C is for CURSED

I thought I would bring you a little taste of Hallowe'en this week via an earlier 52 Photos Project prompt.  & so here it is: "C is for Cursed".

Quite some time ago, the pasture across the street was sold to a developer who planned a high-end luxury gated community.  & I think I should probably start my story with that sale.  It was a sizeable piece of land which had belonged to a successful local farming family for generations.  But one generation got the littlest bit greedy.  No, no not in the way you are thinking.  They didn't sell it for cash....well, they did but not voluntarily.

The short version is in a desire to circumvent inheritance & property taxes one generation sold the land to the next generation for a measly sum.  All would have been well, if not for a divorce.  Things that are inherited can be excluded from community property settlements, after all how could anyone argue that something was acquired jointly if it would have gone to one of the parties singly with or without the presence of the other party?  It is actually more complicated than that, but that is the gist.  Had the property transfer followed the ordinary inheritance process, it might still be covered in cattle but because it was purchased it was part of the assets that needed to be divided.  & unable to be divided it had to be sold.

When the land was purchased & the proposed development was staked out we (the people in the surrounding neighborhood) were skeptical.  After all, there was no internet out here in those days.  There is still no cable television.  We don't hook-up to a water line or a sewer line; each home owner has to deal with that privately,  which is fine if you are frugal, but not so much if you are not.  What kind of luxury, all-services-included type community could work with that?  Naturally, we never counted on services bypassing us completely & running lines directly to that future development. 

Then they broke ground & built a handful of sample houses & we were stunned.  The flagship house listed for $1.4 million & then actually sold for very close to that asking price.  The people who bought it were....an interesting case.  Let me say I know people who know them & say they are quite pleasant & maybe they are.  On the flip side, they were very active in a church that I would describe as hate-mongering if not actually hate-based.  More than that, they were the impetus in a campaign designed to remove certain discrimination protections in an adjacent city's charter.  A city I can confirm they did not live in at the time.

The reason given for this behavior was something to do with the bible; I have never really understood the specifics as the round-&-round speak of these arguments makes my head ache.  Also if we are going to start governing based on a book why does it have to be that one? There are other older books (yes, there are), if age is the criteria.  Finally, why be so pick&choose?  I find it hard to be patient with people telling me the bible says so with a sauce covered rib-bib around their necks, I just do.

Anyway.

We were kinda disgusted.  It didn't help that the above mentioned church has a rather checkered past itself.  My favorite was when a teacher at the school at the church got pregnant by a student; A said he had NO IDEA conservative religious education in the rural American south was so well rounded & he would not have minded a health class featuring a live sex show.  Yes, yes we are both aware the teacher & the student probably did it in the dark with most of their clothes on.  More recently but not all that recently, a member of this same congregation took to the local airwaves to defend Sarah Palin & her worries about....witches.  Witches.  Because that was where so many of us parted ways with Sarah Palin:  witches being among us.  I guess I can understand why someone might want to defend Sarah Palin for her views, but the idea that her views on witches were the biggest problem the American public had with her candidacy...? 

Moving forward, the anti-discrimination repeal failed (YAY) & other church leaders predicted that an angel of the lord would smite us for our folly.  & then this happened across the street:

SOMEBODY got smote.

After they rebuilt, the house lingered, unoccupied on the market until just a couple months ago.  Before that, A took this picture one morning of a fairly typical view from our driveway (more or less the same angle as the fire picture). 

As for the rest of the development, the houses were rather shoddy & of the four built only three sold before the market crashed.  Some lots also sold, but only one was ever built on.  The high-end clubhouse was built, but never really opened & as far as I know the Olympic sized swimming pool has never held chlorinated water.  It is a breeding ground for a particularly aggressive mosquito, which pairs nicely with the pine beetle that has devoured a good chunk of the pine woodland left between lots to provide privacy.  Now it looks more like a Bates Motel landscape without the Bates Motel. 

C is not for Cozy, at least not here. 

The eleventh commandment

I have said before I usually have a few books going, on the bedside table, in the sewing room, etc.  A few weeks ago, I started Don't Know Much About Mythology by Kenneth C. Davis & (brace yourself, I'm about to be petty)  I mostly enjoyed it.  I got a little tired of the quiptastic tone (I know, the Sam Cooke title was more than a clue), but I understand it can be hard to keep that much material & there is A LOT of material, interesting while you build the background & then get down to comparing & contrasting & just plain reviewing.  I said I was being petty & I meant it.

Anyhow it was playing away while I reconciled bird traps & I was one or two discs from the finish line when suddenly I learned something!  I learned that Santoria, a religion about which I know very little except they share my fascination with saints, I learned that Santoria has ELEVEN commandments.  The Moses ten + one.  & according to Don't Know Much the eleventh commandment is a "prohibition against cannibalism".  Way to turn it up to eleven, Santoria!

I am about to do a complete about face on ten commandment displays at court houses.  I am usually against, as I think they send a divisive message- imagine being a christian seeking justice in a courtroom where there is a giant stone tribute to The Five Pillars of Islam; I think you might worry the law might be interpreted to favor a muslim.  Also, I have never been entirely sure why people think the ten commandments & court houses are such a great match, what with so many of the Moses ten not being laws, as in no one is going to jail for failing to keep the Sabbath, but they might go to jail for beating their kids which is by-the-way not a problem according to the ten commandments. What with the big ten insisting we should honor our parents, you could make an argument for the ten commandments condoning you beating your kids.

