Photo Friday - 4/28/17

The week began with rainy, raw weather.  I was still recuperating from the cold from hell, so the beginning of the week wasn't so good.  BUT then the sun came out, was it on Wednesday afternoon?  So I went out and took pictures of the yard blooming and weed free.  Some very nice workers from our lawn mowing company weeded the garden in the rain.  I don't have before pictures but it looked like a jungle!

Our Lady of Guadalupe is no longer hidden behind a wall of weeds!

The azalea is starting to bloom! 

So is the dogwood! 

Thumbelina

Since we had to put Milky down last week, Thumbelina has grown more precious to me.  She's an old cat too and has hyperthyroidism.  She's gotten so skinny.  This week I started giving her medicine for her condition.  It is in transdermal form and I have this 'pen' that emits a cream that I wipe on the inside of the tip of her ear.  I have no idea if I am doing it right or she is actually getting it.  But I didn't want to put something in her food because I was afraid the dog or the other cat would get to it.

Honeysuckle blooming already?  I always think of it as more midsummer.

Thursday I took a walk by the river.  The place was hopping with jet skiers, kayakers, row boaters.  There was some kind of big event being set up and tons of people arriving for that.  I looked it up: The North Face Endurance Challenge.

I take so many photos of paths.  I love paths.

This one was still extremely muddy in places.

But the river view was worth it.

Wednesday Wisdom - 4/26/17 - Augustine on the Death Penalty

I had a little unpleasant interaction on the internet recently with a fellow Catholic.  This person was offended that I thought the death penalty and war were pro-life issues.  This fellow held up St. Augustine (Aquinas and Council of Trent too) as supporters of the death penalty and war and told me I was spreading a massive lie.  Dear reader, I blocked him right after I showed him an article about Pope Benedict's thinking on the death penalty and he told me that the pope was theologically flawed.  People who are more Catholic than the pope tend to be toxic angry people I've found, unfortunately.  So I said a quick prayer for him and with a lovely click of a button, he no longer was there to say nasty things to me about how I am following Jesus' Church all wrong.

But it just so happened that at this point in The City of God Augustine began to talk about the death penalty and torture!  Now I don't know where Augustine states that government should be granted the power of capital punishment, but he certainly seemed to think that even so, it is a problematic thing!

Here is the great saint himself.  He is systematically going through the idea that we can create happiness in ourselves as the pagans taught.  Augustine is saying this is unrealistic because of sin and ignorance, which is why we need God for happiness.

This is from Book XIX, Chapter 6 - under the heading:  The mistakes of human judgment when the truth is hidden:

What of those judgments passed by men on their fellow-men, which cannot be dispensed with in cities, however much peace they enjoy?  What is our feeling about them?  How pitiable, how lamentable do we find them!  For indeed those who pronounce judgement cannot see into the consciences of those on whom they pronounce it.  And so they are often compelled to seek the truth by torturing innocent witnesses in a case which is of no concern of theirs.  And what about torture employed on a man in his own case?  The question is whether he is guilty.  He is tortured and even if innocent, he suffers, for a doubtful crime, a punishment about which there is no shadow of doubt and not because he is discovered to have committed it, but because it is not certain that he did not commit it.  This means that the ignorance of the judge is often a calamity for the innocent.  And there is something yet more intolerable, something to be bewailed, and, if it were possible, washed away by floods of tears.  It is the fact that the judge tortures the accuses for the sole purpose of avoiding execution, in ignorance, of an innocent man, while his pitiable lack of knowledge leads him to put to death, tortured and innocent, the very person whom he had tortured to avoid putting the innocent to death.
. . . .Then after his condemnation and execution the judge still does not know whether it was a guilty or innocent person he has executed, after torturing him to avoid executing the innocent in ignorance.  In view of this darkness that attends the life of human society, will our wise man take his seat on the judge's bench, or will he not have the heart to do so?  Obviously, he will sit for the claims of human society constrain him and draw him to this duty; and it is unthinkable to him that he should shirk it.

[Augustine goes on to enumerate more injustices of capital punishment, like the fact that even if the judge were going to acquit an innocent person they may die from the torture itself, or the witness may give false testimony because of the torture and thus help condemn an innocent man]

. . . All these serious evils our [pagan] philosopher does not reckon as sins; for the wise judge does not act in this way through a will to do harm, but because ignorance is unavoidable - and yet the exigences of human society make judgement also unavoidable. Here we have what I call the wretchedness of man's situation, at any rate, even if it is not to be called the wickedness of the wise man in his judicial capacity.  Yet if it is through unavoidable ignorance and unavoidable duty of judging that he tortures the innocent, are we to be told that it is not enough to acquit him?  Must we grant him happiness as a bonus?  How much more mature reflection it shows, how much more worthy of a human being it is when a man acknowledges this necessity as a benchmark of human wretchedness, when he hates that necessity in his own actions and when, if he has the wisdom of devotion, he cries out to God:  'Deliver me from my necessities!"

These are not the reasonings of a man who is gung ho about capital punishment.  He acknowledges the likelihood of killing an innocent man (and how many on death row have been exonerated now with new scientific testing, 1 in 9, I think!  This opportunity to test is often denied in appeals!)  This is a mark of the wretchedness of man's situation and is something that we, if we are devout, should pray to God to be delivered from!

The more I read the great saints and theologians the more I love Catholic teaching.  Don't listen to angry, ignorant bozos on the internet who try to lead us into sin.  Go to the source!  It is always worthwhile and refreshing!

Tuesday Topics - Dillon's Rule

I think I might be at the very beginning stages of actually becoming an activist!  Now I've gone on marches before and I've sent in emails to representatives when a cause I've subscribed to, tells me too (mostly Virginia Catholic Conference), but I am not a true activist at all.  I am pretty much a complainer-but-don't-do-anything-about-it kind of person.  But because of this past election, I did become a member of the Virginia chapter of the American Solidarity Party.  And one issue that local ASP members want to focus on is the easing of Dillon's rule.

Now I've been a Virginian most of my life and I know next to squat about its politics.  It's a real shame.  I do think media tends to report most about the president, etc and so federal level stuff is often way more on my mind than local things.  That's a wrong way to go about things, I am discovering.  At the federal level, we have two severely depraved, crumbling parties that hold sway over the nation.  Not a good situation.  But locally, one might be able to change things, at least a little bit.

