The daughters are coming to town for the weekend, so I'll probably be scarce.

"Well," huffeth the reader, "you're scarce most all the time. This is news?"

All right. Just wanted to make sure we're on the same page.

I did want to relate a story told me by a student last semester about how her grandmother went comatose, almost died, and then came to life again just before the doctors pulled her life support. But it will have to wait.

Meanwhile, you can watch Zippy stir the pot here.

Lauren Richardson, whom I've mentioned before. The Youtube link I provided in that post has been replaced by the video presentation on this page, because the court has forbidden Lauren's father to link to it. Amazingly tyrannical, isn't it? I didn't know courts could tell you what links you can put on your website. What is such a gag order supposed to accomplish? All the video shows is Lauren in her disabled condition, which will elicit sympathy from some people and contempt from others, the latter disguised behind a mask of mercy: grant her a dignified death, let her go, don't force her to live like this, all of which can be readily accomplished by STARVING HER.

Well, I can still link to it, and it's here.

Equally amazing is the fact that, while Lauren's father wants to care for her, her mother wants to kill her. The court has facilitated this by granting the mother guardianship. The deck is stacked. I can't keep track of how the world works anymore.

Since Smith and I had played golf together back in the 80's (he was a short-knocker with an unexpectedly graceful swing), I was not surprised to see the Players' Championship on the big TV screen over his hospice bed. He was tickled to learn that Bernadette had played on the LPGA Tour for a couple of years. I showed him pictures of both girls, and he remarked on their beauty, but I'm not sure the memory of them completely returned. They were just children, perhaps infants, when last he'd seen them. It was hard to tell what he remembered. Sometimes he seemed right there with us, at others off in some place of his own. That his hearing was going didn't make it any easier. He did ask about my wife, for he had attended our wedding. Every now and then he dozed off, and we could hear the rasp in his breathing. It didn't sound good. Then suddenly he'd wake up again and rejoin the conversation. He looked at me. "When is that girl coming?" he asked.

"What girl?"

"The one from Miami." He waved his hand, exasperated. "Why can't I get her name?"

"You mean Marie," I said. Another former student. She was the editor now of some magazine down in Boca Raton, not Miami. Smith nodded.

"Next week," I said. Just like a man, always wondering when the girls are coming.

There was a tube running into his belly, another carrying oxygen into his nose. I found out later from his daughter, Anna, that the feeding tube - which he had resisted mightily - had saved his life. He'd almost died from the weakness of hunger a couple of months ago when they finally found the cancer. Now, using the triangular bar hanging over his head, he had the strength to elevate himself a little bit when the sheets needed changing, when he needed bathing, or when Anna needed to slide him back up on his pillows.

I'd last seen Anna in her early teens. Now she was a woman well into her 30's. She was always at his side, wiping his chin when couldn't hold down a sip of water, running back and forth to the bathroom to freshen his washcloths. It was plain to see that she would be with him till the end. We sat together on the back porch for a while, talking about what he'd been through, what she'd been through, and what was to come. Below us the back lawn sloped down to a creek invisible beyond the azaleas now crowded by encroaching undergrowth. I reminisced about coming over to mow that lawn for him in the early 70's, and about sitting around the pool and talking with him about a story I couldn't make work. He was incredibly patient. It's a wonder he didn't throw me out. And she remembered the Writer's Conference parties and, being a girl of ten, making herself stay awake so that she could listen to the conversations, some of which she probably shouldn't have heard. Writers can be a profane lot, their vanity giving them license. But in Smith's own home, in his gentle and hospitable presence, things never got too out of hand. And if Mr. Lytle were in town, everyone knew how to walk before the seat of Judgement. As we talked, it seemed as if no time had passed at all.

Meanwhile Smith slept and awoke, slept and awoke.

Later I visited another old friend (and student of Smith's, of course) on his farm outside of town. He had 30 acres, some cattle, and two big black Rottweilers, not bad for an old English teacher, and it seemed like paradise to me. The nearest neighbor's house was several hundred yards away on the other side of an endless wooden fence that disappeared into some forest. About twenty yards beyond the back porch was a wire fence, and when two baby bulls the color of burnt sienna came up to it to nibble on some tall weeds, I grabbed my camera and ran down there. I tried to feed them carrots by hand, but they wouldn't take it. Then a big black cow came running up - I had thought to protect the little ones - but she just wanted the carrots. Pretty soon I had several big black cows eating out of my hand. They jostled for position. Every now and then one would head-butt another in the ribs. I made sure they all got some. They have huge sensitive eyes, snort when they take a carrot, blowing snot on your arm, and they have big strong tongues with sandpaper on top. I could have done it for hours.

When I first met up with my friend, he was all hot and sweaty, having just gotten off the tennis courts out at the country club. He was still robust with playing tennis, running, and lifting weights. At 65, he was not going gently, and good for him. But I could see the post-match stiffness in his bearing, the slight sag to his structure that comes after us all at a certain age. He was twenty years behind Smith; I slightly more. His wife ran out to get us pizza and then the three of us sat around eating it and drinking a wonderful cabernet sauvignon. Again there was reminisence, story telling and laughter and, again, it was as it always is: as if no time had passed. He made me call another old friend (another student) I had hoped to see, but who had not been made aware of my coming. He was a former college football player, a handsome cuss whom the women could not resist. But now he was fighting a daily battle with a severe form of diabetes which doctors attribute to his exposure to Agent Orange. He swims and plays golf, but can't run or lift weights, or drink beer. But one good woman finally nailed him down and he's been married to her for the last fourteen years. I could hear the hint of age in his voice, but otherwise it sounded the same, taking me backwards, making past and present one again. It was good to hear, and I told him so. "Well, goddammit," he began, when I told him that in a few minutes I'd be driving off into the darkness heading home. But soon, I assured him. Soon I had a feeling we'd all be getting together again, all of us, Marie and all the others who'd missed each other this time around, and then we'd play that round of golf I'd been promising him.

