunderstand, explaining why what we believe isn't as silly or as weird as it looks. And in the course of it, I learn things I wouldn't know otherwise, both about my own faith and the one I left. Heck, I've learned more about Protestant theology since I became Catholic than I ever knew before. I still think that where there's a discrepancy the Catholic Church is right, but I don't have to convince anybody else of that.

So Mike, and Paul, and Doug, and Tim and David, and Jeff, and Timotheos, and all the other pastors I know, thank you for what you do for the Lord, and for His Body. If you end up being called to the Catholic Church, the red carpet will be out for you. If I never share a pew with you, at least we'll share heaven. Meanwhile, God's got our respective jobs planned out for us, and I think you guys are doing Him proud.

Susan Estrich has her head on straight

Hallelujah! A feminist who hasn't drunk the "There-Are-No-Alienated-Parents-Only-Abusive-Men" Kool-Aid.

That poor girl, my own daughter said to me. She's right. Imagine if you were that little girl, or that she was yours.

How do you think it feels to be her this week, to have everyone looking at you differently, to be the center of this kind of attention?

And that part isn't her father's fault. It's her mother's.

If my ex-husband ever left a message like that for one of our kids, and he wouldn't, I know what I would do. I think it is what most mothers would do. Erase it, and find out what was going on before I let him near the kids again.

The point is not that we owe a duty to protect our exes from looking like beasts. The point is that we owe a duty to our children to protect them from being eaten up alive because of our problems. No one forces you to have children or makes you stay married, but if you choose to have kids and get divorced, it shouldn't just be the courts who are concerned with the "best interests" of the children. The primary responsibility for safeguarding the kids belongs to the parents, both of them.

The child here never needed to hear that message. But not only did she get to hear it, the world did, over and over. In the fight over her, no pain is too great to inflict on her in order to "win."

Commentaries on Frank Beckwith's reversion to Rome

The Good...

the Bad...

and the Ugly.

(More here, here, here, and here, if you have a high threshold for arrogance.

Green hypocrisy

If people like this really believed what they were saying, they'd have offed themselves long ago. But no, it's always the other chap that's in the way.

At least this bozo was self-honest enough to admit that it's not that there are too many people, it's that there are too many people that aren't like him.

Still, if they really want to reduce the earth's population, I can recommend a place for them both to start.

Tombstone strikes back

Moral of the story: Don't piss off the dead.

What a shocker!

Apparently the Spokesman-Review wasn't entirely honest and above-board in its coverage of the RPS garage controversy. Who knew?

Weaselly half-reply here, with no mention of a trumped-up sex scandal to railroad an innocent man.

Lincoln City under attack

Wow! I had no idea the little Oregon Coast town was having such a wave of tragedies. Prayers are in order, I think.

I found out about it because local pastor Mike Barrett has an excellent post up reminding us that even if we can't find answers, we can still make responses.

I'm broke, but...

May the next 29... er... 43 be spent in appalling happiness!

Bad father! You complained! No kids for you!

California NOW has issued a press release blasting Alec Baldwin for daring to speak up about his ex-wife's manipulation tactics:

Baldwin’s violent outburst is also not an isolated incident, as there have been many other public displays of hostility and poor judgment, just like this talk of “parental alienation” is not an isolated issue but part of a larger agenda of the misnamed Fathers’ Rights movement. The Fathers’ Rights groups who promote junk science like Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) expressly believe in the abolition of child support, the protection of patriarchal family structures, and even repealing women’s right to vote. Leaders of the movement, like Wade Horn who recently resigned from the Department of Health and Human Services, promote the use of legal strategies disguised as psychological disorders to take custody away from perfectly fit mothers and put children in the custody of abusive men. Horn used his position in the federal government to allocate millions of dollars in federal funding to so called Responsible Fatherhood programs, a move that NOW has demanded be investigated. Not only are these programs expressly discriminatory against women, they are also poorly monitored, and many are potentially illegal in how they spend federal dollars.

Notice a few things here? First, Parental Alienation is "junk science?" Tell that to these people. I wonder if it's still junk science in cases where the man is doing it.

And this little gem:

The Fathers’ Rights groups... expressly believe in the abolition of child support, the protection of patriarchal family structures, and even repealing women’s right to vote.

Well, no. Actually, we believe in making child support fair and honest, and that intact families are a good thing. Which to the C[an]OWs is potayto-potahto. What's good for men (and children) is bad for women. As for voting rights, well, I've never really advocated repealing the nineteenth amendment, but these harpies could make me reconsider my position.

Sure enough, the uterofascist chorus is chiming in as one. Say it again: fathers bad, mothers good.

OK, the message he left was a rotten thing to say to a kid. Show me a parent who's never said something rotten to their kid, and I'll call you a liar. Especially, God help us, an adolescent girl. I've raised three of them so far (the fourth isn't to that age yet), and if you can keep your sweet disposition through it, you're simply not paying attention. My daughters would be the first to agree with me on that, in unison.

I also don't know what Ireland has said to him (or rather, what Kim said to him through Ireland). He's only allowed to spend half an hour with her, twice a week? I suppose that would look excessive to people who think "abusive father" is one word.

I don't care for his TV show, and I've never been much of a fan in general, but I'll buy his book when it comes out. New, and in hardcover, at full price. I hope Ireland will be allowed to read it, but I wouldn't bet on it.

A/T to Glenn Sacks.

The real final frontier

Wally Schirra now travels in elephants. Go with God.

A new candidate for 2008

I'm still favoring Romney, but I'd consider switching if this draft movement ever got underway. I expect they'll have trouble overcoming the "native-born" requirement in the constitution, although I don't think he'd have any difficulty meeting the age minimum.

A/T to Tim Challies.

Nothing says "I love you"...

...like an engagement ring taken from the corpse of the last fiancee.

Mommy, what's Handy Manny doing?

What would you tell them?

The possibilities for double-entendres in the article are endless. I dare not go there.

Bring flowers of the fairest

The first of May is one of those things that I've mostly missed out on, being a Catholic convert after Vatican II. It's the traditional date of the May Crowning, when a statue of the Blessed Virgin is crowned with flowers in honor of spring. I'm told that it used to be a much bigger production than it is today, but I don't know; I've never seen it except in our own parish. (There's some background here.)

As an ex-Protestant, I'm usually in a bit of a quandary when it comes to Marian celebrations. On the one hand, I'm kind of leery of things like the May Crowning, especially since it also includes a statue. Yes, I know about the Second Council of Nicea, but I still hear the words "graven image" in the back of my head. You can take the boy out of the First Baptist...