But this behind me now because if you will commit to including this eleventh commandment I will sign your petition.  For many reasons, not the least of which is it is likely to offend the person who wants the ten commandments displayed in the first place, but also because I think cannibalism is at the route of a lot of crimes.  No, no I don't mean Hannibal Lechter cannibalism, I mean the desire to consume our fellow man...& his goods.  & by consume I also mean subsume. 

& I think I will stop there, making subsume my word for the day.  & maybe go listen to some Sublime.  Just in time for Passover.  & Easter.  But just a skosh late for the Spring Equinox.  Funny how they all line up, though.

World Hijab yesterDay

The pun was not lost on me when I realized this morning that yesterday had been World Hijab Day.  I freely admit that I DO consider the hijab a bit backward NOT because it is muslim, but because when it is required, those requiring it usually endorse backward ideas, such as not educating women.  Or anyone, for that matter.

& yes I get that this falls into that fine line category.   I know people (well person) who wears a hijab.  She feels very strongly that it makes her safer; that it is actually liberating.  She doesn't find anything strange about this.  What I hear is I carry mace because it is liberating.  Yes, maybe you are safer (maybe not), but isn't this also a sign there is something wrong with the bigger picture?  S***** insists that a hijab is about modesty.  So is pretending you don't know the answer in math class & never raising your hand.  Modest, yup.  The best idea you ever had, not so much.  I don't get it & I don't think I ever will. 

Just so no one feels picked on, let me tell this little story.  I have regular contact with a group of orthodox jews (a family group, as it happens).  No, the women don't wear hijab BUT when a woman gets married she often removes her hair, sometimes just what is visible to the world or sometimes all of it (I have no idea who decides to do which or why, I just know sisters who attend the same temple who have made different decisions).  After that, the orthodox jewish wife wears a wig for the rest of her life.  Even if she gets divorced, even if she is widowed, her hair is never to be seen in public again. 

Again this is a modesty thing.  OKay fine.  Then explain this:  why oh why oh why do they ALL wear wigs that are several shades lighter than their natural hair?  I asked this question & was told because it is prettier, of course.  Uhm...what?  They cannot tell me why their own hair, chemically treated wouldn't be kind of like a wig.  I mean, no one would be looking at their actual, natural hair, right?  Could they have their own hair made into a wig & wear that? 

I should probably stop at this point & mention that I am a natural blonde.  I am 47 years old & my hair gets a bit darker every year & I am still plenty blonde.  After a bit of my questioning these cousins are usually laughing their wigs off.  They are convinced, every last one of them, that I don't understand because I am already blonde.  Maybe they are right & maybe I don't.  But it sure does shoot holes in that modesty argument.  Invariably one historical truth keeps coming up in these conversations: in ancient Rome prostitutes were required to wear blonde wigs so everyone would know what they were. 

So I won't be wearing a hijab, & I wouldn't even if it still was World Hijab Day.  It doesn't matter much here anyhow; we live so close to a major medical center that women wearing hijab-like head scarves don't mean a thing except they don't want to get their chemo-bald heads sunburned.  Also I imagine they get cold.  Wearing hijab just wouldn't be the same experience. But the reason I won't be wearing one is I believe a modesty that requires you to not even have the option to show your uncovered head because some guy might lose control is a false modesty of the worst kind. 

Today of course is Groundhog Day.  I have no idea if he saw his shadow or not.  Want to know why?   I get weather predictions from the Weather Channel.

"Can you show me/Can you show me/The shine of your Japan/The sparkle of your China"

While my mom was visiting, we went one place I have been longing to go:  the new Cofrin Asian Art Wing at The Harn Museum of Art.  This wing, or rather one of the pieces to be housed there, actually made international news earlier this year: the Korean Bodhisatvah.

The short version is X-rays had shown this 17th century bodhi had a mass in his head.  In the interest of finding out what that mass was, they put him in the CAT scan & soon enough had a diagnosis.  I will let the link go into the details.  Or even better, you can visit himself at the Harn.

While you are there, you can also see other objects glorifying other gods, other lives, even other trades.  But there really is nothing else so eye-catching&fixing as the seated bodhi.   I kept leaving him & going to see the ceramics, & then the garden, the other gods.  & then back to the room with his x-rays & scans & documents & of course, him.

If you had asked me, I would have said that I was most partial to Ganesha & indeed I still think I am, but the bodhi was indeed a thing of great beauty.  I can understand being tempted to sell my house in town.  Instead, my mom bought me the t-shirt.

Star Wars Day, deal with it

Many people already know about May the Force/Fourth Be With You Day or International Star Wars Day.  I am surprised by how many people learn about it & respond that it is "only a made up holiday".  I have news for you:  so are all the others.

Some holidays happened because of convenience (how about we celebrate the harvest on a day after we get the crops in?), others to remember an event good or bad, fiction or non-fiction (Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, 9/11, Martin Luther King Day, Juneteenth, Passover, Chanukah, Groundhog Day), others to perform some function (Town Meeting Day, Election Day, Arbor Day).  Whether or not you believe they commemorate a real event, an important cultural myth or whatever, they are all made up days.  I just cannot believe even the most avid follower of the most literal interpretation of any holy book in the history of human civilization believes the finger of their creator came down to earth, flipped the pages of the calendar currently in use (adopted less than 600 years ago) & pointed to a particular date & said "Yes indeedy, that's the day it happened".  The idea that we are observing an event that took place at some time previous on any given day because this is exactly where the earth was in relation to all other heavenly bodies when it happened is, to me anyhow, laughable.  Especially in when you factor in that +1 every four years. 

