The fall of Miss Of Arc

I hope I don't have to have watched an episode of the television show Joan of Arc to say that the New York Times DVD critic Kate Aurthur doesn't seem to get it.

I don't mean she doesn't get the show. As I said, I haven't watched it and just can't seem to get around to watching TV series (except my one vice, Stargate SG1, which I constantly record and watch at my leisure).

But the conclusion Aurthur draws from the show's loss of viewers is just weird.

Apparently, we were happier in 2002, with our "post-9/11 prayer services rather than heated debates over 'The Passion of the Christ.'" Barbara Hall, the show's creator, explained that the show debuted "before we lived in a theocracy," when "God wasn't quite as controversial . . . as he is now."

Somebody stop my head spinning, please. Secularists (among others) go into an unholy snit about a religious movie, and it's "the theocrats" who have made God controversial? How controversial is God in another theocracy, say, Iran?

I've heard good things about the show; people whose opinion I respect like it, and the description of the first season seems engaging enough that I'm sorry I missed it. Light-hearted events, the God of Bill Cosby's old Noah routine, easy, friendly, sweet. The television of Mayberry and Leave It to Beaver. Nothing wrong with that.

In the second season, as Aurthur describes it, Joan questions whether her visions were real and she tries to ignore God. "She relented, but the mood of the second season was grimmer than the first, and Joan was increasingly isolated."

The reviewer relates that the show lost 2 million viewers during its second season, and so it might not be renewed. "Whether CBS has decided that the show's temperate, humanitarian approach to religion has lost its relevance will become clear when the network announces its fall schedule."

By Aurthur's own description, the show became grimmer during the second season. Maybe the viewers who liked the sunnier Joan of Arcadia didn't like the grimmer Joan of Arcadia. Why does every problem, from fallen arches to falling ratings, end up getting thrown at the feet of the "theocrats"?

I don't know if I'd have liked the second season or been disappointed with it. I know there have been TV shows I've liked that didn't keep enough viewers to stay on the air, and others that I can't understand how they keep going and going and going. I've always said, "Oh, well. There's no accounting for taste" (or maybe, to be honest, launched a rant on occasion), but I never knew I could blame my cultural disappointments on the theocrats.

But now I know. The light turns red as I get close to it? The theocrats did it. It starts to rain when I left my umbrella at home? Theocrats. Article or story gets turned down? Theocrats. Puppy gets excited and piddles on the floor? Damned theocrats. Look at how much times and energy I've wasted trying to take responsibility and fix things for myself. But no more.

So, you lousy theocrats, I'm onto you now. I've been accused of being one of them, but that's just a clever ruse to keep them from knowing that I've gone into deep cover.

Girl wrestlers angry at easy wins

Under the general heading of "can't win for losing" comes this story out of Seattle about middle-school girl wrestlers who are upset because some boys forfeit the match rather than wrestle against them.

The boys attend a couple of Christian schools, and their parents and the schools think it's not good for the boys and girls to be rolling around on the floor together. So if they go the match, and find themselves up against one of the handful of girl wrestlers in the league, they forfeit. The girl gets the points toward the state championship.

But that's not good enough. The girls went to the match to wrestle and they'd better be able to wrestle or there will be lawyers.

The girls argue that the matches are not at all sexual. "When you walk on the mat, you're not a girl, you're not a guy anymore. You're just there to wrestle," one girl wrestler said. I've never been a boy, though I've known a few, and I suspect they wouldn't share that sentiment.

School officials are dealing with federal regulations about what to do with a sport that only a few girls want to participate in. Title IX requires the public schools to provide a "wrestling experience" for them. Under Title IX, the only alternatives to having girls wrestle boys would be to get enough girls to form their own league or shut down wrestling for everybody.

But what the lawsuits seem headed for is the exclusion of the Christian schools from the public schools' sports programs.

The father of one of the girls is outraged:

Connors, a former Episcopal president and one-time pastoral assistant for social justice at St. James Cathedral in Seattle, believes religion should play a role in public life. "But there's a limit," he said.

"If my religion says that once a year on a full moon, I had to get into a hit-and-run accident, I think the cops would take exception to that," he said. "That's an extreme example, but if you come into the public domain, you can't develop a policy that discriminates against people."

He's filed a complaint alleging the Vashon Island School District is violating Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools, by allowing the policies to exist. If the policies aren't changed, he says, he'll make a complaint to the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education and, if necessary, file a lawsuit.

Yes, I'd say that's an extreme example -- since we're not talking about injuring anyone -- and an extreme reaction. The rules are that anyone can refuse to wrestle -- and forfeit a match -- for any reason. Any reason, apparently, except that the one doing the forfeiting doesn't want to fight a girl.

The principal at McMurray Middle School, Greg Allison, said the school values its female wrestlers and plans to attempt to get the policies changed, too.

"We can't necessarily change a private school district's policy," he said. "But we can certainly try to influence it as best we can."

Anyone want to bet that by the beginning of the next school year, those schools will be disinvited from participating in school sports?

They fired the patriarch?

The LA Times reports this morning that Greek Orthodox Church Dismisses Patriarch:

The Greek Orthodox Church's highest ruling body in Jerusalem dismissed Patriarch Irineos I over his alleged role in a land deal that angered Palestinian Christians, church officials said.

The LA Times goes on to detail some he-allegedly-said, she-allegedly-said stuff about land deals not being illegal but controversial, etc. . . , and I went on to find out what was really happening.

I skipped Al Jazeera and the National Post of Canada, but found this article at the Christian Today site:

The Synod is the highest decision making body in the Greek Orthodox Church and the church leadership announced on Thursday that it would be ending all contact with Patriarch Irineos I due to corruption suspicions. They added that from this point onwards they would consider the Patriarch dismissed – however, this decision is non-binding.

Interesting twist in the last clause there. Who would have the authority to make it binding? (This is a procedural question.)

Later, a Church spokesman speaks:

The Church spokesman, Attalah Hanah said, "We decided to fire him and he left today and we don't know where he went."

Yikes. It's like when the city council here in West Linn fired the city manager.

But wait, this is the same Attallah Hannah who in 2002 was removed from his post as spokesman for the Orthodox Church for saying he supported the Palestinian "resistance" -- which at the time was suicide bombers blowing up school buses, restaurants, religious observances and street corners in Israel.

In 2001, Hannah said, "Al-Quds (the Arab name for Jerusalem) is an Arab and Palestinian city with its holy shrines, holy Islamic and Christian shrines," maintained Atallah Hannah, the Greek Orthodox head of the delegation and an ethnic Arab. "There will be no peace in the region unless the city is returned to its legitimate owners and becomes the capital of the Palestinian independent state," which sounds to me as if he shares Arafat's dream of eliminating the state of Israel (not to mention the Jews) from the region.

I haven't been following the vicissitudes of the Jerusalem Patriarchate, but it seems that the Hannah party squared off against the Irineos party, and the Irineos party lost. Irineos' crime, apparently, was leasing land to Jews, and now what appears to be an anti-Semite (OK, Arabs consider themselves Semites -- anti-Jewish) wing of the Church rises to take over.

This post is also available at Blogger News Network.

Increasing the civility, one press release at a time

Catholics for Faithful Citizenship is distancing itself from Sen. Ken Salazar's decision to call Focus on the Family's James Dobson "the anti-Christ."

Salazar’s response is not condoned by Catholics for Faithful Citizenship.

We must work to recognize our shared faith and find room for reasonable and thoughtful debate.

So far, so good, but CFFC continues:

Focus on the Family has consistently tried to shut down debate by questioning the faith and morals of those who disagree with them. Most recently, they have used the debate over the use of the filibuster to personally attack the values of public officials who support the filibuster.

Huh? I can't say I've read everything Dobson has said or written, and I'm not a big fan of his, but . . . When did he question the faith or morals of those who disagree with him? When has he tried to shut down debate? And by what means? How do questions shut down a debate? He made some easily misinterpreted remarks about Sponge Bob Square Pants, which have been vigorously misinterpreted -- but can anyone say that the debate was shut down? Finally, when did he personally attack the values of any public officials? Quotes, people, I'd like to see quotes.

On the other hand, from CFFC's own website:

"William Donohue Sells both his Soul and the Catholic League to the Right”
"Senator Frist votes for legislation denying bankruptcy option to millions of average Americans, while he declares moral bankruptcy himself, declaring that God demands Republican judges.

CFFC concludes its Salazar release with a worthy sentiment:

We must not attack one another’s faith because of political disagreements. Personal attacks revolving around the filibuster are a clear manipulation and misuse of scripture and faith. We call on all Christians to unite behind the consistent and true meaning of the Gospels, and to condemn these politically-motivated attacks that manipulate our faith.