At the same time, I'm rather disappointed in the way we celebrate things like the May Crowning in this country. There's a tendency for American Catholics to feel kind of furtive and half-hearted about these festivals, as though we don't want to be too enthusiastic for fear of scandalizing the neighbors. That's not just evident in our Marian celebrations. Every Christian festival we celebrate, we tone down.

Let's be honest; the United States is culturally a Protestant country. Protestantism, in turn, is not just a set of theological precepts but a cultural current shaped by the dour, spartan cultures of Northern Europe. I don't think I'm being disrespectful in saying that, just as Protestant theology is stripped down to its bare essentials by Luther's Solas, Protestant worship strips away a lot of the pageantry and showiness, stressing decorum and dignity instead. (I'm speaking here of the classic Protestant strains, the Calvinists, Lutherans and the like. We'll get to Evangelicals in a moment.)

Catholics in America are a minority, overall. Even though the censuses show that we're the largest single Christian denomination, we're still outnumbered by the various Protestant churches. More importantly, Protestants were here first, in the sense that when most Americans think of Christianity, Protestantism is the form that comes to mind. Catholics have come mostly from waves of immigration, and tend to feel sort of like newcomers in our country. It's not that we're persecuted or anything (although there was a time), but just that it's mostly a Protestant country.

(I'm in the Northwest, so I may not be seeing a representative sample. How about it, Nightfly? How true is this in a place like New Jersey?)

Because of that, we've kind of evolved our worship to conform to the attitude of our majority neighbors. We haven't changed theology to match, but we tend to go easy on the things that make Protestants uncomfortable, like icons and fancy rituals, especially involving saints. Catholics in other places, countries with a Catholic majority, don't have such constraints. My Lovely and Brilliant Wife has told me about feast day celebrations in San Antonio, where the faithful process through the streets of the city, carrying statues over their heads and singing at the top of their lungs.

Singing and making a joyful noise. Now whom does that remind you of? In a culture that tends to keep religion quiet, the Evangelical churches represent a totally different side of Protestant worship. There's a spectrum, of course, but it runs anywhere from the church my parents attend, with hands in the air and clapping, to the all-out tongues, dancing and shouting of the Assembly of God and other Pentecostal churches. It's so different from the old-style traditional Protestantism that Mark Shea suggested yesterday that the word "Protestant" isn't really applicable anymore. In a parallel development, America has Christians who are just as wild about God and demonstrative in their worship as the Catholics ought to be. It's a weird progression: Protestants repudiated Catholic enthusiasm, Catholics toned themselves down to match, and the descendant churches of the Protestants reintroduced enthusiasm without us.

The difference, obviously, is that Evangelical devotion, as strong as it is, is limited to God alone. Mary, especially, still makes them nervous, although I've heard that that's beginning to change lately, as more Evangelicals explore older Christian traditions from a new perspective. When I first started blogging two years ago, one of my first posts was an explanation of why Marian devotion is appropriate for all Christians. I still stand by that; I think if we love Jesus enough, we'll be wholehearted in our love for His Mother as well. She's the mother of the whole Church, not just the part that's still in union with Rome. Loving her shouldn't be an occasion of division.

It's a shame that American Catholics are so embarrassed of our Mother. That's really what it boils down to. We downplay our devotion to Mary, not because we don't believe in honoring her, but because we don't want the neighbors to see us, kind of like the teenage boy who insists that Mom walk on the other side of the street. What we ought to do is the opposite: invite our Protestant brethren to join us in honoring her without fear of lapsing into idolatry. I'd far rather see us lead other Christians in singing "Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today" than trying to pretend she's not a big deal after all, just so we won't look too different.

The world is a little less funny

Mr. Bickley, R.I.P.

The funniest bleg I've ever seen

Chrystal's angling for votes in some blog contest. Just for this, she deserves to win.

Watch cheese ripen! Live!

Some people will do anything to keep from working. Like me. Including watching a real-time webcam of a cheddar cheese in England's West Country as it matures. It's almost as entertaining as the pre-teen sitcoms my daughter watches on the Disney Channel, and probably less predictable.

A/T to Wicked Thoughts again. It's one of the first sites I check in the morning, along with Miss Cellania and Overheard in the Office. If you can start off with a guffaw, the rest of the day doesn't seem as hellish as it actually is.

Saudi tribe holds beauty pageant for camels

Really. Makes you wonder what their actual women must look like, doesn't it?

Now I'm going to spend the rest of the day trying to get the mental picture of the swimsuit competition out of my head. A tip of the Akubra to Wicked Thoughts.

Monster Mash no More

Bobby "Boris" Pickett has died. Crypt-kicking will now continue from within.

Cops, turtles and booze don't mix

I occasionally make the rounds of cop blogs, because they have some cool stories to tell. The Enforcer has some of the most fun ones, as you can see:

One of the guys on my shift was having a birthday party for his kid the next day and on his way to work last night he picked up a TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) costume and secured it in the dispatch center for safe keeping till he picked it up at the end of the shift. So it was there all night (shell, headpiece, and stuff)

It was an unseasonably warm night and there is no airflow inside our decrepit old station, so we had doors and windows propped open so we could breathe.

Well, I decided to take a break and get some air outside as I walked out of the dispatch center I bump into a drunk guy with his bicycle in the "off limits" side of the station.

I look and the lobby doors are still securely locked, Hmmmmmm thats weird.

Then I realized that the rear entry of the station all the doors were left propped open and he decided to come in for a visit with the comrades in blue, he made it all the way inside (with his bicycle) unmolested, he was a nice enough happy drunk and I decided to have some fun...

I spoke with him briefly, excused myself and after I alerted the other guys and girls inside the station that he was there ,I snuck into dispatch, put on the shell and headpiece and walked back out and picked up the conversation where I left off. It took him a second but the look on his face when he realized I turned into a turtle was priceless.

I think he may have quit drinking on the spot. He finished his visit shortly thereafter and went home.

Children aren't weapons

Tomorrow, in case you hadn't noticed my sidebar, is Parental Alienation Awareness Day. Not that anybody who's ever been on the receiving end of parental alienation can really help being aware. It's real, and it's poison. It may not leave bruises or marks, but it's a pernicious form of abuse nonetheless.

People whose aren't divorced, or children of divorce, probably won't have come into contact with parental alienation. But as soon as a family splits up, the opportunity rears its horrible head, and all too often the temptation is too much to resist.

