Gardening in Hell

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. There are tons of lush, green gardens in Hell. What they don't tell you is that they are full of ivy. Nothing but ivy. If any other plant tries to get a foothold in the Hell Regional Botanical Garden, it is immediately strangled by ivy.

Come to think of it, ivy is a perfect symbol for evil. At first it looks friendly, with big, lush, shiny leaves, almost the perfect picture of sensuality and even fecundity. It can even look respectable, climbing up the brick walls of some venerable institution, breaking the monotony of red brick and grey mortar. It is, of course, easy to grow, the wide and narrow path that even a person on his fifth marriage and fourth sect can manage to get to thrive. It is the promise of a garden utopia. No work and lush greenery year round. You can almost picture Harvard experts telling farmers in Africa to plant nothing but ivy for unlimited rewards at minimal expense. When the famine hits, they will look shocked and offended, "but look at those parts that did plant nothing but ivy: look how green they are."

Then the most perceptive see the deception. They find an ivy tendril 100 feet from the planting site. They find a little volunteer among the roses. Next are the folks who notice that it has clearly crossed the designated ivy planting area. Then come the unwashed, the lukewarm, the blind, who finally see it when it has taken over everything, when it has climbed every tree, every wall, threatening the foundations of buildings, menacing every other bit of flora in the garden.

Furthermore, since sins beget sins, the ivy provides a cover for blackberries to spread. Now, I love blackberries, but in the wrong place, they are as evil a weed as ivy, and they make the ivy harder to extract, because one can no longer just grab the ivy and pull - one risks serious hand injury that way (and on top of healing burns, that just hurts).

Ivy is the devil's plant (OK, all you Southerners can start ranting about Kudzu, but I don't have kudzu, so I will gripe about ivy).

It all started with a need to find a place to take pictures of some sculptures. My yard is dominated by a redwood, so it has a certain look to it, which is great for photographs, but I needed a more classical yard, with a variety of flowers, and the like. So I figured that I could use my parents' yard, which is large and has several areas, for different types of settings. The problem is that my favorite part of the yard has been neglected for awhile, which is normally not a problem, since it is hidden from the main part of the yard. My mother has given thought to reclaiming it, but the ivy is just too daunting, so it sits, the Keilholtz Jungle (not to be confused with Amalia's Jungle, which is actually quite well groomed, allowing her ample space to romp and look for bears and tigers and whatnot).

So half out of selfish desire (I want to take some pictures there), part from filial piety (my parents really would like to reclaim this part of the yard), and part from just liking to relandscape, oh, and part guilt, since the remnants of a Junior High experiment with mint cultivation still plague my mother's vegetable patch (mint might be ivy's other companion in the gardens of Hell), I started yesterday with attacking the ivy. It is amazing how time flies and the ivy still stands. Additionally, I have found that it has invaded another part of the yard that I did not realize it was in. Since I am in Sacramento only once a week, I am going to be facing ivy for a month (to keep me in practice my neighbors' ivy constantly menaces our own yard, so I am always ready with my ivy defense force).

So, if you see a lot of ivy as the floral incarnation of Satan images here, you will understand.

Happy Birthday Jeanetta!

I realized that I have not listed Jeanetta's blog on my links, so what better way to do it than with a birthday greeting?

Pork Tenderloin Pseudo Cinghiale

If you can get a wild boar (cinghiale) tenderloin, use it. Otherwise a good domestic hog tenderloin will do.

About half an hour to an hour before cooking, rub it with a mix of:

Ground Cinnamon
Ground Allspice
Fresh Cracked Pepper
Lavender salt
dried thyme
a crushed clove of garlic
finely chopped bay leaf.

Dice a small onion, a carrot and a stalk of celery. Rehydrate a handful of dried wild mushrooms.

In a hot skillet, melt some butter and gently fry the onion. After a minute or two add the carrots and celery. After another couple of minutes, add the pork and brown it on all sides. When the last side comes up, add the drained mushrooms (reserving the juice). Add a few juniper berries. Stir it up.

Add a generous amount of dry white wine, and a good splash of balsamico. Throw in some fresh thyme, the strained mushroom juice, and a couple of bay leaves. Lower the heat to a simmer and cover.

Meanwhile, toast a handful of pine nuts. When they are done, transfer to a bowl and sprinkle with gin.

When the meat has simmered for half an hour, add the pine nuts with their gin, a handful of sultanas, a handful of chopped pitted prunes and a generous splash of dry marsala. Let the pork cook to an internal temperature of 150 or 160 degrees (normally I stop pork at 140, but you want the more done flavor here).

Remove pork to a cutting board, cover with foil and turn up heat on sauce. Let it thicken. Thinly slice pork and serve covered with sauce. Serve with a good dry red wine (I served Nerello del Bastardo, of which I have spoken in length, I believe), a simple salad, and the roasted potatoes mentioned below.

Finish your meal with a shot of Rebel Yell bourbon, a shot of grappa, or a shot of nocino. Yum.

Slapstick is only funny when it's a third degree burn

Yesterday I made out the week's menus. Tonight was to be pork chops and homemade apple sauce (Sunday is a meat day and I have some overripe Pink Lady apples). Unfortunately Trader Joe's did not have pork chops, so I bought a pork tenderloin. I normally don't buy tenderloin, because it is expensive and I rarely have a recipe in mind that does it justice. But it was the only pig available yesterday, so I bought one.

That is not the point of the post, though. I will post a recipe for my pork tenderloin pseudo cinghiale, but that will be later. Suffice to say that pork tenderloin pseudo cinghiale must be accompanied with roasted potatoes.

I bought a bag that had three varieties of potatoes: purple, red and gold. All waxy potatoes, small, perfect bombs of subterranean delight (OK, I admit that is hyperbole. I never have been a huge fan of potatoes - but then I married one of these Irish (well half Irish) and she eats the things like they are going out of style, which, in Adkins land, is probably true). But roasted potatoes with rosemary and garlic is a Tuscan delight, one of the few ways we will eat the things.

You start the potato chunks on the stove. Heat up some goose fat, toast three whole cloves of garlic, add your potatoes and some chopped fresh rosemary. Coat the potatoes and transfer to a 375 degree oven and turn when you remember until they are done.

The potatoes were done so I grabbed a potholder and opened the oven. About one inch of palm was not covered by the potholder. Said inch was part of the hand that was supporting the weight of a large cast iron skillet full of Irish love bombs. In recognition of this, said hand recoiled, dropping skillet full of Irish love bombs and getting tangled in 375 degree oven rack. Fortunately feet were in Pele mode and managed to avoid hot skillet and cascading Irish love bombs.

Fortunately feet were in such Pele mode that cook did not topple over on top of open oven rack with hot pizza stone and managed to untangle hand from 375 degree oven rack.

Fortunately the nature of third degree burns is that the nerve endings are quite amply singed so pain is not immediate. Cook then puts skillet on stove, gathers errant potatoes, then runs hand under cold, running water.

Playing back this movie in cook's head was quite funny, in spite of tears welling up due to excrutiating pain in hand. Bearded six footers mishandling skillets and dancing around hot cascade of potatoes with hand stuck in oven are inherently funny. I may be a cruel SOB, but I still think the sight is kind of funny. Even though my hand hurts.