Yes, he agreed, it all depended on that rasp we heard when Smith dozed off. So I said good-bye, then hugged my host and his wife and went out into the darkness that pointed the way home.

I had sat with Smith for several hours. Rick Barnett was there with me, having come all the way from Atlanta. At one point I asked Rick if he had told Smith that he was still working hard at his fiction, that he'd written three novels and a bunch of stories. No, he admitted in that somewhat modest, retiring south Georgia way he had, he hadn't done that yet. So I leaned toward Smith, speaking loudly, and said that he needed to know that Rick, unlike some of us others, was still working hard at the craft, and doing good work. Some of it might even be great work, I assured him.

"You might have taught him something, Kirk," I finished.

Rick, realizing the moment, said, "It's true, Smith. If I know anything, I learned it from you."

Smith blinked at him for a moment, and then smiled faintly. "Well, it reminds me of that poet's line I like so much." He squinted, looking frustrated, the name just out of reach, it seemed. "Anyway, it was something like 'the life so short, the craft so long to learn.'"

Anna got my attention and motioned to a corner of the room. I got up and went over and found a piece of wood sitting atop a pile of books and papers, and on the wood someone had engraved for Smith the line he could not forget: "The Lyf so short/The craft so long to lerne." The name he couldn't remember was Chaucer's.
------------------------------

Update: Here's the letter I sent to Anna via email after I got home, which she tells me today that she read to him:

Dear Anna,

I'm sorry I didn't get back to see Smith Friday night, but I had a feeling it might happen. After visiting with Ward and Barbara way out in Alachua, it was getting late, I was tired, and had a long drive home. But it was important to me to see him again, and a great reward to find him so lucid and as strong as he was. Please tell him that I think about him, and pray for him, every day, and give thanks that I was so fortunate to have such a teacher at the time when our lives first crossed. He stopped me in my tracks and sent me down another road without even trying. I could not have written the little I have without the knowledge he gave me - free of charge, no interest due, as a father gives freely to a son (and he had many sons and daughters) - nor can I even imagine what shallowness I'd have brought to the reading of literature had not his powers of perception enhanced my own. He's not the only one I owe, but he was the first; and if I could repay it I would, but I can't. As if he would ever ask, but he won't.

It's clear that the demands on your time now are enormous. You are his angel, the face he sees before he goes to sleep, and expects to see again when he wakes. When I said you're doing good, I did not mean a "good job", because it's too obvious that you are. I meant good, as in the right and virtuous thing. Many are not so fortunate as to die with the one we most love by our side. Maybe Kirk was just enough of a good man to deserve this final grace. He always seemed so to me. I'll pray that your strength and patience be kept up, and that death for him when it comes, if it must come, does so quietly. Give him a hug for me, and a final thanks. With any luck, maybe I'll say it to him myself. We'll see.

If you need anything, let me know...

My love to you both...

I was going to put up another post about girls, but I found out today that my old writing teacher at UF, Smith Kirkpatrick, is - as my correspondent put it - "on his last leg." He's confined to bed, with cancer in both lungs, and being fed by tube. He's 85.

He inherited the Creative Writing Program (of which there is an absurdly short history here) from its founder, Andrew Lytle, later the longtime editor of The Sewanee Review, in which Kirk published a number of essays and stories. He wrote one novel, The Sun's Gold, published by Houghton Miflin in 1974.

One of his students, later a colleague and sometime antagonist, Harry Crews, who achieved a celebrity that Smith never sought, admitted once in conversation that "Kirk knows more about the craft of fiction than any man I ever met." And that would include an awful lot of people, for Smith's cultivation of the Florida Writer's Conference brought the best of the literary lights to town, people like James Dickey, Madison Jones, Lytle himself, John Frederick Nims, Nelson Algren, Howard Nemerov, John Knowles (A Separate Peace), Truman Capote, Reynolds Price, Donald Justice, John Ciardi, and on it goes. A couple of them, like Nims and Justice, enjoyed it so much they took teaching chairs at Florida. I don't think it was anything special about Gainesville, but rather the soft-spoken graciousness of the true Southern gentleman Kirk was, and the enthusiasm of the students who became his literary progeny.

I might give a more personal portrait after he goes, if he goes. I haven't talked to him in over 18 years. I'm just hoping he hangs on for another week so I can get up to Gainesville and thank him one more time for what he gave me. It seems important, for some reason.

Possibly related to something that popped up in the comments thread a couple posts ago:

Day before yesterday I go to flush the toilet. It flushes, but then the water doesn't return to its normal level, just levels off way down low where everything disappears. I remove the tank top and peer inside. Water's dripping, not spewing, out of the rubber refill tube. Most of the water's just bubbling out the top of the fill valve. At this rate, it would take two hours to refill the tank between flushes. I deduce that something's wrong with the fill valve. Solution? Fix it. I run up to the hardware store and come back with a new valve. I also grabbed a new seal because something in my memory told me to. I get home, gather some tools, and start reading the directions. Replacing the seal would be easiest. But according to the diagrams it looks like my valve is out of date and seal replacement won't work. I took the top off anyway and, sure enough, didn't see what the diagram said I should. Better to replace the whole valve anyway. So I begin, which requires holding the valve in the tank immobile while loosening the plastic nut beneath the tank with a pipewrench. It won't budge. The valve turns with the nut. Everytime. Plus there's another pipe in the tank interfering with my leverage. I try firming up my grip with a paper towel, a washcloth, whatever I can think of, but the valve keeps turning with the nut. I get really violent with it and a piece of the pipe breaks. It's made of plastic. Now I'm thinking I'll have to call a plumber and pay him a hundred bucks for a job my wife and I accomplished a few years ago working as a team. I wonder how we did it. The idea of paying a plumber makes me mad and I start yelling at the toilet, swearing actually. I won't tell you what. I was yelling at a heap of porcelain, plastic and metal.