This isn't the place to go into my own experiences with parental alienation, but I've been on both sides of the parenting wall – custodial and non-custodial – and I know both how easy it could have been to slip into, and how much damage it can do when an ex does it. I raised my oldest daughter for ten years as a single dad, and I don't think I ever said a negative word about her mother where she could hear it. She's grown now, and getting to know her parents as people. Part of that is necessarily finding that we both have some warts, but I'm proud to say that anything negative she learns about her mother is coming as a surprise. (Mine, she mostly knew about.)

But there are parents who aren't so careful. I don't want to sound like a misogynist, but women are particularly susceptible to the temptation, both because they usually have more time with the kids, and also because when women are hurt or angry, they're more vindictive. There's also more of a tendency for women to think of the kids as extensions of themselves. Men are more detached than women are from most things, including children. (My Lovely and Brilliant Wife agrees with me on this, so I'm not just being gratuitously sexist.)

Fathers' Rights advocate Glenn Sacks has written a lot about this subject, and it's not for the sensitive. Here's an example he posted:

“After Jim L.’s wife divorced him and moved his daughters out of state, she sent the two girls fake or altered e-mails purporting to be Jim. Afterwards, Jim’s daughters refused to see him, explaining only ‘you know what you’ve done, you know what you said, you know what you wrote.’

“Once when Jim flew to see his girls for his scheduled weekend visit, his ex-wife decided at the last minute to block the visit. Jim flew home on Sunday without having seen his girls. When he arrived at the airport back home he checked his messages and found a message from his ex-wife. On the recording his girls could be heard crying in the background. His ex-wife said:

“’Jim, the girls are here at the restaurant waiting for you to come pick them up. You said you’d meet them here for breakfast and spend the day with them, and you didn’t show up. The girls are very upset. Jim, where are you?!?’”

That came from an article Glenn wrote refuting a PBS program that echoed the uterofascist line that parental alienation is bunk, just a ploy used by abusive men to harm their families. (I wish they could have swapped places with me a few years ago, and we'd see if they still thought so.) The rest of the Sacks article is well worth reading, for anybody inclined to agree with PBS. But beware; the anecdotes will break your heart.

Lots of men's stories (mine included) aren't as hair-raising as the ones Glenn lists, but then, they don't have to be. Each child has only one psyche. A child's security is mostly tied up in his parents, and when parents split up, that security is shattered. He'll never be as certain of his parents' love as he was before, but it's their job to rebuild his foundation as solidly as they can. When Mommy says (or acts out) that Daddy doesn't love him anymore, it has the twofold effect of making him cling harder to Mom (which is what she was shooting for) and convincing him that he can't be certain of anybody. If Daddy really isn't an abusive bastard or a callous clod, if he really does love his kids, that just confuses the child more. Since Mommy wouldn't lie, Daddy must be faking being nice. If Daddy does that, other people must, too. Except Mommy. Mommy never lies. She told me so. And the cycle continues, and the child spends the rest of his life wondering why Daddy doesn't really love him. It's a lot of damage to do, but for some mothers, it's worth it just to get back at "that man."

Don't let tomorrow go by without doing something about this vicious, spiteful form of child abuse. If you're a non-custodial parent, call your kids and remind them that you love them. If you're a custodial parent, encourage your kids to call the other parent and tell them the same. And if you're not divorced at all, if your family is intact, thank God that your kids have been spared the emotional back-stabbing. Lots of others aren't.

Children have enough to do just being children. They shouldn't have to be weapons.

Kind of a cool story to round out the week

This comes from the small town I grew up in.

Dennis Goodrich grew up in Goldendale with the rumor that there was a Model A Ford hidden under the floor of a Main Street business, but he didn’t think it was true until he saw the rusted cab of a car sitting in the alley last week.

“Well I’ll be,” Goodrich exclaimed.

A worker clearing debris from the burned buildings on the north side of the 100 block of West Main Street said he found the cab of the car in a subfloor room that once housed a sawdust furnace that heated several buildings at the end of the block. It obviously had been stripped long ago of all its essential parts.

Like Goodrich, and others who have lived a long time in town, the worker relayed this story told over and over in Goldendale’s pool halls and coffee shops for many years:

Back in the 1920s, someone owed money to the owner of the building that once stood at 105 West Main Street. The guy never paid, and when the building’s owner dug a hole behind the building to put in the furnace, he took the guy’s Model A, pushed it in next to the furnace, and sealed the hole shut.

Jim Farrer, who now owns all three lots where his work crew is clearing the debris from the Oct. 2, 2006, fire that razed the three stores that once stood there, said he didn’t have anything much to say about the car, other than “there it is,” as he pointed toward the rusted hulk.

I vaguely remember hearing something about a car buried downtown, but I never knew what it was all about. Now we know.

More about vigils and public grief

Here's a column that illustrates what I meant in the earlier post about vicarious grieving:

n modern America, there's always plenty of trauma to go around. Even if you knew no one involved in the shootings, have never been to Virginia and can't tell the difference between a Hokie and a Wahoo, there's no need for you to feel left out.

Did you feel sad when you heard the news? Did you ponder, however fleetingly, the mystery of mortality? If so, don't just go on with your ordinary life as if nothing has happened to disrupt it (even though nothing has happened to disrupt it). Honor your grief! Attend a candlelight vigil, post a poignant message on one of MySpace's Virginia Tech memorial pages and please, seek trauma counseling as soon as possible.

Convincing ourselves that we've been vicariously traumatized by the pain of strangers has become a cherished national pastime. Thus, the Washington Post this week accompanied online stories about the shooting with a clickable sidebar, "Where to Find Support" — apparently on the assumption that the mere experience of glancing at articles about the tragedy would be so emotionally devastating that readers would require trained therapists.

In which Joel uses language he otherwise shuns

But not here. The Friday [Fornicate]-Off thread is up at It Comes in Pints? and I let loose my inner potty-mouth on Fred "Jesus loathes you, this I know" Phelps. If you can stand the language, you're welcome to read it. You'll have to scroll down past a lot of ranting.

But honest, I don't usually talk like that. The guy just boils my potatoes.

You go!

At the celebration for the 101st anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake, one survivor showed up. That's not surprising, I guess. He's 104, and some people do live that long, but not too many.

But you want to know what's really cool? He took a day off from work to attend. My hat is off.

Smoking saves a woman's life

How often do you get to say that?

Finally, a victory

It's a small one, but it's a step in the right direction. The Supreme Court upheld the Partial Birth Abortion ban. God grant this trend snowballs.

