Book Dust

Der Tunnel

2009-12-14T15:24:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend we watched Der Tunnel, a German film based on true events regarding a daring tunnel escape from East Germany in the 1960's. It is a beautiful, horrible film, the sort of story for which movie-making exists. Highly recommended. Image from germanfilms.de

I came across it when reading about the 20th anniversary commemorations of the Wall coming down. That milestone also led me to read the book Stasiland by Anna Funder, which tells the stories of ordinary East Germans and their interactions with and in the Stasi, the East German secret police.

Both the film and the book underscore for me that the most terrible thing about the Iron Curtain was not its physical deprivations and repression, but what it did to people in their relationships. Preying on trust and love in order to control people, separating families and lovers causing them to do desperate things. The film shows this in numerous heartbreaking ways. According to Funder, East Germany was possibly the most surveilled society in history. The number of Stasi operatives per capita far exceeded even the KGB's presence. Many of these operatives were "IM's" or "inoffizielle Mitarbeiter," informants. Your wife, your child, your neighbor could be an IM. Statistically the chances were good that someone close to you was. What would that do to the psychology of a people?

In Stasiland, Funder describes meeting a man whose Stasi job was to case a highway rest stop, the last stop for cars on transit from West Germany through eastern territory into West Berlin. Professional people-smugglers would use this route, sending West Germans in who would stop and pick up East Germans and try to hide them in their cars going into West Berlin. The Stasi man tells of opening car trunks and finding stowaways there, dressed in his disguise as a repairman or tourist. He describes the look of joy they had for a moment as they assumed that he was a smuggler and that they had arrived in safety in the West. What sort of inhumanity is it to imprison an entire country?

At the same time, watching Der Tunnel and reading Stasiland makes me proud to be of German heritage. That is not something you often hear, least of all from Germans. However, even though Germans perpetrated some terrible things in history, these things were also inflicted on Germans, and ordinary Germans proved themselves survivors through multiple nightmares such as Americans have not experienced on our own soil since perhaps the Civil War.

Vollkorn Brot, sort of

2009-11-29T15:10:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: My German co-worker raved about this bread. She said it tasted like her mother's.

I got my copy of Healthy Bread In Five Minutes A Day a few weeks ago and have been itching to try it out. I had to wait a while, for an order of vital wheat gluten from King Arthur Flours. Now that is a site that inspires all sorts of baking dreams and would be a good, but dangerous, place to go if you need some inspiration for holiday baking. The vital wheat gluten helps whole-grain breads to rise and lighten.

Since my in-laws are on a cruise this month for their fiftieth wedding anniversary, it was just Pavel and me for the actual T-day. He loves wild rice stuffing and I love mashed potatoes, so as I decided to get a turkey roast and put my effort and love into the sides. I decided to make a hearty bread to serve as basis for the stuffing, and picked the Vollkornbrot, a German-style whole-grain bread.

Oh. My. Word. It was lucky any of the bread made it into the stuffing. I had some English Farmhouse Cheddar in the fridge (much as I try to buy domestic, the English really is better) and the combination with the chewy, crunchy, hearty bread is amazing. If you were in the mood, a beer would round out the trifecta marvelously.

Oookaaay... well, it's not really Vollkornbrot. At least not the Vollkornbrot that I know from living in Germany. Actually, I think it's better. German Vollkornbrot is like a brick, albeit a tasty and healthy one. This, on the other hand, has some chew and softness while still being very substantial. At least, my version did. I did have to make some substitutes: Honey for molasses, and since my whole wheat flour had been in the freezer too long and needed to be thrown away, I ended up using a combination of spelt and white flour. The reason I had spelt flour on the shelf was also because of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes A Day, since the authors rave about it. (Spelt is the ancestor of our usual wheat, and whole-grain spelt flour seems milder in flavor. It is also supposed to be easier to digest.) I was worried about all the substitutes, but you can't argue with results.

The results were so good that I began to regret I had used it all in the stuffing, and decided to make another batch, one loaf being designated for my German co-worker. That's when I took the photos. Note that if you try this particular bread, you should make it 24 hours in advance to let the whole grains absorb water, and the final rise needs to be 2 hours rather than the usual "Artisan in Five" rise time of 30 minutes. The extra time and effort is worth it.

As with the original Artisan in Five method, the new book uses a method of stirring up a wet dough and letting it rise in a plastic container which you can then keep in the fridge up to two weeks. On baking day you just quickly shape up a loaf, let it rise and bake. No kneading required and very little babysitting or fussing the dough. I would like to say that I miss kneading out of pure nostalgia, but... I don't. You still get much of the enjoyment of yeast bread baking, especially the smells of yeast rising and baking. Oh, the smells! First of many breads I hope to try from the new book, and a resounding success.

The Wall is still with us

2009-11-09T13:12:00.000-08:00

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I've been remembering my own experiences in Germany in 1987-88 as an exchange student and later on as an exchange teacher in the eastern part of Germany.

In fall of '87, I went with my host family to see host mother's relatives in East Berlin. At the border, we passed miles of gun towers and electrified gate posts, arriving late in the evening at the checkpoint. We had to get out while our car and luggage were searched top to bottom. As a fifteen year-old American, it made an impression. I recall the border police staring at me, comparing my face to my passport photo. They especially stared at my nose. I also recall a guard picking up the book I had left in the back seat. He searched it through methodically, back and forth, up and down, forward and back. It was a book of German fairytales. I wanted to make a smart remark at this point, about Rumpelstiltskin not being subversive or something. Thankfully I held my tongue. The mood was somber. No one smiled.

I stayed with some cousins, sleeping in the too-short bed of the couple's young son. Conversation with the family was surreal. Every innocent comment I made about my family and life at home was received through the settled opinion that Americans lived hand-to-mouth and most of us were homeless beggars or might as well be. The family didn't do this mean-spiritedly; not at all. However, it also never seemed to occur to them to verify their assumptions, even though they had a real-live American sitting at their breakfast table.

For just a weekend stay, we nevertheless had to check in with the police I got a copious amount of stamps in my passport. Police and military were everywhere. My host mother's teenage niece was my tour guide of East Berlin. She was blunt about what she didn't like about the system, and I got the impression that she was trying to show me that she realized what was behind the curtain. However, under the surface, she had the same settled assumptions as everyone else. After the Wall fell, she went to the West but I heard that she suffered some depression. It was just too hard to realize you had been lied to for so many years.

New generations of eastern Germans seem to be dealing with this by going back to the la-la land of erroneous assumptions. According to this article by the author of Stasiland, "A survey in June found the GDR to have its highest approval rating since unification: 57 per cent of people agreed with the statement that the GDR was 'more good than bad', and a majority of schoolchildren were under the illusion that it had a legitimate, democratically elected government." Funder attributes this to the fact that so many Stasi members, especially teachers, kept their jobs and remain in influential posts in German society. Loyal to the end?

In 1993 when I had returned to a now-reunified Germany and taught English in the eastern part of the country, I was walking around Leipzig one day when I stumbled on the Stasi museum. It's called the museum "in der Runden Ecke," in the round corner, because of the shape of the building which once housed the secret police's district headquarters. Like many such offices in other GDR cities, the wholesale destruction of files and evidence was stopped when protesters massed the building and took it over. Now you can walk through and see the propaganda kitsch, old surveillance equipment, and the wigs, prosthetics and fake moustaches used by agents. Reading Funder's account of the Stasi's "rehabilitation" in modern east Germany, I get the absurd image of a Stasi officer trying to disguise himself by slapping a moustache on while his party insignia is still showing. The real question is why so many people want to be fooled?

I can say that though the weekend in East Berlin circa 1987 was obviously a memorable experience, I was never so glad to be gone from a place. All weekend I had the nagging thought that I would not be allowed to leave. My host mother said it, with her usual humor: "The best view of the GDR is in the rearview mirror." Apparently some eastern Germans have painted theirs a distinctly rosy hue.

Related at The Anchoress. Perspective and lots of photos on the GDR and the fall of the Wall from other American exchange students at this PDF link.

Islamism reading list

2009-11-03T12:54:00.000-08:00

I asked my friend Jeremy, who is on his second tour in Iraq, what books he recommended as an introduction to the historical background of Islamic extremism. With his permission to post, here was his response (links added by me):

"The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. It gives good background and history. Al Quaeda's history is important because it represents (unfortunately not the only or possibly even the most potent manifestation of [Sunni]) Islamic radicalism.

Future Jihad by Walid Phares. It gives a good historical background and gets into the ideology.

Willful Blindness by Andrew McCarthy. Covers the 1993 bombing but also the beliefs and methods animating the actions.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. One of the bravest women alive today. I don't agree with her on everything, she gives unique background based on her experiences.

Inside the Jihad by Omar Nasiri. Some claim the guy made up a phony story. I think it has value in seeing the jihadi movement as jihadis see it.

The Persian Night by Amir Taheri is focused on Iran. I found it to be gratuitously insulting to Muslims (indulging in unnecessary attacks on Islamic doctrines and traditions) but it was nonetheless a good expose on the current regime."

Thanks, Jeremy. Stay safe.

Pancakery, and this dratted bug

2009-10-31T06:42:00.001-07:00

My pancake fetish continues apace, and since this week my copy of The Pioneer Woman Cooks arrived, I had to try "Edna Mae's Sour Cream Pancakes."

If you haven't heard of The Pioneer Woman yet, by all means mosey on over to her website, which is full of beautiful photography and recipes of the luscious ranch fare she cooks. The book is more of the same, plus whimsical stories and photos of Oklahoma ranch life and of her picture-perfect family.

As for the recipes, within a couple weeks of discovering the website (H/T The Anchoress), I had already made three or four things and everything was as delicious as the photos promised. I would see something on the website and think "boy does that look good, but I can't make something that fattening." And then it would just work on me. And work on me. Until I had to make it! I think the beautiful step-by-step photography is behind this devilry. The book would be a great Christmas present for any down-home cooks on your list.

The sour cream pancakes are great, though I must admit I prefer my staple Cottage Cheese Pancakes. I don't always have cottage cheese on hand, though, so into my file Edna Mae goes for her place on the pancake rotation.

Here's another winner of a pancake recipe for you, Truck Stop Pancakes. They're the best buttermilk pancakes I've ever had. Last weekend, while I was feeling poorly, I decided to just make pancakes from a mix, which I hadn't done in a long time. This was a mix that I used to consider a winner. However, the results were so disappointing compared to homemade, I guess I'm spoiled forever. Good thing homemade pancakes are easy to whip up.
***

So, all pancakes aside, I am still feeling like the butt end of a bad day, now going on the third week. I'm pretty sure that the little souvenir I brought back from Texas is H1N1. Everything seems to fit from what I've read of it, including how hard it is to beat. I'm on my second round of antibiotics for an ear infection, and still sucking down Theraflu, gargling salt water, hacking like a chainsmoker, and generally feeling punk. Normally I am a skeptic about vaccination pushes, but I'm here to tell you, friends, if your doctor offers you an H1N1 shot, TAKE IT.

The only good thing I can say is that my husband hasn't gotten it and thus far neither has anyone at work, so it doesn't seem to be super-contagious. I did stay home from work a few days and have been staying out of public places, but had to take the risk to go back to the office since we are so few- the last of the mohicans after all the downsizing. I am pretty sure what made me vulnerable to catching it (probably at the Alamo) was the fact that I had had food poisoning earlier in the week and my immune system was working double-duty. Now is not the time to be a tourist anywhere, and even if you just have a little cold, take all due paranoid precautions to make sure it doesn't develop into anything else. Just want to do my bit to make sure no one else has to battle this.

A bulletin from the past

2009-10-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

A German co-worker was asked to translate a letter that someone found in their parents' things. I thought I'd share it (with names and place names removed) as it's an interesting first-hand historical look from a turbulent time. I'm reminded of my in-laws, six siblings from a little town in Slovakia who had a hard time finding each other again after the war. They were separated during their flight from the Red Army, but managed to find each other in Germany and emigrated together to the US.

Here's the letter:

***

April 18, 1948

I was astonished to receive a sign of life from you again. I thought you had forgotten us, or were drawn into the war and perhaps already dead. And what are you doing in America? From your letter, I see that America is now your homeland. I have thought often of you. One can really say: It's been a long way from there to here. But I enjoy the memories. We passed many happy hours. Earlier on I could still remember the singing, but I don't do that much anymore. I'm now 64 years old, after all, and should take it easy. Have been in -- since 1924. Bought a pretty large farming business. A nice farm with a beautiful view of the lake. Near the main road from -- to --. Since gasoline is again available, about 1000 cars go by in a day. It was quieter during the war, when we didn't get any gasoline in Switzerland. Food was also scarce because we could import very little. We in the country had nothing really to complain about. But in the cities, rations were very meager and also quite expensive. A liter milk costs 43-45 rappen [equivalent to cents]. 1 kilogram white flour costs 1 franc 50. 1 kilogram potatoes 30 rappen. Only vegetables and potatoes were not rationed. Now everything is free again. I'm also enclosing a photograph. Have 8 boys and 4 girls. That's okay as long as we're healthy. We're doing alright financially and health-wise. Hope it's the same with you. Much has changed in your home village, too. You would have a hard time finding your way around, but your birth house is still standing and is still the same. Will close for now and hope to hear from you again soon. In the meantime, greetings from...

A gadget for you

2009-10-27T12:53:00.001-07:00

I appreciate low-tech, low-cost things that work better than the fancy-fangled. So I decided to give Melitta's "Ready Set Joe" a try. It's a plastic mold, as you see, that sits on top of your coffee cup. Insert a Melitta #3 filter and your ground coffee, pour in boiling water, stir up the grounds a bit, and it brews a surprisingly good cup of coffee in a minute or two. You may need to pour a bit more water in if you're brewing a big cup.

A drip pot is obviously more convenient if you're making more than one cup or if you need to keep coffee hot for a while, but our work times mean that husband and I are not on the same coffee-drinking schedule. For under $10, this is a good solution for grabbing a quick cuppa joe.

You can use regular coffee filters, though those are a bit more awkward than the little cone filters Melitta makes. I do recommend stirring the grounds while it brews. Otherwise it's too weak, and weak coffee is an insult to God's creation of the coffee bean. The flavor is like French-press coffee. I actually think it is better than French press, because you have the same richness, but not the slight grit. And no risk of things going the way of French presses in my household, i.e. getting cracked in the sink. All in all it's a win for simplicity of design.

Back

2009-10-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

We are back from vacation. I finished Patrick Geary's book Myth of Nations and made a good start on Lost To The West, aided along by the sad fact that I was down with food poisoning midweek. I'm going to hold out and post about them together, however, since the two of them nicely overlap on subjects such as the Roman concept of what it meant to be Roman and how that changed as the empire absorbed, and finally was taken over by, those they considered "barbarians."

As is typical, I end up being more interested in the barbarians than the Romans. For example, Geary put a bug in my ear about the development of the Slavic identity. I didn't know that the rise of the Slavs as a group presents a mystery to historians. Who they are, where they came from, and why they asserted themselves so fully over Eastern Europe are considered puzzles. Geary states that they probably were caved out of the remnants of an empire you've likely never heard of, the Avars. Ever notice that the terms Serb and Croat don't exactly sound Slavic? That's because the words are probably Avar, and referred not to particular peoples but to a title or rank within the Avar empire's political structure. And they are not the only vanished people who once ruled whole kingdoms. There are the Goths, who once ruled Italy and northern Africa. So how did they end up being used to represent bored suburban teenagers with an overdeveloped makeup budget?

More on such things to come.

Slovak Grandma Noodles

2009-10-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

Here's another recipe. This is another of Pavel's must-have comfort foods, at least my version of it. I now understand why my husband loves it. It's incredibly good. It makes your heart happy, not just your mouth. I don't know the official Slovak name, so I just think of it as Slovak Grandma Noodles, because it's the sort of thing that your grandma would make you if your grandma was from Slovakia.

I'm pretty sure that the Slovakian noodle dish shown here at Man Bites World blog is the same genre. However, Pavel's family uses cottage cheese rather than feta cheese. I happen to think that a combination is very good. You also don't need to make homemade noodles. Homemade noodles are not that difficult and are one of nature's perfect foods, but you can use dried egg noodles or fresh pasta from the deli section.

Turks also make a quick mac-and-cheese this way, by stirring butter and feta cheese into cooked pasta. So if your grandmother were Turkish, you might get this, too, though she's not going to be putting bacon into it. Which means that, if you're like me, you're hoping for a Slovakian grandmother.

Without further ado:

Homemade noodles* or thick egg noodles, cooked
1 pkg thick-cut bacon
1 lg or 2 med onion, peeled and sliced thin
2 cloves garlic, mashed
2 tbsp butter
4 ozs feta, mashed very fine with a fork
1 16-oz container cottage cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tbsp Hungarian paprika (sweet or smoked)
cracked black pepper

Fry up bacon and drain it on paper towels. Pour off most of the bacon grease into a bowl and set that aside. Meanwhile get a big pot of salted water boiling. In the bacon pan, fry the sliced onions 8-10 minutes til browned and soft. Add garlic and cook 1 minute. Stir in the paprika- the warmth brings out the flavor- and set aside off the heat. Slice or crumble up your bacon. Meanwhile cook your noodles in the salted water and pour into a colander to drain. Put the pan back on low heat and add the butter and a little of the reserved bacon grease. When the butter is melted, add cottage cheese, finely mashed feta, sour cream, and black pepper. Stir together and stir in sauteed onion mixture. Let it all warm a bit- you just want it barely warm, not cooking. Fold in hot noodles and bacon pieces. If you want to get fancy, you could add in some chopped fresh parsley, but this is so good the lily needs no gilding. Serve immediately. An excellent side with this would be a garlicky coleslaw or bell pepper salad.

*Homemade noodles easy-to-remember ratio: 1 cup flour - 1 egg - 1 tsp salt, plus enough water to make dough come together. For this recipe I use 4 cups flour, 4 eggs etc.

To make noodles: Put flour on a board and make a well in the center. Beat egg and salt together and pour into the well. Start working the dough with your hands, adding a few splashes of water at a time until you get a good dough, not too sticky. Roll out dough thin but not too thin, maybe 1/8th an inch. Try to get it to roll into a rectangle, pulling a little with your hands here or there. When it’s rolled out, fold the long ends of the dough in on each other in a loose trifold. Slice off 1/4th-inch slices and unroll the strips. Cut into the length you want your noodles and lay out on lightly floured tea towel or board to dry at least 1 hour.

To cook homemade noodles: Separate them with your fingers and carefully drop into boiling salted water; stir once to unstick them. These cook up fairly quickly, about 3-5 minutes. They're done when they float to the top.

Vacation reading

2009-10-07T15:08:00.000-07:00

The blog has been a bit modern history-ish lately, hasn't it? What can I say. If I got paid to study history, I'd have to specialize. As it is, I'm a happy dilettante.

However, with vacation coming up, I am going back to ancient and medieval. I have picked up a couple new books that I'm very much looking forward to digging into. One is Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization. It is by Lars Brownworth, whose 12 Byzantine Rulers podcasts I enjoyed. (His new podcast project is called The Norman Centuries.)

Those of us who have an interest in the Byzantine Middle Ages- all fifty of us :) -need to support such scholars' work.

The other book I picked up is Patrick Geary's The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe. Now this one intrigues me. I have written and reviewed Geary's work before, and this guy and I seem to have similar interests and pet peeves. One of mine is the hold that the modern nation-state has over our thinking of ourselves. Geary's thesis, I gather, is that our modern notions of European ethnicity are based on myths that have more to do with the ideas of 18th century romanticizers than actual fact.

Will be interesting to see how he develops it. Hopefully it will not turn into a print rendition of "We Are The World" and a "celebration of diversity." The reviewers' comparisons of the book to contemporary debates about xenophobia, nationalism, etc. make me a little nervous on that score.

Another book comes to me via a German co-worker whose church supported the work of one of the Malatya martyrs, Tilmann Geske. The book is written by his widow Susanne about the experience and is called Ich Will Keine Rache ("I Want No Revenge: The Drama of Malatya"). I pick it up with a heavy heart, but the title pretty much tells you that Geske herself is one strong woman. She and her children still live in Malatya. The trial for the murderers continues. The latest report I could find was from August, when an informant from inside the Malatya gendarmerie alleged that the murders were carried out with help from the police, who appear also to be trying to hinder the court proceedings.

German Texas

2009-10-06T13:10:00.001-07:00

We are getting ready to head out on a vacation to the hill country of Texas, near San Antonio. It's not just a vacation for us, but a scope-out for a possible relocation. We would like to be in an area that's a little more family-friendly and more affordable. Given the Bay Area's cost of living and particularly of housing, the latter would be anywhere you throw a dart on the map as long as the dart doesn't land on Manhattan.

Initially we looked at Austin due to the tech companies there, but when I heard there was such a thing as a "hill country" in Texas, that drew my attention. One of the interesting things about the region is that it was settled by Germans. I'm from Pennsylvania, which I had thought pretty much ground zero for German settlement in the US, but there is a fascinating and tragic story attached to the German immigrant presence in Texas. New Braunfels, the town where we'll be staying, has a central role.

Prior to the 19th century, there was no such thing as Germany, only a patchwork of small principalities and duchies. Under pressure from Napoleon, the rulers of Austria-Hungary on the one hand and Prussia on the other began consolidating power into absolutist monarchies. This dispossessed a lot of nobles and, through ruinous taxation, took a toll on the peasant folk as well. This eventually led to the peasant revolts of the 1840's.

Out of this unrest and an overpopulation problem, a confederation of German noblemen, led by Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, decided to sponsor an emigration drive and purchased land in Texas. The town of New Braunfels was founded as a halfway point between the coast and an inland land grant. Prince Carl then returned to Germany to recruit colonists. Six thousand took ship and landed at the Gulf, only to find out that the nobles society had not made any provision beyond the initial sea voyage. The 6000 found themselves in open, undeveloped marsh land with no food, shelter, ill-prepared for frontier life, and with the routes inland made impassable by rains. Ravaged by starvation and disease, only one in four would make it to New Braunfels. This is a survival rate more brutal than that of the Pilgrims of New England.

That was not the end of German immigration to Texas, however. By 1900, Texas counted 157,000 citizens who had been born in Germany. You wouldn't think it, but a lot of early cowboys were wearing lederhosen. :)

Not going to be able to keep the old man out of this place!

