Konstantin Levin discovers happiness...

...through mowing.

Mencken on preaching

This, via Daniel Mitsui, is too good not to pass along:

Rome indeed has not only preserved the original poetry of Christianity; it has also made capital additions to that poetry - for example, the poetry of the saints, of Mary and of the liturgy itself. A Solemn High Mass is a thousand times as impressive, to a man with any genuine religious sense in him, as the most powerful sermon ever roared under the big top by Presbyterian auctioneer of God. In the face of such overwhelming beauty it is not necessary to belabor the faithful with logic; they are better convinced by letting them alone.

Preaching is not an essential part of the Latin ceremonial. It was very little employed in the early Church, and I am convinced that good effects would flow from abandoning it today, or, at all events, reducing it to a few sentences, more or less formal. In the United States the Latin brethren have been seduced by the example of the Protestants, who commonly transform an act of worship into a puerile intellectual exercise; instead of approaching God in fear and wonder, these Protestants settle back in their pews, cross their legs and listen to an ignoramus try to prove that he is a better theologian than the Pope.

This folly the Romans now slide into. Their clergy begin to grow argumentative, doctrinaire, ridiculous. It is a pity... If they keep on spoiling poetry and spouting ideas, the day will come when some extra-bombastic deacon will astound humanity and insult God by proposing to translate the liturgy into American, that all the faithful may be convinced by it.

The tin whistle follies

The tin whistle bug has bitten. I'm currently working on God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, having discovered that the alphabet song/twinkle twinkle/baa baa black sheep is gratifyingly easy to play. I have two whistles; naturally, the kids grab one the moment I put it down and start tootling away.

Once I can stumble through God Rest, I'll look into tackling Over the Waterfall (that's not me in the video):

When short little Commies tweet

This is hilarious! I hope it's not a parody.

United breaks guitars

A song about United Airlines from the Sons of Maxwell:

John Henry Newman on the Roman calendar

I didn't know he wrote an essay on the calendar! It starts here.

My latest obsession

I'm writing a program to calculate days on the 1962 liturgical calendar, the one used for the traditional Latin Mass/Extraordinary Form/Tridentine Mass/whatever you call it. This time I'm documenting everything as it happens - breathtaking LIVE coverage of a fat guy typing at a computer!

I've been down this road before back in 2002 or so when I wrote a similar program in emacs lisp for the current liturgical calendar. This time I'm writing in Mathematica, and I'm an older and slightly wilier programmer.

The joys of autodidacticism: Bach

One good thing about being an autodidact is that you sometimes discover something really good only after you're old enough to appreciate it. For example, Bach's chorales! Good solid simple Lutheran hymns perfectly arranged by JS Bach himself.

Small Town's city

Just back from Small Town's fireworks show. On the way there as we passed Small Town's very tall grain elevator the 4yo exclaimed "Wow! A city!" For you city slickers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_elevator

It was the completest thing

I was up late last night and happened to catch a series of very short video clips on ESPN2: "Mike Tyson's Greatest Hits" - a compilation of his complete boxing matches. I realized after a couple of matches that the only way to catch everything going on was watch his opponent's head, since that's where all the action took place. I missed a couple of knockouts because I eventually had to blink. Even with the slow-motion replay I still missed one knockout punch - all I saw was Tyson's left hand move a bit, then instantly his opponent was flying backwards through the air to land on the ropes and fall unconscious. Being in the ring with Tyson at the height of his powers was like being locked in a dark closet with a nest of rattlesnakes.

Bubba's Bar-n-Grill is open for business

Get thee there now and read one of the best writers around.

Audubon's pocket-watch

I caught up a bit on work yesterday, then spent a good bit of the afternoon outside in the cool breeze reading John James Audubon's "Writings and Drawings" from the Library of America series. Turns out he made quite a few trips across far southern Illinois between his business interests in St Genevieve, Missouri and his home in Henderson, Kentucky. It was near the crossing of the Big Muddy River where he once met a drunken hag who, with her two drunken sons, tried to kill him for his pocket watch (the story is there in the section titled "The Prairie").

Senior & Nall

I've been reading John Senior the last couple of days - he was a radical Catholic traditionalist, and, curiously, one of the most sensible writers I've read. So it was amusing to find a Senior-like rant on fast food over at Nancy Nall's place today - she is surely the polar opposite of a rad Cath traditionalist, but if she and Senior ever met at a Fuddrucker's (not bloody likely, but still...) they'd get along swimmingly.

Small-town news

From Lüderitz, Namibia: Music Instructor Revealed as Con Artist, and other fascinating small-town headlines. I had to look up Lüderitz after its recent mention at Andrew Cusack's fine blog.

The last peaceful evening

From Book IV, lines 596-607, of Paradise Lost, the last peaceful evening in Eden. Satan has tricked the archangel Uriel into leading him to God's new creation, where he spies on Adam and Eve and conceives a cunning plan...

Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleased: Now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen unveiled her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

Some of that for us, please

I see that our esteemed House of Representatives in Washington has passed a bill that "[e]xpresses support for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and rule of law." Now if only we could get one of those passed in support of American citizens who do the same.

Neither a novice, a statistician, nor a Yankee

The mint julep ceremony of Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. Though I'm of Kentucky Catholic blood, I was born a Yankee. We'll see what happens.

A mint julep is not the product of a FORMULA. It is a CEREMONY and must be performed by a gentleman possessing a true sense of the artistic, a deep reverence for the ingredients and a proper appreciation of the occasion. It is a rite that must not be entrusted to a novice, a statistician, nor a Yankee. It is a heritage of the old South, an emblem of hospitality and a vehicle in which noble minds can travel together upon the flower-strewn paths of happy and congenial thought.

Welcome to our secret book society, John

7yo John has devoured 35 Boxcar Children books in the last few weeks and now he's started on his first "real" book: Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He's covered five chapters since an hour before bedtime tonight, and he's taking full advantage of our rule that allows kids to stay up as long as they want as long as they're reading.

Books I want to have read already

but I haven't yet, and they're sitting right there waiting for me:

• Democracy in America - de Tocqueville
  
• The Road to Serfdom - Hayek
  
• The Founders' Constitution
  
• Liberal Fascism - Goldberg
  
• The Greek Myths - Graves
  
• The Captive Mind - Miłosz

Those monks could draw

"Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages", a show currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Mew York City. Here's a sample of 9 of the 50 pieces; see especially St Matthew's robe, rendered solely in colored lines. Here's the Met's webpage for the show.