Let me give you a for instance:  if you were a member of George Washington's inner circle & you said "let's take the old man out & toast him on his birthday", you would go out on what day?  Let me make this easy for you: even Wikipedia cannot say for sure.  The date cannot even be specified to a particular year NOT because no one wrote down when young George arrived, but because the Gregorian Calendar has undergone some remodeling since 173X.  What we can say for-sure, to the degree that any of this is for-sure, is he was born in February, but day (the 11th or the 21st) & year (1731 or 1732) are up for grabs.  The US observes the day on the 3rd Monday in February (a day that will NEVER have the date of either the 11th or the 21st), except in Indiana where they observed it after Thanksgiving but before the end of December.  This means if somehow through some strange confluence of whatever, the calendar of Indiana becomes the calendar of the US, we will be celebrating the birth of the father of our country right around the Winter Solstice.  Why does this sounds so familiar?

It isn't much better for Jefferson Davis, the father of the Confederacy.  Last year, his birthday was observed three days apart in adjacent states.  One state always observes on the day itself, another chooses the Monday or Friday before or after to make a long week-end.  Still another pushes it back to the previous month to lump it on with another nationally observed holiday.

Well, that's all well & good , you might say, but George Washington was a person.  We made this holiday out of respect, it isn't a religious holiday.  & they are right.  Where this argument falls apart is that International Star Wars Day IS associated with a religion.  According to the 2001 census, more than a quarter million citizens of the UK identified their religion as Jedi.  Yes, this is only .75% of the population, but when you consider how many Pilgrims it took to land on Plymouth Rock (or not, because you don't actually believe the rock called Plymouth Rock...maybe you do, whatever) & take over the world, 390K does not seem like too few.  More recently Jedi have successfully lobbied that their adopted costume (specifically the cloak worn with the hood up) not be a reason for them to be banned from public spaces; I had no idea that Jedi did not go about with their heads uncovered & I could be wrong but I don't think George Lucas knew it either.

If this is all sounds like a great big joke to you, these people are pranksters, misfits & they just want attention let me ask you to take a good long hard look at....Scientology.  Given a choice, I would rather share the planet with Jedi.  Happy Star Wars Day everyone.  May you not be the driods they were looking for.

Pelagia AKA Margarito

I backed into Saint Pelagia, not in a parking lot or anything but through the Boris Akunin series about Sister Pelagia (which I backed into because of my deep & abiding love for all things Erast Fandorin, also a Boris Akunin character).

There are a few different Saint Pelagias, conveniently celebrated on the same days (today or later this month, depending on which calendar you go with, but all together on whichever day):  a virgin who jumped from the roof of her house rather than be raped by soldiers, another who drove one man to suicide & his father to burn her alive for refusing to marry either of them, & a nun who saw a vision of Mary that told her where to find buried treasure, but today we are taking a look at Pelagia also known as Margarito the Courtesan.

Our Pelagia lived in Antioch (as did the roof-jumper, who is known as Pelagia of Antioch) & had quite a following as a dancer & professional mistress.  She was known for her outrageous costumes & public spectacles (think Lady Gaga) & was out one day with her entourage when she happened to hear Saint Nonnus preaching in the street.  In an unusual twist, as far as I can tell part of what got Nonnus the saint gig was baptising Pelagia & then getting her to renouncing her sinful ways.  Pelagia was a very big fish (imagine Lady Gaga; now imagine her joining Westboro Baptist Church).  She had a very public, very well compensated life of sin.  She was a walking-talking repudiation of be good & good things will happen to you, be bad & you get my point.  This was most excellent PR for the christians.

But Pelagia does not stop being interesting.  She was casting off her worldy goods & worldly life & really wanted to get to Jerusalem & live as penitent without attracting undo attention.  So she went disguised.  As a man.  No where else have I come across a saint who went cross-dressing to redemption.  I am just going to beat this Lady Gaga thing like a rented mule.

Pelagia spent three years disguised as a man, shut away in a monk's cell.  When she was found dead, she was buried without above ordinary ceremony.  I wonder what they thought of the babe in monk's clothing but maybe everyone secretly knew.  Also things were hopping in the Holy Land right about then.  In more scandalous death-news, the wife of the emperor also died- yes they die all the time but this particular wife had been banished to Jerusalem because of her adultery.  There were also a lot of religious schisms, the results of which are still seen today, hence Pelagia being a widely recognized saint in some churches & not so much in others.

That's it for our Pelagia really.  The second go-round of the hooker with a heart of gold story.   For another story about another Pelagia (no more holy than our saint & no less interesting, frankly) let me recommend Sister Pelagia & the White Bulldog.  It has everything:  religious schisms, sexual intrigues & behind the scenes look at champion dog breeding in Tsarist Russia.  Also, the sister wields a deadly knitting needle, what's not to love?

Daddy was a preacher & Mama was a go-go-girl

I have lived south of the Mason-Dixon (WELL south of the Mason-Dixon) for not-quite 1/2 my life & if adulthood comes at 14 (this is the south) most of my adult life, but I am still not of the south.  They say you are never a local (anywhere, not just here, but where I grew up as well) unless you were as-good-as-born there.  Still, I have acquired some southern preferences.  No, not barbecue.  or NASCAR.  or Jesus.  But no one & I mean no one does irreverent mash-ups like they do in the deep south.  I am eagerly awaiting a barbecued Jesus NASCAR event, I know there is one somewhere down here.