Fall supper

2009-10-03T20:38:00.001-07:00

It finally feels like fall here, sort of, so I thought I'd pass on a recipe that both has the tastes of the season and happens to be one of my sweet husband's favorites. Of all the things I've made for him, including things much more time-consuming, if he can have anything he wants he asks for this. Go figure. Maybe it's because it originates with Nigella Lawson? Hmm.

This is adapted from a recipe in Lawson's wonderful book Feast, which gives recipes for various holiday celebrations including Jewish, Christian and Muslim holidays. This meal is sort of Thanksgiving-esque, but not really.

Sage Chicken and Sausage Supper

2 lbs boneless chicken breasts (Nigella uses 4 lbs chicken bone-in)
8 chicken-apple sausages (Nigella uses 12 sausages and probably goes for the full-fat pork)
2 tbsp shredded fresh sage leaves
kosher salt

Marinade:
1 lg or 2 small onions, chopped fine- I whir these in the food processor because I think the juiciness factor makes for a better marinade
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsp English mustard
1 tbsp dried sage
pepper
juice of one lemon
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Nigella says to put the marinade in a Ziploc bag, but more than once I've had those leak so I just put it in a glass dish. Marinate the chicken overnight or up to 2 days. Preheat oven to 425 degrees and let chicken come to room temperature in marinade. Put chicken in a roasting pan (skin side up if using boned chicken) and pour marinade over. Arrange the sausages around the chicken and sprinkle kosher salt and shredded sage on top of everything. Bake about 40 minutes for boneless, 1 hr 15 mins for boned, turning sausages once.

I usually make mustard roasted potatoes to go with these, which I get in the oven about 15 minutes before the chicken goes in.

California Plants: Mesquite

2009-09-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

At our local used bookstore, Recycle Books, I picked up an interesting little volume called Early Uses of California Plants by Edward Balk. It discusses some of the native plants of California and how they were used by native Californians and early settlers.

One of the interesting plants described is mesquite. No doubt you're familiar with mesquite as a barbecue wood. I first became aware that it had other uses when Pavel's brother picked us up a bag of mesquite meal, which is a light brown powder that has a sweet, slightly nutty flavor. It is supposed to be a healthy sweetener. I admit I didn't discern much taste difference when I added it to cakes, but I didn't have much time to experiment because it had to be thrown out when it fell prey to a grain moth infestation (a bit of California fauna that was new to me!).

Photo source

Balk writes of many other uses that native Californians made of the tree. A clear resin that oozed from the trees would be boiled and rubbed into hair. When it was removed, it would leave the hair glossy, lice-free, and dyed black. One could also eat this sweet resin, a kind of native American chewing gum. The various parts of the tree were used for dark dyes and paints.

People built their homes from mesquite wood, and used it as firewood because of its long-burning, efficient heat. Balk makes no mention of it being used as a barbecue wood, but I suppose that goes without saying! Mesquite was also used to make pottery water-tight. Clay pots were baked in a mesquite fire and then a gruel of ground mesquite beans was poured into the hot clay. The gruel would make the clay non-porous.

Mesquite beans were eaten fresh or ground to use as a flour for baking. A drink was also made of either ground-up or boiled mesquite beans. A mush was made out of the ground beans and seeds, left to sit for a few hours to give a bit of fermentation which was thought to improve the taste.

Mesquite was so important to tribes who depended on it that trees were sometimes owned, being marked as private by a bunch of arrow-weed, which sort of gives lie to the romantic notions of native Americans not owning property. Obviously this is one of those super-plants which literally sustained the lives of people who lived near it.

Minnie Vautrin, The Angel of Nanking

2009-09-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

Earlier I posted about the story of John Rabe, the "righteous Nazi" who led the effort to set up a safety zone for civilians before the ferocious assault of the Japanese army on the then-capital of China in 1937.

I feel it's necessary to pause and describe some of the background of the Nanking massacre. After being rudely awakened from its isolationism by American gun ships showing up in its ports in the 1850s, Japan had undertaken a determined effort to industrialize and militarize itself. Besides feeling humiliated by western powers, the tiny island nation felt its survival depended on gaining access to the agricultural lands and raw materials of its more backward (as they saw it) neighbors, Korea and China. It sounds strikingly similar to the German pretext for taking over its neighbors, Lebensraum. However, Japan's imperialist ambitions towards its neighbors had been going on since the latter 1800's.

The fall of Beijing and Shanghai were seen as great military victories, but also came with high Japanese losses. Setting their sights on Nanking, the Japanese army saw it as time to go for broke. Though this is a point hotly disputed by Japanese apologists, it appears that the chain of command more or less green-lighted and even encouraged a policy of "total war" on the populace between Shanghai and Nanking and on the capital itself. All captured prisoners were to be executed. The vicious, wholesale rape that occurred in Nanking is what prompted the Japanese army to undertake setting up army brothels, staffed with the tragically named "comfort women." I won't link or post, but if you do a Google search about the rape of Nanking, you will see photos of Chinese women who were mutilated in the most grotesque, sexually violent manner imaginable. Nor was Nanking the last, perhaps not even the most deadly, of Japan's total war attacks against Chinese civilians.

Into the midst of this horror was thrown a woman from rural Illinois, the missionary-teacher Wilhelmina "Minnie" Vautrin. She had worked her way through college and then foregone marriage to travel to China to teach, and later to help set up Ginling Girls' College in Nanking. She was head of the college in 1937 when the Japanese invaded. You can read portions of her diaries online, for instance here.

The campus of Ginling College was inside the Safety Zone, and though it was designed for 200-300 students, Vautrin sheltered up to 10,000 girls during the massacre. She had to be on constant lookout for raids as the Japanese ran out of women to rape in the rest of the city and would break in to the college. She also had to fend off "official visits" by Japanese soldiers demanding that she turn over the prostitutes. No doubt had Vautrin allowed them, they would have found "prostitutes" among the refugees whether there were any or not.

John Rabe's diary describes some of the violence against the women and girls of Nanking which Vautrin must also have witnessed: "Groups of three to ten maurading soldiers would begin by traveling through the city and robbing whatever there was to steal. They would continue by raping the women and girls and killing everything and everyone that offered any resistance, attempted to run away from them, or simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. During their misdeeds, no difference was made between adults and children. There were girls under the age of eight and women over the age of 70 who were raped and then, in the most brutal way possible, knocked down and beat up. We found corpses of women on beer glasses and others who had been lanced by bamboo shoots...

You would have thought it impossible, but the raping of women even occured right in the middle of the women's camp in our zone, which held between 5,000 and 10,000 women. We few foreigners couldn't be at all places all the time in order to protect against these atrocities. One was powerless against these monsters who were armed to the teeth and who shot down anyone who tried to defend themselves. They only had respect for us foreigners--but nearly every one of us was close to being killed dozens of times. We asked ourselves mutually, 'How much longer can we maintain this "bluff"?' "

It doesn't take much to imagine what witnessing such atrocities and being on the front lines of trying to prevent them would do to a compassionate woman like Vautrin. I can only imagine that she must have asked God "why did you allow this to happen?" Perhaps she never got an answer that could relieve the darkness. The despair of not having been able to do more also runs through all of the Safety Zone leaders' writings. In 1940 Vautrin suffered a nervous breakdown and had to return to the United States. In The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang writes that a friend accompanying Vautrin on the ship journey had to constantly watch her so that she would not throw herself over the rail. Back in the States, she underwent electroshock therapy and seemed to be making a recovery. She wrote her family to tell them not to visit her, that she would come to see them soon. Shortly thereafter Vautrin taped up the windows of her home and turned on the gas.

Minnie Vautrin is known in China as "the goddess of mercy." She has been called one of the last victims of the Nanking massacre, though in reality Chang notes that she was not the only survivor who later committed suicide. Others suffered in silence. It is a sad irony that Iris Chang herself, attempting to right the wrong of that silence and see that heroes like Vautrin be remembered for their deeds, succumbed to the same darkness.

The Righteous Nazi

2009-09-15T10:41:00.000-07:00

I am currently listening to the CD version of Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking, chronicling the Japanese invasion of China prior to World War II, and the massacre, torture and wholesale rape committed by the Japanese army in the then-capital of China.

After commenting about the book to someone, I was shocked to learn that Iris Chang committed suicide in 2004 just a few miles from where we live. She was the granddaughter of Nanking survivors, but her passion to document the atrocities started after she attended a seminar here in Silicon Valley where she saw photographs of the massacre, and learned that no book had been published about it. Her own grandparents, like many Nanking sufferers, were reluctant to talk about their experiences. After publishing her book, which was met with much controversy, and documenting the oral testimony of survivors, Chang suffered depression due to the horrors of what she had heard. This and the stress of her work are thought to have provoked a psychotic episode that led her to take her own life.

One of the more hopeful aspects in this most terrible tale of Nanking's fall is the account of actions by a very few individuals who were fortunate enough to have influence over the Japanese soldiers and courageous enough to use that influence. Just a handful of German and American businessmen, missionaries, and teachers saved hundreds of thousands of lives. As the Japanese army advanced, these individuals who had decided to stay in Nanking won permission from both the Chinese and Japanese armies to set up a "safety zone" to shelter civilians without military interference. Chang surmises, based on death toll statistics and estimates of the number that fled the city before the attack, that nearly everyone in the city who survived did so because they were in the Safety Zone.

The corpses of some of the Japanese army's littlest victims in Nanking. Photo credit.

The story of one of these individuals is moving not only because of what he did, but for who he was. John Rabe was an executive for Siemens and a Nazi Party member, a convinced socialist. He lived in China for nearly 30 years before the attack and considered it his home. Rabe was instrumental in setting up the Nanking Safety Zone, and tireless in personally interceding for would-be victims' protection and survival needs. He opened his house and grounds to hundreds of refugees and secured food for them, and attempted to contact Japanese Army officials, Hitler, journalists, and anyone else who would listen to try to stop the atrocities occuring across the city. Failing in the latter, he decided that the only thing he could do was drive through the city to try to stop the rape and murder of civilians, one victim at a time. His Nazi arm badge was often the only thing that saved both himself and those he tried to help.

In 1938 he returned to Germany, carrying with him documentation in word and film of the atrocities. The film was shot by American Presbyterian minister John McGee, and smuggling it out of China put both Rabe and McGee at great risk. After his return home, Rabe seemed to drop off the face of the earth, and many of his friends in China and among the other expatriates of the Nanking Safety Zone feared that he had either run afoul of Hitler or gone deeper into the dark heart of Nazism.

As it turned out, the former was the case. At first he was celebrated in Germany as a hero and made the lecture circuit, publicizing the atrocities of Nanking in an attempt to pressure the Japanese to prevent further outrages. However, he heard nothing back from Hitler about it, and tried to bring these things to the Führer's attention again, sending him a letter and a copy of McGee's film. Shortly thereafter he was picked up by the Gestapo, held for several days and interrogated, and finally ordered to stop speaking in public about Japanese atrocities. It must have been a rude awakening for him to find his own country so callous to the suffering of innocents, though no surprise to those of us who know what Germany was itself undertaking against its victims of war.

When Hitler's regime fell, Rabe was denounced as a Nazi by the British government, in whose district of Berlin the family lived. They were reduced to poverty while they waited out the "de-nazification" process, during which he could not work. They lived by scavenging food and by selling off the Chinese art they had acquired to American soldiers. Finally, evidence of Rabe's humanitarian efforts allowed his name to be cleared, but his situation improved little. Word reached China in 1948 that the "savior of Nanking" was starving, and parcels began to arrive from grateful survivors and from the Chinese government. Rabe died in 1950 of a stroke. His tombstone was moved from Berlin to Nanking (now known as Nanjing) in 1997, and his former home in the Chinese city has been made into a museum commemorating the massacre.

Later on I'll post about the heroic efforts and sad end of another of Nanking's angels, the American missionary Minnie Vautrin.

September

2009-09-13T20:24:00.001-07:00

It is worth it to try to pick up a used copy of the out-of-print Lost Country Life by Dororthy Hartley. These seem to still be available and fairly inexpensive. The byline of the book is "How English country folk lived, worked, threshed, thatched, rolled fleece, milled corn, brewed mead..." And that ellipsis includes a lot of other things. It is, as you might guess, a historical look at the nuts and bolts of rural life in England from the medieval era up to the present.

One of the charming features of the book is that it's arranged chronologically, taking the reader through the months of the year in the lives of the rural folk of the past.

September's chapter is devoted largely to forestry and the various types of trees native to England, with their uses. In September people would beat down acorns to fatten the pigs for winter, and tar the trunks of those trees they wished to save from wild animals' bark foraging. Dead wood- sometimes made so by scoring the trunk in the spring- or wood first drained of sap was used at parties in the great halls, since it gave bright light but not much heat. Laborers were allowed to take out fallen branches or dead wood from privately owned woods for their own burning, this being whatever they could pull down "by hook or crook," literally the weeding hook of the farm laborer or crook of the shepherd.

Some of the noted trees of the British Isles:

Alder, growing near water and good for waterfast uses like shoe bottoms and kitchen utensils. Alder has grown scarce. In the north, scarlet withies on riverbanks mark where alder has been cut and not replaced.
Birch, a mountain tree and thus at the staple wood for high altitudes. That happy accident has lent the unique properties of birch barrels to Scottish whiskey and birch chips to the Scots' smoked haddies.
Boxwood, used for wood cuts. The term "engraving" (end-graving) comes from the practice of using the ends of wood blocks for wood-cut pictures.
Elm, used for sturdy, waterfast applications like piles for quays. Will sometimes drop full-leafed boughs in autumn, hence what is said of people who die in their older prime, "the hale old goes as do the ellum boughs."
Oak: The sandy soil of the coasts yielded tough wood and was famous for its shipbuilding uses. Many old English country homes show the use of strong oak. Some of these were left in almost their natural shape when put in as pillars, root end up to prevent moisture draw. Some roof beams were created by splitting the wood in two. The "splitting image" was an exact likeness, and the halved trunks would allow for symmetry in the structure. Some houses got the wood after it had already been in a ship. Hartley writes that you can still smell ship's tar in certain old English country homes during wet weather.
Walnut, prized for furniture and gun stocks. The trees yielded the toughest wood if they were beaten in spring til the sap runs.
Wild Cherry, scattered and seems to follow the Roman roads. Maybe cherries were a favorite snack of Roman soldiers?
Willow: The weeping variety is not native and is a late introduction from Asia. The native willows are mainly white or "sally willows" (Salix alba, yielding salycilic acid for tanning) or the dry-grown goat willows whose golden fronds were used as stand-ins for palms on Palm Sunday.
Yew, the wood of the famous English longbow.

My home area of Pennsylvania was known for its forestry in the 19th century, and I remember hearing stories about how our local forests were stripped not only for the domestic tanning and lumber operations but because there was an insatiable market for timber in England. Fortunately, poverty has allowed much of our forest to come back. There are even a few stands of virgin white pine in our area. Much of Europe has lost its primeval forests, probably forever. America could go the same way if our population continues to increase. It pays to appreciate what is left.

Greeting Barbara Boxer

2009-08-15T22:44:00.000-07:00

We stopped by the Tea Party protest today at a Barnes and Noble in San Jose where Barbara Boxer was holding a signing for her new novel. The novel is apparently about a heroic female liberal Senator from California. I wonder who that could be based on! The book is roundly panned here at NRO.

There were a couple hundred people lining the streets. We saw a few counter-protesters, but they were pretty lonely in the midst of the crowd, even though Organizing For America had tried to recruit people to "crash" the Tea Party. I walked all through the crowd, and saw maybe 6 or 7 counter-protesters in the whole bunch.

I was also pretty surprised at the number of cars honking support as they went by. Didn't expect to hear that here in the Bay Area.

I think this was my favorite sign: "Don't Tell Obama What Comes After Trillion." Hehe.

This guy hopes Boxer will be writing lots more crappy novels in the near future.

Ronald Reagan, back from the dead! He looks fit, don't you think?

Second favorite sign: "The Taxes of Evil," with photos of Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

The counter-protesters. There were also a couple people with "Green Jobs" signs. These ladies told me they were "the raging grannies." Dig the feather boas- points for creativity.

I'm generally not the protesting type, but it was inspiring. Everyone was upbeat and the conversations I heard and participated in were all friendly and respectful, even those with the counter-protesters. The burning question: Did Babs think the protesters were too well-dressed?

Plum Kuchen

2009-07-27T19:09:00.001-07:00

We recently celebrated Pavel's parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. At the party a couple of us got talking about how we wanted to gather some of the family's recipes into a book we could all have. Gulash, sour cream-bacon noodles, King Ludwig's nut torte... My mouth's already watering.

Here's a sample and something timely for the summer fruits that are so plentiful and nice right now. I've made this with plums and peaches and it works with apricots, too. I bet you wouldn't be disappointed with blackberries, blueberries or cherries. This is so good, my German co-worker actually asked for the recipe and translated it for her mom and cousins back home. So I think it's made an Atlantic round trip at this point.

Plum Kuchen
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Press-in Pastry: Mix 2 cups flour with 1/2 cup sugar. Cut in 2/3 cup butter until crumbly. Remove one cup of the crumbs for a topping. Separately, beat 1 egg yolk with 1/2 tsp vanilla. With a fork, stir egg-vanilla into the larger portion of the crumb mixture, then use your hands to press into and up the sides of a 9-inch springform pan to make a crust.

Filling:
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 tbsp flour
1 tbsp lemon juice
4 cups (about 1 1/2 lbs) small plums, halved and pitted- best with late-season dark blue prune-type plums

Combine sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and flour. Gently stir lemon juice with plums and then stir in flour-sugar-spice mixture. Arrange fruit, cut sides up, in prepared crust, making about two layers. Sprinkle with any sugar mixture left in the fruit bowl. Cover with reserved crumbs. Bake on lowest rack for 1 hour 15-20 minutes, until pastry is well browned and fruit is tender and bubbly.

Fun With Math

2009-07-27T19:06:00.000-07:00

Wow. And keep in mind, the administration's own numbers are usually rosy.

The Ties That Bound

2009-07-24T19:30:00.000-07:00

I have started reading this book on peasant families in medieval England, The Ties That Bound by Barbara Hanawalt of the University of Minnesota, and have found it interesting and profitable reading. Her portrait of medieval family life in rural England comes primarily from a study of coroner's and inquest reports. Historians of the medieval era can be thankful that people were often scrupulously anal about such record-keeping.

As with so many stereotypes of medieval life, notions of the lives of medieval peasants often don't stand up to the newest research. For instance, far from being hovels, peasant homes show evidence not only of scrupulous cleaning but of care taken to make them pleasant, colorful, and comfortable, even at expense.

People also were healthier than many assume. Though the restrictions in food storage technology and transportability left people vulnerable in times of famine or crop or animal disease, Hanawalt writes, "The evidence from skeletal remains indicates that peasants were fairly robust." All but the poorest had recourse to meat fairly frequently, and otherwise ate a diet that would be considered health-conscious in our day, with whole grains, moderate dairy, and legumes, rounded out by fruits and vegetables either in season or dried. The poorest and most vulnerable, such as orphans and elderly, were given certain gleaning rights, and even free harvest rights at certain times in bean and pea fields. The medieval had to use much more of their income and energy for food than we do, however.

People were taller than was earlier assumed. The average height of remains at the Wharram Percy dig (a Yorkshire village representing habitation from the 10th to the 14th centuries) was 5 feet 5 inches. Dental remains show evidence of a lower caries rate than modern England (!) though more than in the Anglo-Saxon era.

Hanawalt describes the various layouts of "toft and croft" which allowed medieval farming and trade folk to arrange their living areas and protection for the animals. The toft was the living area and yard, and croft the surrounding or adjoining land where they grew crops, fished, etc. Many dwellings were long-houses that had the family living area and a byre for animals or crafting under the same roof, separated by a wall or ditch. More prosperous villagers had human dwellings separated from the barns, often arranged in an L or square with the center courtyard being a work and pasture area. Early medieval homes were not built to last. The family might live in different parts of the croft at different times of year, and change living quarters every few years as the wattle-and-daub walls of the former residence gave out. Wattle-and-daub used a wood frame that was covered by mud and then by whitewash. In areas where stone or wood were more plentiful, these were used, though subject to cave-ins on the one hand and fire on the other. All in all, the wattle-and-daub house with thatching for the roof was a practical way for farm families to have low-cost housing.

In general the picture that emerges is of people who were sensible, industrious, and subject to the same sort of misfortunes and vicissitudes as we are, and wanted much the same things for themselves. Should this be any surprise?

Rusalka

2009-07-11T16:38:00.001-07:00

H/T to Mairs for pointing me to this beautiful paint-on-glass short by Alexander Petrov. I had never heard of him, but apparently he is one of Russia's most famous animators. You can see why. According to his Wiki, the technique of oil animation on glass has been mastered by only a few in the world. He paints with his fingertips, using large layered sheets of glass with slow-drying paint. To create an animation, he photographs the painting, then slightly modifies it for the next frame.

Without further ado:

The story seems to be loosely based on a poem of A.S. Pushkin. It's not clear to me whether the mermaid is a daughter of the jilted woman, or perhaps the woman herself returned in some form. Reading this Wiki on the mythology of the "rusalki" in Russian lore, she is probably the ghost of the woman herself.

Here is more Petrov, a film version of The Old Man and the Sea for which he won an Academy Award (20 minutes).

Famine By Design

2009-07-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

On the commute I am currently listening to the CD version of The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis. It seems a ripe time for reflection on the subject, twenty years after the velvet revolutions of Eastern Europe, 75-odd years after Stalin's purges.

I'll probably post a few things on the topic, but the subject of politically motivated starvation has serendipitously come up a few times in my reading of late. Gaddis describes the calculated starvation of the Ukraine, and the even more massive undertaking of Mao Tse Tung to starve his rural population into submission. An article I recently came across in the National Review urges us to "remember the Holdomor," the name given to Ukraine's mass starvation.

The subject led me to read up a bit on the Great Famine of Ireland, a subject burned into the memory of all Irish-Americans. I would like to do some more in-depth reading on the subject. Even a glance over the Wiki shows that it is on a different plane than the calculated deprivations of the communists.

