Saturday, June 28, 2008

Shrewsbury

In May, Auntie Gill and I went for a day trip to Shrewsbury to see sights and shop.


Shrewsbury castle. Don't know if is the real thing or a new one, but it looks great.

The locals pronounce it "Shroosbury", if you're from anywhere else, it's "Shrohsbury" with the first bit rhyming with "clothes".


This is the church of Shrewsbury Abbey, Br. Cadfael's abbey. It is in the middle of town now, but in the 12 century, it was in the country outside the city walls. Across the street from it, there is quite a nice nature conservancy place with a garden and a gift shop where you can buy nature-oriented things. Part of the nature place is the abbey's former guest lodge and the stone work looks very ancient and beautiful. I bought a flower identification book there.


Cool old buildings in Shrewsbury.


When I die, I want a stone plaque and an epitaph in verse.


The ceiling of St. Mary's church. Original bits built in the Norman period, a lot of re-building and great neo-Gothic stuff in the 19th. Those Anglicans really know how to take care of our stuff.

St. Mary's church was sort of the main church in Shrewsbury and is certainly one of the loveliest I've seen in England so far.


The lighting wasn't ideal to take this pic, but I thought it was worth it. The window is 14th century, and was moved to St. Mary's after the other church it was in was falling down. It is enormous and extremely detailed and beautiful.

But of course, nothing good came out of the middle ages. It was all just wallowing in filth, ignorance and superstition until the glorious revolution...but I digress.


Very nice arches. The pointy ones are the 19th century neo-Gothic ones,


and the round ones are the original late Norman ones.


"New" tile floor. 15th century.


A loving couple. 15h century, the height of weirdness in medieval women's clothes.


The main altar: tres tres William Morris.


A "sedularium"? Something like that. Anyway, it was one of the original Norman bits and is where the subdeacon's chair goes during Mass...which they don't have any more of course.


This side chapel was as big as H-Fam in Toronto and a gorgeous late 19th century medieval revival.


There were three little alcoves with these alabaster carved things in them. 14th century. This one represents the Trinity with Our Lady holding the infant Christ and a supplicant. The long ribbony things are where there used to be mottoes carved, like the talking balloons in comics. No one knows what they said, but they're probably supplications to the Trinity.


Behind the altar of the Lady Chapel


Seraphs.


For some reason, I got the impression that in Britain, builders in the 15th century may have heard of the invention of the plumb line, but were having no truck with it. All the houses were wobbly and kind of leaned out over the streets.


The 15th century pub we had lunch in. Now called Poppy's. Really really good grub and not expensive. The stairs were interesting; all different heights.


Auntie Gill.


All the pictures you see of the beautiful 16th century timber frame houses with black timbers and whitewashed plaster are recent. At least, the paint is recent. In honour of Queen Victoria's bereavement, the towns of England painted all the timbers black. Except in Shrewsbury, where they are all the nice original brown with off white plaster.

Note the upsidedown lizard on the corner.


Good advice from the town fathers. One gets the impression that even the yobs in previous times were more civilized than our modern yobs.


The Drapers' lane.


Inside the Draper's lane. In the 18th century, no doubt a den of iniquity. In the 21st, a "highly desirable property".

That's it.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Here, read this instead

"Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister"

ROME in the footsteps of an XVIIIth century traveller


...

this just in:

...
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hilary White
> Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 3:00 PM
> To: Matt Harding [matt@wherethehellismatt.com]
> Subject: but
>
> What I think I appreciate about you most, Matt, is that no matter where
> you've been, you seem to remember how to use an apostrophe.
>
> Universal brotherly love, joy and friendship are all very well, but to
> meet a guy, who is world famous no less, who knows the difference between
> 'they're' and 'there', and lo! even 'their', 'its' and it's, 'your' and
> 'you're' is a wonder and joy to behold. And you're under forty!
> Astonishing.
>
> It must be because you've never been to university. Nothing like college
> to entirely ruin a person's ability to think rationally and use
> punctuation.
>
> HJW


Thanks so much for noticing, Hilary (and I even caught the one 'l' too).

