Scotland Will Get One Foot of Snow; Cancels Everything

Well, so much for Celtic fortitude.  Also, the Glasgow vs. Dundee soccer match has been cancelled.

'Avoid travel' in red area says minister

Lenten Wave #14

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." - Albert Einstein

Stories Like This Always Make Me Homesick for Northeastern Ohio

McDonald's manager in Cleveland accused of firing shots at customers

I mean, he's the manager.  That's part of his job.

Bonus:  It's just three miles from the house in which I grew up and the McDonald's to which we'd go when I was in high school.  Ah, memories.

With William Powell and Myrna Loy! Yeah, Nah.

A Flamin’ Hot Cheetos movie is in the works

It Was Looking for the Tim Tams

Venomous snake turns up in Australian lunchbox

A Cogent, Sober Explanation

What does “identity politics” mean?
“Identity politics” is the term given to a popular practice in which politicians divide people into group identities and inform them that they’re victims of a shadowy, systemic, oppressive power structure, and anyone who disagrees with them on any social issue is not an individual with valid ideas worth considering but is bigoted, full of hate, and wants them and everyone in their group to die a terrible death.

Why do politicians encourage identity politics?
To position themselves at the top of the actual societal power structure.

Well, It's Not Like They're Being Taught to Write or Think, So...?

Experts Are Warning That Children Can't Properly Hold Pens Anymore

Another Lenten Wave

“The waves are like life, man. And I don’t mean that like in those books about surfing. Waves aren’t about metaphysics or Eastern religion or Californicated gibberish. Everyone tries to apply some deep meaning to life, too. They create massive organizations to define it. Folks have tried throughout history to apply meaning to it, and life resists it. Life is just life. That’s why it’s like the waves. All of that verbiage, all of those words to try to turn a wave into something mystical, and the wave just is. You can tell me about energy and gravity and moon phases and [stuff], but I don’t care. I know it’s just a wave. You just ride it. Like, it’s just life, we just live it. And even when we think it’s over, we still ride it.”
                                         - Stash, a surf bum [never did get his last name, but the story is found here].

Worth Reading

One Teacher’s Brilliant Strategy to Stop Future School Shootings—and It’s Not About Guns

And Now, I Wade Into Controversy

India Pale Ales (IPAs) are bad

and

WHY I HATE SOMETHING YOU PROBABLY LOVE: IPAS

and

Give me cheap beer, or give me sobriety. Just stop this craft beer 'revolution'

Here's what to drink if you're travelling and wish to avoid pretentious hop-slop that would gag a maggot:

Australian - Carlton Draught or Victoria Bitter

UK - Guinness or Harp.  Just stick with a classic.  Scotland has some nice ales, however.

Jamaica - Red Stripe

St. Kitts - Caribe

Antigua - Wadadli

St. Lucia - Piton

Barbados - Banks

Mexico - Dos Equis or Modelo

Canada - Labatt's [I mean, c'mon.]

Vietnam - 33

Japan - Sapporo

You get the idea.  If you want to have fun, savor a Bud Light in front of a craft beer snob and totally watch them lose their IPA.

Lenten Wave #12

"If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That's not a holy promise; that's a business deal...This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God's promise arrives as pure gift. That's the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them."
                                                                 - from Romans, Chapter Four

How Can This Be? A Teenager on TV Told Me It was the NRA's Fault

LA Times: Actually, there is a clear link between mass shootings and mental illness

In particular, the strongest link between the various mass shootings is the use of psychotropic medications on the part of the killers.  However, given how many people in our culture are dependent upon meds to regulate their moods, that's too personal a reality to contemplate.  It would be best if a lobbying organization is to blame.  This, certainly, is the narrative promoted by my ordained colleagues.

By the way, when I was in 6th grade, I was a member of my school's rifle team.  Once a week, we would walk to school in the morning with our rifles, store them in office of the principal's secretary [by store, I mean lean them together in a neat circle by the door], use them at the range, then walk home with them at the end of the day.  There were never, ever any accidents or moments of malice.  We wouldn't even think of it; we would never joke about it.

We may have been a bunch of hillbillies, but it seems our simple world was far kinder than what the Age of Kardashian has produced.  Also, we were the eighth best elementary school rifle team in the state.

To Which We Say "Yep"

Study: 90 percent of Americans Strongly Opposed To Each Other.” That’s the headline on a story in what on some days seems America’s most reliable news outlet, the Onion.

We laugh (or at least I did) because it strikes a chord. Americans of many different political outlooks today seem united in believing that we are experiencing the worst times in the nation’s history. Trump detractors talk about a neurotic Nazi establishing a dictatorship. Trump fans talk about a “Deep State” using secret protocols to undermine the voters’ choice.

Both sides have some cause for complaint. But their claims are overheated. Anyone familiar with the long course of American history — perhaps a smaller category than in times past — knows that, whatever our problems, things have been far worse before.

A Rerun from Two Years Ago

Whenever there is a mass shooting, every member of the media becomes a weapons expert.  In so doing, they reveal themselves to be grossly ignorant of even basic weapon operation and identification.  For the readers' convenience, allow me to share some knowledge in this area as I once held the secondary Military Occupation Specialty [or MOS] of Infantry Weapon Repairman [2111].

[My primary MOS was 0200, or Basic Intelligence Man.  That didn't mean I had basic intelligence, although that may be, it meant that I worked with either the battalion or regimental intelligence team.  It also means that I know your social security number.]

Anyway, I hope addressing these two most common errors helps the reader to be more informed and intelligent than most of the media when it comes to these issues.