A couple of things I ran across

Apparently our shooter at VT fancied himself a playwright. The Smoking Gun has his fairly sophomoric attempt at a modern-day interpretation of Hamlet. This kid had some anger issues, all right. As too many people have found out since.

I'm not going to get into the whole "if they'd had guns on campus this wouldn't have happened" thing. That's just disrespectful, rushing to point up the political implications of something like this. (I also have no use for the human toothaches who are trying to point fingers at what the school's administration or campus security did wrong. These people did the best they could in an unprecedented situation. Any success they had deserves a medal; any failure can't be imputed to them.)

However, in reading other people's commentary, I discovered Jim Treacher's thoughts about home defense, and how lucky we are not to be in, say, England:

I live in the United States of America, where if somebody breaks into your home and threatens you and your loved ones, you're allowed to use any amount of force necessary to defend yourself, up to and including nuclear weaponry. In England, it's different. As if it's not bad enough just to have to live there, the victim of a burglary can't do a thing to stand up for himself. If some "bloke" breaks into your "flat" and you give him so much as a "dry slap," you get life in "gaol" and he's allowed to stop by once a week to make you his "luv."

But there's still hope for you poor sunless bastards. Here's some advice for the burgled, from a Dr. Ian Stephen (not to be confused with Dr. Stephen Ian, if such a person exists, which is likely because they all have names like that):

"In most cases the best form of defence [This is how they spell it. -- ed.] is always avoidance. If this isn't possible, act passively, be careful what you say or do, and give up valuables without a struggle. This allows the victim to take charge of the situation, without the intruder's awareness, through subtle and non-confrontational means."

Makes sense to me. Here's some other good advice to remember, "mates," the next time you want to take control of a housejacking:

* Hit the intruder's fists, knees, elbows, and feet with your face, ribcage, and genitals. This will subtly wear him down and require him to stop for a glass of water.

* On a related note, robbery is thirsty work, and a parched burglar is an angry burglar. If all you've got is tap water, you're just asking for trouble. Try to keep a wide selection of beverages on hand at all times, just in case. This will subtly lull your new friend into a false sense of comfort and good cheer, giving you the chance to crawl out of the room for a change of underwear before the smell requires him to punish you further.

* Refer to the home-invader as "massuh." This will impose a subtle feeling of guilt on the misguided victim of society, causing him to pause briefly for self-reflection in the course of upending your laundry room for hidden jewelry or drugs. In another 30-60 years, he will die of natural causes and cease all criminal activity.

* Many wealth-redistributors are atheist or agnostic, as is their right. Try to avoid offending your guest with thoughtless phrases such as "Please, God, help me," "Oh Christ, I can't feel my legs," or "Jesus, Jesus, there's so much blood."

* If at all possible, prevent the problem entirely by not living indoors. No home = No possibility of home invasion! Divest yourself of all personal possessions and take up a crimefree outdoor urban lifestyle.

See? It's "easy-peasy." So chin up, Clive! Er, well, you know what I mean.

Oh, and I'm humbled by this man. Just humbled. We'd all like to think we'd have what it takes to do as he did, but I'm not sure I would have had the presence of mind. I'm just proud to have shared a species with him.

How nice of them to come

Westboro Baptist Church is planning to offer their (loud, histrionic, venomous, mouthfoaming) condolences at the funerals of the slain at Virginia Tech. Really, it wasn't necessary. Just sending a casserole would have been plenty.

I don't want to sound flippant, but if I thought these people were God's favorites, I think I'd become a Satanist. Christ is better represented by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence than by these dirty-eared inbreds.

No vigils, no shrines, no swaying with cigarette lighters waving

The Virginia Tech shooting spree was a horrible thing; I suspect we're just beginning to find out how horrible. But I think Kathy Shaidle is spot-on in this:

Please don't indulge in godless modern paganism and set up homely, self-indulgent makeshift memorials with cheap flowers and teddy bears. Don't hold hands and sing bad pop songs.

Go to church. That's what it's for. For centuries, people smarter than you and with more finely honed aesthetics worked on rituals that actually do what they're supposed to do.

Those people who hung around outside the Palace after Princess Diana's death looked like fools and you will too if you cave to the lure of cheap grace and post-modern superficiality. Those British mourners displayed as much cringe-inducing, pan-generational learned helplessness as Katrina survivors, but their laziness and ignorance was spiritual.

Worse, you will still feel as empty as you did before, maybe more so, and wonder why.

Don't make America look stupid and shallow to the whole world by Disneyfying your grief. [Emphasis Kathy's.]

Nobody I knew was at Virginia Tech, and certainly not among the victims. That's true of most of America. Whatever grieving most of us do will have to be in the abstract, that such things happen in a fallen, sinful world and that we are part of that fallenness. Church is a good place to mourn that; sidewalk vigils and TV cameras are not.

For those who did lose a loved one at the school, church is an even better place to be. There's an immense comfort in coming into contact with the eternal. Far be it from me to dictate how somebody whose child, or sibling, or friend was killed should behave about it, but I suspect that those people are exactly the ones who won't be putting their sorrow on display for CNN. Churches are for mourners; sidewalk shrines are for attention hounds.

For shame, Father!

I had such a high opinion of Father Joe, too. Now I find he's been going out picking up chicks, peeling them down and posting their pictures on the internet. So much for my faith in the priesthood.

A Pete kind of thing

My Lovely and Brilliant Wife's stepfather passed away shortly after we got married, so I didn't get to spend a lot of time with him. But with Pete, a little time was all it took. If he liked you at first acquiaintance, you were his best friend for life.

Pete was a California Mexican, which he pronounced "Metz-can". Didn't speak a word of Spanish except for a profanity whose meaning he didn't know, so he used it whenever he wanted to sound like Ricky Ricardo tearing his hair out. He looked kind of like a Hispanic Edward G Robinson in a loud shirt, if the mental picture doesn't frighten you too badly. He was so generous that after he died people would approach his wife to thank her for huge favors she never knew they'd done. He had his flaws, like anybody else, but overall, Pete was just plumb good people.

We thought of him first this weekend when it turned out that Don Ho had died. Pete was fanatical about all things Hawaiian, and was a wedding DJ by trade. I'll bet Don had all of ten minutes in heaven before Pete shook his hand and invited him in to play.

And now I run across this, courtesy of Wicked Thoughts. Pete would have laughed his butt off:

A Mexican family was considering putting their grandfather in a nursing home. All the Catholic facilities were completely full so they had to put him in a Baptist home.

After a few weeks in the Baptist facility, they came to visit grandpa.

"How do you like it here?" asks the grandson.