When I lived towards the north-eastern corner of this very large country, every summer, if we could, me & my mom used to go to a regular fair held at the local polo grounds (& if that right there does not tell you what kind of let-your-hair down community it is not, I do not know what will).  It was a very large, very civilized event.  Refreshments all on one side & almost no one brought their food out of that area; screaming running kids were just not to be found.  A much smaller fundraiser for a local church, complete with rides & carnies, was also just not the cut loose kind of thing you read about in books or see in movies. 

& then I came here.  Let me say we do live less than  5 miles from the winter home of at least one major circus, so what we experience now is what people who are paid to make sure everyone else has a good time do when they go active-relaxing. 

& that is as far as I got yesterday morning, saved the file & opened it again when this morning the tv was full of a Baptist Minister (no doubt with his own First Baptist Church somewhere) with a product endorsement prayer & a movie rip-off.  For the record this is not what I mean.  The best thing about this prayer is it reminded me of that Southern Culture on the Skids cover, which is I guess where I will end now.

Saint Zvlkx

If you have never heard of Saint Zvlkx you need to run don't walk to your local library & get acquainted with Thursday Next.   By the time you get to the fifth book, you will have heard of Saint Zvlkx in passing, mostly in reference to the site of his now-demolished cathedral.

On the way, you will learn about the new world religion (the Global Standard Deity).  Living as I do in a part of the country where religions that have a lot of overlap (our county has three, count them three, independent First Baptists Churches) but spend mucho energy emphasizing their differences, the idea of a religion that emphasizes the sameness of them all, well,  it is almost irresistible.  It has all gotten mixed in my mind with the older brother in Wonderfalls, the atheist studying comparative religions; a state of belief quite common in his field at least according to him.  G*d I miss Wonderfalls.

Who was/is Saint Zvlkx?  Well I don't want to spoil anything for you so all I will say is he might be a visionary, or a sham, a flim-flam or a visionary sham.  Seriously, read the books.  Also, get Wonderfalls, it's on Netflix.

What would Terry do?

Yesterday I was asking what would Terry do & I mean Terry Jones.  No not Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, but Terry Jones of DoveWorld Church fame.  As of this typing the "pastor" of the Dove World "church" is planning to burn a book holy to a religion not his own.  The reasons he gives have been well covered in the media locally & internationally.  By & large they read like a list of the usual I know the one true god, they have it coming & look everyone- look at me.

So I thought I would take a moment to review the reasons not being covered ( & the reasons for quotes around the words pastor & church):

Dove World church is only just barely a church.  I don't mean because they don't believe what I believe, I mean because they are a for-profit business.  They are have already had their not-for-profit status revoked for one arm of their enterprise & the rest is still under investigation.  Once you start selling stuff on eBay, it is hard to convince anyone you are not selling stuff.

In the course of investigating are they in fact a "church", the profiteers were identified & numero uno is ...wait for it...Terry Jones.  The technical term is commingled funds, but the initial issue was money made from the labor of people fulfilling court ordered community service, etc.  I want you to imagine for a moment that a person could be arrested for say drunk driving, ordered to "give back" some time making the community a better place & they went to work for well anyone really, who in turn put whatever profit was made in their own pocket.  Does this say "church" to you?  In any case, members of the organization also worked without compensation, except perhaps a Get Out Of Hell Free card.

The website sells anti-muslim books, bumper stickers & coffee mugs & where that money goes is still being investigated.  Among the t-shirts being sold is the "Islam is of the devil" t-shirt that so endeared DoveWorld to the local school district.  The short version is kids who wore this t-shirt to school were asked to put a sweatshirt over it because others might find it offensive, thereby violating the then-dress-code. That was so offensive, some of them dropped out. 

If you thought that was all that was for sale, think again.  The church itself is on the block.  That's right, that piece of real estate being photographed & displayed all over the world is on the market.

Which brings me back to: what would Terry do?  Apparently he would try to parlay his success as a media whore to make a buck.  The truly astonishing part is he is still going broke.  & there in lies the more recent what would Terry do & that is back-down.  Because it turns out the only thing more likely to make him change his mind than cash was the very real threat of a $60K bill for police services during the event, the likely cost of defending himself form "yelling fire in a crowded movie theatre" type charges & assorted civil actions from the local neighborhood association.

It begins with a small game

Let's play word association.  I will say a word & then you say the next word that pops into your head.  Are you ready?

sex  -

children -


father -


Now.  Could everyone who did NOT picture a catholic priest at any point during this game...  Could you just....uhm.  Seriously?

I do not live in CT anymore but I do follow the broad sweeping topics of the area. Lately the broad sweeping topic has been sex with children.  Specifically, the Archdiocese of Hartford, the Diocese of Bridgeport & the Diocese of Norwich are contacting parishioners any way they can think of (sermons, e-mail) & asking that they contact their representatives & request they vote against House Bill 5473.  The part the bishops take issue with is the part extending the period of time by which victims of sexual abuse can bring law suits against their abusers.  Now, those of you who never saw a catholic priest at any point during the word association game, can you think why this might be?

World religions always have been & always will be riddled with sex cults.  India was very big with dedicating young girls to a local temple & they raised funds for the temple by having sex with the local men.  As far as I can tell, this is just a hop, skip & an ahem from Bristol Palin having sex with whats-his-name, spawning & then trotting out to fund raising events to say how she won't do it again, because as far as I can tell abstinence is a kind of sex cult.