I can't tell you how much it means to have someone compliment my grammar.
Seriously.

-Matt


I'm horribly bored

I've got the travel bug rather badly lately, and can't concentrate and so can't think of a single interesting thing to say. Got a long weekend until Wed, (Dominion Day) and am going to charge up the camera batteries, pump up the bike tyres and see if I can get to see St. Winifred's Well at Holywell.

Have started going for walks again after months of skulking indoors, which is good, only to discover that my hay fever, after a 20 year hiatus, has returned to celebrate the new pollen count and interesting, previously unknown species of grass and flowers, which is bad. I'm going to try an ancient home remedy: tincture of nettle, a batch of which I presciently made for myself, anticipating that my immune system would be confused by its new surroundings.

But perhaps it is time for a respite from the blogging scene. Maybe in a few weeks I'll be more interested in the world and have something to say.

When there are photos, I'll put them up. But don't expect more than that for a while.

H.

I'm SHOCKED! Stunned! Speechless with Astonishment!

Really?

No.

Not really.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Tarsiers

I had to do a very difficult interview today that has left me all discombobulated and feeing so wiggy I had to go for a long walk in the field with the purple-headed grass and look at the oak trees and the birds. Now I'm procrastinating by looking things up about our little owl-eyed friend in the videos below.

Despite the name of the video, he is not a lemur; (as anyone could tell; lemurs are very long and gangly creatures with long tails and somewhat dog-like faces), he is a tarsier. A Philippine tarsier, to be exact.

The tarsiers are the smallest of all the primates/

And as you can see, that's really teeny.

His skull is almost all eye socket and really does give him a rather odd bird-like quality, as you can see:


Wiki:
Tarsiers are prosimian primates, [which makes them closely related to lemurs.] Although the group was once more widespread, all the species living today are found in the islands of South East Asia. Their feet have extremely elongated tarsus bones, from which the animals get their name.


This creature is really all about the eyes, which makes sense. It's brain is different from all the other primates in the way it processes visual information. The eyes also do not have a light-reflecting layer, which I think might be the reason he looks so very odd in the videos. They're very good jumpers and catch insects and sometimes birds by leaping at them from the trees. I've seen a video of tarsiers leaping about in a bush and they really look like something unearthly, as if this is where the fairy legends come from. (Except that we know there really are fairies, so it can't be tarsiers).

Wiki again:
Fossils of tarsiers and tarsiiform primates are found in Asia, Europe, and North America, and there are disputed fossils from Africa, but extant tarsiers are restricted to several Southeast Asian islands including the Philippines, Sulawesi, Borneo, and Sumatra. They also have the longest continuous fossil record of any primate genus[citation needed], and the fossil record indicates that their dentition has not changed much, except in size, in the past 45 million years.


For those who worry about the cute furry animals, the tarsiers are OK. They aren't abundant, and they don't really grow in many places in the world, but Wiki quotes some Official Endangered Animal List that says they are mostly in the "Lower Risk - Conservation Dependent" and "Lower Risk, Not Threatened" groups. So, that's one less thing.

Are you OK?

Feeling worried? A bit overwhelmed?

Thinking about the impending end of western civilisation and all good things? Worried you're going to end your days in a gulag for your Christian beliefs? Worried that you won't have a pension and will end your days in a scene reminiscent of a particularly grim Philip K. Dick novel?

Thinking about the ozone layer (remember that?), the rising ocean levels, the mass extinction of cute furry animals?

Worried about the demographic collapse and the inevitability of civil war in Europe over who gets to keep Chartres Cathedral? Wondering if your children will live a long happy life in a free society with lots of cheap Spanish oranges to eat or if the Peak Oil crisis is going to plunge us into a global economic tailspin that will launch us all into a permanent state of third-world misery and perpetual want?