The other way I've been galvanized to become more politically involved is the the Care of Our Common Home ministry at my parish.  I just attended another event last night, a movie night showing The Clean Bin Project movie.  It was very illuminating.  The woman who showed the movie is from Virginia Green Baggers, an organization that tries to raise awareness of environmental issues, especially the problem of plastic bags.  I chatted very briefly with her (I can't recall her name) and she mentioned that Dillon's Rule prevented local counties from passing laws that ban plastic bags or laws that tax them.  Virginia Beach tried to pass a local ordinance to control plastic bags but failed to last year.  Apparently four proposals were presented and rejected by the Virginia legislature last year.

So I am gathering resources to learn more about Dillon's Rule and why it seems to be more restrictive in Virginia than say in Maryland (where Montgomery county was able to pass a law taxing plastic bags in the county).

Here's some links I've found.   I'm just beginning my research.

http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/government/about/dillon-rule.htm

http://www.nlc.org/local-government-authority

http://vagovernmentmatters.org/case-studies/449

https://www.alec.org/app/uploads/2016/01/2016-ACCE-White-Paper-Dillon-House-Rule-Final.pdf

https://www.brookings.edu/research/is-home-rule-the-answer-clarifying-the-influence-of-dillons-rule-on-growth-management/

Monday Meals-Freezing Spinach

Multiply this amount by 4 bath towels!  That's how much turned into 9 quart jars of spinach.

I bought a crate of spinach for $30 from my local CSA.  My idea was that I'd buy in bulk and try to freeze most of it for later consumption.  I'm trying to figure out a way to have frozen food sans plastic.  I miss buying frozen vegetables.  It was an enormous amount of spinach.  It sat in the fridge for a whole week because I was sick and then convalescing and had to deal with other things with my limited energy.   On Thursday I managed to wash one bag, but didn't get to the rest until Sunday afternoon.

We actually picked it up on Easter afternoon.  So I figured on Easter we'd have spinach salad with our lamb and baked potatoes.  My son in law made a delicious spinach salad off the cuff. To a big salad bowl of washed fresh spinach, he added two chopped up Easter eggs, one thinly sliced apple, threw in some chopped green onion and then tossed it all with a salad dressing made from olive oil, balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard and honey.  It was yummy!

Please ignore the fact that my freezer desperately needs defrosting.  Thank you.*

My plans for freezing are pretty experimental.  I just combined instructions that I found on the internet.  I took some advice from this blog and then other advice from this one.  I didn't blanch the spinach.  That just seemed like too much work!  I picked through it carefully (took forever!), washed it three times in the kitchen sink, spun it dry in batches and then let it sit out on a bath towels for 30 minutes or so to dry as much as possible.  Then I stuffed 9 quart canning jars with the leaves and put them in my freezer.

Even after freezing 9 quart jars of spinach, we still had enough left over to eat as our veggie for dinner last night.  I just steamed it with olive oil, butter and garlic salt.  Also yummy!

*You'll probably notice the chicken in plastic packaging.  At my Whole Foods, for some reason you can get beef, sausages and pre-made things like kebabs just wrapped in compostable butcher paper,  But you have to buy chicken in plastic packaging.  The packaging does say it is recyclable.  I have also been buying my chicken from The Fresh Market, which also has a meat section where you can buy chicken over the counter without packaging.  But they wrap it in butcher paper that is lined with something.  I don't know if it is plastic or silicone or what.  I have a sneaking suspicion it is not compostable.  Anyway, this time I was at Whole Foods and I just didn't have time to go to any other stores, so I just picked this chicken up.  It is really hard to stay plastic free all the time.  I am working on it!

Bedknob and Broomstick - Book 16

I'd been fighting some kind of germ all through Easter.  I remember having too much of a nasty headache on Holy Thursday to go to confession.   We went on Good Friday, when my headaches seemed to subside but now I was losing my voice and my throat felt all scratchy.  I persevered through Passover, not feeling too bad but not feeling great.  However, I skipped the Easter vigil because I started to feel so exhausted.  Easter day I woke up feeling awful  So I had three awful days mostly bedridden, except when I had to drag my sorry you know what out to get something done that nobody could do but me.

I read a lot in bed.  I finished Children of the New Forest and then decided I needed another children's novel to keep me company.  Well, another children's book I'd never read was Bedknob and Broomstick.  I'd only seen (many times) the delightful Disney version.  God bless Kindles, is all I can say.  I ordered the book by Mary Norton, it was a delightful companion while I coughed deep raspy coughs and sneezed umpteen times in a row.

Disney took a lot of liberties with the movie.  The original book is not set during World War II.  And as serendipity would have it, it has time travel back to the very time period that Children of the New Forest ended with, the reign of Charles II!

Carey, Charles and Paul are three siblings who've been sent to stay with their aunt in the countryside.  They discover that the quirky, kind old maid at the end of the lane, Miss Eglantine Price, is studying witchcraft.  The character Angela Lansbury plays in the movie is very close to the same character in the book, but the adventures are different.  They never go down to the bottom of the sea to sing Bobbing Along on the Bottom of it.  They never go to Portobello Road.  There are no Nazis attacking England in the story.  Instead they have three hilarious misadventures with bed travel.  First they go to London to visit their mother and get picked up by the police (I think that's in the movie though), then they go to s South Sea island that supposedly is uninhabited but turns out to have cannibals.  Miss Price's magic saves them.  But the bed comes back sodden with water and the children are sent home by Aunt Beatrice.  A couple years pass before the children get to see Miss Price again.  She's given up magic.  She never was good at it.  She's better at gardening.  But Carey talks her into letting them do one trip into the past, a power the bed has but which they never tried before.  They go back to Restoration England and find the sad failed necromancer, Emelius Jones.

This was a delightful book, cleverly written with lovely little tidbits of description too.  Mary Norton could write!  I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite feeling miserable.

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Children of the New Forest - Book 15

Children of the New Forest is my second book by author Frederick Marryat and my second book in the April Children's Literature Challenge.  Marryat wrote this back in 1847 and it was his last book before he died.

