I now understand the passion with which people have been flocking to tea parties around the nation. Thank heavens for Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine where even the advertisements are educational!
Well you might know or you might not but StarShipSofa's Aural Delights is 100 shows old in a couple of weeks and to celebrate StarShipSofa is doing something quite unique - she is putting out her very own book: StarShipSofa Stories Volume 1. This will be a PoD dead-tree type and there will also be a free PDF download. There will be a new website and art commissioned by Skeet. It's all a jolly time over here at StarShipSofa HQ but I'd love some help in promoting this adventure.
I'm hoping you can post info on your blogs or pass on any news that might help StarShipSofa get her shinny new book out and about. All authors have kindly donated their stories to the Sofa in the hope it will raise funds to keep StarShipSofa going for many years to come.
StarShipSofa Stories Volume 1
1. "Into The Blank Where Life Is Hurled" by Ken Scholes
2. "London Bone" by Michael Moorcock
3. "The Second Coming Of Jasmine Fitzgerald" by Peter Watts
4. "Lest Young and The Jupiter's Moons' Blues" by Gord Sellar
5. "Vampire Kiss" by Gene Wolfe
6. "Vinegar Peace (or The Wrong-Way Used-Adult Orphanage)" by Michael Bishop
7. "Godzilla's 12 Step Program" by Joe R Lansdale
8. "Jesus Christ, Reanimator" by Ken MacLeod
9. "The Sledge-Maker's Daughter" by Alastair Reynolds
10. "Mars: A Travelers Guide" by Ruth Nestvold
11. "The Empire of Ice Cream" by Jeffrey Ford
12. "The Ant King: A California Fairytale" by Benjamin Rosebaum
13. "In The Olden Days" by Spider Robinson
14. "Tideline" by Elizabeth Bear
Looking over my previous posts about September 11, which seem to grow like mushrooms as I add links, I see that last year I said:I turn on the TV and watch as the plane slowly flies into the Tower.
Hail Mary, full of grace
My daughter wanders downstairs, shoes in hand,
Turns to look at what has me transfixed on a weekday morning.
The Lord is with thee.
"Where is that, Mommy?" she asks.
Blessed are you among women
"New York," I answer. She nods. The name is familiar,
Like Venus,
Like Mars
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
"Do we know anyone there?" Her eyes are blue and full of innocent concern.
Jesus.
"No," I answer, thinking of friends, family, business associates, safe here.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
She has seen the green glass tower where I work,
Tucked amongst taller builders.
Pray for us sinners
But a skyscraper in one city looks much like one in the next.
Now
"Where's the tallest building in the United States?"
And at the hour of our death.
"Chicago."
Amen.
My daughter looks relieved.
I see that the year before last, I got an email last week mentioning that a deadline was September 11. Maybe it's silly but seeing that date attached to a deadline shocked me. No reason not to have it be a deadline but it seemed ... somehow ... irreverent to have the usual business of the day on that date.Today I realized there was something more shocking. In the press of my unusually busy life lately, I completely forgot September 11 myself. I don't think that I had reason to look at a calendar beyond any particular day but in the past I would have seen the 8th, the 9th, the 10th as they came and have been bracing myself mentally for that fateful 11th memorial date. Not this year. I was completely startled when the front page of the newspaper reminded me of the larger meaning behind this date.
The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 will effectively phase out incandescent light bulbs by 2012-2014 in favor of compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs. Other countries around the world have passed similar legislation to ban most incandescents.As someone whose husband has long been enamored with the concept of fluorescent lighting for saving money and hopeful that the industry's promises of "now we're just like regular lightbulbs" are true ... I can tell ya, it just ain't so. He has finally managed to find a coloring that I can stand but those fluorescent lights just don't give off the good light that a regular light bulb does. Period.
Will some energy be saved? Probably. The problem is this benefit will be more than offset by rampant dissatisfaction with lighting. We are not talking about giving up a small luxury for the greater good. We are talking about compromising light. Light is fundamental. And light is obviously for people, not buildings. The primary objective in the design of any space is to make it comfortable and habitable. This is most critical in homes, where this law will impact our lives the most. And yet while energy conservation, a worthy cause, has strong advocacy in public policy, good lighting has very little.