Sexual assault happens (in the US, Ireland, Germany, etc.) but that is not what the Catholic Church is about.  The church is about some basic core belief, right?  Unswerving, fundamental guidelines for all catholics to live by.  Like, oh say, abortion is bad.  Except of course, in China, where Catholic Bishops keep pretty mum on the subject.  As with the Dalai Lama, the Chinese government went ahead & promoted their own Catholic Bishops, reflecting the state view that abortion is a good idea.  This means that if you are in China, looking for an organization prepared to stand up for their beliefs, no matter how conflicting or out of step with dominant local thinking, you should start praying to GOOGLE. 

As for Connecticut House Bill 5473, I have decided to go one better.  I cannot contact my representative in CT because I don't have one.  But I can contact Bishops in Florida & ask them what the fuck?  Well, maybe not "fuck".

Turtles all the way around

A very good friend of my mother's (& of the whole family, actually), collects turtles.  Not living ones, but mostly realistic representations of turtles.

I have had a completed turtle quilt top for a while.  So long, I have been threatening to baste it & quilt it since before....well, it could have been done for last christmas, but it wasn't.

The pattern will certainly look familiar to anyone who is part of our quilt block swap, as it was the February 2010 block, although the color & concept were very different.  In this case, the fabric was from a bundle of batik fat quarters, I think A bought for me at a Tree City quilt show five or seven years ago.

But not the turtles themselves.  They were all packaged together & came from a grab bag gift exchange quite some time ago. I decided to use them on the corner pieces, the pieces that would never be cut & then laid the completed  blocks out using the reconciling the disparate sashing because the blocks were indeed quite disparate.  Not all the turtles squares were the same.  I do not think any of them were even square & I cut the whole block down to keep as much "turtle" as I could, ending up with nine blocks that were themselves n longer square.

& finally the quilting itself is what I call free-motion with walking foot.  I keep the walking foot on & the feed dogs up & just kind of slowly, gently swoop.  It is almost more a series of tai chi postures than anything else.

As for the turtles, aside from them being a long established favorite, I have nothing. Or too much.  My mother loves the book Old Turtle & has been know to gift it to the local public libraries of friends who have lost children.

The flat world exists on the back of a turtle according to the Iroquois.  This kicks off the favorite fable of physicists about turtles all the way down.  Which is also the much more prosaic expression for programming code that loops back on itself.

So here I am, back at the beginning again.  Only this time the quilt is quilted, the binding is on & everything is boxed to go tomorrow to mom, because she will turn the binding & stitch it down.  In this way I manage to never quite finish anything ever.

Joseph's delight

I am way far behind in my Friday Block Party blocks & I have a whole pile of patterns to work my way thru but last week's block made me stop & do just the one.  The block, if you are curious is Joseph's Delight, a good sized variation on one of my favorite shapes: the anvil (& not just because of the roadrunner et al, but that might be part of it).  I would have made the block sooner rather than later because I really do like anvil-type patterns, but then there was that name.  & that name always brings me to my second favorite bible character.  No not Joseph: Reuben.

For those of you who have not cruised Genesis in a while, let me get you started;  Reuben was Jacob's first born son.  His mother was Leah (you know the "trick" bride).  Joseph's mother was the originally desired Rachel.  I only mention this because it comes up.  It comes up A LOT.

For the most part Christians remember Reuben for a single big thought/statement/act.  It was Reuben who said "let's not kill Joseph, let's sell him instead".  Like his father before him, Reuben was master of the gray area & maker of decisions that would bite him in the ass.  Jews, on the other hand, have much more uhmmm just more stories about Reuben.  Yes, he is disinherited in favor of Joseph here, too, but there are some very strange versions of why.

The big one is that Reuben had sex with Rachel's handmaid (& mother of two of Jacob's other sons) Bilhah.  I admit for me this is the point I throw up my hands.  In addition to everything else he did (remember Esau?), Jacob is having sex with everyone, as had his father-in-law before him (Bilhah, in addition to being Rachel's handmaid was also her half-sister), but Reuben crossed a line?  Really?

But that is not my favorite version.  My favorite is the one where Reuben is disinherited because he moves Jacob's bed out of Bilhah's tent (where Jacob moved it following the death of Rachel) because it is some kind of Feng Shui insult to his mother.  In many ways I am disappointed that Jane Austen never tackled the Old Testament.  Can't you almost hear the regency dialogue where everyone talks about rearranging the furniture but it is all really code for who is sleeping with whom?  Maybe that's just me.

So, where was I?  Oh yes, quilt blocks.  So I made the Joseph's Delight block & it was indeed delightful.  It's good sized with many pieces, but they are much the same & can be made en masse & then assembled, so it goes together quickly.  I only regret that Reuben has no quilt block; wouldn't you know Joseph has several?

//my favorite character (&  book) is Esther.  I think it's has a certian Once Upon A Time quality.  My favorite New Testament story is, of course, the Good Samaritan.  Different friends of mine do things with different summer bible schools (different religions, different churches, different parts of the country).  I always ask but no one teaches the Good Samaritan anymore.  Why not?