Good idea. Why not start with your own press releases?

This post is also available at Blogger News Network.

Sticheron for the Tuesday after Thomas Sunday

My friends and fellow choristers were futzing with a sticheron for vespers of next Tuesday, and asked me to have a hand at it. The problem was that the Greek version was too soft and the American version was too hard (or vice versa). That is, the Greek version sounded like it was translated by someone who doesn't know English very well, and the American version by someone who, though a native speaker, also doesn't speak English very well (that's my take, not my friends').

Since I need to get to work early tomorrow, and since I put a blog post's worth of effort into it, I'll go ahead and post it here. Read it carefully, there will be a survey question at the end:

I greatly delight to behold your Resurrection, O my Savior,
Which you allowed Thomas to confirm by the touch of his own hand.
Henceforth we proclaim and teach that You are one Person undivided,
With two natures and two energies uncommingled.
Truly You are both God and Man.

Here's the survey question: in the second-to-last line, I picked up "uncommingled" from the Greek-to-English version; my friend used the word "unconfused" in her version. They mean basically the same, except that I was concerned that someone might take the more common meaning of "confused"as "befuddled." On the other hand, the long "U" sings better than the "gled." The rest of the committee preferred "confused." I gave my reasons, but told them -- and it's true -- that I'm not emotionally invested in either word. Still I'd be interested in anyone else's thoughts on the question and especially if someone else knows an even better word.

Until tomorrow night or Saturday.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

The mid-20th-century's assault against the Jews is one of the defining moments of Western history. Hitler may not have had the largest list of victims (Stalin multiplied his several times), but the Nazis' atrocities have captured the imagination in ways that the destruction of the kulaks, the Armenian genocide, Rwanda or Darfur have not. The literature of the era has ranged from ridiculous (Hogan' Heroes) to the profound (Shoah and Life Is Beautiful).

But for all that, we really don't understand it. The Nazis are so demonized that people think that they were not the educated, sophisticated people of their day, but rubes and crustaceans, like fundamentalist Christians of the present.

Barbara Lerner comments on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe:

Certain that they have long since been cleansed of any guilt for the sins of their fathers, Eurosecs see themselves as the very incarnation of postmodern virtue. Naturally, they reject the grotesque racist stereotypes their fathers embraced. They know today's Jews are their moral inferiors for an entirely different, entirely factual, reason: that Israel is a poisonous foreign element in the Middle East — a racist, colonial state whose 5 million Jews are oppressing the Palestinians, occupying their land, and preventing peace and progress in the 22 failed Arab states that surround them.

A couple of years ago, Barry Strauss noted the rise of anti-Semitism on American campuses:

It's been a season of anti-Semitism on campus. To cite just a few highlights: After temporarily canceling its invitation, Harvard reinvited Oxford poet Tom Paulin to deliver a lecture. Paulin is the humanitarian who said that Brooklyn-born Jewish settlers on the West Bank should be shot dead. Meanwhile, a Georgetown University professor has reportedly said that the "international Zionist movement" is pushing the U.S. into war with Iraq because Jews want to take over the Arab world. And a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst says that since no Israelis died on September 11, 2001, Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, must have known about the attacks in advance and forewarned Israelis — but not Americans. Never mind that Israeli citizens in fact were killed on the planes and in the Twin Towers on 9/11.

The roots of the Holocaust go back to the Weimar Republic, which is in many ways not much different from ours:

The war and the subsequent inflation had discredited the Victorian values of the older generation, and youth were ready to participate in what Americans were calling the jazz age. No point in saving for marriage in an age of rapid inflation; better to spend and enjoy. Women cut their hair, used makeup, smoked, discarded corsets, and adopted the new rayon stockings. Men shed their handlebar mustaches and tried to look rakish, boyish, adventurous, or intellectual, with horned-rimmed glasses and hair brushed back instead of parted. Wild parties and bohemian manners were no longer confined to the fringes. Berlin became famous in the 1920s for nightclubs and sexual license–the world of Christopher Isherwood's novels (later transformed into the film/musical Cabaret ). Jazz age vitality went along with a consciousness of decadence in Berlin. The writer Erich Kastner summed up the scene: "In the east there is crime; in the center the con men hold sway; in the north resides misery, in the west lechery; and everywhere–the decline."

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, an American Orthodox Jew, excoriates Jewish elites (by and large Jewish by birth and self-identification rather than practice) as being a source of "heinous charicatures" of Jews. He says that Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of the title couple in Meet the Fockers (which I haven't seen and probably won't) is itself anti-Semitic: "In spite of having several Jewish producers and several Jewish stars, this film’s vile notions of Jews are not too different from those used by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels."

He says that the revulsion against Judaism that grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany had a partial foundation in some Jews' assaults against the culture. Consider that in light of the rise of Islam in Europe -- with their strait-laced mores and their predisposition to hate Jews.

To the people of the time, the Nazis looked advanced, sophisticated and enlightened. They did not look like Commander Klink. To the people looking forward, the little brush mustache was not yet a joke. The curved helmets were not yet a sign of Evil. The swastika was a neutral symbol. Leni Reifenstahl was a genius. The next Holocaust(s) will seem equally advanced, sophisticated and enlightened, and people who give themselves a pass on their own capacity for evil will never even notice that they have become perpetrators.

Song travel for Scotsmen

The Scotsman reports that Amarillo, Texas, has become a big tourist destination inspired by a song that's popular over there, "(Is This The Way To) Amarillo."

Someone needs to tell the Brits that while Amarillo is a scenic place if you like sky, and the people are friendly, if you're going to travel to the other side of the planet for vacation, you need to be able to spend more than a day and a half sight-seeing.

Amarillo, a four-hour drive from Dallas, has a population of 177,000 and attracts an average of 16,000 overseas tourists a year. The second-largest canyon in America is just south of the city. It also has a famous steak ranch at which customers who manage to eat a massive 72-ounce steak within an hour get it for free.

Amarillo tourist chiefs say they are looking forward to welcoming British visitors who take driving holidays across the States -- the city is on the east-west 140 highway and is connected to the old Route 66.

Visitors can also see an abstract work called Cadillac Ranch, a display of ten classic Cadillacs sticking out of the ground as if they have just fallen from space.

The Scotsman omits the American Quarter Horse Heritage Center and Museum, which I'm sure would be high on the list of attractions for someone following a 1970s hit to Texas.

All the same, in the interest of international tourism, I offer a suggested trip across roadside-attraction America, inspired by songs from the '60s and '70s. Start off, of course, with the great "Route 66." "It winds from Chicago to LA, more than 2,000 miles all the way . . ." So fly from London to Chicago and rent a car.

"You go through St. Louie," (the Gateway Arch) "Joplin, Missouri" ("Lead Capital of the World"); "Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty" (Myriad Botannical Gardens). "You'll see Amarillo" (this is the way to Amarillo), "Gallup, New Mexico" (allow a few extra days to explore Canyon de Chelly and Navaho country, and bring along a couple of Tony Hillerman novels), "Flagstaff, Arizona" (and a few days here, too, near one of the entraces to the Grand Canyon) -- "don't forget Winona" (or, maybe you should forget Winona), "Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino."

Now that you've been dumped in California, here's the Lowell George song, Willin' --

I've been from Tuscon to Tucumcari (back to Route 66)
Tehachapi (you missed the 13th Annual Spaghetti Feed and Auction) to Tonapah (silver mines and a nuclear test range) . . .

By the end of that trip, you'll be singing the London Homesick Blues.

Welcome to America.

This post is also available at Blogger News Network.

Sen. Gordon Smith will vote to end filibuster

Sid at New Frames reports that Sen. Gordon Smith will side with the Republicans on the filibuster. Sid's not happy about it, but she called the senator's office and got a confirmation from an aide.

I wonder if my e-mails had any effect.

UPDATE: Sid is a "she." Error fixed above.

Gov. Kulongoski on civil unions

We don’t need no piece of paper
From the city hall
Keeping us tied and true
Joni Mitchell

That was the 1970s, but it has become a sudden and urgent need among homosexuals for that piece of paper from the city hall.

Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski and at least some of the Legislature are trying to give it to them.

In November, Oregon (Oregon!) passed a constitutional amendment clarifying that when we're talking about marriage in our state, we mean one man and one woman -- and not various alternative configurations. The tally was 57% in favor of the traditional marriage format and 43% against.

The clarification became necessary because a handful of Multnomah County (site of Portland, Oregon's largest city) Commissioners met behind closed doors (but definitely not in a smoke-filled room -- although medical marijuana is legal in this state, I have no reason to believe any of the commissioners had a prescription for it) and decided that the phrase passed in 1969 wasn't exactly clear about the required combinations of men and women in marriage.

