Old World Swine

A Few Days Off

Weird that we're now experiencing the reverse of the Ice Storm power outage of this past winter... it's in the nineties and our air conditioning is out. The last few nights have been spent trying to figure out the best positions in which to sleep, so that the maximum surface area of skin is exposed. Repairman is on the way, but is facing a backlog.

One benefit - it's nice having dinner on the screened porch and counting hummingbirds and fireflies. I like to use my best "southern plantation owner" voice to intone, "Dinnah on the veranda, deah?"

I did manage to expose the AC's evaporator coils, but they are cleverly designed so that no mortal will be able to clean them. They didn't appear that dirty, however, so I expect the unit is low on coolant. The fan on the outside condenser unit is also having problems. I noticed that it was getting power, but not running. I could hear the electrical relay kick on, but the fan remained motionless and would just hum. Using all my mechanical knowledge and experience with tools, I managed to get it going by poking it with a stick. I can't do that all summer, though.

It seems like a fortuitous time to take a few days off for some family R & R. We are heading out this morning and will be back Thursday.

Startling Pattern Emerges

It's like they're all just waiting for us...

I think my grandfather's death was the first that really affected me as it happened, though I understood the concept of death, having seen a lot of T.V. westerns, along with media coverage of the Vietnam War, the Kennedy assassination, the Munich Olympics and other deadly events.

I've seen a number of deaths, since, and taken note of many more, but the tight grouping of celebrity deaths in the last week has made me look back over my experiences of death, and I have begun to sense a pattern.

Stay with me, here. I'm no conspiracy nut, but it begins to appear that no one is safe, and that the chances of death for any one of us - by my rough figures - approaches 100%. For instance, the older I get, the more people in my general age group pop up on the news, having died in one way or another and it is most often treated as a surprise, if not a shock.

But the shock, to me, may be unjustified. I don't want to start a panic, but it looks to me like we may all be headed for the cemetery.

"Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom."
Psalm 90:12

Last week we heard first, of course, of Ed McMahon, then Farrah Fawcett, then Michael Jackson... next, Billy Mays and this morning I read that Fred Travalena and Gale Storm passed away.

I have no great observations to make, except to say that the only genuine shock for me would have been if Michael Jackson had somehow lived to a ripe old age. I did not see how he could manage much longer. Over the past few years he appeared to be a shell.

I have good memories of Fred Travalena, who often appeared on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, was all over the variety show circuit, and also starred with Rich Little, Frank Gorshin and other master impressionists on The Kopycats - a comedy show (which I never missed if I could help it) built around impressions. He was also an extremely prolific and successful voice actor.

Most people may not know anything much about Gale Storm, but my wife will remember My Little Margie (which was old already when we watched it) from our days as college students, when we could count our TV channels on one hand.

For a long time, when driving by by a cemetery, I have had the distinct and unshakable sense that those dwelling under the tombstones are watching and waiting and maybe chuckling a little... laughing at the living and their frantic and petty preoccupations. Sometimes, I can't help but laugh, too.

This idea of the connectedness of the living and the dead runs deep in the human heart, and is confirmed in the doctrine of the Communion of Saints... which is just the Church expounding on the teaching of the Lord that "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive."  (Luke 20:38).

A Nice Bit of Belloc

Sean at The Blue Boar posts a delightfully bracing excerpt from Hilaire Belloc's The Four Men, which you really should read. In it, a wan and tepid ascetic (The Poet) is taken to task by his companions, because of his pessimistic and puritanical denial of the essential goodness of Creation.

Not that there is not room for asceticism... far from it! But the discipline of the flesh should always affirm and never deny the greatness of God's creative work in nature. All desire - properly understood - is a desire for God. The point of mastering our desires is to properly orient them to their ultimate source - the Creator God - not to deny them altogether.

As I said in Sean's combox;

Life in Christ means *real* life... with what C.S. Lewis called "some blood and sap in it". Not the negation of desire (as the Buddha proclaimed), but the fulfillment of every true and eternal desire of the human spirit.

Every false desire is simply one of these true desires twisted back on itself. The Gospel does not kill desire, but untwists our desires to make them straight and true again ("true" in this sense like a well-planed board, or the path of a well-crafted arrow), so that we may follow them to their source... the creator God, One in Three.

What I've Been Talking About

Photo: Mardetanha -  WikiMedia Commons

My problem with the Iranian situation and calls for more active involvement from the administration occupying the White House has always been a question of being almost wholly ignorant of what we are cheering for.

