The Feudal Spirit

That time of year again...

2010-07-27T14:29:00.001-07:00

Once a year a plague is visited upon me and that time is again drawing nigh. The first full week of August sees the serene beauty of the Black Hills shattered by a ravenous horde of doctors, lawyers and retirees astride their overpriced Harleys. Yes, I am speaking of the Sturgis Rally, or as I like to call it: Bad-Ass Fantasy Camp.

And what better way to show what a tough guy you are than to have your $15,000 piece of crap Harley shipped to Sturgis while you fly in first class... wouldn't want to get any bugs in your teeth now, would you? And just to make sure everybody knows what a tough guy you are (if they didn't pick up on it by the fact that you're riding a Harley), be sure to cover yourself from head to toe in official Harley brand clothing, because until we saw your Harley headband, Harley T-Shirt, Harley Leather Jacket and Harley Leather Pants, we weren't really sure what kind of bike you owned.

Of course, there are a few actual bad-asses to be found. During the rally last year I was enjoying the buffet at the Kentucky Fried Chicken in Spearfish when a real live Hell's Angel let me have the last Original Recipe drum stick... no doubt he realized that a man eating chicken during the Dormition Fast was someone not to be trifled with.

Gourmet Tonic Water?

2010-07-22T15:01:00.000-07:00

I'm not opposed to pricey spirits by any means. Though I drink my Jameson's without shame, were it within my budget, Laphroaig would find itself a regular place in my liquor cabinet. But the mind recoils at the prospect of a drink with Q Tonic in it. Perhaps if it were the last mixer on earth, and it was a particularly hot day, it might see the inside of my highball glass. Until that day arrives, however, I'll take my G&T with Canada Dry, please.

Liturgical

2010-07-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

Thinking of this post from Frontier Orthodoxy got me to thinking about the liturgical moments in my life outside church. For me, these are almost always connected with fishing. I don't claim to be a great fisherman or even a good one but I do claim to have caught some fish and if, at the end of all things, something similar can be said about my soul, I'll be happy to count it as win.

Whitewood Creek is close. So close, I can see my home up on Houston St. as I fish in the valley below. With a toddler and an very pregnant wife at home, this is about as good as gets. When I walk the dog, I can hear the rush of the water and the sound makes me think of fishing, which is almost as good as fishing itself.

You have to watch your step wading up Whitewood Creek. The stream bed is what my dad would call "an ankle breaker", strewn with rocks, logs and the detritus of 100 years of mining and railroading. There are fish in this creek, pretty little brown trout that leap into the morning air chasing bugs so small you can barely see them. They aren't the biggest fish you can catch in the Black Hills and some anglers I know would find a trip to Whitewood a waste of time. A big catch in this fishery is 10 inches, something they wouldn't roll out of bed for. That's why I like it here. I like it too because the fish are dumb and hungry. So dumb and so hungry that they will take my flies, no matter how badly tied and how poorly cast.

There is a feeling that is like no other and that feeling is this: Fishing on a chilly September morning and seeing a fish rising up-stream. Looking down at your feet, seeing a caddisfly float past and knowing in your heart of hearts that this is the bug that fish is eating. Looking in your fly box and seeing a fly that you tied 3 months before and suspecting that this little bit of hook, feather and fur just might fool that fish. Tying on and feeling that pesky headwind dwindle and die as you start to cast. Not hurrying, keeping the four count rhythm, ever mindful of the tree behind you that has shattered so many moments like this in the past. Making the best damn cast you've made all morning if not the whole damn summer. The fly touching the water for an instant before it is pounced on in a strike as pretty as anything you'd imagine. In the brief, lopsided struggle that ensues, the fish flings itself skyward and you can see its a good one. The fish is in the net and you have a few seconds to admire the vibrant red spots that the brown trout get close to spawning time. The hook comes out easily and the fish swims away to be caught on another chilly September morning.

Hey Little Darlin

2010-06-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

Some college acquaintances of my wife's at Celtic Connections in Glasgow.

Ominous...

2010-05-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

Troubled times for a church that has been troubled more than most in Ukraine, according to the NCR, via the Anastasis Dialogue.

How something becomes kitsch, Soviet style

2010-03-12T13:19:00.000-08:00

Interesting to see how this, from a popular Soviet musical (?!?) of the 1960s (The Blue Spark)

turned into the Brezhnevian version of a Lawrence Welk number:

Food for Thought

2010-03-09T09:51:00.001-08:00

An interesting article on the Freakonomics blog regarding the primitive food movement:

Responding to the increasing complexity of food in 1870, John Cowan, author of What to Eat; And How to Cook It, lambasted Americans for eating “conglomerate mixtures”—ingredients “mixed in all shapes, in all measures, and under all conditions.” He insisted that these overly processed foods not only led to “a clogged brain” but also a “sickly and unenjoyable life.

And yes, this is yet another attempt to relaunch this blog.

2009-10-27T16:28:00.000-07:00

"Oh No!" I heard her cry from the other room and in that instant I knew you were gone. I would never get to hold you or even see you as a ghostly outline on a screen. The only proof that you were ever here are some results from a lab test and our broken hearts. I stare at Icons on the wall and feel nothing: She looks disappointed and His eyes are inscrutable. Well wishers say all the wrong things: "Be happy for what you have"... "You can try again"... "It wasn't meant to be"... I don't want platitudes, I want to hold you, read to you and embarrass you in front of your friends. Will I see you at the end of things? Will you know me?

The Eye of a Needle

2009-06-15T18:28:00.000-07:00

The comments on this post at the Ochlophobist remind of the words of Lady Marchmain:

"Now I realize that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor."

Spring is sort of here

2009-04-20T04:48:00.000-07:00

It is almost the end of April and spring is here... sort of. Snow still lurks ominously at the tail end of the 10 day forecast and happy are the days when the mercury reaches 60 degrees, but the trend is definitely springward.