The issue went to the people, and the people, surprisingly, voted to maintain the traditional definition.

When the Oregon Supreme Court failed to strike down the law, the governor and his allies turned to the Legislature.

I've been interested in a discussion of civil unions, because while I don't believe two people of the same sex can be married (a matter of definition, tradition, the fundamental structure of most multicellular animal life on this planet), I'm also enough of a libertarian to consider facilitating legal documents such as inheritance, survivor benefits, joint ownership and so forth for people who are not married but living together long-term (which would include siblings, parents and children, Platonic friends, as well as homosexual couples).

Well, our governor opened the discussion of civil unions in Oregon by admitting that they're a back door to gay marriage. (I received the entire text of the speech as a press release, but it hasn't appeared on his website, yet. If it doesn't, I'll make it available. E-mail me if you want to see it.) It's long, and I'm skipping down to the part about civil unions.

He opens by talking about "gay rights": "Privacy, liberty, dignity, and equality -- not bigotry -- are what this country is really all about." Noticed that only one of these is in the founding documents; one is a product of late-20th-century exploration of the emanations of the penumbra of the Constitution; one is part of a French Revolution slogan that was never in the U.S. Constitution; and the other is a character trait that history has shown, no one can either give or take away from a person.

Oregon is a very homosexual-friendly place. There are prominent, public homosexuals in all levels of government and industry. At my daughter's middle school one year, a teacher stood up in the orientation assembly and announced that she was a lesbian and hoped all the kids were OK with that. It's true that not everyone considers the homosexual lifestyle copacetic, but what some "victim" groups don't understand is that everybody is disliked by somebody.

So, skipping the first two-thirds of the governor's speech to Basic Rights Oregon, April 27:

As everyone in this room knows, Senate Bill 1000 has two parts. The first is the anti-discrimination provisions that I’ve been talking about. The second is the creation of civil unions in Oregon.

I want you to understand: It is the policy of my administration -- and my deep personal belief -- that creating civil unions for gays and lesbians is no less important than ending discrimination against gays and lesbians. As far as I’m concerned, they stand on the same moral plane.

It is also my deep personal belief -- as well as my view as a lawyer and former Oregon Supreme Court justice -- that denying same sex couples the benefits and protections accorded to opposite sex couples violates the Oregon Constitution. The Oregon Legislature now has the opportunity to remedy that violation by providing same sex couples all of the legal benefits and protections accorded to opposite sex couples.

I know that there is disappointment -- even anger -- among many BRO members over the passage of Measure 36. Defining marriage in the Constitution is wrong for Oregon. I opposed it last year -- and I still oppose it. But we should not let our long-term goal of undoing Measure 36 stand in the way of our more immediate goal of according equality of rights and benefits to same-sex and opposite-sex couples. And we don’t have to.

The Oregon Supreme Court did not answer the question as to whether the Oregon Constitution requires civil unions. However, the Court clearly left the door open for the Legislature to create civil unions. And, frankly, that’s their responsibility. The Legislature can fulfill this responsibility by approving and sending to my desk Senate Bill 1000. This is an opportunity they must not miss!

SB 1000 sets up a legislative structure for civil unions that mirrors, almost word for word, the legislative structure for marriage. Civil unions are not perfect equality. I understand that. But civil unions will provide the same benefits, protections and responsibilities that are incident to marriage -- and will align Oregon with Vermont and Connecticut, and put us light years ahead of every other state except Massachusetts. Let me explain what I mean by “same benefits, protections, and responsibilities.” This is what Section 67(1) of SB 1000 says: “Partners in a civil union have the same privileges, immunities, rights, benefits, and responsibilities under the laws of this state, whether derived from statute, administrative or court rule, policy or common law, as are granted to or imposed on spouses joined in a marriage.”

And Section 67(5)(a) says: “Whenever the term ‘marriage’ or any other term that denotes or includes the marital relationship or the status of marriage is used in the laws of this state, the term includes a civil union.”

This language is sweeping, and it has real practical effect. To take some of the more obvious examples: Civil unions will require a state issued license and can be solemnized by a member of the clergy or a county clerk.

Have you got that, Oregonians? You voted for the marriage amendment, but Kulongoski and the Legislature waited hardly six months before beginning a work-around.

Civil unions will give gay and lesbian partners the same right to make end of life decisions as married spouses. The same right to workers’ compensation survivor benefits and to collect insurance proceeds. The same right to statutorily guaranteed health and disability benefits. The same right to create a family and parent children. The same right to protection under Oregon’s intestacy statutes. The same right to sue to for wrongful death that spouses currently have. And, yes, the same right to dissolve the union with the help of lawyers and the courts.

Wait, didn't he use the term "committed couples" above?

I ended my list by mentioning lawyers for a reason. The whole issue of same-sex marriage and civil unions is practically drowning in a sea of legalisms and legal strategies. That’s true for all three branches of government. I’ve had my say. The Attorney General has had his say. The courts have had their say. And the Legislature -- as it debates SB 1000 -- will have its say.

But what we’ve been debating for the past year is not just about constitutional theory, legal analysis, separation of powers, and who has the best legal argument on their side. This is about the human heart -- and being free to answer its call.

It is hard for me to imagine what my life would like without this freedom. But it is not hard for me to understand how fundamentally unfair it is to deny this freedom to others. To tell another human being: Your longings don’t matter. Your choice of who to love is illegitimate. Your family isn’t a socially acceptable family. All of this is wrong -- and I think ultimately hurts not just gays and lesbians, but our entire community.

It is not the job of the State to validate people's feelings. Some people think heterosexual love is illegitimate. Some people think Christians are enemies of society, and some people think space aliens have landed. The only way to guarantee that homosexuals -- or anybody -- will never feel rejection is to organize the Thought Police.

Fredrick Douglas once said, “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.” Bigotry against homosexuals is not slavery. But it is a chain that keeps both gays and non-gays from moving forward.

The fact that Gov. Ted cites and yet apparently doesn't understand the difference between a literal shackle and a metaphor run wild is troubling in itself. So the chain is tying gays and lesbians to -- what? Kept from moving forward -- where? Held back in what condition?

We need to break that chain -- and free ourselves from the burden of trying to dictate the wants of another person’s heart.

The only one I see dictating here is Gov. Ted.

It is wasted energy that could be much better spent rewarding all committed relationships,

Wait, I thought he wanted them to be able to get divorced

which will in turn improve Oregon’s quality of life by making our children healthier, our communities safer, and our spirits pointed in the direction that I believe they are intended to point, toward finding greater unity among the human family by ensuring greater equality among all its members.

Thank you.

And thank you, Gov. Kulongoski, for clarifying the civil unions debate for us.

UPDATE: This post is also at Blogger News Network.

Enemies of Society

At National Review, Stanley Kurtz talks about troubling trends illustrated by Harper's Magazine's “The Christian Right’s War On America.”

The phrase "campaign of hatred" is a strong one, and I worry about amplifying an already dangerous dynamic of recrimination on both sides of the culture wars. I don’t doubt that conservatives, Christian and otherwise, are sometimes guilty of rhetorical excess. Yet despite what we’ve been told, the most extreme political rhetoric of our day is being directed against traditional Christians by the left.

A man I know asked me the other day what I thought of Anne Coulter. I said I thought she was funny. He said he thought she was an enemy of society.

He's prone to exaggerated rhetoric, but he's not the only place you hear such stuff. The New York Times, and its columnist Frank Rich, are horrified that Christians would gather in a church to discuss national issues important to them. Rich uses terms like "lynching" and "mob" and "demonization" to describe a group of people gathered to hear speakers discuss their point of view about the judicial veto in the Senate. He summarizes by recounting -- as "the closest historical antecedent of tonight's crusade" -- a corrupt televangelist of the 1950s and 1960s.

In the meantime, when the Democrats wanted to have a rally protesting the Justice Sunday rally, they met in -- a Presbyterian Church.

In our time of political correctness and sensitivity, there are a handful of groups around that it's OK to insult -- back in the '90s it was the Serbs; since 2000 and possibly peaking in 2004 it was Bush and his supporters; and, as Kurtz points out, a rising drumbeat of rhetoric against traditional and conservative Christians.

No wonder Leftist Christians want to stand as far away from "fundamentalists" as possible.

Walter Inglis Anderson

Someone prompted me to think of Walter Inglis Anderson this evening. The Mississippi artist, naturalist and Barrier Island pilgrim made a deep impression on me for someone whose book I ran across in a university library about 30 years ago.

The book was The Horn Island Logs of Walter Inglis Anderson, and I can't even remember what prompted me to pick it up on that distant day. He was trained as an artist and did ceramics, sculptures and WPA murals in the 1930s, married and had children. And then mental illness struck -- nervous breakdown, depression, even schizophrenia are cited as diagnoses -- it's enough to say that he couldn't function as an everyday "adult" in a busy world.



