John Updike - R. I. P.

From the Washington Post:

John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the postwar prime of the American empire, died Tuesday at age 76.

Updike, a resident of Beverly Farms, Mass., died of lung cancer, according to a statement from his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.

Norman Mailer didn't like his writing.

He captured, and sometimes embodied, a generation's confusion over the civil rights and women's movements, and opposition to the Vietnam War. Updike was called a misogynist, a racist and an apologist for the establishment. On purely literary grounds, he was attacked by Norman Mailer as the kind of author appreciated by readers who knew nothing about writing.

I'd say Updike did pretty well for himself with his "readers who knew nothing about writing".

But more often he was praised for his flowing, poetic writing style. Describing a man's interrupted quest to make love, Updike likened it "to a small angel to which all afternoon tiny lead weights are attached." Nothing was too great or too small for Updike to poeticize. He might rhapsodize over the film projector's "chuckling whir" or look to the stars and observe that "the universe is perfectly transparent: we exist as flaws in ancient glass."
....

"I am very prone to accept all that the scientists tell us, the truth of it, the authority of the efforts of all the men and woman spent trying to understand more about atoms and molecules. But I can't quite make the leap of unfaith, as it were, and say, `This is it. Carpe diem (seize the day), and tough luck.'"

I'm with Updike.

He received his greatest acclaim for the "Rabbit" series, a quartet of novels published over a 30-year span that featured ex-high school basketball star Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom and his restless adjustment to adulthood and the constraints of work and family. To the very end, Harry was in motion, an innocent in his belief that any door could be opened, a believer in God even as he bedded women other than his wife.

H/T to the Episcopal Cafè.

Please! This Is Flim-Flammery, Mr. President

From TPM:

Obama meets this afternoon with the entire Republican conference. "I think what our big moves will be today are to ask the President to help us. Help us make this plan better so that it will put Americans back to work," said Boehner before the meeting.

House Republicans have worked closely with Obama while the plan has been crafted, but have complained that House Democrats have been less open to their ideas than has the president.

In the recent election, the people of the country made it quite clear that they do not want a continuation of the policies of the Bush maladministration and the Republicans in Congress. The problem is not the Democrats, Mr. President. The problem is congress critters like Mitch McConnell and his cohorts. You won by a landslide, Mr. President. Listen politely to the Republicans, and then do the right thing, Mr. President. Please! We're counting on you.

Video from TPM-TV.

A Word From Pip Across The Pond

Posted by Pip Dawkins:

Well bless my 'eart and call me Cromwell! The yank election 'as come to an end at last. Isn't it wonderful? A new leader across the pond. And without even cutting off the 'ead of the old president! Blimey, those Americans sure know 'ow to pick a ruler, don't they? Did it with class they did. I only wish I knew 'oo they picked.

It's my own fault, that is. Time and time again Mr. Greystone 'e told me not to bleed on 'is things, but I never listen. So until I clean every last speck off 'is brick, 'e won't utter one word to me about a winner. In my defense, chaps, I didn't know I was bleedin' at the time, as I'd made the unwise decision to faint on the sidewalk in front of 'is 'ouse. I don't see why 'e should 'old it against me. The front stoop is 'ardly inside the 'ouse. And my blood can't be that 'ard to clean off, being as though I'm right iron deficient.

Poor Pip. Read the rest. Perhaps Mr Greystone's heart will melt, and he'll let Pip know the outcome before too long.

Pip was orphaned at age three when his parents died of cholera. He resides at the Bethnal Green Workhouse in London, and is ever so excited for this year's election in America.

From The Onion.

Padre Mickey Speaks

From Padre Mickey's fingers to Wounded Bird:

Hi everyone,
I rarely send out a single email to a group; that's Mona's department with our Missionary Newsletter thang, but I wanted to notify you all that Mona and I will be in los estados unidos on a sabbatical of some four months this year. After the sabbatical, we'll return to Panama for one year to wrap up our ministry here and, hopefully, return to a new position in the U.S.A.

We are really looking forward to the sabbatical, but we're a little concerned about funding. Our income here in Panama is small but we're able to live simply as the standard of living is not so high, but four months in EEUU would be next to impossible on our income. We are looking for grants to help, but since I hates to beg, I came up with another idea. I'm writing you folks as you are all familar with my blog Padre Mickey's Dance Party and many of you are fans of that silly Friday Red Mr. Peanut Bank and Gallito Mescalito Blogging thang I try to do every Friday. I've opened a Cafe Press store which sells t-shirts, sweatshirts, caps, etc, which have Gallito Mescalito or Red Mr. Peanut Bank or Miss Egyptian Hippo of Love on the front. I'm hoping that this stuff will sell and that this income will help us fund our sabbatical. Of course, we'll also take donations to our Missionary Fund at St. Francis' website, too.

Click here to check out the Dance Party Store of Love, and if interested, please purchase some stuff.

I'm sending this email as I am well aware that you all have lives and aren't able to visit the blog every day.