Well, take a look at this. It will cheer you up.



Matt Harding is a regular guy who made a video of his travels in Asia and got very very lucky after that.

Matt reminds me a little of me, especially the part about being a bad student, but except for the part about living with his girlfriend in Seattle. I don't live with Matt's girlfriend and I live in England.


Matt lives in Seattle, Washington with his girlfriend, Melissa, and dog, Sydney. He hasn't had a real job since Stride [the company that pays him to travel around and make videos] called him up. Matt doesn't mind working, but he doesn't much care for having to show up at the same place every day.

Matt is not rich. Matt also doesn't have some magical secret for traveling cheaply. He does it pretty much the same way everybody else does.

Matt thinks Americans need to travel abroad more.

Matt was a very poor student and never went to college. When he got older, he was pleased to discover that no one actually cares. Matt doesn't want to imply that college is bad or anything. He's just saying is all. There's other ways to fill your head
.


I love the internet. I truly do. I'd live in the Matrix in a second.

If I could get it implanted directly into my brain, I'd be happy to pay the price,

even if it meant my brain getting taken over by aliens.

As it normally does.



H/T to John Jalsevac,
who told me about it via Messenger
and who also loves the internet.

This one's even better

[If you haven't watched the first one, scroll down]

Am I just tired?


or is this really funny?

Animals are weird.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

I think I'm thinking what he's thinking

"The Catholic Church does not deserve to survive if it is so gutless."

In a nutshell:

The former Catholic Children’s Society, at Purley, in Surrey,
has changed its name to the Cabrini Children’s Society on giving up its Catholic
principles in order to comply with the government’s Sexual Orientation Regulations
(SOR) and give children into adoption by homosexual couples, thus condoning same-sex
unions. The Church teaches that putting children into the care of an invalid union is
a gravely moral matter.

The Catholic Faithful need to know that they’ve just lost £10 million (the society's
assets), and been sold down the river of political expediency as it is now
technically outside Church jurisdiction.


more here, and here .

An ethical conundrum for you

You are doing your work in the evening, minding your own business and enjoying the last of the evening's sunshine when along come a handsome pair of young people, about 20 or so, who proceed to sprawl in the doorway of the greegrocer across the street from your window in the small, quiet respectable English country village in which you have chosen to make your home to escape this sort of thing.

The girl is obviously out of her head with drink and she and the boy are all over each other in an unchaste manner.

You are tempted, you are sorely tempted, to take a few photos with your digital camera and then go across the street to inform the young duo that they can either cease and desist or find themselves posted to the internet in this condition for all the world to see by next morning.

What do you do?

"Gordon Brown’s fortunes have now slumped to the point where he is not so much living in Number 10 as lying in state."

"Any further decline will take Labour out of the province of psephologist Tony King and into that of historian Andrew Roberts, whose responsibility it will be to discover equivalent ratings for the Whigs after the defeat of the Exclusion Bill. If Gordon continues in freefall it will then be the mediaevalists’ turn, when some comparisons may be found with the popularity of, say, Richard II at the height of the Peasants’ Revolt, or Henry II immediately after the murder of Becket.

Harbingers

"The Catholic Church was a special target for liquidation," said Sister Margaret Nacke. "...Since we sisters are public representatives of the Church, we were some of the first targets."

And despite the fact their religion was forbidden, women continued through four decades to join these religious orders in Eastern Europe, practicing their faith in secret and always in fear of being discovered by the communists.

Nacke cited case after case of sisters who were imprisoned for years on charges such as treason. One nun spent 11 months in solitary confinement.

"Sister Gerta in Romania was sent to a couple of prisons. The last one was underground. Air was pumped down three times a day," said Nacke. "Sister Ann in Hungary escaped in 1951 with 18 people. As they escaped, one of the sisters was shot and died on the spot. Another was sent back to prison. Only seven came through. She was one of them."

