And I Will Lift You Up...

Last week Melanie and I had a nice dinner at the Awahnee. At least once in your life, you should have a romantic, candlelit dinner in the Awahnee's breathtaking dining room. The food is quite good (not so good that the restaurant would last a year in San Francisco, but very good for resort standards), the architecture fantastic, and the setting beyond belief. Really. I have been going to Yosemite since, well, forever, and it still blows me away.

The only fault with the dining room is the music. In a high-ceiling, American Indian meets Craftsman dining room, they decided to have a piano player. And we are not talking Chopin and late Liszt, both of which would actually work. Instead we are talking about boring renditions of jazz standards (you know the head, repeat and we don't need no stinkin' solos arrangement), show tunes (with way too much Andrew Lloyd Webber, although one song is too much of that guy), Beatles songs, and so forth.

Right after one of the silly songs from Pocahontas came a familiar and very syrupy song, one that lacked rhythmic direction, and made up for its boring harmonies by a sort of false-build-up-to-an-utterly-lame-climax. Yet is was a song that sounded familiar.

And then it hit me.

On the chorus:

"And I will lift you up
On Eagle's Wings!"

I about choked on my venison osso buco.

"That's that horrible song, 'On Eagle's Wings,'" I sputtered to Melanie. She listened and replied, "Gack! You are right."

As our laughter died down, Mr. Piano Man launched into The Phantom of the Opera.

While the whole piano thing seemed out of place in the Awahnee, "On Eagles Wings" seemed perfectly at home among fruity arrangements of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Elton John.

One thing I know for sure: I love my parish. I would guess that "On Eagles Wings" has never sullied the air at St. Margaret Mary's.

Great Walls of the Twentieth Century

Since a couple of my readers seem to think that building walls on the Mexican border is a good idea, let's spend some time this week looking at how good border walls have been in this century.

My favorite is the Maginot Line. The French were not afraid of hardworking Germans coming over to steal jobs (French unions already took care of that sort of thing), rather hardworking members of the Wehrmacht coming over to steal the whole country. So, they built a string of fortifications called the Maginot Line, which was supremely effective in keeping the Germans on the other side of the Rhine.

So effective that there are no photos whatsoever of German troops marching through the Arc de Triomphe, nor of Hitler looking over the rooftops of Paris.

Of course the big difference between a wall of heavy fortresses on the Rhine and a wall on the US-Texas border is that the Germans had Panzers (and a will to conquer, and a recent grudge, and a psychotic neo-pagan leader with a Wagnerian vision of world domination). We are dealing with people who want to come over to work and support their families, which would be bad, because then many Americans might have to stop spending $60 a month on cable television, and would have to go down to being a four car household, and might even have to cut down on the sugar coated chocolate knockers for breakfast.

I love the Maginot Line, however, because I had a roomate in college from France. When he would get out of line I could fix him with an icy stare and say, "Frankreich! Achtung! Remember the Maginot Line! You must obey!" This was good, as it kept variety to our discourse, which would have otherwise been little more than regular questions of "well, Francois, is this a bathing week, or non?"

So, go ahead support border walls. It puts you in the same league as the, uh, French and their noted valor (Best Frontier Defence - Gold Medal).

Especially since this is seen as some sort of job protection thing. Do we get a 37 hour work week and six weeks vacation, too? Well, now there are a couple of things I could get behind.

We would still be able to bring in former colonists to be domestics and farm laborors, though, right?

Because even with a completely closed border, we still won't be able to find Anglos willing to pick pears.

Tomatoes! Still!

A month after morosely proclaiming the end of the season for good tomatoes, guess what still is in the market. Yes, dry farmed tomatoes are still there, still good, and probably will be for another two weeks.

This means that the BLT season goes into extra innings, and that puts a big smile on my face.