He would row from his home in Ocean Springs, usually to Horn Island, 12 miles out, and he might spend weeks there, camping, painting on typewriter paper or in spiral notebooks, sometimes using his art to start fires. His logs tell of finding a can of beans on the beach and attributing it to a gift from Providence. During the 1965 killer storm Hurricane Betsy, he tied himself to a tree on Horn Island to watch the storm.

In the meantime, his wife worked as a teacher and provided a stable home life from which to work, an outbuilding -- garage or glassed-in greenhouse -- for his studio, his wife and daughters giving up what they might have expected from life to accommodate their talented, eccentric father.

When he died, he left tens of thousands of paintings in stacks and piles of notebooks in that studio, as well as his logs, with insights, poetic and profound, like this:

Man begins by saying of course, before any of his senses have a chance to come to his aid with wonder and surprise. The result is that he dies, and his neighbors and friends murmur with the wind, of course! The love of bird or shell which might have restored his life flies away, carried by the same wind which has destroyed him. The bird flies, and in that fraction of a second, man and the bird are real. He is not only king, he is man. He is not only man, he is the only man, and that is the only bird, and every feather, every mark, every part of the pattern of his feathers is real, and he, man, exists, and he is almost as beautiful as the thing he sees.

Maybe he was saner than most of us.

Depend on the Scotsman for details like this

Some background -- a mass grave containing at least 22 bodies of Serbs, murdered apparently by the Kosovo Liberation Army during the 1998-99 war (Clinton's good little war, according to most of those who think we had no right to attack Iraq, but that's a side shot -- back to the point).

Anyway, writes The Scotsman, while international forensics teams dig through garbage for the hidden bodies and while the families of the dead wail and mourn, members of the international "peace"-keeping force lounge around watching the action, taking photos and eating culturally appropriate lunches.

What a world.

"The scene around them on the ridge was one very typical of internationally-administered post-conflict areas like Kosovo.

German NATO soldiers were responsible for providing the physical security of the site; as The Scotsman arrived, a German paratroop lieutenant snapped to attention and saluted smartly.

Trim and dapper Indian riot policemen in blue and black camouflage had escorted the Serb families, and sat quietly in their white UN armoured vehicles eating picnics from lunch-boxes.

German soldiers served up fish-burgers with tartar sauce from a mobile canteen, Swiss soldiers lounged by a stone wall, a polite Nepalese UN policeman noted everybody’s names down on a clipboard, and two Italian soldiers stood around taking pictures.

As the Serb families were led back up the slope, their screaming and wailing grew louder, culminating in an apogee of grief when one woman, sobbing hysterically, dramatically fainted. 'She wanted to kiss the bones,' said Ms Boskovic, standing nearby and watching."

I dreamed . . .

Mesa Verde brick
Originally uploaded by janbear.

I was writing to my blog.

But I neglected to dream what I was writing about.

Look out, Oregonians

Your state is thinking about protecting you again.

You know that peculiar hat you got you got from Great-aunt Velma from a store in the same chain as Meier & Frank? You know how M&F kindly accepted it as a return and issued you a $24 gift card, of which you've gotten around to spending $20 (or even the whole $20, if you haven't gotten around to that yet)?

Well, Senate Bill 845, affectionately known as "Uncle Charlie the moocher," says that since you're not using that $4, he can keep it for you, safe from all those maurauding gift-card suckers, also known as the issuing businesses. He'll just invest the money and collect the interest until you ask for your money back. Unless you forgot to ask to spend that $4 for the next three years, in which case, Oops!, Uncle Charlie sucked it dry himself.

Let's see. This is the party that doesn't like the anti-privacy provisions in the Patriot Act, but they're going to keep track of the funds on all my gift cards? They'd have to add another department for bookkeeping alone. -- provided that the businesses didn't simply stop issuing gift cards in the state.

"It's for the children," is always the excuse.

Thanks, Uncle Charlie. If I want to give it to the children, I'll spend my own $4 on them.

Just because . . .

I like it.

UPDATE: I suppose I should be more specific.

It's a statue of Albert Einstein in Washington, D.C., and what's striking about it is that it's so casual.

I mentioned earlier John McWhorter's book on the dearth of formal speech. Well, this is an informal statue. In another time, we'd have had a dignified bust of the great scientist; more recently, we'd have had an inscrutable mishmash that no one could have recognized without the brass plate identifying the sculpture. Now he's recognizable, and he looks like a grandpa -- or like a child -- and he seems to be watching in indulgence and wonder the people who come to the circle and gaze at the stars. He also seems to be looking inward, as if he's comparing the map of his own soul to the notebook on his lap (if you click through the picture, you'll come to a larger one).

In no other time would the statue of the great scientist seem to invite passing children to be photographed on his lap. McWhorter laments the loss of formal speech, and I think he's right. I also think this statue is beautiful.

What does this gesture mean?

Can anyone tell me what this gesture means? It looks like he's trying to remove the front spigot cover from a fire hydrant, or maybe he's adjusting the horizontal and vertical hold knobs on an old television set.

I'm sure that both topics are far from the matter at hand, and I've seen the gesture before in lecturers making earnest pronouncements, but I never thought at the time about the meaning of the gesture. I'm sure it's clear in context, but the news story gives only the general context, and the photo caption doesn't say, "Bishop So-and-So gestures as he describes the difficulty of getting balance and fade adjusted after his teen-agers give back the car."

Just wondering.

An open letter to Sen. Gordon Smith

Dear Sen. Smith --

I wrote to you a few days ago expressing my support for upholding the majority vote on judicial nominees in the U.S. Senate. I assumed that you had already decided not to allow Senate Democrats to use this anti-historical and untraditional means of blocking the judicial appointments of the elected chief executive.

Now the New York Times reports that you are one of a handful of Republican Senators preparing to hand to the likes of Joe Biden, Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy an un-Constitutional minority veto power over judicial nominees who would certainly be passed by a majority of the Senate.

Sen. Smith, I don't know if you're drifting leftward because you are aware of how Blue a state Oregon is, but doing this thing will alienate your base more than any other action you have ever taken in your career. I am a staunch conservative, and I simply will not vote for you again under any circumstances if you do this.

On the other hand, if you have any expectations about the loyalty of the Blue State Leftists to a Republican in Name Only, you need only consider the end of the career of Sen. Bob Packwood, who after nearly 30 years of unbroken loyalty to the abortion lobby was pitched out on his ear over actions that would be covered over and forgotten in a Democrat. I don't think you're guilty of Packwood's failings, but as the Bolton hearings show, a man can be blasted into oblivion for putting his hands on his hips and huffing. And everybody has huffed on occasion.

The word is getting out to the party base that this is not about the legislative veto, and Mr. Smith hasn't been in Washington in decades.

Fix the rules, please, and let the Democrats prove their principles by changing them back when they get into the majority.

Thank you for listening.

You Will Be Absorbed

I know that Christ prayed that "all would be one," but I get chills when I hear "unifiying" statements like this one from Cardinal Ratzinger.

Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium. When the Patriarch Athenagoras, on July 25, 1967, on the occasion of the Pope’s visit to Phanar, designated him as the successor of St. Peter, as the most esteemed among us, as one also presides in charity, this great Church leader was expressing the essential content of the doctrine of primacy as it was known in the first millennium. Rome need not ask for more. Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while, on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox and legitimate in the form she has always had.

So what's the big deal? Isn't he giving in on papal primacy? I'm sure that in the depths of his heart, he's making all the allowances he can. But notice the directions: East and West:

. . . the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox and legitimate in the form she has always had

That means Russia can still be Russia and Greece Greece and Romania Romania. But --

the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development

My little parish with its 100 or so families and its married priest and its Orthodox hymnography would be folded into the local archdiocese. And rather than influencing the worldview of that great and large body, its worldview would disappear. The building could probably keep its iconography, as a tribute to its "rich history," and if it remained in the archdiocese at all it would probably function as a wedding chapel rather than a parish -- it's just around the corner from a large Catholic parish, and there aren't enough Catholic priests to staff the parishes the archdiocese has. (I'm not referring to the current archdiocesan administration, because this is not a current possibility.)

Or perhaps the parish would be allowed to become part of the Eastern rite of the Catholic Church. The Eastern rite was permitted in America only because the Eastern European immigrants had an alternative. With "unity" as Cardinal Ratzinger envisions it, there will be no alternative, and the Eastern rite in the United States will wither away.

These developments would not stem from ill will. There's no malicious plot in mind to destroy the Orthodox Church as it exists in America. We are, however, weird and incomprehensible to anyone who has not entered the life, and weird and incomprehensible translates to administrative difficulties -- the same difficulties that Archbishop Ireland and St. Alexis Toth faced at the turn of the 20th century.

