Captain Yips Secret Journal

Wonder

Some things are so amazing I can only look and wonder.  The Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Open Thread II

What are the defining differences between Evangelical Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics?  Not, especially here, differences in emphasis, but actual unique identifiers.  Honesty encouraged, but intemperacy should be avoided.

Open Thread I

While I'm (mostly) on hiatus, I leave a couple of open threads for discussion.  Have fun.

1.  Toxic Culture

It seems to me and some other parents that our current mass culture is pretty toxic for children.  Kids who, a generation or two ago, might have had a difficult time but wobbled through, are pretty knocked around.  Perhaps there is now little societal support for marginally stable kids.  Anyway, feel free to discuss how you perceive the problems of raising children in today's society, give examples of failure or success as you wish, opine away, discuss among yourselves.

Noisy Silence

That didn't last long.  Looks like I'll be nodding in, briefly, from time to time.

Anyone who can't see the difference between giving up your life to save others, and giving up your life to take the lives of others, is obtuse.  The notion that turning yourself into a weapon has intrinsic merit is equally obtuse.  War is a part of the evil of the fallen and corrupt world:  sometimes necessary, sometimes utterly wrong. 

Hiatus

Listen up, both of you.  This blog is about to take a break, probably until New Year 2010.  Too much on the plate.  Today begins a complete, stripped to the studs, kitchen renovation that'll last 8 to 10 weeks.  I have cabinets that are making a break for freedom, a range that works when it feels up to the effort, and a floor that looks like it's already been demo'd.  Then there's the difficult, poorly defined task of working with our daughter on the choices she's made, and the sheer disruption of schedule that is a new born child. 

The dominant theme here has, of course, been the decline of The Episcopal Church and the slow development of its successor.  I've come to find the accelerating senescence of TEC to be without interest, the dominant thought processes irrelevant to just about anything, and I can no longer muster the outrage to comment on the latest effluvia.  I realized some time ago that the battle for my home diocese, Chicago, if it was a battle at all, was lost before I came of age.  What's happening now is the inevitable and sour fruit of a long, long process.  Barring real and miraculous intervention, TEC's fate is obvious and inevitable.  I realize that there are places and people remaining in TEC where they do the best they can, and I wish them well.  I am more interested in doing what little I can to help build up ACNA, and that is boring.  Good, but boring.  Construction is slow, tedious, and unspectacular.  It's meticulous, hours of wrestling one small stone into position.  I'm more interested now in exploring the richness of the Anglican theological and spiritual traditions, and that will be one theme of this place come January.

So, have a Happy Thanksgiving, a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.  See y'all in January.

Go Fig

Years ago, my late father-in-law gave us cuttings of his Dr. Van Fleet climbing rose, a favorite of my wife.  Dr. Van Fleet is a soft pink, thorny climber that blooms once in June.  The day his great-granddaughter was born, 8 days ago, it threw off a single, solitary, untimely blossom. 

Rank and Gross, Merely

Midwestern gardeners will understand me when I say that the core gardening months are May and October.  April is too damp, chill, and unpredictable to get more done than some clean up.  May is the time for planting.  Likewise, new bulbs go in the ground in October, and the whole month is the time to prepare for the next May's planting.  So you can imagine the state of my garden after losing three consecutive garden months to one thing or another.  May 2007 was lost when my wife had retina surgery, the next October was lost when I got sick with something or another, maybe an early case of pig-bird-man 'flu, and May 2008 to family turmoil - all subjects for later discussion.  Wild grape crept through the long honeysuckle hedge on the south border, thistle grew rampant, weed trees made themselves at home.  It didn't help that May 2008 was wet and cool.  The place deteriorated to the point that we bit the bullet and hired some pros to, essentially, nuke the place.  A crew of 4 worked 8 hours the other day, and they're not done.  The back yard, though, is neat as a pin.  Now I can get at the surviving plants for the TLC - and fertilizer and pruning and dividing - they need. 

More fun will be the long contemplation of what to plant in the bare spots.  The many, many, many bare spots. I'll put together a daffodil order from Brent and Becky this week.  We now have a 30 foot border on the south side of the house, ready to enrich and then mulch for next spring.  Roses, I think, especially some of the more delicate ones that would benefit from a south wall.  And there's a demi-lune bed that we can see from the dining room that I think will become a quilt of midwestern-hardy perennials - coneflowers, various daisies, and the like.  I'm going for tough . . . and I have to face the probability that a maintenence crew will feature in my gardening life from now on.  With 60 staring me in the face, laughing, and a lot of other interests and obligations calling me, I think I need backup. 

Words Fail

Via APOD

News of the Day

My sister in law reports from North Carolina that Boy Governor Rod “Rod” Blagojevich has made Illinois a laughing stock.  I can’t imagine why.  The unofficial motto of Cook County Politics has for decades been “Ubi Meum? (that’s “where’s mine” for all you ignorant clods),” and the Boy Gov didn’t do anything all that strange.  Just did it ham handedly.  And, of course, endangered the incoming Sacred Obama Presidency to boot.  Really.  My parents used to frighten me with stories of former governor Len Small, one of our many indicted but acquitted govs.  Some of the members of the acquitting jury got state jobs later.  Imagine that.   He should have followed the practice of the late Secretary of State Paul Powell (“The only thing worse than a defeated politician is a poor one”).  After Powell died in 1970, authorities found that his Springfield hotel suite was filled with shoeboxes filled with money - about $800,000.  And a dozen or so transistor radios.  And a case or two of creamed corn.  Powell never made more than $30,000 in salary.  Since no one could figure out where the money came from, it went to his estate, which, I recall, was basically his long time girlfriend.  Boy Gov should have followed Powell’s Principle: Don’t talk, don’t write it down.  But in terms of the pervasive, toxic corruption of Illinois politics, there’s nothing especially strange about the Boy Gov.  It’s true that he’s now demanding that everyone who has ever criticized him be removed from the impeachment investigation.  And it’s true that for a while he tried to govern by edict.  And it’s also true that he got elected.  Twice.  There’s nothing funny here.

In further Strange News from Illinois, ex cop Drew Peterson, whose current wife Stacy has been missing for a year, and whose previous wife was murdered in a bathtub, is engaged.  I am not making this up.  Illinois police of various sorts have been unable to find Stacy Peterson or come up with a suspect for Kathleen Savio’s murder.  It’s no wonder that sardonic detachment is the preferred state of mind hereabouts.

Stupendously Cool

Direct image of a multiple planet star system.  Wow.