Anyway, the dinner was great, if I do say so myself. The potatoes were finished on the stove with a sprinking of olive oil and sea salt.

However, that is not the recipe I am posting with this. Instead, let me offer you something medicinal.

If you have three regions of third degree burns on both sides of your hand and have to get dinner together because you simply cannot trust anyone else in the house to do it correctly, you will need something stronger than witch hazel, preferably in the potable category. Might I suggest a Venetian Martini?

Now, the true Venetian Martini, as served at Cesar's in Berkeley is gin, red vermouth, and Antico Formula. I do not have Antico Formula, so I use a dash of Cynar. It works fine. Perhaps I should call this a Pisano Martini.

Chill a martini glass with ice water.
In a shaker full of ice (ice feels great on recent third degree burns, by the way), add two shots of gin (preferably Beefeaters or one of the B gins - you want the kick of juniper and the 10 botanicals of Sapphire will get lost), a shot of red vermouth and a capful of Cynar. Shake until well chilled (use your hand with the third degree burns, as the icy shaker feels very nice). Pour the ice water out of the martini glass and add three twists of orange and a Fabbri or Toschi candied cherry with a little syrup. Strain the drink into the glass.

It tastes great, is a lovely aperativo, and helps you ignore the third degree burns.

With dinner, drink ample red wine and finish the meal with a shot of an after dinner drink. I guarantee that you will not feel the third degree burns. Well, you will, but they will not bother you nearly as much as they would otherwise. Just do not drink so much that you forget to drink a ton of water and forget to put some Aloe pulp or Aloe gel on the burns. And whatever you do, don't put a fluffy dressing on them. That will cause you immense grief in the morning. If you cook as much as I do, you know that from one bad experience.

Baccala Cakes

I have not posted a recipe for awhile, so here you go:

Rehydrate a package of salt cod (I think I had about a pound and a half) by soaking in several changes of water for 24 to 48 hours.

Chop half of it and puverize the other half in a food processor.

Add to it a finely diced shallot, three cloves of crushed garlic, the zest of one (preferably Meyer) lemon, the juice of said lemon, fresh cracked pepper, a pinch of cayenne, a generous pinch of chopped fresh thyme, and a mixture of four eggs and some cream. Mix well. Form into cakes and coat with pannko (Japanese bread crumbs - although you could use European, they just are heavier) and fry in butter.

Drain on paper towels.

Arrange the cakes on a serving platter, decorate with thinly sliced lemon and sprinkle liberally with chopped Italian parsley. Serve with garlicy green salad, baguette and a dry white wine (pinot grigio, orvietto classico, something like that).

That is what we had last night. I am thinking that I might experiment with adding capers or pickled Italian vegetables to the mix.

Feeling a little grumpy perhaps.

I am sick and tired of sedevacantists and their whining. They are not Catholic and are henceforth banned from Erik's Rants and Recipes. This prohibition does not extend to Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, and others who are honest about their relationship to the Catholic Church and our Holy Father Pope John Paul II. Likewise this prohibition does not extend to authentically Traditional Catholics who are in communion with the Holy Father.

I have come to this decision based on two things:

First, ecumenicism is a worthy and noble thing when seen in the light of Tradition. However, it has become too infected with the Spirit of Vatican II and we need to think of ecumenical dialog in the light of Bl. Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors and how the Church has dealt with heretics and schismatics in the past. Dialogue is two-way, and there is no evidence that pseudo-Traditionalist schismatics are interested in it. We disrespect their own Athos-like views if we insist on dialog with these people.

Second. Error has no rights. Repeat daily. Error has no rights. We do not do these misguided souls any good by giving them any platform with which to broadcast their goofy views.

Third. These people are in grave danger of losing their souls and should not be dismissed lightly. Extra ecclesiam nullus salus est. Authentic Catholics take that seriously, when it is viewed in the light of the Tradition and the Sacred Council. It is one thing to recognize that God may act in mysterious ways and see to it that some animist in the jungle is somehow incorportated in God's Holy Church, but another to use it as a shield for those who pretend to be Catholic, yet abandon the barque of Peter.

So, from this point on, any posts expressing sedevacantism or by known sedevacantists who have not publicly repented of their error will be deleted and the IP added to the list of sellers of online pharmaceuticals.

EDITED TO ADD: The first step in these sanctions are simple deletions, which will happen to any post that is disrespectful of the Holy Father at all. Repeat offences will result in IP Banning, which can be appealed by emailing me at EKeilholtz [at] aol [dot] com.

Brilliant!

Go read this right now. It is a great fisking of some idiot who is lamenting the introduction of one (count 'em, that's one) Traditional Rite mass in the Diocese of Phoenix.

Now, I am perfectly happy with the Novus Ordo, in Latin, celebrated reverently, and I do tend to think that there are a lot of people out there who pine for some glorious golden age of Catholicism that flourished in the 1940's and 1950's. However, when some aging Boomer gets so hysterical about one Traditional Mass, I have to wonder what it is that he really is objecting to and what he really likes about the current state of the liturgy.

I honestly cannot see how anyone who is not tone-deaf, blind, and stupid could think that the church architecture, liturgy, music, and art that 95% of the American Church has to suffer under is anything but crap. The people who defend this garbage talk about "engaging the culture" and all sorts of stuff that sounds (and is, in theory) quite good.

One time I was talking about some stained-glass monstrocity that I encountered and some Boomer started to defend them and accused me of being resistant to modern art. I started to probe and certain enough, said Boomer's defense of Modern Art was nothing more than knee-jerk reaction. She had never heard of Diebenkorn, Ryman, Neri, Stella, and a host of others, yet she was telling me that my criticism was based on nothing more than some yearning to go back to the 1950's.

Run along little Boomer. Go play with children your own age. The grown ups are having a discussion here.

OK, I am being unfair to the Baby Boomers. This specimen was actually slightly older than the Boomers (an even more dangerous group).

In a way, she was right. I do yearn for aspects of the 1950's, like the high point of Abstract Expressionism (as found in Richard Diebenkorn's Berkeley series from 1955 and 1957).

This is bad...

Someone at St. Blog's Parish Hall posted this. I think it was developed in "Republican" Spain. It certainly fits the sentiments of those Commie vipers well.

Anyway, some rather clever stuff. I still have not been able to prevent the nun invasion.

Thinking about Tempe and modern college students

One thing that I noticed in Tempe was that I don't think I have ever seen as many people being arrested at one time as I did on any given night there. I think that almost all of them were guys in baseball caps in their early 20's. The funny thing is that my reading material for the trip is a book about the culture of the Scholastic era (sorry, I do not have the book on me, so the exact title and author will have to wait). I had been reading of the problems that college students were creating back in the 13th century.

Part of the problem was that the students were by and large tonsured clerics. They were not necessarily ordained to Major orders, but had taken the tonsure, which gave them a high degree of immunity from the secular law. So there was this culture of maurading young men who had no intention of church life, but were nonetheless protected. They had to be remanded to church courts, which could strip them of their clerical status, but until then the secular authorities could not touch them.

