BOBBY, WE HARDLY KNOW YE

Governor Bobby Jindal joined the Republican governor rogues gallery in a debate at the Aspen Institute.  Michelle Millhollon reports on the gathering which was mainly a closed affair, but...

For a $15 admission price, the public could grab a seat on the Aspen Institute’s campus Wednesday night to listen to a panel discussion featuring Jindal, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The talk was broadcast on Aspen’s public radio station and was streamed on the Internet.

Ha!  How about that lineup?

Jindal apologized several times for talking fast during the event, explaining that he wanted to fit in several points. Christie ribbed him for his bullet-point approach.

I've heard Jindal speak, and I vouch for the fact that he talks fast.  After a while, I stopped trying to keep up and switched off.

Jindal rapidly described the changes he successfully proposed for Louisiana’s public school system, racing from teacher tenure to the scholarships that use public dollars to send children to private or parochial schools.

“Basically vouchers,” Isaacson interjected to put a new name to the scholarships.

“We call it scholarships. The teacher unions call it four-letter words,” Jindal retorted.

Har-de-har-har.  Jindal made a funny.   And then is it back home to Louisiana for the governor?  Indeed not.  Jindal is off to Washington DC for meetings.  Bobby, we hardly know ye. 

ONE OF THOSE DAYS

Yesterday I was in funk for most of the day. In the morning, Grandpère found the notice to the left hanging on our front door. Encephalitis in the neighborhood! On my street?  In my town?  Panic began to rise. Then I read all the fine print.  "Mosquitoes that can carry ENCEPHALITIS have been found in your neighborhood and we need your help."  The local newspaper published the news that West Nile virus had been found in mosquitoes in Lafourche Parish, where I live, and it's a good thing to remind people not to leave standing water around where mosquitoes can breed, but the notice could have been worded in a way that would not frighten people so.  Still, my first panicked questions would not have come up had I read the fine print.

 Here's how West Nile fever works.  Humans contract the virus from a bite from an infected mosquito.  Most people who are infected with the disease either have no symptoms at all or suffer a very mild illness.  However, in rare cases, and we have had a couple around here, the virus "can cause encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) or meningitis (inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord)."  It does not matter where in a community the cases of serious illness develop, because the disease does not pass from person to person.

What the notice did was push me to decide that so long as the threat of West Nile lasts, I will walk in daylight, when it is hot, but when the mosquitoes are not so much on the move, rather than after sunset, when it is cooler.  

Later in the day, I called the Circulation Department of the Times-Picayune to cancel our subscription. I have not been reading the paper since the announcement of the cutback to three days a week for the paper edition beginning in October and the layoff of half the staff.  The newspaper is already turning into a shell of itself, and I don't want to watch the decline until October.   I thought we'd do better to get our refund from Advance Publications now rather than wait for our subscription to run out.  The customer service rep asked why we were cancelling, and I said one word, "Newhouse," and she understood.  I felt so sad after I cancelled, because I've been reading the Times-Picayune my whole life since I could read, starting with the comics, or the funnies, as we called them in New Orleans. I missed the paper for three years while we lived in Mobile, but as soon as we moved back to Louisiana, we subscribed again.

We also subscribe to the Baton Rouge Advocate, which will place permanent staff in New Orleans to cover the news there. Several groups and individuals, the latest being Tom Benson, owner of the New Orleans Saints, have offered to buy the paper from Newhouse, but they refuse to sell.  We will surely support any worthwhile effort to set up a rival daily newspaper, and we will not subscribe to Newhouse's pathetic web version.

As you see, the day was already a downer when I read that Kenneth Roop, the man who shot Nick Rainey, the door-to-door meat and seafood salesman, had been on trial for pointing a gun at a meter reader some years back, but he was found not guilty of improper exhibition of a weapon.  The prosecutor at the trial said Roop was a ticking time bomb.  The bomb ticked for quite a while, but it finally went off.  Not long before reading the account, I saw the meter reader for my neighborhood pass by my window to read our meter. It made me think.  A jury of his peers did not think pointing a gun at a meter reader and terrifying her was an improper exhibition of a weapon, and Roop was permitted to continue to own a gun, with the result that another innocent person is dead from gunshot.

Some days I just want to give up, and yesterday was one of those days.

A GOOD PUN IS ITS OWN REWORD

A pessimist's blood type is always b-negative.

Freudian slip. When you say one thing and mean your mother.

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

I used to work in a blanket factory but it folded.

Sea captains don't like crew cuts.

When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.

Every calendar's days are numbered.

He broke into song because he couldn't find the key.

His photographic memory was never developed.

When you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall.

Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.

Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.

Acupuncture is a jab well done.

Local Area Network in Australia. The LAN down under.

