Catena aurea: Matthew 1

The gospel of Matthew, chapter 1, in the Catena aurea of St Thomas Aquinas (translation by John Henry Newman and crew).

• Matthew 1:1
• Matthew 1:2
• Matthew 1:3-6
• Matthew 1:6-8
• Matthew 1:8-11
• Matthew 1:12-15
• Matthew 1:16
• Matthew 1:17
• Matthew 1:18
• Matthew 1:19
• Matthew 1:20
• Matthew 1:21
• Matthew 1:22-23
• Matthew 1:24-25

Butler's Lives: August 27

• St. Caesarius, Bishop and Confessor
• St. Poemen, or Pastor, Abbot
• St. Hugh of Lincoln, Martyr
• St. Joseph Calasanctius, Confessor
• St. Malrubius, Hermit and Martyr
• St. Syagrius, Bishop

I'm back

I haven't blogged in a while - it's that darned Facebook. I may as well try to put something up here every day. Perhaps I'll get back into the habit of writing, and maybe my sentences will lengthen, too. This bit at Instapundit was sweet:

Terrorists left in their own filth: War crime.

Patients left in their own filth: Progressive healthcare!

Tolkien fan fiction

As I was drifting off to sleep last night I thought that surely someone has written short stories based in Tolkien's world - it might be interesting to read about the little-known areas of Middle-Earth and the parts they played in Tolkien's history. Hollin, for instance, when Elves still lived there. It was such a bang-up good going-to-sleep idea that I traced the phrase "TOLKIEN FAN FIC" on my arm in the hopes of remembering it this morning. It worked. Behold.

Tin whistle update

My two big tin whistle projects at the moment, aside from easy tunes I stumble across: Over the Waterfall and The Foggy Dew. For the latter, also see this page. At the bottom of that page there's a link to a recording of some old guy singing his version of the song - that's the version I learned to sing. For ubuntu people, you can play the file via "mplayer -playlist http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/easterrising/ram/rs_l06.ram"

What to write about

It seems the early Romans didn't find much to write about. From Edith Hamilton, The Roman Way:

A sense for poetry was not strong in the Roman people. Their natural genius did not urge them on to artistic expression. Rome was said to have been founded in the year 753 B.C., and the earliest piece of literature we know about is a translation of the Odyssey made at the end of the First Punic War, some five hundred years later. For all these centuries it would seem that the Romans felt little impulsion to express in any form what the world was showing them and life bringing them.

The joy of reading GM Fraser

The blogger at The Port Stands at Your Elbow has bang-up reviews of two of George MacDonald Fraser's books, The Complete McAuslan and Quartered Safe Out Here.

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.