But his most heartfelt weekend activity took place elsewhere, out of sight of Washington politicos and devoid of any potential for gain or notoriety. It came under a brilliant Saturday-morning sun, when the former Republican presidential candidate, now a bit more frail than most Americans recall him, stepped out of a car and strode to the National World War II Memorial to greet, one by one, 108 fellow World War II veterans who had been flown to Washington from South Carolina to see the monument built in their honor.I was so pleased to see this story on page two of the WSJ this morning. I loved reading about Dole and the veterans having that time together.
To these veterans, 29 of them in wheelchairs and several toting oxygen tanks, Mr. Dole was like a rock star. They gathered around to shake hands, to have their pictures taken with him, to crack a joke about their ages. ...
This is a scene that Mr. Dole quietly repeats week after week. A grass-roots organization, the Honor Flight Network, has sprung up with the sole purpose of flying World War II veterans to Washington so they have a chance, in the autumn of their lives, to see the memorial built to mark The Good War in which they fought.
1688 The liturgy of the Word during funerals demands very careful preparation because the assembly present for the funeral may include some faithful who rarely attend the liturgy, and friends of the deceased who are not Christians. The homily in particular must "avoid the literary genre of funeral eulogy" and illumine the mystery of Christian death in the light of the risen Christ.Notice the specific mention of avoiding a eulogy? That's where Cardinal O'Malley got it wrong. He allowed the funeral to be derailed from the lines that the Catechism outlines by allowing eulogies. And we see where that got him and everyone.
1689 The Eucharistic Sacrifice. When the celebration takes place in church the Eucharist is the heart of the Paschal reality of Christian death. In the Eucharist, the Church expresses her efficacious communion with the departed: offering to the Father in the Holy Spirit the sacrifice of the death and resurrection of Christ, she asks to purify his child of his sins and their consequences, and to admit him to the Paschal fullness of the table of the Kingdom. It is by the Eucharist thus celebrated that the community of the faithful, especially the family of the deceased, learn to live in communion with the one who "has fallen asleep in the Lord," by communicating in the Body of Christ of which he is a living member and, then, by praying for him and with him.The time for eulogies and stories about the deceased is the wake and afterward with the "funeral baked meats." These were the lines along which my father-in-law's funeral proceeded. It allowed for plenty of time to appreciate him as family and friends, but also to have at the center that forced concentration on much larger issues of life and death. I had never been to a Catholic funeral before and was truly amazed at the wisdom of the entire traditional process ... the viewing of the body (he's really not here, that truly is just his body), the rosary, the life-affirming and joyful wake with stories and jokes, the solid center of the mass, the meal afterward with a turning toward everyday life mingled with sadness and stories. So perfect. It was, in a very real sense, my first look as an insider at the truth contained in tradition and Tradition.
A timely advertisement from Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine. Click the ad to enlarge.
It is the love of God that makes the sacrament of confession possible. More than anything else, that is what I want you to remember out of this book: that God loves us already and is on our side in the struggle to reflect that love, to accept it, to pass it on to others. The heart of the Christian gospel is the message that God was born as one of us and that his name shall be called "Emmanuel", which means "God is with us."
The church engages the world in two ways: through the life of each individual believer and through the common action of believers working together. Every Christian life, and every choice in every Christian life, matters. There's no special headquarters staff that handles the action side of the Gospel. That task belongs to all of us. Baptism, for Catholics, does not simply wash away sin. It also incorporates the baptized person into a new life; and part of that new life is a mandate to act; to be God's agent in the world. Laypeople, clergy, and religious all have different tasks within the community of faith. Everybody, however, shares the basic mission: bringing Jesus Christ to the world, and the world to Jesus Christ.I am privileged to see this sort of Catholic witness every six months, although this is at a time when my Beyond Cana retreat team friends are stepping out of their daily lives. They willingly and gladly step up and make heroic sacrifices to serve married couples in our parish. Most have little ones and must arrange babysitting for an entire weekend. When they return home, they are plunged right back into the thick of daily life with no time for rest. Couples with babies as young as 1 month old have sacrificed mightily in order to give a talk or serve even a greater role ... not because they lightly offered, but because there was no one else to step in, because the need was great and they could help.
Laypeople have the special task of evangelizing the secular world. And this makes sense. Most Catholics--the vast majority--are laypeople. They have jobs, friends, and families. They can witness Jesus Christ on a daily basis, silently or out loud, directly or indirectly by their words and actions. If we look for opportunities to share our faith with others, God always provides them. This is why self-described Catholics who live so anonymously that no one knows about their faith, Catholics who fail to prove by their actions what they claim to believe with their tongue, aren't really living as "Catholics" at all.