The story is set 200 years before in 1647, when Cromwell and the Roundheads are waging civil war against King Charles I.  The children of the title are the offspring of a nobleman and officer who is killed in battle fighting for the king.  The Roundheads eventually burn his estate down, thinking they've also burned to death his four children, Edward, Humphrey, Alice and Edith.  The novel is mostly about Edward who is 15 at the opening of the story.  The children survive because a faithful and kindly forester rescues them,  takes them in to his cottage deep in the forest, and refers to them as his grandchildren.  They have to learn to work and cook for themselves to survive.

The storyline is quite intricate and interesting.  Lots of things happen.  The children are always brave, loving, clever and virtuous.  The dialogue, however, is wooden and unrealistic.  Even though that part was a bit heavy handed, the constant moving of the plot with all the adventures and twists and turns, kept me reading enthusiastically anyway.  There is lots of clever problem-solving by the children, plus there are robbers, Gipsies, soldiers, wild bulls to outsmart, wild ponies to capture, gun battles and love interests.

I do think that the Boxcar Children series was partly inspired by this book!  Remember those kids had a dog named Watch?  Well, there's a dog named Watch in this book too.  And there are four children who are awfully independent and resourceful.  Of course Children of the New Forest is a Victorian novel, not a 20th century children's book series, but it does have the claim of being the first novel written intentionally for children which I think explains its very didactic tone.

The book was extremely popular for many decades. BBC has made several mini-series out of it (here's a link to a movie, made in 1998) though I have not seen any of them.

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Easter Season Resolutions

I can't just make New Year's resolutions.  I never stick to them.  I have to always be starting again, all through the year.  So I look to the change of seasons (both natural and liturgical) as excuses to start over again.

So, in this Easter season (which lasts until Pentecost) I am trying to organize two areas of my life in particular:  our family prayer life and my postings on this blog.

Family prayer life:

For ages now, we've met at some point during the morning to read the daily scripture readings, listen to 'saint of the day' and do some copy work.  Somehow, I think around Christmas time, this habit, which has been going on for years, began to dissipate.  I think because I am dealing with my youngest two who are teens.  As kids get older their sleep schedule, their work schedule, etc become their own and I feel less inclined to dictate to them.  So I just haven't had the motivation to keep at it.  But as these few months have shown, it really was a good habit we had going there.  We need a little bit of structure to anchor the morning.  So back to that, starting Monday.

Also, we've stopped saying night prayers together most nights.  I usually was the one to remember but when I forgot, someone else in the family usually piped up to remind us.  But lately, when I've forgotten, no one else has stepped in.  Our evenings are chaotic often.  Rick sometimes works late, I've been doing school work at night, the kids are out or V is at her class and needs to be picked up at 9:30, etc, etc.  It has become hard to remember.  But it is not good to go to bed without praying.  Maybe the kids pray by themselves.  I think they sometimes do, but not habitually.  So, I am going to try to remember tonight (we remembered Thursday night but not last night, alas).  And I am going to exhort the others to step in if I forget.

This blog:

I do enjoy blogging.  I know I have a very small readership, but that's fine with me.  There's just something about typing my thoughts up and preserving them here that does me good.  But I've decided I need a pattern in my blog posts.  I'm much better at it, if I do have some kind of structure here as well.  Even if it only lasts for a certain phase of time, that's fine.  It still helps me focus.  So here's what I've come up with:

Sunday
Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks - I've been posting book reviews on Sundays for a few years now.

Monday
I think I might make this Monday Meals.  This of course will have to do with cooking, food and meal planning.  It may occasionally branch off into other areas of domesticity.

Tuesday
I like the ring of "Tuesday Topics"  This will be focused on thoughts I've got rolling around in my mind about whatever!  Could be politics, could be religion, could be something else!

Wednesday
Often in my reading I'll come across some little gem of wisdom that I'd like to record.  So I think these posts will be entitled:  Wednesday Wisdom.  It will serve as my weekly commonplace book.

Thursday
Official break day from blogging.

Friday
Photo Friday!  I am going to try to remember to take more pictures during the week and then post the best ones on Friday.

Saturday
Another break day from blogging (although I am posting this on a Saturday!)

St. Augustine on Virtue

I am hopelessly behind on my City of God reading.  I've been involved in a twitter group study led by Professor C. C. Pecknold of Catholic University of America.  It was a 15 week long program, where he assigned reading from The City of God and then every Thursday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. on twitter with the hashtag #CivDei, he led us through the reading we'd done, pulling out its significance and helping us to understand what we'd read.  I mostly kept up for the first 13 weeks.  However, I had to take my Latin final and realized I had to either study Latin or read City of God, so City of God got pushed aside. Then it turned out the next week we had to read not one, but two chapters.  So now I was 3 chapters behind.  St. Augustine is slow going for me.  For one thing the print is tiny in this edition and often my eyes are too strained (probably from being on the computer too much during the day), so this slows my reading capacity by a lot.  But also, this is deep stuff and Augustine goes into very great detail about everything, so it is not a light read to begin with.  I kept slogging on, hoping to catch up, but Book XVIII was a killer for me!  It took me 2 weeks just to get through it.  I thought it would never end!

But I finished it!  Hooray!  I tucked into Book XIX, which I had heard from eavesdropping on the twitter group was fantastic!  However, Passover and Easter loomed on the horizon and then I got sick.  Somehow, time got away from me, despite my best intentions.  The group moved on to Books XX, XXI and last night, finished with Book XXII.  And I am still limping through Book XIX.

I am determined to finish this anyway.  So now City of God is my morning meditation.  I've actually been putting the kitchen timer on for 30 minutes each morning and reading as much as I can.  Frankly, not having the weekly deadline is making me enjoy it a bit more.  So many quotable quotes!

St. Augustine has such personality!  He can be sarcastic as all get out.  At times he stick in a little humor, even occasionally of the bodily sort.   He is frank and full of common sense.  At other times he gets so bogged down in details; he loves precision and categorizing everything very closely.  And sometimes he writes so beautifully and poetically, it makes my heart sing.