Error #1: You will hear a weapon referenced as a "machine gun".  That's incorrect.  Machine guns, which fire continuously as long as the trigger is depressed, have been illegal to own in the United States since the late 1930's.  The most common form of rifle in the United States is semi-automatic.  It fires each time one pulls the trigger.  Such a rifle cannot fire 700 rounds a minute, as I heard some British expert say earlier today, as it is impossible for the mechanism to do so.

Error #2:  There is such a thing as an "assault weapon".  Please look at the photo below and tell me which one is the assault weapon.

The answer is either "both" or "neither".  Since there is no legal definition of "assault weapon", the term gets bandied about like a shuttlecock in a cocaine addict's badminton game, it is essentially meaningless.  For example, while most people would identify the rifle on the bottom to be an "assault weapon", in fact both guns are the same.  They have the same action, same trigger, same rate of fire, the same caliber.  They are both made by the same manufacturer.  Yet, one is considered a basic rifle and the other an "assault weapon".

It takes one screw, called a take-down screw, and one screwdriver and in about five minutes one may change out the wooden stock for the composite one.  In Connecticut, one cannot buy the bottom gun, but may buy the top one and, for some extra cash, legally purchase a conversion kit to change the top rifle into the bottom rifle.  It is no more or less deadly, either way.

Lenten Wave #11

The desert is beautiful," the little prince added. And that was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs and gleams.... "What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well...."
                                                                -Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944), The Little Prince

Archaeological News

Archaeologists Discover Clay Tablets Of Assyrian ‘King Of The World’ Esarhaddon Beneath Biblical Tomb Of Jonah

Who Can't Love This Guy?

I am sitting on my comfortable couch with a ice tea in my hand. That means only one thing- it’s curling time fool. #TeamUSA #curlingiscoolfool

— Mr. T (@MrT) February 24, 2018

Clearly, It was the NRA's Fault

No wonder the sheriff was so quick to lay blame outside of his community.  Couple this with the school's armed deputy "sheltering in place" and one has the most remarkably fouchez* situation that I've ever seen.

Miami Herald: ‘School shooter in the making’: All the times authorities were warned about Nikolas Cruz

* Fouchez is not a real word in any known language.  It is "Marine Corps French" and generally refers to circumstances of total FUBAR.  I'll let you look up that latter term, as it's a bit vulgar for a genteel fellow such as myself.

Another Pungent Observation

The world is about 100 times wealthier than 200 years ago and, contrary to popular belief, wealth is more evenly distributed https://t.co/Wdl64GnvWN

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) February 24, 2018

"Woke" is the New Stupid

Sure, let's lower the voting age.  Also, these are the law enforcement people we want to protect us?

A Pungent Observation, or Pretzel Logic

Alamo, National, and Enterprise car rental agencies have withdrawn from their business agreement with the National Rifle Association because...well, I'm not entirely sure why, as the atrocity in Florida was the result of inept and cowardly local law enforcement repeatedly ignoring an obvious lunatic.  [Again, and maybe this is just because I was a responder at Sandy Hook, but how the heck does anyone walk into a school with a rifle in the year 2018?]

Alamo, National, and Enterprise car rental agencies continue to donate to Planned Parenthood, an organization that enables...well, you know.  Over 6 million enabled to date, as a matter of fact.

Mr. T and I Will Now Celebrate

Finally, some good news this week:

US men’s curling team stun Sweden to capture unlikely gold

Lenten Wave #10

The King of love my shepherd is,
whose goodness faileth never;
I nothing lack if I am his,
and he is mine for ever.

Where streams of living water flow,
my ransomed soul he leadeth,
and where the verdant pastures grow,
with food celestial feedeth.

Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,
but yet in love He sought me,
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

                              - verses 1 through 3 of the hymn "St. Columba"

Aaaannnddd, Schools are as Stupid as Ever

Deaf child's sign language name looks too much like gun, parent says school told him

Lenten Wave #9

"It is one thing for the living water to descend from Christ into the heart, and another thing how--when it has descended--it moves the heart to worship. All power of worship in the soul is the result of the waters flowing into it, and their flowing back again to God."
                                                                                                                                  - G.V. Wigram

Rudy Van Gelder

When one mic will do the job, I will never use two.

He could do things with sound that no one else could do.  For this reason, Miles Davis preferred to work with him.  For this reason, Charles Mingus refused to work with him.  Admittedly, it can be a complicated life for a recording engineer.

There is a particular sound to post-World War II jazz.  It is liminal and hard to describe, at least for me.  There are tones of loneliness, heart-break, desperation, intoxication, and joie de vivre tempered with the incessant flow of mortality.  In my imagination, this sound was born in poverty in the South, in the jangly rapidity of urban life, in the smoke of an after hours bar.   In reality, it was born in a teenager's bedroom in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Born in 1924, Rudy Van Gelder was the product of a middle-class family that owned a women's affordable clothing store in suburban New Jersey and permitted him a life comfortable enough that he could indulge his somewhat nerdy adolescent hobby of ham radio operation.  This was the beginning of his lifelong fascination with recreating electronically reconstituted sound as he fussed and fiddled with the equipment, taking it apart and putting it back together again.  In addition, Van Gelder had an uncle who was a jazz drummer of some success who interested him in what was then the dominant form of music.

So, as he matured, he started recording local, small-venue musicians with no other goal than to see if he could duplicate, or even surpass, the quality on offer by the large record companies.  It became such a diverting hobby that, after he had left home and begun his first career, he somehow convinced his parents to turn a portion of their living room into a recording studio.