As the 15 feet or so of snow we received this winter starts to melt and swell the streams and creeks with run-off, one's mind turns naturally to the subject of trout and how to catch them. Catching them is an impossible dream at this time of year as even the most bucolic streams are swollen and raging torrents, overflowing their banks and sweeping all before them. I am biding my time, restocking my emptied fly boxes with feeble self tied brassies, copper johns and caddis fly imitations and, when the itch gets bad, I drive to the fish hatchery to look at the monster trout in the display pond. If I squint, it is almost like they are pouncing on my dry flies and not on the brown food pellets the tourists buy for a quarter and toss to the already over sized fish.

The mule deer have had it rough. Winter came early, covering much of their grazing area with 4 feet of snow and those that survived hunting season also had to contend with mountain lions and a pack of timber wolves. The fauns that last spring looked innocent and cute with their white spotted coats and spindly legs now have a world weary look in their dim-witted eyes. Instead of looking at the world with wonder, they seem to ask it "how could you do this to me?" This makes me sad because my daughter is just old enough that when I take her outside, I can see the wonder in her eyes. I know that it won't be long until, like the fauns, she is betrayed by the world.

By the middle of May, the snow will be gone, the creeks will return to normal and newborn fauns will stumble through my backyard.

Still Alive

2009-04-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

It has been almost six month's since my last post and though lots has happened in that time, I haven't been able to muster much enthusiasm for posting. But recently I have felt the tingle of logorrhoea stirring in my bowels and so I find myself here again, ready to foist myself on the 2 or 3 people foolish enough to still subscribe to my RSS feed.

It has been an eventful six months. My daughter continues to grow and thrive, despite my ineptitude as a parent. Every day brings new feats of childhood development and new opportunities for me to give her something to talk about in therapy when she's older. Though it is not what I expected, parenthood has been the single greatest thing that has ever happened to me. Yet it is terrifying as well, as I grapple with the fact that I simply cannot protect her from everything, even myself.

I was laid off in January when my company, like so many others, succumbed to the global economic melt down. Unfortunately, being an out of work computer programmer in South Dakota is a pretty grim situation. The technology sector was not exactly thriving here during the boom times and now that economy is bust, I'll be lucky if I can get a job doing anything at all. Sadly, I am spectacularly unsuited to the industries that are surviving here, like tourism and timber. On the bright side, my wife is still employed and likely to remain so and we are able to eek out a living on less than half of what we were making together.

It has been a long winter, and not just spiritually. 3 blizzards in as many weeks dropped 7 or so feet of snow where we live during the month of March. But spring is in the air and I managed to get out do a little fishing between major winter storms. Flooding from the melting snow has rendered most of my favorite streams unfishable for the time being but I am eagerly tying flies in anticipation of summer.

I'm not sure how long this re-launch will last. Frankly, I'm not even sure what I want to write about. Blogging about religion is a near occasion of sin for me, since I am unable to write about it without being obnoxious, tedious or a bore. My extra-curricular interests are so disparate that combining them in one place would be strange, so if you want to read my thoughts on backgammon you'll have to visit my backgammon blog, The Bar Point. Readers of this blog will probably still have to put up with ramblings about fly fishing, gold prospecting and my dismal employment prospects.

Enjoy!

Boring Baby Video

2008-11-13T14:05:00.000-08:00

The first of many boring baby videos, sure to drive off what remains of my readership!

Blizzard Time Again

2008-11-06T13:52:00.001-08:00

Grace Pilar Roberts

2008-09-27T03:12:00.001-07:00

Grace Pilar Roberts
5lbs 9oz
19.25 inches long
Born on 9/27/2008 at 12:34 AM

Nature, red in tooth and claw

2008-07-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

Last week in my backyard:

CFL

2008-07-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

There was an interesting discussion in Owen's comboxes a week or so ago that touched now and again on the use of CFL bulbs. I admit to being swept up by CFL fever until quite recently and at one point almost all bulbs in my mountain fastness were CFL. To their credit, I did see a significant savings, both in my electric bill and in the cost and frequency of replacements.

Then my wife got pregnant.

One day a few weeks after we learned this, I was putting a CFL bulb into a new lamp. Klutz that I am, I could not manage to hold a bulb, a lampshade and balance on a step ladder at the same time. As I swept up the shattered bits of glass that just moments ago were a 6 dollar lbulb, I recalled something I'd read on slashdot about cleaning up the home after a CFL breaks. You can read these articles here and here... as you can see, cleaning up after a breakage is no joke: Carpet removal, throwing away clothes and bedding, etc.

So, no more CFL bulbs for me or mine.

Claim Jumpers!

2008-07-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the extended absence. Two weeks in Kansas City along with some visiting relatives have made my already infrequent bloggings even more rare.

Since getting back to the Black Hills, I've been playing catch-up with all my summertime hobbies, including gold prospecting. I don't claim to be any good at it, but I can tell you that there are few things as thrilling as finding a bunch of gold flakes at the bottom of your pan (especially when gold is over $1k an oz!).

For the last week or so, my buddies and I have been panning at Potato Creek (where Potato Creek Johnny made his great find) with good results... even our amateurish efforts yielded gold flakes in every pan. Apparently, our efforts did not go unnoticed, because a local mining operation filed placer claims up and down the creek last weekend. We have only ourselves to blame, I suppose... it only costs $150 bucks and some paperwork to file a claim and we certainly could have done so.

Ghost Towns

2008-05-27T10:55:00.000-07:00

Recent posts by Fr. Greg and Owen have set my mind to wandering and thinking about my beloved, abandoned Dakotas. Abandoned mining camps, forgotten towns and the ruins of earlier greatness litter the landscape like Ramen Noodle packages litter the floor of a college dorm room. Wild Bill and Calamity Jane are gone, never to return. The Sioux stay on their reservations. Custer is dead in ignominy.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I made the 60 mile trip to Rapid City to do some shopping. Like a meth addict to the lab, I was drawn to the local big box book store. In the "Local Interest" section near the entrance was a coffee table book on the ghost towns of the Black Hills. I opened it and was surprised to find my own town listed.

When I was a little boy, my answer to the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" varied between two poles: Pavement Worker and Farmer. The joke is that, while we teach our children the joys of agrarian life through song ("Old MacDonald", "The Farmer in the dell", etc), this is not a life most children could choose even if they wanted to. Sure, they can attend any of our nations fine agricultural colleges, but where the hell are they going to get the farm? The sad truth is that, if your parents weren't farmers, you aren't going to be a farmer. I can take solace in the fact that pavement work is still within my grasp.