Today, I was inspired by this passage.  He is talking about how the pagan philosophers were, as he puts it, 'amazingly idiotic' when they determined that one can find the ultimate good within ourselves.  They believed the wise man can find happiness in this life.  A wise man is virtuous; virtue being the art of living right.  Augustine begins to take this assertion apart by analyzing what the virtues actually do:

And what of the virtue called prudence?  Does she not employ all her vigilance in distinguishing good from evil, so that in our pursuit of the good and our endeavor to shun the evil, no mistakes may creep in?  And does not she herself thus testify that we are in the midsts of evils, or rather that evils are in us?  For she teaches us that it is an evil to consent in sinning, and a good to refuse to consent.  But although prudence teaches us not to consent to that evil, and self-control causes us not to consent, neither prudence nor self-control removes that evil from this life.  Consider the virtue of justice.  The function of justice is to assign to each his due; and hence there is established in man himself a certain just order of nature, by which the soul is subordinated to God, and the body to the soul, and thus both body and soul are subordinated to God.  Does not justice demonstrate in performing this function, that she is still laboring at her task rather than resting after reaching its completion?  For, we may be sure,  the less the soul has God in mind in all its thinking, the less it is subordinated to God, and the more the desires of the flesh* oppose the spirit the less subordinate the body is to the soul.  So long, therefore, there is in us this weakness, this disease, this lethargy, how shall we dare to claim that we are saved?  And if not saved, how shall we dare to assert that we are already blessed with that final bliss.

* Lest you think St. Augustine means 'flesh' in the sense that the body is evil, let me correct you.  He already, hundreds of pages ago, has stated that all God's creation is good and reflects His glory.  But he is using the word 'flesh' in St. Paul's sense of being of the temporal, corruptible world rather than of the spirit which leads to the eternal.

Goodbye, Milky the Cat

Poor kitty.  Becky and I said goodbye to Milky.  She didn't want to stay to see the vet give Milky the shot, but you can see the poor thing was in a very bad way.

We had to put our cat, Milky, down yesterday.  I came downstairs early Tuesday morning, to find her sprawled strangely on the family room floor.  She couldn't walk.  She'd try to scoot herself with her back legs but she couldn't lift her head or use her left foreleg and she'd plop over to one side or the other.  She'd scoot a few inches and then collapse and lie there panting.  She kept opening and shutting her mouth in a silent cry.  Something was really wrong.

I got really sick Easter afternoon.  I'd been fighting something for several days, but it hit me like a ton of bricks around noon, after we'd got home from Mass and had some breakfast.   I just couldn't function anymore.  Actually, at some point in the afternoon, I managed to get the leg of lamb on to roast and stick some potatoes in to bake.  And that was it.  I was bedridden most of Monday and Tuesday.  So I was in no condition to deal with a cat crisis.  Rick took her to the emergency vet where they said she'd probably had a stroke, plus she was ill from all these other underlying causes, we didn't even know about.  We waited a day, but then we decided yesterday it was Milky's time to go.  The vet had no hope of improvement and in fact she had actually worsened over night.  So instead of letting her have a lingering death, we said ok to putting her to sleep.

I have mixed feelings.  Milky was kind of dumped on me by a friend who was going through a marital separation and had to move.  I think she just couldn't handle the cat anymore.  She came by when I wasn't even home and said to the others:  "You've got cat already, how about one more?" and simply left her with us.  So we took Milky in.

I'm still friends with this dear woman, in spite of this.  I think she just was at the end of her rope.  But I've always resented the cat.  And also the move, because she moved a good 35-40 minutes away and J who was best-est friends with her son and could see him often for they had only lived ten minutes away, now suddenly couldn't and didn't see him nearly as often.  His heart broke and he never quite recovered.  I trace the beginnings of his painful introversion from this point in his 9 year old life.

Milky turned out to be a pain in the ass.  First of all, she freaked out Thumbelina, our resident cat, completely.  It took a solid year before they could be in the same room together.  That was fun.  Thumbelina started having accidents in the house out of anxiety.  Lovely.  Her preferred spot was the dining room carpet, which eventually wound up in the trash.  Milky, even though she would go outside, also used a litter box, so now we had one of those to deal with.  Milky also had a habit of jumping on the table and sticking her paw in any drinks that were left there.  Often doing this right after she had visited the litter box.  I'll never forget the first time I went to take a sip of water only to see some litter debris floating around at the bottom.  I still wretch at the thought of it.  Thus began the hardening of my heart.  But it really hardened the day she peed all over the clean laundry.  At the time, I had 5 children, three of whom still wet the bed.  And maybe we had had the flu so that vomit was also a factor.  I can't remember.   I just remember that I had wearily conquered an absurdly enormous amount of laundry and temporarily stored the pile on one of the family room chairs while busy doing something else.  And Milky came by, perched herself on top and peed all over it.  I wept when I was done cursing like a sailor.

After that, that was her chair to pee on.  It was a beautiful wicker chair that matched another one in our family room.  It soon was destroyed.  I threw out the cushion and relegated the naked chair to the basement.  I learned to keep stuff on the furniture to deter Milky from peeing on it.  So we left books and toys strategically placed on top of the couch and chairs, to make it too uncomfortable for Milky to relieve herself on them if we were going to be out for any period of time.

Milky had a problem with hairballs.  Now all cats do upchuck once in a while, but she made a regular habit of it.  I learned to always wear slippers, so as to avoid inadvertently stepping in cat vomit in my bare feet.  She liked to throw up the most on the back of the living room couches.  Many's the time I sat down foolishly forgetting to look first!  I developed lightning fast reflexes.  The second I heard the sound her cat gagging, I'd bolt into action, grab her up and take her outside.  Sometimes, I was quick enough.

Milky also had an extremely loud meow, like a Siamese.  She would meow and meow and meow often late at night.   Once we went away for a weekend and I thought to tell the pet sitter to just feed her on the back patio and not let her into the house.  You know, so when we came home, the house wouldn't be destroyed by her.  Milky spent the weekend under the neighbor's porch, yowling.  My neighbor was not happy with me when we returned!  "I almost called animal control!" She told me.  She resented having to listen to the yowl 24/7 all weekend.  I felt so sheepish about that.  I hate annoying the neighbors.