Nacke also talked about the "secret sisters," women who entered religious life during the underground period. Sometimes hiding this from their families, they would sign papers to enter religious life and then burn them to protect themselves. Nacke talked about a secret sister who had access to a habit to wear to take her vows and then immediately took it off, not to wear one again until the fall of communism. They practiced their religion at great risk.

"Can it happen again? Who can say?" remarked Nacke. "We only know it's a question we must never stop asking."

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Drumroll Please

No NervousDisorderFest would be complete without...



CREEPY GIANT PUPPETS!!!

...with added bonus, a bearded Boomer singing folk songs, off key, with a guitar.

Now that's Catholic.

Let's give a big hand for NewChurch.

The Dance of the Sacred Triangles


To spare you pain, fast forward to 22:36 for the real fun.

...but it's OK. It's not "A Liturgy". It's "a spectacle". In Quebec this is what they do. It's kind of the Frenchie version of the old Chinese ladies you see doing Tai Chi in Vancouver parks when you're coming into town from New West on the Sky Train in the early morning.

As I just wrote to a friend:

You've never been to Quebec have you? The entire province is like one colossal Novus Weirdo Alternate Service Book Liturgical Renewal and Solstice Conference.

Every day.

So long...


George Carlin May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008

Another ex-Catholic who was likely never given the straightforward answers to religious questions and concluded that religion in bunk.

He got funnier as he got older, I think.

On the stupidities of environmentalism:
"How about those people in Kilauea Hawaii who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room."

H/T to she of the ardente di pellicce di gatto

Slouching towards what, again?


What is that thing he's wearing? It looks like it was designed by the team from STNG circa 1998.


This

is listed as the "Dramatized liturgy of reconciliation".

Do you think the organisers of the International Eucharistic Congress know what the word "liturgy" means?

If you can stand it, fast forward to about 31:56 to get to my favourite bit.

In case you want to sing along, the lyrics are in English:

"Millions and billions and trillions and zillions and of angels around..."

Zillions.

That many? Really?



. . .



This pseudo-church needs to die.

It needs. to. die.

Soon.

Little things

"What does it matter what I wear to church on a Sunday. After all, God loves me whether I'm in flip flops and shorts or in a tux. All that stuff is just meaningless externals."

Why do little things matter?

Ask Mayor Giuliani why it's important to fix broken windows.

Spam Envy

Long-time readers will recall that I've never particularly liked Mark Shea. I know some people who had once been in solidarity with me on this have gone a little soft recently, but I'm afraid I have been unable to shake my distaste for his peculiarly American, Disnified version of Catholicism that is sometimes referred to as Neo-cathism. This will not come as any sort of surprise to Shea either, since I've never kept it a secret and I know he doesn't particularly hold it against me, being, I suppose, essentially a good enough sport on the one hand and not giving a damn on the other. Fair enough.

But I have to say, I do envy his spam.

As a more or less ex-prod, Shea, instead of the dreary invitations to become involved in international money laundering scams from Burundi and requests to join pyramid schemes, gets long loving and painfully over-punctuated pleas to return to the bosom of protestantism.

Dear Mark, just came from your Web site and have some questions.
It sounds like you were a "Protestant" before becoming a Catholic? I don't
know which church you were in but I have to question whether you were ever
taught the Word of God there? If you had been in a church which taught the
truth concerning Baptism according to the Word of GOD and not the "traditions
of men" you would have learned that not only does baptism NOT save nor
"grant justification" but it is ONLY for those who ARE BORN-AGAIN by the
SPIRIT of GOD by placing their faith in the LORD JESUS CHRIST! It is to be
symbolic of the new birth ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED by GOD as Romans 6 clearly
teaches! PLEASE READ the Gospel of John and pray asking GOD to show you
HIS TRUTH -- HE LOVES THE WORLD and DESIRES TO SAVE the LOST -- which we all
are apart from the New Birth which IS FREELY offered to ALL! Please read
and be saved! I will be praying for you in JESUS Name. Carolyn


If I got stuff like this in my spam file, I would check it most diligently for treasures, every day.

