Sweet Petunia

Photo for the day, for my Project 365, wherein I post a photo a day for a year.

It’s a petunia out in the garden, taken as I was moving plants around for the cold weather blowing in.

Similar to the photo posted yesterday, it was taken the day before I actually posted it on my photo-a-day-photo-shoot-extravanganza.

But I’m guessing that’s OK, and that the project 365 police aren’t going to come after me for being a day behind on this. Because … I’m not really a day behind. I’m early, and have been planning ahead.

Tomorrow on the other hand, will find that I’ve taken zero pictures today, and will have it’s own photo of the day at which point we’ll be all caught up, and everybody can breath a sigh of relief and stop stressing out over this entire issue. (Not that anyone was of course.)

“Around here we’re always on the go. We don’t need caffeine bringing us down!” Name that commercial?

Splash, out.

This morning I took to looking around the internet for images of masculine saints.

It kind of goes with the territory in Priesthood (I’d imagine,) as many images of male saints can kind of stylized, or even efete.

That led to some interesting blogs.

Prophetic Vision of Saint John of Kronstadt

Di Meliora, which has some beautiful pictures up.

And it led to a slew of women’s rights blogs, condemning the role of religion in putting women down, denying women their rights, and generally being ignorant. A prominent theme there is the speech given by Jimmy Carter on Religion as an Agent of Women’s Oppression. ::rolling eyes::

But I did find a few, before prayer beckoned me away.

For instance this picture of St. John of Kronstadt. A masculine image from another time, perhaps a more simple time, if the turn of the 18th-19th century could be called that.

For the record, I don’t consider that the Catholic Faith oppresses women. I often hear from women that they want to be Priests, but I have the feeling that if they were Priests, they’d quickly realize the Grass is Greener syndrome is, as usual, not all it’s cracked up to be.

Anyway, all of this also showed up the below photo of Mads Mikkelson, from the film Valhalla Rising. As far as I know he’s not a saint, and he’s not portraying one on film. But he is a current image of masculinity.

And all of this was spurred in the first place because I’m hitting the gym and the diet again, and wanted fit and holy role models for inspiration. (It’s not spurred in the least by the fact that I’m a complete internet nerd. Not in the least!)

Masculine imagery, like feminine imagery, changes through time in societies. Perhaps you need to hit the gym or do some diet correction today too?

Splash, out.

My good friend Gary Sinise (right! He has no clue who I am, we’ve never met and more than likely never will, God bless him,) tweeted this link, to this video.

It’s awesome.

Great site here with scans from old books.

The page shown here is filled with art, and the site itself has a number of other treasures, worth a leafing through.

It’s great if you happen to need a bit of art to add to a post, or if you’re designing a site and need some high quality free graphics. (Who wouldn’t want that?)

Be sure to check it out and bookmark it; it’s called From Old Books.

On a separate note…

Years ago I learned CSS by reading through a book written by Molly Holzschlag. I learned everything I needed to know, and immediately decided to learn php.

I never did, but recently the bug resurfaced, and I cam across the video series Diving into PHP.

What, this should take a few days? We’ll see how this goes….

Latin text

O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
jacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera
meruerunt portare
Dominum Christum.
Alleluia.

English translation

O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
Christ the Lord.
Alleluia!

St. Ambrose, a Father of the Church, is certainly an interesting character to study. Take for instance this bio-blurb from the Catholic Encyclopedia over at New Advent.

Through the door of his chamber, wide open the livelong day, and crossed unannounced by all, of whatever estate, who had any sort of business with him, we catch a clear glimpse of his daily life. In the promiscuous throng of his visitors, the high official who seeks his advice upon some weighty affair of state is elbowed by some anxious questioner who wishes to have his doubts removed, or some repentant sinner who comes to make a secret confession of his offenses, certain that the Saint “would reveal his sins to none but God alone” (Paulinus, Vita, xxxix). He ate but sparingly, dining only on Saturdays and Sundays and festivals of the more celebrated martyrs. His long nocturnal vigils were spent in prayer, in attending to his vast correspondence, and in penning down the thoughts that had occurred to him during the day in his oft-interrupted readings. His indefatigable industry and methodical habits explain how so busy a man found time to compose so many valuable books. Every day, he tells us, he offered up the Holy Sacrifice for his people (pro quibus ego quotidie instauro sacrificium). Every Sunday his eloquent discourses drew immense crowds to the Basilica. One favorite topic of his was the excellence of virginity, and so successful was he in persuading maidens to adopt the religious profession that many a mother refused to permit her daughters to listen to his words. The saint was forced to refute the charge that he was depopulating the empire, by quaintly appealing to the young men as to whether any of them experienced any difficulty in finding wives. He contends, and the experience of ages sustains his contention (De Virg., vii) that the population increases in direct proportion to the esteem in which virginity is held. His sermons, as was to be expected, were intensely practical, replete with pithy rules of conduct which have remained as household words among Christians. In his method of biblical interpretation all the personages of Holy Writ, from Adam down, stand out before the people as living beings, bearing each his distinct message from God for the instruction of the present generation. He did not write his sermons, but spoke them from the abundance of his heart; and from notes taken during their delivery he compiled almost all the treatises of his that are extant.