I'm not worried about this; there's blessed intransigence on both sides. But when people talk about their earnest desire for unity between East and the West, I thank God for my disorganized religion.

H/T: Fr. Joseph

Astounding Revelations

I just got a copy of a transcribed meeing between from the producer of the television "religious drama" Revelations and the directors, dated Nov. 4, 2004:

PRODUCER: The network boys say that people in the audience want "values."

DIRECTOR: "Values"? What kind of "values"?

PRODUCER: They didn't say. They thought I'd know what they were talking about and they were in no mood to explain. Something about the election.

DIRECTOR: Republican values?

PRODUCER: Nah. That can't be it. Religious values. That's what it was. Christian values.

DIRECTOR: Christian values? You mean like handling snakes and killing abortionists?

PRODUCER: No. Been there, done that, pissed off the Christians. That's not what we want to do this time.

DIRECTOR: So what kind of stuff do Christians like?

PRODUCER: That's why I called this meeting, for God's sake. I don't know any Christians. Do you?

DIRECTOR: My parents' neighbors in Omaha go to church.

PRODUCER: Good. Now we're getting somewhere. What do they like?

DIRECTOR: Oh, you know. The Left Behind crap.

PRODUCER: Don't call it crap. We're trying to make nice here. (noting) Left Behind crap (erasing). OK. Books. That's a good place to start. What other books are Christians reading?

DIRECTOR: Well, the Da Vinci Code is all about Catholicism and that's selling like lattes in Seattle.

PRODUCER (noting): Da Vinci Code, Catholicism. OK. Let's see what we've got so far: end of the world, Catholics, puzzles. Where can we go from here?

DIRECTOR: I've got it. It's almost the end of the world. And there's this nun -- that's your Catholic angle -- and a physicist who doesn't believe in God just yet -- that's your values angle -- and there are all kinds of signs that they go chasing around the world after.

PRODUCER: Good. Good. Let's run with this. Isn't there a book in the Bible called Revelations?

DIRECTOR: Yeah.

PRODUCER: That'll be our title.

DIRECTOR: Oh, oh. It was written on the island of Patmos off the coast of Turkey.

PRODUCER (looks at him in awe): Where do you get this stuff?

DIRECTOR: I just remembered somebody saying that when my wife and I were on our Aegean cruise last year.

PRODUCER: Brilliant. Patmos. We'll have Jesus born on Patmos.

DIRECTOR: That'll be expensive.

PRODUCER: Are you kidding? It's cheaper to film in Turkey than in Manhattan. Anyway, we'll just find a dark little Greek church and put some Gregorian chant in the background, lots of ladies in long dark dresses lined up to touch his hand. Give it the spooky, religious flavor.

DIRECTOR: Oh! and we'll have this devil kind of guy quoting Scripture.

PRODUCER: Could work. Better have the nun quote Scripture, too; don't want to piss off the Christians.

DIRECTOR: My writers can't keep up that level of Scripture quoting. They'd have to read the Bible.

PRODUCER: OK. Have the physicist tell her to can it in the first episode.

DIRECTOR: We can do that. I'll get a couple of writers together and set up a meeting through your secretary. When do you want to roll it out?

End of transcript.

Highway avatars

The blue boat of a car came onto the freeway in the morning traffic and slipped in between two trucks. I was in the center lane, and although the left lane was clear, I was not traveling as fast as the cars that had been coming up in that lane all morning. I stayed put. A few carlengths ahead, the blue car put on its left blinker, then turned it off. I thought the driver had seen me coming and decided to wait.

As I came into the car's blind spot, it started coming into the middle lane. I swerved left, missed her, and honked. Even though I could have prevented it by moving left earlier, I muttered, "You're supposed to look before changing lanes."

A mile or so later I'm still in the middle lane, and the boat pulls alongside me and slows to my speed. I look over, and there's a lady driving, early 60s with big hair, and she's waving her forefinger and mouthing the word, "Sorry."

I waved back -- all my fingers.

It's easy to forget sometimes that those inanimate objects of steel and glass and plastic are in a sense the highway avatars of real people. And then a big-haired lady comes along in a blue boat to remind you of errors and repentance and forgiveness -- all at 60 mph.

Ah, the Divine Comedy

Thomas at Endlessly Rocking has characterized the Great Story as a Shakespearean comedy:

Think about it. From the moment of the Fall, what do we see? A villain who seems a prince of light; a merciful King who must disguise himself at various times as now a beggar and now a horrible judge; mistaken identities among lovers; it’s all there. In the end, after all the sorrow, all the mayhem, all the confusion, the King is revealed, loves are sorted out, and there’s a great and marvelous wedding, as befits the end of a comedy. I won’t go into this any farther at this point, but trust me, the Bible tells a comic tale, and we my friends are right in the middle of it.

I think he's onto something.

Sugar and spice and everything nice

Not.

Three girls from our town were sentenced recently for chiefing and sexually abusing another girl at an after-prom party last year. Two of them were on my daughter's soccer team back in grade school. They are strikingly pretty, financially well-to-do girls who have never had anything denied to them.

"I still have concerns about their lack of empathy and remorse," Judge Gleason said. "They need evaluation and treatment."

The judge was extremely angry and "nearly threw the book at the girls." I'm not sure which book it was -- maybe a Betty and Veronica comic book. One of the girls has been seriously grounded, at least according to her parents. The one who actually perpetrated the sexual crime had to spend the night in jail. She and the other juvenile are sentenced to 100 (for the "badder" girl; 80 for the "nicer" girl) hours of community service and five years of probation. They have to write a "sincere" letter of apology to the victim (how is that enforceable?) and, like, never do it again.

The dad who provided the alcohol at the party got 24 hours of community service and a $626 fine.

In the meantime, my daughter frequently sees one of the girls buzzing around town in her ever-so-cute chick car, and she's very likely shopping for this year's prom dress.

My daughter was out driving around with a friend of hers, who is a neighbor of one of the perps. The friend is a good Christian, sweet girl, also very pretty and also never had anything denied her. They passed one of the perps and the friend waved. My daughter was outraged. She thinks there should be social consequences -- glares and coldness and certainly not smiles and "Hi! How's it going?"

I'm inclined to agree. (I'm also inclined to envision a firing squad, but that's probably out of proportion.) But we're so damned non-judgmental that we treat the perps like princesses and the victim like a traveling tinker.

Why people look at me funny

I used the word "arguably" in a spoken sentence yesterday, and my boss looked at me quizzically and said, "Did you just say 'arguably'?"

Well, yes.

But this isn't really about my odd speech patterens; rather it's about John McWhorter's Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation Of Language And Music And Why We Should, Like, Care.

McWhorter laments the fact that Americans have lost appreciation for the beauties of formal rhetoric. He doesn't diss spoken language, and as a linguist, he respects the grammatical fluidities of spoken languages, as well as the rhythms and timing that arise out of a communication that comes out of the speaker unedited and goes into the hearer with no opportunity for reflection.

All the same, America's tradition of rhetorical appreciation is lost to a false idea of democracy and a rejection of formality as artificial and thus bad (actually bad, and not good "bad").

And all my life I've been trying to incorporate elements of polished speech into my daily conversation. Not that I've succeeded -- I have been known to forget the word "potato" -- but if a four syllable word seems to fit what I'm saying, I'll use it. Now I understand why people have always looked at me as if I were brandishing a loaded weapon.

Think how much better adjusted I'd be if I had understood this concept in fifth or sixth grade. Well, too late now. The geek synapses are too firmly set, and the amusement I've gotten over the years has more than paid off the exchange.

But now I understand why I got those looks.

Another dissenting voice on applause

Fr. John Whiteford also thinks applause at Pope John Paul's funeral is weird. Fr. John writes:

It seems to me that applause during a worship service is the final step in the process of making the services a show. This is not unconnected with the innovation of the pew, which invites people to sit and watch, rather than to stand and pray. In the Scriptures, it is clear that public worship was always done either while standing, or bowing, but never while sitting.

OK, now there's two of us. It's the beginning of a revolution.

Finding the value of failure

I arrived in speed building in my court reporting class last week. I had gotten to the end of Phoenix theory, theoretically having learned all I needed to record anything in the English language -- all, of course, except speed.

So I went into the first speed-building class, the one where they test at 60-80 words per minute. You do a few practice runs at increasing speeds, take the dictation, type up your notes and hand it in. The teachers say you should always type up your notes. You can't lose anything by it, and when you pass two tests in each of three categories at 95%, you move on to the next speed.