The good thing about Milky was she was friendly.  She loved to be petted and stroked.  She'd purr at the drop of a hat.  Visitors loved her for her friendliness.  She'd get right up on their laps.  But they didn't have to live with the fact that she never let up.   She constantly pestered you until you thought you'd go mad!  You couldn't get anything done!  No matter how many times you'd remove her from your lap (where she'd painfully knead you) she'd jump right back on.  You could do this 20 times and she'd never get the message.

But because she was friendly, Steve, Rick's brother grew very fond of her.  Whenever he'd visit, she'd become Steve's cat and he'd pet her the whole time.  So after it awhile the idea was suggested that Steve take her.  This was bandied about for a couple of years before somehow, Steve did indeed take her.  And so for a few years, she lived with Steve in his apartment over in Maryland.  She got really fat and a bit crazier.  Then Steve got ill and was in the hospital for weeks before he passed away.  Poor Milky was shut up in the bathroom and a kind neighbor came in once or twice a day to feed her.  The day Steve died, Rick brought Milky back.  By that time we had acquired my dog, Tillie, and B had gotten her own cat, Clover.  Milky was so traumatized by being shut up in a bathroom for weeks and by the move.  At first we thought to keep her in the basement bathroom because she was so crazy and Clover was absolutely terrified of her, and Tillie was overcome with curiosity and wouldn't let her alone.  But she panicked so much that her claws became bloody and I had to clean her and the bathroom up from all the blood.  We took her to the vet's.  She had to be on a diet.  But she did get better and she did settle into living with us again. She didn't have accidents on the furniture anymore.  Her preferred spot was the carpet on the landing of our staircase.  I could never get the stains out, so people would walk into the house and the first thing they'd see was this huge stain on the carpet right there.  Cleverly (I thought) I found an old scrap of the carpet, which I put there to cover up the stain.  It didn't look too bad.  For a while she didn't use it, but then she did.  It was only a temporary fix.

Off and on sometimes I'd think, both before and after Steve, why don't we just get rid of her!  But I knew they'd just euthanize her.  Who would take her? And old crazy not quite housebroken cat?  She couldn't help it, could she?  She was never quite all there to begin with.  She was only a cat reacting to the harsh vagaries of her limited intelligence and life.  So though I sometimes steamed with resentment, I never could work up enough rage to actually do anything about it.  I really am, deep in my heart, pro-life.

This morning I came down to feed the pets and went right into the mudroom to feed Milky first.  She always got first dibs because otherwise she'd frantically pester the other pets when they got fed.  I did it out of habit and then felt sad when I realized she was no longer there to feed.  Whenever I did my morning meditation, she always sat curled up next to me and purred while I said my prayers and did my reading.  She won't be there anymore.

I do miss her presence.  I am sad for her sad little life.  I am sorry I was so resentful all the time.

Poor kitty.  She lived 16 long years.  Rest in peace, Milky.

Particles of Faith - Book 14

HAPPY EASTER!

Particles of Faith; A Catholic Guide to Navigating Science by Stacy Trasancos is a worthwhile read. I am grateful to her for writing it.  Trasancos is currently a high school science teacher but formerly was a research scientist with a PhD in Nanochemistry.  After she converted to Catholicism, she also earned a Masters in Theology.  So she is well placed to discuss the tension that seems to exist between faith and science.

This book is like a memoir of sorts.  In the first part of the book, the author traces her education, her love for science and how she wound up as a nanochemist (I didn't even know what nanochemistry was!).  She then tackles the meaty issues that seem to divide Christians: creationism, intelligent design and evolution.  She patiently explains the science involved in these issues in layman's terms and why theology, which governs one realm of knowing and science, which governs another, don't contradict each other.  Both realms are important but limited.  Science is always in a process of uncovering and discovering how the natural world works.  There is much we don't know and much we may never know.  In theology, we can approach our understanding of the divine using our reason but we must also base what we believe on divine revelation, something we are too limited to fully understand.  Science shouldn't overreach and try to do theology and theology shouldn't overreach and try to do science.  Instead of competing, they complement our understanding of our world and our lives.

Trasancos was very influenced by Father Stanley Jaki, a Benedictine priest who held doctorates in both Physics and Theology.

I found this book very enlightening.  I think Catholics who struggle with this issue should read it.  In my area, many Catholics are influenced by protestant fundamentalistic creationism and often they don't even realize that they are at variance with what the Catholic position on this is.

This book also fulfills the requirement for the 'your name in the title' square in my bingo book challenge.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Passover 2017

Setting the table

View from my seat (you can see both Josh next to Viviane and Tom next to Theo.  It was hard getting everyone in one shot!)

From L to R:  Peter, Hannah, Granddad, Peggy, Dylan, Viviane

From front to back:  Susan, Will(Eli), Becky, Andrea, Theo, Sean, Rick

Virginia Bluebells!

We went for a walk along the Potomac river yesterday at a park I used to volunteer at.  I haven't been back in a couple of years.  The day was lovely; a perfect spring day and the bluebells were out in full force.

The river view

Bluebells in the woods

Close up!

A couple of my walking companions.

And to top the day off, Rick got me this gorgeous bouquet of flowers to use as a centerpiece for Passover/Easter.

Holy Thursday Birthday

Today is my 57th birthday.  Thank you, God for granting me so many years and so many blessings!  Since today is also Holy Thursday, that rather eclipses other things.  I told the kids that they just have to do up Mother's Day instead!  We did go out to dinner last Sunday to celebrate which was very pleasant.  Today I hope to:

• Finish Book XVIII of City of God.  I am waaaay behind my group study.  They are on to Book 21 or 22 by now.  I have missed the last two Thursdays and I am going to miss this one as well.  Gotta keep reading.  Book XVIII has been a real slog for me.  I hear Book XIX is the best book out of the entire work, so I am looking forward to getting to it!  So a birthday gift to myself would be to finally finish Book XVIII!
• Food shopping . . . again.  I am supposed to make dinner for a mom who is going through a terribly rough time.  Her Lent won't be ending any time soon.  I hope to get the shopping and cooking done by noon.
• Deliver the meal
• I want everyone to come for a walk with me.  The local parks are celebrating our native bluebells this Saturday.  We can't go then because of Passover (the family are all coming over to celebrate) but we could go for a walk today.    So I'd like to do that this afternoon.
• Take S to his English class at 4:00.
• Go to my parish's  Holy Thursday Mass of the Last Supper at 7:30 p.m. One of the most beautifully moving masses of the year.