Van Gelder wasn't making a living off of this hobby, of course, but that didn't matter as, by the mid-1940's, he had graduated from optometry school and had a working practice.  One understands that patiently working the small organs and precise equipment of an eye doctor's would be perfect for one who sought to refine the small pieces and precise fittings of sound and electricity.  Van Gelder invested his optometry profits into more recording equipment, with state-of-the-art microphones, amplifiers, turntables, and all of the other gear that once ruled the pre-technological recording world.

While making records for some of the nascent artists, and gaining a reputation for making even the most mediocre of amateur musician sound polished and perspicacious, Van Gelder was eventually introduced to the artist and repertoire representative of Blue Note Records, a company that was becoming known as the source of the jazz artists who were popular with youth.  Blue Note realized that the quiet, bespectacled, bow-tie wearing suburban Jersey guy had managed to find the perfect balance of sound, so they hired him, repeatedly, to record their top-flight talent.  What optometry lost, modern bebop found.

As of the mid-1950's, Van Gelder was the most in-demand recording engineer in the greater New York market.  Not only did he supply his very particular talents to Blue Note, but also to other record labels that were once familiar to the public, especially Savoy and Prestige.  Between these three labels alone, Van Gelder recorded almost all of the top musicians of this period.

What makes this all the more interesting is that, especially in jazz, there can be a variety of creative process.  As the jazz of the Van Gelder period was no longer designed for ballroom dances, but for more introspective moments based on improvisation and atonal interruptions, each label permitted its artists to indulge in whatever was necessary to create the music.

Blue Note, for example, was known for its controlled recording sessions without any risk of wasting time re-arranging music or permitting overly-extended extempore solos.  Prestige, on the other hand, allowed their artists to simply have an open-ended jam session in the studio, editing together the individual "cuts" on an album of those songs that had the most promise.  Ordinarily, recording engineers would prefer one method over the other, but Van Gelder didn't mind how the music was made, only in how it sounded once the musicians left the studio and he had the chance to run their sounds through his equipment over and over again until it sounded even better than it did before they left.

By 1959, Van Gelder's second career had proved lucrative enough that he was able to build his own recording studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey in a building designed to reflect the modern cache of the recordings.  It was particularly noted for its 39-foot ceiling, as this contributed to the secret of the Van Gelder sound: natural reverb.  This became the Mecca for East Coast jazz, in no small part due to the albums that would be recorded in that leafy suburb.

Over the next decade, Van Gelder would record in his studio dozens of albums for the seminal artists of his era, including many of the recordings that still figure in jazz critics' "top ten" lists such as Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil, Sonny Rollins' Saxophone Colossus, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, Thelonius Monk's Monk, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis' Cookbook, and much of the work of Miles Davis.

As was noted in an appreciation by Rolling Stone magazine [1]:

Van Gelder often reiterated throughout his career that his duties differed from that of a producer; he didn't arrange the group's lineups or tell them what to play. Instead, he was charged with bolstering the sessions with the trademark vibrant, textured and robust Van Gelder sound that gave the recordings its depth.

"When people talk about my albums, they often say the music has 'space.' I tried to reproduce a sense of space in the overall sound picture," Van Gelder once said (via New York Times). "I used specific microphones located in places that allowed the musicians to sound as though they were playing from different locations in the room, which in reality they were. This created a sensation of dimension and depth."

Of course, between trying to make the recording studio sound as intimate as possible, a rather important quality in post-war jazz, and countering the realities of the LP [or "long playing"] disc, a notoriously unforgiving medium that was dominant in record albums of the pre-digital decades, Van Gelder had to manipulate the studio recordings in ways that weren't always satisfying to the more persnickety musicians, such as the aforementioned Charles Mingus; those who not only didn't mind the occasionally flawed sound but regarded it is a natural feature of jazz composition and improv.  As surely as musicians argue among themselves about how their music sounds, so they draw the recording engineer, often called the "extra musician", into their controversies.

Nevertheless, as long as jazz was dominant, Van Gelder created art.  As jazz gave way to rock and roll, rock, RAP, and hip-hop, and as analog recording gave way to digital, Van Gelder stayed current and continued to work his magic with successive generations of musicians and composers.  While his influence would be quieter after the jazz age had subsided, more than one popular musician of the 1970's and beyond would say to their producer, "I think this needs the Van Gelder sound" and, thus, find themselves along the banks of the Hudson in that cavernous studio with an old man with thick, but stylish, eyeglasses giving them exactly what they, and their fans, wanted.

Van Gelder would spend his final days re-mastering many of those original recordings into new digital presentations so that their downloadable form would be as vivid as they were when first heard by the public.  He would live until his 91st year, surrendering into an eternal repose just a few miles away from that place of magic in Englewood Cliffs.

In one of this final interviews [2], Van Gelder would note:

"The idea of listening to old tapes that I made, another chance to transfer them ... this is my opportunity to present my version of how things should sound," Van Gelder said in a 2011 interview with Blue Note. "What a great job this is."

It's difficult to write of music without providing some, so we'll conclude with Theolonius Monk's Hackensack,  composed as a tribute to Rudy Van Gelder and his sound.

Stupid is the New Woke

Seattle Residents Complained About A 'Confederate Flag.' It Was Actually The Flag Of Norway.

Today's Pungent Observation

If you wish to visit the grave of Karl Marx, you are charged a fee.

If you wish to visit the grave of Adam Smith, it's free.

This is Worth Reading

Some thoughts on why we and our institutions may be failing to deal with mass shootings because we approach them as part of broader problems, not as a distinct and self-perpetuating plague.