I cannot imagine how bad town-gown relations would be if the fellows going to Hooters were immune from civic law.

The problem with today's college student is that he is the product of privillege. He is not immune from the law, but thinks he is or at least ought to be. We cannot think that the self-centeredness so often identified with the Boomers has stopped. The arrogant sense of entitlement that pervades the young people today is unbelievable. I heard on several occasions the arrested's friends saying to one another things like, "dude, he's gotta fight this. It's totally bogus."

I was not privvy to all conversations around all of the arrests I saw, but I heard snippets of several and not once did I hear the friends saying things like, "well, he was being a complete ass. I sure hope he learns this time."

More and more am I thinking that college students should have compulsory military service before entering college (not that that is the be-all/end-all that will bring discipline and order, but it is a step in the right direction). At least they can have a little humility drilled into them.

Some of us in the music program at UCSC were fortunate to have studied music theory under Prof. Anatole Leiken. Prof. Leiken was a bit of a drill sargeant who was not afraid of instilling a little fear and discipline into his class. It was one thing to make a mistake in counterpoint or chord analysis, but another to make said mistake out of laziness. Even worse was to pretend that the mistake was not a mistake but some exercise in creativity. Prof. Leiken had a look that he could give a student that instantly brought the student to order.

We certainly learned to avoid certain errors in counterpoint, and I think his influence had some effect on us outside of the music department as well. We could certainly put down the booze with the best of them, but we were not a group given to wanton vandalism and mischief. We certainly were not running afoul of the law.

I can only imagine the feeling of dread that one would have if one had to face Prof. Leiken when word had gotten around that one had been arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct.

Part of what made Prof. Leiken so credible is that he was from the USSR and had endured more than any of us. You simply did not want to act in a way that showed arrogance or culpable ignorance around him, because he could put you down with a look at best or a caustic remark that would haunt you forever. The great thing about him is that he always did this with remarkable humor.

I haven't seen him in years, but I know that he is still teaching, which gives me hope for the music department at a school that is trying hard to erase the things that made it stand out (in their vain and half-hearted attempt to be more like Berkeley, they are becoming more like Santa Barbara, which is a shame. But that is a different story).

Back from Tempe and a Belated Friday Five

We just got back tonight. I will post later on some random thoughts that went through my head, but we had a great time, enjoyed the desert, forgot just how fast all moisture is sucked out of you, got to see some baseball in a great setting, etc. Meanwhile, I need to finish a review due tomorrow, so all I can offer for now is....

If you...

1. ...owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve?

Italian.

2. ...owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell?

Either cheese or books

3. ...wrote a book, what genre would it be?

Ask me when I am done.

4. ...ran a school, what would you teach?

Liberal and Fine Arts.

5. ...recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it?

Either late baroque, as typified by Domenico Scarlatti or Antonio Soler, or modern (Webern-influenced fados with harpsichord).

Take Me Out to the Ball Game!

Dear Readers,

At some ungodly time this morning I will be heading off to the airport to spend four days at spring training in the Arizona sun. I will probably not be posting until Sunday. I would say, "I will think of you," but that will probably be a lie. I will be watching baseball and hanging out with Melanie and Amalia in Tempe. So, fight nicely amongst yourselves. If any of you want to take up the torch of Reconquista, there is a lively discussion going on at A Saintly Salmagundi.

Play Ball!

Five by Five

Courtesy of Lynn at Reflections in d minor:

Five times Five (my answers reflect my mood at the moment and may change within minutes)

Music
1.Bach - Goldberg Variations
2.Dino Saluzzi - Mojotoro
3.Tin Hat Trio - The Rodeo Eroded
4.Stan Getz and the Oscar Peterson Trio
5.Respighi - Pines of Rome

Books
1. Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene
2. The Book of Laughter and Forgettting by Milan Kundera
3. At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen
4. The Aeneid by Virgil
5. Continental Divide by James Houston

Movies
1. Wings of Desire
2. Singin in the Rain
3. The Night of the Shooting Stars
4. 8 1/2
5. My Father's Glory

Places
1. San Francisco
2. Rome
3. Todi/Pienza (tie)
4. Big Sur
5. Orvieto

Foods
1. Fire roasted pork loin, with pancetta, garlic, rosemary and sea salt served with a glass of one of the Super Tuscan reds.
2. Tacos al pastor, served with an ice cold Tecate.
3. Fior di latte, melon, or fig gelato eaten while walking around Lucca at sunset.
4. Ensalata caprese made with Molina Creek dry-farmed tomatoes, picked in late September, accompanied with a glass of Nerello del Bastardo and a slice of francese bread.
5. Trippa alla Fiorentina. Served with a glass of Chianti Classico (Macchiavelli is good for this one).

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Wear green, drink Guiness, go to Mass, etc.

Just don't watch Riverdance. That crap will turn your brain to mush.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

One more new link

I keep meaning to link to Fr. Jeffrey Keyes, C.PP.S. I met him awhile back and later was reading a blog and put two and two together, and by the Grace of God did not come up with five this time (I hate when I do that), but realized that it was the same priest. Anyway, he has a great blog: reflective, balanced, well-written and edited, in short, all the stuff that you have gotten used to doing without on my blog. His new home at stblogs.org looks very good, too. It turns out he is moving back to take over a parish not too far from us, so hopefully we will get to see him in person soon.

Maybe we can set up a bingo game or something

I was invited to come to St. Blog's Parish Hall, which is like a message board, the ancestor of the blog. It is pretty good. Some familiar names, even a familiar face, but no bingo. So immediately I posted a complaint about what was wrong with the whole parish and how nobody ever comes to see me anymore and the kids are all mean and loud and on dope and...

Sorry, just getting in touch with my inner old Italian.

On another front, I took the Irish quiz and scored 80%, which was pretty good, since I don't think I could point out a single Irish county on a map. I missed one gimme question, though, forgetting that the Irish punted their own currency in favor of the Euro, so it really should have been 85%. Pretty good for someone who is not a bit Irish (proudly non-Islander is how I put it, although I am not prejudiced against islanders - Melanie is 100% islander (and if you think that the Englisch speak a strange dialect of German, you should hear what the Azorans do to Latin)).

As is my usual custom, tomorrow I will listen to the Pogues, drink a Guiness, make some green cookies and that will be the extent of my Irishness. St. Patrick was really an Italian anyway, so much more appropriate than Italians slumming with corned beef and cabbage would be for the Irish to follow the example of their ancestors and see the superiority of Italian ways!

So, drop that potato, Seamus, we are eating pasta tonight!

I just have to keep my Irish phrases in order. Otherwise I may go up to some fellow and wish him "pogue mahone" instead of "Erin go Bragh!" It is dangerous to only know two phrases of a language, especially when one phrase is a patriotic slogan and the other a curse. It can get you in trouble, especially with such a pugnacious people.

Dali

I have to admit that I have been fairly hard on the Catalans recently, mostly because of their preposterous recent positions on taurine culture. From listening to the ranting from Barcelona, you would think that they should establish Course Comarguese. However, what they are really doing is flashing a contemptable trans-Alpine (trans-Pyranee in this case) cosmopolitanism, a persistant curse and blessing of Barcelona.