The Berlin Wall, redux

President Calderon is absolutely right. Walls on borders are shameful things, and I still remember the elation when the Berlin Wall fell (just as keenly as I remember about two months prior having some GOP fellow telling me that it was simply not realistic to think that the Soviet Union would not be around within our lifetimes).

The only thing that makes me not regret voting for Bush is Kerry. Or Gore.

Englisch Dentistry

No wonder vampire stuff is so popular in the Islands.

I would have found someone wearing fake teeth for the picture, however.

OOPS! Thanks to Don, I realized that I did not include the link. It is a photo of someone in England wearing very realistic vampire teeth. What is impressive about the teeth is that they are not perfectly even, which most fake-looking fake teeth are.

Anyway, it was from a news story, and I have no idea where I found it. If I run accross it again, I will post it.

But if I don't you can set the scene up in your head and imagine it sparking a German-accented diatribe against the Godless Englischer.

Gone Fishin'

Well, we aren't going to do any fishing, but drawing, hiking, dining at the Awanhee, and enjoying the sites of Yosemite are definitely on the table for the next three days.

No blogging until after Wednesday!

TFP and Wicca

The other day I had the rare treat of having a great little thing pop into my head, one that definitely is quoteworthy:

Wicca is not a religion. It is a role playing game.

You can even take if further and note that it is a role playing game for stunted adolescents, for bored suburbanites, etc.

It would be refreshing to hear an elected official say this, but until we get rid of the poison of liberal democracy, fat chance.

Anyway, a couple of days after that a friend's blog made notice of a "traditionalist" (actually SSPX adherent, so chalk him off as yet another Prottie who thinks he has stumbled on a church that is more ancient and authentic than the True One) who was whining that the woman he will marry (unlikely) is going to provide him with a dowry (even more unlikely) and that it is a waste of time to educate women.

A couple of days later I got my regular silliness via email from TFP, and, while reading one of their essays on dress (they seem to pay a lot of attention to how people cloth themselves), I realized that TFP is the Catholic version of the Wicca role playing game.

How many hit points do I get for reading one of Prof. Plino's little essays?

It's Pumpkin Time!

We went to the pumpkin patch yesterday. Pumpkin risotto, pumpkin soup, pumpkin seeds (fried with the pulp, Worchester Sauce, and butter. Add freshly ground pepper and enjoy), pumpkin panna cotta with a candied acorn crust, pumpkin...???... This season, like last year's successful foray into the world of winter squashes, I am going to focus on the pumpkin. I will post things sporadically, as per usual. If you want details on any thing that I describe too hastily, holler.

Don't You Love Inclusion?

Read this. If you need background information, I am sure it can be found on the web.

Where is the International Journalists' Coven standing up against power?

Art and the Nekkid Body

I just heard Cardinal Arinze's latest podcast on modesty. One point that the rather irritating interviewer kept going back to was on the morality of artists drawing from the nude. The cardinal was taking the position that it is at the very least dangerous to the soul for an artist to draw nude models.

The objections that the interviewer kept throwing up were primarily straw men: arguments of art for the sake of art, that there is so much of this in culture that it can't possibly be wrong, etc. Insofar as the ordinary person's understanding of looking at the nude goes, the Cardinal quite properly pointed out that morality trumps art and that morality trumps culture.

Fine. What both the interviewer and the Cardinal miss, however, is that a serious artist drawing from life tends to distance himself from the prurience that is assumed in spending hours with a nude model. I have spent many hours drawing and painting nude models, and based on my own experience and from talking to many other artists on the matter, one tends to take a fairly clinical and anatomical view of the body.

Now, one could argue that this rather cold and objective view is no way to treat the human body, and that would be entirely correct, IF the drawing was the ends of itself. What both men, knowing little of art, miss is that it is nearly impossible to correctly draw (and therefore paint) the human body without spending considerable time studying it undraped. In fact, to really get it right, you have to take the skin off and study muscle groups and bones as well.