So, thanks for any help you can give, and maybe we'll see you while were in los estados unidos, hopefully!

Gracias a todos,
Michael aka Padre Mickey

--
Padre Mickey's Dance Party

Padre Mickey is an Episcopal priest and missionary who has served the Parroquia San Cristóbal for three terms. He and his wife, the Lovely Mona, sacrificed a great deal in their years of ministry in Panama. I have enjoyed the crazy, but occasionally serious, blog of El Padre for some years now. If you haven't checked it out, you should, especially his Friday evening dramas with the fascinating assembly of characters, some of whom are pictured above and featured in the merchandise at his store.

Padre Mickey posts many pictures of the parish activities at San Cristóbal. If you visit his blog, you will see the beautiful members of the parish in which he serves. The children are adorable.

UPDATE: Regarding the Dance Party Store of Love. Please! The "Store of Love" part is not what you're thinking.

Kentucky Ghost Story

This happened about a month ago just outside of Owensboro, Kentucky, a small town on the banks of the Ohio River, and while it sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock tale, it's indeed real.

An out of state traveler was walking along the side of the road hitchhiking on a dark night in the middle of a thunderstorm. Time passed slowly and no cars went by. It was raining so hard he could barley see his hand in front of his face.

Suddenly he saw a car approaching, moving slowly and appearing ghostlike in the rain. It slowly and silently crept toward him and stopped.

Wanting a ride very badly, the guy jumped into the car and closed the door; only then did he realize that there was nobody behind the wheel, and no sound of the engine to be heard over the rain.

Again the car crept slowly forward and guy was terrified, too scared to think of jumping out and running. The guy saw that the car was approaching a sharp curve and, still too scared to jump out, he started to pray and beg for his life. He was certain the ghost car would go off the road and into the river, and he would surely drown! But just before the curve, a shadowy figure appeared at the driver's window and a hand reached in and turned the steering wheel, guiding the car safely around the bend. Then, just as silently, the hand disappeared through the window and the Hitchhiker was alone again.

Paralyzed with fear, the guy watched the hand reappear every time they reached a curve. Finally the guy, frightened nearly to death, had all he could take and jumped out of the car and ran through the storm to the nearby town.

Wet and in shock, he went into a lighted tavern and with voice quavering, ordered two shots of whiskey, and then, shaken, he told everybody about his supernatural experience.

A silence came over those listening and everybody got goose bumps. They realized the guy was sober and was telling the truth. And the sounds of the storm continued outside.

About half an hour later, two guys walked into the bar and one says to the other, 'Look Billy Bob, there's that idiot that rode in our car while we was pushin' it in the rain.'

Who is the idiot here?

Today is a lazy Monday blogging day, but trusty Doug comes to the rescue.

Once upon a time, I played a fairly decent version of "On the Banks of the Ohio" on my mountain dulcimer, which is pictured below.



Isn't it a beauty? It was handcrafted by Lynn McSpadden, from Mountain View, Arkansas, in 1975. The McSpadden family still operates The Dulcimer Shoppe.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Good Luck Chinese New Year Ox Year 2009


People born in the Chinese New Year of Ox, 2009 will preponderantly have the below mentioned traits in their character: Leadership qualities, dependable, great organizers, loyal, patient as well as strong and responsible. They are also some of the best people one can have as colleagues in the work place as they are believed to posses strong work ethics and display their creative side as well, especially when it comes to decorating their home.

Since the people born in the Ox year are also trusted to be reliable and logical, people generally turn towards them for suggestions and guidance. Their honesty and eye for details also helps them to prove their worth both in the workplace as well as in their personal lives.

Sounds good to me. But wait!

However there are a few negative traits associated with the character of the Ox that also is reflected through the people born in the ox years. Attributes like being narrow minded, stubborn, with low public relations skills and also very far from being emotional are generally associated with people born in this year.

From 123 Chinese New Year.

Inner Peace

If you can start the day without caffeine,

If you can get going without pep pills,

If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,

If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,

If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,

If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,

If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend,

If you can conquer tension without medical help,

If you can relax without liquor,

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,


...Then You Are Probably The Family Dog!


And you thought I was going to get all spiritual.

Thanks to Doug.

New Rector And Son Of Proud Mom

From the Daily Chronicle:

"Don’t let this be your next ride to church."

A bumper sticker displaying a hearse, and those words, is one that the Rev. Dave Hedges remembers a fellow seminarian having on his car when they both attended seminary.

The flip side of that message, Hedges said, is that priests and other church ministers need to do their part in inviting people back more often, so that the Sunday morning ride to church isn’t their only contact with ministry.

A week ago, Hedges affirmed this clerical duty. He was instituted – meaning permanently placed – as rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Sycamore [Illinois].

The handsome young dude in the picture is the son of our own Susan S, who is bustin' her buttons with pride. After serving as a curate in Crystal Lake, Fr. Dave served as "priest-in-charge" at St. Peter's for 18 months. Now he is rector of the 150 year old church.