Part of what makes Barcelona a vibrant city is this cosmopolitanism, but that vibrancy is won at the expense of armies of Commies and sexual degenerates that run rampant through the Western corner of the Occitan world. Barcelona was one of the last holdouts against El Caudillo, so I will always look at them with a dose of suspicion.

In my book, Catalonia partially redeems herself with the work of three artists: Gaudi, Miro and Dali. Each one is as close to a definition of Catalan as one can get.

So, partly because I admire the author of this article, partly because I have to give some credit to these folks (I ranted about their most recent disgraceful political performance this morning, so it is fair that I post something good about them).

The article is here and the link was brought to my attention by Fr. Tucker. Enjoy.

Minimalism at the Guggenheim

Modern Art Notes does it again with a great capsule of the minimalism show at the Guggenheim. While I tend to disagree with the common wisdom that places Robert Ryman in the camp of the minimalists, he is found in the show, and that is always a good thing. Personally I would not quibble with Ryman's inclusion in a show of Fra Angelico.

Anyway, Tyler Green offers some great insight into the Ryman Surface Veil pieces.

Ryman is a difficult artist. You simply cannot get what he is doing with a fast pass in front of the canvas. I have mentioned before in this space that when the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opened its new museum, they had a whole room dedicated solely to Ryman. I loved to walk in there and just move at my own pace, which in galleries tends to be slow; snails find me a bit too pokey.

After a few years, SFMOMA recycled the space and it is now full of po-mo garbage like Gerhardt Richter and little art school homages to grafitti and the like. I want my Ryman room back!

An interesting and sad thing about the room was the number of people who would walk in, take an incredibly superficial look and move on. These are the catalog and textbook people. They are ticking off from a mental checklist: oh, the Duchamp urinal, check. Matisse portrait with green stripe, check. An Albers square, check.

Since most textbooks have a terribly wrong view of modern art, these folks inevitably pay attention to the wrong things, which they barely see anyway. I would chalk it up to their own loss except that this mindset all too often governs the curatorial decisions. Certainly the blockbuster show is a symptom of this banal approach to art (although I will maintain to the bitter end that a banal approach to art is better than ignoring it altogether - I would rather have the Average Joe come to the museum to rush through a Chagall show than have him never come to a mueum at all).

Anyway, now that the buzz is gone from minimalism, it is a great time to take it in without the inflated hype. Some of the greats of minimalism continue to stand as strong artists, and they are worth a second (third, fourth, fifth...)long look.

Good Old Jack Chick

I read with delight the account of one of the Catholic Answers fellows meeting Jack Chick (I do not have the specific URL now, but I am sure you have read it). I like Chick's style and have often thought that we need a Catholic version of the Chick comic books: showing smug Protestant preachers being tossed into the pits of hell, homosexuals converting in tears on their death beds, etc. Then it dawned on me: that is where a revival of baroque painting could come in handy. Just think of Joseph Smith being dragged to Hell as painted in heavily dramatic chiaroscuro.

Of course that would take a lot of time and effort, and the advantage of doing little nasty jabs in comic book form is that you can crank them out in reams. So, those of you who like the comic book form: please heed my call for some good vitriol and lively depictions of the pains and sufferings of those outside the Church.

Of course this post will offend everyone from Protestants to hard-core ecumenical types. Sorry.

I actually have no issue with the rank and file Protestant or Mormon. It is their heresiarchs that I believe in being rather harsh with. Too often I deal with the casualties of an upbringing founded on wretched theology. I have a good friend who is struggling to find truth, coming from the Mormon Church. The shocking stuff that she was taught (and she went to BYO or whatever it is called) makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. She is, in fact, so philosophically messed up that sometimes I wonder if she would not be better off back in the Mormon fold. I just see so much risk in her landing in with even more dangerous goofballs. I don't always know what to tell her. Preaching will not work. Burning someone at the stake who is genuinely trying to discern Truth is wrong. I tend towards encouraging her to keep looking for Truth and to avoid easy traps. I don't know how successful that advice is, but it is the best I can offer. So I pray.

I know another fellow who came to the Church with a background (even theological training) of some Calvinist stripe. He is tormented with Jansenist ideas and strange dualisms that continually creep into his mind. These people are victims of tragic errors. When we speak of the freedom of man's conscience, we cannot mean it to include the license to propogate these wretched errors. Remember: Error has no rights! Repeat this nightly. It gets you in the correct frame of mind for daily reading of the Syllabus of Errors with your morning espresso.

Last night on the bloated pig of a radio station/hungry leftist media empire there was a lecture by one of these "historical critical" method folks. He delivered the usual twaddle about the lack of archaeological evidence being the equivalent to proof that something did not happen. It dawned on me: this fellow probably believes in theories of the origin of man that are built on scanty fossil evidence, no directly observable phenomena, and incredible conjecture, not to mention outlandishly improbable events. Does he think that the lack of a fossil for a missing link is proof that the whole system is a house of cards?

Probably not, and he shouldn't. Well, maybe he should, but I am not going to tackle the errors of natural selection's basic assumption right now. But why does he make radically different assumptions when evaluating Sacred Scripture?

The answer came in the conclusion. I paraphrase, but basically he was saying, "don't let anyone tell you how to interpret the Bible. These people all have power agendas and are simply trying to justify their power grabs with concocted mythologies." The talk was sponsored by the Unitarians, those radical Protestants who have protested even the divinity of Christ.

Did I mention that I heard this driving back from The Passion of the Christ?

Anyway, here is a great example of the evil of Sola Scriptura. Don't let those power mad folks tell you what to believe. You have to be the brave pioneer, to think for yourself and then come up, all on your own, the pathetic and anemic approach to scripture that we are pushing. Otherwise you are nothing but a slave to Rome. He did not actually mention Rome by name, but his basic framework was so painfully Protestant that he may as well have.

I have to ask my Protestant readers (I think there are two of you - masochists or something): how do you reconcile sola scriptura with refuting the claptrap found in The Da Vinci Code or the complete denial of the miraculous (and the divinity of Christ) spewed by Unitarian Universalists? By what authority do you base your defenses of the basics of Christian faith against these folks? They claim the bible just as strongly as you do.

And, my dear Protestant readers, rest assured that I do not have a hardwood spit with your names on it. I save that for the Scientologists. I do pray that you find your way out of the dark wood and into the embrace of Holy Mother Church (so much for not preaching - can't help it, sorry). I would certainly rather someone be Protestant than Mormon, Mormon than Unitarian, Unitarian than Mohammedan, Mohammedan than Sikh, Sikh than Hindoo, Hindoo than animist, animist than neo-Celto-Germanic pagan, and, well, at that point it is a draw with dogmatic atheism, Scientologists, Satanists, Jim Jonesites, Moonies, Nazis and Mansonites. There is a hierarchy of truth, and it is better to be closer to the top than to the bottom.

Mansonite. Sounds like luggage or a building material. Yes, we are doing the walls in mansonite veneer with sgraffito swastikas. They say it is all the rage among the hip, post-modern set.