Or is it? The Soviets and Maoists deplored the owning of private property, and seemed especially incensed about private citizens owning their own land. The Great Famine of Ireland seems to have largely come down to a populace who was not given the sovereignty and incentive to own and improve upon private property. Much of the land, vast tracts, were owned by people who never set foot on it but relied on managers to oversee many small tenant holdings. Small subsistence parcels were the "reward" for people's labor on the rest of the land, whose crops were sent to England for export. The small plots people had for their own subsistence were only sufficient to grow potatoes. None of the improvements you made on your little plot were considered yours, so there was no incentive to innovate. Because Ireland was a conquered nation, the customs of duty and reward that governed landlord-peasant relations in England also didn't apply.

So much of freedom circles around the opportunity to own, and keep the fruits from, one's own private property. Personal freedom is closely allied to the right to private property. Unlike in the Soviet Union, Britain did try- however lukewarmly and ineffectively- to aid the victims of its own policies. However, they also tried to exploit the crisis for the purposes of social engineering, like the goal of having fewer and bigger plots instead of the small postage-stamp ones. There are lessons here for us. Once the family and the neighborhood does not have control over its own destiny, you can expect the "aid" that comes from the large collective to hurt more often than it helps, and the fix to be worse than the disease. The sweeping dictates of social restructuring are more likely to harm than help, especially when a government is willing to exploit a crisis to enact them. One of the most important and least exercised functions of government is to protect us from itself.

Humiliation of Relics

2009-06-28T16:07:00.001-07:00

You may or- more likely- may not have noticed that I've not been blogging much of late. While this is mostly a personal blog, I do try to keep it thematically oriented towards history and medieval history in particular; and the fact is, my deeper reading and thinking has been largely about politics since the election. That is something I'd rather not write about much here, however. For one thing, I've been so appalled and angry over what has been happening, it would likely amount to little more than venting. My thoughts are also just not well developed enough to write about. So I've been stewing and reading (most recently Mark Steyn's America Alone), but decided to spare you the fruits.

On the personal front, I am sometimes surprised when I realize how prosaic my life has become when compared to the previous ten or fifteen years. Husband and I are in many respects in a holding pattern. I'm not complaining about that fact, it just leaves little to say.

It is pitiful, however, to blog about why one isn't blogging, so I'll turn to the subject I put in the title. This comes from a book called Living With The Dead in the Middle Ages by Patrick Geary. I was really looking forward to reading this book, because it's a subject I'm fascinated by and have come to look at in a much different way since becoming Orthodox. In Orthodox worship, the recognition that we are one community with the departed is front and center. Eamon Duffy writes very movingly about the practical outcome of this mindset on the life of medieval people; you can read my previous blog posts about his work here.

The book wasn't quite what I was expecting. It is a collection of lectures loosely themed around the topic, not a comprehensive presentation. However there were some interesting bits. One was on the medieval practice of the clamor and the humiliation of relics. It seems to have been popularized by that powerhouse of monasteries in France, Cluny, and spread through its network of associated monasteries.

The clamor ranged from the petitions normally said during the Mass, to a separate ceremony where monks could protest against a wrong that was done to them. This involved prostrations before the altar and the recitation of lament psalms. The saints whose relics the monastery possessed could be brought into it, as well. They were seen as part of the community, so what hurt the community, injured them. Monks would lay out hair blankets on the floor and place the relics on it, forcing the saints to join them in their humiliation.

Geary cites a couple instances where this method was used to shame and petition secular lords with whom monasteries had grievances. According to the stories he tells, it worked quite well. Monks could even go one step further and hold services where they prayed curses on the offenders, asking God to damn them rather than bless them. Few medievals would want to risk becoming such a target.

The practice was never canonically sanctioned and was banned at the Second Council of Lyons in 1274. By then a system of canon law and petition was in place. As we see in the case of England, that didn't always work out. Had the Pope invoked the relics of St. George, abasing them, would Henry VIII have feared more for his soul than for his lack of progeny and given in to Rome's wishes? Doubtful.

Comments

2009-05-25T21:22:00.001-07:00

Not that I've been blogging much anyway (sorry, sometimes the well is dry), but due to a flood of spam, I'm putting the comments on moderation for now.

Garden Notes May

2009-05-11T20:33:00.001-07:00

I have some California poppies growing in my lemon tree pot. Aren't they happy flowers? They make me smile when I see them.

No opium puns intended!

Fallout 3

2009-05-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

I'm not much of a gamer, but I have to tip my hat to Fallout 3. For a time-waster, it is an absorbing one, driven for me mostly by a good, emotional main storyline: A parent-child tale with tough ethical choices, reminding me of an Orson Scott Card book.

Some credit for the emotional impact has to go to the voice actors. These people have an amazing talent when they- along with the writer, of course- can make you care about a blob of pixels on a screen. Emil Pagliarulo is the writer and quest designer for the game, Liam Neeson heads the list of voice actors for Fallout 3. However, Wes Johnson must get applause for voicing, alongside the evil "supermutants" (humans who have been exposed to a virus that transforms them into bloodthirsty Incredible Hulks), the philosophy-spouting supermutant Fawkes who managed to rise above his limitations and become a much nobler sort.

My character Maggie and Fawkes look over part of D.C.'s ruins 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse. The Washington Monument is pictured in the distance.

The developers, of course, must also get their due, for creating a world with many absorbing, creative niches, for making it so that casual gamers like myself could be brought along while hardened gamers also are satisfied, and for some beautiful artwork. Speaking of emotionally connecting with characters, the credit for the game's dog companion must go entirely to the developers. All it took was a few whimpers and ear scratches from this particular character and I would go to any in-game length to watch his flea-bitten back:

Dogmeat is homage to Mel Gibson's dog companion in The Road Warrior, and is modeled after the Australian Blue Heeler.

Let's pause for a general homage to Australian cattle dogs, since I grew up with one at my side; in my case, a bearded collie. No doubt another reason I took to the game's Dogmeat.

If you are already a fan of Fallout 3, you know that a new downloadable extension of the original story line has just been released. I don't think that my Fallout 3 enjoyment can extend to taking on an account with Microsoft Games, but it's tempting.

Then And Now

2009-05-04T09:39:00.001-07:00

I ought to tag this as "Humor" because it's sickeningly funny how our national media has entirely discredited itself over Barack Obama.

H/T Gateway Pundit.

What's for dinner

2009-05-02T19:48:00.001-07:00

I'm always looking for easy supper ideas, so I thought I'd pass along a link to one that I've made a couple times now and like: Drunken Sausage and Pasta. It's deceptively simple but good. The cook gets to open another bottle of beer to sip during prep, of course.

I also made the slow-cooker pot roast from Crepes of Wrath blog to excellent results. Pot roast is one of my favorite things of all time, so I'm demanding, and I'm happy to report it came through. I think the trick is to stack onions and the other vegetables both underneath and completely covering the top of the roast, so that the meat gets lots of the flavor soaking in and keeps moisture.

Crash and burn: UPDATED

2009-04-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

My feelings about the latest political goings-on are most succintly captured by the following, lifted from The Anchoress:

"Isn’t it fabulous how Obama has reconciled with our enemies and put fear into the hearts of Americans? Does any image illustrate so neatly the wrongheadedness of the Obama administration than Americans scrambling in terror from Air Force One?"

And the background is most eloquently summed up in this editorial in the Washington Post. A snip, bolded by me for sheer, perfect distillation:

"Americans should keep this worst-case scenario in mind as they watch the tragicomic spectacle taking place in the wake of the publication of the Justice Department's interrogation memos. It will help them recognize this episode of political theater as another major step in the bipartisan dismantling of America's defenses based on the requirements of presidential ideology. George W. Bush's democracy-spreading philosophy yielded the invasion of Iraq and set the United States at war with much of the Muslim world. Bush's worldview thereby produced an enemy that quickly outpaced the limited but proven threat-containing capacities of the major U.S. counterterrorism programs -- rendition, interrogation and unmanned aerial vehicle attacks. Now, in a single week, President Obama has eliminated two-thirds of that successful-but-not-sufficient national defense troika because his personal ideology -- a fair gist of which is 'If the world likes us more we are more secure' -- cannot tolerate harsh interrogation techniques, torture or coercive interviews, call them what you will. Surprisingly, Obama now stands alongside Bush as a genuine American Jacobin, both of them seeing the world as they want it to be, not as it is...

Americans should be clear on what Obama has done. In a breathtaking display of self-righteousness and intellectual arrogance, the president told Americans that his personal beliefs are more important than protecting their country, their homes and their families. The interrogation techniques in question, the president asserted, are a sign that Americans have lost their 'moral compass,' a compliment similar to Attorney General Eric Holder's identifying them as 'moral cowards.' Mulling Obama's claim, one can wonder what could be more moral for a president than doing all that is needed to defend America and its citizens? Or, asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs?"

Can we finally elect a grown-up now?? Can we elect someone who will actually lead and govern a whole country, rather than leading a narrow ideological wing of one of the parties while grasping at power so as to engage in doctrinaire political theater? When Obama responded to Republicans' concerns about his proposed orgy of spending with "I won," I had deja vu of Bush declaring his 2004 slim victory as a strong mandate when it clearly was no such thing. Though I certainly had misgivings about what an Obama presidency would mean, he has unfortunately lowered himself beyond my expectations. It is hard to look at what he is doing to the country and think that he is not deliberately trying to undermine us. It is hard to keep disgust at his actions and words from becoming personal contempt for the man.

On the other hand, it is really not personal contempt I feel. If he were a law professor in Chicago or a doodler at some leftist think tank- for which he actually is qualified, unlike for his current position- then I would be able to radically disagree with him while respecting him personally. And it is really not Obama's fault. If the board of directors of a company, when selecting a new CEO, rolls the dice on someone in the junior ranks despite not having any evidence of a proven track record, is it such a shock that that over-promoted junior partner flails and ultimately torpedoes the business? And is it really Junior's fault? He can be faulted for his fluffing of the resume, of course. He can also be faulted for the hubris he brings despite his unlikely good fortune. Just tonight the Hypocrite-in-Chief was intoning about people not being able to lay aside political games for the good of the country, when the only real competency he and his team have shown has been in playing stupid and dangerous political games, not least in the areas of national security.

Our allies now know: You can't count on America to have your back. In fact, if you have ever been so stupid as to help us, you're going to suffer for it. But since the people leading us apparently favor America's enemies not only over our friends, but over their own people as well, the shafted among our allies at least are in good company.

UPDATE: I have been quite critical of Condoleezza Rice, but she hits this one out of the park. I hope she goes back to academia. That universe could do with some actual diversity of thought rather than the mock version they usually celebrate.

Garden Notes April

2009-04-19T13:36:00.000-07:00

I'm undertaking my first attempt at growing roses, and I can say so far so good. The first bloom opened up this weekend, just in time for Pascha! The variety is Grandiflora "Arizona Sun." Growing such things in Northern California is almost like cheating, with our abundant sunshine and mild weather, but I was still intimidated by roses. Not any more, and certainly this will not be my last rose bush. The dot of color on the balcony is a such a pick-me-up. My lemon tree is also blossoming, with a luscious fragrance that I can smell even down on the street.

Pictured below is a charming little interloper that cropped up in my lavender/thyme pot. I have no idea what it is. The leaves look like parsley, but some of them came out deep blood red and it had a little purple flower which you can see left of center in this photo. If this is what constitutes weeds, I don't mind weeds! If anyone can identify it, please do:

This is the nicest time to garden in our area. Pretty soon it will be too hot, and especially my flowers will be under constant threat of burning to a crisp. It's ironic that for us, the time for colorful flowers is winter, not summer; at least if you don't have some shade. I am hoping the roses will withstand it and continue to bloom, however.

I Dreamed A Dream

2009-04-19T13:06:00.000-07:00

All blessings of Pascha to my fellow Orthodox. Christos anesti!

Unless you've been under a rock or in a monastery this past week, you've probably heard of the Scottish woman who astonished audiences in Britain and on YouTube with a performance of "I Dreamed A Dream" from Les Miserables. I can't get enough of watching this video, and somehow I cry every single time. The song is so beautiful, and the story is, too. Listen to it once without looking at the video and it is even more transporting. Just in case you think this was a one-off, there is this recording of Boyle doing "Cry Me A River" which is also beautiful.

Boyle is Catholic and her priest said that he was not surprised by the reaction to her singing.

I'm reminded of taking a voice class in college. I took several voice and acting classes as a side interest, and I've been told I have a nice voice, but performing is another thing. For me the three minutes of a song is an interminable time when you are standing in front of other people watching you. If you know you're hitting the notes, it's so exciting that you end up croaking on the next bar. If you're mucking it up, even worse. That is what I was thinking as I watched Susan Boyle. She not only has a beautiful voice, her control and stage presence is astounding for a woman who has not been on stages all her life. One minute she was dowdy old maid talking about living in the village, but she started to sing and had command of an entire live and television audience by bar two. I heard she had taken voice lessons for many years and performed on the small scale, and that work has obviously paid off, but that confidence is amazing.

For comparison, take a look at this video of award-winning singer Lea Salonga doing the same song. This is not taking anything away from Salonga, who gives a passionate performance even though she must have done this song hundreds of times. She also enunciates better, is better at the lower register etc. etc. But compare not just the voice, also the passion in interpreting the song, and you see that Boyle can take her place right next to the professionals. Then look at a video of Elaine Paige, the British stage actress whom Boyle cited as her paragon of success. To me Paige has that diva "look at me, I'm a star" demeanor which ultimately takes away from the song. All to say again that it is just really fun to see a woman that everyone discounted when they first saw her be recognized for the combination of talent and hard work. I hope fame does not spoil it!

Best military history books

2009-04-07T15:10:00.001-07:00

As someone who has a pet interest in military history, I was interested to read a list of the top 10 military history books from one of the writers at Foreign Policy. Linked via Omnivoracious via Instapundit.

I haven't read a single one of them. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing (because it shows how little I actually have read on the subject) or a good thing (so many things left to read!).

Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer
Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson
Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell
Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge
Thunder Below! by Eugene Fluckey
Korea: This Kind of War by T.R. Fehrenbach
Achilles in Vietnam by Jonathan Shay
The Nightingale's Song by Robert Timberg

Cold sales

2009-04-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

At our small office, I'm the one who usually picks up the main phone line, and am usually the one who answers the front door. As a result, I field a lot of telemarketing and drop-in solicitation folks. It must be a sign of the times but lately there has been a definite increase in the number of door-to-door salespeople trying to scare up business.

I noticed that several of the door-to-door salesmen would physically hold the door open while I was trying to shut it. It became a bit of a comic struggle. It is somewhat intimidating- not to say rude- to have to physically struggle to be able to close your own door. I wondered if this was a technique that is taught to salespeople. I didn't find that technique specifically, but a lot of other interesting stuff at the Mr. Cold Call website.

Let me say that I recognize that sales is a business like any other, and some people do it both ethically and well. I don't always feel cheated or annoyed by my contacts with random sales people, but often enough. I even spent a summer doing telemarketing myself, the memories of which I don't relish. However, even some of the sleazier tactics are in evidence at this straightforward tips website. For instance, the advice that how to respond to a "No Solicitation" sign is up to the person. We have a No Solicitation sign, and I can tell you, no one has ever read it and turned away. I watch them, and they look right at the sign, then knock anyway. This is roughly the equivalent to the telemarketer who tries to convince you they're not selling anything. It's just a "courtesy call."

It was fun to read the article on the 15 types of gatekeepers and how to get around them. I am definitely the "Forget About It" screener. Our company never accepts random solicitation; it is small enough that I know everyone in the company and who is likely to be a genuine caller; and most of the people on the company's public listings actually sit in Europe and have unpronounceable names, so I know instantly what's up when some college kid who butchers an executive's name tries telling me "oh but I just met with him last week."

Like they advise in this article, I have had people ask me to repeat their phone number to test whether I actually wrote it down. That's a fun one! I always feel in the mood to buy from someone who's just insinuated I'm a liar.

Then there are the people who try to ramrod through by insinuating they are a very important caller and don't have time to be bothered with a peon receptionist like you. They insist that they need the decision maker. I'm the purchasing agent in our company, so it's especially fun to then be able to tell them that I actually am the person who would be buying their products, if there was a snowball's chance that we ever would. It's probably good advice in general and not just for sales people: Respect the receptionist, or cashier, or other underling who might seem like a peon but actually be the one who keeps a place running.

Of course, skillful sales people leave you feeling good about the encounter even if you don't need what they're selling. As an example, one of our recent drop-in visits was from an area hotel and against all policy and habit I did take their brochure. Mainly that was because my boss actually likes their hotel chain, so there was actual interest and not just something worked up by phony techniques. It didn't hurt that they brought no-strings-attached candy boxes. We might never have a reason to take them up on their sales offer, but at least the word "cretins" doesn't come to mind when I think of their business.

The Johnstown Flood

2009-03-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

My friend Cindy asked where my blogging was. I get in moods where I just have nothing to say, I guess. Due to downsizing, I also have less down time at work which is when I would sometimes write.

Anyway, in the car I have been listening to an audiobook on the Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood of 1889. Being a native Pennsylvanian myself, the subject has always interested me and we saw a History Channel special on it. The book, however, goes into more detail, with more eyewitness accounts. Some of them are truly harrowing.

A Reader's Digest of what happened: Lake Conemaugh was formed first as a reservoir behind an earthen dam, and then was bought, dam and all, by a Pittsburgh-based gentlemans' sporting club. The club was the retreat of such Pittsburgh industry barons as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. When I saw a picture of the intact dam, I was surprised at how low it was, and how tame the body of water behind it seemed compared to the destruction it wrought. photo link

Lack of maintenance on the dam and a fierce Memorial Day storm combined to send Lake Conemaugh rushing down the valley through several smaller communities towards the industrial immigrant town of Johnstown, which was already experiencing flooding from the storm. Witnesses said that the dam did not break, it simply was "moved out of the way," shifting downstream with the water pouring out around its edges.

The force of devastation on Johnstown was increased by the fact that the water and debris had been temporarily stopped by a railroad bridge upstream. When that collapsed, the force of the wave was multiplied. Witnesses described seeing no water; there was so much debris, it was like one of the hills had detached itself, started moving and was rolling over and over down the valley, swallowing everything it hit. Just before reaching Johnstown, it took the Gauthier Iron Works, causing a "black mist of death" to cover the flood as it advanced. This was steam from the combination of mud with molten iron. Unfortunately, the iron works produced mainly barbed wire and when the debris hit Johnstown, it was full of not only houses and train cars and timber, but the barbed wire as well.

In Johnstown, the wave was halted by the high stone bridge of the Pennsylvania Railroad, but that did not stop the devastation. There was a backsurge, and then the built-up debris caught fire, killing eighty people who had managed to survive riding the wave but were trapped in the debris. The debris fire raged for three days.

Ninety-nine entire families were wiped out, and over 2000 people total died. The flood has a foothold in the American imagination, probably because it happened during a time when the U.S. was at a high point of optimism, industry and expansionism.

Naturally at such times, people talk about the coincedences, both lucky and unlucky. One survivor account I found memorable was from Victor Heiser, son of German immigrants, a boy who had run out to the barn to check on the animals due to concerns about the flooding. While he was in the barn, he heard the roar of the debris approaching. From the house, his father motioned to him to get on the barn roof. Just a few weeks before, they had decided to cut a trap door to the barn roof. The boy made it up there in time to see his house swallowed with his parents inside. The barn was then pitched sideways and rolled end over end, but he managed to stay on top of the rolling wave. When he saw himself being hurtled towards his neighbor's house, he was able to jump on the neighbor's roof just in time. He then rode the roof through Johnstown, watching people be crushed and sucked under around him. As the debris hit the railroad bridge, he rode the backsurge up the tributary Stoney Creek. The backsurge carried him about a half mile up the adjoining valley. There he was able to jump onto the roof of a brick building that was intact and where other survivors were clinging. Heiser had looked at his watch when he first saw the debris approaching his house, "because I wanted to know what time I would leave this world." When he made it to the roof of the brick house where he would be able to survive the rest of the flood, he looked again. The whole ordeal had taken just ten minutes.

What strikes me from listening to the eyewitnesses talk about it is that for years people had discussed what would happen if the dam broke. Speculation about that had become a part of Johnstown life. Nevertheless, few people thought it could really happen, or be as bad as they imagined it. How many other things do we think the same about? Here in the Bay Area, it's the earthquake. For any of us, it could be a terrorist's nuclear or radiological bomb or biological attack. Are we really prepared?

Malatya Martyrs and Ergenekon

2009-02-18T15:25:00.000-08:00

Back in 2007, I blogged quite a bit about the torture and murder of several Bible publishing workers in Malatya, Turkey, including one I knew when I lived in Turkey. The trial has been ongoing and I thought I ought to post a little update.

Two of the murder victims, German national Tilman Geske and my former acquaintance, Necati Aydın.

The third victim, Uğur Yüksel, who reportedly cried out "Mesih, Mesih"
("Messiah, Messiah") as he was being stabbed.

Some time later, I also blogged about events in Turkey that seem straight out of the movies. A shadowy nationalist organization, Ergenekon, was busted and accused of trying to stage a coup d'etat complete with political assassinations.

Now the murders of the three Christian workers are being tied to Ergenekon, and the trial is on hold while investigators work on expanding its focus. It's alleged that Ergenekon organized and egged on a conspiracy of youths who eventually carried out the murders. Two more have been arrested, including a man who volunteered for the Bible publishing house. Your guess is as good as mine if the connection is real, or if it's a case of seeing Ergenekon under every rock or even using them as a scapegoat to cover up for someone else. The widow of Tilman Geske did hint early on that she believed there was a higher conspiracy than just a bunch of murderous youths. Public opinion certainly likes the conspiracy theory. The extremely popular and extremely dubious TV series Kurtlar Vadisi ("Valley of the Wolves") ran an episode based on the murders which linked them to an ultra-nationalist organization.

I just pray, as I often do with such cases, that the real truth comes to light.

Stimulating

2009-02-13T21:06:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Soviet States of America. No matter what you think of what's in the stimulus bill, the manner in which it was created and forced through the process would have seemed bold even to the Politburo.