It's also why asking Catholics to keep their faith out of public affairs amounts to telling them to be barren; to behave as if they were neutered. Nothing could be more alien to the meaning of baptism. The Christian idea of witness, which comes from the Greek word martyr, isn't limited to a bloody death in the arena for the faith. All Christians have the command to be a martyr in the public arena-to live a life of conscious witness wherever God places them, no matter how insignificant it seems and whether or not they ever see the results.
And we should perhaps consider what our acceptance of a preferred, easier-to-take narrative concerning a dreadful summer night in Massachusetts has wrought forty years on; we are now a society comfortable with relativistic “truthiness.” Something may be true, simply because one wishes it to be.A good piece (as all hers are) and one that should be read by anyone who wonders why politicians do what they do ... and who should also consider our culpability. That includes everyone, I think, including Tom and me.
How culpable are we for that? How much damage did we do to Kennedy, and to ourselves, by indulging and enabling his reckless behavior, because we loved his familial myth?
At the height of the Great Depression, the showman of a renowned circus leads his troupe through the devastated American landscape, lifting the spirits of audiences along the way. During their travels they discover a man without limbs at a carnival sideshow, but after an intriguing encounter with the showman he becomes driven to hope against everything he has ever believed. Starring Eduardo Verástegui (Bella), Doug Jones (Pan's Labyrinth, Fantastic Four) and featuring the debut performance of Nick Vujicic.About 20 minutes long and well worth the time.
Jean-Claude Van Damme is an aging action star going through a bitter divorce and custody battle. He needs money to pay his lawyers, and new roles are not exactly rolling in by the pile. With few doors left open in Hollywood, Van Damme opts to return to Brussels, his roots, in order to clear his head and maybe find a renewed career in the international market. Upon arriving in Brussels Van Damme travels to the local post-office to pick up the funds he needs to pay his lawyer, only to stumble into a robbery attempt that quickly turns into a hostage situation. Through a combination of bad luck and public (mis)perception, Van Damme gets fingered for the crime-in-progress; his face gets splashed all over the news, and even while cops surround the post-office, a larger crowd of fans begins to gather outside the post office in support of their hometown legend. (Screen Rant)Here's what I didn't know about the movie. We expected it to be played much more lightly, a la My Name is Bruce (haven't seen it, only read about it) where actor Bruce Campbell is called upon for help by a town who mistakenly thinks his movie powers apply to real life also. That movie was played very lightly as I understood it.
... Doctors had told the parents that baby Rachel only had only minutes to live because her heart was beating once every ten seconds and she was not breathing.There is more and a current photo of mother and baby. Once again, doctors' don't always know everything and I'm sure they were thrilled to be proven wrong.
Isbister remembers:
I didn’t want her to die being cold. So I lifted her out of her blanket and put her against my skin to warm her up. Her feet were so cold.
It was the only cuddle I was going to have with her, so I wanted to remember the moment.” Then something remarkable happened. The warmth of her mother’s skin kick started Rachael’s heart into beating properly, which allowed her to take little breaths of her own.
We couldn’t believe it – and neither could the doctors. She let out a tiny cry.
The doctors came in and said there was still no hope – but I wasn’t letting go of her. We had her blessed by the hospital chaplain, and waited for her to slip away. But she still hung on.
And then amazingly the pink color began to return to her cheeks. She literally was turning from gray to pink before our eyes, and she began to warm up too.
The sad part is that when the baby was born, doctors took one look at her and said ‘no’. ...
Fleeing a failed engagement and mother who makes life decisions based on a psychic’s predictions, skeptic Victoria Scott joins a weather team on a Scandinavian island. Harassed by insomnia and her unpredictable boss, she writes off her dreams of a breath-sucking hag and forest creature made of twigs as nightmares. Eventually, however, she discovers that these creatures are real and possibly the least of those she may encounter.The beginning of my review of Giants of the Frost. Read it all at SFFaudio.
The island is actually Midgard, a gate between our world and that of the old Nordic god, Asgard. The book alternately tells Victoria’s story and that of Vidar, a son of Odin, who has been waiting a thousand years for Victoria to be born. In Vidar’s world we meet, among others, his bondmaid Aud, who tells much of the story, and his cousin Loki, trickster god of the Norse pantheon.