Outside of drawing a person in armor, the knowledge of bone and flesh masses is essential, and a careful study of the masters will show that folds of clothing, belts, etc., are generally used to mark various bones, muscles and fascia.

In medicine it would be considered pure quackery to suggest that doctors not study anatomy on nude models (or carefully rendered drawings of nude models), and it is the same in art. The serious artist's training must involve hours of studying the human form without the shielding of cloth (now, I am entirely comfortable with requiring that genetalia be covered, so long as the structure of the pelvic girdle can still be seen).

Whether or not these nude studies should be exhibited in final paintings is a different question. Certainly there are historical subjects (Adam and Eve, for instance) that require this treatment, as we find in the Sistine Chapel (not generally held as an example of modernist degeneracy). However, in my own work, I will not put a nude figure in a final painting because the whole ballgame is different, and this sort of thing too easily crosses the line between an admiration of beautiful forms into a temptation to lust. I used to do it, but have not for some time, precisely for the objections the Cardinal has outlined.

But, if we are to have any sort of renewal of figure painting, and we must (so I write, even as I am working on an ambitious cycle of highly abstracted paintings), artists must constantly work from the nude. Art is as important as medicine, in fact, probably moreso, and we must demand that our artists go through a training that is suitably rigorous.

Now, certainly there are artists who will find the sort of detached view difficult, and simply cannot get beyond the fact that a purty nekkid girl is in front of them. There are probably med students with similar problems, and it behooves them, as it behooves the aforementioned theoretical artist, to avoid this sort of thing, even if it means abandoning the profession.

But Lord...

But Lord, what if we find a hundred good people in the land? Surely you will spare it for a hundred?

We seem to be getting closer and closer to striking range.

Notorious Homoxexualist Dies

Stubbs died. Let's hope he repented. One thing to note in the obituary is that the writer refers to Stubbs sodomy-buddy as his "husband." That is the legacy of men like Stubbs, one of the worst legislators to ever serve in Congress, and a long-lasting stain on the state that elected him (one of many).

May his soul rest in peace, and may perpetual light shine upon him.

Journalists...

I certainly don't advocate the systematic killing of journalists, but I can understand culling their self-important numbers every so often. The cure for thinking that journalism is the most important profession in the world is to spend some time with them, preferably the ones who went to J-School. You will not find a bigger group of numbskulls on the planet.

So when I read of the International Journalists' Union and Coven calling this a war crime, my instinct is to roll my eyes. Especially when they use the sort of pompous language of "any attempt to silence a journalist must be brought to justice."

Sorry, guys. Often silencing journalists is justice.

Thinking in Bumper Stickers

Nothing brands someone as an idiot faster than a carload of bumper stickers making political points.

It will be a wonderful day when the schools get all the money they need and the Deparment of Defence has to hold a bake sale to get a bomber.

Sure. Right. Whatever. If you want to live in some pinko country where they have more schoolteachers than soldiers, move to Costa Rica. And pray hard that Nicaragua never gets its stuff together enough to invade (never mind that what keeps Costa Rica safe is that the United States DOES have a standing army, and one that is well equipped).

Newly discovered truths go through three phases...ridicule [I am paraphrasing, as it is one of these longer ones], reluctant acceptance, and then full embrace as if it were self-evident." -Schopenhauer.

First, what are the odds that anyone with this sticker has actually read Schopenhauer? Second, there are plenty of untruths that were correctly tagged as ridiculous.

Free Leonard Peltier/Mumia Abdul Jabar

Hang 'em both. Dangerous murderous revolutionaries.

Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty

OK. I can live with random acts of kindness. Help an old lady cross the street. Give a lost tourist directions that don't land him in Bayview. Etc. However, there is no such thing as a senseless act of beauty. Can't happen. Does not exist. Senseless acts of violence? Yes. Senseless acts of cruelty? All the time. But there is no such thing as a senseless act of beauty. This betrays a horrible neo-puritan thinking that the good and the true are not always also the beautiful. Practice that act of random kindness. Piss on the car with the sticker as a gratis educational device. With love.