Iraq on my mind

2009-02-12T13:16:00.000-08:00

It can't fail to be, since my nephew- father of a one year-old girl- just reported for his first tour there with the National Guard. At about the same time, an old college friend (and occasional reader of this blog) went back for his second go-round. I asked that friend what books he could recommend about Iraq's situation, and among them he recommended Fouad Ajami's The Foreigner's Gift. I am finding it a worthy read. There is so much behind the headlines.

Michael Yon's website is also worth visiting for his on-the-ground reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan, supported by reader donations.

And for a lighter look, this round-up of soldier gag photos is great.

One more link: A reminder about anysoldier.com where you can see requests from soldiers in various locations for letters and packages. The effort and $13 for a Priority Mail flat-rate box is well worth it when you receive grateful e-mails and notes from the troops.

An Open Letter to Frank Schaeffer

2009-02-11T15:53:00.001-08:00

By Orthodox priest Fr. Gregory Jensen, an irenic commentator who nevertheless pulls no punches on the subject of Schaeffer's and others' "pro-life" support for Barack Obama:

"Certainly, President Obama's economic plans is something that reasonable and honorable people can disagree over. And while I am willing to entertain the possibility that Mr Obama's policies may, and I must stress MAY, reduce the number of abortions, this is not the salient moral point. But the moral problem does not lie so much with the number of abortions but with the fact that abortion is not only legal in the US but accorded the status of a right. But how can anyone have the right to kill an innocent human being?

Your willingness to accept the continuation of legalized abortion as the law of the land is not compatible with either the Tradition of the Church or natural law; it is certainly not a pro-life position.

I would go further and say that your letter is scandalous. Not only is it such in the popular sense of shocking, but in the technical, theological sense as well. You present yourself as a Christian and a self-professed pro-life leader and yet you offer a public witness that argues for the moral legitimacy of abortion. In suggesting a course of action that allows not only for the upholding of legalized abortion (or as you refer to the euphemistically, 'reproductive rights') but also suggests that such a position can reflects 'the moral high ground,' you are not only morally wrong, but have caused grievous harm to his readers—you have left them with the false notion that a pro-choice position is consonant with the Gospel. It is not.

By all means let us as Christians support Mr Obama when he proposes policies which, to quote His Beatitude Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America, 'extend a hand to those suffering from their sins, what ever they are.' We have the confidence to do this, no matter what the personal or political cost because by faith we know and proclaim that "There is no sin that cannot be forgiven, save the one we refuse to accept forgiveness for."

At the same time however, we must remind Mr Obama that we cannot simply work to reduce the number of abortions; we must stop abortion. Why? Because as His Beatitude reminds us 'Abortion not only destroys the life of the infant; it rips the soul out of the mother (and the father!),' even as our support of abortion has ripped apart the fabric of our society."

Twice A Stranger: A Story

2009-02-10T21:28:00.000-08:00

The following is an excerpt told by a Pontic Christian and appearing in Bruce Clark's Twice A Stranger. I found it both charming and heartrending. It is probably the story that will stick with me the most from the book, maybe because I grew up on a dairy in a remote hill area and can relate to some of the idyllic descriptions, and in a much milder way, to being exiled from them.

"I was born in 1912, in a mountain valley where for many centuries, Greek-speaking Christians had made an excellent living from farming, trading and mining. On the wings of an eagle, my home town of Imera is only fifty miles southeast of the great port of Trebizond but thanks to its altitude, over 4500 feet above the sea, the climate is different. Trebizond in July can be humid and oppressive; but in our highland home, the air in summer tastes like wine, and as soon as you fill your lungs with it, you feel all your ailments are being cured. That was why rich people from Trebizond, including my cousins, would spend their summers with us. And those of us who lived in Imera all year round were resilient. From November to April, we were enveloped by thick snow, and our livestock were kept indoors. But in spring, as the sun grew stronger, the fields around us turned into a carpet of rich and scented foliage. It was a perfect environment to raise cattle and sheep, and a paradise for youngsters. When I close my eyes, I can still recall the aroma from the blue flowers that wafted down from the meadows above our house. I can taste the milk from our three cows, and I remember the tang of the butter we preserved in wooden vats, long before the age of refrigerators. The hay smelt of flowers, the milk smelt of flowers, the butter smelt of flowers; all our produce was of high quality thanks to the fodder provided by nature.

In my imagination, I can still hear the rivulet that cut through our valley, with a small pasture, thick with clover, on one side. As children we used to dam the stream with stones- and make a pool where we could splash about, revelling in every moment of the precious sunshine. And in my mind's eye, I can still see poplars with silvery leaves and steep hillsides, with tiny chapels at the top, appearing and then disappearing as the clouds scudded around them. Immediately above our house, there was a shrine at the top of a hill called Panayia Eremitissa- the hermit, or desert-dwelling Mother of God. On 15 August, the whole community would gather at the peak to commemorate the Dormition of Mary- and prepare for the rigors of winter.

We were not sophisticated Christians; some of our priests were simple folk, even though our community was led by powerful and well-educated bishops. But the feasts and customs of the Christian calendar were embedded in our life. Imera was almost entirely Greek-speaking and Christians; the only exception to this was a group of ten households, about an hour's walk from Imera which retained the Greek language but had converted to Islam. For some reason, they were much poorer than us, and we kept them at a distance, although they were related to us by blood.

...During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Imera was devoid of able-bodied men. My father and all his male contemporaries were away in Russia earning their fortunes. Boys would marry young, sire children, and then set out for the furthest reaches of the Russian empire, finding opportunities in that turbulent but exciting world. With the money they earned, they would return to Imera and build handsome two-storey houses of chiselled white stone. And those 'local boys made good' would pay for schools and churches which enhanced our community and amazed our Turkish overlords.

Among ourselves we spoke the Pontic dialect of Greek, but at school we learned the official Greek that was cultivated in Athens and Constantinople. We called ourselves Romioi- the old word for Greeks in the Ottoman world- but Greece itself was remote from our consciousness. The country that loomed in our imagination was Russia...

The strong ladies who dominated my childhood did a good job of sheltering the youngsters of the village from the turbulence raging around us. We used to accompany these ladies as they brought the cows up to their pastures in springtime, and we helped as they gathered up the hay and leaves to feed the livestock in winter.

Was I aware that a world war was going on? Did I know that our stretch of the Black Sea was taken over by the Tsar's forces in spring 1916- and then abandoned, because of the revolution in Russia, in 1918? I do remember the Tsarist occupation because one day, Russian soliers came to our house demanding food. They discovered the stable where our prize cow, Silky, lived- and tried to take her away. But the cunning creature knew what the Russians wanted. She lay down on the ground and refused to budge, even when the soldiers beat her.

One of the few grown-up men still resident in the village was my grandfather Dimitris Siamanis, a weatherbeaten old fellow, a retired merchant, who was bewildered by the international crises that were disturbing, and would ultimately destroy, our little Shangri-la. 'Accursed be the dogs that turned our world upside down,' he used to mutter to himself. But he still took pride in our comfortable house- it had cost him 120 (Ottoman) pounds- where we all lived. We had double windows to keep us warm in winter, and oil paintings of hunting scenes on the wall.

After the Russian withdrawal in 1918, it was anybody's guess what would happen to us. As Kemal's army established its authority across Anatolia, they put on trial some prominent Greeks from Trebizond who were suspected of supporting the campaign to create an independent Pontic state... Two years later, after the Greek army suffered its final defeat, we found ourselves in mortal danger again. One day in January 1923, all the Greeks who lived in Trebizond were rounded up and transported by sea to Constantinople. One of them was my older sister Sophia... On the day of the expulsion order, she was given fifteen minutes to gather everything she could and go to the harbour. Of all my family, her story was the most tragic. Her infant child died in her arms during the voyage, and she remembered this until her death in Salonika, in March 2004, when she was 101.

Amazingly enough, our mountain community soldiered on a few months after the evacuation of Trebizond. My family went on tending its animals, and holding services in the one church still functioning. The school had stopped its lessons, but I remained a voracious reader... As I pored over my books and enjoyed one final summer amid the sights, sounds and scents of Imera, the grown-ups were making plans to leave...

[Arriving in Salonika], we found ourselves in a former army camp used by French colonial troops during the First World War, where there were millions of lice. It was a moonscape, with not a tree in sight. We remembered our mountain valleys and we cried...

In Greece I have lived through turbulent times- invasion, dictatorship, civil war- and I rejoice that my grandchildren are now growing up in prosperity and peace. Through every trial, I have been sustained by the memory of the place where I grew up... But I still feel it was necessary for us to leave. Our only protection in Turkey was the isolation of our village and the good relations which people like my uncle enjoyed with his Turkish colleagues in the bank. But we never had any real security. For example, if we were robbed as we went from one village to another, who could we turn to for help? We had no protectors. I think we did the right thing when we came to Greece."

Twice A Stranger

2009-02-08T16:38:00.000-08:00

In the aftermath of World War I, the British and the Greeks made a bargain to divide up the failing Ottoman Empire. This led to an invasion of Asia Minor by the Greek army, which was to prove a disastrous failure. The Greek army was routed and left a swathe of scorched earth on its retreat.

At the peace treaty negotiations in Lausanne, several western powers, Greece and Turkey forged an agreement whereby Christian minorities in Turkey- some of whom had supported the invading Greek army- would be forcefully expelled to Greece, and likewise Muslims in Greece would be forced to resettle in Turkey. The old order of the Ottomans was being replaced by two modern states who would each try to forge a new national consciousness based on nationalistic ideology and, to a lesser extent, on religious identity. The Aegean mindset and culture would now be split into two largely artificial halves. In many respects what is thought of today as Greekness and Turkishness was an artificial construct of this time period.

This forced population exchange and its impact on both the large scale and on individuals and families is poignantly explored in Bruce Clark's Twice A Stranger. Clark is a writer for The Economist, which is one of the best publications out there for international reporting. A lot of the documentation he summarizes is new to the English-speaking world.

How the population exchange affected people depended a lot on where they lived. If you lived in the seaside trade and resort town of Ayvalik, for example- which was entirely emptied out- you would not have had a long journey to reach the ports of Greece, but your men would have been forced to stay behind in a work gang to rebuild damage from the Greek army's rape and burning of the countryside on its disorderly retreat. The clergy of the town were executed; their bishop suffered a heart attack, apparently during an attempt to bury him alive. If you were from the green interior of Pontus in western Turkey, you would have suffered from the typhus and plague outbreaks in the horribly overcrowded holding camps and then in the ships you were packed into. After several days' of horror on the seas, you might have been turned away from port after port in your new homeland, a homeland you had never seen and whose language you may not have spoken. If you were a Greek in Istanbul (including the Ecumenical Patriarch), you were exempted from the original population exchange by special deal reached in Lausanne, but that meant you were hung up in the middle as a pawn, subject to pressure from the Greek side or reprisals from the Turkish. If you lived in Izmir, which was occupied by the Greek army, you might have suffered most of all. The city was burned nearly to the ground, including ships waiting in the harbor laden with refugees waiting to depart for Greece. Though responsibility for the fire is disputed, an American observer reported seeing gangs of men torching Armenian houses, probably in reprisal for aid to the occupying Greek army. If you were a Muslim in Crete, you might have had to leave behind rich gardens and orange groves and become a dirt farmer in the middle of Anatolia.

Restored Ottoman houses in Izmir. What was once burned to the ground is now considered an attraction.

Clark lets us hear voices from many of these groups through oral history and diaries and letters. One of the things that stands out from these accounts is that people survive. They will go to great lengths to survive and adapt. Under the Ottomans, some of them remained as "crypto-Christians" for hundreds of years, publicly living as Muslims in order to escape scrutiny or burdensome taxes while secretly maintaining a Christian faith including clergy. When one occupation was forbidden them, they learned others, and frequently prospered. Common people living as neighbors found ways not just to get along, but to treat each other as family despite religious differences. This perseverance and adaptability would also be brought to bear as people were ripped from their homes and forced to start over in a strange land. Clark argues that what hurt the most was not being able to talk about what they lost.

Interestingly, I came across this article recently which says that the AKP, the Islamist party which has been in power in Turkey now for six years, is hoping to roll back the Kemalist secular nationalist doctrine that was the fruit of the Turkish Independence War and go back to more of an Ottoman understanding, and to look east rather than look west as Kemal Ataturk did. If you read Clark's book, you understand what a revolution in thinking that is. It is also a sober reminder that what has been suggested as a solution to ethnic conflicts in the Balkans or the Middle East is really no solution at all- carving out artificial countries and forcing homogeneity upon them.

This is a story that is difficult for Americans to grasp in our souls. We are an uprooted people anyway, without a strong sense of place, and our very country's foundation is similar to what the Greeks and Turks tried to carve out: A loose statist ideology based on Protestant principles. At the very least it serves as reminder to us that something like that is inherently fragile. You can convincingly create a sense of Turkishness or American-ness in people for a while, and that may even have its advantages, but statist ideology can't give people a heritage they eat and drink and live. That comes from the land, and it should not be taken for granted.

Pancakes solve everything

2009-02-07T21:32:00.000-08:00

Normally I say that cookies solve everything, but lately I've been on a pancake kick. I think it's because Pavel took me here and it blew my mind. I've been to pancake houses before of course, but this place has every kind of imaginable breakfast pancake. Pavel got a "Dutch baby," which is a humongous baked thing that I know of as a German oven pancake.

Dutch baby

I had the "20 year sourdough pancakes," which supposedly are made with a sourdough started 20 years ago. They were pretty good- not actually sour, just a wee bit tart, but nice and squishy which is how I like 'em.

But I have to say, I made these cottage cheese pancakes this weekend and I think they are the best pancakes I've ever had. I didn't bother whirling the cheese in the blender like they suggest, and since I didn't have quite enough I topped the cheese off with Greek yogurt which seemed to work just fine. I also added a bit more flour, about 1 1/2 cups total, and a little sugar and vanilla. Ooh, are they good. They don't taste like cheese really, they're just doughy and custardy with a nice crust. Yum.

The other recipe I tried lately that I really liked were oatmeal pancakes, made with oatmeal you soak overnight in buttermilk. Those were my favorites until I tried the cottage cheese. They have a little tooth to them from the oatmeal, but are also nice and custardy.

I know, I know- it's silly to get so excited over pancakes. So call me silly. And pass the maple syrup.

Trader Joe's fans, please note

2009-02-07T11:55:00.000-08:00

TJ's has not been overly "out there" with this information, so fellow TJ's devotees please note:

Several TJ's peanut butter products are included in the peanut butter recall. I'm sad to hear that among them are a couple of my addictions, the peanut butter chewy granola bars and nutty chocolate chewy granola bars. The recall also includes the apple slices with peanut butter packs, and Sutter's cookies. It says that this only affects stores in SoCal, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada, but to be safe, you probably shouldn't eat these things if you have them on the shelf.

Prayers for Amy Welborn and family

2009-02-04T07:48:00.000-08:00

Many in the blogosphere know the Catholic writer Amy Welborn. Her husband Michael died yesterday rather suddenly after collapsing at his gym, leaving Amy and young children.

Amy suggests, for those asking how they can help, that people buy her books, read them and pass them on. Here is her page on amazon.com. She has many devotional books and books for children and teenagers.

Memory eternal.

Garden Notes January

2009-01-31T16:46:00.001-08:00

January is not a big garden month even in Northern California, but it is bare-root rose time, as you'll see if you peek into your local garden center. And finally, after a year or more of saying "I think I want to grow roses," I took the plunge. For some reason I'm ridiculously nervous trying to grow one, even though I've been told they're really not difficult to grow, especially in our climate which is basically a Mediterranean climate. We shall see.

It doesn't look like much now, but hope springs eternal. The mulch is from a coir mulch block that I ordered along with the container. I don't like the looks of it as much as redwood mulch, but the compact block is convenient if you have an apartment garden rather than one with a storage shed and stuff. I'm hoping it darkens a little with time.

The rose is a grandiflora "Arizona Sun":

photo link

Meanwhile, the lemons on my dwarf tree are finally beginning to ripen! Not quite marinade-ready yet, but getting there.

And the red blooms on the sedum "Autumn Joy" are juuust beginning to show themselves. That's all that's really happening in the garden at the moment.

Mor Gabriel Monastery

2009-01-28T20:14:00.000-08:00

H/T to Gateway Pundit. Several court cases are being brought in Turkey which threaten the existence of the oldest continuing monastery in Christendom, the Syriac Orthodox monastery of Mor Gabriel. Nearby villagers are making the absurd claim that a mosque used to stand on the site which predates Islam itself by 200 years. Asia News link here.

Turks themselves should protest this travesty.

Book Notes

2009-01-24T23:36:00.000-08:00

A couple books I will note in passing, and likely post about in the future.

Twice a Stranger is the story of the Greek-Turkish forced population exchange in the early 1920's, whereby one million Orthodox Christians were forcefully expelled from their ancestral homes in Turkey and about half that number of Ottoman Muslims living in Greece were forced to leave for Turkey. This came about as a result of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the Greek invasion of Turkey, which lasted three years and resulted in a Greek rout and many atrocities against civilian populations on both sides. I have this one out of the library now and have read a couple chapters. It puts a great deal of modern Turkish and Greek history into context, as well as the mentality of the Aegean which can seem maddeningly schizophrenic and paranoid to the outside observer. It also gives context for the Armenian genocide, and even the Nazi views on dividing up and moving around (and exterminating) whole populations.

The other book I came across on the internet but have not yet read: Philip Jenkins' The Lost History of Christianity, which deals with the Nestorian and monophysite churches. Previewing some chapters and reading reviews, it strikes me as a rather breezy account, and the title had me wary until I read more of what it was about (too "DaVinci Code," don't you know). However, I have enjoyed Jenkins' work in the past and will put this one on my list. It seems that Western Christians continue, slowly but surely, to discover the eastern church.

Random photo day

2009-01-24T22:44:00.001-08:00

Browsing through my photo files, I thought I'd post random shots walking down memory lane.

Adowable.

The farm where I grew up.

The road on our farm where I played a lot as a child and walked a lot as a young adult living at home.

Alexanderplatz, Berlin, winter 1987. This was when it was still Communist East Germany. "Alex" has changed a lot now! I was an exchange student in West Germany at the time.

80's glasses, egad! College graduation, 1993. I got to carry the banner for the German Department. This was one of my favorite profs, Dr. Manfred Keune (now retired).

Queens College, New York, 1998.

Brooklyn, New York, Christmas 1999, with my lovely co-workers.

My apartment in Istanbul.

The view from my kitchen window in Istanbul, looking down to the Bosphorus.

Riveaulx Abbey, Yorkshire, 2003.

Pavel with his niece and nephew.

Pascha 2005, a few months before I moved to California.

And the rest, as they say, is history...

Some Reminders

2009-01-22T20:40:00.000-08:00

For those of us born after the Civil Rights era, this article (PDF link) by Alveda King, niece of MLK, offers some surprising reminders about the heritage of our respective political parties on these issues.

"As a Republican, my goal is always to seek the will of God for good government, and then to demand accountability from all elected leaders. We are off track, seeking solutions from government, when we should be seeking the grace of God!

..Removed from memory are the facts that it was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools, established the Civil Rights Commission in 1958, and appointed Chief Justice Early Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation.

Meanwhile Democrats in Congress were still fighting to prevent the passage of new civil rights laws that would overturn those discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws that had been enacted by Democrats in the South. There would have been no law for President Lyndon Johnson to sign in 1964 had it not been for the Republicans breaking the Democrats’ filibuster of the law and pushing to have that landmark legislation enacted.

No one batted an eye when President Kennedy opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King. Hardly a ripple of protest was uttered when President Kennedy, through his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated on suspicion of
being a Communist..."

I urge you to read it all. She goes on to speak in impassioned manner about abortion, and she doesn't speak lightly on the subject.

H/T to American Thinker.

The Churches of Egypt

2009-01-21T21:14:00.000-08:00

We had a presentation after the Divine Liturgy on Sunday from the editor and instigator of this beautiful book. If you have something in the book budget, I highly recommend it. The photos are amazing, many of them not likely to be seen anywhere else. The Copts sitting around me were impressed, saying that they did not know all the sites described in the book. The editor, Carolyn Ludwig, spoke with such appreciation and genuine faith. Her inspiration for it, after having accompanied her egyptologist husband on many expeditions, was realizing the importance of the Holy Family's journeys in Egypt. She said she woke up one night and told her daughter, "Rome has so many monuments. But the Holy Family never set foot in Rome." Then she knew she had a story she needed to tell.

Marvelous work and a true labor of love. Perhaps I'll do some blog posts on some of the sites described in the book.

"Kolyadki" at Fort Ross

2009-01-18T15:32:00.000-08:00

The Mr. and I are celebrating our second wedding anniversary this weekend, so we took a drive up the coast to Fort Ross, an early Russian settlement ("Ross" being short for Rossiya). We had thought to go there during my Christmas vacation, but read that there was going to be a heritage festival there yesterday so we planned the trip to tie in with our anniversary. "Kolyadki" is the pagan winter festival now overtaken by the several weeks of the Nativity feast. That lasts up until Theophany, which in the Russian Orthodox as in the Coptic Orthodox churches is tomorrow.

We took the drive up north and ended up in the wrong lane- don't you hate when that happens!- such that instead of bypassing San Francisco, we ended up crossing the Bay Bridge right into the heart of the city. We jockeyed with streetcars and tourists while struggling to find freeway signs to get us back on track. By the time we were approaching the Golden Gate Bridge, I knew where we were again and was able to enjoy at least that part of the unplanned detour. The bridge is truly magnificent. Lots of people were out jogging and enjoying the sunny day.

We then continued on up the coast. I hate to rub it in for those back east who are getting snowed on, but the weather has been astonishingly beautiful this week. We had this same bright sunniness for our wedding weekend, but this year it's a lot warmer. Yesterday temperatures were in the 70's. After we got off the freeway, we drove through rolling hills and dairy farms to get out to the coast. Seeing so many cows was a little bit of heaven for me, dairy farm girl that I am. Sonoma is the most like home of anywhere I've yet seen in California. After a few miles we started seeing sea oats- stalks of what look like massive wheat- and then finally the blue of the Pacific itself. We wound through Bodega Bay (of Alfred Hitchcock's "Birds" fame) and Jenner, then continued up Highway One on what was one of the simultaneously most nerve-wracking and gorgeous drives I've ever made.