It had been so comfortable before. Finishing the book. Focusing on accuracy rather than speed. Doing . . . the . . . dictation . . . at . . . a . . . speed . . . like . . . this (30-40 wpm). Now, I'm back at the bottom, and the dictation moves along at double the pace, though still more slowly than anyone actually speaks.

There's a guy in my class who had never turned in a test, though he's been in the class at least a couple of months. He just never felt that he had done well enough to make it worth typing up the notes. But I, on my second day, turned in a test. Though I knew I had left some stuff out, I had nothing to lose, I thought. If I make 50%, I told myself, that's halfway to the next level.

Tonight I got my test back. I had done the format all wrong -- and one of the school administrators came in during class to give me a packet of information I had received but had failed to memorize -- and the grader gave up less than halfway through the test. Still riding on my earlier optimism, I said to my classmates, "Less than 71%. That's progress." The guy who hadn't taken the test before seemed thoughtful. "You know where you're starting from."

When the testing came around this evening, I knew which were the 80 tests and which were the 60 tests. It wasn't Q&A, so I couldn't get the format wrong. I had practiced over the weekend and noted a miniscule improvement. But when the time came to turn in the test, I had lost my nerve.

The guy turned his in, though.

I hope he gets a 95%.

Memory Eternal

To Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America, forced out of office in 1996 by the Patriarch of Constantinople for calling a meeting of Orthodox bishops at Ligonier, aiming for Orthodox unity in the United States.

The multiple Orthodox jurisdictions in America are a heresy and a scandal; we are bedeviled by cultural misunderstandings, quirks of history, turf wars, and fears of losing American funding for strapped Old Country churches. Archbishop Iakovos acted with great courage and then accepted his punishment gracefully. I hope that his name appears prominently in the history of that search for unity.

UPDATE: This column by Terry Mattingly is a good overview of the archbishop's life and witness.

The Bishop of Cyberia strikes again

Bishop Tikhon (my bishop, if you want to know how loyal I am to the Church that glimmers like a mud-spattered diamond through time and space) has given us another argument for his retirement:

I don't like much about our times. All this humbug about the corpse of another Pope. The world is not that much diminished by his passing. The world was, however, diminished by the passing of Ray Charles and J. Hunter Thompson. As far as the Christianity of the USA goes, it is not the Pope, but Jimmy Carter who, as the only truly devout Christian President in our time, keeps the memory of a country with Christian aspirations alive, even when its present government is busy abolishing the freedoms of its citizens, and its adherence to decency, as well as morality in government.

I love the music of Ray Charles, and I think Hunter Thompson was a tragic story in the full meaning of the word, and though I think Jimmah Carter is slimy, mean and stupid, and on a short list for the worst president in American history, when he dies, I will keep my mouth shut and let those who admire him have at least 40 days of grief before I reiterate that I think he's slimy, mean, stupid, etc.

Nevski at Novae Militiae said, "Someone has suggested, in light of Vladyka's gift of being able to offend someone somewhere every time he opens his mouth, that he should be renamed Tikhoff."

H/T: Orthodox Net.

Maybe it's working

In a story datelined Myrtle Creek, Oregon, the Associated Press reports that public school districts are trying to woo homeschooled familes back into the schools.

Here are the highlights:

In Myrtle Point, the district is trying to phase in some courses that could prove particularly appealing to home-school parents, such as forestry, ecology and computer science.

Superintendent Robert Smith said the school system is also willing to adjust the curriculum -- for example, by allowing discussion of creationism in biology class, or biblical literature in English courses.

"We're not setting up a church steeple. But students want academic freedom enough to encourage different things, and that should not be stifled by relying on exclusive treatments," Smith said.

Myrtle Point, with an enrollment of 779, is not the only district pursuing such a strategy.

In Walla Walla, Wash., school officials have launched plans for a new learning center that they hope will attract at least 30 home-school students, to help cope with a projected $200,000 in budget cuts next school year.

A school district in Fort Collins, Colo., started a program aimed at drawing home-schooled youngsters into the system with two days a week of art, science and music. In 2003, it earned the district an extra $203,341 in state funding.

Of course it's not enough for some familes, because the lack of enhanced subjects wasn't why they left in the first place, and there will be others like the Myrtle Creek school board member who accused homeschooling parents of "cherry-picking" music and sports.

But.

If school boards are asking, "Why did they leave?" they might learn something useful. If they're asking, "How can we help give families the education they want for their children?" they might find ways for everybody to gain. And the ones who seek to cooperate with families instead of trying to make them fit into some kind of mold will see the flowering of a lot of different kinds of educational experiments.

My own favorite of the "experiments" is Portland's Agia Sophia Academy, an Orthodox Christian classical school. I wish it had been around when my kids were young enough for it.

Satire or a lovely daydream?

It's hard to tell, as Fr. Joseph Huneycutt breaks the news that Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has been elected to be the next Pope of Rome.

Reconciliations all round, as the MP and ROCOR kiss and make up, the Greeks are permitted to be part of the American Church, and the OCA and AOA say, "Heck, why not?"

What he doesn't cover is the rage and anguish among the the advocates of women priests, rock'n'roll Masses and "applause prayers." That, however, could be the best part.

Some kinds of prayer I don't understand

A Catholic priest from a "traditionalist" parish was keeping vigil in St. Peter's Square with thousands of others when the announcement came that the pope was dead.

To pick up the story:

Within moments, a cardinal announced to the crowd that the pope had "gone home to his Father's house."

After a moment of stunned silence, a reverent round of applause swept the plaza.

"It was not the raucous clapping like you might have at music events or something like that," the priest wrote. "It really was a prayer for the pope."

I don't doubt his sincerity or love or loyalty, but how weird is it that smacking one's hands together to produce a noise has become a form of prayer? I could expect it from American Pentecostals maybe, since that faith tradition has grown up in the shadow of the American popular culture. But Catholics, and among them a "traditionalist" Catholic, in Rome?

Maybe it's just me -- and I know I have my quirks -- but this seems to treat the pope's life and death as a long and successful performance, rather than a life of ministry.

Here's a BBC piece on applause, from Caesar Nero to the present time. It's all about performance, but not about prayer.

Mothers and daughters

The girl sitting across from me on the bus doesn't remember me, but she was on my daughter's third-grade soccer team eight years ago.

She was a beautiful child, with a mass of thick, wavy, blonde hair, which she wore in a long braid. Her mother had a no-nonsense appearance -- comfortable shoes, no makeup, no jewelry, and well-made, practical clothes. There were some moms I could imagine dressed for a cocktail party, but she wasn't one of them.

One day my daughter waved good-bye with a cheery, "Bye, Jessie!" The mother corrected her sternly: "It's Jessica, or Jess if you must, but not Jessie." Well, oooooookay.

For soccer picture day, the mother held her daughter in place so that she could braid her hair into an ornate French braid. I was surprised at this woman who dressed so plainly being so decorative with her daughter, and I wondered if maybe, like me, she dressed plainly because she gave up following the fashions, but wanted to emphasize the beauty she saw in her daughter.

Eight years later, the girl is wearing dark cargo pants and a black sweatshirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, no makeup. She looks a lot like her mother. She is a pretty teen-ager who will be a handsome woman, but she is not at all frou-frou -- except for professionally shaped eyebrows.

We try so hard to give our children what we lack, but end up giving mostly what we have an abundance of.

That's it

Outer Life has captured what I'm trying to get from court reporting school He calls it superfluidity: (as good a name as any):

Not to be confused with superfluity, a very different goal, superfluidity is an unusual state of matter characterized by a frictionless flow. This state of matter has so far been observed only in liquid helium cooled down near absolute zero, but I hope over my remaining years to develop my own permanent state of frictionless flow.

Superfluidity is like the Taoist ideal of wu-wei, action without action. It's akin to what athletes call the 'zone,' their elusive source of effortless achievement. It's losing yourself, it's a state of grace, it's nirvana, the ultimate melding of thoughts, senses, abilities and actions into a perfect harmony of living.

Superfluidity applies to more of life than taking down other people's conversations, but as Outer points out in his sports examples, there are different ways to pierce the bubble. I think stenography is one of them.

Trying to pass my 60 wpm tests, so I have a long way to go.

Ah Spring!

It was a crazy morning. Young-adult daughter's car is in the shop, and we're sharing a vehicle. I dropped her off at school, ran across town for an interview for the day job, went back to pick her up at school and leave her the car for the rest of her afternoon work.

I arrived at lunchtime, and found a pretty blonde (my daughter) and a pretty brunette (a schoolmate of hers) waiting. Daughter would give schoolmate a ride home after they dropped me off at the Oregon City transit mall, but I had some intervening stops. First, the gas station, where daughter got the attendant, a goateed 20-something, talking about the most recent time a car's gas tank caught fire. Her friend teased her about flirting, which she insisted she wasn't, and then pointed out as we drove away that he had gone back into the office and pulled his shirt off.