Can the clock be turned back?

Tornadoes

2008-05-26T05:36:00.001-07:00

I've made the drive from Lead, SD, to Denver, CO, many times. I've got a million pictures of antelope playing, rainbows over the plains and ghost towns taken during the six hour drive. It figures... the one time I decide not to bring the camera, I see something worth taking a picture of.

My wife and I drove down to Denver on Friday to do some shopping in preparation for the arrival of our first child (there is not a Babies-R-Us within 500 miles of us). We were cautiously driving, through torrential down pours and hail, down I-25 around Wheatland, WY, when we noticed what appeared to be a large funnel cloud far to the west. Turns out it was one of the many tornadoes during this weekend's outbreak.

Tatanka

2008-05-18T18:55:00.000-07:00

My wife and I drove down to Custer State Park this weekend, hoping to see some mountain goats. They were nowhere to be found, but we did see some antelope as well as several of the herds of free range buffalo.

Baby Girl

2008-05-15T18:28:00.001-07:00

Man vs. Trout

2008-05-03T19:28:00.001-07:00

Here I am with a smallish Rainbow Trout, caught last month on Crow Creek.

Here I am with an even smaller Brown Trout:

Spring Time in South Dakota

2008-05-02T12:43:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night it began to rain. This is what it looked like by Friday afternoon:

UPDATE: The official tally is that we got 32 inches. However, I went out with a measure and consistently found depths of at least 40 inches and in many places it was well over 4 feet.

Triumph In Spearfish Canyon!

2008-04-27T15:51:00.000-07:00

I struck out last week, but this afternoon I finally pulled my first trout of Spearfish Creek. It was a harrowing experience... I sunk waist deep in mud at one point and began to wonder if I would be able to get out. At another point I could barely make headway against the current and had to pull myself forward inch by inch. But at last I found a nice deep pool in the creek and I could see my adversaries at the bottom. Using a Copper John tied by my friend Patrick, I caught two brown trout (about 8 to 10 inches each) casting across the creek and slightly up stream. I had a couple of close calls with overhanging branches, but managed to get unsnagged each time without scaring off the fish.

The only disappointment of the day was that the flies I tied myself were not successful. Two were lost in the trees and one began to unravel... better luck next time!

Self Consciousness

2008-04-25T08:56:00.000-07:00

One morning after Matins at Holy Resurrection Monastery, where I was once a novice, one of the monks looked at me said "Dear Br. Spyridon (for that was my monastic name), the one thing you need but can never have is a Catholic childhood!"

He said this because he had seen in me (a very recent convert to the True Church (TM)), from the moment I showed up, an awkwardness in my religion. Over the next two years he would do his best to give me the Catholic childhood I had missed. Using his unique spiritual gifts (discouragement and sarcasm), a vigorous reading program (the Sword of Honor trilogy, The Land of Spices, Speak Memory, to name but a few) and, well hidden beneath his crusty exterior, a generous amount of love and prayers, he attempted to transmute a convert still damp with the oil of chrism into a cradle Catholic.

Sadly, he was never entirely successful. I still feel self conscious when making the sign of the cross. I still don't know what to buy someone on the occasion of their first communion. Unlike the residents of Santa Dulcina delle Rocce, "... to whom the supernatural order in all its ramifications was ever present and ever more lively than the humdrum world about them...", for the me the supernatural order and clouds of witnesses are something I read about but rarely feel comfortable enough to treat as a reality.

My fervent prayer is that someday before I die I will be able to walk into a church and not wonder what the hell I am doing there.

Fishing on Saturday

2008-04-21T08:19:00.000-07:00

Saturday, the first decent day of spring, found me out on Crow Creek with Jon and Patrick as we tried out our new fly fishing skills. I'd spent several hours last week standing in the middle of the street practicing my casting, but I was still nervous and convinced that I'd spend more time untangling my line from over hanging branches than fishing.

Jon and I started out at a wide pool at a bend in the creek. We were both fishing with a Hare's Ear, a wet fly tied by Jon himself, and it was clearly a great choice since we both caught fish within the first 5 minutes. Jon caught a smallish brown trout and I got an even smaller rainbow. Casting, at Crow Creek anyway, was easier than expected since the creek was pretty wide, there weren't a lot of overhanging branches and the brush hasn't really started to grow in yet. I only got hung up a couple of times and only one of those resulted in the loss of a fly.

We stayed out for about 5 hours and had lots of luck. Jon and I caught 4 or 5 each, while Patrick got 10 or so. Jon and Patrick each caught one fish of a size worth keeping (though we released all we caught), while mine were a little too small to fillet. We knocked off about 3:30 and headed to Sanford's for some much deserved beer! Below is a picture of Jon with one of his smaller conquests. More pics to follow!

My First Meme

2008-04-12T18:29:00.000-07:00

The Rules:

a)The rules of the game are posted at the beginning
b)The blogger who gets tagged must answer the following questions about himself
c)After this has been accomplished, the blogger tags five more to answer the meme, and leaves a comment at their blog to answer it

1) What I was doing ten years ago: Working as a computer programmer for Meditech.

2) Five things on my to-do list:

Clean the garage
Figure out how to assemble my new fly fishing rod/reel.
Finish playing Field Commander: Rommel.
Put a patio in my backyard.
Call a plumber about installing an spigot near the garage.

3) Things I would do if I were a billonaire:

Buy a bigger house. Or maybe an entire subdivision of bigger houses.
Buy my wife a car with all wheel drive. Or maybe a fleet of cars with all wheel drive.

