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December 27, 2006
Don't Tread On Me
USS Key West (SSN 722) raised the First Navy Jack in place of the Union Jack Wednesday at Pearl Harbor Naval Station to honor those who died during the attack on Sept. 11, 2001.
In a similar ceremony held just across the harbor, the Aegis cruiser USS Port Royal (CG 73) joined the Key West in raising the Navy Jack to remember the innocent men and women who lost their lives one year ago.
The Secretary of the Navy directed that all U.S. Navy ships raise the historic Jack beginning on Sept. 11 and continue to do so throughout the global War on Terrorism. The temporary replacement of the more widely recognized Union Jack represents a historic reminder of the nation’s and Navy’s origin.
The First Navy Jack is a flag consisting of a rattlesnake, superimposed across 13 horizontal alternating red and white stripes with the motto, 'Don’t Tread On Me.'
"First Navy Jack Flies Until End of War," Navy Newstand, September 12, 2002
Posted at 05:17 PM · Comments (1) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: America
December 26, 2006
"Christmas in Christendom"
When the technocratic secularists today, in the name of the “modern world,” strike at Christmas and attempt to prohibit its public celebration, they can take comfort in being in a tradition that goes back to the fining of poor men five shillings because they danced on Christmas Eve. Secularism and all the mythology about the “absolute separation of church and state” is simply a Puritanism debased, its original corruption compounded.
"Christmas in Christendom," by Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, December 1967
Posted at 08:27 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Catholicism
December 25, 2006
Merry Christmas!
The warmth of home and hearth to you
The cheer and good will of friends to you
The hope of a childlike heart to you
The joy of a thousand angels to you
The love of the Son and God's peace to you.
And from a friend,
A Merry Christmas on ye, and a very good year,
Long life and health to the whole family,
Life and merriment living together,
Peace and cheerfulness 'twixt women and men,
Goods and wealth, stock and store,
Plenty of potatoes and herring enough,
Bread and cheese, butter and beef,
Death like a mouse in the corner of the barn;
Sleeping safe when you'll be in bed,
And the tooth of the flea, may it not be good.
Posted at 09:27 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Holidays
December 24, 2006
"Why do good things happen to bad people?”"
The question should be not "Why do bad things happen to good people?” but “Why do good things happen to bad people?” If the fairy godmother tells Cinderella that she can wear her magic gown until midnight, the question should be not “Why not after midnight?” but “Why did I get to wear it at all?” The question is not why the glass of water is half empty but why it is half full, for all goodness is gift. The best people are the ones who are most reluctant to call themselves good people. Sinners think they are saints, but saints know they are Sinners.
"The Problem of Evil," by Peter Kreeft
Posted at 10:37 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Spirit
December 23, 2006
What you can do - right now - for our troops
I am frequently asked the question, "What can we as individual Americans do for our troops, particularly those serving overseas?"
I have two answers and a recommendation. The two answers are to pray for them and to say, "Thank you," when you encounter serving military personnel and veterans.
The recommendation is to "send a few dollars to Operation Call Home."
Operation Call Home is the brainchild of Ladd Pattillo, an Austin, Texas, businessmen, U.S. Army Reserve colonel and personal friend.
"Operation Call Home," by Austin Bay, TCS Daily, December 21, 2006
You can buy calling cards for our troops through a Department of Defense Military Exchange program: Military Exchange Prepaid Calling Cards. Cards are distributed through the American Red Cross, Air Force Aid Society, Fisher House, Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, USO, and the Soldier & Family Assistance Center.
Posted at 11:47 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: America , Getting Things Done , Holidays
December 22, 2006
This was the year when ... Celebrities ruled the Earth
In a world without inspirational heroes or leaders, celebrities increasingly fill the void. This is not just about the news being full of gossip and trivia, or the (very) odd MP becoming enthralled by a Cheeky Girl. It is about celebrities being used to front debates on serious issues, and every politician hanging on to celebrity coattails in a desperate bid to boost their standing. There has been no worse advert for the empty circus of public life than the tyranny of the celebrities, and the way that vacuous PR gestures have come to be considered deep and meaningful.