Monday, June 23, 2008

9:50 pm

I took this photo out my upstairs window a few minutes ago.


I can't help but think, though I have not yet looked it up, that we must be at a considerably higher latitude here than in Tranna. It gets light out extremely early and has been doing so since May.

I was awake this morning at 4:20 am and it was light and the birds were singing.

When my Uncle drove me in early May to the Liverpool airport to catch a 6:30 am flight, it was light out by the time we were on the highway past Chester and broad daylight when he dropped me off at five.

No one else thinks this is weird.

I think it is to England's extremely long hours of daylight, in addition to the mild and damp weather and abundant natural fertilisers, that we can attribute the beauty of the gardens.

Some people collect stamps

but I never saw the appeal.

I collect ridiculous sophistries from politicians and public figures, a hobby that entertains both myself and my friends and benefits readers. I'm especially fond of those pieces in my collection that come from people whom the press enjoy describing as "public intellectuals". I was riffling through the files today looking for the following for a colleague and thought I'd share.

It's one of my favourites.

“Our conviction about what is natural or right should not inhibit the role of science in discovering the truth,”
Prime Minister Tony Blair responding to critics of Britain’s plan to clone human embryos for research.

I picked up another doozy this afternoon from Mr. Warner:

"If the Bible is very clear - as I think it is - that a heterosexual indulging in homosexual activity for the sake of variety and gratification is not following the will of God, does that automatically say that that is the only sort of homosexual activity there could ever be?"
Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Isn't it lovely?

I'm especially fond of these ones. They leave you breathless and momentarily stunned with the beauty of their inner contradictions and uniquely brazen deceitfulness. They are, in their way, works of great rhetorical art.

Capital Punishment

So far from disrespecting [not a verb! urg!] human life, capital punishment asserts the sacred character of innocent, as distinct from guilty, life.

The objections of whey-faced liberals are infantile, in the context of grim reality. Capital punishment is not “un-Christian”: Saint Paul awarded the “jus gladii” to Christian princes. It is not “barbaric”: perfectly civilised people endorse it, as has always been the case, as well as many distinguished philosophers – the true barbarism is sanctioning the collapse of society. When no judge has at his disposal the supreme penalty which every thug carries in his pocket, then power has departed from legitimate authority and resides with the forces of anarchy.

It does not “make us the same” as the murderers: we shall only become the same if we mutilate and eat children
.


I have noted elsewhere that our societies are intrinsically disordered. We have inverted the natural order of the state by allowing private citizens to murder the totally innocent without even public scrutiny, let alone intervention; and we have removed the right of the state to take the life of its guilty citizens. It is absurd to think that such a society could re-adopt any kind of systemic respect for human life until it corrects this basic inversion.

It is absurd to think, in fact, that such a society can even survive.
I knew I'd seen Gerald Warner's name around somewhere. I think I have some vague recollection, perhaps from a previous blog, that someone sent me an article or two by him that I thought was wonderful.

Anyway, Fr. Finigan put me on to his blog the other day and I have turned into a Gerald Warner fan overnight.

He is at the Telegraph, but has done things for the Spectator where this little item, dated 2002, caught my attention:
Rome is in meltdown, says Gerald Warner, and part of the problem is that in some respects John Paul II is scandalously liberal.


and I realised we were kindred souls.

Oh, and thanks to Mac, we have word that the English Catholic Birkenstocked Wrinklies Brigade hasn't sent the albino monk after Damien Thompson after all. For some reason known only to the internet kami, the Telegraph is reshuffling all their blogs and Mr. Thompson is here now.

Thoughtcrime of the day: Nazi eugenics was a movement of the left

and still is.

it was not thoughtless right-wing thugs as much as writers and scientists, the intellectual elite, who led the movement.