4) Three bad habits:

Laziness
Nail biting
Compulsive book buying

5) Five places I have visited:

Nogales, Mexico
Bastogne
Wall Drug, SD
The Cosmos Mystery Area
Devil's Tower

6) Five jobs I’ve had:

Combat Field Medical Specialist, U.S. Army
Phlebotomist
Deli Clerk
Pizza Delivery Driver
Computer Programmer

7) Five snacks I enjoy:

Sour Gummy Worms - the best can be found at Wall Drug in Wall, SD.
Anything Jerky
Almonds
Hot-n-Spicy Chex Mix
Dried Figs

Five places I’ve lived:

Greensboro, NC
Longmeadow, MA
Karlsruhe, Germany
Newberry Springs, CA
Kansas City, MO

Game Night

2008-04-08T07:12:00.000-07:00

Last night I made the 40 mile journey to Beulah, WY, for my bi-monthly game night with Mike and Theresa. On the table this time was the highly anticipated Descent: Road to Legends. An expansion to base game Descent, Road to Legends adds a campaign setting to the game and the ability to continue your adventures over the many weeks it will take to complete it without having to leave this component heavy game set up on the kitchen table. After setting up and equipping our adventurers, we cleared one level of a nearby dungeon, then called it quits for the night. Though a bit too "dungeons and dragony", it was good fun.

Next, we played Through the Ages, a abstract Civilization-esque game. It is a neat game with elegant mechanics and a surprisingly quick pace. My only complaint is that it uses tons of these little wooden bits to track resources, population and other things and my clumsy fingers had a hard time manipulating them. Anyway, the object of the game is to produce more culture than the surrounding civilizations. This can be done in a variety of ways: science, art, religion, etc. Naturally, I went the religion route, adopting the Theocracy government type as soon as it showed up and plugged significant resources into my religion structures. Happily, I won by a wide margin.

All and all, a good time!

Baby

2008-03-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

1052

2008-03-02T07:04:00.000-08:00

Owen's recent post on St. David of Wales sent me on a trip down memory lane. It was a bit of a relief, honestly. I'm recovering from a bout with pneumonia (which I spent half the week thinking was flu), so a diversion to a more pleasant time is welcome.

As I've written elsewhere, I was once a novice in a small Eastern Catholic monastery in the Mojave Desert. To attempt to support itself, the monastery opened a bakery 75 miles away in the mountain resort town of Big Bear, California. For the first year of this adventure, a small house was rented in Big Bear and the monks assigned to the bakery (of which I was one) would live in this metochion during the week, baking bread and (in theory) living the same liturgical life they would have in the desert. What nobody realized at the time was that, in a bakery operation that ran 18 to 20 hours a day, the full liturgical life of a byzantine monastery was just not going to fit in. It's not as if you can say to the 50 lbs of dough you just took out of the mixer to just "hold it right there... I'll be back in an hour after Vespers!"

We faced other challenges to our liturgical life, one of which was a paucity of liturgical materials brought on by poverty. The monastery, of course, had the full complement of the St. John of Krondstadt Press Menaion (complete with hilarious mis-translations, absurd renderings into what translators thought was Elizabethan English and strident reminders about copyright laws and the pains of hell that awaited those who violated them on each and every page of this 12 volume set). In the metochion, we were not so fortunate. We had a three ring binder filled with printouts from Fr. Ephraim Lash's fine web-site and that was about it.

Another resource that I'd located on the internet was a free computer program called "Menologion", which had the troparia and kondakia for the whole Byzantine Calendar. This meant that we didn't have to use the generic "Office for a Heiromartyr" or the even more exciting "Office for two or more Heiromartyrs". The only weird thing was that the Menologion computer program, written by some guy in the U.K., included verses for every pre-schism saint in the British Ilse. Though certain of the brethren bridled at trying to mellifluously sing the praises of Kentigern Mungo, whose light apparently shone in Strathclyde like a beacon, I myself never really minded.

We'd, of course, been in stranger liturgical situations at the monastery, such as at the feast of St. Alexis Toth or St. Mark of Ephesus (when I asked the cynical but liturgically expert Br. James why we were celebrating the feast of St. Alexis Toth, he replied that the saint's great virtue was modesty because he'd kept all his other virtues secret). Yet I did find it curious that, at least in the eyes of the authors of Byzantine liturgical verses, England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland had once been holy places, filled with holy men and women, until January 1st, 1052 AD at 12:00 AM exactly, when the Holy Spirit, "moving mysteriously it's wonders to perform", suddenly shot across the English Channel on a course straight for Eastern Europe, never to be seen in those parts again.

But things aren't always as simple as what shows up in your Menaion or your missal or whatever book your church gives you. Ask the Coptic Orthodox with a devotion Padre Pio or the followers of some Mexican folk saint. Or, for that matter, the Greek Catholic monks who sang the praises of Alexis Toth, who shone forth from Wilkes-Barre like a beacon of Orthodoxy in America.

How I Won the Cold War

2008-02-06T09:35:00.000-08:00

I served in the U.S. Army during the last years of the Cold War... I was stationed in Germany from 1989 to 1991, where I served as medic in the 7th Medical Command. Here's my Cold War story:

The week after REFORGER (a large annual military exercise in Europe during the Cold War, simulating a Soviet invasion of Germany) in 1990 (or was it 89?), I was driving an ambulance from Landstuhl to Karlsruhe. The highway was clogged with military convoys and I pulled off at a rest stop to use the restroom. I pulled in behind a small blue Opel and noticed that it had an strangely familiar license plate. Realizing where I'd seen it before, I jumped out of the ambulance and fumbled for my wallet... there, behind my 1k Zone card, Code of Conduct card and military id was my SMLM card.

SMLM's, or Soviet Military Liaison Missions, were Soviet Military observers who were allowed to observe military forces in West Germany. However, there were certain circumstances where NATO forces could detain them. U.S. Army forces were required to carry a helpful card in their wallet that identified the SMLM license plate, who to call if you saw one and described the circumstances in which they needed to be detained. As fate would have it, one of the circumstances was close proximity to military exercises (but not, as you will see on the SMLM card, on the autobahn).

As I stood in stunned silence trying to figure out I if I should try to detain him and if so, how, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Emerging from the restroom, was a smallish fellow in strange combat fatigues. Our eyes met. He saw me fumbling around with my SMLM card, staring dumbstruck at his license plate. Effortlessly lighting a cigarette, he walked briskly past me and got into his vehicle, no doubt speeding off to report to his overlords. I was left with nothing to do but phone military intelligence (their number was on the back of the SMLM card) and report his plate number.