For about ten miles you climb and loop your way up, down and around sea cliffs, with the endless blanket of undulating blue off to the side, crashing up against the rocks and the steep cliffs that you are trying to drive along. With the weather so warm, there were quite a few beachgoers stopping off at the many beautiful beaches. Speaking of cows, we saw several of what Pavel took to calling "sea cows." These were being pastured on the thin strips of grass just by the side of the road, with no fencing or anything. I wish I'd been able to get a picture, but pulling off the side of the road on those needle-thin hairpins was out of the question.

By the time you get to Fort Ross State Park, it feels pretty far from civilization. Little imagination is required to picture what a rugged and remote life the early pioneers had there, despite the natural beauties of the spot. Ross was started as a source of food for the Russian Alaska colonies, and its protected cove was chosen as the site in order to make it as inaccessible as possible to the Spanish just to the south. After our nail-biting drive and with the rockiness of the coast, I could understand why the Spanish wouldn't have bothered!

We arrived just in time to see a little presentation of folk songs, dances and games by a group of charming Russian ladies.
The yellow sign the woman is holding has a little cross on it, but I think is supposed to represent the sun. "Kolyadki" in pre-Christian days was a festival calling on the sun god to triumph over Kolada (keh-la-DA), Father Winter. We had had a little laugh on the trip up as I realized I was wearing my St. George Coptic Orthodox Church t-shirt, and realized I was going to a festival where there were likely to be Russian Orthodox. But as it turned out, there were no clergy, and though Theophany was mentioned, I think the Russians in attendance were more into the folk side of things than the religious side. An embroidery kit they were advertising called upon "mother earth" as blessing, for example. Suffice to say I didn't feel like too much of a heretic!

The little tykes in folk dress were cute.

This was a game where a round bread (again symbolizing the sun) gets held up and, while keeping both hands on a pole you hold between your feet, you reach up and try to grab a bite of the bread. It's harder than it sounds since the bread keeps bouncing away. After about the fifth person it also ceases to be hygienic! But nonetheless it was fun to watch.

Behind this handsome fellow is the chapel. It was the first Orthodox church constructed in North America south of Alaska.

Interior of the chapel. It seems rather unloved considering its history. Naturally this is no longer church property and you wouldn't expect the Park Service to demonstrate Orthodox piety, but I would have expected that this would be a pilgrimage site and that you would see more obvious signs of Orthodox presence. I wasn't able to work out from the history if this was ever a consecrated altar- I don't think so- which is perhaps why it's not given special attention. The fort had no resident priest. The bishop from Sitka in Alaska would visit on occasion to perform marriages and baptisms.

Outside they were singing and dancing.

Here they're playing a catch game. The man in the center of the circle is chasing the woman in the red skirt, and one or both of them can weave back and forth in between the people in the circle, but the circle people might decide to lower their hands and bar the way.

Icon corner in one of the reconstructed rooms.

I liked this figure on one of the storage chests. They had some interesting reconstructions of workshops, a kitchen and a naturalist's study. Most of the residents of the fort were not actually Russians but native Alaskans or mixed Russian-Alaskans. There were no Russian women here at first, for instance; the men married native Alaskans or the local California natives.

Photo from the blockhouse, which was heavily kitted out with cannon. You can see why this protected cove- free of big rock unlike much of the coast we passed- was chosen. You also can see why the Spanish would think twice about attacking this location. However, Fort Ross never lived up to its promise as breadbasket for the Alaska colonies, since grain was too difficult to grow on the coast. They had better luck with orchards, and the fort did open up settlement inland in what is appropriately named the Russian River valley. Eventually the fort was abandoned by the Russians, taken over by the Spanish, and then sold to Americans during the Gold Rush days.

Women and Children First

2009-01-10T23:10:00.000-08:00

Occasionally you hear claims by atheists, Richard Dawkins most prominently, that religious instruction of children is a form of child abuse, as here. He frequently expresses that he would like to see churches destroyed, and that as a first step the influence of religious people in the public sphere should be restricted. You can pray freely, but just so God alone can hear. I leave to your own judgment the similarity between those sentiments and the following written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (memory eternal), about a government who took militant atheism to heart:

"However, the root destruction of religion in the country, which throughout the twenties and thirties was one of the most important goals of the GPU-NKVD, could be realized only by mass arrests of Orthodox believers. Monks and nuns, whose black habits had been a distinctive feature of Old Russian life, were intensively rounded up at every hand, placed under arrest, and sent into exile. They arrested and sentenced active laymen. The circles kept getting bigger, as they raked in ordinary believers as well, old people, and particularly women, who were the most stubborn believers of all and who, for many long years to come, would be called 'nuns' in transit prisons and in camps.

True, they were supposedly being arrested and tried not for their actual faith but for openly declaring their conviction and for bringing up their children in the same spirit. As Tanya Khodokevich wrote:
You can pray freely
But just so God alone can hear.

(She received a ten-year sentence for these verses.) A person convinced that he possessed spiritual truth was required to conceal it from his own children! In the twenties the religious education of children was classified as a political crime under Article 58-10 of the Code-- in other words, counterrevolutionary propaganda! True, one was still permitted to renounce one's religion at one's trial; it didn't often happen but it nonetheless did happen that the father would renounce his religion and remain at home to raise the children while the mother went to the Solovetsky Islands. (Throughout all those years women manifested great firmness in their faith.) All persons convincted of religious activity were given tenners, the longest term then given... Religious prisoners... were prohibited from ever returning to their children and their home areas."

- The Gulag Archipelago, Book I

Fun With Numbers

2009-01-03T14:00:00.000-08:00

Taking a little break from papal history, I thought I'd doodle a little of what I've been trying to teach myself of the history and mysteries of mathematics. I'm one of those classic cases of "math anxiety" people who came out of school thinking I hated math. I was a good student who hit high school algebra and found myself failing math tests in a humiliatingly crash-and-burn fashion. I learned how to apply myself in ways I didn't have to bother doing in English or geography, and I did quite well at geometry, but still, you don't lightly forgive a discipline that caused such red-marker horror.

As an adult, however, I'm re-thinking it all. For one thing, if I had been taught math in the context of the history of mathematics, I think I would have had a much different attitude towards it. I probably wouldn't have made much better grades than I did, but I would have been less miserable in the midst of it all.

Lately I've been reading Mathematical Mysteries: The Beauty and Magic of Numbers by Calvin Clawson, which presents some basic arithmetic concepts in just this manner- by looking at their historical development. There are some very interesting things in there. Again, I just barely grasp them, but what I do understand I find fascinating. I'm also watching the DVD course The Joy of Thinking: The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas.

If you'll excuse some crude doodling, I'll illustrate some of the "aha" moments I had in reading Clawson's book.

The Greeks discovered some mathematical principles through pebble notation. Like, picture real pebbles on the ground, and a crusty old Greek crouched over them moving them around and noticing patterns. So, you've heard of the square of a number, right? But did you ever picture it as an actual square?

If you look at them this way, you see you can build consecutively larger squares by adding an extra row and an extra column.

But another way of looking at the squares is that you build them by adding consecutively larger "L's" of odd numbers. The "L" was called a gnomon, borrowing a word used to measure a unit of time.

By deduction, the Greeks figured out that the square of a number n is equal to the sum of all consecutive odd numbers up to (2n-1). So, for five squared, that would be all the odd numbers up to 9. 1+3+5+7+9=25. Pretty cool, eh? It works for the other numbers, too. Try it. Two times 6 minus 1 = 11. So we should get the square of 6 by adding all the consecutive odd numbers up to and including 11. 1+3+5+7+9+11=36. Hey presto!

Using pebble notation, the Greeks also discovered prime numbers and factoring.

Oblong numbers allowed our old Greek to see that you could "divide" a rectangle with a stick, leaving equals on either side.

But some numbers won't make oblongs- they can't be evenly divided. They always leave an extra pebble dangling, so to speak. Those numbers were called the prime numbers. They can't be factored by anything but themselves and one. As it turns out, prime numbers become very important in the laws of mathematics, because the buck stops with them. Every natural number is either a prime or a composite. Composite numbers can be factored down until all you have left is a bunch of only prime numbers. For example, 18 factors into 2 x 9. Nine will factor again into 3 x 3, and 3 is prime so you can't go any farther. So another way of writing 18 is 2 x 3 x 3. Therefore, all composite numbers can be expressed as the product of some arrangement of prime numbers. Now, the cool thing is that no composite number will be "primed" in exactly the same way, and no other set of primes will ever produce that number. 2 x 3 x 3 belongs to 18 and 18 belongs to it, happily ever after, with no cheating. This is called the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, and I'm sure it works as a building block for math people to figure out other things.

You could really get lost in trying to find these magnificent patterns and laws. The Greeks saw themselves not as creating mathematics, but as discovering it. They were so fascinated with numbers that they postulated that mathematics was the basis of the whole universe.

The other thing that really blew their minds were the platonic solids. The Joy of Thinking lectures go into these quite a bit. These are 3D figures made up of regular sides. There are only five of these that are possible to make. They yield other coolness upon closer study, like when you start adding up their edges, vertices and faces you get regular patterns that appear in all of them, even though to look at them they seem like very different shapes. I won't go into all that, however. The Greeks thought they corresponded to the five elements of the universe: Air, fire, earth, water, and the fifth or quintessential element.

diagram link

The average college freshman could probably explain these things better than I can, but perhaps this will inspire another math-dropout to give the discipline another chance. The teacher with the big red pen can't hurt you anymore! :)

The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, Part Three

2009-01-02T21:47:00.000-08:00

Part one is here, part two here.

Norman Cantor, in his otherwise excellent book Civilization of the Middle Ages, echoes the opinions of many historians when he dismisses the medieval Byzantines as "contributing nothing new" in art, theology, or technology. They dedicated themselves to being caretakers and to surviving the threats on all sides, he says. To which those of Orthodox faith say: Thank God.

Obviously, the opinion on whether the eastern Middle Ages was a fruitless era is a relative one. In regards to the engagement of the Orthodox with the Gregorian papal reform, Papadakis and Meyendorff claim that the responses of Byzantine churchmen in the 12th century are so sound that their essence remains today. In particular he highlights two such responses: The courteous public debate in 1136 between Anselm of Havelberg, ambassador to Constantinople of the German emperor, and Nicetas of Nicomedia; and a more pointed correspondence in 1199-1200 between Patriarch John X Camaterus and Pope Innocent III. As with many such documents, the Byzantine side of this correspondence has only recently been translated. While their work rested on patristic bases such as St. Cyprian, and while much further development would occur on the issue of the filioque, the defense of eastern ecclesiology against the new papal reformist claims stands basically as these men framed it.

Anselm laid out what had become the standard western position of interpreting Petrine texts in the gospels as applying exclusively to Rome, of pointing to Rome's role of final appeal in the councils, and asserting that salvation was found only in "the ship of Peter," who had ultimate and expansive authority over all the church, the plenitudo potentatis. Papadakis and Meyendorff characterize Nicetas' defense of the Orthodox position as among the most eloquent of any Byzantine churchman. He responded that Rome's primacy and senior status had always been acknowledged by the church, but expressed astonishment that the ministry of Peter should be understood in a localized geographical manner, rather than in the manner that even the West had interpreted it up until then, as a dispensation to the whole church. He stated:

"Rome has appropriated to herself, my dear brother, the monarchy which is not contained in her office and which had divided the bishops and Churches of East and West since the partition of the empire...How shall we accept from her decrees that have been issued without consulting us and even without our knowledge? If the Roman pontiff, seated on the lofty throne of his glory, wishes to thunder at us, and, so to speak, hurl his mandates at us from on high, and if he wishes to judge us and even rule us and our Churches, not by taking counsel with us but at his own arbitrary pleasure, what kind of brotherhood, or even what kind of parenthood can this be?... I ask your pardon when I say this about the Roman Church, for I venerate her along with you. But I cannot follow her along with you through everything; nor do I think that she should necessarily be followed through everything."

Nicetas pointed out that the eastern church had kept the orthodox faith with or without Rome, for where heresies had occurred, responses to them had been given. He dismissed firmly the idea of papal infallibility, stating that what was true of the Pope was true of any hierarch in Christendom: That no one person was infallible in matters of faith. Nicetas declined to mention, as he might have, that the sixth ecumenical council had already censured a Roman pope.

Pope Innocent III and Patriarch John X Camaterus would echo many of these points in their correspondence, only more forcefully. Camaterus stressed the novelty and uncanonical nature of Rome's sole appropriation of the Petrine mantle, since the apostolic ministry was confided in all the apostles and preached to all the churches. All bishops were equal, and as such no bishop could unilaterally elevate himself over the others (as the 13th century writer Nilus Cabasilus would put it, "When the pope is ordained by bishops he does not receive a higher power than a bishop; no one can give what he does not have"). Rome's primacy of honor had been a historical event based on Rome's position as imperial capital, not conferred in the Gospels. Camaterus wrote:

"Such primacy and honor have been allotted to her over the years not because Peter was made bishop in Rome by Christ (surely this is not a tradition supported or handed down by Scripture) or because he died there. Indeed, the first argument limits the honor granted the apostle by confining to Rome alone the man who was sent to circumcised Hebrews everywhere in the world; the second is hardly a source of pride in Rome. Such honor has been granted to your Church because at the time it was exalted by an emperor and senate, neither of which is found there any longer."

Modern scholarship significantly supports the Byzantine position that the papal claims were novelties, advanced in part on the basis of forgeries such as the decretals of pseudo-Isidore (documents written in 824 in France purporting to represent patristic support for papal supremacy, such as the so-called "Donation of Constantine"). As the authors put it, "...modern impartial scholarship is reasonably certain that the conventional conclusion which views the Gregorians as defenders of a consistently uniform tradition is largely fiction. 'The emergence of a papal monarchy from the eleventh century onwards cannot be represented as the realization of a homogenous development, even within the relatively closed circle of the western, Latin, church.'" (p. 167, quoting Marcus, From Augustine to Gregory the Great) The Gregorian papal reform, which had been a response to internal problems within the European churches, created an inflexible barrier which was to come smashing into the doctrinal conservancy of the Byzantine church.

The occasion for this collision was, as I wrote about in the previous post, the Crusades. What the western church had not been able to accomplish in two centuries of councils and correspondence, it took as fait accompli after the Latin sack of Constantinople in 1204. Pope Innocent III, though he did not formally authorize the takeover, nevertheless saw it as "a just judgement of God" on the Byzantines and a "wondrous achievement" which would at last put to rest east-west disunity. This blithe assumption was expressed also in the fourth Lateran council of 1215. Monastic orders such as the Franciscans and Dominicans moved in to aid in the "mopping up" of conversion. However, gradually even Latin correspondence reveals that the Roman church was recognizing that the rosy picture was an illusion.

For the Venetian doge, Dandolo, whose tomb in Hagia Sophia is shown here, the Fourth Crusade was payback for the expulsion of Venetian merchants from the imperial city several years earlier. The crusaders were aided by Byzantine prince Alexius IV, who sold the city in exchange for a promise to install him as emperor instead of his uncle Alexius III. (photo credit)

The Orthodox patriarchate and imperial aristocracy continued on in exile in Nicaea. In 1261 Nicaean general Michael Palaeologus achieved a dramatic recovery of Constantinople, and appointed himself emperor. Almost immediately, plans for a new Latin crusade to retake the Byzantine capital were set in motion. Trying to avert this, Palaeologus initiated negotiations with Rome which would culminate in the Second Council of Lyons in 1274. Rome's conditions for calling off the crusaders were, basically, "unconditional surrender" to papal claims and the filioque. No political or military intervention would precede full capitulation of the Byzantine church. No eastern patriarch or bishop participated in the preparations for this council; the only Byzantines taking part in the actual council were the emperor's own three emissaries; the patriarchate's sole apprisal of negotiations came through Palaeologus. To put it bluntly, he lied to them about what would be demanded of them, claiming that only accession to Rome's primacy and right of final appeal would be required. The patriarchate for its part insisted that no union could be achieved without an open airing of all doctrinal differences; they also would not act on their own without consultation of other patriarchs. Palaeologus, in short, ignored them, sent his emissaries, and signed on the dotted line.

The sham union of Lyons unleashed a popular revolt which encompassed clergy, monastics, and the aristocracy, and which did not abate even though the emperor undertook a brutal suppression. Patriarch Joseph I drew up a response to the synod which forcefully repudiated it. He would eventually abdicate in protest, and in his seat Palaeologus installed the controversial figure John Bekkos, an enthusiastic convert to and apologist for reunion who nevertheless met with little success in convincing others of his ideas. The Romans began to see all of this as a stalling tactic on Palaeologus' part, and seven years after the council, voided the agreement, anathematized the emperor, and began preparations for another crusade. This was averted only by a Sicilian revolt, the so-called "Sicilian vespers." Palaeologus' son, Andronicus II, moved immediately to restore Orthodoxy upon his succession, and the deposed Bekkos was replaced by a gifted intellectual, Michael II, who would labor to address the issues brought up in Bekkos' writings.

St. Thomas Aquinas was on his way to the Second Council of Lyons when he died. Papadakis and Meyendorff point out that the rise of scholasticism in the western church would create further distance between east and west. (picture link)

Next time I will summarize the 13th century Orthodox responses to the filioque claims of John Bekkos, and give some brief but interesting glimpses into how the medieval Byzantine church was structured. Being westerners, even we Orthodox are probably more familiar with the Vatican than with the endemousa! After that I will have to take a break, since I return to work on Monday and have not yet finished the remainder of the book, which looks at the hesychast controversy and the transition to modern times.

The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, Part Two

2009-01-01T13:53:00.000-08:00

Part one is here.

If you ask people when the "eastern" and "western" churches split, many will throw out 1054 as a dot on the timeline. However, many realize that the picture is more complicated than that. What I did not know prior to reading Papadakis' book is the context of Norman invasion that surrounded that time. Norman (French) armies had taken over Byzantine lands in Italy and openly declared an intention to use these as a base to attack Constantinople itself. This, while Byzantium had lost its breadbasket of Anatolia to the Turks on its eastern border. The Byzantines were hoping that the pope would offer them an anti-Norman alliance; the opposite turned out to be the case. Cardinal Humbert, the papal legate who threw down the bull in Hagia Sophia, had been appointed bishop of a region of formerly Byzantine Italy. The writings of Anna Comnena reveal that the Byzantines indeed were much more incensed over the Latins' support of the Normans against them than over the dust-up in 1054.

The Byzantines eventually repudiated the Norman armies, but this conflict was to have ripple effects in the Crusades. Papadakis points out the radical nature of Pope Urban II's call for Crusade in 1095 at Clermont. While both the eastern and western churches had recognized the necessity of armies, Urban's innovation was to tie together the idea of holy pilgrimage- which up to then had been strictly pacifist- to the idea of holy war, and to give crusaders an indulgence whereby their very militarism was seen as sanctifying. For the restless warrior lazing around in a relatively peaceful Europe, this was an attractive career option. This spiritual dimension to the Crusades was something which horrified the Orthodox, as Anna Comnena wrote, describing her shock at the warrior-priests of the Latin crusaders. Desperate due to the threat of the Turks, Emperor Alexei Comnenus had asked for a small army of knights with which they believed they could repel the advance of the Turks. What they got was a large, unruly army whose pledge to return any lands won back to the Byzantines (so long as those lands had previously been imperially held) was so shallow that it didn't outlive the first victories in Syria.

Pope Urban II had every intention, it seems, of helping the eastern church by sending the Crusade. However, matters got away from him. For one thing, the sons of those very Normans who had had ambitions of taking over Constantinople were now crusaders, notably Bohemond who was to become conqueror of Antioch. When the Latins won Antioch and Edessa, and after Pope Urban's legate died in Syria, a latent anti-Byzantinism among the Normans asserted itself. They not only installed themselves as feudal rulers, they deposed the Orthodox bishops of those lands and set up Latin ones in their place. Priests and monasteries were made to swear loyalty to the new Latin bishops; some were even martyred. The same would happen in Palestine. The Crusaders, who had experienced the Gregorian papal reform in their own lands, began to export it to the East. Bohemond wrote to the Pope:

"What, therefore, seems more proper in all the world than that you, who are the father and head of the Christian religion, should come to the original and chief city where the Christian name was used and bring to a conclusion on your own behalf the war which is yours? For we have beaten the Turks and the heathen, but we do not know how to defeat the heretics, the Greeks and the Armenians and Syrian Jacobites. We therefore continually entreat you, our dearest father, that you, our father and ruler, will come to the city which is yours, and that you, who are the vicar of St. Peter, will sit on his throne and then you will find in us obedient sons, acting rightly in all things, and you will be able to root out and destroy all heresies, of whatever kind they are, by your authority and our strength."

The successor of Urban II, Pascal, was to be much more amenable to this Roman universalism, and in fact Latinization became official policy until the Muslims thrust the crusaders out. The anti-Byzantine polemics sent back by the crusaders began to be believed. It is sometimes said that the Fourth Crusade of 1204, which brutally savaged Constantinople itself, was an errant venture undertaken by the Venetians over which the Pope had no control. While that may be true in the fine print, it is not hard to see where the Venetians would have gotten the idea. An earlier campaign, 1105, had been undertaken with papal blessing expressly to defeat the Byzantines, not the Turks. Calls for crusade against Byzantium grew, expressed by such notables as Bernard of Clairvaux. Every crusading campaign after the First Crusade had suggested an attack on Constantinople. Even long after the Latin occupation of Constantinople ended in 1261, the Roman church would occasionally contemplate the possibility of forcible reunion. During the occupation, the imperium and Orthodox patriarchate in exile in Nicaea was able to keep the former alliance of Orthodox nations largely intact, despite political pressures on the Balkans, Armenia, and Georgia. They returned to find a city plundered, its material and spiritual wealth (relics, icons, etc.) carted off to Europe. It goes without saying that this weakening of Byzantium helped lead to its eventual defeat by the Turks. If anyone wonders why the Orthodox sometimes react so forcefully to the presence of Catholic bishops in traditionally Orthodox lands, or to the idea of Eastern Catholics being "just like Orthodox but submitted to the Pope," this should help explain why.