When serving as a curate at a Crystal Lake church, Hedges assisted a priest who had been there for 31 years. The priest acted as Hedge’s mentor, and made Hedges realize the value of visiting members outside of the once-a-week sermon.

“There’s a lot of people in the congregation; their contact comes on Sunday morning and that’s pretty much it,” Hedges said. “But you have to be a presence in people’s lives. He taught me to value that and to strive for it.”

Congratulations to Fr. Dave, the parishioners of St. Peter's Church, and last, but not least, to Susan S.

Let us pray for Fr. Dave and the members of St. Peter's:

Almighty and everliving God, ruler of all things in heaven and earth, hear our prayers for this parish family. Strengthen the faithful, arouse the careless, and restore the penitent. Grant them all things necessary for their common life, and bring them all to be of one heart and mind within your holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(Book of Common Prayer), p. 817

Continuing On The Theme Of Guantanamo

From the Washington Post again:

President Obama's plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials -- barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees -- discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.

No comprehensive files? We shouldn't be surprised, but, once again, I am. If there was a way to get things wrong, you just know that the Bush maladministration would do it.

Several former Bush administration officials agreed that the files are incomplete and that no single government entity was charged with pulling together all the facts and the range of options for each prisoner. They said that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were reluctant to share information, and that the Bush administration's focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority.

I'm surprised that I continue to be surprised by these people.

In a court filing this month, Darrel Vandeveld, a former military prosecutor at Guantanamo who asked to be relieved of his duties, said evidence was "strewn throughout the prosecution offices in desk drawers, bookcases packed with vaguely-labeled plastic containers, or even simply piled on the tops of desks."

He said he once accidentally found "crucial physical evidence" that "had been tossed in a locker located at Guantanamo and promptly forgotten."

What other shocking leftovers from the Bush maladministration await discovery, as the new administration moves forward? Probably not just a few. Remember Cheney's secret meetings with the oil barons early in Bush's first term? The battle goes on for the documents which disclose who attended and what was discussed. We're not really done with the Bushies, and we won't be for a very long time, more's the pity.

The "Good" Guantanamo?

With the help of Arkansas Hillbilly, I'm proud to say that Wounded Bird scooped the Washington Post on the story that Guantanamo was once a relatively decent place.

When Marine Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert and his unit were assigned to Gitmo to meet the first 300 prisoners, they had 96 hours to draw up procedures and rules. They decided to go with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, other U.S. laws, and the Geneva Conventions.

Lehnert said he had been told by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the Geneva Conventions would not technically apply to his mission: He was to act in a manner "consistent with" the conventions (as the mantra went) but not to feel bound by them.

What the hell does that mean? When Lehnert tried to bring in the International Committee of the Red Cross, his request was turned down. However, the call to the ICRC had already been made, and they arrived at Gitmo. With their help, Lehnert began to improve the conditions of the prisoners. The military, including the head of the JAG group tried to do the right thing, but Rumsfeld had other ideas.

By late January 2002, according to Brig. Gen. Galen B. Jackman, Lehnert's chief contact at Southern Command, the defense secretary told officers on a video conference call with Southern Command that he was frustrated by the absence of such information [actionable intelligence].

A displeased Rumsfeld seems to have decided to create a second command, one that would exist side by side with Lehnert's. It would be devoted solely to gathering intelligence and would be headed by a reservist major general, a former U.S. Army interrogator during the Vietnam War named Michael Dunlavey. Jackman told me that he considered the idea of two parallel commands a "recipe for disaster." At the same time, Navy Capt. Robert Buehn, the commander of the naval base at Guantanamo, recalled, the Gitmo task force's initial expectations of orders to build a courtroom began to fade.

For two years, the reporter, Karen Greenberg, gathered information through interviews, which essentially supports Arkansas Hillbilly's contention:

I believe in due process, and I am ashamed of what GTMO became, but when it started we were trying to sort the bad guys from the good,treat all the wounded and hopefully get information WITHOUT torture. When I was there the mere mention of that word was shunned for fear of being accused of it. I used to be proud of the things I did there... and still am of the accomplishments. But all the allegations of torture after I left, what it became, I am horribly ashamed of the whole mess. You shouldn't be ashamed to serve your country, but there it is. Thank you Mr. Bush and Chaney.

Thank you again, Arkansas Hillbilly.

President Obama ordered that Guantanamo be shut down within a year. Where will the prisoners go?

And there is a final irony on the horizon.

One of the places now being considered as a new U.S.-based destination for the remaining Gitmo detainees is Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base in Southern California. The base's commanding general is none other than Michael Lehnert, now a major general. The detainees might well be returned to his custody. In several senses, we could wind up right back where we started. This time, however, we should have the law on our side -- not to mention a conscience.

You can't make this stuff up. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their minions came together in a perfect storm which resulted in disaster.