The League of Bearded Catholics

Heavenly Hops

A ditty my college friends used to sing*:

In heaven there is no beer,

That's why we drink it here,

And when we're gone from here,

Our friends will be drinking all the beer

Theologically, technically correct (maybe), but for all the wrong reasons. The implication is that heavenly life will be unspeakably dull, so we'd better get in some good times while we can... the exact reverse of the truth.

The Bible gives us images of stuff in heaven - streets of gold, the Temple made of jewels - and of course we are told and affirm that our bodies will be resurrected, but spiritual and incorruptible. What all this will actually be like, the actual experience of what C.S. Lewis called "the furniture of heaven", is impossible to know, and probably useless to speculate on.

Beer in heaven?  I will only say that, whatever creative ideal beer expresses, whatever aspect of God's glory is dimly reflected in it, will be fulfilled in an ultimate sense in heaven.

In Hell, I'm almost certain, there will be great, foaming pints of every kind of beer imaginable to tease and tempt those tormented in the flames, but it will all - no matter how rich and dark - taste like Bud Light.

*This demonstrates how extensively the art of the Drinking Song had been corrupted since the time of Hilaire Belloc, mere decades before.

Tolkien's "Eucatastrophe"

At the Chronicles of Atlantis blog, there is a brief introduction to Tolkien's literary idea of "eucatastrophe", a word he coined and which would translate (from the Greek) roughly as "good destruction".

Athos (the blog's inestimable author) also graciously provides handy links to the Tolkien Gateway website, which (in Wikipedia fashion) gives information about Tolkien, his life and work.

Tolkien's "eucatastrophe" - good destruction - is not to be confused with the mere modern taste for tearing things down... quite the opposite. No, not even the opposite - the cure for such an affliction of mind. Eucatastrophe entails making great sacrifices to preserve what is good and beautiful in the teeth of destruction.

It expounds on the biblical principle that "all things work together for good to them that love God", along with its negative corollary - all things work together for ill to them that hate God. This triumph of good, far from being accomplished via a deus ex machina, is completely organic, woven into the fabric of creation. Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction. This is also why the proverb warns "Do not envy the wicked".

The job of the hero, the one who overcomes, is simply to persevere in doing right, "Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him." - James 1:12.

The hero's job is explicitly not to overcome by any means possible. This, in fact, may be his/her chief temptation... to secure a victory on the ground by doing evil, to move in his/her own strength and understanding - even on behalf of "the good guys". Of course, the other major temptation wil be to quit... or even to rest.

Perseverance in doing right may cost the hero dearly, but the worst that can happen is that he/she will be defeated and die defending the Good... and receive a heavenly reward - what Tolkien calls, "the consolation of the Happy Ending" characteristic of the Fairy Story. Choose to ignore the moral law - even (or perhaps especially) in a "good" cause, and the best that can happen will be that one become a citizen of Hell for eternity in exchange for a hollow and very temporary earthly victory.

In Eucatastrophe, It is not the destruction that is good, but good that is suddenly brought out of destruction... a crisis that stirs up self-forgetting love and courageous action in the hero.

Pope-Slapped!

By posting this picture from an anti-Catholic protest in Germany, the folks at Irreligion.org totally pay the highest possible compliment to the Pope without realizing it. I don't recommend you visit the site, but credit where credit is due... the dinosaur just needs a beard, though.

On a forum where I hang out, Christian Pipe Smokers, a member has coined the term "Pope-slapped", which is a fun term for (as near as I can gather) "receiving a papal smack-down".

It was meant, I think, in a playfully pejorative way, as the one who coined it is definitely not a Catholic, or even very sympathetic with Catholic practices.

The press has lately noted with some genuine astonishment the fact that the late Pope John Paul II "whipped" himself, or as ABC News sort-of more accurately phrased it, he made use of an "ancient ritual of self-flagellation". The word "ritual" is not really helpful or correct in this case, methinks. Flagellation is an ancient practice, not so much a ritual.

The press, and others, are surprised to find that the Pope in fact "Pope-slapped" himself. They are surprised for a couple of reasons, I suppose.