The problem with almost every narrative that mass shootings are “actually an X problem” is that X is usually so broad it’s like saying the real problem with asteroid impacts is that the Earth is so big.

Today's Pungent Question

Q:  Given their public statements, when are the Democrats in Congress going to introduce a ban on all semi-automatic guns?

A:  When they're done posturing for CNN.  [See this.]

Floral Archaeological News

Plants are 100 million years older than we thought

Science is ever-evolving as it's always testing theories and integrating new data.  Well, except for environmental science; that's always settled.  At least, that's what the media and politicians tell me.  Why is it different from other types of science?  Because shut up.

Finally, the Book We've All Been Waiting For

Do Germans Really Believe in the Enviromentalism They Spout?

Mercedes maker seen as using VW-like emissions tests

It looks like recalls and social guilt, again.  I'll never buy a German car.

Lenten Wave #8

“Having been tenant long to a rich Lord,
Not thriving, I resolved to be bold,
And make a suit unto him, to afford
A new small-rented lease, and cancell th’ old.

In heaven at his manour I him sought:
They told me there, that he was lately gone
About some land, which he had dearly bought
Long since on earth, to take possession.

I straight return’d, and knowing his great birth,
Sought him accordingly in great resorts;
In cities, theatres, gardens, parks, and courts:
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth

Of theeves and murderers: there I him espied,
Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died. ”
                                                       ― George Herbert

[Herbert was a poet of the 17th century and a priest in the Church of England, which is the "main branch" of the Episcopal Church.]

The Media Thinks It Has Met the Enemy, and It Looks LIke He is Us

“Guns don’t kill people; men and boys kill people, experts say” -USA TODAY 

“Michael Ian Black reacts to Florida shooting: Boys are broken” -New York Daily News 

“How Gun Violence And Toxic Masculinity Are Linked, In 8 Tweets” -The Huffington Post 

“Toxic white masculinity: The killer that haunts American life” -Salon 

“Toxic Masculinity Is Killing Us” -The Boston Globe 

“Toxic Masculinity Is Killing Us” -Harpers Bazaar 

“Don’t Blame Mental Illness for Mass Shootings; Blame Men” -Politico

Boys aren't broken and every biological male isn't responsible for the actions of some lunatic; a lunatic enabled by a complacent law enforcement system, an absence of real mental heath programs at the federal and state level, and a school that allowed a former student [and this is mind-numbingly outrageous to me, speaking as a former educational administrator], whose educational career was marked with mortal threats and violence against fellow students, to simply walk into a school with a rifle.

It took a bit of work, but I found something that Doris Lessing observed about seventeen years or so ago.  For those who don't know her name, she was a proper feminist and not one of these contemporary neo-Victorian whelps who require great government systems to protect them from words and images.  [Jeez, talk about patriarchy.  Is there anything more enabling of patriarchy than women expecting a government to protect them from creepy men?]

She was in her eighties, I believe, reacting to a visit to a British elementary school classroom:

Young boys were being weighed down with guilt about the crimes of their sex, she told the Edinburgh book festival, while energy which could be used to get proper child care was being dissipated in the pointless humiliation of men.

"I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed," the 81-year-old Persian-born writer said yesterday.

"Great things have been achieved through feminism. We now have pretty much equality at least on the pay and opportunities front, though almost nothing has been done on child care, the real liberation.

"We have many wonderful, clever, powerful women everywhere, but what is happening to men? Why did this have to be at the cost of men?

"I was in a class of nine- and 10-year-olds, girls and boys, and this young woman was telling these kids that the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men.

You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives."

Lessing said the teacher tried to "catch my eye, thinking I would approve of this rubbish".

She added: "This kind of thing is happening in schools all over the place and no one says a thing.

"It has become a kind of religion that you can't criticise because then you become a traitor to the great cause, which I am not.

"It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests. 

 "Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back, and it is time they did."

Sorry, but "fighting back" is not a feminized reaction, and that is the only style of reaction that would be acceptable in our current age.   The Episcopal Church determined that men were a problem about three decades ago.  How many men do you see in the average Episcopal parish on a Sunday morning these days?  How many of those parishes look shabby and have inadequate budgets?  In society as well as in physics, every action has an opposite and equal reaction.

Lenten Wave #7

“In the end, it is our defiance that redeems us. If wolves had a religion – if there was a religion of the wolf – that it is what it would tell us.” 
                                                ― Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness

[Remember that there has never been an act of defiance greater than the one realized on Easter morning.  It is one thing to defy Temple authority, or Roman bullying, or Satanic coercion; it is at a whole new aspect of redemption that requires defying mortality itself. - Me.]

Marine Archaeological News

Archaeologists find fossils, Mayan relics in giant underwater cave in Mexico

Lenten Wave #6

“I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.”
                                                  ― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

Archaeological News

An Archaeologist May Have Finally Unraveled The Mystery Of The Flawless Alignment Of The Great Pyramid Of Giza

It's Nice to Know There Are Still Some Outlaws About

Hawaii's Last Outlaw Hippies

I'm Really Not Interested in Lectures About Civility and Social Order from These Folks

"Democrats should fight dirty, play dirty, beg, borrow, steal, do whatever it takes. 'When they go low, we go high' doesn’t work. Playing nice got us to this point with President Trump." #NYTLetters https://t.co/SwOZO2qDNd

— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) February 18, 2018

Governor Terry McAuliffe says he’d punch Trump: ‘You’d have to pick him up off the floor’

I've met McAuliffe and, for all of his bluster, he has soft, callus-free hands.  He seemed as robust as flan.