Speaking of the hip, post-modern set...naw. That can wait. In the words of the immortal Ian Shoales, I gotta go.

Spain

Needless to say, I am depressed about the election in Spain. The best case scenario is that the Spanish people wake up and remember what it was that their ancestors were doing for 700 years. I am hoping that this little Socialist will come to terms with reality and do the right thing. If not, I am hoping that somewhere in Spain, in a remote outpost there is a young general without a reputation for political involvement, maybe with a mixed past, perhaps someone who did not get into the naval academy and ended up as an officer in the infantry, perhaps someone who was misguided in youth even, and thought of being a freemason but would not agree to their creed, someone who later distinguished himself in the field and was made general very young...

I emphatically do not want to see Mother Spain plunged into a Civil War again, but if she sinks to the lower abyss of anarchy, commieism and Mohammedanism, then let's pray that there is someone who will step to the plate and lead her out again.

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde, pray for us!

On The Passion

As I mentioned earlier, I finally saw The Passion of the Christ last night. I need to see it again to really write a review of it, mainly because it is hard to separate the faithfulness of the film with the artistry of the film, something akin to trying to judge the merit of a faithful likeness of a loved one. You see who is being portrayed to such a point that the work itself is hard to see.

In a big way, this is inherently a success as a piece of evangelization. However, it makes it difficult to look at it in terms of art.

So, until I get a chance to see it again, here are a few reflections.

First, I think Fr. Sibley pointed out how cold Gibson’s Satan was, and I agree. This Satan was a little sexier than Dante’s, but not to the level of Milton's. I liked the androgynous look for Satan, and the nose maggot was a good touch. A question, though: why didn’t Gibson have the Blessed Mother crush the snake’s head? I certainly understand having Christ do it, especially in the context of the Passion, but Gibson missed (or chose not to use) an opportunity to add some imagery from Scripture that is often associated with Catholicism only.

Second is something that is inherent to the story of the Passion but really hit me: in all the pointing fingers at Jews, Romans, all mankind for the charge of deicide, one thing that gets missed is that essentially every form of government was involved in the Passion. We have absentee colonialism in the form of Caesar, military dictatorship in the form of the actual Roman presence, theocracy in the form of the Sanhedrin (or clerico-fascism, as Gabriele Ranzato calls it in The Spanish Civil War), direct democracy in the plebiscite that freed Barrabas, republicanism (again, looking at Caesar and his precarious relationship with the Senate – a stretch perhaps, but the point of the roles of all of these forms of government is their degeneracy, so I think it is fair to include), and monarchy in the form of Herod.

I first thought of this after discussing it with my friend, the crypto-anarchist who accuses me of looking to salvation in the temporal order. He compared the Temple Guard to the Falange. It is actually a fair comparison, insofar as the Gospel presents us a picture of ALL human government failing to keep people from killing the Son of Man. Due to original sin, no temporal order can gain us salvation (although try telling that to a neo-Liberal/neo-Con who insist that free markets and free elections will bring about global utopia, if only people would get past these outmoded notions that hold them back).

Amália just woke up. More later.

Misc stuff

I finally saw The Passion of the Christ last night. I want to see it again, but I am not sure when. Meanwhile I will be posting some reflections, along with a rant against Unitarians and the Historical Critical Method, recipes for simple, Southeast Asian-inspired fish, thoughts about the wedding at Cana and the age of the universe, and some other things that have been floating around my head. I should have plenty of time, although it will be rather spotty.

Last night Amalia woke up burning with fever. She had no other visible symptoms, and the fever went away with children's ibuprofen. Her fever is gone for now, but she is not her usual bouncy self today, so I predict a day of napping and moping. During naps I should be able to post some stuff, although I do need to get a restaurant review in by the end of the night.

AAAOOOOOAAAOAOAOARRRRRRRRAAAAAOOOOAAR

Never mind the title of this post. I'm just saying the Zooth. You know what today is. Stay away from the forum! Avoid men with lean and hungry looks. Blah blah blah.

Be safe out there!

Coffee Geeks

As many of you know, I am a complete espresso fanatic. I recently bought a new espresso machine, giving up something like 18 years of hard-won practice of making tolerable espresso on a steam-powered machine for the ease and joy of a pump-driven unit. The old Frankenbrewer, a patchwork of parts from my old machine from high school and Melanie's college years machine, was on its last leg. I had been looking at a decent espresso machine/burr grinder by La Pavoni, but we decided to go with a super cheapo pump machine, rather than a mid range one that will only make me long for the amazing thing of beauty that will someday sit on my counter. Anyway, after pouring about a pounds' worth of espresso down the drain (thank God for Trader Joe's cheap beans - the only option for learning the ins and outs of a new machine) and replacing one of the parts with something from the old Frankenbrewer, I have been able to get a consistantly excellent espresso.

Anyway, with my new espresso machine, I have been experimenting with blends, and that gets me back into the habit of reading coffee literature. So it was with great delight that our paper ran a story about home roasting that mentioned Coffee Geek. What a website! They are geeks. They review grinders and tampers and are the sort who use terms like "heat exchanger" in casual conversation. My kind of folks. Needless to say, I am adding them to the links section!

Friday Five

Today's Friday Five. I might have a Friday Afternoon Sermon, too. We'll see.

1. What was the last song you heard?

"Corina, Corina" as sung by Taj Mahal

2. What were the last two movies you saw?

The Jungle Book
Gaslight

3. What were the last three things you purchased?

Groceries
A book about cement
A plastic watercolor palette

4. What four things do you need to do this weekend?

Plant flowers
Host a lunch party
Serve as head usher at Mass
Get the tires checked

5. Who are the last five people you talked to?

Amalia
Melanie
Mike (friend in San Diego - it was via telephone, does that count)
Diana (our neighbor)
The clerk at Trader Joe's (not much of a conversation, though)

Prayer

Blessed Virgin, please continue to watch over His Most Catholic Majesty Juan Carlos and his people. The Spanish people evangelized the New World from a ship named for you, please continue to be their strength in face of evil and violence. Please help bring the whole of Iberia together in the arms of the Church to make common cause against terror. Please make the King of Spain once again lead the world in bringing souls to your Divine Son.

Santiago Matamoros, pray for us!
Saint Isidor the Worker, pray for us!
Saint Dominic, pray for us!
Saint Ignatius, pray for us!
Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us!
Martyrs of the Civil War, pray for us!

Which Cartoon Dog am I?

In Hell, one will have to constantly watch out in order to avoid stepping on chewing gum and dog poop. Naturally, to get the dog poop, Hell will be full of dogs. It will be a perfect place for them: they stink like Hell already, they are dangerous, dirty, and loud. Naturally I will have nothing to do with identifying with a pooch, cartoon or not.

I am curious about trying dog, though. If anyone has any experience with the culinary uses of this animal, I would love to hear them. I was thinking of poking around Korea town, but I doubt that I will get anywhere.

And don't worry, providing me with information on the culinary use of canines will not make you an accomplice to my stealing of the neighbor's wretched hounds. We are on good terms and the owner has been very good about the barking issue. She has spent a lot of time and money on obedience school, she gives them plenty of exercise, etc. So any experiments I do in this area will thoroughly respect the private property of my neighbors.