"It's wonderful! Everyone here is so courteous and respectful," says grandpa.

"We're so happy for you. We were worried that this was the wrong place for you. You know, since you are a little different from everyone."

"Oh, no! Let me tell you about how wonderfully they treat the residents here," grandpa says with a big smile.

"There's a musician here -- he's 85 years old. He hasn't played the violin in 20 years and everyone still calls him 'Maestro'!"

"There is a judge in here -- he's 95 years old. He hasn't been on the bench in 30 years and everyone still calls him 'Your Honor'!"

"And there's a physician here -- 90 years old. He hasn't been practicing medicine for 25 years and everyone still calls him 'Doctor'!"

"And me......, I haven't had sex for 35 years and they still call me 'The F*cking Mexican' "

Pro-abortion Brownshirts on the march!

Don't think you can get away with practicing your religion. We will find you, we will root you out, and we will bend you to obedience.

As of August 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the sales of over-the-counter EC. Under this new regulation, pharmacies are now required to carry EC and distribute it without any judgment or delay.

Planned Parenthood said the refusal to sell EC over the counter is unacceptable and that this form of discrimination puts the health of women at risk.

"That's why we've asked you for help. Working together, we'll make sure pharmacies change their policies so women are guaranteed access to EC," according to Planned Parenthood's Web site.

"We are shining a national spotlight on pharmacies that are not pro-woman," Kessler said...

The group also offers a list of questions on its Web site that volunteers, also known as "secret shoppers," can ask when they contact the pharmacy. The questions range from the name of the person who answered the phone; is EC available (why or why not); how much does it cost; and, if it is not available or in stock, would the pharmacy order it for the woman.

However, the most important part of this entire process is making sure volunteers report their findings because these reports allow Pill Patrol to verify if the pharmacy refused to sell EC and why.

If the pharmacy did refuse to sell EC over the counter, the group would demand meetings with the pharmacy and pressure the pharmacy to sell EC through rallies, letter-writing campaigns and advertisements in local newspapers.

Because it's all about choice. Provided you choose as we tell you to.

Pregnancy Test

Minor language alert.



A/T to (whom else?) Miss Cellania.

This seems like a good way to head into the weekend

With a painful A/T to Miss Cellania.

A Dog Named Mace

A mechanic who worked out of his home had a dog named Mace. Mace had a bad habit of eating all the grass on the mechanic's lawn, so the mechanic had to keep Mace inside.

The grass eventually became overgrown. One day the mechanic was working on a car in the backyard and dropped his wrench, losing it in the tall grass.

He couldn't find it for the life of him, so he decided to call it a day.

That night, Mace escaped from the house and ate all the grass in the backyard. The next morning the mechanic went outside and saw his wrench glinting in the sunlight.

Realizing what had happened he looked toward the heavens and proclaimed,

"A grazing Mace, how sweet the hound, that saved a wrench for me!"

This justifies my belief in the 90% rule

That's the principle I firmly believe in, that ninety percent of people, in general, are good, decent folks who would rather do you a good turn than a bad one. It's the other ten percent that make us instinctively wary of them all. I would have to put this guy squarely in the ninety, despite the circumstances.

The masked man entered the Kangaroo Express store early Saturday in this Orlando suburb and pointed what appeared to be a semiautomatic handgun at 60-year-old clerk Mary Parker, according to surveillance audio/video released Thursday. He demanded access to the safe, but she said she didn't have the keys.

He told her to empty the cash register into a bag. He then pulled up a stool for her to sit down and told her he was doing this because no one would hire him and he had bills to pay.

She started hyperventilating and pleaded with the gunman for help.

"I have heart trouble. Help me," Parker said...

The gunman let Parker call 911, and when the store phone didn't work, he let her get her cell phone. She told the operator she was having a heart attack, but didn't mention the robber. She then sat back down on the stool.

A customer came in and, without seeing the gunman, tried to calm Parker. She handed him the phone, and he spoke to the 911 operator.

The gunman then reappeared and told the man to get into the beverage cooler.

He then grabbed his loot and apologized again.

"You have a good day. I'm sorry this had to happen. I'm sorry. God!" he moaned. He then went out the door.

Police said Parker is OK.

I hope if he's caught, the prosecutor goes really, really easy on him.

How very insulting

Just another reminder of the ultimate irrelevance of fathers.

The federal government made a splash recently with its newest study of American children who attend day care at an early age. The research showed that day-care kids are more argumentative in grade school but have better vocabularies than most of their classmates.

Just as important was what didn't make the headlines. In the fine print of the study -- funded by the U.S. government's National Institutes of Health -- was the definition of "child care" that the study adopted. Lumped together with care provided by preschools and day-care centers was care provided by the child's father.

That's right. If your mother stayed home with you, you were cared for by your parent. However, if your father stayed home with you, according to the NIH study, you are the product of "child care."

Ironically, this represents an improvement in our societal picture of fathers. A dad who's relegated to the status of daycare provider is at least getting time with his kids. Many fathers would love to exchange the title for the actual opportunity.

Another A/T to Glenn Sacks.

Doug's bragging about his daughter again

All daddies think of their little girls as princesses, but Doug's got some reason behind his boasting. I've heard her sing, and she's very good. And my dad would be the first to attest that preachers' daughters tend to be prettier than average, which doesn't hurt in a Junior Miss pageant.

Yes, my girls are princesses as well. Then again, so were Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia.

Congratulations, Sarah!

NARAL whore sells out her religion

One more step in the ongoing battle to render the health professions Katolischenfrei.

Druggists who think "morning-after" birth control pills are tantamount to abortion can't stand in the way of a patient's right to get a prescription, state regulators said Thursday.

In a unanimous vote, the state Board of Pharmacy ruled that drug stores have a duty to fill lawful prescriptions, regardless of an individual pharmacist's personal objections to any particular medication. [Emphasis mine.]

The rule is a compromise worked out last year by Gov. Chris Gregoire, women's advocates and the Washington State Pharmacy Association.

Note that it's not even limited to individual pharmacists who refuse to sell something their employers offer. Now the state is going to force store owners to violate their consciences in their own businesses, as they've been trying to do for a couple of years. There is no other drug that an individual store is forced to stock (except ipecac, which is pretty uncontroversial). If I were a manufacturer of abortifacients, I'd be measuring myself for a yacht right about now.

There's no "compromise" involved here; it's NARAL's way or the highway. And for Catholic pharmacists, this means they either have to abandon the profession they've worked all their lives at, or abandon their faith. There is no third option. Because here in Washington, "choice" means doing as you're damn well told.

