A Mighty Wind

It’s Music from the Vatican, a collection ”of modern classical music from The Choir of the Philharmonic Academy of Rome and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra featuring prayers recited and sung by Pope Benedict XVI.”  Go on over to see and hear the trailer. 

HH has a pretty thin and warbly voice, but at least he stays pretty much on key.  Not so some of the clergy in my parish, who, owing to a pretty obvious lack of musicality, on occassion bring about spectacularly dissonant responsive chants from the congregation, as some the pew-dwellers follow them in their strange modulations while others stick with the original key and still others find themselves lost in the wilderness in between.

It doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does I always fear the choir director is going to leap over the organ, grab a candlestick and start running amok.

Veterans’ Day

Perhaps just by chance, but last evening I happened to reread George MacDonald Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here, his account of his service in the ranks in Burma during WWII.  Here is his summation:

  Glad I was there; I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.  A good thing to have done, and to have been, as Samuel Johnson so wisely observed.  No regrets about it, and much gratitude.  I can almost hear an interviewer saying: “What about guilt?”, to which I could only reply: “What’s to be guilty about?  I didn’t ask for the bloody war.”  He might speculate, because it seems to be the fashion nowadays, on guilt for having survived where others did not – which is one of the silliest notions I have ever heard.  If you feel someone got killed because you let them down, that’s a reason for guilt, no question – but to feel guilty because the man next to you caught it when you didn’t, that’s pointless.  Remember him, revere him, but don’t feel guilty.

It’s terribly trite, no doubt, but like most trite things it’s absolutely true:  the best comment on infantry war, the best philosophy, and above all the best advice, was written in four lines by Rudyard Kipling.  It isn’t jingoistic, it’s realistic; it has nothing to do with the higher questions of morality, but it has deep meaning for anyone who finds himself, as so many have done and will continue to do, facing the moment.

When first under fire and you’re wishful to duck,

Don’t look nor take heed at the man that is struck,

Be thankful you’re living, and trust to your luck,

And march to your front like a soldier.

Seems quite fitting to the day to me.  So pray charge your glasses in salute to all the brave men and women who have done so in the past – both those who made it and those who didn’t – and continue to do so today.

Nice Church You’ve Got There, Padre…

Be a  real shame if something happened to it:

I expect political hardball on any legislation as important as the health care bill. 

I just didn’t expect it from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). 

Who elected them to Congress? 

The role the bishops played in the pushing the Stupak amendment, which unfairly restricts access for low-income women to insurance coverage for abortions, was more than mere advocacy. 

They seemed to dictate the finer points of the amendment, and managed to bully members of Congress to vote for added restrictions on a perfectly legal surgical procedure. 

And this political effort was subsidized by taxpayers, since the Council enjoys tax-exempt status.
When I visit churches in my district, we are very careful to keep everything “non-political” to protect their tax-exempt status. 

The IRS is less restrictive about church involvement in efforts to influence legislation than it is about involvement in campaigns and elections. 

Given the political behavior of USCCB in this case, maybe it shouldn’t be.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

A couple of observations:

Silly bishops! Don’t you realize that the separation clause of the First Amendment bans religion from politics and sets up a de jure atheistical State?

“A perfectly legal surgical procedure.”  If that doesn’t give you the screaming heebie-jeebies, you are in some serious moral doo-doo.

“When I visit churches in my district, we are very careful to keep everything “non-political” to protect their tax-exempt status.”  Presumably, she’d have had Martin Luther King, Jr.,  set upon by the Feds, too.  You know, because “Church” (such a quaint term) isn’t about standards and values and shaping human behavior to comport with God’s will or anything….it’s about handing out soup and blankets and non-judgmental embracing of anyone who walks through the doors (well, so long as they’re properly enlightened, according to the Congressional Progressive Causus). 

Feh.

I’m guessing that Rep. Woolsey wouldn’t dream of making similar comments about, oh, say, whatever the Islamic equivalent of the USCCB is.  But then again, there are far fewer reports of zealous Catholics marching into population centers and yelling “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti!” before opening fire.