Bernie Sanders Supporter And Attempted Assassin Of Rep. Steve Scalise Already Being Erased From History

Rachel Maddow Show Sparked FBI Investigation Into Death Threats Against McConnell, Pruitt

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Sunday called the recovery from a November attack outside of his Kentucky home "a living hell." 

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai canceled his appearance at CES because of death threats

A few years back, when Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot by a deranged man, we were informed that it was the rhetoric of violence on the part of the opposing political party that was responsible for inflaming the lunatic's passion.  The opposing party was bid by Giffords' party to keep its rhetoric civil or else social bifurcation was inevitable.

It appears that perspective had a rather brief shelf life.

Needlehooks: Of American Bureaucracy

It's worth reading the whole thing:

The guiding principle of American law enforcement is that it is easiest to enforce the law on law-abiding people, while enforcing the law on outlaws is something that looks terrifyingly close to hard work. That’s why gun control so ensorcels the bureaucratic mind. (Which is to say, the progressive mind: The essence of progressivism is replacing organic institutions with permanent bureaucracies.) If you are a federal law-enforcement agent with a comfy desk chair, you probably cannot imagine a more attractive anticrime program than gun control. Gun dealers have federal licenses, and they have to apply for them: You don’t have to go tracking them down — they come to you. They fill out paperwork. They generally operate from fixed addresses with regular business hours. Convenient! What you have is the power of political interposition, which is a mild form of terrorism...

Chasing down fleet-footed 18-year-old criminals through the rough parts of Chicago on a cold February evening? That’s work. And that’s why we don’t do squat to prosecute actual gun crimes — the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago won’t even look at a straw-buyer case unless it’s a major organized-crime enterprise — but we twist ourselves into knots to figure out how to create new hoops for federally licensed firearms dealers and their customers to jump through every time some pasty-faced virgin shoots up a school.

They Should Just Stick With Curling and Be Done With It

How NBC Flubbed Its Coverage, Reported The Wrong Gold Medalist, Then Botched The Correction Of One Of The Most Stunning Upsets In Olympic History

Lenten Wave #5

Christ died once for our sins. An innocent person died for those who are guilty.
Christ did this to bring you to God, when his body was put to death and his spirit was made alive.
                                                                                                                                         - 1 Peter 3:18

Seems Like I Re-Run This Annually

This is a re-run from a few years ago when I was getting tired of posturing politicians using the dead as a method of fund-raising:

Our elected leaders have been posturing for eager TV news cameras this week, and through a filibuster that caused the folks at Channel 3 to swoon, but it's all just empty gestures. The congressman representing Fairfield County even walked out on a moment of silence in the House this week in protest of such moments.  He attends the Presbyterian church in Greenwich and, as I worked in that county in the early days of my ministry, I expect his lack of respect for what some members of congress regard as a moment of prayer is reflective of the "country club Christian" mentality of Connecticut's Gold Coast.

Protesting what the congressman sees as an empty gesture with his own empty gesture is rather rich, but he seemed terribly serious about it when the cameras were pointed at him.  He even scowled to denote his concern.  The scowl seems to be something that's learned at Goldman Sachs, the congressman's former employer and a notorious paragon of high morality.

They will now make the rounds of friendly radio and talk shows, humbly promoting their moral courage.  It's all very familiar and those of us who were witness to the blood and bodies at Sandy Hook know the routine and aren't fooled by it.  The end result will be, as in Connecticut, laws that will not address the actual atrocity.

If they were serious, and not just trying to come to the attention of Hillary Clinton's vice presidential nominating team, they would do something that is totally in their power:  They would repeal the Second Amendment.  They can talk all they want about "common sense gun laws", but the only thing that will answer their concern is repeal and confiscation.

Appearing before fawning audiences is easy, though.  Changing the Constitution is hard, but it can be done and, in fact, Blumenthal, Murphy, and Himes have that legal ability.  So, fellas, let's see if you mean it.  To facilitate the process, and even though they have hundreds of aides and interns at their beck and call, I've actually tried to help by putting together an outline of sorts that would enable them to never, ever again have to endure people joining in a moment of silence or offering thoughts and prayers.

First, they will have to make their case to the American public that they can be trusted to protect us. In the aftermath of "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor", trust will be difficult to construct, but not impossible.  They will have to leave the urban and suburban parts of Connecticut and travel to the rural sections of the state where they are not as highly regarded.  They will then have to travel outside of the state to places like Xenia, Ohio and Sharpsville, Pennsylvania; to Rolling Fork, Mississippi and Littlefield, Texas.  As gun ownership is of more concern to them than Islamist terrorism, they should frame their actions as a kind of holy mission.  After all, anyone can appear before the clapping seals of The Daily Show, but it takes men of mission to stand in a Grange Hall and convince a crowd.

It will cost a remarkable amount of money for travel, advertisements, radio and TV spots, contributions to the re-election campaigns of those whom they wish to coerce to their side plus getting those sympathetic to their cause elected, so they should start forming those PACs now.

Then, once the groundwork has been laid, they actually have to frame the repeal in law.  It will have to be written with care, they are canceling part of the Bill of Rights, after all, and will have to go through the ringer of committees.  Still, this can be done.  Once complete, and the Second Amendment repealed, then the real work will begin.

You see, simply repealing the Amendment doesn't change gun ownership in the United States.  It does, however, give the government free reign to design new gun laws.  Since making guns illegal and confiscating the 300+ million firearms currently owned would seem to be the logical goal, these new laws will be sweeping and require a type of enforcement more common in totalitarian regimes and on a level never seen in our country.  Still, this can be done.

