Doug Strikes Again!

Summer In Florida

Irving and Murray were sitting on the park bench one May day. "You know, Murray, I'm going to Miami Beach for the summer this year," Irving said.

"For the summer?" asked Murray. "Where are you going to stay?"

"The Horowitz-Carlton. They have good air conditioning. And it serves only kosher food."

"Sounds good. But is the food glatt kosher?"

"Yes, glatt kosher. I wouldn't eat anywhere else."

So Irving went to Miami Beach. After a few weeks, Murray became bored going to the park by himself, so he decided to surprise his friend by going down unannounced. He walked into the hotel and asked the desk clerk where he might be able to find his friend Irving.

"Right now he's in room 402 at the Sans Souci Hotel across the street," the clerk replied.

Murray hopped into a cab and headed for the Sans Souci. "I'm here to visit the person in room 402," he told the clerk.

"Do you mean Miss Murphy?" asked the clerk. "She's busy now."

"Uh, no, she's expecting me," Murray said, thinking quickly. He rushed up to room 402 and knocked on the door. A sparsely dressed redhead woman with a nice set of knockers opened it. And there was Irving, sitting at the edge of the bed in his underwear, in a bathrobe.

Murray was furious. "I'm shocked and I don't know what to say! A religious man like you! And you insisted you were going to stay at a kosher hotel!"

Irving looked at him as if he was crazy. "Why are you getting so excited? I don't eat here!"

Cool Dog

He's like the Fonz. Only a dog. How cool is that?

Thanks to Doug. The caption called for a bit of editing. You know Doug. He can be naughty.

St. Paul Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

On Sunday, I attended the service at St. Paul Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in New Roads. The rector there is a good friend of my rector. I asked him to report back that I did not skip going to church, just because I was out of town. I preserved my reputation for tardiness, but I was not as tardy as some of the parishioners. I feel less guilty about being late, when others are later than I am. Why is that, I wonder?

Below are the stained glass windows on either side of the sanctuary.













ADDED LATER: In New Roads and the nearby town of Livonia, first there was Ma Mama's Kitchen Restaurant in New Roads, and then there was Not Your Mama's Café & Tavern in Livonia. Dueling reataurants? We chose to have our Mothers Day meal out on Saturday evening to avoid the crowds at Sunday lunch. This time we chose Not Your Mama's - for Mothers Day, no less. That don't seem right, do it?

We had an excellent meal with Grandpère, my daughter, my three grandsons, and, of course, me. At first, I was seated in full view of a bloody boxing match on the huge TV. I use "bloody" not as a swear word, but as a true description of what was happening on the screen - surely not what I wanted to watch while eating dinner.

GP saw that I was uncomfortable and offered to change places with me. We did, and GP and the boys enjoyed the bloody match, and I had my back to it and didn't have to see any of it.

Our food was delicious, rich and spicy, with huge portions. We took home several boxes of leftovers, which were more than enough for the adults to have a full meal the next day. The prices were not cheap, but I wonder why the owners, or the chef, or whoever wouldn't serve smaller portions and charge less.

A good time was had by all, once I moved out of view of the TV.

"We" Let Them Do It

From Jacob Weisberg at Newsweek:

The use of torture on suspected terrorists after 9/11 has already earned a place in American history's hall of shame, alongside the Alien and Sedition Acts, Japanese internment during WWII and the excesses of the McCarthy era. Even liberal societies seem to experience these authoritarian spasms from time to time. It is the aftermath of such episodes—what happens when a country comes to its senses—that reveals the most about a nation's character.
....

Well before the nation reelected George W. Bush in 2004, the country's best investigative reporters had unearthed the salient aspects of his torture policy: in December 2002, Dana Priest and Barton Gellman revealed on the front page of The Washington Post that American interrogators were employing "stress and duress" techniques as well as shipping prisoners to places like Egypt, where even fewer rules applied. "Each of the current national security officials interviewed for this article defended the use of violence against captives as just and necessary," the reporters wrote. "They expressed confidence that the American public would back their view."

Seymour Hersh broke the Abu Ghraib story in The New Yorker in April 2004. In May of that year, The New York Times revealed that the CIA had waterboarded Mohammed. In June, another major Washington Post scoop described a Justice Department memo asserting that CIA interrogators couldn't be prosecuted for using torture on detainees. That same month, NEWSWEEK further revealed that Cheney's lawyers had declared waterboarding a legal and acceptable practice. The leaked Red Cross report and the new memos released by the Obama administration add horrible detail to the story. They do not fundamentally change what we previously knew.