Nevertheless I should mention that as the Byzantines viewed the Latins, so the Byzantines themselves were viewed by Armenians, Jacobites, and Nestorians. Many of these dissident groups had suffered under Byzantine rule and viewed the Latins as liberators, though apart from the Maronites of Lebanon, none themselves latinized. In Syria, these were mostly in the countryside, whereas the towns tended to be Byzantine Orthodox. Jacobites and Armenians were allowed to keep their own bishops; only the Byzantine bishops were deposed and replaced. However, this proved to be their undoing when the Muslims reasserted control, since they were seen as collaborators with the invaders. Muslim dhimmitude (the protected minority status given to Jews and Christians in Muslim lands) had never been especially generous; it created an exploitative ghetto mentality. However, Islam became much more militaristic and proselytizing as a response to the Crusades than it had been prior to them. These relatively isolated eastern churches were to dwindle even more in the wake of the Latins' withdrawal and Muslim reprisal.

Chapter Four of Papadakis' book is a fascinating overview of the various eastern churches. I'll only mention the African churches: Coptic, Ethiopian, and Nubian. Egypt never was conquered by the Crusades, so despite being anti-Chalcedonian the See of Alexandria actually maintained some distant relations with Rome until the later generations of papal universalism caused ties to be cut off by the 13th century. Copts enjoyed some prestige and a majority status until the post-Crusade era, when the anti-Crusade backlash caught them, as well. The Egyptian Mamluk dynasty which helped thrust the Latins out of Jerusalem returned home and took vengeance out on Egyptian Christians, too. Coptic and Nubian (the latter from the region which is now Sudan) Christians were also being increasingly displaced by immigration from the Arab peninsula. Nubia is interesting- you don't typically hear about their church. Apparently though they were under control of the Coptic see (which had moved from Alexandria to Cairo), they had an independent character. Their liturgy was sung in Greek, and monasticism did not have the center place it had in Egypt. Although all of them suffered under the Islamic yoke, the fact that the Ethiopian, Nubian and Egyptian churches remained unified throughout the Middle Ages probably helped them survive in better shape than some of the more isolated churches in the Middle East, and the Nestorian churches in Persia and Central Asia which were all but wiped out by the Mongols.

Legend circulated in western Europe of "Prester John," a descendant of one of the Magi and Christian king in the East whose fantastic wealth and piety would help drive out the Turk. He was variously believed to be in Persia, Armenia, India or Ethiopia. (photo link)

Next I'll summarize Papadakis' review of the Byzantines' doctrinal responses to the papacy's new claims about itself.

The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, Part One

2008-12-31T15:20:00.000-08:00

Though the "papal reform movement" is generally called the Gregorian reform after Pope Gregory VII, Papadakis writes that the reform really began earlier with the enthronement of Leo IX in 1049. "...nearly everything that we associate with the papacy in its most expansive period can be traced back to his initiative." (p. 34, quoting R.W. Southern) He would also set the tone of engagement with the Byzantine church. (photo link)

The book The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy by Aristeides Papadakis and John Meyendorff begins by laying out the conditions which sparked the papal reform movement of the early Middle Ages, and in chapter two begins to shift to where this movement will most dramatically clash with the eastern churches, the Crusades. The dissolution of the Roman Empire left not only decentralized states, but a decentralized church which came to function much like secular feudalism. A church office and its holdings were granted as a fief by a secular lord in return either for service or along hereditary lines. Rome was spiritual head of the European churches, but the papacy exerted little practical control. "Men went to Rome not as the centre of ecclesiastical government but as a source of spiritual power." (p. 27, quoting Southern) Spiritual criteria was rather far down the list of priorities for church office, and as a result, simony- the buying and selling of church offices- and licentiousness were common. Men saw ecclesiastic office as a comfortable career choice if you could get yourself into it by hook or crook.

This was the scene as some energetic young Germanic clergy, towards the end of the millennium, began to hatch plans for church renewal centered around a strengthened papacy. Parallel to this reform movement and serving as example for it was the rise of the monastic houses, spearheaded by Cluny. "[The reform movement] was at first little more than a talented band of Rhinelanders. It was not from Rome nor from Italy but from outside that the first reformer popes and their patrons came." (p. 33) Leo IX was responsive to these calls for reform and traveled extensively in German lands, holding reform synods and trying to clamp down on simony and corruption. The cardinalate was expanded and internationalized, eventually given the power of electing the pope.

As with most revolutions, the reform movement spawned its radicals. The next generation of reformers grew more polemic and more expansive in their view of the papacy's role, among them Cardinal Humbert (whose name should be familiar to Orthodox as the papal emissary who threw down the papal bull against the Greek patriarch while he was serving Divine Liturgy at Hagia Sophia) and archdeacon Hildebrand who would later become Pope Gregory VII. The honorary understanding of the Roman church's primacy began to take on a more monarchical character, greatly expanding the Petrusmystik associated with the see. Nothing unites and energizes more than a common enemy. For papal reform-minded churchmen, there were two rivals for prestige that drove this papal expansionism: Byzantium, and the German emperors. With the latter, Rome struggled over the question of "lay investiture," the power to appoint bishops. Rome won, and the pope received sole authority to appoint bishops in Catholic lands. The papacy took on more of the character of an emperor, appropriating the title "Vicar of Christ" and the imperial insignia which had formerly been used of Christian emperors, instituting a vastly expanded canon court system, reserving the right to appoint and depose kings, and asserting a universal spiritual authority unmatched by any other which it justified under new understandings of the merits of St. Peter. A new superior title, patratus, was created out of the former episcopatus.

The fact that many of the papal reformers were Germans with little exposure to the Greek fathers and the ecclesiology of the eastern church was to lead them into a conflict with their other rival, the Byzantines, who would prove far more intractable than the German emperors. The Latin and Greek churches were still in communion and had interplay even after the famous 1054 mutual anathemas. Nevertheless, the Gregorian reform was to set the stage for a conflict which has proved impossible to bridge even down to the present day. A tragic clash would come first with the calling of the Crusades, which Papadakis points out can properly be viewed as an extension of the Gregorian reform and the newly energized, consolidated, and extremely powerful papacy. Ironically the first Crusade was called with every intent to aid the Byzantine church against the encroachment of Islam. As with many good intentions, these went astray, and Papadakis argues that while Islam suffered little or no harm from the western Crusades, eastern churches were in many ways undermined and in some cases all but destroyed by their activity.

More on a snapshot of the eastern church at the time of the Crusades, and the Crusades' aftermath on them, in the next post.

Eve Reconciled

2008-12-29T21:27:00.000-08:00

I rather liked this painting by Sister Grace Remington. H/T The Anchoress.

Sacrilege, Part Two

2008-12-28T13:04:00.000-08:00

Before I go into Aristeides Papadakis, let me go back to Leon Podles' book Sacrilege again, much as I would rather turn my head and forget that I ever read some of the things I did. Yet the themes brought up here are too important, not only for the church but for our larger society. Much as people would like to think that what went on was a peculiar sickness of the Catholic Church, the facts simply don't admit that.

Though as I mentioned in my earlier post, Podles shows that sexual abuse of minors by priests is not a new phenomenon, in our own time it intersected with trends in larger society, specifically the move to see evil as mental disorder which can be cured by the application of scientific methods. In a sense the therapeutic movement returns to something which has always been recognized in Orthodoxy, i.e. that sin is disorder, not just legal infraction. However, as with so many things in the faith, if you take one piece out of the whole, it is worse than if you had left it alone. Post-Vatican II Catholics got into the therapy movement, but some placed an over-reliance on the science of psychiatry to solve disorder which is deeply rooted in the spirit. Bishops trusted that a few years of therapy "cured" the offenders. Priest-abusers and their apologists looked to so-called experts and took encouragement from the theories being tossed about that pedophilia does not necessarily harm children, and that it is repression of sexual desires which is more harmful. Some of the most notorious of the abusers, notably Paul Shanley and the Canadian sociologist-priest Andre Guindon, were founding members and apologists of such organizations as NAMBLA, which advocates "consensual child-adult sexual relationships." Take a glimpse into Guindon's view of the world, and shudder:

"It should be pointed out that the most recent studies tend to disprove that lasting harm results from pedophiliac contact itself. Rather the trauma comes from the familial panic which is the usual response to the incident. Nobody seems to care that children are exposed to violence, greed, social injustice, and family wars. But let a man kiss a young boy or touch his genitals- usually a meaningless gesture for the child, by the way- and the incident is blown up into a national tragedy. Many parents and citizens who pose as do-gooders should consider carefully whether they are not making a scapegoat out of the defenseless pedophile for their own sins. " -Fr. Andre Guindon, The Sexual Language: An Essay in Moral Theology

Guidon taught "moral theology" at St. Paul's University in Canada until his death in 1993, and was dean of the theology faculty for a time. His thoughts were echoed by a study group organized by the Catholic Theological Society of America, which published a work in 1977 that posited that almost any sexual behavior was potentially beneficial to explore. Priests and seminarians needed only to "proceed discreetly with their sexual project," because of society's pesky tendency to misunderstand. For more of this hellish logic, see this report on the ongoing debate among psychiatrists about whether to classify pedophilia as a disorder. Many of the arguments will sound familiar, because they are the same used to argue that homosexuality is not a disorder, rather simply an alternate expression of human sexuality that should not only be given not only free rein but special protection (again because of society's tendency to stubbornly cling to its taboos and thus "discriminate"). After all, there is more historical precedent for child marriage than for homosexual marriage, and age-of-consent laws are arbitrary. Pedophiles are counting on society changing in much the same way and along the same lines as the trail blazed by homosexual-rights advocates.

The logic used by Guindon is as old as the hills. It is as old as Adam saying "the woman you gave me gave to me of the fruit, and I did eat"; to wit, the problem is not really in me, it is out there, so not only should the perpetrator not be blamed, he should be pitied and protected with special privileges and discretion. In all of the responses to the abuse scandals that Podles describes, one of the few hints of spiritual health I could detect was in the response of an old monk who ran a treatment center that became a repository for pedophiliac priests. He wrote his superiors that these abusers were under besetting passions and should in no way be entrusted with the care of souls. He didn't need a raft of psychiatrists' opinions to tell him what was before him. His sage advice was ignored, and his more "sophisticated" successors ran these abusers through meaningless psychiatric models, pronounced them "cured" or at least not harmful, and sent them out to parishes and schools to abuse again.

There are warnings for Orthodoxy beyond this one. Many of the depositions Podles treats in his book can be read online at BishopAccountability.org. In the deposition of the defrocked Archbishop Rembert Weakland from Milwaukee, he describes a feeling among Catholics of being a besieged and misunderstood minority in American WASP culture, which fostered a sense of wanting to keep scandal "in the family." This, combined with an exaggerated sense of clericalism that did not allow people to confront their priests and bishops with sin, put clergy and church reputation on the top rung, above the welfare of individual souls and the health of parishes. The Orthodox could easily fall into the same patterns. The temptation to see our churches as above all of those scandals that other churches get into, the shyness about holding leaders to account because we do hold our bishops and priests in genuine reverence, and the temptation to circle the wagons because we are a tiny minority in American Christianity- these are all things of which we should be mindful.

The married priesthood does lessen the chance of certain kinds of abuse occuring, but not all of them. As Podles recounts, true pedophiles, those attracted to immature bodies, are usually heterosexual and often marry, so they are not deterred from their perversions by having a wife and kids at home. In the case of the Catholic Church's scandals, the majority of the abuse was homosexual and oriented towards youths. Some of the abusers were simply opportunists and chose boys because they had more access to boys than girls, and because boys were less likely to "tell" and the community less likely to react in outrage than if girls were messed with (we should ask ourselves why that is so). However, despite the desire of political correctness enforcers to distance the homosexual rights movement from pedophilia, Podles makes a strong case that the "lavender mafia" that all but took over some seminaries and dioceses gave cover and encouragement to abusers. The climate of dissent on sexual matters they fostered made people numb to the evil and willing not only to look the other way, but to give each other cover. One victim described how an assistant priest walked in on a priest abusing him in the sacristy, and his only reaction before walking out was to yell, "Jeff, we told you not to do that here! Are you mad?"

This lack of will to confront evil went all the way up to the Vatican. Bishops soon learned their lesson when those few who reported abuse cases encountered either a wall of silence, or recriminations for being "troublemakers," even suggestions that they were themselves troubled because they seemed to take prurient interest in what priests under their care were doing. Encouragingly, the current Pope seems to have been at times one of the few voices of dissent on this laxity.

The human cost of these tragedies is incalculable. It is too much to take in. So many of these children were already vulnerable when their innocence was taken from them. Shanley was considered a hero because of his work with runaways. One of his victims describes getting into his car because he was afraid to be on the street alone at night. When he would not play the priest's games, Shanley tried to forcibly rape him, until the boy was able to get away and go back to the streets which then seemed safer than a priest's car. This animal was part of a network of pedophile priests. One of his victims describes being brought to Shanley by another priest who had abused him, undergoing a kind of "interview" where it was decided he passed muster, then being abused by Shanley as well. He and his cousin were later brought by the two priests to a monastery where they were passed around by the monks. Fr. Bruce Ritter, founder of Covenant House and pedophile, was one of GHWB's "thousand points of light," luring kids in from the street by promising them a haven. Orphanages were as ripe fields for the predatory monks and priests, who were often assigned to them because they showed such interest and aptitude in working with children. Priest-abusers would search for victims among the vulnerable of their parishes: Boys whose fathers had abandoned them, for instance, and whose harried single mothers were just grateful that a priest was taking an interest in their sons; boys who were spiritually sensitive and interested in the priesthood or who would agonize in confession about sexual sin. They would groom them by teaching them that being diddled or raped by their priest was not as bad a sin as fooling with girls; that oral sex was a kind of sacrament between Christian men; that the abusers were in fact doing them a favor by risking their own souls to make sure their sexual "needs" were taken care of. The aftermath among these children is all the more pointed because of the spiritual impact. Children often blame themselves when adults fail them. The sense that they were at fault for what predator priests did to them, that they had committed and caused their beloved priests to commit mortal sin, was sometimes too much for victims. One despondent boy doused his genitals with lighter fluid and lit them on fire. Podles' book recounts numerous suicides and suicide attempts. The fact that parishes often reacted, on the rare occasions that abuse was reported, by blaming the victims and their families for "persecuting" popular priests no doubt intensified the already natural feelings of ambivalence and isolation that abuse victims experience.

Podles' work is one of self-sacrifice, and it seems evident that he did it as a painful labor of love for the church. He remains a Catholic and speaks as one determined to clean the wounds regardless of how much it hurts to have the dead flesh exposed. No doubt he, too, came under the same sort of criticism that kept victims and the spiritual leaders responsible for their care silent for so long. In Jane Jacobs' classic on urban planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she writes that the one thing most instrumental in preventing in crime is making sure that you have "eyes on the street." Cocooning people in isolated pockets and depriving them of their sense of ownership for the shared common area- the stoop outside their door and the street just beyond- builds a callousness that allows the unthinkable to occur right under our noses. The tendency in our society towards individualism and "minding our own business," of "doing our own thing," must never be allowed to keep our eyes off the street or stop us from saying, like a good neighbor would, "Hey, what do you think you are doing? Stop that!" The civil authorities are not the first line of defense to protect the innocent; we are. Works like Podles' book, and the websites BishopAccountability.org, SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests), and its Orthodox counterpart Pokrov.org*, help ensure that our eyes stay wide open.

* From a Wiki article on the feast called the Protection of the Theotokos: "The Russian word Pokrov, like the Greek Skepê has a complex meaning. First of all, it refers to a cloak or shroud, but it also means protection or intercession."

The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy

2008-12-27T23:07:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

We'll be celebrating next Wednesday, January 7th, but as usual it is hard not to get caught up in the festivities with the rest of you too.

Stay tuned- I'll be doing some posts on this book on the rise of the Gregorian papacy from the perspective of the eastern churches. It is a rare gem. As I've blogged about before, there is tantalizingly little out there on the Middle Ages as seen from the East.

I'm off work this week and thus well positioned to do some blogging. I know you are waiting with bated wassail-scented breath!

Sacrilege

2008-12-19T10:52:00.000-08:00

I am several chapters in to Sacrilege, the investigative account of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church by Leon Podles. Podles is a lifelong and committed Catholic with whom I was familiar from Touchstone and also because Pavel and I read his other book, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. Both are worth reading, but I teeter on the brink of asserting that Sacrilege should be required reading for every Christian. The reason I don't come right out and say that it should be is that it is harrowing. Podles made a decision not just to recount the abuse but to do so in detail (from court documents only, not private interviews), though he claims that the worst of it remained in his files. Each reader must know his own soul and his own limits, so please take my note of caution as you will.

At his blog, Podles keeps up with current news regarding the abuse, and continues his impassioned demands of his bishops for "simple" accountability and good shepherding.

As a non-Catholic I want to make a point to say that no church, indeed no institution, can point smug fingers at the RCC as though exempt from the dangers here. While there are perhaps things unique in Catholic history and consciousness that contributed to the abuse being as widespread and hidden as it was, that is something that we can leave for Catholic in-house discussion. Though I do think that having married priests makes a difference, we shouldn't think that the Orthodox world is impervious to such desecration. Before I was even considering becoming Orthodox, I read Victoria Clark's Why Angels Fall: A Journey Through Orthodox Europe from Byzantium to Kosovo, which is like a travelogue of Orthodox lands from the admittedly jaded perspective of a secular westerner (you can still read my old review of it at Amazon, currently the 3rd review down). She wrote of encountering village boys outside Mount Athos who told her they were the "special friends" of monks. Make of it what you will- it is hearsay- but if any of us thinks it can't happen, we're naive. Nor can Protestants point fingers (though the usual anti-Catholic suspects do). Clericalism provides cover for abusers in Catholicism and presumably Orthodoxy, and the institution allowed certain especially sociopathic abusers to create rings where they could cover each other's tracks and even share victims. However, Protestantism's tendency to anoint leaders with pop-star status, and the relative anonymity of loosely connected churches and institutions, carry their own dangers.

The most baffling thing I ask myself as I read is not how priests could abuse children, but how other priests, bishops and laypeople- even the victims' own adult family members- could excuse or downplay what was happening. More than one victim describes having other priests or church officials walk in on abuse scenes- some of them outright rapes, so not something which could be ambiguous- and walk back out again, saying nothing. Clerical correspondence brims with concern over possible harm to the abusing priests or to the church's reputation, but is horrifyingly, baffingly silent about the victims. Podles writes of people expressing the idea that "children are resilient, they will bounce back"- as though rape, molestation, and spiritual violation were a scraped knee. Have the times changed so much? Did people really not believe that witnessing or knowing about the rape of children required nothing of them? Try as I might not to judge, I simply can't understand.

One other point that Podles brings up early on is that it cannot all be written off as a response to Vatican II and the "sexual revolution." He gives examples of writings going back to the desert fathers warning those in spiritual service about having young boys in their purview. No doubt the Greek culture of homophilia played some role here. Podles also points to a 17th century monastic order which was dissolved because its schools had such a pervasive history of pedophilia, and to scandals closer to our time but prior to Vatican II. One abuser told a complaining mother, "Throughout history priests have sometimes kept boys." Sadly, he is probably right.

I will no doubt have more to write as I work my way through the book. I don't know what it means to the victims that their stories can finally be heard, but it seems to me that we owe it to them as a society and as Christians to listen, to try to comprehend, and above all to do whatever it takes to ensure that such horror never happens again.

Home

2008-12-16T14:17:00.000-08:00

I had a dream not long ago (a real one, as in, I was asleep at the time) in which I met a bunch of people who lived in a large house where the bottom floor was subdivided into individual units and the top floor had at least one large room that was a common area. It was on a pleasant country road, one of the dirt roads up in the "hollers" like in my home area in Pennsylvania, and I believe the people living in the house were all related.

Their living arrangement didn't make a great impression upon me at the time, but I can't stop thinking about it since then. Wouldn't it be a great way to live, if you could find the right people to share such an arrangement with you? As I envision it, the families would go their own way more or less, but share some meals (hence the common area on the top floor) and perhaps some tasks like childcare and gardening. My ideal place would be in a rural area, but near enough to a town so that people could work "town jobs." The success would no doubt depend on the kind of people involved. If any louts or mooches snuck in, there would have to be a way to deal with it.

The main attraction to me would be the chance to have a life similar to that of where neighbors help one another instead of largely ignoring each other, and where pooling resources and specialized skills could- hopefully- help lift the burdens of an individualized, compartmentalized life. What says Blogoslavia?

Blogoblivion

2008-12-09T15:42:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the light blogging. I've had some interesting things I might have blogged about, such as my reading of Aristeides Papadakis' and John Meyendorff's The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, listening to an audio CD of a book called The Sociopath Next Door on the phenomenon of sociopathy, some reading into the history of mathematics, and my continued recent addiction to the science fiction of Orson Scott Card.

However, down time at work is more scarce than it used to be, thanks to downsizing (at least I still have a job). I've also figured out that what I thought was a recurring flu were actually migraines, and so I try hard not to stare at computer screens as much as I can avoid it. For a couple months I was on the edge of a migraine almost constantly. Putting in some filtered lighting at work, turning down the brightness on my monitors, and unplugging completely more often has helped a lot. Going to the gym is still painful with all the fluorescent lighting and flickering TV monitors- more excuse not to go.

Anyway, I do plan to muster some hopefully interesting posts, if there's anyone still out there.

Any Soldier- UPDATED

2008-11-20T16:13:00.000-08:00

H/T to my former roommate Cindy for pointing this site out to me. With the holidays approaching, why not pick up some extra stuff for the men and women serving overseas? This site allows you to see the names, addresses, and requests of "Santas" in various units who distribute your packages and letters to their fellow soldiers.

Just a reminder, 'cuz budgets are tight: You would only be buying postage to a San Francisco or New York APO/FPO address.

Please also note the request not to send homemade food items (only factory-sealed), and not to send food items together with hygiene items. As the site says, "You would not believe how even factory sealed cookies taste when they have lived together in the same package with bath soap for a month in 120 degree heat."