Time for Archbishop Brunett to grow a pair and excommunicate this woman before she sells us out even more to please her Planned Parenthood Pimps. No man can serve two masters, and it's pretty obvious which one Ms. Gregoire has chosen.

So it goes

God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut. Thanks for all the books.

Daddy's home!

I haven't actually watched this yet, as I ran across it at work and had to at least look productive. But the story is a real tug at the heartstrings, and I don't doubt the video is better. I'll see it when I get home.

Akubra tip to my guru Glenn Sacks.

Holy Thursday tears

I feel bad that I'm not keeping up with posting lately, especially during the Triduum. (In my defense, I've been on vacation this week and spending most of my time on family and church.) But Ricki, who's an elder in her church, has a wonderful story about her church's service:

Last night was our Maundy Thursday service. The pastor gave a fairly moving sermon (I was fighting tears, I suppose that is what started it) about Jesus washing the Disciples' feet. About how God came down and took the form of a man, and one of the last things He did was wash His followers' feet - and the minister reminded us that it wasn't just dust on those feet; there'd be animal dung and other types of ordure. He spoke about the great contradiction of it all - that the One who could have had anything, even to turn away and say, "I will not do this thing" when He was called to die - would do such a mundane and humble action. (And - it struck me - the minister pointed out that the towel and basin were there in view - and no one else stepped up to the plate, apparently - it was Christ who volunteered to do it, even though any of the Disciples COULD have.)

And then, we had to get up and have the blessing over the communion. And I had my prayer all planned out, as I always do beforehand - comment on how we commemorate the founding of this sacrament, and that we also at this time remembered the cross and...

His arrest (oh damn)
His betrayal (I'm starting to cry, this is hitting me hard, oh crap)
His...death

And then I had to stop. I couldn't go on. It was like, what happened, what we were commemorating yesterday and today hit me all of a sudden, and I just lost my stuff.

This is exactly the right approach to the Triduum. All the drama, all the weight, all the power of the Christian Gospel comes to a head this weekend. The rest of the year, it's easy enough to do your hour or so on Sunday morning, fulfill your church callings, and appreciate intellectually what we believe. But when Holy Thursday rolls around, the reality sinks in of Christ saying His goodbyes, going willingly to torture and death, and rising triumphant. It's not a matter of intellectual knowledge or mere history (though it's those things, too). It's reenacted and re-experienced for these three days. When the Eucharist is carried from the church to a stylized mini-tomb, the reality sinks in that Jesus has left the building. For three days (or however it's measured), God is not with us, at least physically. And His triumphant return, although we know the first one was more powerful, should still strike a chord in the most blase believer. This is not just talk. This is the real thing, damn it. We should cry.

What are we going to do about the other generation?

Well, probably link them. I've always said my daughter had some writing talent, but now everyone else can see why.

I'd probably embarrass her terribly if I mentioned I love her and I'm jolly proud of her, so I won't. But I will recommend that she keep writing. She's going to go places, this girl.

A dish best served cold... and rubbery

Okay, it's official. Chrystal rocks my world. The language is salty, but the belly laugh is well worth it.

Surprise, surprise

You Are Guinness

You know beer well, and you'll only drink the best beers in the world. Watered down beers disgust you, as do the people who drink them. When you drink, you tend to become a bit of a know it all - especially about subjects you don't know well. But your friends tolerate your drunken ways, because you introduce them to the best beers around.

What's Your Beer Personality?

I do like Guinness, actually, although after spending a lot of years in Portland, I've developed a taste for microbrews like Terminator Stout. Alas, I live in a place that has no microbreweries. A/T to Miss Cellania, who doesn't like beer but nevertheless is just as refreshing and flavorful as the finest ale.

Still watching Iran

An interesting money quote on the British sailors and Royal Marines being held in Iran:

A Web site run by Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Expediency Council and a former Revolutionary Guard commander, quoted an unidentified lawmaker as saying, “If Iranian diplomats in Iraq have no security, there’s no reason why we should forgive and turn a blind eye to aggressors into Iranian territories.”

No reason? I beg to differ.

The UK has gotten a lot less aggressive since its empire grew up and moved away, but it still seems unwise to cheese them off this way. Especially when they're already stationed in the Persian Gulf.

Why carrying a gun is the civilized choice

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

I have one firearm at home, and it's a little .22 single-shot that my uncle taught me to shoot when I was a kid. It's currently dismantled and the pieces stored in various parts of the house. That's as it should be; having a functioning gun in the same home with Hypertot would be an abjectly stupid thing to do. Nevertheless, I agree wholeheartedly with Marko on this. In an unarmed society, the weak are simply prey for the strong, and all the demonstrations and candlelight vigils won't make the world as safe a pllace as a single bullet can.

Barista rant

I don't go to Starbucks very often (too expensive for me), but the next time I do, I'm going to be very, very nice to the kid behind the counter. For all I know, this one (Language alert) may work at one of the stores here in town. Not that I blame him much, but anybody who works behind a retail counter needs to get used to annoying customers.

Happy birthday, Calvin!

He probably won't see this (at least not until he comes here for Holy Week), but I thought I should mention that it's my son Calvin's eleventh birthday. He's a great kid, and I'm proud as hell of him. And as you can see, he's a good-looking devil as well.

Gotta love that bureaucracy

After all the money they've poured into the badly-needed expansion of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, our DOT officials have figured out a new way to shoot themselves in the foot:

An oversized expansion joint for a Tacoma bridge project made it more than 1,300 miles before being stopped at a weigh station on the Washington border because the Washington State Patrol said it's too heavy for its trailer.

State Department of Transportation officials looked for ways Friday to send the 73-foot expansion joint the final 300 miles to its destination to help complete the second span across the Tacoma Narrows. It has been sidelined on its custom-built trailer since Saturday at the Spokane Port of Entry on Interstate 90 just west of the Idaho border after tipping the scales at 330,000 pounds.

I really like the quote from the trucking company:

"We're open to suggestions," [owner Mike] Love said. "What I've told them is, 'We'll do this any way we can. If it's impossible then it's real easy; y'all can build the bridge in Idaho.'"

Another engineering marvel from the state government that brought you Galloping Gertie. Way to budget my taxes, guys.

We few, we happy few

We band of lawsuit-happy ex-hippie has-beens with deep-fried brains and talent that hasn't been tapped in almost three decades.

It's sad to see them have come to this. I think I'll go home and put on Surrealistic Pillow and dream of what was.