So yes. "We" gave tacit approval to torture when we reelected George Bush. Maybe not you, maybe not me, but "we", as a society, gave the George Bush maladministration the approval to continue to use torture.

Members of Congress say they didn't know. How could they not know? I knew. They were briefed. Perhaps certain information was withheld, but they could have read the newspapers.

The fact is that many in the country believed that torture was justified. I hear folks say the same thing today. Avoiding even the mention of the repugnance, immorality, and illegality of torture, I ask them about the innocent who were rounded up willy-nilly and tortured first and released later, the response is, "Too bad for them. We had to do it to stop the terrorists." Then I say, "But they were not terrorists. They were innocent and subsequently released!" that changes nothing in their thinking. It had to be done.

As the good book says , Pogo's book, I mean, "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us".

Many of my friends may disagree with me, but I believe that Weisberg is right.

President Obama has done the most important thing: reversing Bush's policy and declaring, as he did last week, that torture was unequivocally wrong. What we need now is a public airing through congressional hearings and perhaps an independent commission, an idea that the White House is resisting. Pursuing criminal charges would be too hard politically and too easy morally. Prosecuting Bush and his men won't absolve the rest of us for what we let them do.
(My emphasis)

The White House must stop resisting the idea. I want the commission, but I don't want public discussion of torture shut down. That's why I do not want a special prosecutor, because important actors in the planning and execution of this horrifying policy of torture, the insiders in the second and third tier, have tales to tell, which however self-serving they may be, could shed light on what took place behind closed doors.

UPDATE: Read Diana Butler Bass' report on a pew Research poll on the attitudes of Christians concerning torture and weep.

H/T to the Episcopal Cafè.

The View From The Homestead

I'm sitting under the shelter on the deck at the end of the pier on the river bank of False River, which is not a river, but a crescent-shaped lake. The Mississippi River once flowed here, but a long time ago, Ole Man River changed course and cut off this area from its flow. Thus the reason for the name of the parish where the lake is located - Pointe Coupee.

When I stepped onto the the deck, I chased away a female wood duck. I see several eggs in a corner. Perhaps, she's hatching them? It's lovely to have the wood ducks around, but, on the minus side, they leave behind big white plops of duck poop. I wanted a picture of the ducks, but none are nearby.


To get to the water, we cross a well-traveled road, which must be done with care, because there are curves in the road in both directions. It's nice and breezy out here, but it's hard to see the computer screen, because it's so bright. I keep losing the cursor.

My daughter and my grandsons caught a mess of catfish and one perch yesterday and today. Grandpère cleaned and fileted the fish, and they will take them home to fry.

Earlier today, Diana and I went for a walk in the back pasture, which was formerly a cow pasture. The whole yard, front and back, was a cow pasture when I first met GP. You had to walk looking down, because cow patties were all around. Diana pooped in the pasture, and I didn't need to scoop the poop, because this land is my land, and the pasture is large.

The pasture was once the location of one of GP's follies. He had a pond dug on one side of the pasture, but he did not line it with clay or plastic, and the pond didn't hold water for very long. He left an island in the center, where we placed a statue of St. Francis, but, as the pond went dry, weeds and little trees began to sprout, until the whole thing became a tangled mess. Poor St. Francis was in the midst of the tangle, and no longer visible.


GP finally had the pond filled in. Good thing he left the scooped out dirt around the pond, because it was used to fill the pond and level the field to its former state. Now St. Francis stands alone and bereft in the field. I want GP to move him to the front, but he says that he's too heavy for one man to carry, and when he comes here with other men, they have better things to do than concern themselves with moving poor St. Francis to a better location.

Behind the pasture is the farmland, which once supported five families, but is now given over to a farmer to make hay for a percentage of the price that he gets for the hay. Behind the farmland is woods, which was always there.

You can see the hay bales in the picture along with the small pecan trees which my son and GP planted recently along the sides of the field. One day they will produce pecans, but perhaps not in our lifetimes. The trees will benefit our children and grandchildren.

Note: I wrote this while I was on the swing under the shelter, but I'm posting from home, because I was working on slow wireless at the homestead, as many of you already know, and I could not include the pictures.