Next stop, Taco Bell, where we arrived at the same time as the Oregon City High School lunch break. Three guys in a headache-mobile behind us in the drive-through started off by saying what cute girls were in the car ahead (that would be daughter and friend), then hopping out of the car to "test" the volume and quality of the speakers, and then, when that didn't work, the driver shouted, "West Linn sucks!" I would have questioned the effectiveness of insulting the girl's home town as a pickup line, but I guess if the speakers don't impress her, you just go for broke.

Then I stopped at the Oregon City transit mall so that I could catch a bus (it's good to be back on the bus). Daughter came around to get into the driver's seat, and friend got out and into the passenger seat, and as I crossed the street, the slackers standing waiting for the bus asked me, "Is that your daughter? Can I have her number?"

Ah, spring, when a young man's heart turns to love -- and his brain turns to mush.

Cosmos

Your womb became more spacious than the heavens . . . .

She had been through a rough time, partly of her own making, and she had come home -- to the place where "if you have to go there, they have to take you in." We took her to the emergency room to be checked out, and the doctor found something none of us had expected.

During Lent in the Orthodox Church, at every Liturgy, we sing a hymn that draws out the mystery of the Incarnation:

All of creation rejoices in you, O full of grace,
The assembly of angels and the race of men,
O sanctified temple and spiritual paradise, glory of virgins,
From whom God was incarnate and became a child, our God before the ages.
He made your body a throne and your womb he made more spacious than the heavens.
All of creation rejoices in you, O full of grace, glory to you.

They took her in for an ultrasound and found a new little person, just a few weeks along, a 3 mm. black dot against the speckled white backdrop of the screen. In the image, the blood flow to the new life appeared as yellow and orange flashes, the color of fire.

My browser's home pages is the Astronomy Picture of the Day. Every day, I see pictures of earth, Mars, distant moons, dying suns and sprouting galaxies, and often, the starry sky looks just like the image of that 3 mm. "clump of cells," already unique, already of the same species God became, already in the grand scheme of things, Somebody.

"He made . . . your womb more spacious than the heavens . . . ."

Of course, it's uniquely true of Christ and the Theotokos, His mother, but if each person is made in the image of God, then each person is a universe, bigger on the inside than on the outside, bearing the "logos," the identifying mark of the Creator.

And every womb that bears a child is more spacious than the heavens.

"All of creation rejoices . . . ."

You thought it couldn't happen here?

My parish was one of the venues for the Valaam Ensemble, singers who support the Valaam Monastery in Russia. We only had numbers 1, 3 and 5 in the photo above, because the other two couldn't get visas to come to America.

The tenor, baritone and bass came to the United States on business-tourism visas. The other two, because they are full-time professional musicians, would have had to get performance visas, and for that, they would have had to have an agent or to be hired at musicians' union wages -- no free concerts in churches and colleges to share a wealth of Russian music and collect free-will offerings to rebuild a historic monastery in Russia.

This is their fourth trip to the United States, and the first time they've had this problem.

Which brought to mind a recent article about an opera conductor who was arrested for bringing Eastern European musicians to put on operas in small towns in France. These towns couldn't afford to host operas staffed by French union musicians, but this touring company, staffed with musicians from Ukraine or Bulgaria, bring great music to the towns. The conductor was arrested for violating France's union-protection laws.

Let's just hope our State Department is as serious about keeping out terrorists as it is about outlawing renegade musicians.

News of the weird

Better keep a tight hold on that poop bag you're trying to carry home from the dog walk. It seems that San Diego muggers have taken to snatching them.

Next they'll tell us it's an ingredient in meth.

A look at national dialects

This map shows generic names for carbonated drinks. Besides being a lovely mosaic of the USA, it tells a story of migration and influence, as well as pockets of disconformity. Why is St. Louis "soda" country at the juncture of "coke" and "pop"? How did Detroit stake out "soda" in the midst of "pop"? What is the "other" used by 50% or more in central New Mexico and in one little district in upstate Michigan?

Happy Easter

Western Easter, 2005

I stopped at the Starbucks in Lake Oswego after church today. It's the second Sunday in Lent for us Orthodox (Pascha is May 1), because of a glitch in the calendar and Orthodox recalcitrance. Papacino's, our neighborhood coffee shop, was closed, and its empty parking lot was my reminder that this was not an ordinary Sunday. Nevertheless, Seattle-based Starbucks was open -- appropriately enough, because the only state with a lower church-going percentage than Oregon is Washington.

So I stopped at the Starbucks in Lake Oswego, an affluent suburb of Portland, a small city with a lively downtown and beautiful tree-lined streets. I assumed that its customer, being affluent Lake Oswegans, would be uninterested or unaware of the holiday.

I was surprised to find that even in Starbucks, even in Lake Oswego, Oregon, Easter and resurrection are not far from people's minds. People came in dressed in uncharacteristic finery, exchanging greetings of "Happy Easter." And against a backdrop of Miles Davis playing "It Ain't Necessarily So" from Porgie and Bess, another man, sitting behind me, railed against the preaching of the resurrection and the Catholic Church.

If I were trying to get away from Easter, I wouldn't succeed.

Instead I'm waiting.

To my Western Christian readers, "Happy Easter."

'Transnational pabulum'

Talking about the Bolton nomination as U.N. ambassador, the ever-quotable Mark Steyn says, "For much of the civilised world the transnational pabulum has become an end in itself, and one largely unmoored from anything so tiresome as reality."

I recommend the whole article, but in that sentence he has captured a nauseating tendency in discourse at large: in ecumenical-speak in religious circles, in politically correct speech in political circles.

Here's an example from very recently: Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard after a 200-pound accused rapist overpowered and murdered a lone female deputy assigned to bring him into the courthouse: "I think that women are capable of doing anything that men are capable of doing. And I don’t think it’s the weight, I think it’s the heart, the training, and the ability. I don’t think the weight has a whole lot to do with it." (I wonder if he's going to get up at her funeral and tell the assembly that she just didn't have the heart, the training or the ability to do her job.)

Open season on cats?

Jonah Goldberg raises the question of whether to permit hunting of feral cats.

His point is that cats kill more birds than pesticides, without doing as much good, and I wished I had access to an article by Chuck Bolsinger, who writers for the East County Gazette out of Boring, Oregon (that's a place, not an adjective).

Anyway, Chuck made a case that cats kill rodents and -- because they're a larger proportion of the bird population -- "weed" birds such as starlings and English sparrows more than native songbirds.

It was done with humor, level-headedness, sharp observation and informative detail, as all of Chuck's nature pieces are.

Let Wisconsin legalize the hunting of feral cats and tell us what the outcome is. In the meantime, Chuck's columns are available on-line, and as much as I like Jonah Goldberg's humorous political commentary, Chuck is a better nature writer.

What I'm reading

I would have thought from the title of Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety that it's just another self-help book and have passed on it.

In fact, it is another self-help book, in a way, but this author of The Art of Travel makes the genre something beautiful, and the "self" he aims to help is not just the pocketbook or the sense of emotional well-being, but something deeper -- maybe even the soul.

De Botton allows that status is actually important, since it can affect how a person functions in a community, but he observes that many people spend their lives in useless worry about who is coming up behind them or whether they're catching up with the person in front of them.

When I look at status as a motivation, it clarifies a lot of otherwise unexplainable behavior -- from the next-door neighbor getting angry out of proportion to the incident to Jimmie Carter's wandering around the world looking for audiences to admire him ( I won't pick on Clinton while he's in the hospital).

In the second half of the book, the self-help part, De Botton offers ways to overcome some of the frustrations of status -- at least to realize that a person's true value is not measured by his standing in the community. I'm not finished reading the book, so I can't

It's worth reading, and even when I find myself arguing with the author, the argument takes me into new areas of thought where I hadn't traveled before.

Bush supporters not welcome

An open e-mail to Ocean Haven, "Nature Friendly Lodging on the Oregon Coast," where "Nature Friendly" is defined as "No Hummers, No RVs, No Bush Voters (due to his environmental destructive policies)."

Congratulations on getting noticed by Best of the Web Today.

I'm curious, though. How do you know if the person trying to rent a room is a Bush voter? Can you tell by looking? Do you inspect bumpers for tell-tale stickers, have connection in County Clerks' offices? If they e-mail you, do you count spelling errors and malapropisms?

Or is it just an instinct thing?

Thanks for the chuckle.

Jan Bear
West Linn, Oregon

No answer so far.

I think on further reflection that it might be the honor system, which would necessarily include a presumption that Bush voters have honor -- a big step forward across the Red State-Blue State divide.