If I can't get a man then I'll have to get a parrot

I avoid the commercial saints generally but Saint Valentine is so mangled, mauled & maligned, I cannot resist him. Let's take a look:

There are two Saint Valentines documented for this day, but lots of people believe he was actually just the one person. This is an interesting twist right there as many individual saints are often more than one person, blended together. Man One was imprisoned for giving aid to imprisoned martyrs (that is a hard one to picture; did he break into the jail?). Man Two is less well documented, but mostly had the same name, was also beheaded (on the order of a guy named Placid Furius, no less) & was big with healing prisoners. There is not a whiff of earthly love around either of them. Okay, maybe a whiff.  There is an intriguing reference to the jailer's daughter, but it really is just the faintest whiff. As for why just Man One & Man Two, I could not say, there are a dozen or more Valentines in the index.

But lets just settle for these two beheaded priests who ministered to prisoners (not in a prison movie way). The whole romance thing seems to have more to do with pre-christian rituals about the day. That's right, apparently neither Valentine himself is not the reason for the season.

Before christianity was a twinkle in a rabbi's eye, the day recognized now as February 15th was the Festival of Lupercalia, the She-Wolf that nursed Romulus & Remus. Before it was Lupercalia, it was well, something else. Everyone forgot & that is how the She-Wolf got into it. & interestingly, gender-bending type events were part of the festivities even before it was Lupercalia. Now, of course Sadie Hawkins Dances are often held on a near weekend to Saint Valentines Day, although Sadie Hawkins Day is actually in November. Confused yet? It gets better.

It is not just ancient history that muddies the waters, there is also our history. After cards, chocolate, etc. the most famous thing about Saint Valentine's Day is the massacre, which has nothing to do with Saint Valentine's Day. Every american film buff knows at least part of the confusing 1929 story. Or thinks they do. At a minimum it was the driving force for so many famous films, not the least of which was Some Like It Hot, still a high water mark for gender confusion in film.

Another Saint Valentine's Day massacre was the bloody match between Sugar Ray Robinson & Jake La Motta. It was not all that pretty either.

More recently, Saint Valentine's Day has been adopted by feminists (THEM!) as a rallying point for the whole "woman needs man like fish needs bicycle" aesthetic. Which has triggered a "take back the day" movement from...people who want to buy cards...?

Poor Saint Valentine. Look what they've done to his day.  Or their day.  Or his days.  Or, yea I'm done.

//it was only as I was testing the links that I realized the Steeleye Span version does not have the verse that is the title of this post. So here it is.

Ban that bastard

I know you thought this would be about Michael Vick (ban him, too), but this is really about Banned Books Week

This year for Banned Books Week I have been reading The Canterbury Tales & Madame Bovary. Last year I was rereading Harry Potter et al & the His Dark Materials trilogy, so I guess you could say I am upgrading. For me, there is that banned books favorite I try to read every year (but turns out more like every other year): To Kill a Mockingbird.

So, run don't walk to your local library & make sure you request a banned book. Chances are pretty good, at least one of your favorites is being challenged as I type this. If you do not ask to keep them, they will not be there for the next person to discover.

Bernardine of Siena

You think there is no patron for compulsive gamblers? Wanna bet? Saint Bernardine of Siena is also the patron of public relations & advertising. How ever shall these be reconciled?

According the the index, he was very popular with the ladies. As a preacher. No, really. & the primary subject of his sermons was the damage done by gossip which could lead to vendettas by aggressive males. It sounds to me like he might have been preaching to the choir. A lot of preaching to the choir, as he is also invoked against hoarseness.

Actually, I have deliberately misled you. Initially, Bernardine was hoarse & therefore did not preach (despite having joined an order dedicated to missionary preaching) but he was moved by devotion to Mary & his hoarseness was cured & then he could preach. Or so the story goes. He was very unpopular with many other preachers (if you have been following my other saints posts you might notice a trend), but drew large crowds wherever he went. & quite the show it was, what with the collective weeping & exorcisms. Am I the only one who hears shades of Neil Diamond here?

Today, Bernardine's insignia is much better known than the man himself. He adopted the symbol IHS as his own, ultimately displacing many other standards (& the preachers that went with them, no doubt). Here we are back to jealousy, gossip & aggressive men. Where would the church be without them?

I am not really sure what the message is here. Let symbols & slogans do your talking for you? Make your weakness your strength? Pretend your strength used to be a weakness? Forget about separation of church & state & work on separating them both from theater? Or maybe just be reconciled to the world, keep your head, use your brain & try not to make everyone around you crazy.

Or maybe it is to give the dice the best shake you can & roll hard.

//originally I linked to the Atomic Fireballs cover of Luck Be a Lady, but it has been removed. Too bad, but it gives me cause to just order you, my useless minions to go & buy Torch This Place & Birth of the Swerve. If not for me, do it for the economy, because if we stop buying jazz, the terrorists win. Or wait, maybe fraudulent investment executives win...? I get confused. Did I mention whats-his-face is also the patron of ad men? I did? Well, it never hurts to say these things twice.

What would Mervyn do?

Following my last post I got a number of messages. Pleasantly, most them wanted to know what the hell a Gormenghastian is. Around the time that Tolkien's books were cutting their swathe, Mervyn Peake published his own world view. Like Tolkien, he had maybe spent too much time being gassed in the trenches. I do not know this I am only guessing.

I have never actually read the Lord of the Rings books. I struggled through The Hobbit because C***** was reading it & I thought I should make an effort. I then made it clear that for the rest, she was on her own.