I needed emotional support so I called my wife and asked her if she could remember how we had done it before. No, she said, but she'd be glad to take a look at it when she got home. Sounded faintly condescending. But if we can't fix it, I said, you'll be going without a toilet for the rest of the day and night. It was late afternoon already and most plumbers are closing up and I ain't paying their emergency fees. So I said I'd try again. She wished me luck and hung up.

I looked at the valve in the diagram again, really studying it this time. For some reason it looked different, just like the one in my toilet. Maybe I could get away with replacing the seal after all. I followed the directions and (things are never as easy as in the diagrams) finally got the top off, correctly this time. There was the magic seal. I popped the old one out and put the new one in. Then I put the top back on the valve. Then I turned the water on. The top blew off, and now I had a gusher rising toward the ceiling. I yelled again - screamed, really. Use your imagination. I shut the water off and spent five minutes mopping up the floor with the available towels, which was sure to get me in trouble with the wife, but I didn't care anymore. I then reseated the valve top by pushing down real hard, which sent the plastic sleeve that fits over the valve all the way to the bottom of the shaft. I tried pulling it back up. It didn't want to come. So I pulled real hard and it released suddenly, which caused me to lose my balance and fall against the sink behind me. I yelled some more. There was no way this toilet was going to work. A piece of plastic can't take this much abuse.

I reseated the valve top with greater care, adjusted the height (carefully), pushed the little plastic ring into place to secure it (which I'd forgotten to do the first time), tugged on the top to see if it would hold, reconnected the fill tube, and turned the water on. I flushed, still worried about the broken plastic beneath the sleeve. It worked. "Take that, you inanimate piece of #!$*&! You stench-filled conduit for..."(unrepeatable). For some reason it felt good to insult the toilet. It got quite elaborate. I remember at one point explaining patiently to an open lid that it was nothing more than the ornamental top end of a sewer line, its sludge-filled essence below ground where none could see the truth of its being.

I decided to finish up some other plumbing chores while I was at it, replacing the seats and washers in the leaky tub faucet, and the gate valves on the equally leaky outdoor faucets. Piece of cake.

When the wife got home I told her about all the work I'd done - that she might better apprehend my value as the masculine part of this one-flesh team - including a blow-by-blow account of my skirmish with the toilet. When I got to the part about the top blowing off, she nearly fell out of her chair laughing. "How about a little gratitude," I grumbled. "You might have ended up crouching behind a tree in the middle of the night."

"Oh, cut the melodrama. I could use the guestroom."

But the guestroom's a separate building. I doubt she'd appreciate having to go out there in the "wee" hours should the need arise.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You're right. Thanks for gutting it out." But I could see she was still stifling her amusement. As she left the room to go say her rosary, she muttered something under her breath that sounded like "Mr. Goodwrench."

Later, after she'd taken a shower and used the toilet, she came back out in her nightclothes to say goodnight. "Well, congratulations Mr. Plumber Boy; it looks like everything's working fine."

Mr. Plumber Boy.

...a couple of looks at how it's done, to be committed to memory and taken to the course:





Update: both of these vids are available on YouTube, here and here. There's a link below the viewer window that says "Watch in high quality." It's worth clicking on.

In last Monday night's class my students turned in their responses to Judy Brady's "I Want a Wife", the assignment requiring of them some degree of creativity in giving their own opinions of the relations between the sexes. Then I read aloud a few responses of former students, gathered over the years, which I thought might amuse them, papers with titles like "I Don't Need a Man", "Girls Rule, Dogs Drool," "My Three Husbands," "The Better than Perfect Man", "Feminist Judy Brady Whines about the Hard Life," and "My Wife is a Mental Transvestite." (Some of these used to be found on my old .com site, but didn't make the transfer to my current archives. I'll repair that eventually.) After we'd had our fun, I told them another story - about one of their own classmates. I told of how the previous Monday I'd gone to my mailbox to find two overdue papers waiting for me, a research paper and a narrative. Underneath those I'd found a brief missive from the registrar, notifying me of the death of one of my students, and with the purpose of preventing any further accidental communication with the family. It was the same student whose papers I now held. The date of death given was March 10th. Something didn't sit right so I looked at the overdue papers and attached to the research offering - "In Favor of Pro-Choice" - was a handwritten note:

Dear Prof. Luse, This is my revised research paper, as well as my story. I emailed them both to you this morning about 11:30 A.M. I am also turning them into your box just in case they didn't go through. Thanking you, Stephanie.

The date on the note was March 25, 2008.

"So," I asked, "how do you die on March 10th and leave me a signed, handwritten note on the 25th?"

I had their attention. A few mouths dropped open.

"She sat right over there," I said, pointing to the spot. Heads turned, and in spite of her erratic attendance, all remembered.

"Yeah, the dirty blonde," said one fellow. Another thought her a strawberry blonde.

"Her name was Stephanie," I said, "and this is her story." I held up the typewritten paper found in my mailbox: "I Should Have Listened to My Parents." I did not read the whole thing, but mostly summarized: about a girl who'd met a guy under apparently auspicious circumstances, how wonderfully they'd hit it off, and how she'd planned to move in with him after graduating high school. She asked her Mom's advice, who didn't like it. Her boyfriend's advice? "You are eighteen years old. You don't have to listen to that. You can just move out."

So she did. After a year there was an argument during which the boyfriend yelled at her and "smacked" her in the mouth. "He had never yelled at me like that before. What did I do wrong?" She called a friend and asked again of her what she might have done "to set him off."

"What you did wrong? What the hell is wrong with you?"

She returns to her parents. The boyfriend later offers a weeping apology. He gets her a puppy to prove his sincerity. She goes back to him. The cycle begins again. The arguing resumes, and eventually he (in her words) "punched me in the eye and busted my lip."