Poisoning the World with Packaging

This is a great quote from an interview with conservative Roger Scruton:

You have some quite severe things to say about the kind of market economy we’ve ended up with…

People fear the anonymity of the big corporations and the confiscation of the space in which small-scale economies can grow. I feel very strongly about this. The food economy, for example, has been confiscated by the supermarkets and the mass distributors. They’re not only poisoning the world with packaging, they’re also destroying the ability of communities to survive without central distribution. This is very dangerous.

I AGREE!

Slaying the Plastic Dragon - Day 35 - Wrapping Things Up

Holy Week 2017 began yesterday.  We've got a busy week ahead of us, so I think I shall have to wrap up my Lenten series on plastic early.  Some things I've learned:

http://www.ecobags.com/

1)  I do think the idea of changing gradually, with one habit at a time per month, is a less stressful way to move into a more plastic free style of doing things.  It was hard to do this all at once, especially when we were still so busy and everyone had given up different things for Lent, which made navigating daily life difficult.  Lent is supposed to be hard, but unless Lent is a thing for you, I'd advocate changing more gradually.  All the advice is to start with bags, then water bottles, then travel mugs and then move into other areas.  That makes good sense to me.

2) Just getting into the habit of remembering to bring my own bags was hard to do.  And I have to admit that sometimes I appreciated getting paper bags from the grocery stores.  I need them to put my recycling in as well to use occasionally for other things.

3)  If you have to choose between getting milk in a carton or a jug, try to choose the carton.  It is made up of 80% paper and 20% plastic.  Of course these are only half gallons, so you if you need the gallon, you are stuck with plastic jugs unless you can afford to get milk in glass jugs or you are willing to spend more and buy two half gallons in cartons.  And that's the weird thing.  Avoiding plastic can be expensive!  It changes your buying habits.  I do think though it makes you avoid prepackaged, convenience stuff which actually cuts costs.  So maybe it all evens out in the end.  I am not focused enough to do an in depth financial study on it.  I wish someone else would, though!

https://equalexchange.coop/

4)  The way things are set up now makes it very hard to be a conscientious consumer.  For example, I tried to find Free Trade coffee in bulk and there seems to be no such animal in the stores  If you want Fair Trade, you must buy in plastic.  If you want to avoid plastic, you can't buy Fair Trade.  This is frustrating.  Also, of course, Fair Trade coffee is much more expensive.  You can order it on line but then pay for shipping and it still maybe comes in plastic.  I am still trying to figure this one out.

5)  You can't avoid plastic when it comes to medicine.  Or even things like Tums.

6)  If you hunt them out, there are a surprisingly large number of every day pantry items that can be found in non-plastic containers, but my impression is that we are moving towards more plastic packaging, not less.

http://inhabitat.com/compostable-packaging-test-whole-foods-deli-containers/

7)  Some people are really trying but the effort is uneven.  For instance, Whole Foods has lots of bulk items, but has thin plastic bags for use in their bulk aisle.  The Fresh Market has fewer bulk items but sells cloth reusable bags.    Whole Foods has plastic in all their bakery bags and coffee bags, but Fresh Market and Harris Teeter do not.  It is frustrating because I had to shop at so many different stores.  There is no one store where I can shop completely plastic free.

8)  I never knew that one can recycle some plastic wrappers.  I learned to start closely reading the packaging on many items to see just what I could or could not recycle.  The problem is though that only about 20%-30% of plastic gets DOWNCYCLED.  Plastic doesn't get recycled.  So the first step is to avoid plastic to begin with.  Though they are making many improvements now in plastic packaging, we've still got a long, long way to go.

9)  One thing I love about Whole Foods is that their cardboard to go containers are compostable.  We also got take out from Taco Bamba and their carry out clamshells are also compostable.  So, like I said, people are making an effort but it is uneven at best.

10)  Carrying around lots of glass makes me nervous.  I live in fear of dropping things.  For instance, I've taken to using vinegar as a hair rinse, but the glass bottle freaks me out in the shower, where I have wet hands and hard tile floors.  I bought a little stainless steel cup to use.  I pour the vinegar in it and then I don't have to worry about dropping the glass bottle.  This makes me wash my hair right away though because the whole bathroom stinks of vinegar and I want to rinse it away asap.

11)  I don't get how people shop by bringing lots of glass jars with them.  How do they haul this stuff into the store?  It seems so awkward.  I prefer the cloth bags.  I bought many.  I fill them up and then fill glass mason jars when I get home.  Now around here (unlike California) there are no bulk liquids to be had, so I guess bringing glass containers would be a bigger deal then.

12)  I love that I can compost things.  But I learned that I must take plastic stickers off of fruit and compostable wrappers.  This can be a pain.

13)  I still need to switch trash companies.  Mine is not very inclusive when it comes to recycling.  And my county has recently closed the nearby recycling centers!  This was due to people throwing stuff away that wasn't recyclable.  So now we have to drive all the way to the dump, which is a good 25 minutes away with no traffic.

https://www.saintjn.org/care-for-our-commone-home/

14)  I am glad my parish (following another nearby parish who started their ministry a couple years ago) started up an environmental ministry.  We definitely need to advocate for change.  As consumers we really are at the mercy of corporations bent on selling us lots of stuff.  And even though I am a free market kind of gal (I think objectively speaking, it has raised more people out of poverty than any other system) I think we need to be strong, conscientious, principled citizens.  That is the responsibility we have that corresponds with the freedom we deserve.  We must be well informed and very busy about the business of living ethically.  Most people are in a stupor (myself included) but a paradigm shift is needed right now, in this place and time.

