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!)