And I told the class how, during the intervening week, after reading the story, the incident had begun driving me to distraction. I called the English department, told the secretary of the date discrepancy, and asked whether, when a student died, they were notified of it. No, was the answer. The secretary, who seemed genuinely concerned, suggested I call the family, which I was reluctant to do. So I googled her name, and found an obituary in the Orlando Sentinel, giving no information but that incongruous death date, March 10th. I also found a couple of MySpace pages, one in which her name was mentioned but lacking any other details, and another which appeared to be a memorial administered by her brother. But still no word of why, or how. I even thought of calling the sheriff's office, for the story she had written was a disturbing one. Surely there was some Source of Information I could contact to find out if someone was really dead. And then, after almost a week, I get an email - from the girl's mother.

Dear Prof, I am Stephanie's Mom...There is much more to the story that we are just now finding out.

I wanted to give you the ending... On Sun March 30, Stephanie passed away in her sleep, with the person she speaks of in her story. Her continued relationship with him cost her her life.

If you want to share her story and my e-mail with her class, that would be great. Because I am going to share it with anyone who will listen. It won't bring my daughter back, but maybe it could change the life of someone else.
Sincerely...

At the words "passed away", several of the girl students let out a gasp, for they had thought until now that it might all have been a big mistake.

So I acceded to the mother's wish. She provided many details Stephanie had left out, which I have time only to summarize here; it involves drugs and alcohol and a girl who knows she should sever her ties with the "man" in her life but keeps going back to him anyway. One night, after deceiving her mother about where she would be spending the night, the worst finally happens. She's already on an anxiety medication, which she supplements with alcohol and, according to the boyfriend, a couple of methadone pills. She goes to sleep in the wee hours of the morning and never wakes up. He was on a methadone program to combat an addiction to pain medication, but claims that she had acquired those pills on her own, not from him. At my last communication with her mother, the investigation into the circumstances of her death is ongoing, though the police claim that it will be very hard to prove that he supplied the pills.

I passed Stephanie's picture around the room. She had seemed to me - in the few conversations I'd had with her - a nice kid, genuinely sweet. She seemed to want to do well, apologizing for her spotty attendance and swearing to do better in the future. It was all just an impression, but I liked her.

As anyone who reads here regularly knows, I don't understand women, even as I find their nature the most fascinating and annoyingly complex thing on the planet. But do I really need to tell you, ladies, (as I told the class) that a man who hits you is not a man, but a barbarian? If he does it once, he'll do it again. If he can hit you, he can kill you. If he can even think of inflicting harm on the one person for whom a tender solicitude should possess his being, there's an evil brewing that love will not cure. You are supposed to be the object of his adoration, not his therapist. Do you think you can change him? You won't. And you don't really love him, either. You love an idea of what he could be if only...he would change, if only that good side you once saw would take control. But that won't happen either. If you think you love him enough, you may end up dying in his presence.

Hell, I don't know what to say. Another young light goes out, and for what? It's been dragging me down for the past couple of weeks. The mother, of course, just wants her daughter remembered, so I did my little bit. Here's Stephanie on a happier day, in her mother's embrace.












The class ended on a suitably somber note that Monday, but by the next week we seemed back to normal. We talked some more about marriage, I expressing surprise (somewhat feigned, actually, having witnessed it for years) at the cynicism students invest in any prospect of matrimonial success.

"You guys are approaching it in a way that never occurred to me when I was your age," I said.

"Well look at the examples we've got to follow," said one fellow, which got laughter all around.

"Well don't look at me," I said, and they laughed some more. Many of them come from broken homes. I can't tell you how many "My Parents' Divorce" papers I've read.

And then I said, "Why don't you just make the world a better place, and stop using others as an excuse?"

But through it all I was keenly aware of the empty seat two rows back against the left wall, and probably will be whenever I'm assigned to that classroom. And maybe some of the students were as well, but simply gave no sign. It's almost understandable that they would rather not think about it, pretend to forget. Almost. That's how it will be for most of us. Except for those closest, the world will forget, and quickly at that, almost as though you were never here.

Maybe some of you can take the trouble to remember Stephanie, for a few days at least, and add her, and her family, to your prayers. Her Mom will thank you.
-----------------------------------

A couple of weblogs have linked to this post. They are Alicia at Fructus Ventris, and Genevieve Kineke of Feminine Genius. Visit them.

Add to those Opine-editorials. And add to that one of my old favorites, Dale Price.

Protestant modes of thought and analysis are clearer if and only if [their] methodologies correspond to the nature of the subject of investigation; as this very thing is in dispute, appealing to them possesses the character either of a begged question or a "just because" assertion. Frankly, one of the reasons I am no longer a Protestant - one of the considerations that sent me fleeing from Protestantism, in fact - is just this presupposition that the competing claims of the churches can be resolved in some metatheological exercise, subsequent to which we examine actually-existing churches to determine whether any correspond to our idealized Christianity. The intellectual exercise itself is conducted in accordance with Protestant presuppositions, most particularly that such knowledge is itself not mediated authoritatively; in other words, implicit in the exercise is the notion that any church is the product of human deliberation, an artifact of history, a contingent manifestation of some disincarnate Christian essence. Which is merely to state that we're still debating late scholasticism, or certain tendencies thereof, and the influence of these upon subsequent religious thought.

It is true in a formal sense that anyone undertaking to adjudicate the respective claims of the churches, in the course of his spiritual journey, must possess, or develop, the capacity to articulate theological and historical claims at a high level of sophistication and subtlety; what doesn't follow from this is that Protestant approaches to the question - the alleged inescapability of private judgment - are superior - superior because unavoidable, any more than the judgement involved in such investigations entitles us to elide the distinction between private judgement and a humble quest that ends in its renunciation. Moreover, the very possibility of investigating such competing claims raises the question of sources: from what sources will we derive the criteria by which the claims will be evaluated? I perceive no prima facie reason to accept the Protestant claims of sola scriptura, and this rejection enables us to delve into ecclesiastical and doctrinal history. ...that a True Church, with magisterial authority, Divine guidance, and Apostolic succession, exists is entitled to the benefit of the doubt. This claim should function as the default position, inasmuch as it was the uniform conviction of Christendom, East and West, for nearly three-quarters of the temporal span of the Christian religion. It is not that this claim, being "positive", bears a greater burden of proof; rather, its negation bears that burden, since the negation of this claim is the attempt to argue that virtually everyone was getting it wrong for 1500 years. History does not need to justify itself; it simply is what it is. To the contrary, those desirous of overturning history must justify their undertakings; the accumulated weight and authority of history must be accorded their due. It seems to me that this is the properly (tempermentally) conservative posture.