Except, most of the states of the union have constitutional protections that permit the individual states to make up their own minds about federal law.  Some of those states will be easy to convince, some will resist.  You will also have to overcome the "sovereign citizen" types in Idaho, for example, and the reservation Indians of Oklahoma, who know too well what happens when some white guys from the East come for their guns.  This may require the intervention of the military.  Still,...

This will take years and may damage their future political careers but, if what they say they believe is true, we will never, ever again be plagued by gun crime or violence.  Well, except from those who will ignore the law and evade its enforcement.  Still,...

I have a feeling it will be easier to continue posturing.

Related:  The Washington Post assigns Murphy three "Pinocchios" for his recent and repeated statements.

Also related:  Why Does the IRS Need Guns?  Sounds like they're getting ready for enforcement.

Update:  I just received a fund-raising letter from Murphy highlighting his bold, transgressive filibuster, so in addition to serving to attract the attention of the Clinton campaign in their search for a VP candidate, the slaughter was handy for raising money, too.

I Just Thought It Was a Clever Photo

Amelia Earhart in London, 1928

You Should Read My Twitter Feed on Some Days

Faith is no longer a virtue in America

CUMBERLAND, Md. — Last week Joy Behar, co-host of the ABC show “The View,” did something that has become an escalating trend in our popular culture over the past 10 years — she mocked religiosity.

Lenten Wave #4

"Let us learn upon earth the knowledge that will continue with us in heaven." —St. Jerome

Needlehooks

I am a First Amendment purist and don't want to see expression censored in any way. And I don't argue that there's a straight line between any specific cultural creation and bad acts. But surely, a culture in which those in authority approve of and argue for things like gangsta rap and GTA — and indeed for the use of violence to silence speech that offends them — well, such a culture becomes a machine for transforming madness into murder.

Archaeological News

Last month, it was announced that a "lost" Mayan city had been re-discovered in Guatemala, using the latest advances made possible through LIDAR [it's explained in the article].

Scientists discover ancient Mayan city hidden under Guatemalan jungle

This month, yet another has been re-discovered, this time in Mexico:

Laser scanning reveals 'lost' ancient Mexican city 'had as many buildings as Manhattan'

Lenten Wave #3

"One who has no faith has no freedom of spirit." —St. Ambrose of Milan

True Dat

"Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is." - Winston Churchill

Is This a Symptom of a Dying Institution?

When I was a young priest, during the season of Lent, we wouldn't have any meetings at a diocesan or deanery level.  [A diocese would be divided into deaneries, each supervised by a "rural dean" who was elected from the deanery clergy, usually for a one or two year term.]  Instead, we were bid to pray and concentrate on reconciling ourselves with God, our congregations, our sense of vocation,..well, you get the picture.  It was also the time when Confirmation or inquirers' classes would be held on the evenings and weekends.

This year, in the octave surrounding Ash Wednesday, a diocesan "clergy training" day, a clericus [a meeting of regional clergy only] that lingers from the old deanery system, and a regional meeting have been scheduled. ["Regions" being that which has replaced the deaneries.  The only difference, besides representing a larger geographic area, is that they are no longer supervised by a deanery rector, who did so for free, but by a regional missionary who is paid to do...stuff.]

"It's Lent, we should have meetings!" is not a real compelling spirituality, is it?

What used to be a time to savor prayer and connection with God is when we now arrange, organize, and plan for a time to sit and talk about the same things that have compelled us to have meetings for three decades.

Tatiana Proskouriakoff

I'm not sure what it is about those of us from southern Ohio, where I was born, who are educated in Pennsylvania, as I was, and then find themselves drawn, through some strange inevitability, to the ruins of Mayan culture in Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala.  It is usually through peculiar set of coincidences, as was certainly true for me and for today's profile.

I occasionally write of archaeologists, as that field was the object of my first, true academic affection, and it was where I met the academics whom I admired then and admire still.  As fortunate as I've been having great professors, scholars, writers, translators, and historians provide my education, including one Nobel Peace Prize winner, it is the archaeologists who carried best that balance between esoteric knowledge and hard-headed pragmatism.

Permit me to quote from myself:

Once upon a time, when I studied archaeology, my world was divided into two distinct groups: Diggers and Squints.

Squints worked in laboratories with elaborate machines that were known by esoteric terminology and were so complicated that they looked like something from one of Jack Kirby's nightmares or sparky whirligigs from the old Universal Pictures "Frankenstein" movies.  Squints would take items of great antiquity, place them in their infernal devices, and then tell us, with rather smug precision, how old the piece was, what it was made from, and whether or not it was important enough to study further or place within the museum's permanent collection.

Diggers, on the other hand, were those in the field who, sometimes at great personal peril, found the remote treasures of the past using the eldest tools of the human race: Shovels and trowels.  Diggers were at turns historians, contractors, linguists, soldiers, diplomats, and detectives.  Those talented in the sciences tended to become Squints; those less easy to categorize favored the ranks of Diggers.  Naturally, I, and everyone I knew, wanted to be a Digger.

The view from the top of the Culhuacan Pyramid with The Coracle's host

It has always fascinated me, when a particular Hollywood movie character was invented, how many biographers and curators sought to tie their subjects with a fictional person.  At any given time during the last nearly forty years, Sylvanus Morely, Hiram Bingham, T.E. Lawrence, Roy Chapman Andrews, Gertrude Bell, Percy Fawcett, Giovanni Belzoni, and even Sir Richard Burton have been referred to as "the real Indiana Jones".  Nothing could be more absurd, especially since the creators of "Jones" admit he was based not on a real-life person, but on other movie characters.  Still, the temptation to make fiction real is narcotic.