"The year we nearly went mad," by Mick Hume, Spiked, December 21, 2006
Posted at 09:27 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Ay Caramba! , Sick of Celebrity
December 21, 2006
George Gershwin - oxygenator
The writer and playwright S. N. Behrman observed that George Gershwin "oxygenated" any room he entered. Other friends agreed. Commandeering the piano with a cigar clenched between his teeth, Gershwin dominated any gathering, yet instead of sucking the air out of a party he enlivened it. In the same spirit he oxygenated American music, inspiring a new and expanded sense of its possibilities, from pop songs to orchestral works to opera. Nearly 70 years after his death at the age of only 38, he remains America's most protean and popular composer.
"Fascinating schism: How the uniquely gifted George Gershwin fashioned masterpieces in both popular and classical music," by Ken Emerson, a book review of "George Gershwin: His Life and Works," by Howard Pollack, in The Boston Globe, December 17, 2006
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December 17, 2006
"A miracle!"
How presumptuous it is to try to treat of such a subject in a short article, when great books (like Dietrich von Hildebrand's In Defense of Purity) have been written on the subject. I can only put down a few thoughts, a few incidents, perhaps a few things I have read which influenced my thinking profoundly.
A few years ago a young woman came to our farm-retreat house to spend a few days before Pentecost, on which great day she was going to be confirmed together with two or three other adults in the local parish. You could not say she was spending her time in silence and recollection, because she was an ardent and lively creature and shouted rather than talked and moved swiftly rather than with the thoughtful deliberation one might expect for such an occasion. She was as happy as a lark and after the great occasion when we all sat down to table to celebrate with a good Sunday dinner, she snatched the short breviary from her pocket and called out loudly, "Listen to this! Listen to St. John Chrysostom: '. . . the grace of the Holy Spirit . . . has been poured out abundantly and has transformed the whole world into heaven; not by changing of natures, but by correcting of wills. For it found a taxgatherer and transformed him into an evangelist; it found a persecutor and made him into an apostle; it found a robber and conducted him to Paradise; it found a prostitute and rendered her equal to virgins; it found the learned and showed them the gospels. . . .' A prostitute--equal to virgins! That's me. That's me today. A miracle!"
"Reflections During Advent, Part Three: 'Chastity'," by Dorothy Day, Ave Maria, December 10, 1966
Posted at 10:37 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Catholicism
December 14, 2006
"Why Identity Politics Distracts Us From Economic Inequalities"
[E]lite universities have come to think of African-American-studies programs on the model of state-of-the-art fitness facilities: No one goes to a college just because it has a great climbing wall, but, all other things being equal, the great climbing wall might clinch the deal. And if the climbing wall comparison seems to trivialize the commitment to diversity, insofar as that commitment involves one Ivy League university's trying to lure some students of color away from other Ivy League universities, it already seems pretty trivial. In fact, from the standpoint of social justice, the question of whether kids who might otherwise have gone to Yale decide instead to go to Princeton couldn't be more trivial.
. . .
But there's a more-important sense in which even African-American studies is a kind of blackface, a performance not only of blackness but of race itself. Asian-Americans are overrepresented in elite colleges like Princeton; African-American students are underrepresented. But no one's as underrepresented in those colleges as poor people. And no one's looking to get their numbers up to where, if you wanted to eliminate the underrepresentation, they would have to be. A Princeton that managed to lure enough black students away from the other Ivies to constitute 12 percent of its entering class (just as African-Americans constitute approximately 12 percent of the American population) would be a more diverse Princeton. A Princeton where 50 percent of the entering class consisted of students who came from households earning under $46,326 (the median income in the United States) would be an entirely different institution.
"Why Identity Politics Distracts Us From Economic Inequalities," by Walter Benn Michaels, The Chronicle Review, December 15, 2006
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December 13, 2006
"The Thrill of the Chaste"
NYC blogger Dawn Eden of The Dawn Patrol has just published "The Thrill of the Chaste." It's getting good reviews on Amazon. She is in the DC area giving readings the next few days.
Posted at 08:57 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Publishing
Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
Depending on who you talk to, the passage of Proposal 2 in Michigan last month was either a great victory for freedom and equal rights or a disastrous setback for minorities and women.
The ballot measure, known as the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, attracted little national attention after 58 percent of voters approved it Nov. 7.