For one, John Paul II was often thought to be a kind of post-modern, media-savvy pope, popular with the kids... with his baby face and gentle smile, he was sort of harmless and fuzzy as popes go, though the secular opinion makers somehow contrived to be continually shocked and disappointed that he remained stubbornly Catholic. In the modern mind, images of private self-flagellation and warm public smiles and waves are not easily juxtaposed. Cuddly father figures who ski and play soccer just don't whip themselves over dusty old concepts like Sin and Penance. His baby face concealed an Inner Beard of apparently impressive proportions.

And then there is the practice, itself. Flagellation involves two concepts absolutely alien to contemporary thinking; a living, ancient tradition, and self-mortification. The modern West has been all about moving forward and leaving behind - dropping like a hot rock - anything too reminiscent of the past. Traditions are things you throw off.  This sort of thing was supposed to have died out with the Inquisition and the Crusades and Galileo and (oh, where's a handy cliche when you need one?)... did I mention the Crusades? Truthfully, the practice goes back way past the Middle Ages to the Desert Fathers, at least.

Self-denial and discipline are also unpopular ideas. Oh, you can sell any sort of diet plan, but the ones that sell best seem to be the ones that promise to make an end-run around the slow and arduous spiritual process of training in Moderation. The exercise programs and their varied machines all hint at miraculous results in "20 minutes, three times a week". The idea of physical disipline for the sake of spiritual health is generally seen as nonsense talk, except for a few New-Age health spa types, and bring Sin into it and they are amused at best and positively affronted at worst . Even most Christians don't get the concept of actual, you know, penance.

The Church, the ancient and living Church, when seen clearly is a lot like seeing a real, honest-to-Pete dinosaur - say a Triceratops - walking around in Manhattan... a thing that (by all natural indicators) ought to be not only dead, but long extinct. Finding a fresh Triceratops carcass would be a nearly unfathomable mystery, but seeing a living specimen, walking - to hear it and smell it, to feel the pavement shake - that would hardly fit into one's brain.

And yet, that is what the Church is. Her critics even love to call her a dinosaur, and talk about her stone-age doctrines, but they are thrown into deep confusion when the dinosaur seems to move and breathe ("Just out the corner of my eye... was that? Naw... couldn't be..."). It doesn't fit into their heads. When the modern world imagines a popular and loveable public figure whipping himself over his sins, they feel the breath of the dinosaur on their very faces for a moment. It's disconcerting.

Over the last several decades, some in the Church (those more infected with the modern virus) have talked about The Dinosaur Effect as a kind of scandal or an embarrassment. It shocks and confuses people, they say, makes them uncomfortable. They have proposed hiding the dinosaur, dressing it as a more popular and less threatening animal, maybe, like a Panda or (that's it!) a Dolphin (people love dolphins... they poll very high). The spectacle of the Church as a living, breathing, ancient and impossible creature with eyes and scales and teeth makes them wring their hands.

But a huge fake panda or dolphin people can probably see in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The Church is meant, in some sense, to be gawked at, to make jaws drop, even if in a kind of horror, as people might look at a dinosaur in Manhattan. We are commanded to love our neighbors, not to make them love us.

"Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man." - Luke 6:22

Miss Roginski's Reading List for Boys

Nothing goes with a pipe like a good book.

The Princess Bride was a novel before it was a movie, a novel (by William Goldman) which was passed on to me by a friend who had the good grace not to say much about it beforehand. If you like the movie, find the book, if it means crossing rivers and climbing mountains.

For years I had the pleasure of holding The Princess Bride as a kind of secret treasure, known only to a few. My favorite part of the book is barely touched on in the movie (which I'm not knocking... our whole family love it), that is, the story of the Six-Fingered Sword and the rise of Inigo Montoya as the Greatest Swordsman Who Ever Lived. It is only after having fed on the rich history of the legendary Inigo and his singular blade that one can hope to truly appreciate the momentous and earth-shaking significance of his duel with the Man in Black atop the Cliffs of Insanity.

But I'm gushing.

Early in the book we are given a fantastic preface, in which Goldman lays the mythical groundwork for The Princess Bride as written by the immortal S. Morgenstern, the greatest literary genius of Florinese culture.