Less than a year later, the Berlin Wall fell. Coincidence?

Pink Sky at Night

2008-02-04T07:04:00.000-08:00

I walked out the front door, just in time to confront an entire sky that looked like the photo above. I raced back up 2 flights of stairs to get my camera, only to find the telephoto lens was on. I didn't have time to change lenses since the pinkish/purplish light was fading by the second, so I was only able get a few close-ups. Not much visual interest... I really wanted to get the clouds and the hill line in the frame or maybe the hoist tower of the Yates Shaft from the nearby Homestake Mine.

Slashdot on the Pope

2008-01-31T12:59:00.000-08:00

Working in information technology, I make it a point to visit slashdot, a technology news site, a couple of times a day. The subjects covered on this site are many and varied and the same can be said of the user comments attending each news item. Today, they linked to this story, in which the Pope spoke on various bio-ethical issues. Hilarity ensued. My favorite comment was this:

"First lets deal with the ridiculous: An institution whose authorities have never experienced marriage and procreation presents itself as an authority on marriage and procreation."

You could say the same of a lot of scientists and slashdot readers.

Backgammon

2008-01-11T07:49:00.000-08:00

My father-in-law is a backgammon fiend. Having learned the game from him this past Thanksgiving, I was eager to play with my wife as well. I surprised to find that she did not know how, but I soon understood. I am myself the son of a highly competitive (he accused me of cheating at Candy Land when I was six) bridge player (it occupies almost all of free time), and despite the fact that my entire family plays, I do not. Fathers, it seems, often have difficulty passing on their passions.

After much cajoling, I convinced my wife to give backgammon a try. The rules were easily explained and before I knew it, we were off! Our first game was fairly bloodless... between her natural caution and my reluctance to ruin the game for her, no blots were sent to the bar and we both began bearing off at the same time. Fortune favored the cautious, apparently, because she won while I still had 5 checkers on the board.

Our next game was almost as bloodless... timidity was our by-word, but I did manage to swat one of her blots and keep it off the board for a couple of dice rolls. We both began bearing off at roughly the same time, but I'd had an extra turn or so to position my checkers in my home quadrant and, aided by some good rolling, managed to carry the day.

By this time it was late and time for bed, but I was pleased to see that she'd enjoyed the game and was looking forward to playing again!

On a side note, we'd been playing on a backgammon set I'd gotten for Christmas. It was a wooden set from Amazon that I thought would be nice. Sadly, however, the checkers are quite insubstantial and both die rolls and board jostling send the careening about like crazy. My father has a set that is fabric with leather pips, with stone checkers... I'd like to shoot for something like that.

Game Night: 221-B Baker Street

2008-01-11T07:21:00.000-08:00

My wife absolutely adores Sherlock Holmes and this game is a particular favorite of hers. Even though I quite enjoy it, I am often loathe to play it because the game has limited shelf life, at least in terms of the number of cases available to solve.

She overcame my reluctance last night, however, and we tackled the case of the murdered inventor. We both "rolled and moved" about London and as we did, it occurred to me that, at least in two player games, starting with one each of the Scotland Yard and Skeleton Key cards is less than interesting. Because your opponent already has a Skeleton Key card, there is little incentive to place a Scotland Yard card... your opponent will, with a faint smile upon her lips, simply breeze through it as if it weren't there. You then laugh mirthlessly as you realize that you must go back to Scotland Yard if you want to try blocking another location. Why bother, you ask yourself, since your opponent will surely have the mystery solved by the time you get it. It might be an interesting variant in two player games to start off with 1 Scotland Yard card and no Skeleton Key. Or perhaps skip the cards all together.

But the game was afoot... I had scarcely entered my 4th location when I noticed that my wife was headed back to 221-B Baker Street. Good God, had she solved the case already? In fact she had, in just 4 clues!

In the post game discussion, she said that she'd taken a page out of Holmes' book and been bold with her accusations... often, in "Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective" we'd spend hours looking for proof beyond a reasonable doubt... a signed confession, a self published book by the murderer entitled "How I Did It", etc. Anybody who's read Holmes, however, knows that he will trot out the old j'accuse on the slightest scrap of evidence. Her boldness also paid off, it seems, because she had it all: motive, weapon and killer. Drat!

For Pete's sake

2008-01-05T07:40:00.000-08:00

If you feel like risking your sanity, read this article by the Ochlophobist. Owen writes:

But then again, one might begin to make suggestions that the bourgeoisie in the West have embraced baroque and folk Catholic art as perfectly acceptable. My boss, a wealthy white male who is an agnostic that reads Zen literature, keeps a poster of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the office restroom at work.

Could not the same argument be made about Byzantine Iconography?

Shared Memory

2007-12-20T07:36:00.000-08:00

While a novice at Holy Resurrection Monastery, I had the opportunity to meet a lot of people whose paths I would not ordinarily have crossed. The monastery attracted the mundane, the curious, the bizarre and occasionally the truly holy. The encounter with Obadiah that Arturo relates here is one of my most treasured memories from the monastery.

I remember being absolutely astounded by the thought of this man pedaling that ramshackle bicycle across 50 miles of desolate Lucerne Valley and up several thousand feet of elevation to Big Bear Lake. My spirits were at an all time low and I was just 3 or 4 months away from leaving the monastery. I knew at the bottom of my heart that my vocation, if it had ever existed at all, was on life support and I felt like a failure, that I'd let God down, that I wasn't keeping up my end of the deal. Life was miserable drudgery and I couldn't pray without weeping at the futility of it all. But as Arturo and I loaded the basket of Obadiah's bike with goods we'd baked and frozen burritos we'd microwaved, I knew that we were in the presence of something special and unexpected. To this day, I'm not sure if he was fool for Christ or an angel that we'd entertained unaware. But when I imagine what it must be like to be holy, I think of Obadiah - a man that you could see shining with the love of our risen Lord.

Great Questions of Speculative Moral Theology - Zombies

2007-12-19T10:49:00.000-08:00

Like you, my sad and lonely reader, I find myself dwelling on the subject of zombies.