Icon SourceMonica was married to a pagan official by the name of Patricius. He was a very generous man, but violent tempered and dissolute, although tradition tells us he never laid a hand on her. She also had her mother-in-law living with her and this woman is described as being very cantankerous. Monica suffered much insult and ridicule because of her family, but her patience, gentleness, compassion and love won out in the end and both her husband and mother-in-law were converted.A brief, but good history of her may be read here.
... The ways in which I would normally envision Christ are not guy-next-door, my-buddy-the-savior kind of images. Christ the King, enthroned in eternal splendor into union with whom all Christians wish to enter for life everlasting. Christ Crucified, pouring out his blood for the sins of the whole world. Christ Risen, triumphing over the reign of death which had doomed humanity since the Fall. Christ in the Eucharist, kneeling before the glittering monstrance in which the Body of Christ forms the center of a sunburst of golden rays, with the crucifix above and the tabernacle behind.I could relate to this. One of my favorite meditations, and I know I am not alone in this, is Psalm 139.
O LORD, you have probed me, you know me:I think about this and then I reflect upon all life and creation coming to be through Jesus' creative power.
you know when I sit and stand; you understand my thoughts from afar.
My travels and my rest you mark; with all my ways you are familiar.
Even before a word is on my tongue, LORD, you know it all.
Behind and before you encircle me and rest your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is beyond me, far too lofty for me to reach.
Where can I hide from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee?
If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in Sheol, you are there too.
If I fly with the wings of dawn and alight beyond the sea,
Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand hold me fast.
If I say, "Surely darkness shall hide me, and night shall be my light" --
Darkness is not dark for you, and night shines as the day. Darkness and light are but one. ...
I was plagued by this question after reading Diana's defense of Jesus as her best friend. I did not want to bother with it, truth to tell, but it recurred so often that I finally stopped what I was doing and just sat there considering how I would define my relationship with Jesus. I am truly indebted to Diana for her passion as otherwise it wouldn't have occurred to me to so something as simple as just sit and think about how I feel about Jesus. It's a good thing to do. I highly recommend it.Prayer of Saint Augustine
O Jesus Christ, you are my Father, my merciful God, my great King, my good Shepherd, my only Master, my best helper, my beloved friend of overwhelming beauty, my living Bread, my eternal priest. You are my guide to my heavenly home, my one true light, my holy joy, my true way, my shining wisdom, my unfeigned simplicity, the peace and harmony of my soul, my perfect safeguard, my bounteous inheritance, my everlasting salvation.
My loving Lord, Jesus Christ, why have I ever loved or desired anything else in my life but you, my God? Where was I when I was not in communion with you? From now on, I direct all my desires to be inspired by you and centred on you. I direct them to press forward for they have tarried long enough, to hasten towards their goal, to seek the one they yearn for.
O Jesus, let him who does not love you be accursed, and filled with bitterness. O gentle Jesus, let every worthy feeling of mine show you love, take delight in you and admire you. O God of my heart and my inheritance, Christ Jesus, may my heart mellow before the influence of your spirit and may you live in me. May the flame of your love burn in my soul. May it burn incessantly on the altar of my heart. May it glow in my innermost being. May it spread its heat into the hidden recesses of my soul and on the day of my consummation may I appear before you consumed in your love. Amen.
... my one true light, my holy joy, my true way, my shining wisdom, my unfeigned simplicity, the peace and harmony of my soul, my perfect safeguard ...There is no word except the name of Jesus that means these for me. As we are human and must settle for words, however inadequate, I will settle as did St. Peter, St. Paul, and so many other greater souls before me ... my Lord and my God. My only Master.
A couple years back a friend of mine (a filmmaker and used bookstore owner) was telling me about one of the scripts he was working on. He said something to the effect of “every story must have conflict.” That’s probably not a new concept, not original to him, but it was new to me – at least in those words. Now I love such sweeping declarations – they give my dialectical brain something to hack away at. It seems a fairly straightforward a concept – and on the face of it seems likely – but, that always gets me thinking: If it sounds so obvious it is probably at least partially false. So I thought about it for maybe thirty seconds and then pointed out that ‘pornographic films need not have conflict – but they can still have a story.’ Illustrating I said “Pizza delivery guy comes to the door – half naked woman answers – sex follows.” It has a beginning, a middle and a money shot. My friend and I both laughed. But, I’ve been thinking about this meme ever since. Now, with Way Station I think I have a more serious defeater to my friend’s all encompassing rule about storytelling. There is very little conflict in Way Station. That is actually a pretty common thing for author Clifford D. Simak. His stories are highly pastoral, full of backstories being revealed, mysterious farmers and friendly aliens. Conflict may be mentioned, as having happened long ago (or in some distant future) – but shots are rarely fired in anger. I’m thinking back on all of the Simak I’ve read, and in it all I can’t recall much conflict at all. And yet, I love his stories.Intrigued, I couldn't remember if I had ever read Way Station so I requested it from the library. It really is a wonderful story, easy to read, and thought provoking in its own pastoral way.
