Worth a Thousand Words: Pear and Pond

Callery pear and pond in Mount Tado, Yōrō Mountains, Kuwana, Mie, Japan.

Lagniappe: Which apples did dinosaurs prefer?

The DNA of apples is more complex than ours; a recent sequencing of the Golden Delicious genome uncovered fifty-seven thousand genes, more than twice as many as the twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand that humans possess. Our own genetic diversity ensures that our children will all be somewhat unique—never an exact copy of their parents but bearing some resemblance to the rest of the family. Apples display "extreme heterozygosity," meaning that they produce offspring that look nothing like their parents. Plant an apple seed, wait a few decades, and you'll get a tree bearing fruit that looks and tastes entirely different from its parent. In fact, the fruit from one seedling will be, genetically speaking, unlike any other apple ever grown, at any time, anywhere in the world.

Now consider the fact that apples have been around for fifty million to sixty-five million years, emerging right around the time dinosaurs went extinct and primates made their first appearance. for millions of years, the trees reproduced without any human interference, combining and recombining those intricately complex genes the way a gambler rolls dice. When primates—and later, early humans‚encountered a new apple tree and bit into its fruit, they never knew what they were going to get.

Amy Stewart, The Drunken Botanist

I had no idea. Fascinating.

Worth a Thousand Words: Portrait with Apples

August Macke (1887–1914), Porträt mit Äpfeln 

Cruz and Rubio Should Take Lessons from John Oliver

Not only was this takedown of Donald Trump hilarious, but I found it cathartic.

Worth a Thousand Words: No Chocolate for You!

A possible Maya lord forbids a person to touch a container of chocolate.
Via Wikipedia

Lagniappe: Pechuga

I've been thoroughly enjoying The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks. This is a book to enjoy a little each day.

There is one ingredient that can make mezcal different from whiskey or brandy: a dead chicken. Pechuga is a particularly rare and wonderful version of mezcal that includes wild local fruit added to the distillation for just a hint of sweetness, and a whole raw chicken breast, skinned and washed, hung in the still as the vapors pass over it. The chicken is supposed to balance the sweetness of the fruit. Whatever its purpose, it works: do not pass up an opportunity to taste pechuga mezcal.

Amy Stewart, The Drunken Botanist

Crazy, but it actually makes me want to try it.

Dropped my iPod. Shattered the Screen. Yep - it's Lent.

Curse you, dry hands!

I'm now somewhere in the five stages of grief.

Podcasts, audiobooks ... how the deprivation already grips me!

I'll take this as a chance to enter Lent more deeply, while I send my baby off to specialists for glass replacement.

Well Said: Never mistake for malice ...

Never mistake for malice that which is easily explained by stupidity or incompetence.

attrib. to Napoleon Bonaparte

That certainly is the charitable way to interpret many of the frustrations that people put in our way.

Worth a Thousand Words: James Abbott McNeill Whistler

James Abbott McNeill Whistler by William Merritt Chase
via Art Renewal Center Museum

Worth a Thousand Words: Joy of Life

Joy of Life
taken by the incomparable Remo Savisaar

Well Said: The test of bureaucracy

If the first person who answers the phone cannot answer your question, it is a bureaucracy.

President Lyndon Johnson

We'll ignore the irony of the purveyor of that wisdom, shall we? It does make me think again fondly of the three companies I can call who are unfailingly polite and always have the answer: Discover, Chase Bank, and Republic Wireless.

Most others fall far short.

Blogging Around: Random Things

Going Whole Hog

Doriana Giustozzi and Raffaele Petterini have adopted a 100lb boar, Pasqualina in Foligno, Italy. The caring couple gave the hog a home after finding it desperate, undernourished, and close to death in the woods. Now the bulky animal gallivants freely around their house.

There is a delightful slideshow for this story in The Telegraph. Thanks to T for the heads up on this after seeing the Wild Boar photo here last week.

Roses = Secrecy

Sub rosa literally means "under the rose" in New Latin. Since ancient times, the rose has often been associated with secrecy. In ancient mythology, Cupid gave a rose to Harpocrates, the god of silence, to keep him from telling about the indiscretions of Venus. Ceilings of dining rooms have been decorated with carvings of roses, reportedly to remind guests that what was said at the table should be kept confidential. Roses have also been placed over confessionals as a symbol of the confidentiality of confession.

I had no idea that roses symbolized secrecy. For that matter, I never knew the meaning of sub rosa, while I'm busy breaking silence! This is from the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day which I receive in email. It is only email subscription I have and I read every one of them. They almost always have some interesting tidbit I didn't know.

How Do You Keep Your Wedding Vows When Everything Changes?

That was only the beginning of what felt like a series of deaths over the next several years. Al came home after six weeks in the hospital. He walked with the aid of a leg brace, a cane, and a gait belt. He had almost no use of his left arm. I comforted myself with the thought that on the inside, he was the same old Al. My sweet, funny, and compassionate husband was still alive, and that’s what mattered most. Over time, however, I started to see that he had changed on the inside as well.

Al suffered from chronic brain fatigue that made him need to take long naps. He was often confused, and his short-term memory was impaired. Most difficult for me was the decline in his emotional capacity. Not just our physical intimacy but our whole relationship no longer had the same depth. The closeness I had shared only with Al, my partner for life, seemed to be gone.