We all know that Ahmadinejad is a loon just a few ticks below Kim Jong Il in grandeur, we have all heard his inflamed fantasies of a final comeuppance for the Jews and their chief enabler, the Great Satan, the United States. We remember his face from the first Iranian revolution, where he was involved with the attack on the U.S. embassy, the kidnapping of American citizens and their continued imprisonment. He deserves to be deposed.

But Ahmadinejad doesn't really run the country. The country is run by the Supreme Leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a network of clerics, mullahs and others. You may remember Khamenei's predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini. The Supreme leader controls the armed forces, has veto power over any legislation, and can even summarily dismiss the President.

The defeat of Ahmadinejad will result in almost no real change in the actual governance of Iran.

Now, let's look at the opposition leader, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, for whom we are supposed to be rooting. There is some hazy idea of the opposition in Iran being idealistic freedom fighters, longing for a more open, free society and better relations with the West. While a number of the opposition supporters may talk this way, and many may believe what they say, the actual candidate supposedly representing this new Springtime In Tehran is barely distinguishable from Ahmadinejad, in terms of his pedigree.

According to this Jeff Stein article in The American Conservative, for instance, you may be interested to learn that;

...three decades ago Mir-Hossein Mousavi was waging a terrorist war on the United States that included bloody attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.
 
Mousavi, prime minister for most of the 1980s, personally selected his point man for the Beirut terror campaign, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur, and dispatched him to Damascus as Iran's ambassador, according to former CIA and military officials.

The ambassador in turn hosted several meetings of the cell that would carry out the Beirut attacks, which were overheard by the National Security Agency.

"We had a tap on the Iranian ambassador to Syria," retired Navy Admiral James "Ace" Lyons related by telephone Monday. In 1983 Lyons was deputy chief of Naval Operations, and deeply involved in the events in Lebanon.

"The Iranian ambassador received instructions from the foreign minister to have various groups target U.S. personnel in Lebanon, but in particular to carry out a 'spectacular action' against the Marines," said Lyons.

God help the people of Iran, but I can't see how we can claim to really have a dog in this fight. The world is a complicated place, and we like to see things in simple, good against evil terms, but we ought not let that blind us to the messy realities.

Yes, protest the death and oppression and lack of freedom... but don't expect any real change in Iran as a result of our efforts, even if we "win" and Ahmadinejad is sacked. Mousavi will be happy enough to receive our help, now, but once in office he would just as likely give us a khanjar in the back, as a way of reassuring those Iranian hardliners who might have questions as to his real loyalties.

Stuff I Like About Modern Life

I run the risk, at times, of sounding like a crusty old curmudgeon because of my frequent critiques of all the myriad absurdities and outrages of the modern age. Most of these are simply the effects of allowing some foggy ideal of Progress to become a substitute for actual thought. This has resulted in a society that is a lot like a Formula 1 race car with a broken steering wheel... plunging with impressive speed in one random direction after another.

This might be less harmful, if the overall lay of the land was level and even, but it isn't. Thanks to original sin, the natural tendency of man is to follow Gravity down the slope into oblivion. We are making some crazy turns, and some of them even head in the right general direction, but without a real awareness of where we need to go all our natural efforts tend downward. It is this reality of a speeding society with no steering that makes me and many others feel that it might be wise to get out and walk for a bit - or at least stand and gather our wits - and let the race car do what it will without us (while trying to stay out of its way).

At any rate, I thought just for kicks I would begin making a list of things that the modern world has brought us and for which I am truly grateful. You may add your own. This is in no particular order, just a stream of bloggishness...

STUFF I LIKE ABOUT MODERN LIFE

THE INTERNET / Social Networking - Okay, I know... I have the same criticisms as any sane person, but there are a lot of benefits to the Worldwide Web (at least at present... who knows what kind of regulation waits around the corner?). Anyone can find almost anything they hope to learn or study, if they can navigate their way through all the crap, which takes just a little experience and common sense. You can also reconnect with old friends and make new ones. Not to sound maudlin, but I am grateful for a number of people I have met and interacted with through blogging and otherwise poking around.

DOMESTIC TECH - Showers, air conditioning, clean water, refrigeration, electric lights, toilet paper... all that cool stuff we take for granted. I just hate that we take it for granted.

NYLON TENTS - A great leap ahead in my lifetime. I remember the old canvas jobs, with wooden poles and rope. I'll take a nylon tent any day. Same with nylon packs and other outdoor gear.