Ideally I would like to find a restaurant that serves it, perhaps unlisted on the menu, you have to ask for Mr. Kim, that sort of thing. I do not really want to have to slaughter and butcher the meat. I do not have the right space, and I would definitely have to do it when Amalia was away for a couple of days. She is being raised to understand the proper relationship between predators and predated, but it might be a bit too much for her to actually see a doggie become dinner. Although, who knows? I was a little worried when we ate rabbit, but she loved it and even said, when we were looking at the cute bunnies at the farm, "I eat rabbit." A futre 4-H girl if ever there was one!

Very Funny

I hate gallery openings with a passion. I also can't stand the First Thursday deals where you go from scene to scene, I mean, gallery to gallery and have to wade through tons of irritating hipsters. With the current state of contemporary art (I am talking mainstream here, I find plenty of good artists out there, but they aren't showing at the biggies for the most part) the art itself is depressing and made more so by the inane conversation that goes on, both in person and by a lot of art critics.

I talk about art a lot. I spend a lot of time with artists. I look at art. I make art. But I hate artspeak, because most of it is based on a completely useless notion of progress in art, the misunderstanding of how art is supposed to challenge the viewer, and the fact that artspeak cliches are nothing more than fashionable little phrases, designed as a sort of currency for other arts fashionistas.

So it was with particular joy that I encountered this little guide to art fairs on Modern Art Notes. Read it and weep (or giggle, either reaction is appropriate).

Need some advice from DC folks

We will be in Washington DC for a week in April. Melanie will be in meetings most of the day for four or five of the days, so I will be taking Amalia around. We will certainly do the obvious: Air and Space, Hirschhorn (that doesn't look right. Is it Hirshhorn? No. I give up. Will look it up later. Sorry), Natural History, the Basilica, etc. I have not had to think about DC from a toddler's perspective since, well, I was a toddler, and it was my parents' job to keep me entertained.

I would appreciate any suggestions from folks who know the area as to things that I should not miss with my two and half year old. I think that she will be completely unimpressed by the big government stuff, as for her government means Babbo and Mamma and the Supreme Court for her is running to Babbo in tears saying, "Mamma said 'no'" or running to Mamma in tears saying, "Babbo said 'no.'"

I know DC fairly well from a grown up perspective, but this should be something entirely different.

In a similar vein, we will be in Phoenix at the end of next week and have one free day (yes, we are going to spring training. Baseball in March! Yipee!), and if anyone knows of the best place to look at dessert flora, I would like to know. Neither Melanie nor Amalia have been to Arizona and I would like to show them the most stunning example of the dessert. I am much more familiar with Tucson, so if anyone has any suggestions for the Phoenix area, I would love to hear them.

Thanks!

Welcome!

I want to welcome a very specific reader to the blog who has never visited before (or if he has, he has done so undercover). He will know who he is. Anyway, welcome to the world of Eriksrants!

Pax et bonum!

Speaking of new links...

I am ashamed. I thought that I already had Mark Sullivan's Irish Elk in the links section. He is as big a fanatic of early American jazz as you will find in St. Blog's Parish. He is also a baseball fan, although he is into those teams that one finds on the other side of the Sierra Nevada (I chalk it up to accident of birth, invincible ignorance, etc.). He has named his blog after some extinct Polish deer that is known as an Irish Elk. What more do you want? Mark is the Mezz!

New Link!

Anyone named Otto is OK in my book, particularly if he is Catlick. He also links to a hideous picture of the grotesque hand of a witch, so if you want a scary image, see what a lifetime of Leftism will do to one's physical well-being, and be glad that you were never Tom Hayden or Ted Turner, go click on the Hanoi Jane photo link. Eeeew.

Anyway, this Otto fellow runs a mighty fine blog! Check him out if you haven't done so already.

Yikes! That was long

I broke the last post into two parts, so that scrolling was not so much of an issue. I forgot about that Extended Entry part of Movable Type, which is really a lovely thing.

Also, this morning when I logged onto AOL, I was confronted with Ellen Degenerate's smiling face and the caption "Can't Get Enough of Ellen?"

Well, no. That's not it. I think I have had all I really ever wanted of Ellen and then some. If her whole career had been nothing more than her role in Finding Nemo, that would have been about right.

Speaking of this morning, it sure is a lovely one. Nothing beats drinking one's coffee outside while watching Amalia explore the great outdoors. It is already in the 70's and will probably end up in the mid 80's. I love spring.

The Libertarian Test

I scored 17, which is a "soft core libertarian." Wow! To call me even that is a stretch. I have some quibbles with the test, however. In typical libertarian fashion, this test sees everything as binary with the poles being pro-regulation and anti-regulation.

For instance, "Do you think that zoning laws are too strict?"

I have to answer yes and no. When they are oriented towards improper means, then they are too strict, for instance in the way that they keep work areas, commerce areas and housing areas apart. If we want to get rid of massive ribbons of highways (I will anticipate the foaming of pro-automobile libertarians and point out that these highways are almost always funded with tax dollars and that our current low prices of petrol are subsidized), we will have to explore city planning that encourages people to live closer to their work. It works great in many places.

When zoning laws allow for nouveau riche to buy and tear down a Julia Morgan house to build a monstrous starter castle that clashes with the whole neighborhood (this happened in Palo Alto a few years back), then I would say that the laws are too weak.

This illustrates the essential problem of the libertarian mind. It cannot take a stand on matters of quality, brushing them aside with staunch defenses of individual preferences. Of course this reeks of aesthetic relativism, which is the kissing cousin of moral relativism.

In fairness, the libertarians like to claim that government (that bogeyman they fear more than anything) cannot possibly make a claim to moral or aesthetic high ground, which, in a liberal democracy, is probably a fair point. With a one-man, one-vote system, official taste boils down to either majority taste or taste that the majority has been tricked into buying into. So, to keep some diversity of ideas alive, if one has to have a liberal democracy, one probably needs to have some libertarian flavor to it.

I suppose that is where my 17 score comes from.

The problem is that liberal democracy must rest on a common culture and a common religion or else it degenerates into a lost world of "values" and pluralism. When deeply held and contradictory "values" are enshrined as law, law becomes meaningless and arbitrary. This is exactly where we are headed.

When law becomes meaningless and arbitrary, tyranny arises and dictatorship is the inevitable end. I have to admit that I am pessimistic about our ability to resolve the deep contradictions that polarize our culture (I am speaking about the West in general, not the United States in particular). As a result, I am convinced that we need to prepare ourselves for dictatorship. The question then is what kind of dictator do we want to back.

If we do not decide what sort of dictator we want, that decision will be made by those who have decided and have started to plan. With Puritanism as the strongest single force animating the American body politic, Catholics should worry. A secular Puritan dictator, a Ralph Nadir in a fancy uniform is the spectre that looms for us unless we get behind a different dictator.

The best way to get behind the right dictator is not in the realm of politics. That realm is lost until we get the culture in order. And if we get the culture in order, we might be able to salvage a dictatorless state. Note that I say "might." We should still keep in mind the fact that we may need to get behind our own dictator.