I never would have heard of Gormenghast had it not been for B***. She knew we got BBC on our satellite & asked me to tape it for her (the series had not yet played on PBS & yes, we still taped programs; it was a while ago). I did tape it for her & then discovered that the broadcast had been interrupted to cover the annual marches & accompanying violence. So I watched the whole damn thing to see which episodes I needed to retape (all of them). Let me go on record: watching people shoot & gas each other over a dispute that makes the Palestinian/Israeli conflict look nouveau was a blessed relief when compared to this program. That being said, all you Tudors fans want to put it on hold because this is the very creepy role that put Jonathan Rhys Meyers on the map.

It has been suggested that I do not like them (Tolkien, Peake) because of the religious leanings. On the other hand I do like the Narnia books & they are more overtly religious than all the others. Of course I missed this completely the first time I read them. When someone finally clued me in, my first Aslanic insight was "organized religion is an artful predator"; probably not the message C.S.Lewis meant to send.

So what would Mervyn do? I haven't the faintest idea.

Modest majority has moral misgivings OR How the infidels came to have Good Friday off

The Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) set the date of Easter as the Sunday following the 14th day of the paschal full moon, which is the full moon whose 14th day falls on or after the vernal (spring) equinox.

& it came to pass that our Houston consulting office was told (by a payroll auditor from the State of Texas) that we needed one more holiday to be in compliance with state law. The news was broken to all of us at the weekly staff meeting & I immediately moved for Ramadan. Not that I ever expected this would fly, but only the boss/owner laughed. The others actually said "but none of us are Muslim".

There was a list of choices, among them Good Friday, which also happened to be the next holiday on the calendar. I voted for Good Friday. The owner voted for Good Friday. The remainder of the staff stood with their mouths hanging open; the two of us did not have a great track record when it came to supporting group absences for religious holidays & it caught everyone off guard.

& then we explained. In this particular year, Good Friday coincided with Passover & my in-laws would be in town (for those who are curious Passover is NOT one of the holidays that State of Texas will consider an official or optional holiday but LBJ's birthday is). This accounted for my unusual sympathy.

But the best was saved for last. The boss wanted Good Friday because his golf course was not open on Mondays, so another Monday holiday was useless to him. There was pandemonium while the ethicacy of selecting a religious holiday for wholly unreligious reasons (unless you consider golf a religion, which F**** kind of does) was debated. & then we moved for a vote.

In the end, Good Friday became an official holiday in our office. & F**** got his golf game in. & I privately swapped Good Friday for whatever day Passover really was (someone has to deal with the calls from clients who do not observe Good Friday) & all was right with the world.

Equine cargo cult

I am a gynormous fan of the writer Nevil Shute. Not just On The Beach or A Town Like Alice; my favorite is definitely Round The Bend. I just love all those lists of airplane parts (oh fixed asset inventory, how I adore you). & I find cargo cults (& mummies) irresistible.

Cargo cults, for those who do not know are yet another example of man's interpreting as divine what he cannot explain through his experience. Specifically, when native (technologically immature) people were slammed right up against modern (technologically dependent) people, the natives saw the results of technology as miraculous. The most common example is the Pacific islanders of WWII. After seeing US troops clear drop sites & landing strips & line them with burning torches so supplies could be delivered with some accuracy, the natives would make similar clearings of their own & wait for manna.

What I did not realize until I took up Useless Ranching was that cargo cults are not limited to human beings. This is an excellent argument for the 'animals have souls' crowd & I would have clued them in earlier if I actually believed in souls, which I do not.

Our donkey, as I believe I have mentioned, is a clever bastard. Equal emphasis on clever & bastard. People go on about the nobility of horses. With very few exceptions, horses are idiots (so nobility just might be the right word). Donkeys are quite intelligent & not the least noble.

Bert (the donkey) likes puzzles. No really. He likes watching you do things & then he likes to undo them. This can be anything from the knot in your shoe laces to the latch keeping the gate closed. He is fascinated by the all things mechanical. He has stolen power drills, cell phones, all kinds of things of that ilk. He has never stolen the scoop I use to give him his food. He has tried to bump it out of my hands, spilling feed every where (he is a glutton, have I mentioned this? Well, he is), but the scoop itself holds not interest for him.

Not so the horses. If I pick up a bucket & put it down, they will kill each other trying to get their heads into what the donkey knows is an empty bucket. The donkey waits until I come out of the feed room with the full scoop. Then & only then does he behave as though it were dinner time. This usually means trying to muscle me around before I can pour the feed into a bucket that will be claimed by a horse, who may or may not be in a sharing mood. Pound for pound the donkey is stronger & pounds aside more clever by far, but he is always, above all things, lazy. He has no interest in expending energy fighting with a horse when he can steal from the barrel itself.

This brings us to equine cargo cults. The horses are not complete idiots, they know the feed is kept in the feedroom. They have seen me chuck out hay & refill the scoop from that magic den. But they accepted they cannot get into the feed room; the feed must come to them. Until the day the donkey opened the door latch.

Donkeys have a prehensile lip. You would be amazed how strong & limber it is (keep it clean, people). One day, Bert opened the feedroom door with it. This means he flipped a loop of metal from flush against the plate to 90degrees from the plate, leaned his weight on the door & pulled towards himself, sliding the locking pin back & opening the door. Then he went in & made a total pig of himself.