I am, of course, speaking of real zombies, not those unfortunate victims of Haitian voo-doo, doomed to a life of unending slavery and toil for their overlords, nor do I speak of those eponymous philosophical thought experiments, beings indistinguishable from normal humans but totally lacking qualia and conscious experience who exist solely to torment grad students. Real zombies... undead creatures (either by supernatural means or some virus that causes the dead rise), animated solely by their hunger for human flesh are what consume our thoughts.

Here are a few salient facts about zombies that I wish to place before us at the outset:

A zombie will, without exception, attempt to devour the living.
Zombie-ism is contagious. A person attacked by a zombie will, invariably, become a zombie. If the person was killed by a zombie, zombification will be almost instantaneous. Persons wounded by a zombie will take longer to zombify but will, in the end, do so.
Zombie-ism is incurable.

Bearing this in mind, I would like to speculate on some moral questions.

First, would it be sinful to kill an attacking zombie, intent on feeding on your flesh? It is quite possible that this zombie attacker is simply a human infected with some viral or bacteriological agent that drives him to kill, thus making the zombie an innocent pawn, the unwitting victim of forces beyond his control. Fortunately, St. Thomas seems to have anticipated the question:

Accordingly the act of self-defense may have two effects, one is the saving of one's life, the other is the slaying of the aggressor. Therefore this act, since one's intention is to save one's own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in "being," as far as possible.

Let us now consider another possibility, which if zombie movies are to be believed (and I don't think we can assume otherwise), is a frequent situation in zombie attacks: That is, a companion has been wounded by a zombie. This unfortunate person's zombification has yet to occur, however this wounded fellow will, at any moment, turn into a flesh eating fiend. Is it morally licit to kill this person before they try to eat your brains? There are no easy answers from St. Thomas here. In fact, he is quite silent on the question. However, I think concept of double effect is in play. Were I to kill my soon-to-be-a-zombie friend in anticipation of his change in appetites, my intention is still to save my own life, not end that of my doomed friend.

A similar, but more difficult question, regards the licitness of suicide in the case of one's own impending zombification. Ordinarily, suicide is a shot that is not on the board of Catholic moral theology. But in this case, suicide is being considered to keep ones self from becoming a murderous fiend, an almost heroic action. However, as is apparent in many zombie movies, the unfortunate victim often considers suicide, not to save the lives of others, but to avoid the humiliation of becoming that which he would not. Here we may compare the case of Samson, who caused his own death and the death of many Philistines yet remains listed among the Saints, with the case of Razias, who takes his own life out of pride. Apparently intention is the key.

Finally, what responsibility does the zombie bear for it's actions? If truly undead, then its soul has presumably left for the here-after and is not responsible for the actions of his corpse. But if the poor soul is infected with some agent that controls his actions, the guilt for the murders committed while in this state would presumably fall under the category of involuntary sin.

Ochlophobist 451

2007-12-19T07:08:00.000-08:00

When I first read this post I had what Owen would call "book egalitarian" reaction. Most of my adolescence had been spent in what I considered then to be an heroic battle against the forces of puritanism embodied by my parents. Certain books and records had been confiscated, various movies forbidden, MTV not allowed. In short, my parents were doing all they could to raise a son in what is surely one of the most depressing and soul destroying cultural milieus ever.

I could not see this, of course. Like many who read Bradbury's novel, I came away convinced that book burning, censorship, etc, were pretty much the worst things ever and they would be the first order of business if people like my parents ever got in charge. That it was the Reagan era and people like my folks already were in charge escaped me.

But now, with the perspective that only time can bring, I can understand what my parents were trying to do. If my child comes home with the 21st century equivalent of this or this
* you will find me in the back yard firing up the Weber.

* UPDATE: Originally, I included a link to this book by John Romanides to be among the items grilled on the Weber. A reader (I'd forgotten that I had any!) pointed out that this was perhaps not charitable. I stand by my assertion that the book in question is, for all practical purposes (except that of kindling) worthless, but it isn't fair to Romanides, who no doubt meant well, to include him in the company of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.

O Holy Night

2007-12-18T05:38:00.001-08:00

Speaking of Bryn Terfel...

2007-12-15T13:56:00.001-08:00

Terfel is the giant baritone.

Jussi Bjorling - Greatest Tenor Ever!

2007-12-15T13:49:00.001-08:00

Jussi Bjorling singing the phone book is a thousand times more compelling than the work of any modern male vocal talent, save perhaps Bryn Terfel.

More Menotti

2007-12-14T15:36:00.003-08:00

Here is Menotti in his own words.

Amahl and the Night Visitors

2007-12-14T15:36:00.001-08:00

I'll be honest, Menotti is not my favorite composer. I've seen a production of "The Old Maid and the Thief", which struck me as inane (though not as inane as "The Barber of Seville") and I own a copy of "The Medium" (the mezzo on the cover of the linked recording, Joyce Castle, was my wife's voice teacher while she was earning her doctrate) which does little to move me.

Yet I find myself really liking "Amahl and the Night Visitors" despite the bitchiness of Amahl's mother and the preposterous aria "This is my Box". The first Christmas television special to become a traditional favorite, it aired on Christmas eve from 1951 to 1956 on NBC. A far cry from "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Nestor the Long Eared Christmas Donkey!"

Pachelbel Rant

2007-12-12T13:50:00.001-08:00

Amusing to see how pervasive this tune is!

The True Church (TM)

2007-12-11T08:04:00.000-08:00

A week or so ago, I asked a friend to take a look at the Ochlophobist's remarks on the recent events at Ravenna. His first question to me, after reading the post, was "Are you going to 'dox'?" A mirthless laugh passed my lips. "I've given up trying to find the true church," I said.

Being an Eastern Catholic is often a depressing enterprise. In my few years as a communicant, I've seen a microscopic parish split in bitter internecine warfare. I've seen a vibrant monastery hounded out of its own Eparchy by a clueless chancery. I've seen liturgies where even the clergy seemed to have no idea of what was going on. Why, I often wondered, did I even bother showing up?

There was time, a few years ago, when the thought of dox-ing was attractive. No more nagging doubts about Popes. No more frustration with what I perceived to be lax praxis. No more re-arranging of the deck chairs on the iceberg. If I were Orthodox, I thought, I could just go to church on Sunday and not worry.

