Happy 60th Fathers Day

To my dad, shown here around his first Father's Day, in 1953. That's me in the "child abuse" car seat.
Love you, Daddy.

Fr. W. on why there's no whining in Modesty:

"And ladies, before you come to us with your complaints, just consider- our necklines are higher, our sleeves are longer, our hemlines are lower and we're wearing black."

On the Corapi reactions



First: I had no idea who Fr. Corapi was when this story broke. It turns out that I have actually listened to him briefly on the local Catholic station a time or two- but didn't know it was him. So, I have no opinion on the case itself, beyond a wait and see stance. I am praying for all involved, of course.

More worrying to me is the reaction in the Catholic blogosphere, especially the response of Fr. Corapi's defenders to those they consider insufficiently proclaiming his innocence. Wise and cool heads have tried to defuse heat vs. the light about this, but without much success.

Clearly, many people are deeply invested in this. It seems Father has quite a reputation for orthodoxy and has been instrumental in bringing many people back to the Church, or helping to deepen their understanding of the faith. Some feel so strongly about him that they are willing to read the minds and hearts of others on the strength of a blog comment, and accuse them of various faults from stupidity to being modernist tools of the devil. The kinder wish for them conversion and repentance, the more severe wish them a similar experience of false accusation.

What this all needs is a huge helping of Prudence, Charity and Temperance.

Prudence to not discuss those things that we don't actually know anything about.

Charity to not make silly assumptions about others simply because they have a differing opinion, or no personal stake in the subject beyond the general welfare of the Church: it is entirely possible to be a perfectly devout and orthodox Catholic in America and not know Fr. Corapi from Adam's off ox.

Temperance, because there is such a thing as informational gluttony.

And on that last virtue, that is all I have to say on the subject.

Morgan Jane, Doctor of the Church

For Christmas this year, I adopted the plan of buying a Nativity scene for the Y's and giving them one piece a day, ending with the infant Jesus on Christmas. Bubs was the one who really got into this, to the point that I sort of planned the discovery of that day's figure for him. For example, one appeared in the theater dressing room when we were collecting loaned costume pieces from "A Little Hous Christmas". But it seems Morgan was paying close attention as well.

She and Sis were in the garden decor aisle at their home away from home- "Oh! that's the Hobby Lobby- I go there with my mommy"- when she spotted a resin statue of a cherub.

"Mommy! It's Baby Jesus!"

"No, honey, it's a little angel. See, he has wings."

"No, Mommy! It's Baby Jesus, he has curly hair, and his mother is Mary and his birthday is Christmas!"

All with emphatic hand gestures, while the granny next to them is biting her cheek not to crack up at our pint-sized Teresa of Avila.
"Morgan Jane," says her mom "I did not know you were a Bible scholar."

Shape of Things to Come, pt 2

"... with the cordial cooperation of many unpleasant powers or dependent nations, large and small, who felt that having avoided fighting themselves it would now be a good plan to throw their weight about and demand Self-Government, Self-Determination, Ambassadorial Status, large gifts of money and arms and complete freedom to be as nasty as they wished to be to everyone, while no nation- under pain of expulsion from a number of Leagues or Pacts, known only by their intials though most people had not the faintest idea what words the initials represented- was to be allowed to defend its own frontier, protect its own nationals, or publish any newspaper article in any way depreciatory of its grasping ill-wishers."

- Enter Sir Robert, 1955

Seriously, Angela? Stop it!

Interesting that Thirkell and Kipling were cousins. She refers to him as 'prophetic' a number of times in her novels, and she seems to have had a touch of the quality as well.

Reading through the new ones I ordered from Alibris- she will eventually have her own shelf, at this rate.

The Shape of Things to Come

"...we are living ourselves under a Government as bad as any
in history in its combination of bullying and weakness, its bid for
the mob's suffrages, its fawning upon unfriendly foreigners who despise it,
its effort to crush all personal freedom."

She was writing about England in 1946, but might as well have been describing America in 2010.

The author? Angela Thirkell, whose post-war novels were full of the despicable exploits of Them, who harassed a war-battered citizenry with bureaucratic nonsense, meddling into things about which They knew nothing and general mischief done just because They could.

It's a rare thing for a comedy of manners to send a shiver down your back.

Man vs. Skwerrel

Because the kids are in the yard constantly, I mostly garden organically and steer clear of pesticides. But measures had to be taken against the squirrel, who is re-foresting our backyard with oaks.

Now this is mostly my fault, because I mulched the paths with the two big bags of oak debris in the first place, creating an annex to the All-U-Can-Eat buffet I was already running at the bird feeders. Acorns+ raised beds full of soft dirt+ squirrel instincts= the New Forest.

I don't mind plucking seedling trees out of the paths. In fact, his dedication to his job would be adorable, except that his wallowing around in the beds was causing havoc, so I bought a bottle of some sort of Repel-All at Lowe's. O and I tore up some muslin strips, tied them to short bamboo stakes and sprayed them with the solution.
And we may have been a little over-enthusiastic,

Because my yard STINKS.
But we expect that to fade with time.

Oh, snap!

(Boring technical spinning post. feel free to skip.)
Okay- at the Fest, I was seduced by some silk waste at a vendor's site, which spun up into a rope of gems.
For her.
I wasn't happy with the texture of mine when I spun some up. It was much too stiff- a problem of silk- and had little give. Researching on the Net, many suggested combining it with a 1: 2 ratio of wool, so I decided to dye up some merino that was in the bin, using my new "greener" dyes, also from the Fest.
All was going well until I took my eyes off the pot for a few minutes and it boiled. OVER, actually, but only onto the stove, not the floor. Whew!
After the pot cooled and I was rinsing the roving, it began to look as if the whole mess had felted. Which makes sense, because that's how you make those Austrian boiled-wool jackets.
Damn.
Because I don't have any use for five six-foot long lengths of amethyst felt, however lovely and brilliant their color.
Still, some of the shorter pieces that have dried all the way through are pulling apart, so perhaps all is not lost.
Note to me: PAY ATTENTION!
UPDATE: False alarm. Once the roving dried, it was fairly easy to card it out and re-card with the silk. Next up, spinning two batches to see how they do.