...
The initiative's opponents have depicted this victory as the result of white men fighting to retain their privilege. But maybe it's really about Americans taking action to end a regrettable detour in the battle for true civil rights.
"Michigan's Civil Rights Victory: A well-meaning end to discrimination," by Cathy Young, Reason online, December 12, 2006
"attracted little national attention" after it won. If it had lost, it would have attracted a lot of attention...
Posted at 06:57 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Politics
December 07, 2006
new blog - Ask Sister Mary Martha
St. Rose of Lima was aware that if her beauty caused boys to have...bad thoughts...she was causing them to sin, which by the way, is a sin on her. Somebody needs to explain this to Brittany Spears, post haste.
"I feel a headache coming on," Ask Sister Mary Martha, December 1, 2006
Posted at 06:27 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Catholicism , Fun , Humor
December 06, 2006
"Sex is the only sacrament they have"
I preferred it when the stars had to pretend they were one of us, really. That there were certain values - flag, country, detonated corn hulls consumed with your offspring – that we all shared. What really annoyed me about the DeVito remarks was his account of sexing up the Lincoln Bedroom with his wife; leaving aside the fact that America really doesn’t want to think about this hairy-backed gargoyle pinning Rhea Perlman up against the door, it was the lickerish lip-smacking delight in despoiling something that seemed so utterly typical of an aged ur-boomer. Why don’t we do it in the road? as the Beatles put it. Well, perhaps because you’re not dogs; perhaps because a school bus is due along in a few minutes. For some people of a particular generation, sex is the only sacrament they have, but it’s anything but holy. It’s hot short and loud, like a rest-room hand-drier you turn on by hitting the button with the side of your fist. This has been going on for forty years, but they still act as if the Eisenhower Shock Troops will burst in and arrest them for talking about recreational sex. If they have a church, it has Lenny Bruce as St. Sebastian, pierced by a dozen hypodermic needles. He died for our sins. And what were our sins? That nagging sense of shame at finding a Playboy in daddy's sock drawer, I guess.
"The speech," by James Lileks, The Bleat, December 6, 2006
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December 05, 2006
"Education is basically a series of rent-seeking rackets"
A very good rule of thumb when reading child-development literature is that any study that has not taken careful account of heritable factors--by comparing identical twins raised together or separately, fraternal twins ditto ditto, non-twin siblings ditto ditto--is utterly and completely worthless. That sentence is (a) true, and (b) guaranteed to get you thrown out of a high window if spoken aloud at any gathering of education theorists.
Certainly Mr. Tough will have none of it. The child is a blank slate. Parents act on it, causing this and this. Then teachers act on it, causing that and that. Bingo!--you have a finished adult. Or, as Mr. Tough summarizes the interesting (but perfectly gene-free) work of sociologist Annette Lareau: “[G]ive a child X, and you get Y.” So simple! One wonders if there has ever been an education theorist who has actually raised children, or retained any memory of his own childhood.
. . .
Raising two children in suburban America, I dream fondly but futilely of my own 1950s English childhood, when by far the commonest words I heard from my parents were: “Go out and play. Make sure you’re back in time for supper.” How on earth did civilization survive?
"The Dream Palace of Educational Theorists," by John Derbyshire, New English Review, December 2006
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December 03, 2006
AP provides "shoddy goods"
When a company defrauds its customers, or delivers shoddy goods, the customers sooner or later are going to take their business elsewhere. But if that company has a virtual monopoly, and offers something its customers must have, they may have no choice but to keep taking it.
That’s when the customers, en masse, need to raise a stink. That’s when someone else with the resources needs to seriously consider whether the time is ripe to compete.
The Associated Press is embroiled in a scandal. Conservative bloggers, the new media watchdogs, lifted a rock at the AP.
"Say no to AP’s shoddy work," by Jules Crittenden, The Boston Herald, December 3, 2006
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December 02, 2006
The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On
Dawn Eden, author of "The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On," will be at Blessed Sacrament Church, 1427 W. Braddock Road, Alexandria, VA, to talk about her book on Wednesday, December 13, 2006, at 7:30 pm.
Here is her blog, The Dawn Patrol.
Posted at 07:27 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Good Advice