23 April 05
Our Dinner With The Katzes
Our friend Virginia invited us over this evening to the seder she and her partner Ben were hosting for his family this year. The Katz clan is large — almost thirty people were at the seder — the patriarch being ninety-year-old Joseph, seated across the table and several seats down from me, with a wonderful portrait of him hanging from the dining room wall.
It was probably the rowdiest seder I’ve ever been to: the centerpoint of it was the family taking turns telling the story of the Exodus all from memory. And we were delighted to find that Virginia was using the Velveteen Rabbi’s haggadah for the service!
No sign of Elijah this evening. But Virginia’s kitty Eloise made fleeting appearances throughout, wondering why in a tale that began with seven years of famine and diminishing grain stores, cats have gotten left out of the telling.
21 April 05
Stalino-Papism
Marc Cooper’s take on Pope Rottweiler.
20 April 05
God’s Rottweiler
“Insofar as Vorbis got any pleasure in life, at least in any way that could be recognized by a normal human being, it was in seeing the faces of humble members of the clergy as they rounded a corner and found themselves face-to-chin with Deacon Vorbis of the Quisition. There was always that little intake of breath that indicated a guilty conscience. Vorbis liked to see properly guilty consciences. That was what consciences were for. Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of authority turned.”—Terry Pratchett, Small Gods“It’s Ratzinger. Be Jewish.”—My Friend Barbara, minutes after the Habemus Papam announcement
Here we go. Why do I feel like I’m back in the sixteenth century?
Here comes a guy who declares relativism the greatest threat to the Catholic Church (and, by extension, to the World As We Know It). No compromises, everyone. No compromises on the role of women in the church, no compromises on married priests, no compromises of course on homosexuality or abortion or contraception (including condoms, in an age when AIDS is pandemic), no compromises on anything, especially not on any kind of silly Marxist preoccupation with poverty. Vatican II was an embarrassing aberration, a blip, an Error. We are in the land of No Compromise. This sounds awfully like last November. When people are so certain they’re right, compromise is unnecessary. (They don’t care that history has shown these people to be tyrants.)
John Paul II was a skilled communicator, a politically savvy actor (and, I believe, a profoundly devout man) who was able to navigate turbulent waters with finesse and diplomacy.
He left the details of dogma to his buddy Ratzinger, is why.
This is why I’m especially grateful for a welcome to a friend’s Seder this Saturday. We are all invited to bring a visual representation of freedom from something that enslaves us. Since I seem to be unable to wrench myself entirely from the clutches of the Catholic Church, I might ponder something along those lines.
Does God really need a rottweiler?
19 April 05
La Rata
Congratulations to all of you who made the correct picks in the Papal Conclave Brackets; for the rest of us, do hurry on over to Pharyngula for discussion of the selection of Joseph Ratzinger as Grand Inquisitor Pope. Somehow it seems fitting that I got an emailed pdf today of last week’s editorial in Science entitled “Twilight for the Enlightenment?” Oh well — maybe Pope Benedict XVI will have the decency to bring back the Latin Mass. Or at least ban guitars.
18 April 05
Quill Knives
Ten years ago today, I posted a message to the calligraphy usenet list asking what the best knife was to cut goose quills, since I was a birder in Boston and all the geese on the Charles River were dropping their primary feathers. I got the name of a knifemaker in Minnesota and bought one of his beautiful quill knives.
I also got a note from a graduate student in geography at UC Santa Barbara saying he knew nothing about quill knives but just wanted to say hi from another birder-calligrapher.
The rest, as they say, is history…
16 April 05
Picnic Day Duty
Today we spent most of the day at the Wildlife Health Center booth at Picnic Day, folding and distributing Cootie Catchers (we were left with about five at the end of the day, so about 250 of these things are wending their way to preadolescent bedrooms as we speak) and posters and magnets and teaching children how to clean oiled birds (they were practicing on rubber duckies that had a good coating of nontoxic black paint on them).
Numenius’ sister and her boyfriend made the trip up from Berkeley with Hooper the dog, so we had a great visit. They were unable to join us for dinner at Davis’ newest restaurant, the New Delhi Chaat Caf, which was a shame, because it was a pretty good answer to Berkeley’s Vik’s Chaat House, famous all over the Bay Area.
12 April 05
On Seeing More Butterflies
Spaghetti-strapped, I see them flutter by
Their nasal twangs submerged in pony tails
They yearn for depth, these quiet butterflies.
They clutch their tomes, where passion’s in supply
An exercise routine beyond the pale
Spaghetti-strapped, I see them flutter by.
From Donne to Plath, they read, they sink, they sigh
The bell jar beckons with its lonely veil.
They long for depth, these quiet butterflies.
They see the book. They smile. They pay. They buy.
The vortex draws them louder than a gale:
Spaghetti-strapped, I see them long to die.
Profundity ensnares them: mirror, spy.
The oven-abyss calls – it’s so female.
They whisper “death,” these quiet butterflies.
I rail, unheard, against the sylvan lie
Whose petulance bores into wings so frail
This yen for depth will kill my butterflies:
Protruding ribs, preparing soon to die.
11 April 05
Bike Basket Inventory
A list of items in my bike basket — it’s good to do one of these every now and then!
- Today’s Davis Enterprise, front page headline reading “Picnic Day nears”
- A copy of Programming PHP, by Rasmus Lerdorf and Kevin Tatroe, that I was going to return to my office today but forgot
- A plastic grocery bag in which I was carrying around the PHP book
- A Kryptonite bike lock
- My charcoal grey light fleece sweater
- An apple
- An old washcloth used primarily to dry the bike seat on rainy days
- A Cateye bike light
- A 700×20/28C bike tube, Presta valve
- 2 blue Uniball Signo pens
- One green Uniball micro pen
- One Bic ballpoint pen
- 2 medium binder clips
- A Park micro toolkit for the bike
- A Park 36mm headset wrench
- A copy of the Discworld reading order guide
- An Amtrak ticket jacket
- 3 AA and 3 AAA alkaline batteries, state of charge unknown
- 1 pencil
- Scratch paper with conjugations for the verbs conseguir, tomar, and cubrir
- A black Pilot G2 pen cartridge
- A rubber band
- And a twist tie.
6 April 05
Adem
The surname of a Mexican Cohomologist at the University of Wisconsin Mathematics Department.
The Department of Environmental Management in the State of Alabama: administers all major federal environmental laws, including the Clear Air, Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water acts and federal solid and hazardous…
A singer-songwriter with the Domino Recording Company and with a very cool website.
The Department of Emergency Management in the State of Arkansas.
Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis.
Administration of Employment in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
A microfilm company located in Britain.
The four letters that give uncial letters the characteristics that make them unmistakeable for anything else. I’m not sure any other hand can boast this, though I’d love to be proved wrong. Example below is written out with a Pilot Parallel Pen that arrived in the mail this morning…
4 April 05
Of Deer and Popes
I saw you early at Wembley:
“Like as the Hart
Desireth the Waterbrook”—They rehearsed us to death,
Drunk with youth and hope
Till the chopper brought you into
Howls. Holy Hooligans, Batman!
Among us you were
Joy
Before your Inquisitors
Silenced Boff
A hint
Of times
To come
You’re gone, now
Facing Death standing up
No heroics
(Unlike the ones
They insisted on
For Terri)
I felt the tears
But is it you,
White Hart,
Or saccharine nostalgia,
Or just
This Is The End
The white light
Down the tunnel—Hollywood and faith
Caught in the headlights?
Leonardo Boff was a Brazilian Franciscan and a Liberation Theologian who advocated a Preferential Option for the Poor which ran him afoul of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and had him defrocked.