The exhibit is important, accurate but, regrettably, long overdue. It also fails to stress just how much the socialist left initiated and supported the eugenics campaign, not only in Germany but in Britain, the U. S. and the rest of Europe. Playwright George Bernard Shaw, English social democrat leader Sydney Webb and, in Canada, Tommy Douglas were just three influential socialists who called, for example, for the mass sterilization of the handicapped. In his Master's thesis The Problems of the Subnormal Family, the now revered Douglas argued that the mentally and even physically disabled should be sterilized and sent to camps so as not to "infect" the rest of the population.

It is deeply significant that few if any of Douglas's left-wing comrades in this country or internationally were surprised or offended by his proposals. Indeed the early fascism of 1920s Italy, while unsavoury and dictatorial, had little connection with social engineering and eugenics. The latter German version of fascism was influenced not by ultra conservatism in southern Europe but, as is made clear in the writings of the Nazi ideologues, by the Marxist left.


...and it is also significant that Canada, a country in which the public information systems are entirely controlled by the left, voted recently voted Tommy Douglas "Greatest Canadian". Nothing could have been more appropriate in the socialist state he helped to create in which there is no such thing as a free press and thoughtcrimes are now being prosecuted in courts in which there are no rules of evidence of procedure.

The philosophical origins of the Eugenics movement are not widely known of course, because they have been so thoroughly buried in the simplistic political sloganeering that has replaced serious debate and investigation. But the evidence is clear enough for those willing even to do a little Googling, that the modern eugenics movement (free abortion for "defective" children up to birth, Planned Parenthood "clinics" in every black neigbourhood in America, pre-natal hunter-seeker technology for Down's syndrome babies, pgd, the work to "improve" the human race through monkeying with IVF) that all of its tools continue to be fought for on the southpaw side of Parliaments.

When I started doing research into this ten years ago, I thought what everyone thought: that "conservatives" were evil and if you pushed them just a little, they turned into jackbooted brownshirts. It was my look into the history of the Eugenics Movement that made me realise I had gone my whole life blindly accepting a bunch of slogans that had been formulated specifically to prevent me from thinking clearly about this subject.

Friday, June 20, 2008

The body as a piece of Samsonite

This was quite good, I thought:

But there are more profound reasons why the pill is so disruptive of marital happiness. It has to do with the nature of sexuality itself. Sex, we tell our audience, is a mystery which can never be reduced to biology. It has a meaning far beyond the physical act of love. You recall the scene in The Graduate when Mr. Robinson confronts young Benjamin Braddock about his adultery with Mrs. Robinson. Benjamin defends himself by saying that it was no big deal: "Mrs. Robinson and I might just as well have been shaking hands." Mr. Robinson gets even more upset, and rightly so; because behind Benjamin’s statement is a gnostic separation of spirit and flesh, of heart and body, which even the dimmest of cuckolds can sense is utterly wrong.

The problem goes back to Descartes, or maybe even Plato. Our culture has been able to turn sex into a casual activity because it has separated personhood from the human body. Most people have the idea that their real self is somewhere inside—the proverbial ghost in the machine—and that what they do with their bodies doesn’t make much difference. But this has never been the view of the Church, which teaches that the body is not a mere appendage, but is as much a part of us as our soul. After all, in the Nicene Creed we don’t say that we believe in the immortality of the soul, but in the resurrection of the body. In a very significant way, we are what we do with our bodies.

What's good.

Take

six chicken oysters, (that's chicken thighs to the world outside Gerry's butcher shop)
two medium tomahhtoes,
Six large mushrooms,
a small bulb of garlic, broken up but with the paper jackets still on,
two large shallots,
salt and freshly crushed peppercorns,
palmful of rubbed basil, or three sprigs fresh, chopped,
half a cup or so of olive oil

Only quarter or halve the mushrooms and shallots and tomahhtoes, don't slice.
Load the whole mess into a cast iron dutch oven, and squoosh it all around with your hands so everything is completely and evenly coated with the oil and spices. Throw in a bit more olive oil on top.