As part of this preface, we are introduced to one Miss Roginski, a flummoxed elementary school teacher doing her best to deal with a very bright but very contentedly underachieving schoolboy.

In short, thanks to his father, the boy develops a love for adventure stories, and Miss Roginski gamely meets the challenge of his growing appetite for literature. She recommends authors and books, and just for fun I have - armed with my trusty pipe - been working through the list to make sure I have read them all. I just finished Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - a story most Westerners know, but I think surprisingly few have actually read. It's so short, more a pamphlet than a book, and it cost me all of a quarter at the local used bookshop. Incidentally, our man Chesterton thought very highly of Mr. Stevenson.

The thing is, to become a man, it's preferable first to be a boy, and I maintain that no boyhood is complete without knowledge of these authors' works (Thanks, Miss Roginski!);

Robert Louis Stevenson

Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped

Sir Walter Scott

Ivanhoe, Rob Roy

James Fenimore Cooper

The Last of the Mohicans, Leatherstocking Tales

Alexandre Dumas

The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo

Victor Hugo

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Miserables

Did I Miss Something?

This blog is really not intended to muck about in politics, but... *harrumph*... perhaps I was busy trimming my beard, or maybe my nose hair (which requires far greater concentration), but I seem to have completely missed out on any national conversation or debate over this, which I'm sure must have been vocal and abundant.  Far be it that anyone should get all worked up over such a trivial matter, but in looking over the instructions for the IRS Form 1040, I recently found the following;

 

Expiring tax benefits.

The following benefits are scheduled to expire and will not be available for 2010.

... The exclusion from income of qualified charitable distributions

 

Tax-deductible charitable contributions are... just gone? In the words of my old Building-and-Loan pal, George Bailey... "Do you realize what this means?"

Did I read this wrong? Am I dreaming?

UPDATE: So, a couple of knowledgable commenters at Jimmy Akin's blog have pointed out that, unlike the "charitable tax deduction", the "exclusion from income" is limited to direct contributions of things like IRAs to charitiy. So, a follow up question: how will this affect charities and donors? How greatly do charitable organizations count on this sort of funding?

It doesn;t sound as dire as I had imagined.

The Miracle of Fermentation

Paul Stilwell, at his blog Spike is Best, posts a marvelous meditation on wine and the wonder of fermentation;

There is a limitless range of symbols to be read in nature that mirror God's supernatural working and manifestation in His Son. While it is true that Christ would have suspended the laws of nature to make the wine in Cana, it is also true that the natural enzymatic process of fermentation anticipates this first public miracle of Christ; by mirroring the Cana miracle in the rather miraculous process we call fermentation.

Is it an accident that so many stupendously wonderful things are fermented? Bread, cheese, wine, beer... Kimchee...

St. Paul said;

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. - Romans 6:4

Like the wine grape, we must die to be raised to a new, higher life, or as C.S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity;

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for a bird to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

Internet Interrupted

Apologies for the radio silence the last few days. Two unexpected family funerals in one week, and a fair amount of travel associated with each. Your blog author was concerned about a number of things, but blogging was not particularly high on the list.

I'm thinking about an internet rule; for every two hours spent blogging or otherwise on the net, I have to either, A) go knock on the door of one of my neighbors, just to see how they're doing, B) call a family member, or C) write someone a brief note or card and mail it. Handwritten notes are cool.

In fact, letter writing (on real paper, even) would be a tremendous activity to pull from the cold ashes of the bonfire of tradition that was the 20th century . Ooh! I wonder where I might find a good quill pen? Or maybe a nice ballpoint. My father-in-law collected them, and had some real beauties. I tried one, and it was like writing on silk.

*(BTW... apologies also that the membership packets are tardy. Their release from our secret, underground distribution center is imminent!)

"Just Dried Leaves, Boiled"

"Now listen. If I want to be toned up, calmed down, invigorated or anything then it’s very simple: I'll just have a cup of tea." - Arthur Dent, from Douglas Adam's The Hithhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The last post on pipe smoking brought to mind the similarities between the ritual of packing and smoking a bowl of tobacco and that of brewing and drinking a nice pot of tea.