However, in the real world of archaeology, one finds people who are beyond any Polo Lounge "artist's" limited and cartoonish imagination, as truth is often far more vivid and inspiring than fiction.  One marvelous example of this is Tatiana Proskouriakoff, from whom anything we know of the Mayan culture is due to her brilliant work.

While born in Russia in 1909, Proskouriakoff moved with her family to Dayton, Ohio during the Russian Revolution.  At an early age she displayed remarkable linguistic aptitude, reportedly able to read both Russian and English by the age of 3 and to draw with mature lucidity.  From that time forward, art and words would serve as her media.

By her senior year in high school, Proskouriakoff's family had moved to Pennsylvania and, as she was her class valedictorian, she was readily accepted into the Keystone State's university system, originally receiving a degree in architecture.  However, her innate ability for language and art brought her to the attention of the burgeoning archeology and anthropology program at the University of Pennsylvania, where she began to work for the progenitor of Mayan studies, Lincoln Satterthwaite.

Archaeological work had just begun on what would become a premier site for the study of the Maya, a culture that resists revealing all of its secrets even in our contemporary, technology-driven age.  In the Usumacinta River basin in Guatemala, in the late 19th century, a German archaeologist named Teoberto Maler had stumbled across some well-preserved stones bearing pictographs and hieroglyphs.  The stones, known as stela [pronounced as "steel-la"] were of such significant value that Maler, who abhorred the practice of his era of ripping such stela away from its site and transporting it to labs and museums, mostly kept the discovery quiet in order to maintain the site's integrity.  He did, however, take numerous photographs of the evidence.

By 1931, the photographs, which had been filed away at the Peabody Museum at Harvard, had been re-discovered by Satterwaite and his colleagues.  As no significant progress had been made in their translation, what is now the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archeology and Anthropology funded a major, multi-year expedition to Guatemala to study the undisturbed site.  One of the chief goals of the expedition was correctly to catalogue the Maya construction captured in Maler's photos, with special consideration of the Maya's curious language.

For such a goal, the expedition needed an artist with a facility for language and there were no better candidates than Proskouriakoff.  She had already displayed her talents for artistic renderings of ancient structures as a volunteer at the university's museum, so Satterwaite knew that she was perfect for the job.  In 1936, Proskouriakoff arrived at the site, known by its expedition name of Piedras Negras.

An aside:  For those wondering, it was not unusual for women to be members of archaeological expeditions.  Since scientific archaeology's earliest days, women had not only served beside men at dig sites, and certainly in the labs and museums, but had even led expeditions.  Well-funded expeditions tended to permit rather comfortable camp sites for those involved, too.

Proskouriakoff pioneered the field of what came to be known as reconstructive archaeology.  Similar to the facial reconstruction that's used for the discovered skulls of ancient peoples, and even victims of crime, remnant structure is the basis of a re-created appearance using scientific logic and generally accepted attributes.  Proskouriakoff studied the structure of the Mayan temple and buildings, in particular those framed by the existing stela, and created a panorama of drawings that brought life to the dormant structures, enabling an appreciation of how the Mayan cities appeared at the height of the culture.

For example, with the aid of the archaeological team's input, this becomes...

...this.  The Temple of Xpuhil in its former glory.

While without a university degree specific to the study of Maya culture, once Sylvanus Morely [previously profiled in The Coracle] saw her panoramic drawings upon Proskouriakoff's return to the U.S., he secured funding for expeditions to other Maya sites in Honduras and the Yucatan which, in turn, lead to her receiving a position at the Carnegie Institution of Washington D.C.  From there, using her drawings and notes, Proskouriakoff began a serious study of the Mayan language.

The reigning theory in her day was that the hieroglyphs contained information about subjects such as astronomy, the Mayan religion, or prophecy.  Not finding much progress with this theory, Proskouriakoff began anew by returning to the original stela of Piedras Negras and noting, with the aid of an older theory posited by Yuri Knorozov, a Russian linguist, and through the repetition of certain pictographs, that the hieroglyphs were instead about the lives of the various rulers, including information about the events that formed their dynasties.  Once this theory was realized, like any formerly un-crackable code, the language of the Maya ceased to be opaque and revealed much about this lush, vibrant, and remarkable culture that thrived, and then disappeared, between 2000 B.C. and the 18th century A.D.

By the time her initial translations were completed in the late 1950's, Proskouriakoff was named honorary curator of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a sinecure from which she was able to continue her work in translation and publish over twenty scholarly books on the subject.  She would be awarded numerous honors and honorary degrees during the remainder of her life, including the Alfred V. Kidder Award in archaeology [subsequent recipients of this honor receive a medal that was designed by Proskouriakoff herself as she wasn't all that fond of the original design] and the prized Order of the Quetzal, Guatemala's highest civilian award.

While one may still find copies of her popularly written books, including a collection of her reconstructive archaeological drawings, the best way to come to know Proskouriakoff is to tour the Peabody Museum, where her drawings and the stela that she studied are on display, or the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, which also houses some of her studies and the subsequent work that has been built on her translations.

After her death at the age of 76 in 1985, Proskouriakoff's remains would be entombed in the foundation of one of the ruins in Piedras Negras, where a simple plaque marks their presence.  It has become, in recent years, a place of pilgrimage for those who continue to study the stubborn mysteries of the Maya.