A little excitement at my kids' school

There are certain things you simply don't do in this town. Among other things, you don't insult Mormons (who make up about a fourth of the population here), and you never, never get a snootful, storm the school cafeteria, and shout obscenities until you have to be flung off the premises bodily. Especially not if you're a teacher on the payroll. Jackass.

Update: Looking at the comments on the second story, Pastor Paul points out a certain... shall we say, discrepancy, in spelling skills between Lyman's supporters and those of the administration. I've had three kids at that high school myself, and they can all punctuate and capitalize, so the subliterate Lyman-ites have no excuse.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

... but didn't we end up in a war with England after they pulled something like this on us? And almost again when we did it to them? This may be the incident that triggers an invasion of Iran.

I'm no huge fan of war (I've never been in one, but my dad died from the last one we lost), but it seems to me that Iran is angling for one, and I'd for damn sure rather settle them before they get a bomb than after.

Because it's Friday...

...and it's an odd-numbered day (which is when I act like a misogynist) and because I'm full of attitude today, and, well, just for the heck of it:

A boy asked his mother the following question: "Mom, why are wedding dresses white?"

The mother looks at her son and replies, "Son, this shows your friends and relatives that your bride is pure."

The boy thanks his mom and goes off to double-check this with his father. "Dad why are wedding dresses white?"

The father looks at his son in surprise and says, "Son, all household appliances come in white."

Age cannot wither her

I just discovered Olive, who at 107 is probably the oldest person in the blogosphere. She's been present at events that the rest of us only know from history books, if even that. Check out her blog (or "blob" as she calls it).

I'd love to see more people her age share what they know in blogs. The older I get, the more people pass on whose memories and wisdom I wish I'd absorbed. I hope Olive blogs for another 107 years.

An envelope of medals

Eric at Is That Legal has been searching for several years for any trace of his great-uncle, who – like so many – went into a German death camp and never came back out. (There's some back story here.)

Well, he found something that puts a lump in the throat of this total stranger:

I reached in and pulled out two small packages, each perhaps the size of a large pack of chewing gum. They were pieces of thin cardboard that had been folded in thirds and then in thirds again, to enclose something. I unfolded one and out tumbled something solid, wrapped in blue onion-skin paper.

It was a medal.

I opened the other package. A second, identical medal, but without the ribbon.

These were the medals my great-uncle received for his military service and his injuries in World War I.

I held one in my hand, and as I realized that I was holding something that my great-uncle had held, my eyes filled with tears. I cried very softly – I was in a public space, and felt self-conscious. But I was not prepared for this – for the possibility that I might come upon even one of his belongings, let alone one that would have been so meaningful to him.

It was only later that I figured out how the medals came to be in the file. Leopold must have brought them with him when he was forced from his home in Bad Kissingen to the site in Würzburg from which he would be deported. Even at that late date – April 25, 1942 – he must have maintained a desperate hope that his military service in World War I might protect him from what lay ahead. These medals (and his useless left arm) were his proof of that service, the only protection that he had left.

But it was a vain hope. The Gestapo seized the medals, wrapped them up neatly in thin folded cardboard for me to find sixty-five years later, and sent Leo off to his fate.

Go read the whole thing.

A long-promised review

I promised Mike Barrett I'd review his new book, The Danger Habit , some weeks ago when he sent me a copy. I've been running under the whip a lot since then, and I beg pardon for taking so long. Here's the promised review (along with more personal information than you ever wanted):

This is a tough book to review, because it's hard to explain why it should make such an impression on me. I'm not a surfer, or a rock climber, or one of those guys that spin a skateboard off into the stratosphere to see how few bones they can leave unbroken. I'm terrified of heights, and even getting me on an airplane requires two bourbons and a rosary. I swim in a nice calm lake and my fishing boat is pedal-powered. I have a motorcycle, but it's a little bitty riceburner barely capable of highway speeds, not the sort of roaring mid-life-crisis crotch-rocket a true adventurer would ride. I am, in short, a sit-at-home-in-safety type, a long, skinny hobbit. So at first, reading The Danger Habit reminded me of a manatee reading a book on how to be a better cheetah.

What I hadn't counted on was the varied nature of risk addiction. While it's true that I've never been inclined to climb every mountain (at least since I was old enough to realize what would happen if I fell), there's a lot more to risky behavior than mere danger of physical injury. Some people are compulsive gamblers, risking everything on a throw of the dice or a bare-bones business start-up. Some are compulsive womanizers, slipping out of bedroom windows ahead of one angry husband after another. One is in search of money, another is in search of nookie... there are endless ends for which the means is risk. And one of those that Mike mentions is high-risk relationships. That's where I relate. Much of my relationship history has been, in a word, stoopid. I don't just mean "stupid." I mean stoo-oo-pid.

The story: I've never made any secret that I've been divorced. The marriage was made at an early age under the compulsion of pregnancy, so it wasn't hard for the Church to find it invalid. But the four years I spent being, honestly, not a terribly good husband, set the stage for a lot of years spent chasing a dream of stability. If you've ever been through a divorce (even one that anybody could have seen coming a mile away), you know the feeling that follows it: like Alice falling perpetually down the rabbit hole. And as desperately as the gambler chases his money, and the philanderer chases sex, I chased security.

My favorite verse in the Bible is Micah 4:4, which says, "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid." Pretty weird verse for a risk-fool to hold dear. But that was a promise I held on to like a leech on a swimmer. I had custody of our daughter (then four years old), which made the need for security more urgent. I went in search of a life in which I could raise her without the insecurities that a child of divorce always has.

For the next ten years, I went through relationships that I thought would bring stability to me and my daughter. Every time I thought I had found myself a wife and her a mother-figure, it would sour and we wound up worse off than before. In the process, she learned that people are temporary and kids are just adjuncts to their parents. It was exactly the opposite of what I was looking for. That vine and fig tree were farther away than ever.

What I was doing, really, was gambling. I kept thinking that if I just took this one chance, if I just went out on this limb, it would all pay off and I would reach a safe emotional haven. Of course, it never worked that way. And naturally, every time I lost, I figured the solution was to gamble a little bit more. We all know what happens when you do that, don't we?

I also had let my faith disintegrate. By the time the Lord pulled me into the Catholic Church (which is a whole 'nother story), I had grown really adept at fooling myself. At the time, I tended to lump church in with the other trappings of stability. In other words, God was a means to an end.