Without geometry, life is pointless.

Dreaming in color is a pigment of your imagination.

Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.

A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.

A backwards poet writes inverse.

Definition of a will. A dead giveaway.

Pay your exorcist, or you'll get repossessed.

A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

I like the puns, so I will thank Doug rather than blame him.  I've probably posted some of them before, but who's keeping track?  Not me.

LENT IN SILK AND LACE

We've seen Cardinal Raymond Burke wearing splendid red and green vestments, and now we see him arrayed in purple Lenten vestments.  Once again the cardinal wears the tall, gold mitre.  After clicking on the link above, scroll down to see all the posts on the Cardinal Burke.

Orbis Catholicus Secundus reports that American Cardinal [Raymond]Burke celebrated a Pontifical Mass at the Lenten Stational Church of San Nicola in Carcere  (St Nicholas in prison) with outdoor penitential procession and chanting of the Litany of Saints. San Nicola in Carcere is one of the traditional stational churches of Lent.

For the procession, His Eminence wore a very tall golden mitre (mitra aurifregiata), and a penitential purple cope bearing the coat of arms of Pius IX. For the Mass, he wore another tall white mitre and a purple chasuble and Pontifical gloves (chirothecœ). The use of episcopal gloves became customary at Rome probably in the 10th century. Most of these liturgical vestments have been rarely seen after the Pauline changes of the last ‘60s. The revised Caeremoniale Episcoporum no longer imposes on bishops the use of episcopal gloves.

 I wanted you to see the gloves, which all too often seem to be not quite the right color and tend to clash with the other vestments.  These chirothecœ are the best match I've seen yet.  The vestments may seem  somewhat splendiferous for the Lenten period, but think of it this way: Lent is a time of fasting, so the people who attend the services at least get to feast their eyes on colorful silk and beautiful lace during the penitential  season.

Cardinal Burke explains the attraction of masses with elaborate pageantry and lavish vestments in the video below which was posted on the website of the National Catholic Reporter.

STATE WILL PAY SCHOOLS TO TEACH CREATIONISM

Taxpayer dollars in Louisiana’s new voucher program will be paying to send children to schools that teach creationism and reject evolution, promoting a religious doctrine that challenges the lessons central to public school science classrooms.

Several religious schools that will be educating taxpayer-subsidized students tout their creationist views. Some schools question whether the universe is more than a few thousand years old, openly defying reams of scientific evidence to the contrary.

Even as public schools go wanting, and public universities lay off staff.

"What they’re going to be getting financed with public money is phony science. They’re going to be getting religion instead of science,” said Barbara Forrest, a founder of the Louisiana Coalition for Science and a philosophy professor who has written about the clashes between religion and science.

Yes, but we are not to worry.

Superintendent of Education John White says annual science tests required of all voucher students in the third through 11th grades will determine if children are getting the appropriate science education in the private school classrooms.

“If students are failing the test, we’re going to intervene, and the test measures evolution,” White said.

After hundreds of thousands or even millions of state dollars have been given to schools that teach nonsensical science and leave their students ignorant.

[Governor] Jindal, who holds a college degree in biology, has supported the teaching of creationism, saying the theory of evolution has “flaws and gaps.”

Jindal was also a Rhodes scholar, and how he made his way from his studies for a degree in biology from Brown University and his studies at the University of Oxford to his present opinion in support of creationism is a mystery.

How will the schools that teach creationism coach the students at testing time?  Will the teachers say something like, "Well, you have to say that evolution is correct on the test, while you keep in mind that it's not really true";  in other words, will they coach the students to lie on the test?  Or will they encourage the students to give back what they've been taught and risk not meeting state standards?

COOL DESIGNS

Bunk Bedroom

Dog House With Loft

Dresser Dog Bowls

Hanging Boat Bed

Dog Water Fountain












Thanks to Doug.

STORY OF THE DAY - ANGELS OF MERCY

Most people don't know there are angels whose only 
job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable & 
fall asleep & miss your life.

From StoryPeople.

THE MANY VOICES OF THE BIBLE

The Bible is a remarkable collection of countless people's perspectives from a broad range of locations over the course of centuries. In this amazing assortment of texts, we see all of these different people -- individuals and groups -- reflecting on who they are, who their God is and how they see the relationships between themselves, their God, their land, their neighbors and more.

Esther J Harmon's excellent article explores the complexities and - yes - contradictions within the text of the book sacred to both Judaism and Christianity.  Harmon writes from a Jewish perspective, but much of what she says applies as well to how Christians read both Hebrew and Christian testaments.