Both processes involve the manipulation of a mixture of dried leaves, which is somehow comforting. It's easy enough to believe that the bottles of popular drinks which line our store shelves are filled with concoctions entirely synthesized in a giant lab, somewhere. Though the ultimate source of both tea leaves and tobacco are, in all honesty, a mystery to me (I can at best rely on hearsay), there is reassurance in the seeing, smelling and handling of something organic. I can choose any number of different kinds of loose tea or tobacco.

One may be given to wonder, at times, who first decided that drinking the broth of boiled tea leaves, or smoking dried tobacco, was a great idea. The origins of things like beer, wine and cheese are not difficult to imagine. People just stumbled on these things in the natural course of life before refrigeration. But there had to be a kind of imaginative leap where tea and tobacco are concerned. How many times do we normally find ourelves walking past a plant and thinking "By gum! I'll bet that would be just terrific dried and boiled up into a broth", or something. It had to be inspired.

There is a built-in sabbath involved with making hot tea. You can't really make a pot of tea in a hurry. It gives one a chance to stop and think a bit, to contemplate the warm vapor rising from the cup. I've come to drink less and less of the kind of drinks you find in plastic bottles or cans, and have been drinking more tea, both of the traditional English variety (a hot cuppa), and the traditional brew of the Southern U.S., iced tea.

I never drank much iced tea growing up in Alaska, but in migrating southward to Arkansas I was introduced to the Baptist Tea of my sainted aunt (who very recently passed away). There was not, I don't think, a great deal of tea in it, but what was lacking in tea flavor was more than made up in sugar. A large pitcher of it was light and clear enough that you could easily read a newpaper through it, and sweet enough to put a horse into a diabetic coma. It's an authentically American tradition.

Both the Art of the Pipe and the brewing of tea have the advantage of connecting us with a living, tangible cultural and geographic heritage. They each, in a small way, move Production closer to home, and they involve a calming and contemplative ritual that is pleasant in itself. Try getting all that from a can of soda.

In addition, if everyone drank more home-brewed tea, it would greatly reduce the current practice of shipping unreckoned kilotons of water from point "A" to point "B" on a weekly basis. Shipping dried leaves is much more efficient. Very "Green".

Tea is not, of course, one of those things known since the Dawn of Civilization, like bread and wine. Like tobacco, it came along fairly recently, as reflected in these quotes from Messrs. Belloc and Chesterton;

"You know, I hope (though I myself have only just thought of it), that the four rivers of Eden were milk, water, wine, and ale. Aerated waters only appeared after the Fall." - G.K. Chesterton, from his essay entitled Cheese - Alarms and Discursions, 1911

"Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone." - Hilair Belloc, from his essay entitled On Tea - On Nothing & Kindred Subjects, 1907

Pipe Lines

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.

 

- G.K. Chesterton - Broadcast talk 6-11-35

(quote courtesy of The American Chesterton Society)

As a preface to the following excellent post by League member Tobin Rachford, on the subject of pipe smoking, some thought should be given to two great and opposing internal threats to a lively and humane culture in the West; Profligacy and Puritanism. The mere debauched urbanite and the astringent Pharisee are alike in their lack of proper gratitude for the delights of earthly life.

 

The profligate cares only for worldly and bodily pleasures, dismissing the possibility of any real spiritual importance to anything. Some reject the idea of any transcendent dimension to our actions, while some may allow for a God, but doubt his goodness.

 

The Puritan, through an unconscious gnosticism, rejects the body, the created world and all things sensual as base and evil, over against spiritual things, which alone are good and pure... the "total depravity" of Calvinism. This is one reason why we moderns build such ugly churches.

 

One rejects the goodness of God, and the othe rejects the goodness of his creation.

 

The Church - in her teaching and her lived tradition - acknowledges both the goodness of God and the goodness of His creation, top to bottom, in opposition to both the Puritan and the Profligate. Let God's name be praised in basilicas, and in bread and in beer, in feasts and in fasts. When our ascetics give up wine or meat, they at least ought to know they are giving up a good thing.