As I went through the RCIA program (or as I called it, PIT – Papists in Training), I began to find that God was calling me back to Him, not so He could set me up with a worry-free life, but so that I could quit looking for one. I found myself doing a lot less stupid stuff. By the time I met Christina (in a Catholic chatroom), I wasn't looking for a relationship to make me stable. I had stopped chasing stability and more or less resigned myself to a disorganized, off-the-cuff life. Strangely, my daughter was better off than she had ever been, and I was beginning to be a significant part of my son's (from one of those failed relationships) life.

This is where I found myself identifying with Mike in The Danger Habit. (You'd forgotten that was what this was all about, hadn't you?) I may not jump off bridges attached to a huge rubber band, but I've said "I love you" to women I really wanted to believe I did, just so they wouldn't leave. I don't climb cliffs, but I've stood on an emotional precipice, hoping that if I fell, somebody would catch me. Ironically, nothing I've done has been riskier than my search for safety. Today, I'm sitting under my vine and fig tree, but it was a long, needlessly dangerous road to get there, and it left me and my kids with a lot of wreckage to clean up.

Jesus said that whoever would save his life must lose it, which is a really scary principle to put into action. It's also important to remember that giving up a life, or an aspect of your life, is not something to be wasted. That's part of where Mike is going in The Danger Habit. Birds gotta swim, fish gotta fly, and adrenaline junkies gotta take chances. The difference, for the extreme sort who also wants to serve the Lord, lies in the stakes. Fr. Damien is my favorite example, but you can see the same willingness to put it all on the line in the lives of Joan of Arc, Thomas More, even Martin Luther. None of those people hid in the shadows, but none of their gambles was wasted, either.

Mike does an excellent job of painting a portrait of this kind of Christian. If you haven't bought this book (and chances are you haven't), you should. Even if you're a safety-clinging hobbit like me, read The Danger Habit and see what God can do with a life that's put on the line.

Uh-huh

Sure, buddy. Su-u-u-re it was.

Update: Apparently, it's not as wild as it sounded. "Unicorn" is kind of proseutorial jargon for a mystery person that nobody saw. Way to ruin a perfectly good headline, folks!

Fairness alert

Court rules that the law protects Catholics just like everybody else.

Expect howls of rage from the SNAPperheads.

Boobs, Injuries and Dr Pepper

This and this have convinced me that if I don't add Crystal to my sidebar, I'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of my life.

"Honey, don't forget to pick up bread and milk on your way home."

Bizarre. As well as sick and wrong, but that part goes without saying.

A/T to Jim Romanesko.

My deadly sin index

Actually, judging from the quiz questions, I think this makes me not so much godly as just boring. But I'll take it anyway.

Greed:	Very Low
Gluttony:	Very Low
Wrath:	Low
Sloth:	Medium
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	Very Low
Pride:	Very Low

The Seven Deadly Sins Quiz on 4degreez.com

Are you free, Mr. Humphries?

Not free, not cheap, but very dear. And now, alas, gone.

'Teens accused over flaccid ostrich'

How often do you see a headline like that?

Three teenagers in Germany are being sued by a farmer who claims that their shenanigans made his ostrich impotent...

The rest is here.

Woohoo!

Just got tickets to see Peter Kreeft this weekend. It's hard to believe a speaker of his caliber is coming to our little podunk town, but it's true.

I had to buy the tickets from an institution that I swore would never see another nickel of my money, but to see Kreeft, I'll live with the bad taste in my mouth. This is gonna be great.

Ain't love grand?

When she promised "till death do us part," I think she meant longer than just that afternoon. (No injuries, fortunately.)

"Bourbons on the rocks"

I get a real kick out of stories like this. Appeals to the romantic history buff in me.

"If I am right - and I don't have absolute proof, but I completely believe in my theory - then Balthazar Bourbon would be the eldest in the line," [Prince Michael of Greece] told the Guardian.

"This is the cherry on the cake. Mr Bourbon is head of a decent, dignified, middle-class Indian family. They look so Indian and yet bear this name. When you look at them, it seems incredible. The more unbelievable it is, the more I believe in it."

He said several of his royal relatives in Spain and France were "quite excited and thrilled to have found a new branch". He was in favour of a DNA test, perhaps from a surviving lock of Bourbon hair, to establish the facts.

From his home in the Bhopal suburbs, Mr Bourbon, 48, said he would be glad to take a DNA test, but remained stoical about the "hypothetical question" of whether he was heir to the throne. Conscious of the bloody outcome for royals in France, he felt royal status could bring "trouble", not to mention questions from skeptical historians.

Still, he has long had a brass plaque above his front door reading "House of Bourbon" with the fleur-de-lis crest of the French monarchy. His wife runs the neighbouring school for local children, called the Bourbon school. The family is Catholic and keeps Bourbon relics, including a sword, in their home. He said he felt "a sense of pride" when contemplating the picture of Versailles on his wall.

But he is aware that his family's fortunes waned in Bhopal long ago. He describes the Indian branch of the family as Bourbons on the rocks.

I sure hope we get to find out the results of the DNA test. I suppose it's not terribly significant; legitimism isn't really a political force these days. But it's fascinating nonetheless. A/T to the Whapsters.

I kind of expected this

If my Lovely and Brilliant Wife was Myrna Loy, I don't guess I could be anybody else. From what I can tell, William Powell was a gent off screen as well.Besides being the last love of the unhappy Jean Harlow, he starred in one of my favorite romantic films, One Way Passage. See it if you ever get the chance; it's a sniffle-fest.

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You scored 11% Tough, 38% Roguish, 14% Friendly, and 38% Charming!

William Powell

You are the classic rogue, a stylish rake with the devil of a wit and a flair for mischief, and you shake your martinis to waltz time. You are charming and debonair, but slightly untrustworthy, and women should be on their guard. If married, you are simply a bit of a flirt, even if it's just with your own wife...but if you're single, watch out. You usually rein yourself in to concentrate on one lovely beauty at a time, but with you, we never know. You're an inviting partner, but there's a playful devil behind your eyes, and those trying to get close to you should know they're playing with fire. You're stylish and fun, but you follow your own course, which may or may not include a steady gal. Co-stars include Myrna Loy and Carole Lombard, classy ladies with an adventurous streak. Find out what kind of classic dame you'd make by taking the Classic Dames Test.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Tough You scored higher than 99% on Roguish You scored higher than 99% on Friendly You scored higher than 99% on Charming

Link: The Classic Leading Man Test written by gidgetgoes on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Promises, promises

I just finished Mike Barrett's book The Danger Habit today. I don't really have time for a complete review, but I'll try to get one up tomorrow. I can say, though, that it's an excellent read, and struck chords in me that I didn't expect.