Shove the entire lot into the oven, with the lid off, at about 180 C. for an hour.

Eat.

Domestic Peace

I find there is something ineffably soothing about hanging up washing on the line. It is symbolic, perhaps, of peace and order. If one has the leisure to hang up one's washing, the barbarians can't quite yet be at the wrought-iron gate. The siege has not just yet started. They aren't quite ready to haul us all off to camps or display our rotting corpses on gibbets.



My little garden, in pots in the courtyard.


The nasturtiums did especially well, but not much show from the snapdragons.



* ~ * ~ *

This post is the first in a series in which we intend to use the words "ineffable", "wrought" and "gibbet" in sentences in ordinary English writing. This is in honour of his excellency, Donald Troutman, the bishop of Erie, Pennsylvania whose work to save the liturgical movement of his generation has been tireless.

Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie, Pennsylvania, a longtime critic of the new translations, said the texts contain a number of “archaic and obscure” terms, pointing to words such as “wrought,” “ineffable,” and “gibbet.” He also said that the text’s preference for mimicking the sentence structure of Latin, featuring long sentences with a large number of dependent clauses, impedes understanding in English. Trautman cited one prayer in the new Proper of Seasons presented as a single 12-line sentence with three separate clauses.


Let's play a game:

In an ordinary post, about any subject, use one or more of the following words in a sentence.

"ineffable"
"wrought"
"gibbet"

A long sentence "with a large number of dependent [subordinate] clauses," that "impedes understanding in English" will be especially welcome and will be awarded extra points.

The contest closes when the new translation of the Novus Ordo Mass is approved by the USCCB.

To start us off, I tag the usual suspects:

John
Steve
Dale
Mac
Fr. Finigan
Mr. Carriere

[P.S. Hint for Steve: "ineffable" is an adjective; "wrought" is a simple past tense verb and an adjective. "Gibbet" is a noun.]

[P.P.S. This reminds me of one of the many times a teacher of mine decided I was making words up. He handed back an essay with the word "wrought" circled in red with the note "Does not exist". He wasn't a Catholic, but I'm sure he'd love Bishop Trautman's church.]

Now we know

Writers, particularly writers of novels, frequently make jokes about that perennial question: "Where do you get your ideas?"

John Cleese is said to have replied once, "I buy them from a little old woman who lives around the corner."

Apparantly, the little old ladies in Mr. Cleese's neighbourhood are dealing in controlled substances.

H/T to Steve.

FIVE. THIRTY. THIS. MORNING



five thirty.

The Stare:

Diversity



Pics here for the March for Life in Ottawa in May.

I don't really know how much actual difference these make to what is done in Parliament, but I have been on a few of them and I can tell you it makes a hell of a difference to the people in the movement.

And I've got to say that there are a bunch of people in these photos who are friends and whom I really miss.

Like

Thursday, June 19, 2008

The road to gay "marriage"

Like the ancient babbling oracles, the hybrids on BSG and all the soothsayers in all the Greek tragedies, the Pythons spoke truer than they ever knew:

That's what being a Protestant's all about. That's why it's the church for me. . . . I can go down the road any time I want and walk into Harry's and hold my head up high and say in a loud, steady voice, "Harry, I want you to sell me a condom. In fact, today, I think I'll have a French Tickler, for I am a Protestant."
Mr. Blackitt in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

Gardens in the village

Roses








The Mill Pond and the Hall


Foxgloves at Laurel Cottage


Campanula at Rose Row






The walk down to the Spinney


Oaks on the Commons in a sea of nettles


Requiescant in pace


The Yew tree at St. Alban's Churchyard. The children in the village maintain the ancient superstitions and will not talk while passing underneath and hold their breath.


St. Alban's


St. Alban's House


My street


The view outside my window.




Peonies