The Sands Of Time

As regular port-swillers will recall, I mentioned a few weeks back that I was rereading my Herodotus and enjoying every word of his accounts of the wide world in general and the rise of the Persian Empire in particular.  In Book III, Herodotus relays a chilling story of an army send by the mad ruler Cambyses (son of Cyrus the Great) to sack and destroy the oracle of Zeus Ammon, far out in the western part of Egypt in about the middle of the 6th Century B.C.  According to this account:

The force which was sent against the Ammonians started from Thebes with guides, and can be traced as far as the town of Oasis, which belongs to Samians supposed to be of the Aescrionian tribe, and is seven days’  journey across the sand from Thebes.  The place is known in Greek as the Island of the Blessed.  General report has it that the army got as far as this, but of its subsequent fate there is no news whatever.  It never reached the Ammonians and it never returned to Egypt.  There is, however, a story told by the Ammonians themselves and by others who heard it from them, that when the men had left Oasis, and in their march across the desert had reached a point about mid-way between the town and the Ammonian border, a southerly wind of extreme violence drove the sand over them in heaps as they were taking their mid-day meal, so that they disappeared forever.

 What a way to go.  I’ve always had a mental picture of this lost legion being swallowed up by the sands, obliterated by the Sahara and lost to all human knowledge.

Well, apparently not any more, for in one of those articles that just makes my day, it is reported that this long-lost Persian army may have been found again.

The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology’s biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.

Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.

Go and read the rest.  It seems from the article that many of the men tried to take shelter behind a large rock formation, the only one in the area.  Apparently, their bones only recently have come back to the surface where they were buried for so long.

 

The Dude And The Duke

Via GroovyVic comes the horrifying word that the Coen brothers are remaking True Grit, with Jeff Bridges in the role of Rooster Cogburn.

Oh, sure.  Why not? I mean, what does anything matter anymore?

- – Sound of flask cap being hastily unscrewed – -

But how is it even possible to make such a film these days?  What made Rooster Cogburn (and so many other Wayne characters) so good was that under the boozy, eccentric, cantankerous exterior the audience knew that there was a man of honor, integrity and morality, a  -dare I say it? – hero.

But we live in a post-modern age, in which all those old-fashioned notions have been largely jettisoned.  Under the boozy, eccentric exterior of characters like the Dude (and other Coen brother creations) lies….what? Ambivalence? Relativism? Nihilism?  There’s really no distinction.   

So I really don’t see how this works.

Plus, you don’t mess with a classic.  Just ask Tom Hanks, who is still pulling out splinters of shrapnel from his bombed attempt to “update” The Ladykillers.

Gratuitous Saturday Afternoon Observations

Well, Robbo has finally started the Reconquista of the garden, doing some cutting and pulling this morning.   I fear, though, that in the end it’s going to take me just as long to throw all the Buddleia out of my little plot as it did the Spaniards to throw out the Moops Moors.

On the kitchen front, we are now at the stage where we are I am painting and installing the covers on all the light switches and electrical outlets.   It’s been quite some time now since I last did a paint job and I’d forgotten all about the heady rush of huffing all those fumes.  Whoa.

That Will Do, Jeeves

Damian Thompson puts the boot into Stephen Fry:

Every year the Edenbridge Bonfire in Kent sets fire to a celebrity effigy on Guy Fawkes’ Night. Previous victims include John Prescott, Anne Robinson and Saddam Hussein. This time it’s Jordan. Bad choice. Mine would be Stephen Fry. Yup, let him fry. Or, rather, melt, since this particular guy would be made of wobbly, self-pitying blancmange.

I think I’d call it “burning at the stake” rather than a bonfire, because that is what Catholics do, according to the caricature Stephen Fry has constructed of us. That’s when they’re not herding Jews into Auschwitz, which, you may recall, was Fry’s imaginative reconstruction of the Nazi atrocity. Polish “rightwing Catholicism” was to blame, he argued, from the perspective of “those of us who know a little history”. Later, he apologised to the Polish people (though I’ve been unable to locate any apology to Catholics). “I mean, what was I thinking? Well, as I say, I wasn’t. The words just formed themselves in a line in my head, as words will,” he wrote on his blog.