15)  I think I benefited enormously from this Lent.  Giving up plastic in this consumer oriented world that I live in (a rich suburb of Washington DC) made me have to focus on details I never would have.  I was forced to live more intentionally.  I had to think about the consequences of my own little daily habits.  I had to sacrifice my own convenience.  This got me out of my own little self-absorbed bubble.  I felt like my soul enlarged a bit because so many things I was doing (shopping, cooking, eating, cleaning) were done with a raised consciousness.  It felt like a broadening experience.  And I also often had a feeling of contentment, of hygge, that I could care for my family, myself and the environment in a loving, mindful and creative way.  There was a deep satisfaction that went with the effort and frustration.  Pope Francis said there is such a thing as ecological virtue and I think he is right.

I am now committed to living as plastic free as possible and I aim to start advocating in my community and state for better plastic free packaging.

To all who read this, many blessings!

101 Dalmatians - Book 13

Blessed Palm Sunday!

The 101 Dalmatians is my first book for the April Children's Literature Challenge.  It also fulfills the 'prime number' square on my bingo challenge.

I'd been meaning to read the original novel by Dodie Smith for a few years now, ever since my sister said it was a great read aloud with her sons.  Somehow I never got around to it.

The story is basically the same as the Disney animated one, except they do change a few details.  Pongo's wife is named Missus.  Perdita is a rescued Dalmatian found by Mrs. Dearly to help nurse the 15 pups that Missus bore.  I always wondered about the name Perdita because it does mean lost, so the book cleared up that little mystery for me!  The other thing I learned is that Pongo was the traditional name for the Dalmatians that helped firefighters.  I didn't know that!

I found the novel charming, cute, funny and surprisingly Christian.  I forget if this detail is prominent in the animated film, but the Dalmatians make their way back home to Mr. and Mrs. Dearly and the Nannies on Christmas Eve.  At one point they stop in a church for shelter, but not knowing it is a church of course.  They just think the nativity scene on the altar is the best TV show ever (the puppies loved watching TV, if you recall) and they are delighted with the little puppy-sized dog beds (that are really kneelers).  In fact, the very last paragraph has the littlest puppy, whose name was different in the movie than the book where she is called Cadpig, and who loved TV the most, says that she really liked the TV at the church the best and somehow felt that the owner of whatever that place was must be very kind.

This would make a charming read aloud and also is written simply enough that I think it would make a great independent read for elementary school children.

I read this on my kindle but this meant I could not enjoy the wonderful illustrations in the book.  I chanced to be at a Barnes and Noble and a reissue of 101 Dalmatians was on sale there.  I thumbed through it and the illustrations really are charming.

Two thumbs up!  For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Slaying the Plastic Dragon - Day 34 - Plastic Free Easter

(I visited the art gallery yesterday.  Something I only do about once a year.  The exhibit of Florentine Renaissance Della Robbia art was exquisite!  A fine thing to see as Easter approaches.  So I am going to post photos just because the artwork was so lovely.)

Just stunning!

I've been meaning to post about preparing for Easter without plastic.  I am on an email list for my parish's newly formed Care for Our Common Home Ministry and someone sent out some suggestions for Easter.  So here are some ideas:

• We reuse our baskets every year and I have always been partial to the wicker variety, so no plastic there for us.  I think these non-plastic baskets are pretty easy to find.

The colors are gorgeous!

• Avoid those now ubiquitous plastic eggs.  I personally have never gotten into using them.  We've always dyed real eggs and hidden them for our Easter morning egg hunt.  So use real eggs!  My mother always hid them the night before and not one of us ever got any sort of food poisoning. But if you are nervous, just get up early and hide the eggs before the kids come down!
• A store near me sells jelly beans in bulk!  That's where I'm planning to get ours.  So look for jelly beans in bulk!

John the Baptist

• I plan on putting a foil wrapped chocolate bunny in each basket.  Not sure of the plastic content here, but at least it is a small amount of packaging as opposed to other chocolate Easter candy.
• Each basket will also get a small, pretty notebook (my kids are older, so they'll appreciate this)
• For the little toddler in the house, I got him a little board book, a little cloth bag of wooden blocks and a little cardboard tube of crayons.  Everything looks fairly plastic free, methinks.

The Visitation

• I probably am going to put more trinkets in the baskets, but I haven't come up what else, yet.  I had planned to order stuff on line from the plastic free place but I fear I've waited too long on that.

• As for the dye for the eggs, I wish I was the type of person who made dye  from beets or red cabbage, etc.  Maybe next year!  I bought a dyeing kit from Whole Foods but honestly, probably the regular Paas kits have just as much plastic in them.

• Pysanky eggs - I also aspire to do these one day!  I think if you concentrate on these kinds of activities, you can forgo the abominable plastic wrapped marshmallow peeps and the other creeping, consumerist tchotchkes that are creeping into our Easter celebration.

• Replacing the plastic grass for the Easter baskets might take some ingenuity.  I always hated that stuff anyway.  It gets everywhere and clogs up the vacuum!  The email I received suggested shredded paper, but I don't have a shredder and if you buy already shredded paper, it always comes in plastic wrappers!  But I was thinking of getting green yarn and using that.  Or even pretty scarves or any kind of floral cloth (wash clothes, tea towels, dish towels).  I could use the cloth later for other things and the eggs might look pretty nestled in the basket.  I also got
•  the idea of giving each person a t-shirt and having the t-shirt serve as the 'grass' in the basket.  Stilling working on this one.

Other plastic free things to do for Easter:

• Go to Easter vigil - my absolute favorite Mass of the year!
• Go for a family walk -either through the neighborhood or maybe at a park somewhere.
• listen to Handel's Messiah (people always think this is a Christmas piece but it works for Easter too!)
• Watch the movie Ben Hur - this is annual thing for me.  I haven't seen the newer version.  I'll stick with Charlton Heston (though this is actually the only movie of his I like!)
• For dinner, we'll have our annual leg of lamb or maybe just lamb chops.  It might be easier to get the latter not wrapped in plastic, but just over the counter at the butcher section of the grocery store.  Along with that will be scalloped potatoes, asparagus, a tossed green salad, maybe some kind of dessert.  

Slaying the Plastic Dragon - Day 33 - I Got Nothing

I've got nothing to post today.  I just dropped B off at her friend's high school to get on a bus for New York.  She will be having a choreography workshop this evening with someone from the original Hamilton cast.  She's excited!  I think she is supposed to see 4 different Broadway musicals while up there.  She comes home late Sunday night.