Jeff Martin, in a long comment thread at W4.

I stopped by Alli's house on Sunday (actually, her owner owns the house) to find out how the awards ceremony went, and while there Elaine (the owner of Alli and the house) gave me mine (my award, not my ceremony). One half was a T-shirt courtesy of the Orlando Science Center. On the front it says Pet Fair 2008, and on the back STAFF. I get the feeling it wasn't made just for me. But it's free so I don't mind. The other half was a family membership to the Science Center. Supposedly they have all kinds of neat stuff there, like an observatory, a huge movie theater, and exhibits featuring biological, archaeological, paleontological, geological, anagogical, and purely logical phenomena. That's good because I'm a bit of a science geek. For example, H₂O = water. Not bad, huh? I also know that the universe probably started with a big kaboom, that the ingredients for life (before they were living) got together in a big soup bowl - sort of like what happens with a recipe except that there was no recipe-maker - which then fit themselves together like a jigsaw puzzle except that there was no puzzlemaker nor anyone to do the fitting, and, voila!, they (which was now an it) came to life. That is, it started moving about of its own accord or otherwise behaving in ways that seemed to indicate it was somehow different from the heretofore seen objects in the material world except that there was no one to do the seeing. As my kids used to say, "It was a accident."

I also know that this accident has led to the intellectually compelling conclusion that we are too. It's pretty simple: you can't start with an accident and end up with a plan. Well, you could but the universe can't because it doesn't have one. This is the truth and we must teach it to our children. It's called evolution. I've always wondered why, if it's true, it didn't imprint its truth on our minds without this annoying, and rather lengthy, religious interim (which shows no signs of going away) but that's probably because I'm not evolved enough.

I also know that the correct name for the mother-of-all-waves is "tumamis", and that a highly endowed male wave who goes about capsizing ships and charming the froth off all the female waves is called a "rogue." As you can see I'm pretty conversant in a variety of areas, so the folks at the Science Center will probably be glad to see me stop by. I'd even be willing to do a little pro-bono tour guiding.

Oh. I got distracted. Well, while Elaine's telling me how suitably modest the mayor was in receiving his award, I'm sitting on the floor trying to wrestle a soft toy ball away from her snarling silkie terrier. I'd tear it away and throw it down the hall. He takes off after it and brings it back. Over and over again. He never got tired. Every now and then Alli, jealous of the attention, barks her way in, turns her rear end toward me and looks back at me as though expecting something. I finally figured out she wanted her back scratched. She never tired of that, either. At one point I stood up holding the ball in my left hand with the silkie terrier hanging on, snarling, his hind feet barely on the ground while I'm conversing with Elaine.

Alli seems to be recovering nicely. The only thing still unknown is the pit bull's fate. There was a hearing but the judge has yet to render his decision. So I'll get back to you when he does.

Still in the chapter detailing the first note of development, preservation of type, Newman discusses another of those superstitions of which Christianity was "seemingly the parent":

The impression made on the world by circumstances immediately before the rise of Christianity received a sort of confirmation upon its rise, in the appearance of the Gnostic and kindred heresies, which issued from the Church during the second and third centuries...

The Gnostic family suitably traces its origin to a mixed race, which had commenced its national history by associating Orientalism with Revelation. After the captivity of the ten tribes, Samaria was colonized by "men from Babylon and Cushan, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim," who were instructed at their own instance in "the manner of the God of the land," by one of the priests of the Church of Jeroboam. The consequence was, that "they feared the Lord and served their own gods." Of this country was Simon, the reputed patriarch of the Gnostics; and he is introduced in the Acts of the Apostles as professing those magical powers which were so principal a characteristic of the Oriental mysteries. His heresy, though broken into a multitude of sects, was poured over the world with a Catholicity not inferior in its day to that of Christianity. St. Peter, who fell in with him originally in Samaria, seems to have encountered him again at Rome. At Rome, St. Polycarp met Marcion of Pontus, whose followers spread through Italy, Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and Persia; Valentinus preached his doctrines in Alexandria, Rome, and Cyprus; and we read of his disciples in Crete, Cæsarea, Antioch, and other parts of the East. Bardesanes and his followers were found in Mesopotamia. The Carpocratians are spoken of at Alexandria, at Rome, and in Cephallenia; the Basilidians spread through the greater part of Egypt; the Ophites were apparently in Bithynia and Galatia; the Cainites or Caians in Africa, and the Marcosians in Gaul...the Ebionites of Palestine, the Cerinthians...the Encratites... the Montanists, who, with a town in Phrygia for their metropolis, reached at length from Constantinople to Carthage.

Good Lord. And to make matters worse:

"When [the reader of Christian history] comes to the second century," says Dr. Burton, "he finds that Gnosticism, under some form or other, was professed in every part of the then civilized world. He finds it divided into schools, as numerously and as zealously attended as any which Greece or Asia could boast in their happiest days. He meets with names totally unknown to him before, which excited as much sensation as those of Aristotle or Plato. He hears of volumes having been written in support of this new philosophy, not one of which has survived to our own day."

Many of the founders of these sects had been Christians; others were of Jewish parentage; others were more or less connected in fact with the Pagan rites to which their own bore so great a resemblance.Montanus seems even to have been a mutilated priest of Cybele; the followers of Prodicus professed to possess the secret books of Zoroaster; and the doctrine of dualism, which so many of the sects held, is to be traced to the same source. Basilides seems to have recognized Mithras as the Supreme Being, or the Prince of Angels, or the Sun, if Mithras is equivalent to Abraxas, which was inscribed upon his amulets: on the other hand, he is said to have been taught by an immediate disciple of St. Peter, and Valentinus by an immediate disciple of St. Paul. Marcion was the son of a Bishop of Pontus; Tatian, a disciple of St. Justin Martyr.