Sharing these thoughts with a trusted advisor, he recommended that I spend more time among the Orthodox. As I did so, I saw a mirror image of the Church I was already in... parishes obsessed with ethnic concerns from the old world, clueless celebrants muddling their way through liturgies, petty divisions. In the affair d'Estonia in 1993, I saw a hierarchy just as obsessed with power as Jack Chick's wettest dream.

It is only because of the vagaries of time and space that I even have the luxury of considering the question of the true church and where it might be found. There wasn't a "St. Joseph Catholic Community" down the street in some village in Asia Minor 1500 years ago or "Sts. Boris and Gleb ROCOR Parish" in the next town over in medieval France. Until very recently, nobody even had to worry about the question. You just went to church.

In the end I decided that I would just have to hope that God would not make my salvation contingent on unraveling a 1000 year old spat between East and West. I'm not smart enough to figure it out. I don't know who is. So, I've given up trying to find the True Church (TM). I shall fight no more forever. To paraphrase the monks of the Holy Mountain, Uniatism or death!

Who the hell am I?

2007-11-29T12:09:00.000-08:00

It was never my intention to write about religion on this blog. I did my bit as a religion blogger years ago and found it ultimately unhelpful in my spiritual growth. So, I've contented myself in these later years with reading religion blogs, all the while remarking to myself how glad I was to get off that treadmill. Self congratulatory thoughts about how I'd risen above pointless Internet theological contretemps and argumentation without end were my bread and butter. I was better than that, I thought.

But as it is our common destiny to become that which we most loath, I now find myself blogging about religion. Which means that I owe you, my sad and lonely reader, some explanations.

I am Catholic, having swum the Monongahela in 2002 to enter into blessed union with the See of Pittsburgh. I spent nearly two years as a novice in a small monastery in the Mojave desert, along with a certain other blogger. After watching my vocation incinerate at 450 degrees in an industrial baking oven, I returned to the world with most of the wounds I brought to the monastery completely healed by the grace of God and the love of the monks, whom I will treasure as brothers for the rest of my life. The inevitable nicks and abrasions suffered in religious life are now distant memories and I ache for my lost vocation only occasionally, as if it were a phantom limb.

The Ochlophobist on factory wafers.

2007-11-29T06:25:00.000-08:00

First, read this.

It is probably just as well that Owen shut down the comments... Arturo's stalker showed up which meant a future of nothing but non sequiturs and Dr. Dre references. But Owen made a final comment to me that I feel compelled to address. I reproduce his remarks below:

Sean,

"which is really a function of demographics, not theology"
- very well then, this phrase perfectly captures the ethos of big box praxis.

Eastern Rites do sometimes tend to join the bandwagon suggesting that the EOC is to small to be The Church, etc. One can be so small and be part of the Church, but not The Church, etc., following that general condescending attitude of RCs that Orthodox claims to be the One Church of Christ are quaint. A barking poodle, to use one (canonically) Eastern Catholic’s choice of terms.

"The Errors of the Latins and their Floor Waxes"

Here is the suggestion that the polemical target of this post, Mcwafers, is as arbitrary a target as what one finds in RC mop buckets. In suggesting as much, you unwittingly suggest that the origin and type of what is in the Cup (for Orthodox, in the hand or tongue for RCs) is not substantially more important that the origin and type of what is the mop bucket. This is exactly the inclination that a Mcwafer ecclesiological culture breeds. For if in that very thing that is most important to us we use something that is cheaply and inhumanly made (when we have and could use something else – and seeing the extraordinary works that Catholics routinely do on all number of fronts I refuse to believe that they could not handle making their own wafers on a parish level, though perhaps some difficulty in the effort might help sway what many conservative Catholics believe is an overly frequent Communion practice in AmChurch), is from an arbitrary or exchangeable source, as it were, is in its packaged form a product easily disposed of (which no one will miss because no one made it, certainly not the person who might throw it away on the parish level if its gets past the expiration date), and has been marketed by those who bask in their increased market share and market dominance, then, my friend, we have essentially affirmed that the whole cosmos is a mop bucket.

"very well then, this phrase perfectly captures the ethos of big box praxis."

I'm not sure what he means by this. I was simply suggesting that the fact that there are lots and lots and lots of Catholics in many of places and that it is often necessary to build bigger houses of worship to accommodate them all.

"...that general condescending attitude of RCs..."

This is truly rich. Catholics have, in general, a condescending attitude, says the man for whom, it sometimes seems, the Catholic Church can do no right, this bread obsession being only the latest example. Well, when you hate someone, the way they use their fork infuriates you. When you like someone, the way they lick their plate is charming.

"In suggesting as much, you unwittingly suggest that the origin and type of what is in the Cup (for Orthodox, in the hand or tongue for RCs) is not substantially more important that the origin and type of what is the mop bucket."

First of all, I don't believe it is possible to "unwittingly suggest" anything. Attempting to indicate a natural connection of ideas without plain expression would require far more wit than I posses and, were I even to attempt such a feat, I doubt I could do it unconsciously. I will leave aside the horrific insinuation that I actually believe that what is in the Cup is not more important than what is in the mop bucket, but I do dispute the notion that the way in which Catholic communion wafers are made somehow diminishes them.

Wheat does not plant itself or harvest itself, folks, even if it is no longer done by an army of serfs equiped with scythes but instead by a single farmer on a big John Deer rig (also made by humans). Somebody laid the tracks the carried the train to the grain elevator. Another fellow came up with the idea for whatever automation is at work in the bakery. No babies were sacrificed, no deals with the devil were made (though I'm sure Owen will insist otherwise).

"[I] refuse to believe that they could not handle making their own wafers on a parish level, though perhaps some difficulty in the effort might help sway what many conservative Catholics believe is an overly frequent Communion practice in AmChurch"

Owen insists that the level of production required to supply many large Catholic parishes with bread is available in the kitchen of the local rank and file. Well, if he says so, I guess. He goes on to suggest, wittingly I presume, that it might be all for the best if the last few communicants in line were turned away from the table. Nice.