Lenten Wave #2

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone-we find it with another.” - Thomas Merton

In Cleveland, Stealing Perogies May Be a Capital Offence

Royal Canadian Mounted Police searching for perogies stolen from Ukrainian Catholic Hall

Lenten Wave #1

In honor of the surfing expression, "You learn something from every wave", we offer a quotation a day during the season of Lent as a focus for seasonal meditation.  Unless otherwise noted, these will be accompanied by photographs offered by Robbie Crawford Arts of Huntington Beach, California.

"People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering." - St. Augustine

Before We Sail into Lent, an Appreciation of the Lyricism of Nature

The Trees That Sail to Sea: In one of nature’s remarkable second acts, dead trees become driftwood and embark on transformative journeys.

Even a Worm Will Turn

No, that quote in the title doesn't quite sound right in this day and age, does it?  Even though it sounds like something from those execrable books, it is, in fact, attributed to a proverb by a 16th century playwright named John Heywood.  It speaks as to how even the lowly may become formidable if provoked.

Consider what has occurred to the author of the Harry Potter books:

Alice’s magic wand is made of pine, and it has a phoenix feather in its core. The 17-year-old Italian knows this because she uses Pottermore, a website where Harry Potter fans take quizzes to find out what life would be like if they lived in the wizarding world. On Twitter, she spends two hours a day updating her profile with clips, quotations and pictures from the books and films. But while Alice loves everything about Harry Potter (she has read each of the seven books 14 times), she does not like JK Rowling.

“I strongly dislike her,” Alice (who does not wish to disclose her surname) says. “I just think she wrote many beautiful things in Harry Potter, but she doesn’t live up to them in real life.”

It's remarkable how ideologies eventually devour themselves.  Also, Alice, please read some other books. 

An Interesting and Provocative Open Letter to Harvard's New President

As you told a University of California audience last year, “if you’re not managing change, you’re not leading, you’re presiding.”

What might that mean in Harvard’s case? It could mean redefining the emphasis on diversity beyond race and gender also to encompass ideology. It could mean reaching even more students via online courses and the extension school, so that the university shifts its measurement of success away from how many tens of thousands of applicants it rejects, and toward how many it educates.

It could mean expanding geographically beyond relatively prosperous, and politically liberal, Cambridge and Boston, toward more economically challenged and politically diverse parts of the state. Tufts has a veterinary school in Grafton, Mass. and its medical school founded a rural community health center in the Mississippi Delta. Harvard has a forest in Petersham.

With NYU operating in Abu Dhabi, Cornell in Qatar, and Yale collaborating on a college in Singapore, it’s harder to make the case that Petersham, in Central Mass., or even, say, Pittsfield, in Western Mass., are so remote from Cambridge that ramping up activity there would prevent effective control or definitely dilute the brand.

Needlehooks: "The Intoxication of Moral Superiority"

I occasionally come across quotations that snag my attention like a needle-hook to yarn.  I may or may not agree with the writer's perspective, I may find them derivative or vulgar, but they represent something that stirs my curiosity and, sometimes, thinking.

From time to time, I'll share them and their source, but caveat emptor.

I thought love trumps hate. That’s what I’ve been led to believe by an effusion of t-shirts, bumper stickers, and social media postings from the self-styled anti-Trump Resistance™. As my friend Roger Kimball likes to say, there really is nothing like the intoxication of moral superiority.

The syrupy slogans promulgated by the ruling class, ruling class wannabes, and fellow travelers on the Left aren’t fooling anyone, not even, I would guess, the people who say, wear, and post them. Truth is, they really don’t like the rest of us. No problem, we have our own lives and families. But it’s only not a problem until such disdain is combined with a sense of political entitlement and the coercive power of government.

Not long ago, while at a clergy meeting, I imagined that, were I not clergy and not used to common conversation within the Episcopal Church leadership, I would understand that it was an organization dedicated to hating the current occupant of the White House and seeking a deity's intervention in punishing him for not being as morally evolved as clergy.  Actually, the word I heard more than once in regard to the current occupant was "loathing".  There was also considerable commentary noting that the current occupant was not a member of the same social class as eastern Episcopal clergy.  We are, of course, all free to believe what we want about ourselves and our relation to the greater world, but it's hard to reconcile this attitude with a church that states in its Baptismal Covenant that we strive to "respect the dignity of every human being".

I wondered if it has occurred to anyone that one of the reasons for the rapid decline in membership in the Church is that it is determined to associate with an increasingly narrow band of the American public.  Nah.  When I mention this, my colleagues either fall silent or respond with "Who would want those people, anyway?"  Oh, well, as they say: Get Woke, Go Broke.

Speaking as a half-breed, Midwestern hillbilly, if I extend that attitude, it means I'm not wanted in The Episcopal Church, which makes me rather glad that our spiritual life is in the hands of God, rather than those intoxicated by their sense of superiority.

Perhaps Their Lettuce Wraps are Popular in the Newsroom

And, Since I'm Soon to Be the Former Reverend, It's Time to Enjoy the Scolding of Puzzlewits

Let me put this impolitely: This is moronic. And not just a little bit moronic. This is so moronic, so dim, so utterly and incandescently stupid that I frankly worry for the future of the republic.

Always Be Cautious of Moral Posturing

In an interview, Weinstein said that people generally misunderstand what happened to Polanski at sentencing. He's not convinced public opinion is running against the filmmaker and dismisses the categorization of Hollywood as amoral. "Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion," Weinstein said. "We were the people who did the fundraising telethon for the victims of 9/11. We were there for the victims of Katrina and any world catastrophe."