SNICKERS

TUBE PAINTS - Artists used to have to grind their own pigments, or have an apprentice do it for them. Some still grind their own, which I totally support and admire. I would be curious to learn how, but life is short.

MY DIGITAL CAMERA / PHOTOSHOP - Some still love the Kodachrome (very recently defunct), but the digital brings more freedom, flexibility and quality for a heck of a lot less money. Remember being limited to 36 exposures? Remember waiting to see how your prints would come out?

CARS - I love cars. I love driving. I love road trips. My gripe with cars is actually not with cars, but with the way most cities and suburbs are laid out so that I can't go ANYWHERE interesting without driving. I would love to walk more... walk to work, stop and get a bagel and a paper, wave at my barber... walk as part of the natural rhythm my life, rather than as another Planned Activity for the narrow purpose of something called "exercise". Back to cars, though... I would love a '59 Chevy Impala. That is the most bombastic, bodacious driving machine. The instrument panel looks like it came out of a Roswell UFO. You can tell that America was fueled on unfiltered Camels and black coffee when that car was built.

MOEDERN MEDICINE / Medical Workers (Doctors, nurses, EMTs) - A great deal to critique here, as well - people are generally way too eager to pop pills and dcotors are much too quick to precribe them - but MAN!... What they can do these days is routinely miraculous. I used to have horrible, debilitating back pain, but after the surgery on my spine 14 years ago, I have had not one problem. The scar is the size of a quarter. My niece - 18 - is alive today with someone else's heart beating in her chest. She is in robust health. One wonders where health care will be headed in the next decade or so, what with reform on the way, whether we like it or not.

POWER TOOLS - And other readily available home improvement stuff. Arr-ARRGH!

AVIATION - I'm nuts about anything to do with flying. Space, too. I always take the window seat, if I can, and gawk the whole time like some kind of 10 year old. I don't get people who find flying dull.

CELL PHONES - See the first entry, above. Yes, I know the frustrations, but you have to admire that our communicators can do way more than Captain Kirk's could. Last summer, when my daughter and I were driving my old Plymouth Neon through desolate Northeastern Colorado in 100-degree heat, having a cell phone helped take some of the edge off the anxiety of imagining a breakdown.

KING of the HILL - and other examples of well-done animation, like SpongeBob, Animaniacs, Wallace and Gromit, and old NickToons like Angry Beavers and Invader Zim. Not to mention classics like Bullwinkle and of course, Looney Tunes... And I'd better add a whole entry for;

PIXAR - the seamless 3-D effect is just the icing on the cake for their latest movie, UP. A wonderful film, by any standard.

CATHOLIC MEDIA - EWTN, Relevant Radio... all the great stuff. Hey... Father Corapi, Father Benedict Groeschel, Bishop Sheen, Catholic Answers Live, Dale Alquist's Apostle of Common Sense (a whole show about G.K. Chesterton)... what's NOT to like?

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Please feel free to continue the list. I'm grateful most of all for the timeless things... my family and the eternal God, One in Three. But I'll take this age, if we can slow down enough to find some sanity.

More on Iran

Esteemed reader Sleeping Beastly writes;

There is something about this "twitter revolution" that strikes me as wrong, somehow. I recognize that I really don't know what's going on over there. I just wonder how much of what I'm seeing online is fabricated. I've seen some photos from Tehran where police uniforms and protesters' signs had English words on them. I suppose I can understand some protesters writing English on their signs. Maybe. But police shields? That on top of my unease with the whole Twitter-branding of the whole thing.

The assumption on American websites seems to be that the election was rigged, but no one has really presented any evidence that that's the case.

And whether or not the election was rigged, what makes this batch of student protests any different from similar protests we see every year in other countries (including the United States?)

See, that's what I mean about not knowing even how much we don't know. Remember the bogus allegations of widespread vote fraud against G.W. Bush & Co.? Entirely trumped up protests, amplified and carried along by a willing liberal press. I have not seen any discussion of the evidence of fraud in Iraq, but then again, Andrew Sullivan seems to be the go-to guy on the situation, and I don't normally frequent his blog. Perhaps he has some information about it.

I think having protest signs in English is pretty standard, as everyone is very aware of the pervasive Western press.

The police signs are a little harder to figure, though... uncomfortably reminiscent of Saddam's clumsy attempt to manipulate public opinion by providing "evidence" that the U.S. had cruelly bombed a baby formula factory.

His evidence consisted of a video of some factory workers, all wearing jumpsuits with the English words "BABY MILK FACTORY, IRAQ" emblazoned on the back in huge block letters.