I need to get ready to take S, two other high school guys, V and little D into Washington D.C. today.  S and his government classmates are getting a tour of the capitol.  The rest of us are going to hang out somewhere.  Unfortunately, the weather is a tad cool and a little rainy (nothing like yesterday's storms and tornado warnings though!).

So today, I will just remember to bring my handy dandy eating utensil kit,* my water bottle and my travel mug.  And that's about all I've got for today!

*Darn!  Out of stock!  Check back later.  I just bought mine at the beginning of Lent.  Maybe I took the last one!  Sorry!

Slaying the Plastic Dragon - Day 32 - The Zero Waste Chef

The benefit of giving up plastic for Lent is that even though it is hard and my whole family is really annoyed with me for harping on it all the time (hey, it's their Lent too!) it has really made me focus on simple things like cleaning dishes, shopping carefully, looking at packaging, looking at costs, looking at where food comes from and which companies have best practices when it comes to pollution.  It has given me a nesting feeling about being home, and cooking for my family.  Currently, there's a bestselling book out there about hygge, and I think I get a sort of hygge feeling. (I haven't read the book though!)  But that sort of comfort feeling is kind of an unexpected blessing from trying to avoid plastic.  Giving up plastic has made me feel more intentional and at the same time made me step back and really think about the consequences of my everyday choices.

In that spirit, I discovered this inspiring blog, The Zero Waste Chef.  I aspire to cook and organize my kitchen like this.  I am lightyears away but this blog will help me there!

Slaying the Plastic Dragon - Day 31 - Joshua's Birthday Dinner

I made dinner for my son's birthday last night.  He turned 22.   He had to work all day, but I made him a birthday dinner.  Since he loves anything with tomato sauce but he'd given up meat for Lent, I made tomatoes with pine nuts over bow tie pasta.

The sauce turned out well (I was trying to recreate a recipe from a long time ago) but it wasn't enough.  I should have bought 2 jars of tomatoes to feed six people.

I got the pasta at Mom's organic.  I think it was $1.99 a lb.  The olive oil is a new brand to me.  I picked it up somewhere, not sure where.  I usually buy the medium priced olive oils.  The parmesan cheese in a jar (front left) is one I bought weeks ago at Harris Teeter.  I think it was something like $4.99 but it has lasted us a while now.  I am surprised at how much grated parmesan cheese is in that jar!  The little bottle of pignoli or pine nuts, I got from the international market section of Bed, Bath and Beyond, also a few weeks ago, and the jar of tomatoes I picked up at Whole Foods.  It was the only jar of chopped tomatoes.  The other brands were canned or in those plastic vacuum boxes.

This bread was the biggest hit!  DELICIOUS!

I bought this lovely parmesan bread at a local bakery.  The boy behind the counter thinks I'm a little looney because I bring in my own bag.  He is very industrious in making sure all the loaves are bagged asap after they come in to him from the original bakery (they don't really bake them at this store but in another town about 20 minutes away.)  You have to make sure you get there pretty soon after it opens, in order to get bread that hasn't already been bagged!

I made a green salad to go with the pasta and bread.  I found that nice netted bag when cleaning out one of my kitchen drawers!  It is perfect for greens.  I have a little cotton bag I used for the bulk mushrooms.  The carrots, green onions and green pepper all were loose in the produce section.

This cake looks a little sad.  We did add some candles for Josh to blow out!

And for dessert we had lemon cake.  Since Josh doesn't care for icing, I just dusted it with powdered sugar.

So the plastic that went into this meal:

-The jar lids probably have plastic, but the glass itself is pretty much 100% recyclable.  I think some places recycle the lids for the metal content.  I can't tell if my recycling company does.  It looks like they probably do because they don't explicitly forbid them.  They just say they recycle glass jars.  No mention of lids.

-the tomato jar had a plastic seal around the top
- the inside plastic bag for the cake mix
- the inside plastic bag for the powdered sugar
- salad dressing included:  olive oil, balsamic red wine vinegar, chopped garlic from a jar, dijon mustard, salt and pepper.  All these bottles/jars probably came with little plastic seals around the top.

***************************
Here's an article about a neat idea!  Someone has invented a small reactor that can fit on ships that uses plastic as fuel!  I am confused about how much the reactor pollutes as it burns the plastic?  I guess I need to read the article again more closely! But what struck me is all the garbage floating in the waters in the photos.  So disgusting!  Here in our country we do have the infrastructure to somewhat maintain some level of cleanliness but since I've become more aware of plastic pollution, I have noticed more and more litter.  Our trash could easily get out of control.

Slaying the Plastic Dragon - Day 30 - No More Disposable Tablecloths

I bought a tablecloth!  It was only $6.99 at a nearby thrift shop and it is definitely long enough.  It might be partly polyester, but it isn't one of those new microfiber ones that don't absorb liquids.    As wonderfully stain resistant as those may be, they are made with plastic.

The important thing for me was finding a tablecloth big enough.  The table is 108 inches long with all the leaves in.  Most long table cloths are 108 inches, which means they just barely cover the top of my table with no 'drop' which I've learned is the technical word for the amount of cloth that hangs down on the sides of the table.   It is hard to find a tablecloth for a table that long and when you do it is expensive.  For years I've been buying disposable 'tablecloths,' that is, paper with plastic coating.  We usually use our dining room for homeschooling (you can see I've tucked the books that were on the table on the chairs in the photo).  But for certain holidays we get all formal and eat here:  Rosh Hashanah, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's and now Passover and Easter are coming up.

I really needed a tablecloth!

It is a kind of neutral pale green, which I think works with the room.

I think the lacy embossed pattern is lovely.

You can see Dylan's cardboard castle he got from Christmas.  It lives in the living room.

Of course, the beauty of disposable tablecloths is if someone knocks over a glass of red wine, you can just chuck it in the trash and be done with it.  This tablecloth will have to be stain treated and washed.  I do think it will fit in my washer.  I mean if king size sheets fit, this surely will.  But even if the stain doesn't come out . . . . well. I only spent $6.99!  Though then I'll have the same problem of needing a tablecloth!


***************************************
I just thought Monday's dinner looked pretty.

Plastic free dinner!  Sweet potato hash and corn muffins