Whatever might be the history of these sects, and though it may be a question whether they can be properly called "superstitions," and though many of them numbered educated men among their teachers and followers, they closely resembled, at least in ritual and profession, the vagrant Pagan mysteries which have been above described. Their very name of "Gnostic" implied the possession of a secret, which was to be communicated to their disciples. Ceremonial observances were the preparation, and symbolical rites the instrument, of initiation.

He then mentions the enthusiasms of these gnostic variations - these sects of a sect - their asceticisms and excesses, their zeal for ritualistic redundancy, their tendency to emphasize a point of doctrine leading to its death by exaggeration. Some abstain from wine, others from flesh (the first a sure sign of derangement, the second possibly, depending on what is meant by it). The Montanists, he says,

kept three Lents in the year. All the Gnostic sects seem to have condemned marriage on one or other reason. The Marcionites had three baptisms or more; the Marcosians had two rites of what they called redemption; the latter of these was celebrated as a marriage, and the room adorned as a marriage-chamber...The prophecies of Montanus were delivered, like the oracles of the heathen, in a state of enthusiasm or ecstasy...honour was paid by the Carpocratians to Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, as well as to the Apostles; crowns were placed upon their images, and incense burned before them. In one of the inscriptions found at Cyrene, about twenty years since, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Epicurus, and others, are put together with our Lord, as guides of conduct. These inscriptions also contain the Carpocratian tenet of a community of women. I am unwilling to allude to the Agapæ and Communions of certain of these sects, which were not surpassed in profligacy by the Pagan rites of which they were an imitation. The very name of Gnostic became an expression for the worst impurities, and no one dared eat bread with them, or use their culinary instruments or plates.

I think I may have figured out the gnostics, who have always been a great mystery to me. They were the original comparative religionists, or indifferentists, or relativists. If you're going to cram worship of every deity, of every spiritual or intellectual eminence you can think of into your "liturgy", can you really claim to prefer one to another? Musn't the pious make accomodation to the profane, such that the two eventually merge? And which do you suppose will triumph? They were very modern, those Gnostics.

I made a lemon pound cake last night with a lemon glaze icing drizzled over it. After I put it in the oven, I licked the mixing bowl clean. I think I actually had my head inside the bowl at one point. Sorry you couldn't be here.

                    *          *          *

There's going to be a ceremony today at the Orlando Science Center Pet Fair honoring Mayor Buddy Dyer for his heroism in coming to the aid of Alli, the Jack Russell attacked by a pit bull. There was a message on my answering machine last night from Alli's owner inviting me (the Onlooker) to attend and be likewise honored, a condition she demanded of the ceremony's organizers. There was also one from a guy named Jeff, the organizer himself. I haven't gotten back to her or him, but I won't be there. I would like to see all the pets, but I don't want to be recognized. (The law's after me.) (JK.) The world's not yet so depraved that one ought to be recognized for behaving like a normal human being. It's getting close though. Maybe next year.

                    *          *          *

Advice from the child

hey dad, i read your post about myspace on your website. i know you signed up for it to check out my site and spy on me :) I hope i've satisfied your curiosity. here's my advice and i hope you take it. stay off myspace. i honestly haven't even visited that site in months because i started getting all kinds of spam and friends requests from whorish looking girls. also, comments would show up in my comment box from "friends" when that person never actually left the comment. so that tells me that people can somehow get onto your page and pretend to be you. This screams viruses to me! myspace doesn't control anything that goes on on their website. there's a lot of porn and it's just gross. well, not real porn but close enough - i don't appreciate half naked women requesting to be my friend. and like that lady said in your comment box on your blog - that email you got was probably connected to some prostitution ring or something and i hope you didn't really respond. i haven't seen any of that happen with facebook (yet) and if it does i'll get off that site as well.

love you pops

All right, advice noted. I'd already canceled my account anyway when I went back to copy and paste Gina's letter and saw an ad for a hookup site featuring a couple of clean-cut guys holding hands and staring longingly into each other's eyes.

...and i hope you didn't really respond. The women in my family still don't trust me.

I want it further noted that she mischaracterizes my motives. I wasn't spying. I was exercising my God-given parental prerogative to KNOW WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON IN MY KID'S LIFE UP UNTIL THE MOMENT MY DYING BREATH IS EXTRACTED.

Love you, sweetheart.

TSO might be one of those:

But I feel a bit discombobulated mostly by the gimlet eye of my bosses’ boss who is not gay (he’s married with kids) but who feels the same sort of compulsion to look at me that I feel towards a buxom girl. He travels by my cube at least five times a day and has clever and self-aware eyes that he holds in a perpetual half-squint as if out of vanity. I can see him out of the corner of my eye looking at me as he passes by. Don't think I don't know you're looking, I think...

So...how do you know he's not gay?

He (TS) also gets a massage. The corporate world's no doubt a wonderful thing; I just don't understand it.

                    *          *          *

VICTOR/VICTORIA......

...William/Wilhemina, whatever. It came in the mail addressed to me. Not to the "Resident" at such and such address - or to the wife, or one of the daughters - but to me:

YOU'LL THINK IT'S CUSTOM MADE
NEW! BIOFIT UPLIFT
Victoria's Secret introduces a bra that feels custom-made just for you. Just for your shape, just for your cup size...

I'd get 10% off. The girls were pretty. One of them (her body turned sideways, a long lock of hair falling over her shoulder saving what was left of modesty) wasn't even wearing a bra. She was showing off the free panties that come with the bra. But it was of a solid fabric, while I prefer some lace in my cup covers, so I've decided to pass.

                    *          *          *

HI THERE!