Now all of this might sound grim, but it doesn't have to be. A dictator is admittedly a stop-gap solution. A good dictator is one who is not followed by another dictator, as dictatorship is an energy-consuming sort of government. What I would hope to have, in the case that dictatorship is inevitable, is a Francisco Franco y Bahamonde.

Franco was faced with a Spain absolutely wrecked by Commies and Anarchists. Priests and nuns were being executed simply for being priests and nuns. Churches were ransacked, and an impending Stalinism was on the horizon (as soon as the Stalinists could kill all the Trotskyites and Anarchists). The government was either unable or unwilling to govern. Murder and mayhem were the rule.

So Franco did the honorable thing, and became the dictator Spain urgently needed. He stabilized institutions and saw to it that the economy moved along, albeit slowly. Certainly Spain was culturally a bit dusty (as I have said before, I would prefer cultural dust to a land where every wild idea, no matter how evil (Patricia Ireland, Michel Foucault, etc.) is given its day). However, in contrast to what was going on in Eastern Europe or Africa, the average man in Franco's Spain was able to go about average business as a matter of course.

Eisenhower wanted to know what Franco had in mind for Spain, so by way of a diplomat, he asked him. Franco replied that he wanted to restore the monarchy, to have a constitutional government, and to have a professional army that was subservient to the civilian government. While King Juan Carlos has allowed far too much liberalization (that will probably require another Franco in a generation or two), that is exactly what Spain has.

Note that Franco was not trying to create some Franco y Bahamonde dynasty, nor was he up for a kleptocracy along the lines of Marcos. He was simply a paramedic who kept his country from dying. And that is the proper role of a dictator. Stablize, govern firmly and fairly, and let the culture flower once the patient is stable, law is the rule rather than the exception, and the elements that threaten to destabilize the country have been neutralized (which does not necessarily mean people are killed, imprisoned or the other litany of horrors that sentimental democrats moan about - they can be bought off with good results or given compromise positions that will forever keep their radicalism in check).

A dusty dictator is the kind we will want. We must avoid the ones who see themselves as great reformers or who have grand visions and utopias. A good dusty dictator realizes that his thumb might be a bit heavy, but errs on the side of caution. A bad dictator is one who sees glories and the ultimate perfection of man. The dusty dictator sees the inherent flaws in man and does the best job of keeping those flaws somewhat in check, but understands that his efforts will necessarily be crude. The dusty dictator discourages wild political ideas, but the good and fair running of the bureacracy. A little censorship here and there is OK. What a DD is looking for is for society to be in the habit of non-reflexive government, of sober consideration, of a disdain for new ideas and experimentation. A free press stirs up sentiments and should be curbed (but not completely crushed) under a DD-type government.

With these habits instilled, democracy can be allowed to gradually come back, first in the local level, with town councils and industrial syndicates. Then the syndicates and town councils should elect members of parliament. Eventually a restricted representative government should be given a bit of a go. The Constitution without the Amendments (keep the abolition of slavery, but get rid of every other one, particularly the ones that expand the vote) comes to mind.

But all of this will come to naught without good habits instilled under the DD.

So, here are my criteria for a good Dusty Dictator:

1. He must be a serious and pious Catholic, although a painful experience in the past in which he strayed from the Church and was brought back might be good for humility.
2. He must be thoroughly aware of the Social Teachings of the Church, but must not confuse his own rendering of them for the teachings themselves. He should read the Rule of St. Benedict at least weekly.
3. He must be willing to submit to the guidance and authority of the Pope, his bishop, and his priest.
4. He must entertain no schemes to rapidly build the economy, he must be suspicious of Grand Public Works and radical land reform. He should be primarily an isolationist in external affairs and shun notions of empire building.
5. He must surround himself with advisors who agree on 1 through 4, but disagree on all else. They should be armed.
6. He must cultivate a distrust of sycophants and flatterers (ah, there's the hard one - number three will come in useful here).
7. He must respect his office. Nothing turns a leader into a tyrant faster than pretensions of equality, for in disdaining the respect due his own office, he ultimately disdains respect for all offices. To help him in this, he should refer to all of his citizens as "my children."
8. His exit strategy must not involve direct relatives.
9. He should establish two competing police forces (I am convinced that the Caribinieri and Polizia keep each other from excessive interference in Italian daily affairs).
10. He should follow the Lateran treaty and turn education and family courts over to the Church entirely.
11. He should live comfortably, with ample means for retirement, should he determine to go that way. Envy and resentment create feelings of entitlement, which in a dictator cause oppression.

Note that I do not in all seriousness propose myself for the job. Not that I don't want it. I do. In a heartbeat. But there is far too much of the Mussolini in me. I would trade the dust for a polished helmet, the slow growth for experimental schemes. I would be the sort to dynamite Mt. Rushmore to build a bigger sculpture of my leering mug, which would contain some sort of vital public works to preserve it for posterity.

The Italian National Wedding Cake would serve as the outhouse to the Duce Keilholtz Monument. My police would have the best plumes, the brightest brass bands, the biggest and blackest horses. Every day would be parade day, and I would look at borders as insolent challenges, awaiting my crack corps of elite troops. I would have a finger in everything, with architects' drawings requiring my approval, music scores scrutinized for bad counterpoint, giant public bonfires of Margaret Atwood books and Van Clibern records, chefs required to wear military insignia, the whole nine yards. Accordion music, gypsy brass bands and yodelling would be broadcast from loudspeakers mounted on cars for the edification of the benighted public.

And the speeches. Endless tirades, long readings from the Aeneid, reflections on the nature of the state, Ezra Pound poetry, all broadcast over all radio stations as well as over loudspeakers mounted atop power poles.

There would be grand train stations, magnificent concert halls, amazing museums. Public money would go to fund fantastic Cathedrals (I might be an aspiring Comic Opera Tyrant, but I am a Catholic aspiring Comic Opera Tyrant after all).

I would recognize that I would end my days shot and hung from a telegraph pole, but would see that as nothing more nor less than the price of duty.

So, no, I am not running for the job. Or I am, but cannot in good conscience endorse myself. So I try to work on the cultural aspects, writing to defend the unborn, the poor, the wholesome pleasures of family and table, museum and concert hall. I work to make art and music and vote for the candidates least likely to will the death of the unborn, the least likely to bomb innocent Serbian Christians in a goofball knee-jerk reaction to a complex problem, the candidate most likely to stop Mohammedan expansion. But I am always looking for the right candidate for Dusty Dictator.

New Link

I have checked out Tyler Green's Modern Art Notes before, and have no idea why I did not add him to the links.

In reading his blog today I found this tidbit about Paul Wonner. I agree with him wholeheartedly that Wonner's early work was interesting, with broad, painterly strokes, the verve of which contrasted with the sort of unease of his subject matter. Later, he started painting these qaint little still lives in crisply rendered lines. They are formulaic, boring, and rarely worth the time spent taking a good look at them (I have spent a lot of time at it and have come away feeling like I should have been looking at Thiebaud instead).