What I was suggesting by my "Floor Wax" comment is that Owen seems determined to loathe the Catholic Church (here we may insert his standard comment about his many Catholic friends) and as far as he's concerned, "sucks to them". If the Red Sox were the official baseball team of the Vatican, he'd be a Yankee fan. If Catholics drink Coke, he'd be a Pepsi man. If Pope Benedict shouted "Great Taste!", he'd yell "Less Filling!". And no doubt he'd be full of incredibly well articulated justifications, all based in theology and orthopraxy, for each of these opinions.

For the record, let me say in advance that I am not suggesting anything else about baseball, soft drinks or Miller Lite.

Puppies

2007-11-18T21:40:00.000-08:00

Puppies

Yesterday and Today

2007-11-14T06:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, I bugged out early and went to Spearfish to attend a recital at BHSU, given by some of Nancy's students. All were good, but there was a particularly beautiful setting of Psalm 23 by Dvorak that I really liked.

Afterwards, Nan and I drove back to Lead, in preparation for the concluding class of Basic Obedience. Brynn was doing really well until it was time to go off leash for recall training. She got distracted by a giant nerf football and we had to spend what seemed like hours trying to catch her. Tracy gave us some tips to deal with that situation that seem like they might help.

Weekend

2007-11-12T08:24:00.000-08:00

A pretty quiet weekend in Lead. Friday night we enjoyed a Mystery Dinner at Enigma in Rapid City. The appetizer was one we'd had before and great favorite: fried brie with a crushed walnuts and raspberry reduction sauce. The pasta course was also pretty unbelievable: mushroom ravioli with crispy shitake mushrooms in a delicious broth. The main course was also quite good: some kind of crazy beef wrapped around asparagus with potatoes. Desert was the only disappointment: some kind of crepe with a slice of fried pineapple. 3 out of 4 ain't bad!

Saturday was spent vegging in front of the TV after a hike to Deadwood. Sunday was another lazy day, though we dragged ourselves and the dog up towards the Englewood trail head. We found the Bismark Mine and the Wasp Mine, two old gold mines that closed in the 20's. The mysterious Dr. Nero and I will probably make our way up there to go through the tailings.

Game Night

2007-11-08T07:58:00.000-08:00

Mike and I looked over Gunslinger and Republic of Rome... we didn't really have the time for either. Instead, we played Fantasy Flight's StarCraft - The Board Game. I was apprehensive, since a board game version of a popular video game didn't sound too promising. But it turned out to be kind of fun... plus, I won!

Mike and I planned on getting together November 28th. I think we'll try to make time for RoR... I'm going to see if I can come up with some .Net play aids to speed things along.

Tonight

2007-11-07T09:19:00.001-08:00

Tonight I'm gaming with Mike in Wyoming... we are either playing Gunslinger, Republic of Rome or Tannhauser. All sound pretty good, though I confess I'd like to give Gunslinger a try. It will be interesting to see how Avalon Hill managed to remove all aspects of fun from this exciting concept.

I bummed out to hear that there would be no fake golf today, but apparently Steve had a pipe burst in house and won't be able to play.

Deadwood - Season 3

2007-11-06T07:19:00.001-08:00

The wife and I finally finished Deadwood Season 3. Disappointment on all counts. First, what a bummer that this fantastic series got cut short. Second, the third season in general and the finale specifically were real let downs. With just a fraction of the intensity of the previous seasons, I wish they'd spent more time working with the characters they had than developing several of the pointless story lines that featured so prominently. I am speaking specifically of the theater troupe, although the saga of the livery and Aunt Lou's son were also a waste of time.

The season/series finale was also a bummer. Frankly, ending with a whimper would have been an improvement over the dull, soft thud of this ending. Why on earth did they think anyone cared one jot about Langrishe's whining that the opening night of their production might be delayed by the power struggle with Hearst?

The Book that Would Not End

2007-11-05T13:50:00.001-08:00

Though I'm enjoying it thoroughly, I'm starting to wonder if I will ever finish Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I read and read and read but the end never seems any closer.

Gold Fever

2007-11-05T09:35:00.001-08:00

The mysterious Dr. Nero and I went prospecting this weekend, with some small success. Armed with an improved knowledge of both geology and panning techniques, we snorted around two spots in the Kirk valley, garnering several microscopic bits of gold dust. The areas we worked in had to be pretty picked over, due to their easy accessibility and proximity to the Homestake mine, but it was nice to find some "color" in our pans at the end of it all.

Not off to a great start

2007-10-22T14:04:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I'm a little slow getting off the mark. A couple of posts will be appearing post haste.

Beware of Rants

2007-09-04T15:44:00.000-07:00

Behold, my new blog. Its been quite a few years since I tried this last... my original efforts, "Swimming the Tiber" and "The American Pickler" have both faded from popular memory. We'll see how long this lasts.

The Feudal Spirit

That time of year again...

Gourmet Tonic Water?

Liturgical

Hey Little Darlin

Ominous...

How something becomes kitsch, Soviet style

Food for Thought

The Eye of a Needle

Spring is sort of here

Still Alive

Boring Baby Video

Blizzard Time Again

Grace Pilar Roberts

Nature, red in tooth and claw

CFL

Claim Jumpers!

Ghost Towns

Tornadoes

Tatanka

Baby Girl

Man vs. Trout

Spring Time in South Dakota

Triumph In Spearfish Canyon!

Self Consciousness

More Fish Stories

Fishing on Saturday

My First Meme

Game Night

Baby

1052

How I Won the Cold War

Pink Sky at Night

Slashdot on the Pope

Backgammon

Game Night: 221-B Baker Street

For Pete's sake

Shared Memory

Great Questions of Speculative Moral Theology - Zombies

Ochlophobist 451

O Holy Night

Speaking of Bryn Terfel...

Jussi Bjorling - Greatest Tenor Ever!

More Menotti

Amahl and the Night Visitors

Pachelbel Rant

The True Church (TM)

Who the hell am I?

The Ochlophobist on factory wafers.

Puppies

Yesterday and Today

Weekend

Game Night

Tonight

Deadwood - Season 3

The Book that Would Not End

Gold Fever

Not off to a great start

Beware of Rants