 

There will be those who will object to any positive mention of tobacco, as there are those who will object to any positive mention of alcohol, rejecting even the very possibility of moderation in the use of these things.

 

Long story short... according to scientific studies, like this 1979 Surgeon General's report (National Institutes of Health)... cigarettes are just awful for you. They are not only the most unhealthy form of tobacco, but because of their ease of use and other factors, they are very addictive.This does not make their modrerate use impossible, only very difficult. Cigars are less habit forming, as well as being less physically harmful. Pipe smoking is the least harmful and addictive form of tobacco use, and is very easy to moderate, because each smoke requires a kind of elaborate ritual, which becomes in itself part of the pleasure. So, considered as a whole statistical group, there is only a negligible difference in the lifespans of pipe smokers and non-smokers... and moderate pipe smokers (a few smokes a day), like moderate drinkers, may actually live longer than non-smokers.

 

The absurd panic over second-hand (and now third-hand!) smoke, we will not even address, except to say that being locked in a room (or a car, or a closet) with a chain smoker is, by plain common sense, not going to be good for anyone... but the millions of deaths commonly attributed to second-hand smoke every year we frankly hold to be obvious bunk.

 

In short, we can confidently say of pipes what Chesterton said about booze... "We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.".

 

And now, Tobin Rachford, for The League of Bearded Catholics;

 

 

 

My Pipe Smoking History,

with a nod to Tolkien, Lewis, Belloc, & Chesterton

 

by Tobin Thomas Rachford

(December 2009)

 

 

I took up pipe smoking just exactly two years ago.  I am still not a very experienced pipe smoker, since I only indulge a few times a month, maybe once a week at most (okay, sometimes twice).  I still consider pipe smoking to be basically an outdoor sport, so the weather has to cooperate as well. And when I do smoke, it is usually only one bowl of tobacco at a sitting, which takes me maybe an hour to go through.  At that frequency, I have never experienced the dreaded tongue bite, and I always look forward to my next opportunity to indulge this relaxing hobby.  There is nothing frantic or compulsive about the briar.

 

I was raised to hold cigarettes in utter contempt, but I could never bring myself to harbor any evil thoughts against pipes.  According to my mother, my great-grandfather on her side was a pipe smoker.  He kept a pipe in his breast pocket, and the advice which he passed along was to load your pipe very carefully, like you were packing a suitcase.  My grandfather on my father’s side is a pipe smoker, and still indulges on occasion (so I hear) at 90-years old.  One of my childhood memories is the smell of a leather tobacco wallet (was it black cherry?) which he kept in the drawer of a workbench in the basement. 

 

The back cover of my old copy of The Hobbit, which I first read as a child and cannot sufficiently praise as an adult, had a picture of J.R.R. Tolkien, pipe in hand, looking very grandfatherly and very authorial.  That was enough to convince me forever of the virtuousness of pipe smoking.  As a child, I doubted that I would ever have the wisdom or stature to take up a briar.  A few years ago, and now fully convinced of the fact, but with 40-years in sight, I decided there was no need to wait any longer.  After all, as G.K. Chesterton quipped, “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly!” (Platitudes Undone).

 

 

My pipe collection is still exceedingly small.  My first, and primary, pipe is a bent-stem briar, a Dr. Grabow no less, a piece of drugstore Americana.  It has a wonderful grain and seems to smoke just fine, for all the better I know.  Perhaps wider experience will disabuse me some day.  Then, I have a long-stemmed churchwarden pipe.  My “Gandalf pipe” is for the good stuff.  All I know about it, is that it is briar and was made in Italy and wasn’t very expensive.  My last pipe is a straight-stem corncob, a Missouri Meerschaum (is there any other kind?).   I favor over-the-counter burley tobacco, which I have seen referred to affectionately as “codger burley,” in a corncob.

 

 

I began pipe smoking with those unknown aromatic blends which are measured out from big, glass jars in the tobacco shop in the local mall.  I didn’t, and still don’t, know much about them.  The blend that I enjoyed most, and still buy sometimes, is called “Sunset.”  I think it is basically a burley blend, with a little dark Cavendish and a rum-flavored aromatic component.  And I think everyone will confess to enjoying a good black cherry aromatic now and then.  Captain Black satisfies my occasional craving for vanilla.