Wonner will ultimately be remembered as a third-tier Bay Area Figurative painter, who, along with Joan Brown and Nathan Oliveira, showed extraordinary promise in the heady days of early Bay Area Figurative Painting, but never was able to really keep it up.

For me, the Joan Brown retrospective at the Oakland Museum of California was a real eye-opener in this way (as a recent Nathan Oliveira show was), in that it was clear that at some point she lost her artistic vision and substituted it for an insipid private language of domestic affairs. For Oliveira, he has shown sparks here and there, but Brown never did (and quite frankly her Bay Area Figurative stuff was always second rate to begin with - I suspect that a great deal of her reputation hinged on the fact that she was a women and was married (for all of a year or so) to Manuel Neri).

Anyway, this Green fellow hits the nail on the head, so I am linking to him. Go read some good arts writing!

Simple Fish Dish

Heat some extra virgin olive oil in a pan. Gently fry three large cloves of garlic, thinly sliced. Add a can of tomatoes, a generous splash of dry white wine, a pinch of dried oregano, a pinch of dried mint, a pinch of dried thyme, a couple of generous pinches of red chili flakes, a couple of turns of the pepper cracker, and a bay leaf. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer.

Put on your rice in the rice cooker.

When the rice cooker clicks, put cod fillets in the sauce. After two minutes turn them over. Cook for another 11 minutes. In the last five minutes of cooking add a generous amount of capers and salt to taste.

Serve fish and sauce over rice with a dry white wine (Pinot grigio or Orvieto Classico) and crusty French bread. Garnish with lemon slices and a sprig of fresh thyme, if you are feeling fancy.

Debussy

During the Bach versus Debussy war that was going on in the artsblog world I was taking the Bach side pretty firmly. After all, I am a harspichordist, Bach was a German, what more do you really need for an alliance? OK, I can overlook the Lutheran bit because he wrote some glorious Latin music. But overall I find Bach to be just short of pure joy. Rich counterpoint, inventive use of melodic ideas, meaty harmonies. He made a few errors in counterpoint, but so has almost everybody.

However, even with a deep love of Bach, Debussy continues to move me. I write this as I listen to La Mer (we had cod for dinner, and I could not find my sea songs records fast enough, so I settled for this and a CD of Joseph Spence). I completely disagree with the charges of "pretty yet shallow" that are frequently used against Debussy. The problem with this cliche is two-fold:

1. It links depth and complexity with standard practice functional harmony. This is the error Schoenberg made in his essay "Brahms the Revolutionary," which actually paints a good picture of why Schoenberg was the least of the Second Viennese School.

2. I know I sound like a broken record, but the cliche has a lot to do with our lack of vocabulary for timbre. What Debussy was doing with timbre is fantastic, but evades description and verbal analysis, because we simply lack the vocabulary.

Now, as for the topic of Bolero that has come up on Reflections in d minor and About Last Night: that piece is an essay on orchestration. I never could figure out why it is staged for paid public performance. As an essay it is beautiful. If an orchestration student thoroughly memorizes the sounds of that piece, he will be light years ahead of those who haven't. However, it is not really a finished piece of music, and I completely sympathize with Terry Teachout who actually had to play the bass on that piece. I think I would rather take the Chinese Water Torture.

On the Repugnance of Moderation

I am sick and tired of Westerners calling for us to support "Moderate Muslims." It reeks of arrogance that we are telling them the form that their religion should take, based on post-Endarkenment secularism. What exactly is a "moderate Muslim?" A cafeteria Mohammedan? A Mohammedan who believes that the Koran is the infallible word of God, yet is willing to bend on crucial issues when faced with the prospect of Western goods?

I am willing to grant the Mohammedans that they believe in the truth of their religion. So why would I trust anyone who compromised on what they saw as Truth, particularly when said Truth comes with strict orders of obedience?

In order to make any headway against the errors of Mohammedanism, we need to first recognize that Mohammedanism is not a religion of peace and that those who really profess it are inherently opposed to the West. While supporting so-called moderates might have the worthy goal of putting off violence, it is short-sighted and ultimately supports the worst aspect of secularization, which is the divorce between religion and society.

If we are to have meaningful dialogue with the Mohammedans, we have to stop trying to refashion their faith into one of our own making. Then we will have an unvarnished portrait of what we are up against. Until then, we are propping up nothing by stooges, compromisers, and cowards in our support of so-called moderate Mohammedanism.

Friday Five

The Friday Five is boring, and I cannot honestly answer at least two of the questions, so I am skipping it. In fact, I will be too busy to do much posting at all, particularly if I end up seeing The Passion tonight.

I did see Ibsen's Ghosts at the Berkeley Rep on Wednesday. Fantastic play, well produced, well acted, definitely worth going to if you are in the Bay Area. I have read most of Ibsen and tend to have a hot and cold reaction to him. When he was good, he was very good, but when he was bad, ick. Then there are those plays that read well, but resist staging, for instance, Peer Gynt.

I saw a particularly awful Peer Gynt at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival a number of years ago (13 I think). It ran way too long (and had been edited) and felt like sitting through a four-hour long dead horse beating. That horse was dead from about minute 17 and stayed that way until the bitter end.

Part of the problem was the director's urge to be clever. Translation was done in such a way as to make un-subtle references to current events that really did not serve the drama. For instance, Peer was looking at the stars or something and exclaimed, "a thousand points of light!" (this was during the senior Bush administration). Titter titter. It got the laugh from the aging liberal set, but...so what? So imagine this sort of liberties for four hours on a play that already resists staging.

Berkeley Rep, on the other hand, did a fantastic job. I was at first taken aback by the stark stage, but given the mood of isolation and loneliness, it was entirely appropriate. The last scene was done in front of a large detail of an El Greco, which had the unfortunate look of Art Student Who Is Just Getting Into Baroque Mannerism, which in many ways describes the look of much of Greco anyway, but when enlarged to mammoth proportions becomes overbearing.

However, overbearing is the whole point of the last Act, and Munch did do the sets for an early staging of the play, so it all fit in, as did the strangely post-industrial electronic music that was used sparingly throughout (very sparingly, and quite appropriately).

An added bonus to going to the Berkeley Rep is that it is just around the corner from the only real gelateria in the Bay Area (I forget the name, as they changed it recently - I think it is Gelateria Naia or something. It is on Shattuck at Addison). OK, I take that back, there is an Argentinian gelateria in Oakland, but their style is a bit different than the real Italian thing.

Since we went as guests of the Rep, and they fed us, we resisted gelato, but it is something to keep in mind if you are in the area and are looking for a good evening of drama and gelato.

My Concession Speech

It turns out that I did lose an election on Tuesday. I was a write-in candidate for a seat on the Republintern or whatever the GOP Politburo is called. As a result, I guess I owe you a concession speech:

Dear Republicans,

I thank you for not electing me to a seat on your Grand Council. It really would have been a terrible fit. I might vote for your candidates, but I am voting AGAINST the pro-abortion Democrats, not FOR the pro-free-market Republicans. And, frankly, your support of the pro-life cause has been spotty at best. You always seem to forget Reagan's real role in the issue, which was liberalizing the California abortion laws years before Roe v. Wade. Nevermind the warm fuzzies that the pro-life side was suppo