How very typical of Stephen Fry: he says or does something stupid, then issues an apology which, though fulsome, is intended to leave his critics loving him even more than before he screwed up. Please, Stephen, spare us. Not just the apology, but the winsome references to “words” tumbling about and lining up and whatever else they do as you’re rolling them fruitily around your mouth before they pop out smugly.

Fry could give masterclasses in the art of dishing it out but not taking it. If he comes out with something wildly offensive, then he says “silly old me” and moves on - but when critics savage him or even take the mickey out of his tweets then we’re treated to the hissiest fit in luvviedom.

And the critics do have a go at him because, let’s face it, he spreads himself awfully thin these days, under the impression that if you can chortle your way through a few sub-Wildean epigrams then you can also shine as an essayist, stage actor, poet, documentary maker, novelist and authority on cricket, new technology and bipolar disorder. The truth is that very clever people (of whom Fry is one) can attempt all these things, but they end up doing nothing quite as well as the person who sticks to doing one thing - say (to pick an example at random) playing a doctor in a cult American television series. Look what happened to Clive James.

Fry claims to hold the record for saying the word “f***” on television, which is appropriate, when you think about it, because that’s what people increasingly say when they turn on the set and hear the dreaded squidgy chuckle. Enough! Next year, people of Edenbridge, set fire to an effigy of Stephen Fry. Something tells me he won’t enjoy the joke, and the words tumbling out of his mouth will be fruity indeed.

Yikes.

I own several of Fry’s earlier novels, which I found somewhat amusing, plus an autobiography that, although certainly not lacking in objectionable material, was nonetheless quite moving in places. (Fry was a sneak and a wastrel in his teenage years and showed every sign of heading straight for the bottom.  Nonetheless, he managed to pull himself together.)  But I must confess that I have not paid any attention to him in some time.  Evidently, he has contracted a rayther severe case of Oscar Wilde Syndrome, the primary symptom of which is believing that an artiste is free to make an ass of himself in public with impunity.

It seems Dr. Thompson would beg to differ.

Rake’s Progress

Yes, today is the day Robbo begins the annual ritual of pulling in the hammock and deck furniture and starting in on what the seven year old still calls the “leabs”.

Ah, Autumn!

UPDATE:  First frost of the season last night.  Always a lovely sight first thing in the morning.  Even the seven year old noticed as we tooled off to brekkers together.

Speaking of lovely sights, I’m afraid the foliage has been a disappointment this year in Northern Virginny- very dull colors for the most part, and not a’tall a uniform change.  Oh, well.  I understand from the Mothe, however, that the season up in northern New England was terrific.

Also speaking of the season, we’ve had a buck hanging around this year with a pretty nice rack – 10 points at least.  This morning we saw him again, only he’s  now sporting a broken foreleg.  (I assume he was hit by a car within the past day or two.)  It was rayther cringe-making to see him moving about on the thing.  However, at least when we saw him he was busy trying to have to do with Madame Doe and did not seem to notice his affliction too much.  (Madame Doe, I should add, was not in the least interested and fled in alarum.  He sped right along with her.)

Gratuitous Gunpowder Plot Posting

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Now there are those of you two or three together who may wonder how Robbo’s swimming of the Tiber has affected his attitude toward this anniversary of the discovery of a plot among English Catholics to blow up Parliament and the King?

My response?  Not a’tall.

You see, in part I am still a dedicated Anglophile.   As much as I detest the early Hanovarians, I still believe the ‘45 was a ridiculous undertaking.  Ditto the plots to undo the earlier Stuart monarchy, however dismal its record.  I am no great fan of James I.  But I remain a devotee of Good Queen Bess and the footing on which she placed This Sceptre’d Isle, and I loathe the machinations of those who sought to bring it down.

On The Links

My fellow port-swillers, I may go to hell for this, but here goes:

George MacDonald Fraser’s golf story “McCauslin in the Rough” is, in fact, better than any golf story Plum Wodehouse ever wrote.

Discuss.  And St. Andrew? Ora pro nobis.