Captain, being a big Big horse could not have fit in there while the donkey was in there, but still managed to pull several bails of hay out & they had a grand time. Bert did this more than once (I thought I was forgetting to latch the door properly before I actually saw him do it). A has since made an addition to the locking mechanism: a latch that prevent the loop from moving up to that 90degree position, unless you can unclip it & lift it out, something a prehensile lip cannot do.

As soon as he saw this, Bert gave up. He knows what he cannot do. He then went on to accomplish other assinine feats, but I will save them for another day. Captain on the other hand could not be deterred. On any given day, he would stand at the feedroom for hours, hours & hours licking....wait for it....the hinges. He had seen Bert do this trick & open that door & dammit he was going to do it, too. It never worked but he never really gave up. You can argue that maybe the hinges had some quality he liked, a mineral taste maybe.Except he never licked the hinges before this & he never licked any of the other hinges, including those on the doors of the adjacent stalls.

As far as I am concerned that meets the definition of Cargo Cult. & I do not just mean Captain's behavior. The donkey is the modern person in this little tale & he is too close for my comfort: he would rather steal than work, he would rather work than wait & he would rather give up than pretend he could ever make it work again.

In rereading this, I realized I may have given the impression there are mummies in the Shute books. There are not, that I can recall. If you want mummies, let me recommend the works of H. H. Ryder (that's right, the King Solomon's Mines guy) or even better The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips, which does for mummies what The Historian did for vampires. Well worth the pages.

Please, please go away

The door-to-door G*d salespeople have been out in force. They exhaust me. First of all, we have way too many inside dogs (who do not always use their inside voices), for anyone expecting conversation to knock on my door & then hang around. "Deafening" does not really cover it.

& when I said knock I meant knock. The doorbell died years ago & it took us a long, long time to notice. That is how much I want to talk to someone who does not know better than to come to the front door.

The truth is I KNOW when someone is there because I can hear all that barking, too. You don't have to bang on the door, lean on your car horn, shout loudly over THE BARKING DOGS. The barking dogs are the clue to your presence.

It is always possible I am not there to hear the dogs, in which case banging on the door, honking your horn & shouting almost certainly will not work. If I cannot hear the dogs, I cannot hear you.

But there have been stalwarts who insist on waiting & waiting & waiting until the noise of the dogs is more than I can handle & I answer the door. These people always want to talk about Jesus. Funnily enough, no one tries that hard to deliver a package or the word of Muhammad (or Abraham or Isaac or Jacob for that matter). It is always Jesus.

After years of my saying "no thanks" & A saying more (any mythology outside of Sinbad movies holds no interest for him; I once had to explain to my book club that he thinks there is just the narrowest of gaps between people who go to church on Easter to humor their mothers & snake handlers), the door-to-door G*d salespeople stopped dropping by.

True story about A: he was stopped on campus & asked if he would accept a copy of the New Testament. He said no & then asked if the solicitor would like a copy of The Origin of the Species? He said no, too. Then A asked if he thought he should be illegally taking up a parking space that people pay $100s of dollars a year to use? That is stealing, right? One of the big Ten? Believe it or not, the guy packed up & left.

But I digress. I was saying the door-to-door G*d people are back. Some time ago, the pastureland across the street was earmarked for luxury homes. Four swanky models went up, the swankiest directly across from our driveway & listed for up to 1.4 million. We laughed our asses off. Until someone bought it.

Who would buy a 1.4 million dollar luxury entertainment-style house in the middle of nowhere? Why the pastor/deacon/whatever of a large new-testament-is-truth, we-go-to-heaven-faster-if-we-convert-more-infidels style church. Apparently, Jesus wants you to have the coolest pool party in the neighborhood.

& then they were back. Every week or so, a pair of little old ladies would stand on our front step, waiting to be torn apart by mad dogs. & this is how the conversations would go:

"Good morning"
"WHAT?""
"Have you heard the word?"
"WHAT?"
"The word of G*d?"
"WHAT?"

At least I think that is how it went. I really could not hear much over all that barking. I would toy with the idea of letting the dogs escape, but I do not want to get charged with assault or my dogs destroyed (although if you are standing on my front step, trying to talk to me about Jesus & my dog attacks you, isn't that a Sign?).

Seeing as how I got e-mails for the entry about saints & shoveling horse-sh*t, I am sure to get e-mails about this. In my defense, at least I am not standing on your doorstep reciting this to you.

Saint Alphonsus Liguori

Today (according to the Saints Index on-line) is the day of Saint Alphonsus Liguori. The only thing I miss about the Catholic Church is the saints. They have a strange fairy-tale quality: Once upon a time there was a very old man who lived in a cave --let's face it, that's 1/3 of them, right there.

It's a shame my limited religious instruction didn't cover the saints in more detail; even when they were crazy they were interesting. I have begun to wonder why they did not come up more often during my Liberal Arts education, in world history or abnormal psych. Pretty much the only saints I have run across outside the church are Thomas Aquinas, that well documented philosopher, & Louis IX of France, who as far as I can tell was canonized for killing Jews. Oh, I forgot Constantine & his mother Helen. They are fun, too.

I like what I have read about Alphonsus Liguori so far. Apparently he worked for separation of church & state & thought kindness was more important than piety. I wonder that they canonized him at all. He is also the patron saint of moral theologians. I am doubly impressed. I did not think the church was that close to admiting there were immoral ones.

So today, in honor of the man Alphonsus Liguori I will make an effort to consider that every vastly corrupt institution probably has one or two members that are not quite so bad. I will do this while shoveling out the horse stalls in the rain.