Question Reality

This says much more about the driver than the driver probably intends.

Alas

Rod Dreher has gone back to Protestantism, albeit with valid sacraments. Poor bastard. To leave the One True Church because you find too much banality in worship and too much corruption in the clergy and go over to...the Russians?

Pray for him. Hell is a nasty and miserable place, and the place reserved for ex-Catholics is one of the vilest.

The tomato

Earlier I mentioned the bowl of tomatoes.

Lunch was the best BLT I have ever eaten. Perfect. Perhaps tomorrow will be a repeat performance.

The secret (besides the best tomatoes known to man, and Niman Ranch uncured bacon)? Potato bread. The texture, when toasted, is exactly the right support for a BLT.

Also, I figured out the autumn replacement for a BLT: Bacon, Arugula, Goat cheese, and Persimmon sandwich. I will report in, probably, three weeks (still have not seen a persimmon).

Did I mention that I had a California bay leaf creme brulee the other evening? It was interesting, quite good, even though I use Bay Rum as my aftershave, and could not help but think that some cook grabbed the wrong bottle.

Finally, if you make chicken in a green pumpkin seed sauce (recipe from Rick Bayless), and you have leftover sauce, but not chicken, use it to simmer chicharrones (fried pork rinds). Just add a little lime juice, a little water, a pinch of salt, and simmer for about five minutes. Serve on a hot corn tortilla. With beer. Definitely with beer. You can add a little salsa verde if you want it to have more kick.

Torn tonight

You see, there is this part of me that actually likes Detroit:

1. My grandfather played for their minor league team.

2. I am fascinated by ghost towns, especially when they were major cities. A ghost town in progress is very interesting.

3. Motown! They only got lame when they moved to LA.

4. How can you not like pitching like that?

5. Not to mention textbook-perfect double plays?

6. Poetry in motion. Really.

That being said, I hope the A's stomp them tomorrow.

The Irish

I was asked by an Irishman, what is it that I have against the Irish?

Well, first let me tell you that I am no bigot. Some of my best friends are Irish.

Tee hee hee.

No, seriously folks, I am a bit of a bigot. I admit that quite freely. And yes, some of my best friends are Irish (even my wife is part Irish).

However, there is a long history between the Irish and the Italians in this country. The church in the United States was inflicted with the Irish in a very bad way, going back to the 19th century. Irish priests, Irish bishops, and worst of all, Irish liturgy and church art. The Irish bishops combined the worst of clericalism (and you must remember that Italians are an innately anti-clerical people) with dubious theology and the habit of lording their Irish ways over everyone as the only Catholic ways, and you will understand why the Italians of Sacramento begged the Papal Nuncio for Italian priests in a national parish (which we got in St. Mary's, originally a mission parish of St. Francis in San Francisco).

Now, there is nothing wrong with the Irish per se, and this is where we get to the root of my bigotry: another island, one peopled by renegade swamp Germans and Viking spawn. Yes, the Englisch.

Because when it comes down to it, every bad trait of the Irish has roots in the Englisch. Jansenism? Deliberately introduced to the Irish priesthood by the Englisch. Tacky art? The people did not have access to cultivation or education because of... you got it. Sentimental songs about only the rivers running free? Well, most oppressed people do develop much better music than that cheesy crap that comes from the Emerald Island. Go figure.

And as for cuisine, what do you expect on a near Arctic island? Can't hold that against them. Especially when the Englisch stole all the cows. I still don't quite understand the potato, but Melanie loves them, so I have learned to cook the things in a variety of ways.

Now, as for language, I love the sound of Irish Gaelic, mainly because songs in it are incomprehensible, so I don't have to pay attention to all the silliness of the rivers running free.

And "pogue mahone" is a fun thing to say!

Nerd Alert

Watch out. Someone found this site looking for: official kryptonite recipes.