Update: Let me share some tips after my trip to the post office, so that you won't end up being one of "those people" as I was this morning. It is really worth it to get one of the flat-rate Priority Mail boxes. There is a deal right now discounting the Large size for military addresses- $10 instead of $13. Then you can fill it up and it's the same price regardless of weight. You can't send anything containing alcohol, including perfume, even if it's just in a spray bottle rather than pressurized. Oh, and you have to fill out one of the white customs forms unless you're just sending letters. Best to do that beforehand, but wait to sign it until you're at the counter.

Reason #456732098764 to abandon public education.

2008-11-17T21:10:00.000-08:00

And most of the media, too. Or is it an advertisement for the Fairness Doctrine?

Zogby Poll

512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet.....

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we "gave" one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

source

Congratulations

2008-11-04T20:39:00.000-08:00

No matter who you are, it is a touching thing to see America elect a black President. I can't imagine what tonight means for African-Americans. Congratulations to Obama and to all his supporters. I earnestly hope and pray that he rises above my expectations of him. Given the challenges the country faces, he needs our prayers- we all do.

God bless America.

The least of these, part two.

2008-10-30T13:38:00.000-07:00

So, I will probably get back around to ignoring politics eventually, but I am finding that I have things to say. Here is some more.

I come across some very earnest, very well-meaning Christian voters who believe or are starting to believe that poverty issues are as important as abortion, and that a vote for the Democratic ticket therefore carries moral weight that sort of cancels out the pro-abortion stuff.

I think abortion and poverty/disenfranchisement are very much connected and shouldn't be separated. Why is it that Planned Parenthood locates most of its facilities in minority and poor neighborhoods? I don't have a good answer for that. Given their background with Margaret Sanger and eugenics, it would make me nervous to vote for someone who takes his cues on abortion policy straight from Planned Parenthood, regardless of whether I was a Democrat or Republican.

I don't have a good answer for the following questions, either:

Why do the Obamas and the Bidens give so little to charity compared to, for example, the Palins?
Why does Trinity United Church of Chicago's website talk about "disavowing the goal of middle-classness," but feel it is a good use of their tax-free money to build Rev. Jeremiah Wright a $1.6 million mansion abutting a golf course?
Why do Obama's relatives live in slums in Boston and Africa while he is spending $5 million on styrofoam Greek columns? Is Obama going to give back the $260 given to his campaign by his aunt who lives in public housing (and obviously cannot work so probably gets Medicare and disability, too)?

Follow-up question to all of the above: Why is there not a single reporter in America who will ask the candidate these questions?

Team Sarah

2008-10-24T08:27:00.001-07:00

I heard about this when Jeri Thompson was on Hannity and Colmes last night, and wish I had heard about it earlier. It is somewhere between an advocacy group and a fan club for Sarah Palin- bipartisan and issues-oriented. For those of us who feel Palin is the only one who represents us in the election (even if imperfectly), and are sickened by the vile stuff that continues to be put out about her in the media and which is bleeding over even into conservative punditry, a forum like this is a nice counterbalance.

The group is holding a teleconference this Saturday at 11AM-1PM EST, with a panel of women conservatives taking questions in townhall format. You can sign up at the website.

If we didn't know it before, this election should show us that the cultural elite not only wants to marginalize women with conservative viewpoints, it despises our very existence, going so far as to say a conservative woman is not really a woman and so on. We can therefore empathize a little, I suppose, with minority conservatives who are considered "Uncle Toms" for their viewpoints.

For different reasons, I get a kick out of the site Hillbuzz (caution: pinups of shirtless firemen may appear :>), which is a gathering place of Democrats supporting McCain in this election for this or that reason. I can say I have never appreciated blue-dog Democrats, the old-style liberals, more, and if Obama is elected my appreciation will no doubt grow, since the leftist fringe seems to see their day coming. I think traditional conservatives and old-time liberals should make a pact that we will each do what we can to throw a muzzle and a leash on the wingnuts in our respective parties.

Quick reviews

2008-10-20T14:35:00.000-07:00

Thanks to some Book Mooching, I've been reading mostly novels lately, and my Orson Scott Card kick continues with a book-on-CD version of Empire that I listened to last week and this weekend.

I didn't really realize what it was about when I got it out of the library, but it turns out to be timely, in a sad sort of way. It deals with an American civil war along radical left/radical right lines, precipitated by an engineered terrorist attack that decapitates the executive branch. It stretches belief to think that such a thing could actually happen, but with the Era of Bush possibly leading to the Era of Obama, it looks a hair more likely.

Most reviews of the book tend to fall along the political lines of the reviewer: conservatives positive, liberals not liking it. Since it is not a partisan or even necessarily pro-conservative book, this is probably because the heroes of the story are primarily U.S. military men and the main character is a conservative (his wife is an old-style liberal). Moderates get their villain, too. In fact the ultimate villain ends up exploiting people's desire for "moderation." As usual, I enjoyed the story for its characters rather than the underlying themes, though I thought many of the action sequences were nailbiting. Technogeeks would also find some novel weaponry and the like. Little bonus: The main character is Serbian Orthodox.

My previous reading project was Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield. I had read a recommendation for it, in a discussion of the movie 300!, by a military historian who is a frequent commenter at Touchstone. He said in essence "skip the movie, read this." I am not at all qualified to comment on the historical accuracy, but I suppose you could take his word for it. The story moves well across various subplots and of course the main one, the invasion of Greece by Persia's vast army and navy and the heroic stand of the Spartans at Thermopylae. The main character, Xeones, never gets fleshed out as much as I'd like, but serves as observer for some compelling side characters like the rebellious Rooster, bastard son of a Spartan hero who resists being elevated to citizen status, and Arete, the wife of Xeones' master and a prime mover in several of the plots. Pressfield explores the philosophy and regimen that made Sparta's fierce martial culture tick, and tries to show some of the humanity underneath it. I have read other reviews say that he humanized the Spartans too much, but I am not going to complain about that. It is a book worth recommending, and I'll be looking into some of Pressfield's other historical fiction.

I am now on to The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. In a phrase it can be called "Jesuits In Space." It starts from the intriguing proposition that, as in their missions to unexplored lands on earth, the Jesuits would be likely to be on the forefront of exploration when SETI discovers music emanating from an alien culture in Alpha Centauri. From the beginning of the book, however, you know that this mission has gone terribly wrong. Good so far.

Who are "the least of these"?- Updated

2008-10-15T13:55:00.000-07:00

I have spoken with a number of people who say they are personally pro-life, but either think that voting for Obama constitutes a "larger" pro-life position or that electing him will not have much of an impact on abortion rates, perhaps even lowering them.

If you're someone like that, I implore you to read this article from the Witherspoon Institute. I learned some new things.

EDIT: For some reason I cannot link directly to the article (that is frustrating), but if you go to the home page, it is the second article in the October 14th edition.

UPDATE: Re. some questions raised in the comments, here is a defense of single-issue voting. I think the name is a misnomer, really. It should be "voting priorities," or something which acknowledges that people wouldn't vote for a vagabond just because they agree with you on one thing. As the article also points out, the chances are good that someone who agrees with you on this issue is going to share priorities in other important issues concerning family and medical ethics. H/T both here and for original article to Touchstone.

Paglia on Palin

2008-10-14T20:38:00.000-07:00

I've tried to limit my election commentary, but I just have to say how much I like and admire Sarah Palin. I don't agree with her and McCain on everything (actually it is difficult to know if I agree with Palin or not, because quite aptly she follows McCain's lead on things like foreign policy). However that is not really why I like her, or not the main reason.

Surprisingly, liberal feminist Camille Paglia expresses almost perfectly what I like about her. Oh, and the contrarian in me also kicks in: The more people sneer at and underrate her, the better I like her. I have to thank her nomination for revealing clearly for all to see how utterly corrupt is our supposedly objective media and for one more reminder of how hypocritical are the "enlightened" liberal elite.

Downfall of a chocolate giant

2008-10-13T12:39:00.000-07:00

Now I don't have to feel guilty for thinking Hershey's is crappy chocolate.

I'm a Pennsylvanian; my dairy farm family went on our one and only family vacation to Hershey, "Chocolate Town USA." As my chocolate tastes went towards the higher end, I started buying gourmet chocolate, but would still indulge in a comforting snack on Reese's Cups at Easter or Milk Duds at the movies. But now even Hershey's cheap and sugary chocolate is going downhill in quality. A lot of their candy these days is not even chocolate anymore, but confectionary coatings. Bleh. They also have closed down the manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania and five others in North America, sending the production offshore to China, India and Mexico. More on the sad tale of Hershey's "mockolate" at CandyBlog.

So Mars' marketing that it still uses real chocolate and manufactures it in the U.S. has real purchase with me, at least. I'm not in love with Dove candies, but they are edible. Lindt, Scharffenberger and Ghirardelli also aren't what they used to be. When are people going to learn that if you mess with quality, you don't win in the end? Hershey's still makes some products with real chocolate, but how are people supposed to know? If the brand gets cacheted with the notion of "crap chocolate" in people's minds, you lose all across the board, and that is sad for a company with such a strong heritage in American chocolate making.

In other chocolate news (you know this is more important stuff than Wall Street and Washington!), look out for a trend in making spicy chocolate- chocolate with chili pepper or even curry. I picked up on this because gifts from German colleagues included several varieties of this "hot chocolate," i.e. bars of chocolate with spicy flavorings. Now I am starting to see them here, too, though it looks like marketers are trying to ease people into the idea by combining them with sweet flavors like cherry or mango.

Sedums

2008-10-05T17:13:00.001-07:00

I put in a window box of sedums recently, hoping to get some year-round drought-resistant color. I can see why people who grow sedums love them so much. They are somewhat other-worldly seeming, sort of like underwater plants, though you don't get the texture from looking at photos. In fact I've concluded that photographs don't do these lush little beauties justice.

Of course, these are young so they don't have a lot of color yet. The trailing sedum in the middle is putting out red shoots, however, and the sempervivium on the right is getting deeper red. The one on the far left is called Autumn Joy which is supposed to get red flowers. You don't see it well but tucked next to that is a little yellow guy called sedum Ogon. On the far right is a sempervivum, Autumn Sunset.

I could use some help identifying the trailing sedum in the middle and the fleshy yellow guy to its right. I don't like it when the garden center doesn't identify genus and species, but perhaps someone recognizes them.

This is a flowering Autumn Joy sedum.

source Moosey's Country Garden

This is an Ogon sedum close-up.

source

Cut down

2008-10-03T15:45:00.000-07:00

I could tell something was off, but didn't realize what until I was headed out the door to work the other day. The large tree that hugged my kitchen window had been chopped down, ostensibly (judging from the newly poured concrete) because its roots were making the downstairs neighbor's entrance unlevel.

I cried all the way to work.

We live in an ugly fourplex surrounded on all sides by ugly fourplexes. The builders took care to create something as shabby and unimaginative as possible. When I moved in, the chief virtue besides the Christian roommate and cheap rent were the trees that ringed our building. Earlier this year, one of them was sacrificed when the neighbor trespassed to cut it down, perturbed by leaves dropping on her balcony. At the time I thought, "at least they didn't take my kitchen tree."

On Sunday mornings, when in a heathen culture you can come as close to stillness as you are going to get, I used to stand and watch the squirrels chit-chitting in its branches. Last winter before a storm, the whole tree was filled with robins sheltering. I hadn't ever seen so many robins in one place, but read later that they do flock during winter. With the tree gone, I feel naked. The light is all wrong in our kitchen and living room, and just in time for autumn when light is one of the few subtle signs of the change of seasons coming on. Suddenly a crappy apartment is not just crappy but unendurable. The maze of freeways, the strip malls, the beige of my cubicle walls are unbearable.

The psychic damage of urban and suburban life can be offset by the smallest things. In New York I lived on a tree-lined street with one particularly showy maple right in front of my bedroom window. I have photos of it displaying its various guises through the seasons: snow-covered, brilliant yellow in autumn, green and full in summertime. In Turkey I was less lucky, and I felt the effects of dreariness, noise and monotony in force. The only consolation was that sometimes the ramshackle dinginess would take on its own sort of poetic quality.

To have the privilege of looking at a tree you have to be either rich or poor. The very rich can afford to buy such solace. To get it otherwise, you must go to places where jobs are scarce and growing scarcer. Inexplicably to me, my neighbor chose the concrete. A nice, new slab, as smooth as a tombstone. For good measure the landlord had the taker of our tree go around the other side of the building and lop off half of the trees there. These will probably recover eventually, but in the meantime we look through the bare, flat-hacked stumps of branches directly into the windows of the neighboring building just a few feet away. Prior to this, we had only seen green leafiness. I didn't know how rich we were.

Diversions

2008-09-30T20:59:00.000-07:00

These are tense times. What do you do to keep sane?

I write, and when it gets really desperate, listen to Turkish pop music.

There is no such thing as coincidence

2008-09-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

Two items submitted for your consideration regarding the financial crisis. Draw your own conclusions.

Don't miss the clip of Bill Clinton speaking at 8:24.

Then read this report on the Cloward-Piven Strategy. H/T Anchoress for the link.

Cruel Miracles

2008-09-26T14:57:00.000-07:00

If you need a good story to hide your head in, I have fallen hard for the science fiction of Orson Scott Card the past month or so. I am normally pretty choosy about the sci-fi and fantasy I'll read, having cut my teeth on Tolkien, but Card is just good storytelling. Really good.

Good storytelling should rank up there with brain surgery and nuclear science among the skills valued by society. It probably should rank higher, because even if we had never split an atom and were sitting around hearth fires, we would still want stories. We should definitely value our storytellers more than our bankers, because we see where they get us. Alas, we live in a technophile society, and the most homage we can pay to an author as common people is to praise them in a blog, so here is my cheap but sincere praise. Card is good at what he does.

Hart's Hope has the familiar ring of your usual fantasy novel- castles, princesses, witches, and so on- and the elements that I understand are trademark for Card's fiction: A young boy as protagonist, an unflinching gaze at how merciless the human heart can be, and an understanding that (as Fr. Schmemann puts it) man is homo adorans, a worshipping being. The mythology in this story is so unexpected, however. You would expect a Mormon author to offer a fairly conventional view of God, perhaps veiled like Tolkien or in analogy like C.S. Lewis, but here is nothing of the sort. I don't suppose I can say much more about that and not give spoilers. I read another reviewer who considers the theme to be the meaning of mercy. That is a fair assessment, but it really is just a good story. I was drawn in and when I found myself weeping at the end, and still thinking about it several days later, I knew I had found a new favorite author.

So I immediately started into Cruel Miracles, a collection of short stories. I have said here before that I like short stories and find them one of the most difficult genres for an author to do well. Every one of these stories hits the mark, despite having very different settings: A boy who can create disease just by being angry at someone, anti-technology pirates seeking to turn back the clock on civilization, a human colony after invasion by flesh-eating aliens, and a corporate privateer among a "primitive" tribe on an extraterrestrial planet. Of course what makes a science fiction story compelling is the human element, human drama, and for me the techno and otherworldly trappings had better offer a frame for that rather than displace it. Card's stories definitely achieve that. If I were to say that the overarching theme of the stories was the religious mind, that would make it sound too dull. But if you assume, as I do, that to be human is to be spiritual, then it is enough to say that these are human stories in science fiction frames. And good ones.

I am green with envy about a writer who can be both so original and so skillful. I am also on to reading Ender's Game.

Dried peppers

2008-09-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

I posted a few weeks back about my attempt to dry the chiles from my puta tree pepper plant.

Here is the finished product. I dried them mostly in the sun, but when I brought them in they were still a little soft so I finished them in the oven at the lowest setting for about an hour. That crisped them up a bit. I was surprised that even the black chiles turned a dark red.

I then ground them in a coffee grinder I keep for spices. As always, latex gloves are a must for handling hot mamas like these. And when grinding, a face mask and goggles might not have been a bad idea. :) Nothing too painful, but I was sneezing afterwards. There was danger in the air.

I figure my balcony crop (this harvest and the next one) will give us crushed hot pepper for the whole year.

P.S. I did discover how to dampen the bite if you get hot chile on your hands- when I was twisting stems off, I unwisely forgot the gloves. I didn't notice any pain on my fingers, but later I rubbed my eyelid and well... Fortunately I remembered a Food Channel show that said milk binds the capsaicin in hot peppers, so I rubbed some yogurt on the burning spot and that took care of it. Yogurt is a home remedy for sunburns, too, but not sure if that works on the same principle.

Honor

2008-09-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

Reading this story, I am struck by the tragedy, but also by the fact that this was an ordinary man. Ordinary in the sense that the heroic was not just a one-time act, but in how he went about his daily life.

"If you ever ran into Nokesville dad Thomas S. Vander Woude, chances are you would also see his son Joseph. Whether Vander Woude was volunteering at church, coaching basketball or working on his farm, Joseph was often right there with him, pitching in with a smile, friends and neighbors said yesterday.

When Joseph, 20, who has Down syndrome, fell into a septic tank Monday in his back yard, Vander Woude jumped in after him. He saved him. And he died where he spent so much time living: at his son's side.

'That's how he lived,' Vander Woude's daughter-in-law and neighbor, Maryan Vander Woude, said yesterday. 'He lived sacrificing his life, everything, for his family.'"

Memory eternal.

Feminism revealed, postscript

2008-09-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

The Anchoress recounts the new lows to which supposedly respectable publications are sinking in these oh-so-revealing few weeks. In the pages of the Canadian national broadcaster's webpage, a female writer compares Sarah Palin to a porn star and says she is "not really a female"; Republican men are "sexually inadequate." Over at Salon, Palin is a "dominatrix," complete with photoshop work-up.

I've often been a critic of the hypocrisies of feminism in particular and tolerance in general, but even I am shocked. These writers actually pulled up keyboards and wrote these things; editors actually thought it a good idea to publish such juvenile, sexist screeds. Are they writing merely for the shock value? If so, what sets apart the mainstream media from a tabloid?

Well, people of the world, and especially women of the world: At least we know what they really think of us. What it says about our democracy is another matter. I believe in a free press, and have a saying I occasionally regale Pavel with: "Let an asshole talk; everyone will figure out what the smell is." However, to have such a rank smell shooting its way out of our culture's institutions at projectile speed is pretty alarming. I don't think Fred Thompson was kidding when he said this ticket was going to drain the swamp so all the alligators could be exposed; I just don't think any of us realized how quickly, or from which direction, the alligators were going to come running. It really diminishes everyone, including Barack Obama, who I believe genuinely wants to do some good for our country.

Empedocles

2008-09-08T13:57:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's that time of year and as long as it comes only every four years, a smattering of attention to the election won't hurt. But I have been doing other things, too, including listening to some more CD courses on ancient and medieval history. This has put some bugs in my ear and I thought I'd mention a few (in a series of posts). Call them historical vignettes.

Compared to the heavy hitters of Plato and Aristotle, the Pre-Socratics are much more fun to my mind. That might be because we don't know much about them, so there's some mystery. Also, what we do know tends to come in pithy sayings and tantalizing bits. They also were more poetic and somewhat more mythical than were their post-Socratic descendants. They called upon the gods, the Muses, to enlighten their philosophy, rather than relying on the brute force of human reason.

Empedocles is the source of the idea that the earth is composed of four elements- Earth, Wind, Water and Fire. These elements were drawn and held together by Love, but Empedocles considered that Strife was an equally powerful force and would probably gain the upper hand in the end. Empedocles was known to the later Middle Ages through Aristotle, and his seeming prediction of the end of the world drew attention. In Luca Signorelli's fresco in the cathedral of Orvieto, Empedocles is shown looking up in horror and surprise at the apocalypse (or is that an "I told you so"?).

Plato and Aristotle insisted that the world was completely orderly and that if we put our minds to it, eventually we would figure it all out. We are still stuck with that dreary idea today. The Pre-Socratics held that there was a bit of chaos to the world (or a lot of chaos, in some cases). Empedocles wrote of creation:

"On the earth many heads sprung up without necks and arms wandered bare and bereft of shoulders. Eyes strayed up and down in want of foreheads. Solitary limbs wandered seeking for union. But, as divinity was mingled still further with divinity, these things joined together as each might chance, and many other things besides them continually arose. Shambling creatures with countless hands. Many creatures with faces and breasts looking in different directions were born; some, offspring of oxen with faces of men, while others, again, arose as offspring of men with the heads of oxen, and creatures in whom the nature of women and men was mingled, furnished with sterile parts..."

I don't know how scientific we find that explanation, but it provides some images. I also think the idea that all is ordered and tied down does not fit with reality, either that as narrated by modern science or by "creation science." Plato and Aristotle have cast a long shadow. Maybe it's time for Empedocles, Pythagoras and Heraclitus to have a turn.

Feminism revealed

2008-09-02T12:05:00.001-07:00

I have often said, and will here again, that feminists hate women as women really are. Women are great when they can serve as a boilerplate for the ideology, but women as they are in the real world? Forget it.

I believe we are seeing this curtain pulled back in the clearest form that I have ever seen it in American public life in my own few short years. Perhaps through all of this, we will finally see a much-needed redefinition of the word, such that it will be understood that the ones claiming the title are the biggest hypocrites when it comes to actually living it out. And that they are hopelessly out of touch with anyone outside their echo chamber.

The Anchoress fumes. I'm with her. It is hard not to take all of this personally.

Terry Mattingly tries to pick his jaw up from the floor about his journalistic colleagues. Good analysis, as always.

Women's Space gets it.

Are we not his guests every day?

2008-09-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

I love this story, from Christ Is In Our Midst:

"Last summer we were in Macva. We were awaiting a train at a small station. I noticed an old peasant woman near the tracks. She had a withered old face, but one which was illuminated by that miraculous, mystical light which is often noticed in the faces of spiritual people. I asked her, 'Who are you waiting for sister?' 'Well, for whomever God sends me,' she said. From further conversation we learned that every day she comes to the station to see if there is any poor traveler who might be in need of bread or shelter. When one such as this appears, she accepts him with happiness as though he were sent by God, and takes him to her house which is about a kilometer away.

We learned through still more conversation that she reads the Holy Bible, attends church services, fasts and observes all the laws of God. Her neighbors later told us that she is considered to be a real saint.

At the end, I tried to praise her evangelistic hospitality. Before I had finished, she sighed and said, 'Are not we His guests everyday, all of our lives?' Tears shone in her eyes.