St. Ambrose, pray for us that we may as we grow closer to Jesus Christ, the Lord of all ages.

Well the long awaited film on Margaret Thatcher’s life is coming due January 6.

Baroness Thatcher’s friends are distancing themselves, saying it is a ‘left wing fantasy’.

Concessions exist though, that it may help to demonstrate that she was the ‘Nostradamus of her day’, regarding the economic future of Europe.

Meryl Streep’s performance is garnering the usual accolades. Here’s a good review over at the Telegraph: “This is a brave stab at a contemporary life, and even with its flaws it does Margaret Thatcher a certain grudging justice. Awards should be coming Streep’s way; yet her brilliance rather overshadows the film itself.”

It all equals “I can’t wait.” I love good day [read few hours] at the movies.

It never occurred to me until the other day, after I had taken this picture, that orangutans earned their name by the color of their fur. So, I looked it up over at dictionary dot comand found out that ‘orangutan’ is actually from pidgen or ‘bazaar Malay’ and means ‘forest man’. So there.

And with the cooler weather, all the animals were in great moods, so it seemed.

That was over at the zoo the other day. I had bought a membership right after I bought my camera and then never got around to going. So I headed on out and diligently learned a bit more about photography. (I played around with fill flashes. Speaking of which, National Geographic has a Guide to Flash Photography which has some beautiful photos in it.)

Beautiful Sunday today; I’m working on getting that Homily up here. It wasn’t a priority today (to post it here, i.e.; it was a huge priority yesterday in the making…), but I’m working on it! Wisdom and shalom.

Wikipedia has a lovely article on Martin of Tours. It’s very well documented.

This was especially informative:

While Martin was still a soldier in the Roman army and deployed in Gaul (modern day France), he experienced the vision that became the most-repeated story about his life.

One day as he was approaching the gates of the city of Amiens he met a scantily clad beggar. He impulsively cut his own military cloak in half and shared it with the beggar.

That night, Martin dreamed of Jesus wearing the half-cloak he had given away. He heard Jesus say to the angels: “Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptized; he has clad me.” (Sulpicius, ch 2). …

Small temporary churches were built for the relic [of the cloak] and people began to refer to them by the word for little cloak “capella” that these churches housed. Eventually small churches lost their association with the cloak and all small churches began to be referred to as Chapels[3] .

Interesting! It’s documented from Daimaid MacCulloch’s A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. I completely did not know that.

Use some common sense with Wikipedia

More often than not the articles are accurate because people read them and if they are wrong, log in and correct them with proper notation. It’s sort of like a self correcting, group thesis.

But sometimes you see information before it’s corrected and if you have no reference points you could easily start to bandy about false information. I can easily understand why it’s not a valued source for academic research. (It could easily be a great source for helping to gather sources though.)

Take for instance their article on Katrina which is wrong.

The Wikipedia entry states, in the section on Federal Preparation: “On the morning of Friday, August 26, at 10 am CDT (1500 UTC), Katrina had strengthened to a Category 3 storm in the Gulf of Mexico. Later that afternoon, the NHC realized that Katrina had yet to make the turn toward the Florida Panhandle and ended up revising the predicted track of the storm from the panhandle to the Mississippi coast.”

Bzzzzzttttt!!

Katrina was nowhere near being a Category 3 Hurricane on the morning of Friday the 26th of August, 2005. Trust me, I know this.

If you’d like to do some looking up, you can start with these links:

NOAA’s Katrina Section

National Hurricane Center’s Katrina Warnings Archive.

Or the NHC’s graphics page, which clearly shows that at 5pm EDT on Friday August 26, 2005 Katrina was just off the coast of Florida and had winds of 100mph, which is a Category 2 Storm.

You can look almost anywhere and find that the article on Wikipedia is clearly wrong in stating that Katrina was a strong Category 3 storm in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday Morning.

The fact is, it was nothing of the sort. On that fateful Friday, forecasters were predicting the storm would swing up into the Florida panhandle. Later Friday evening the news came out worse.

People went to bed clueless, and most people learned about it on Saturday morning.

Which is why a million people weren’t able to pack up and head onto the road until Saturday morning at the earliest if they were lucky, with the storm starting to blow in with strong winds by Sunday evening. It’s also why so many people were not able to take many things with them. It was an incredibly rushed, get up and go type of situation, filled with foreboding.

Anyway

I corrected the Wikipedia article, and got a note back that I was wrong and contradicted the sources. (Duh…)

So I corrected it again, and again, responding in kind each time, yet it remains blissfully ignorant and wrong.

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

It’s just wrong. And it’s wrong that it’s wrong.

I have spoken, and I rest my case. But those are the facts and they are indisputable.

St. Martin of Tours, pray for us.