My advice?

Put down the comics books. Comb your hair. Brush your teeth.

Very good.

Now, move slowly. This is going to be hard. I understand.

Open the bedroom door. The daylight will not hurt you.

Now, it is time to go outside. Just a walk. Nothing too scary. I promise you that if you encounter a girl, you can go back into your room, just this first time. Tomorrow I will expect you to at least get out a "hi." Then on Friday, you will be expected to actually make eye contact.

See, that wasn't hard, was it?

Now, let's say this together: Krypton is a fictional place. Superman isn't real.

I knew you could do it.

Tomatoes

As I sit, catching my breath after an overly-productive morning, I am enticed by the victims of my lunch: a bowl of dry-farmed, organic, tomatoes. Tomatoes this good are a bittersweet affair: each bite is perfect, but each bite brings us closer to the end, to the gustatory hibernation that we go through every year.

But it won't seem like darkness or gloom, because we will have fall mushrooms, persimmons, pomegranates (already have had those), chestnuts (been roasting at least five a day). The end of the tomatoes will hit sometime in late November, when the fall bounty is tapering off, and the reality of root veggie-dom starts to hit.

By March, we will tear our hair and gnash our teeth, which will be a good thing since it will be Lent, and that is a good time to really enjoy penance.

Today, you see, is another grey, gloomy day, unlike yesterday's glorious splendor of sparkling blue, and a lot like the weather on Friday (or was that Thursday), a grey, post-drizzling day when we went to the Monterrey Market.

The contrast between the overcast sky, the bundled customers and the piles of bright red, fragrant, round tomatoes could not have been more stark. With the mounds of orange, white and green pumpkins, the piles of green pears, the last anemic plums, autumn is definitely blowing its trumpet, but those tomatoes, those plump berries of joy, those tomatoes held up the standard, however Quixotic, of summer.

It gets dark earlier now, and the mornings are starting to sort of make me wish they'd pull the plug on Daylight Savings Time. Talk around here centers on duck confit, roasted pumpkin, hearty risotto, so, as I mentioned earlier, I can't really get too overwrought about the end of summer.

Anyway, if your area still has 'em, go out now and get the last of the organic, heirloom tomatoes and enjoy every bite, every drop of juice, every seed stuck in your molar.

Deutschland uber...vas?

Here is a great video for those of you who like all things German.

A disturbing look at the toll of celebrity

Be warned. Some of this is pretty disturbing...

Or as Melanie says, "you didn't post that one with the dog?"

Well, yes I did. So be warned.

Really Sick of Blog Spam

There are now 2075 ISP numbers banned from commenting. Only a handful are actually people who were banned for things they wrote. The rest are my futile attempt to stop blog spam. I have to delete at least a hundred comments a day just to keep up. I am sick and tired of it.

I will probably start turning off the comments function for some of the old posts, which is too bad, because old posts sometimes keep generating discussion. I will certainly keep the post on Pink Popcorn going, because it is interesting how the stuff has a powerful resonance for people who grew up in the Bay Area, Sacramento, or some of the few other places where pink popcorn was a staple at the zoo or the circus.

If I can talk Ann into doing it, I would ideally have one of those things where you have to type in the characters you see on a graphic.

It is either that or go the way of Don Jim Tucker and not have comments at all.

And another thing...

I have to applaud The Cardinal on having a blog. I don't know exactly what role blogs are going to have in communications overall, but I know that they will have one (or several).

However, I have a couple of questions and comments:

1. Why the accent mark? The Irish love accent marks. Why? Aren't they a pre-to-il-literate people? Do they just like making little marks above random letters because they think they are pretty?

2. OK, Keilholtz. Why does your daughter have an accent mark?

3. Because she has a Portuguese name, and they are certainly a pre-to-il-literate people, especially after a whole day drinking wine and cerveja at the bullfights. Of course there are literate Portuguese, on the mainland. Islands sap something in the head.