Top 25 Signs You’re Part of the 00’s
(that’s pronounced “aughts”)
- You just tried to enter your password on the microwave.
- You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three.
- You call your son’s beeper to let him know it’s time to eat. He emails you back from his bedroom, “What’s for dinner?”
- Your daughter sells Girl Scout Cookies via her web site.
- You chat several times a day with a stranger from South Africa, but you haven’t spoken with your next door neighbor yet this year.
- You check the ingredients on a can of chicken noodle soup to see if it contains Echinacea.
- You check your blow-dryer to see if it’s Y2K compliant.
- Your grandmother clogs up your e-mail inbox asking you to send her a JPEG file of your newborn so she can create a screen saver.
- You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home.
- Every commercial on television has a web-site address at the bottom of the screen.
- You buy a computer and a week later it is out of date and now sells for half the price you paid.
- The concept of using real money, instead of credit or debit, to make a purchase is foreign to you.
- Cleaning up the dining room means getting the fast food bags out of the back seat of your car.
- Your reason for not staying in touch with family is that they do not have e-mail addresses.
- You consider second-day air delivery painfully slow.
- Your dining room table is now your flat filing cabinet.
- Your idea of being organized is multiple-colored Post-it notes.
- You hear most of your jokes via e-mail instead of in person.
- You get an extra phone line so you can get phone calls.
- You turn off your Modem and get this awful feeling, as if you just as if you had pulled the plug on a loved one.
- You get up in morning and go online before getting your coffee.
- You wake up at 2am to go to the bathroom and check your E-mail on your way back to bed.
- You start tilting your head sideways to smile. :)
- You’re reading this.
- Even worse; you’re going to forward it to someone else.
This area includes information and resources for the assembly with implementation and practice of the new Roman Missal.It's got a print button and a "share" button which says that you can post it to your blog, but the Blogger part can't find my blog. Perhaps they were thinking of people who had just the one blog?
Emerging from an alcohol-poisoned sleep that should have left her dead on the streets of Toronto, Ana Markovic slowly began to remember the dream that came to her while she was unconscious. Ana hadn't always been homeless. Once, she had a home and a family. And then there was war and all that she knew burnt to the ground. Ana came to Canada with her husband as a refugee of the former Yugoslavia and fell into a depression that led her into a self-destructive, alcoholic spiral. Eventually, she abandoned her husband and young child to live on the streets in a perpetual state of self-hate. But God was not about to let Ana fall to eternal perdition without a fight. While she lay passed out, St. Michael the Archangel, appeared before Ana to offer her a final chance to redeem her soul and accept her worth in the eyes of God. This story lays bare the struggle for salvation as it travels through the shattered life of one lost soul and beyond to the Garden of Eden, to the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the redemption God's love offers every human being.Sounds painful but powerful, right? I'm really looking forward to this one ... which is en route, or will be soon.
Author David Murdoch was born in Toronto, Canada and graduated from Queen's University in Kingston. David converted to Catholicism after having been raised as a Protestant. Ana Markovic was written as a means of sharing the gifts God has given him, and doing something with God's grace
In downtown Gettysburg, there are two statues in front of the house where Lincoln stayed the night before he gave the Gettysburg Address. One is of Lincoln with his left arm raised, using his stove-pipe hat to point to the window of the room in which he stayed. His right hand is on the arm of a "tourist", as if he's showing the tourist the room. The tourist depicted is Perry Como, in his famous cardigan sweater.It sure looks like Perry Como ... you can see the photo at Roadside America.
Kweku Anansi is just another down-on-his luck con man who preys on the more fortunate during the day and goes home to his loving wife at night. That seems rather a comedown for the African trickster god, which is his real identity. ...My review is up over at SFFaudio as is the link to Podiobooks where you can get the book free.
Meet "The Zimmers" - a rock band of 40 OAP’s with more aggression than Nirvana and more style than The Who.