I had to sign up for a Myspace account, not because I wanted one but to view a friend's page. Signing up got me a page too. I didn't want one but that's what happens. It's a nothing page, as in there's nothing on it and never will be. But, magnet that I am, I have a new "friend" already. I open my email the other day and it says: You've got a new message from Gina on MySpace! Click here to read...

Oh. Gina. Yeah, there had to be one somewhere along the line. I click. There's Gina. Kind of cute. Kind of young. Enough to be my daughter. Granddaughter...

Hello good-looking!

Well, she had the right guy. I must have met her somewhere. Somewhere staid and proper, of course.

I'm a cute single woman looking for a bit of friendly fun. I'm smart, adventurous and outgoing. I also love singing karaoke and going out to bars. I hope you're still single or at least available for to meet a great woman. I won't disappoint. If interested, get back to me, but dont reply directly to the message. I'm actually using my friend's account. I wasn't sure I wanted to do the whole online hook-up thing. So please e-mail me directly at this address: hugznkises_4u@yahoo.

Thanks for your time! see ya'

My reply:

Dear Gina, this is a disappointment. I don't think I meet any of the qualifications. Well, I am smart in my own opinion, and I used to be adventurous and outgoing, but now I like books and the rigors of composition while it's obvious you don't. I do like singing, but I don't know how you'd sing something that sounds like a Japanese soup. I also used to be single but am now its opposite, if you get my drift. I've sworn to some woman that I would love, honor and cherish her till death do me in, and I hope the same for you some day, although it looks like you might be getting off on the wrong foot. Among other things. Since you probably don't read a lot (not the right stuff anyway), I assume you watch plenty of television and ought to be well aware of the dangers in hooking up online. I probably better sign off now since that woman I'm sworn to is real jealous of her territory and I feel guilty even writing this. So with all best wishes for, oh, I don't know...What do I wish for someone like you? I just hope you get knocked off your ass on the way to Damascus. Not quite truly yours, etc.

And if any of you reading this respond to that email address she gave, you're degenerate.

In applying his First Note of a True Development, Newman recalls our ancestors in the Faith, the primitive Christians, those of whom the modern world knows no more, for whose memory we cast no care; whose sufferings in their severity, in the calumnies heaped upon them, and in the courage and perseverance with which they bore it, ought to incline us to keep them close in memory - through gratitude at best, shame at the least.

No unbiased observer could have been sanguine about their prospects. They were the latest adherents to one of those "magical" and "superstitious" cults always emanating from the East to trouble the kingdom. At several points, Newman conveys the atmosphere under which they labored by offering the words of some of the most cultivated minds of the day:

The primâ facie view of early Christianity, in the eyes of witnesses external to it, is presented to us in the brief but vivid descriptions given by Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny, the only heathen writers who distinctly mention it for the first hundred and fifty years.

Tacitus is led to speak of the Religion, on occasion of the conflagration of Rome, which was popularly imputed to Nero. "To put an end to the report," he says, "he laid the guilt on others, and visited them with the most exquisite punishment, those, namely, who, held in abhorrence for their crimes (per flagitia invisos), were popularly called Christians. The author of that profession (nominis) was Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was capitally punished by the Procurator, Pontius Pilate. The deadly superstition (exitiabilis superstitio), though checked for a while, broke out afresh; and that, not only throughout Judæa, the original seat of the evil, but through the City also, whither all things atrocious or shocking (atrocia aut pudenda) flow together from every quarter and thrive. At first, certain were seized who avowed it; then, on their report, a vast multitude were convicted, not so much of firing the City, as of hatred of mankind (odio humani generis)."

After describing their tortures, he continues:

"In consequence, though they were guilty, and deserved most signal punishment, they began to be pitied, as if destroyed not for any public object, but from the barbarity of one man."

Suetonius relates the same transactions thus: "Capital punishments were inflicted on the Christians, a class of men of a new and magical superstition (superstitionis novæ et maleficæ)."

When Pliny was Governor of Pontus, he wrote his celebrated letter to the Emperor Trajan, to ask advice how he was to deal with the Christians, whom he found there in great numbers. One of his points of hesitation was, whether the very profession of Christianity was not by itself sufficient to justify punishment; "whether the name itself should be visited, though clear of flagitious acts (flagitia) or only when connected with them." He says he had ordered for execution such as persevered in their profession, after repeated warnings, "as not doubting, whatever it was they professed, that at any rate contumacy and inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished." He required them to invoke the gods, to sacrifice wine and frankincense to the images of the Emperor, and to blaspheme Christ; "to which," he adds, "it is said no real Christian can be compelled." Renegades informed him that "the sum total of their offence or fault was meeting before light on an appointed day, and saying with one another a form of words (carmen) to Christ, as if to a god, and binding themselves by oath, (not to the commission of any wickedness, but) against the commission of theft, robbery, adultery, breach of trust, denial of deposits; that, after this they were accustomed to separate, and then to meet again for a meal, but eaten all together and harmless; however, that they had even left this off after his edicts enforcing the Imperial prohibition of Hetæriæ or Associations." He proceeded to put two women to the torture, but "discovered nothing beyond a bad and excessive superstition" (superstitionem pravam et immodicam), "the contagion" of which, he continues, "had spread through villages and country, till the temples were emptied of worshippers."

poses a question urgently in need of an answer: What is literature?

One of you highbrows ought to be able to help her out.

Update: God. I forgot the link. I meant for you guys to do it at her place.

...found on my sitemeter pages. I have no idea why it was there. It's a link to a 2003 post by Sparki, in which she attributes her very existence to divine intervention, and has good cause for doing so. But it's also a sad story, because of the ingratitude of two of its witnesses, and because at the end we find a wish for Terri Schiavo that didn't come true.

I believe yesterday was the anniversary of the death (by legalized murder) of Terri Schiavo. We really ought not forget what Nat Hentoff called "the longest public execution in American History."

They also serve who only stand and wait.

In a couple days, be sure to remember one whose passing coincided eerily with her own.