  

But, basically, I enjoy burley tobacco – just straighforward, uncomplicated burley – and I am partial to the old American standby, Prince Albert.  I consider the Prince to be “good tobacco,” even if it does happen to be sold in drugstores (but, I concede, it is better from the tub than from the individual pouches).  If I was marooned on a desert island and could have only Prince Albert tobacco in a Dr. Grabow briar, I could be perfectly content.  I love the raisiny-chocolatey, granny apple-caramely flavor of Prince Albert.  The best puff is always the first, when I am first lighting the bowl.  Then down towards the middle I get those reliable chocolate notes, and billowy clouds of white smoke.  As a relatively new pipe smoker, however, I have the problem of smoking too fast and too hot.  I get moisture in the bowl and have to re-light frequently, especially towards the end.  So sometimes I reach instead for Sir Walter Raleigh burley, which has a different cut (cube-cut) from Prince Albert (crimp-cut).  The chunkier cut of Sir Walter helps me to slow down a little bit, and I enjoy the nuttier flavor as a change of pace.

 

 

I recently opened up a tin of Mac Baren’s Burley London Blend.  It is a rich burley blend, with some Virginia tobacco added in for a little sweetness. This tobacco really takes burley to a new dimension for me.  There is some kind of top note that comes on strong when you first open the tin – maybe a little rum, maybe some cocoa, maybe both, I can’t really say – so I had to air it out a little.  The tobacco is a coarse-cut, ready-rubbed, flake tobacco.  I’m still a little confused about what to do with it.  I pretty much just wad it up and stick it into my briar.  All I can say is, I will have to indulge this blend very sparingly, or it may ruin me for my usual burley.

 

 

 

 

My first foray into Latakia tobacco was McClelland’s Frog Morton blend.  When I saw the label and realized the connection with J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, it was a no-brainer.  For those who don’t know, Frog Morton is a village in the Eastfarthing of the Shire.  The smell from the tin reminds me of wet oak leaves in Autumn with a good campfire in the background.  The flavor is full and smoky and sort of peppery, I suppose.  Really good stuff.   I am eager to try Frog Morton on the Bayou, which includes a little bit of Louisiana Perique tobacco.

 

I also have some other McClelland blends around here:  Christmas Cheer 2009 (description: “made with a special selection of beautiful, ripe, sugary, deep-orange, South Carolina Border-Belt, flue-cured, aged Virginia tobacco from the 2003 crop”), and Dark Star (description:  “bright, yellow, sugary, top-grade Virginia tobacco, triple-aged and stoved”).  Concerning this last, like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, it beggars description.   Finding words for the impression made by a particular tobacco blend can be challenging, and I am at a loss to characterize the experience of McClelland’s Dark Star.  For the time being, I will say only this:  like C.S. Lewis’ Aslan, it is certainly good, but definitely not safe.

 

 

My current wish-list of tobaccos includes:  Mac Baren’s Navy Flake, Golden Extra, and Scottish Mixture; McClelland’s Oriential Blend #14, British Woods, and Blackwoods Flake;  Peterson’s Old Dublin and University Flake;  and the Spilman Mixture, by Iwan Ries.  The world of pipe tobacco is as varied and interesting as that of artisan-brewed beer, single malt scotches, or good tea (McClelland’s Frog Morton Latakia blend reminds me of Lapsang Souchong tea, because of the smokiness.)  A little tobacco lasts me a long time, however.  It will be a long time before I ever get bored with discovering new tobacco blends.

 

And just for good measure, although apropos of nothing, here’s an obligatory picture of Hilaire Belloc smoking a pipe and sporting a distinguished beard:

 

Prayer Request

If you think of it, please send up a prayer for several members of my extended family suffering health problems, as well as my aunt who passed away a few days ago.

Details at my Old World Swine blog.

Thanks.

ADDENDUM:

Please also pray for the people of Haiti, especially our local parish's sister parish, St. Francis of Assissi in Bombardopolous, Haiti. I have not heard any news, but will post updates.