Pardon me if I'm late in answering email, because any mail that had an attachment or a link to a picture or a video would not open.

UPDATE: Below is a picture of the steps leading down to the riverbank. They're a tribute to my father-in-law, who, amongst his many occupations, was a welder. The steps are made of iron, which he welded together, carried across the road. and laid down on the steep slope. Ingenious, don't you think? They're a perfect fit. He got it all right, the angle of the slope, the placement. They've been there for many years, and they will, very likely, be there for many more years.

Senator Vitter, Release Your Hostage

NewYork Times:

Hurricane season begins June 1, and yet the Federal Emergency Management Agency still has no new director. Two months ago, President Obama nominated Craig Fugate, the state emergency chief who excelled in Florida. The choice was hailed widely, on both sides of the aisle, as ideal. But Mr. Fugate is being held hostage in the Senate by David Vitter of Louisiana.

Mr. Vitter complains that FEMA is not answering his questions about some high-risk flood areas that await rebuilding. FEMA should answer his questions. But we suspect that Senator Vitter is more preoccupied with the approach of re-election season than any weather events. He is clearly relishing doing battle with the administration, issuing broadsides styling himself as a populist standing up to “strong arm” tactics of the White House.

Sen. Vitter, stop it! You have made a fool of yourself and embarrassed your constituents quite enough. Stop the posturing. We don't need or want any more of the Vitter follies. Let Mr. Fugate's appointment go through, so he can do his job to prepare for THE HURRICANE SEASON THAT IS LESS THAN A MONTH AWAY! This is not all about you. It is about the safety of the citizens of Louisiana, whom you have thus far represented so poorly.

The Rhodes scholarship vetting process needs serious work. How could the powers that be allow in two such sorry prospects as Vitter and Bobby Jindal?

Thanks to MotherAmelia for the link. Click over to read MotherAmelia's Mothers Day sermon, which is excellent.

Happy Mother's Day

A blessed and happy day to mothers and to all who care for children. Mothering is not just for mothers, and mothering doesn't end when children reach adulthood but rather, it is a job for a lifetime.

Almighty God, heavenly Father, you have blessed us with the joy and care of children: Give us calm strength and patient wisdom as we bring them up, that we may teach them to love whatever is just and true and good, following the example of our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

PS: Let us pray for those who are missing mothers who have passed on.

From Roseann

Failure to Thrive

I've been diagnosed with Geriatric Failure to Thrive. I don't think of myself as geriatric but I have all the symptoms and the hospital and doctors have made this an official diagnosis. I want you all the know that I am fighting as hard as I can to turn this around.

Love, R

Roseann, we love you. We know that you are a fighter. We are with you and Gary in spirit. We continue to pray for you.

Roseann is at home now. Her blog is Give Peace A Chance.

"One Word"

You must, you absolutely must read Fr Tobias Haller's address to Provincial Synod II in Albany, New York.

Here's a taste, but read the entire speech. I won't take "No" for an answer, and I promise you won't be sorry.

In the long run, there is no such thing as a solitary Christian. There is no Christian without the church, no church without Christ, no Christ without God. For as we believe that God is love, there can be no love without relationship. This love divine, all loves excelling, is the ultimate compassion — feeling-with — the love that embraces the other, that gives itself for the life of the other, that becomes itself in losing itself, saving its life in losing it. This is the embodied love of the Incarnation, the love that died on the Cross, the love that rose again from the dead, and in whom we will one day be raised: love that becomes so united with the beloved that the old categories that ruled the world — Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female — are overshadowed by the love which passes all understanding, yet shelters our hearts and minds under the shadow of everlasting wings.

O The Woes Of Slow Wireless!

My friends, I can't even get to some of your blog sites. If you have pictures or videos, I get a time-out notice, or I get tired of waiting. If you sent me emails with attachments, I may not be able to open them. I can't watch or listen to media links, other than print.

Posting takes a long time. I've about given up on using pictures, with the exception of the beautiful icon of Julian of Norwich that I "borrowed" from Paul, which took three tries before it finally went up. I can only have one file open at a time. This reminds me of many years ago, when I worked on my first computer, which had a very small drive, after it was five years old.

Oh, woe is me! I know what you're thinking: "Bitch, moan, and complain - that's all that woman does. Enough already!" And you're absolutely right, of course. So I'll stop.