...posts a nine year old poem, which seems to me a love poem, and maybe a little more.

...(lately of the poorly tended Drive-thru Musings) sends an email:

Hi Bill,
I know we haven't been in contact for some time, but I thought you might like to know that my wife just gave birth to our first child (a girl). Prayers and advice would be much appreciated!

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Bernhardt

Bill's advice: swamp baby girl with love morning to night; lots of hugs and endless kisses. Babies can absorb immeasurable quantities of this treatment. At the end of 6 months, she should smile from ear to ear every time you come into sight. Carry her in your arms rather than in some device if at all possible. Start reading to her as soon as she can sit upright and continue with this for the next 5 years minimum. When she begins to understand English, pay frequent compliments to her intelligence and beauty (this must needs continue throughout her life). If you have a bicycle, put a child seat behind yours and take her for many rides. When you need to run up to the grocery store, take her with you instead of leaving her at home like most parents. The accepted wisdom that parents need a break from their kids is a malicious lie. By the time she's 4, brush her hair frequently. She'll want to do the same for you, so sit still while she brushes and puts clips and pins and scrunchies in your hair. If your hair is short, grow it. If one of your buddies stops by unexpectedly, tough it out. Before bedtime, dance with her to music. Often she will fall asleep on your shoulder. Mine liked to dance to the Eagles; Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young); the Gatlin brothers, Anne Murray, and the soundtracks to My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music, the lyrics to all of which it will be necessary to memorize. When you rock her to sleep, sing Ave Marias, Jesu Bambino, and other lullaby-like tunes. If you can't carry a tune, turn on the stereo. Frequent talk about God is always permissible because, unlike adults, children are not horrified by it. When you tell a little girl that you thank God every day for her, she knows what you mean. The idea of the unseen Maker of All and Giver of Gifts recommends itself to her uncluttered mind. The Christmas story will dawn upon her consciousness like the happy ending she'd been expecting all along. God came down from heaven? As a baby? Of course He did. What would you expect? Later, she will ask awkward questions (look for this around 6 years of age) without hindering her faith. The invisible world is to her just another of the neat things about being alive.

This merely scratches the surface, but should stand you in good stead as far as it goes. When she approaches teendom, write me another email. Oh, and congratulations.

Proof of baby girl falling asleep after being danced to the music:















Another kiss being demanded by the infant Bernadette, who receives it as royal custom:

...one Muslim at a time. ...some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually? I'm impressed.

Paul Cella sent me this wonderful article from National Review detailing the work of Coptic priest Zakaria Botros. He's doing great work. From the article:

Botros’s motive is not to incite the West against Islam, promote 'Israeli interests,' or 'demonize' Muslims, but to draw Muslims away from the dead legalism of sharia to the spirituality of Christianity. Many Western critics fail to appreciate that, to disempower radical Islam, something theocentric and spiritually satisfying — not secularism, democracy, capitalism, materialism, feminism, etc. — must be offered in its place. The truths of one religion can only be challenged and supplanted by the truths of another. And so Father Zakaria Botros has been fighting fire with fire.

Saith Paul, "That cannot be repeated often enough." Amen.

My progress was slowed, however, by a particular paragraph in which we learn that "Botros spent three years bringing to broad public attention a scandalous — and authentic — hadith stating that women should 'breastfeed' strange men with whom they must spend any amount of time...the logic being that, by being 'breastfed,' the men become like 'sons' to the women and therefore can no longer have sexual designs on them."

Finally, a Muslim tenet I might be able to embrace. With minimal enthusiasm, of course.

and this one certainly did.

You've probably seen these stories, which I'll be stashing away in the "I can't take it anymore" file.

Anyway, 11 year old Madeline Kara Neumann is dead because her parents prefer prayer to insulin, which could have saved their daughter's life.

Said Leilani, the girl's mother: ""We just believe in the Bible, that's all. This is our faith."

Her husband added that, "We believe the word of God and live according to its precepts."

I've been looking for the one where He gives us permission to murder by omission, but I can't find it. Maybe they were focused on the one about faith being sufficient to move mountains. They even admit they didn't have enough of it. Bad luck.

I wish I knew where the law stands on this, because there oughta be one.

The mother has a couple of posts at a website called America's Last Days, run by Unleavened Bread Ministries. You can read it here.

Oh, if it's any comfort, the police chief also said that "The mother believes the girl could still be resurrected."

Audio of the 911 call here.
_______________________________

"Maggots in the rice" - of sugar and spice and everything nice.

One of my female adult students of Chinese derivation wrote her research paper against China's one-child policy. I followed one of her sourced links and found this: doctors discover 23 sewing needles in woman's head.

This was done to her after she was born. I can't even comment. I have daughters.
______________________________

This one's about giving life, not taking it, but you're still not going to like it. A human is born a woman, transitions to a man, but retains his/her female sexual organs (after undergoing a double masectomy), and is now pregnant.

"How does it feel to be a pregnant man? Incredible," he adds. "Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am."

I'm confused.

And I really almost can't take it anymore.

A follow-up to these two posts.

The pit bull that attacked her has not been put down. There will be a hearing Friday to determine whether the dog can be returned to its owner, who finally stepped forward after about a week's time. (I guess it takes that long to figure out your dog's missing). You can read the story here, and decide his credibility for yourself.

Other information has also come to light that never made the papers. It turns out that the same pit bull attacked another dog a few blocks over just minutes before the incident involving the mayor and yours truly. A lady was out walking her two Chinese cresteds when the pit came trotting along, seemingly friendly, before taking one of the cresteds by the throat. Somehow the little dog got loose and took off running. A neighbor chased the pit off and it headed up toward our street where the next incident ensued. At least it appears that way at the moment. The owners of the cresteds weren't aware of the second incident until they read about it in the papers, upon which the husband sent an email to the reporter covering the story, which email was forwarded to Animal Control, to Alli's owner, and via her to those of us who helped her out. I wrote a witness statement and turned it over