4. And if your wife reads this?

5. She has, for the most part, given up on reading the blog. "I get enough of that in real life," she says.

6. Anyway, back to the Cardinal.

7. Using lol is silly when it is done by teenagers, irritating when done by college students, and out and out embarassing when done by a Prince of the Church. What if the Pope put one of those asinine IMHO's in an encyclical? I know, a blog is not an encyclical and a cardinal is not the Pope, but still. Dignity, man, and I'm not talking about the poofter group.

8. I can think of no worse penance than having to leave Rome to go to Boston.

9. No, Amarillo would be worse.

10. Far worse.

11. Amarillo is just about the ugliest place I have ever been to.

12. If you are from Amarillo and are offended, there is probably not much I can do for you at this point. Get out, if you still can. I'll pray for you.

13. Doesn't Cardinal Se'an have a ple'asant smile?

14. Wow! Look at m'e. I'm writing Irish.

15. No, it's only Irish if it's uncial.

16. And shamrocks.

Turkish Hijackers

Amy Welborn mentions and links to an editorial about why coverage of the Turkish hijacking seemed to vanish when the story was no longer one of Mohammedans protesting the Pope, but one of Christians fleeing oppresive Turkey.

I think the answer is that the hijackers really have no cause, and most newspaper reporters are seeing right through their alleged grievances. Not to belittle the suffering of Christians under the hands of the Mohammedan, but my skeptic meter goes on overdrive when one is hijacking an airplane to show one's Christianity.

1. Turkey is a majority Mohammedan country, and this is sad. However, it is the most secular of all the Mohammedan countries. It is also pretty easy to leave Turkey. I guarantee that if you showed up in Greece (or Armenia) seeking asylum because you feared persescution as a Christian convert from Mohammedanism, you would not have a problem. Ditto if you found your way into the American embassy.

2. Hijacking a plane full of innocent civilians shows that perhaps the hijacker's catechesis is a little, shall we say, incomplete. This is the sort of silliness that normally comes from cradle Catholics of an Irish Massachussetts with a last name that starts with K disposition, not from converts.

3. So, when it comes down to it, the fellows are bull goose loons.

Perhaps the Turk is not so compassionate when it comes to treatment of the criminally insane. If so, then they should be hospitalized in Europe.

But however you slice it, this is not a cause for Catholics to get up in arms over. It has nearly nothing to do with Christianity and Mohammedanism and everything to do with a couple of malfunctioning brains.

A Prayer

Lord,

Right now the girls are singing and making bad puns in French.

Please deliver us.

Swear Words and Foley

Well, now, just as I was planning to do a little tribute to everyone's favorite driving word, along comes Rep Foley to provide a good illustration of it. It will have to wait until tomorrow, but, oh-boy is this fun.

You know, I detest the Democrat Party. Utterly and completely.

Then I look at the Republicans and the Democrats don't look so bad.

Hogwash. They still look just as bad. The Republicans just don't look any better.

I am greatly enjoying this GOP mid-term crumble. You know it is bad when Bush is out stumping for a**h***s like Richard Pombo (preview of coming attractions)and our Governor, Adolf von Kennedy, doesn't even bother to meet him.

However, von Kennedy is the future of the Republican Party: something even worse than what it is, yet more honest. Free markets, free bedrooms, CHOICE! CHOICE! CHOICE!

Very soon, the GOP lip service to conservatism will end.

At that point, write me, and we will see about getting you fitted for a shirt.

Happy Feast of St. Francis

Better than getting all sentimental over animals, go out and read the Canticle of Creation. Then go hear a Dominican preach.

Unfortunately I will not be able to hear a Dominican preach today. Deadline looms, the car is fritzy, and the nearest Franciscan church is beyond walking distance, so if I get to mass it will be Fr. Wiener from the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest preaching, which is not a bad thing at all.

Anyway, have a good feastday. Maybe you should go out and preach to a Mohammedan.