UPDATE: I did hear back from her. She said she doesn't have time to read the Internet, being too busy saving whales and tide pools and what have you, so she didn't know what Best of the Web is.

She said she didn't need to check up on Bush voters, because she doesn't think they'd lie about they voted for. So she does think we're honorable. But, of course, if she didn't know, she wouldn't know.

She said she had turned away only one Bush voter, and she didn't have any vacancies anyway.

Since amusement is as great -- maybe greater -- a reason to like someone as rationality, I could enjoy having her for an acquaintance. But I couldn't stay in her facilities. I wouldn't lie about my political stance, and besides, I can't afford it.

Cognitive dissonance

I can agree with the animal rights activists that this is pretty sick.

So why can't they agree with me on partial-birth (or the less exotic varieties of) human abortion.

Lamb -- valuable.
Human person -- valuable.
Sense of proportion -- priceless.

Left Hand, meet Right Hand

MEMORANDUM

FROM: Left Hand
TO: Right Hand
DATE: March 2, 2005
RE: What's up?

A press release from the Oregon Department of Human Services announces: "2 problem-gambling programs, state manager to be recognized."

The Oregon Lottery -- with billboards round the state promising $MILLION$ to some lucky player -- meets gambling addiction:

Problem-gambling programs in Lincoln and Linn counties and the state's problem gambling services manager will be recognized Thursday in Newport for exemplary efforts in preventing, treating and promoting public understanding of gambling addiction.

The Oregon Gambling Addiction Treatment Foundation, an advocate for increased public awareness of problem gambling and ensuring access to treatment, will present awards Thursday during a statewide problem-gambling training conference at the Embarcadero Hotel.
Receiving the awards will be:

• Treatment award: Lincoln County Health and Human Services' problem-gambling program.


• Prevention award: Linn County Department of Health Services' problem-gambling prevention program.


• Michael H. McCracken Memorial Award: Jeffrey J. Marotta, Ph.D., problem gambling services manager in the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS). The award is named for the foundation's founder and former director, who was an effective advocate for problem-gambling treatment and other health-care services.

"Both the Lincoln and Linn county programs accomplished remarkable gains in increasing awareness of problem gambling services," said Thomas L. Moore, the foundation's executive director.

"The Linn County prevention program was able to reach 552 middle-school students in five schools, a great partnering effort with the schools, the county, the commission on children and families, and the state.

"Lincoln County was a phoenix example of resurrecting a program that had essentially closed. The number of problem-gambling enrollments greatly exceeded the previous years' performance." Moore said Lincoln County's sole staffer, Marilyn Heins, conducted numerous community presentations to re-establish the program in the public's mind.

Moore said Marotta, who manages DHS' Lottery-financed treatment program, will be recognized for improving quality and introducing greater accountability into Oregon's research-based treatment while also bringing national attention to Oregon's innovative problem gambling services. Innovations include a home-based treatment program for seniors and people in rural areas and problem-gambling respite programs in Columbia and Josephine counties. Marotta, a clinical psychologist and recognized authority on treating problem gamblers, joined DHS in 2000.

Keynote speaker at the conference will be David Hodgins, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of Calgary who is recognized as a leading expert on problem-gambling recovery. He will speak Thursday at 9 a.m. about effective treatments for problem gamblers and their families.

For DHS, the good news, as far as I can tell, is that more lottery funds are going to more problem gamblers. By that reasoning, a new lottery game can get more problem gamblers to help pay for more problem gambling services.

Oregon bureaucrats are a perfect illustration of the old line describing the lottery as a tax on people who are bad at math, except in this case the tax spenders are bad at math also.

Real-time reporting

I can't type any more, because someone moved all the keys around. When I stand in the choir, my hands are doing the steno of the lyrics. I'm on lesson 26 of 32 in Phoenix theory before I begin speedbuilding in earnest -- going from somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 words per minute to 225 (205 real-time).

But tonight, I got a glimpse of what I wanted from this. I heard a story a long time ago about a court reporter who was taking a deposition at the airport (stop me if I've blogged this before). He liked planes, and he was looking out the window at the airplanes and transcribing the conversation, and suddenly he realized that the attorney was asking, "Reporter, would you please read back the last question?"

The reporter lifted his notes and found that he'd written several times, "Reporter, would you read back the last question?"

From the time I heard that story, there's been a tickle in my mind that I'd like to go there -- to the place where you're a witness, a transcriber, with a direct connection between ears and fingers and the mind engaged but disengaged in between.

At class this evening I got a glimpse of that. I know, I know, it was 30-40 words per minute, and I tangled my J's and Y's terribly and when I looked at what I'd written, it was laughable, but -- but -- I didn't skip any sentences (first time), and I could read what my notes should have said, and I began to find the silent spaces between the words where the transcription happens.

It sounds crazy, and I'm not sure I can say it so that it makes sense to anyone else. But I've done my best for someone whose keyboard keeps rearranging itself.

Barney aids crime fighters in U.K.

Aye, laddie, I'd been on White House duty for a little over four years, and the Missus had given me a new assistant to train, when I got a call from Northumbria Police.

They had seen my work in hunting terrorist cells among the White House staff and checking the Christmas tree for explosives in 2003 -- the big white ball was especially suspicious, but I got it out of the house and dealt with it. Christmas 2004, I had to do a training run on a kidnapping. I handled it pretty well, if I do say so myself, and the word got around.

The Northumbrian lad said they needed some new technology to deal with similar situations over there. The Big Guy was out of the country, and I was on my own four feet for a while. I shipped them a couple of Barney-cams.

They were quite grateful, but what could I say? Anything for Scotland Yard.

Gosh, he's really sorry now

The eponymous Wead is really, really sorry about releasing all those tapes of him talking to his good friend George W. Bush. It wasn't for the money, honest; he lost millions , he says, by not releasing the book before the election. But now that the election is over, that coverage in all the major metropolitan dailies can't hurt, can it?

I'm having trouble getting a handle on what the "right to privacy" means if it's sacrosanct for people aiming to bring suitcase nukes into the country but not for a presidential candidate talking to a "friend" on the telephone, if it applies to public library records but not to private telephone calls. The New York Times would undoubtedly say, "If we didn't print it, someone else would"; which may be true, but beside the point. It sometimes seems that the major media do see themselves as above and outside the society at large, not beholden to any standards of decency or loyalty, not bound by any constraints except their own "ethics," which, as Dan Rather has shown us, can be -- shall we say -- fluid.

The Constitution is set up to protect the press, and the rest of us, from the government, but who protects private citizens from the press, which by now has equal and sometimes greater capacity to destroy than the government? I don't believe it's a conspiracy or a cabal -- it's just ordinary people using the power that's been given them without any reflection, and "absolute power . . . ."

Bush comes off pretty well -- better than I would, if someone caught me venting with a person I felt safe around. But the deposit of trust in the world has been drained a little more. It's a scarce commodity, and Wead and the reporters may need it at some time and won't find enough of it left. So be it.

Anyway, as far as the eponymous Wead is concerned, read Dr. John Mark Reynolds.

'Free Mojtaba and Arash Day'

In.

Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad are Iranian bloggers in prison for what the rest of us do without thinking about it every day.

If you want to tell the Iranian authorities what you think of their approach to human rights, here's the address of the Iranian embassy in London. (I gather that they don't have one in the United States.)

I probably don't need to say it, but I will anyway. Overloading their servers with firm but civil missives will be more effective than hate mail. Nuf said.

You've been waiting more than a century for this

(creep-out alert)

At last! On display in St. Petersburg, Russia, the organ that influenced Russian politics for the entire 20th Century.

Longer-lasting than the Soviet Union, harder than the "Man of Steel," holding up longer even than Lenin's body, this will give spam a whole new realm of promises for the future of man.

Freudian analysis will get a muscular boost as psychologists discuss why Russians have envied America's possession of Napoleon's. The missile defense program may need to be revamped, if it turns out that this is indeed larger.

Seriously though, if you're weak of stomach or delicate of sensibilities, don't even go there. If it weren't so funny, I'd wish I hadn't.

Some friends

It's partly to try out the Flickr photo application, partly to introduce my friends Mocha and Sadie.

Here we are on our way to an excellent adventure in the park.

We were on our way to Tryon Creek State Park, a 645-acre network of trails along a ravine on the edge of urban Portland.

It's a haven for joggers and walkers, with bike and equestrian trails, and parts of the park where you can (Shhhh) let the dogs off their leash. There, it's about a 50-50 chance of running across another dog off-leash or running across some pickle-faced volunteer park monitor telling you that dogs should always be leashed.

If Mocha looks annoyed in this picture, it's because we're passing within 20 feet of a creek, and she's not being allowed to go swimming.

This is the color of Oregon in the winter.