The spectrum of voices in the Bible is astonishing. Writers of biblical texts reflect northern and southern perspectives (Israelite and Judahite); urban and rural; rich and poor; they are priests and poets, shepherds and elite literate professionals in royal scribal circles; people living in Jerusalem and Babylon and Persia and more. It should therefore not surprise us that some of these people differ in how they see the world.

Harmon reminds us far more eloquently than I ever could that humans wrote the texts from differing perspectives, and they did not write as though they were copying dictation from God. 

Some readers will find the acknowledgement of a multiplicity of voices in the Bible objectionable. But these are texts written by human beings with human viewpoints. Attributing perfection to them is idolatry, and God-as-ventriloquist is bad theology. So given that the writers were human, wouldn't we expect a better reflection of reality to come from the collection of a spectrum of voices than from any one person purporting to speak for everyone? And if a person believes God to be behind the process of these many texts being written and preserved and recopied and collected and becoming "The Bible," it should, for such a person, be that much more important to explore the relationship between the writers' perspectives.

As Harmon states, to note the many different voices in the Scriptures is not a matter of looking at the Bible from a liberal or a conservative viewpoint but is rather to study what is actually in the texts, to note what is known of the identity of the persons who wrote the words, and to explore the context in which the words were written.  Do read the entire article.  Esther Harmon is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible, Union Theological Seminary.

Thanks to Patricia on Face book for the link. 

A SPLENDID PANORAMA

Yesterday, as I walked still in daylight, the waxing gibbous moon was already high in the sky. The gorgeous sky was pastel blue and the clouds pastel pink from the sun lowering in the west. Then, seemingly in a few seconds, the clouds turned bright orange and the sky a brilliant aqua. The clouds further east became smoky blue. What a splendid and ever-changing panorama. Oh did I ever want a camera to catch the colors and shapes! But perhaps the better thing was to embrace the moments for what they were at that time and place and not try to hold on to them except in my memories.

"The heavens are telling the glory of God;
   and the firmament proclaims his handiwork."  (Psalm 19)

AT THE MOVIES AT MY HOUSE - QUICKIE REVIEWS

"Of Gods and Men" ("Des Hommes et des Dieux") tells the story of a small community of French Cistercian monks in their monastery on a hilltop in North Africa, who live peacefully amongst their mostly poor Muslim neighbors. An elderly monk who is also a doctor offers what medical care he can to the people in the surrounding area with minimal medical equipment.   

Enter militant Muslim fundamentalists who kill a group of foreign workers and instill fear in the local population.  The situation of the foreign monks becomes dangerous, and the monks must make a decision on whether to leave or whether to stay.

I loved the scenes in the monastery with the monks praying, chanting, and going about their work.  The actors in the film perform superbly, and the camera work shows off the landscapes surrounding the monastery beautifully.  Viewing the film was altogether a powerful and moving experience.

In French with subtitles.

The fast-moving "Source Code" called for two and a half viewings for me to work out exactly what was going on.  The first time around, I was interrupted more than once for rather long periods, which made it difficult for me to follow the intricate plot.

The surprised and confused Jake Gyllenhaal wakes and finds himself on a commuter train, thrust into a mission to stop a terrorist from carrying out his plot without knowing who the terrorist is, only that the man is on the same train, and Gyllenhaal has to find him before he carries out his plan.   Doing the job involves him in life extension, a form of time travel, and an alternate universe.   With Michelle Monaghan, as a fellow-commuter, and Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright, as Stevens’s military handlers.

In "The Descendants" George Clooney plays the stressed, workaholic scion of a large, extended family, descendants of Hawaiian royalty, who are heirs to vast and valuable land holdings in Hawaii.  An offer to buy the land for development divides the family.

At the same time, Clooney grieves for his wife, who now lies in the hospital on life support following an accident and fumbles and stumbles through learning how to be a father to his two daughters after leaving all the parenting to his wife through the years.  The movie shows Clooney at his best, which is very good, indeed, and Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller perform with excellence as the two daughters.  Of course, the fine film includes gorgeous vistas of Hawaii.

It had been a long time since I'd watched "Young Frankenstein" all the way through.  I'd catch parts of the movie on TV, but I never timed it right to see the whole movie in the proper sequence.  I decided to order through Netflix, and I was not sorry to laugh my way through the film again.  I laugh out loud now when I think of some of the lines.

Dr Frederick: "Perhaps I can help you with that hump." 
Igor: "What hump?"

Inga: "Werewolf!"
Dr Frederick: "Werewolf?"
Igor: "There."
Dr Frederick: "What?"
Igor: "There, wolf. There, castle."
Dr Frederick: "Why are you talking like that?"

A good time was had by me with all the movies.  Grandpère does not watch with me, even when I tell him he'd probably enjoy the movie.  He's busy doing his own thing, and my timing is not always right for him.