Yeah.

Still, with all the languages and dialects in the region, and the history of British colonialism, it might be that English serves as a convenient and common second language... but I have no idea.

Many Thanks to New Liturgical Movement

I should have mentioned this earlier, but my work (via my daily painting blog) was featured recently at the respected and august New Liturgical Movement online magazine, which you really should check out if you are not familiar with it. NLM is a treasury of  information, inspiration and resource materials for anyone interested in the restoration of the traditional liturgy of the Roman Rite.

As a result of the mention at NLM, it was nice to see a spike in hits at my daily painting blog this past week. I haven't really been marketing it as I should, so it ordinarily languishes in the murky backwaters of the internet. I am trying to Twitter again, though, and hope to make that and Facebook part of a more organized and focused effort at naked self promotion.

I'm tickled to report that more of my work will soon be presented in another very respected online magazine of Catholic culture... I promise to let you know when it happens, though, and not a week after the fact.

Meanwhile, I've got to get back to painting and sketching.

Still no word on any of the teaching jobs I applied for last week. Prayers would be welcome. If I do not end up teaching this school year, I will have to redouble my self-marketing efforts.

More Small Laws

Someone, please TELL me that this new, insane ban on "flavored" tobacco does not apply to pipe tobacco.

Good grief... the gub'ment now decides that tobacco can't be flavored? Will flavored alcohol be the next target of these Orwellian measures? After all, some alcoholic drinks are made with fruity-'licious flavors that might appeal to kids.

"When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws." - G.K. Chesterton

Another Iranian Revolution

Acknowledging that I know next to nothing about international politics, the Middle East, and Iran in particular, I have to throw in with those who say that our official, public response to the current unrest should be muted and general, supporting broad ideals of free expression and condemning violence - as the Obama administration has been doing.

The thing is, an individual can barely begin to understand the cross-currents, motivations and tendencies of his own society, let alone one as foreign to us as a totalitarian Islamic state half a globe away. We have no idea even to what extent we don't know what we don't know. Insinuating ourselves into the mix by making what can't help but be inflammatory public statements would be a mistake. In terms of publicly and officially rooting for one side or another, we can't do anything but screw up.

But just as the current revolution in Iran has been spread and fueled by the internet, private messages of support and encouragement from around the world can and should be expressed in the same way. So, in the event that anyone involved in the Iran crisis may be reading;

To the extent that you are striving for a more open, free and humane society, I support you and pray God's blessings on you. As Eric Scheske has noted, the test of any society is in how well it can balance the demands of order and freedom. Too great a concern for order produces tyranny. Too great an emphasis on personal freedom (at the expense of social order) produces a decadent, weak and self-indulgent nation... which also leads to tyranny, sooner or later. Only a hard-working, sensible, self-reliant, just and moral people can make freedom work. Once we begin to rely on the state to provide for us in any of those categories, the game is pretty well up.

My prayer is that Iran - after the dust has settled - will find itself closer to achieving that balance.

Here is a video link showing the death of a 26 yr.-old student, named Neda, who has become a symbol of the new movement in Iran. She was allegedly shot by a Basij sniper while protesting in a crowd. It is graphic and disturbing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvPHxmXYILA

(I post the link rather than the video because there is a formatting issue I haven't resloved that makes the video too large for my column width).

Deep Fried Southern Culture

Reader Adam writes;

Maybe McDonalds is homogenizing and dumbing down food, but that's not their biggest evil, if you buy the general message of the film "Super Size Me"

I don't know that I can really blame McDonald's for making people fat. Anyone ought to have enough sense to know that you can't eat cheeseburgers, fries and shakes every day... and McD's is offering more healthy alternatives, now.

My dad was very unhealthy toward the end of his life. He smoked, was overweight, didn't exercise and sat in his La-Z-Boy a lot. People applauded the regulation of big tobacco. McDonald's and other restaurant chains are being sued now... should we go after La-Z-Boy next, for making unhealthy and addictive furniture?

I can't stand the thought of restaurants being regulated by the government or penalized for offering rich food that people like. We had some pretty rich food at my Mom's house, yesterday, I can tell you. Burgers and brats. We are planning a trip to Memphis, this summer, that includes a stop at Dyers restaurant on Beale Street (this is exactly the kind of local culture that I have learned to love so much) where the hamburgers are deep fried, in (reputedly) the same grease they have used since 1912. There used to be a sign on the wall, apparently, that said "We dip 'em, and McDonald's don't".