O sweet and merciful soul of the people! My young friend, if you are called a teacher of people, you could often be ashamed of yourself, but if you are called a student of the people, you would never be ashamed.

May the mercy of God shine upon you."

Sprinkled with spices!

2008-08-30T23:07:00.000-07:00

It's no secret I am a fan of Trader Joe's. Two years ago I discovered their Winter Blend Coffee and swooned over the mixture of red and green peppercorns, cloves and cinnamon stick pieces in with the coffee. Last year, however, the quality of the coffee took a nosedive. It had that syrupy, bitter taste that we all know and love (or not) from roadside diners.

Now, I make my own. I've started doing so this week, having decided that even if it is in the 100's, I'm going to will autumn to come. I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and say lalalalalala itsOctoberitsOctoberitsOctober. I'm going to read Russell Kirk ghost stories and make crockpots full of soup and bake pies. I'm going to wish I could watch Penn State football, if California TV stations didn't shun the Big Ten.

In any case, if you want to try a homemade winter blend, it is quite easy. You just dump a few peppercorns, whole cloves- go light on these or the coffee will be too puckery- and cinnamon stick pieces in the coffee grinder with some good beans and voila. It really is lovely. It reminds me of the "spice coffee" they talk about in the Dune novels. Except I haven't noticed it causing prescience yet.

Puta Pepper Tree, Part Three

2008-08-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

After I did some harvesting a few weeks ago (supplying a Mexican co-worker with hot peppers galore), some of the new growth came in not black but bright red. Pretty! They also look dangerous!

I found suggestions on how to dry them at Pepper Joe. This should provide us pepper flakes throughout the year if it works with these particular chiles. You sew them through the stems on a line and hang them in the sun to dry. There might be an easier way to dry them than this, but it was fun to sew peppers. :)

My next gardening project, when I get to it, is to put in a window box of sedums, which will hopefully provide some autumn and winter color and draw the bees and butterflies. They have been visiting less since my lavender plant (alas) passed on.

Babies

2008-08-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

I know this has been a blog theme lately, but among the coverage of McCain's pick of Sarah Palin as VP someone linked to this NY Times article that reports that 90 percent of Downs Syndrome babies are aborted. 90. 9 out of 10. What is wrong with this country?! Down's children are functional, often very affectionate, and the medical advances these days mean they can lead substantial and even independent lives. Of course, future generations will not know that, because the chances will be very slim that they will ever know a person with Down's.

Watch out when they discover a prenatal test for autism- kindergartens will be closing down across the country. Maybe someday they'll find a fat gene, and then we won't have to look at fat people anymore. People already select for gender, but perhaps parents of the future will also be able to look in the womb and see if baby's got daddy's ugly nose or mom's flat feet, and down the toilet she can go so that they can go back to the drawing board. Look out if scientists ever discover a "gay gene." Perhaps then social activists will find a kind of abortion worth objecting to.

Maybe someday people will go pick out babies like they pick puppies at a pet store. With a 90 day guarantee in case you change your mind. That would be choice in action!

On a less sarcastic note, I was quite moved by this podcast interview with Sarah Elizabeth Oftedal, the director of Martha and Mary House in Escondido, CA, an Orthodox maternity home. She speaks frankly about her own experience of having an abortion, and gives some eye-opening insight into the aftermath of abortion on women and their families. As an example, studies show that the children of women who have had an abortion have higher rates of maladjustment even if they don't know about the earlier abortion, the theory being that women have trouble bonding to a child after such an experience. Oftedal's message is ultimately hopeful, however, mentioning the church's teaching of the Holy Innocents and giving the message to women that have had abortions: Your baby is praying for you.

Totten on Georgia

2008-08-26T13:27:00.000-07:00

I think this report from independent Middle East journalist Michael Totten puts some much-needed context to the Georgia-Russia conflict.

The context he (or rather his experts on the ground, corroborated by eyewitnesses) puts to it is a revival of the Soviet strategy of planting seeds of ethnic conflict that can be stoked at appropriate moments. I was reminded of Rwanda, not only by the reports on Georgia, but on the Armenian-Azeri conflict that escaped a lot of notice in the West. In Georgia, the shenaningans go back a long while, but in this specific situation there are eyewitness accounts of Russian bombings and troop movements one or two days prior to the August 7th date usually given for when Georgian president Sakashvili supposedly "provoked" the conflict.

H/T to Instapundit.

Book Mooch

2008-08-21T13:34:00.000-07:00

I've jumped into book mooching and have given away a lot of our shelf-fillers. The way it works is that you sign up and list books that you have that you wouldn't mind giving away. You get points for signing up, for listing books, and every time you send a book or give feedback on a mooch. With your points you can then "buy" a book that someone else has listed. Everyone pays the postage to send their own books out.

I'll probably always put more into it than I get back, because I don't buy fluff books and it doesn't seem there are a lot of "heavyweight" books available- those probably get resold to textbook stores or on Ebay. But, I like the idea of people helping each other out and books I don't necessarily want or need going to people who want them.

And the more people who sign up, the more selection there'll be. That's where you come in, dear blog readers. :) If anyone is a Moocher, my handle on there is GinaSJ. A lot of my good inventory got snapped up right away, but I have a few lingering.

Why Obama shouldn't be hired as lawn boy, prequel

2008-08-19T10:29:00.000-07:00

In an update to my previous post Modern Infanticide, please read, if you can, an account of the case that led to the bill being introduced into the Illinois Senate which Obama opposed:

"That family had wanted a baby, but when they learned that theirs would be born with Down syndrome, they wanted an abortion. For that, they went to Christ Hospital in the southwestern suburbs of Chicago, which is affiliated with the United Church of Christ.

In 'induced labor' or 'prostaglandin' abortion — a common procedure at the hospital — the doctor administers drugs that dilate the mother’s cervix and induce contractions, forcing a small baby out of the mother’s uterus. Most of the time, the baby dies in utero, killed by the force of the violent contractions. But it does not always work. Such abortions sometimes result in a premature baby being born alive. Sometimes the survivors live for just a few minutes, but sometimes for several hours. No one tried to save or treat them — it is hard to save someone you just mauled trying to kill. But something had to be done with them for the minutes and hours during which they struggled for air.

Stanek says her friend had been told to take this baby and leave him in a soiled utility closet. She offered to take him instead. 'I couldn’t let him die alone,' she says..."

Nurse Jill Stanek held the baby for the forty-five minutes it struggled to live, and later, petitioned the Illinois Attorney General to help make sure this would never happen again. Obama was the only state senator who spoke in opposition to the bill.

I am shaking as I type this. When I wrote my other post, I didn't know that the baby in this case had been aborted due to Down's Syndrome. I am named (middle name) after an aunt who had Down's Syndrome, my father's youngest sister. She had been a late baby, a surprise to my grandparents, the sort of child who might be aborted these days even without knowing she was handicapped. She died of Down's complications while my parents were dating, but my mother told me she was the most lovable of people and very much treasured by her family. I've seen her Sunday school drawings and exercises and her school notebooks.

Sometimes I think I don't want to live in a world where people would choose to do what these parents and doctors did, and where other powerful people would protect and justify such "choice." Obama's wife is a hospital PR person. If there were any justice, politicians like Barack Obama and administrators like his wife would be mopping up the detritus in a hospital- if they were lucky- rather than running them and making laws that affect them.

Related: The flip side. H/T to Orrologion.

Syrian Orthodox martyrs in Iraq

2008-08-18T21:13:00.000-07:00

The online journal of the British Orthodox Church/Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate is always a good source of information and news about the Oriental Orthodox. Many of the reports from abroad are sad ones, like this one:

"Father Youssef Abdel Aboudi, aged 49, Syrian Orthodox parish priest of the Church of St. Severios the Great in Baghdad, was shot dead outside his home in Baghdad on 5 April 2008 by attackers who used a pistol with a silencer, witnesses said. His wife, they said, who stood near him, did not realise he had been shot until well after he had fallen.

His house was just around the corner from the heavily barricaded Cathedral. He and his wife had just returned from the market and as he went to close the gate after parking his car, he was hit by three or four bullets to the chest and shoulder. The gunmen escaped.

He was the second senior Syrian Orthodox priest to be killed this year. Church officials estimate that since the invasion in 2003, about 40% of the Syrian Orthodox community, the country's second-largest Christian group, have fled their homes.

H.H. Patriarch Ignatius Zakka spoke of his martyrdom and said he 'was slain for sticking to the faith in the Lord Jesus in performing his priestly duty' and said he had cried at his death because it is a great loss to the Church and to his family.

The Armenian Archbishop of Baghdad, Avak V. Asadourian, who is the Chairman of the Christian Council in Baghdad, spoke of the exodus of Christians from Iraq, 'We do have the courage of faith, the outpouring of love, but because of the war, you see death and destruction, the manifestation of evil. Our people are lacking hope, and so they are leaving … Young people are faced each day with death and destruction. They are faced each day with being kidnapped or facing the agony of having a loved one who is kidnapped.' Yet those who stayed were steadfast in the faith, 'We have new martyrs in the church in Iraq. I know of no one incident in the last four years where priests have converted to another religion because they have been threatened,' the Archbishop stated, adding that the same was true for lay people. 'So in Iraq the faith of your brothers and sisters in Christ is strong enough to face martyrdom.'"

Abouna Youssef, pray for us.

Transfiguration

2008-08-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

I recommend this podcast by Frederica Matthewes-Green, touching on themes of the Transfiguration of Christ. It includes mention of the fascinating process of how the American Byzantine Society preserved an ancient icon of the Transfiguration at St. Catherine's of Sinai, and an observation (originating from Armenian Orthodox writer Vigen Guroian, who wrote Inheriting Paradise: Orthodox Reflections on Gardening) that in consuming plants we actually eat light.

The icon she mentions can be seen here. I personally witnessed the fruits of the American Byzantine Society's work at the Church of Chora, and we owe them quite a debt of gratitude for bringing to light and preserving part of the collective memory of the faith. Photos of Chora and of many other fascinating places can be seen at Visiting the Past.

Solzhenitsyn sent back to school

2008-08-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

With all the talk of the departed Alexander Solzhenitsyn, rightly praising his courage and his prophetic voice about the course of western civilization, Pajamas Media provides a bracing reminder of his detractors among left academics. In the Norton Anthology of World Literature, for instance, there is this juxtaposition and a commentary from Solzhenitsyn which in this light certainly seems to be prophetic:

"...under 'classroom strategies' in the Norton instructor’s manual, teachers are told that they are likely to encounter the problem of students accepting the 'truth' of what Solzhenitsyn has to say: 'Because the story answers to most of the myths and preconceptions Westerners already have about Soviet life, the problem will be to make sure that students read it with the same degree of resistance with which they would normally confront any other piece of fiction.' Here we have the apologists for communism directing teachers: All that you’ve heard about the brutality of communism is merely part of our 'myths and preconceptions.' Students must be reeducated to 'resist' the testimony of Solzhenitsyn as dramatized in his fictional account.

No such 'resistance,' however, is asked for the selections from Marxist authors, native American tribes, or the 'colonized' writers like Wole Soyinka who extol the African tribal custom of having the king’s horseman commit suicide after the king’s death (a practice to which Christian 'colonizers' insensitively object). Instructors are told to 'Discuss the meaning of ritual suicide among the Yoruba as it is explained in Soyinka’s play,' and then ask students, 'Under what circumstances may suicide be the right choice?'

It is this kind of sophistry that Solzhenitsyn had in mind when he said in his commencement speech at Harvard in 1978, 'Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges.' "

So, the professoria of the West will not be taught what to think about socialism by an upstart Russian, simply because he happened to suffer under socialism. The Soviets weren't real socialists, after all! (Just as I have heard it argued that they were not real atheists.) I used to really like the Norton Anthologies, which I used in some of my literature classes in college, but I did notice the increased politicization when I picked up a newer version. It is after the typical manner of literature departments, where books are divided according to which race or gender they pander to. Since most of the fruits of western civilization fall to the "white male," well, you know what we do with those apples. Not even a man who, on the face of it, would seem to garner leftist sympathy, having suffered tremendous oppression, makes the cut. Apparently it was not the right kind of oppression- the fashionable sort.

Monastery coffee

2008-08-15T12:27:00.000-07:00

I would like to put in a plug for the coffee brewed by the Russian Orthodox monks of All-Merciful Savior Monastery in Vashon, WA. It's available online here. I really like the Christmas Blend, but that won't be available until October (dunno about you but I am ready for it to be autumn!). My next favorite is Abbot's Choice. The four-bag coffee pack for $39.75 is a good way to try them all.

The Anchoress raves about another monastery coffee roaster, Mystic Monk Coffee made by Carmelite monks in Wyoming. They offer free shipping for orders over $40. They also have flavored coffees, if you're into that kind of thing.

It's more than you'd spend at Trader Joe's, but I'd rather spend $2 supporting American monasticism than $1 elsewhere.

Modern infanticide, or why Obama shouldn't be hired as lawn boy let alone as President.

2008-08-14T14:44:00.000-07:00

This is my second and hopefully my last commentary on the national election process. I pine for the days when people stayed in their village and what the King did you did not even know, much less care (if you were not in too much obligation to a noble lord). Alas that the tax man brings the federal government to our door, and so we must pay attention to them even if we don't want to. At bottom, I think such processes are much ado that changes nothing.

As to Obama vs. McCain, Senator Obama thrice tried to quash a bill in the Illinois Senate which would have stipulated that medical care be given to a baby who "accidentally" survived an abortion procedure. In ancient times, that was what was called exposure, and the early Christian church fathers had a thing or two to say about the practice. St. Macrina was known for saving such babies who had been left out to die and raising them up. Her brother Gregory of Nyssa writes movingly of the devotion such women had for her to whom they owed their very lives: "Saddest of all in their grief were those who called on her as mother and nurse. These were they whom she picked up, exposed by the roadside in the time of famine. She had nursed and reared them, and led them to the pure and stainless life." (Life of St. Macrina) We can try to tell ourselves that it's not the same because the death occurs in a sterile room on a metal table or in a hospital incinerator rather than by the side of a road or in the mouth of a jackal. But we would be kidding ourselves.

The above-mentioned bill eventually passed in the Illinois Senate, after Obama left it to go to the U.S. Senate. There, a similar bill had fortunately already passed with the support of even the most ardent pro-abortion legislators. What kind of person cannot see their way to it?

I know that arguing over a lawmaker's non-action concerning such a thing obscures the real reality, the outrage that such a law would have to be passed in the first place, stipulating that a mother and a doctor should do what comes most natural to the human feeling of even the coarsest of people: Protect a baby. And that passing such a law allows lawmakers and the rest of us to feel (maybe) that we're not living in a completely evil society, despite the perverse irony that, apparently, in our national consciousness the only difference between a legal, socially acceptable abortion and a legally culpable infanticide is the fact that medical science doesn't always get the head-crushing or chemical-flushing just right.

All that be as it may, John McCain would have to be pretty depraved to warrant voting for Obama over him. There are other reasons I think it would be foolish to hand the Presidency to Obama. And I hear rumors that McCain is looking for a "pro-choice" running mate. If that turns out to be the case, this year more than most will conform to the saying that politics is the choice between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

Related: First Things on the historical myths feminists spin about abortion in history.

Squirrels

2008-08-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

While digging around in my plant containers this weekend, I found a couple of "treasures" hidden in the soil- whole peanuts. At first I thought they might have been in the potting mix as loosening agent, but as I thought about it, I couldn't imagine that I hadn't noticed when I was first planting.

Now, I am wondering if our neighborhood squirrels haven't been digging in my pots and hiding their stores. None of my plants have been destroyed, but in pots where there is empty space I have sometimes noticed holes which I put down to soil shifting due to watering, and sometimes soil is spilled out. People at Garden Web do report squirrels digging in container plants. The little critters would have to be gutsy since mine are on a first floor balcony and not in a yard, but they do scurry across our roof sometimes, and it would be only a short hop from there up and down from my balcony. I would love to catch one of them in the act. Thus far they've been civilized, so no foul, but I would get a kick out of it.

Reading

2008-08-10T12:40:00.000-07:00

A brief rundown on what I've been reading, and which will likely figure in future blog posts in the form of reviews or at least mentions:

Still slowly making my way through The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk. It's tough going, as I have only superficial interest in political philosophy, but many of the ideas do resonate with me. The idea is that society is best structured on the innate, small, enduring institutions rather than on utopian ideals implemented across broad swathes.

For my lunch hour reading, I just started Andrew Louth's Discerning the Mystery, available from Eighth Day Books. A more Ortho-speak title I cannot imagine, but from what I gather, this essay by the Durham University professor deals with the aftermath of the Enlightenment on the way we think about the spiritual world. Macrina at Vow of Conversation has been blogging extensively about the book.

Over our vacation and the weeks following (amazing that it took me only a few days on vacation to read as much as it then took me a few weeks to do back in the daily grind), I finished the first volume of The Way to Nicaea by Fr. John Behr of St. Vlad's. I think it could serve as a primer on the early church fathers, picking out some of their themes and showing how they built on each other, starting with the New Testament writers.

In the car I've been listening to a few CD courses on early modern history, The Age of Henry VIII and History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts. This works together well with the first two books I've mentioned, since so many of the seeds of modernity were being settled into English and therefore American life during this period. I was struck, for instance, by the fact that Thomas Cromwell colluded with Henry VIII to get all monastery properties into the Crown's hands, enriching its coffers for Henry's part and allowing Protestants to fill in the ecclesial gaps to Cromwell's advantage. The effect of this was the liquidation of all the church's hospitals, schools and hostelry for the poor into state hands- the creation of the welfare state. All other institutions in English society were weakened so that one of them, the Crown, had no competition. This is pretty much where we are today, if you cobble in a few parliamentary gizmos to the state apparatus.

Bedtime reading is currently The Angelic Avengers by Isak Dinesen. Dinesen's stories often start out as period drama and evolve into fairytales, poking holes between the facades of European gentry life into the supernatural. This one is told from the perspective of two orphaned teenage girls, reminiscent of Charles Dickens except not quite so complicated.

Speaking of Dickens, over several weekends I've been watching and enjoying the BBC miniseries Bleak House, with Gillian Anderson. At first I couldn't stop thinking "Scully with an English accent," but she does a really good job of playing the appropriately-named Lady Dedlock. Being Dickens, it's darker and grittier than your usual Jane Austen story, and the producers seem to want to intensify this with Law and Order-like scene changes. You know, the "dun-dun" sound effects. That is annoying, but the DVD's are good watching apart from that. I don't know the book at all so I can't say how faithful they are to it.

Puta Tree Pepper Plant, Part Two

2008-08-09T12:45:00.000-07:00

Say that ten times fast!

I don't think the photos I posted a few weeks ago did the puta tree pepper plant justice, since it's fairly exploded with chilis. If you grow this plant, expect lots of hot chilis for you and all your spice-loving friends. I am going to try to dry them and keep them for winter. I have no idea if this will work.

The other potentially exciting thing is that some lemons are starting to grow. They look like undersized limes still, but I am hopeful they'll keep growing and start turning yellow soon.

Reading more about growing citrus in containers (yes, you should do that before you buy and pot something), I think I may have erred in putting it in this big of a container. I suspect this causes it to grow lots of leaves but not as much fruit as if it were more potbound. Live and learn.

It's gotta be Friday

2008-08-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

H/T to Nivera for sending me off to Youtube looking at Eddie Izzard clips. This one's classic (language warning).

Orthodox publishing

2008-08-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

I suppose this is a vent of sorts, but also a pondering of whether Orthodox publishing might be done in a different way. I cringe whenever I hear an Orthodox recommending so and so's book, because the likelihood is great that when I go to amazon or Abebooks I'll be informed the book is out of print. Oh, but here is a list of used copies available... for ludicrously usurious prices. I don't care how formative a book is, I won't pay $150 to find out. Even the Orthodox books which are in print, from one of the few houses which print such things, are expensive. Deepening my frustration, libraries aren't exactly snapping up Orthodox titles either.

I believe in paying my due, but in the age of the PDF document and the digital book, can't Orthodox publishing be done differently? We are the runt of the theological and scholarly litter, to be sure, but other niche markets publish this way (I think- I am not trying to pass myself off as an authority on how publishing works here). Orthodox scholars and writers and publishers need to put food on their plates, I understand, but there has to be a middle point where the people who actually would read their books and pay for them- in other words, ME- can afford to do so and can get access in the first place.

Or is there some conspiracy, I ask tongue in cheek, by those who think Orthodox Christians should be praying and not reading theology anyway?

Tensions in Egypt

2008-08-05T23:28:00.000-07:00

An interesting article about the rising tensions resulting from, on the one hand, strengthened Coptic institutions and on the other, fundamentalist Islam being promoted from our "friends" in the Gulf.

The article describes an attack on monks reclaiming the ancient monastery of Abu Fana, which predictably receives lukewarm response from the Egyptian authorities:

" 'Is it a land dispute when they kidnap monks and torture them?' Brother Michael, 34, asked from a hospital bed in Cairo, where he cradled an arm hit by shrapnel in the attack.

'Is it a land dispute when they tell you to spit on the cross, when they try to make you say the words to convert to Islam?' asked Brother Viner, 30, sitting on Brother Michael's bed. He wore a neck brace because of the beating he received in the attack."

Profoundly disturbing

2008-08-01T17:17:00.000-07:00

The socialist indoctrination of young schoolchildren. Next there will be re-education camps, for those of us who slipped through the cracks and actually think for ourselves. (Ah wait, we already have that in the form of workplace "sensitivity training.")

It is no wonder that schools produce students who can't find China on a map or spell calculus let alone do any. When would they have the time?

A video for animal lovers- UPDATED

2008-07-25T19:43:00.000-07:00

I love this video! OK, not the gratuitous Whitney Houston music, but, it made me cry.

A lion story

UPDATE: Here is some fascinating backstory on this video, about the lion's unlikely life as a local celebrity in Chelsea, London, and his re-introduction into the wild in Africa. Usually I am an advocate for wild animals remaining wild and being respected as such, and when I first saw the video I was sure the lion was thinking nothing but "oh, lunch has arrived." But I think the chord this story strikes is our awareness that that is not the way it is meant to be. Humans, at least, were not meant to be killed by animals, but to rule over them, and to do so in a respectful and beneficent way.