A powerful and thought provoking article from Word Among Us.

Worth a Thousand Words: Transfiguration

Icon of transfiguration (Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery, Yaroslavl), 1516

It was not the feast of the Transfiguration last weekend, but the Transfiguration was the Gospel reading. One thing that struck me when listening to the reading was that Jesus went up to pray. To pray.

Is this what his prayer was always like? Glowing, God's glory all around him, praying with saints all around him? It is fascinating to meditate upon this.

I love this icon because it strives to portray the unportrayable, but taken together with the Gospel (which strives to describe the indescribable) perhaps we can get a glimpse of Jesus at prayer.

Well Said: Religion and Politics

I have heard that in some debating clubs there is a rule that the members may discuss anything except religion and politics. I cannot imagine what they do discuss, but it is quite evident that they have ruled out the only two subjects which are either important or amusing.

G.K. Chesterton,
Appreciations and Criticisms of
the Works of Charles Dickens

Worth a Thousand Words: Solitude

Frederic Leighton (1830–1896), Solitude

Well Said: The nicest white people that America has ever produced

So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years...The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.

Chris Rock, New York Magazine interview

Worth a Thousand Words: A Bride and Groom

Peter Paul Rubens, Rubens and Isabella Brant, the Honeysuckle Bower, c. 1609
via Arts Everyday Living

I couldn't resist this picture today.

We just spend the weekend helping present the Beyond Cana Retreat for marriage enrichment. It is always a pleasure which far exceeds the amount of work or trouble necessary. Not only do we get to see the couples growing deeper in love with each other as they reconnect, but the team gets to spend lots of time together. It is a simply wonderful experience and we feel blessed to be part of it.

The Reign of God 6: Jesus, Israel, and the World

Continuing with the excerpt, which ended in Part 5 saying that one would have to prove Jesus did not view Israel as a sign of blessing for all nations.

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Part 5

It would then have to be proved explicitly and in detail that Jesus only appeared in Israel because that was his place of origin, because he was naturally shaped in some way, like every human being, by the history of his people, but that otherwise he had set himself apart from Israel's history of election. And yet there is not the faintest evidence of such a thing. It simply cannot be produced. Precisely where Jesus (like John the Baptizer before him) calls into question the participation of Israel, or part of Israel, in ultimate and definitive salvation (cf. Matt 8:11-12) he presumes Israel's salvation-historical function. But above all there is an overabundance of texts to show that Jesus did not abandon the fundamental constant we have described. I will speak of those texts at length in the following chapters. Most important of these is the choice of the Twelve--a demonstrative sign-action showing that Jesus cared about the twelve tribes of Israel. The Twelve are a visible sign and, of course, also an "instrument" of his will to gather all Israel. And why? For the sake of Israel? No, for the sake of the world!

The principle behind this is pointedly formulated in James's speech in Acts 15, aided by a mixed quotation based on Amos 9:11-12:

After this I [the Lord] will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it [the tent] up, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord--even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called. Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things known from long go. (Acts 15:16-18)

The sense of this combined quotation is that the fallen Israel must be rebuilt precisely in order that the Gentile nations, over whom the name of the Lord has been called out, may seek and find God. They cannot perceive him otherwise. The ultimate goal of the rebuilding of Israel is the coming of the Gentiles. Jesus thought no differently.

Obviously this resolute will of Jesus to gather all Israel (for the sake of the nations) had everything to do with his proclamation of the reign of God. The two are inseparable...

Jesus of Nazareth by Gerhard Lohfink

The Name of God is Mercy by Pope Francis

The Name of God Is Mercy by Pope Francis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was a gift from a friend and it was the book I began Lent with. The first part of the book is a Q&A between a Vatican reporter and the pope. As usual, Pope Francis is personable and clear answering the series of questions about mercy and its centrality in our Christian faith.

What might surprise many readers is that Francis spends an equal amount of time talking about sin, repentance, confession, and reconciliation. One can't receive or even recognize mercy unless one knows why it has been extended. That means you've got to know you did something wrong. And then fully receiving mercy means you will respond to the love that has been offered. This isn't just the easy mercy that secular society thinks of when the word is used. It is the real, full-blown deal that changes lives.

Also of interest to many will be that Francis continually mentions his predecessors as bearing the same message to the people. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Paul VI, etc. and their writings are continually referenced. People often act as if Pope Francis's ideas are completely new and different when, of course, it is the same Catholic faith simply shining through a different person. It's part of what makes Pope Francis interesting to watch. He's not easy to fit into the categories with which so many want to label him.

The last part of the book is the text of Pope Francis's Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy. It is as if the first part of the book is Francis talking you through his points and then the last part is the more structured presentation.

I found this book inspirational and an easy read. It is another look into the mind of this pope who so many admire and a window into the ways of true Christian life. May we all move closer to being authentic examples of it!

The Reign of God 5: A Basic Biblical Constant

Continuing with the excerpt, which ended in Part 4 with Israel as the experimental nation to show others God's salvation.

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That, or something like it, is the description one must give of the meaning of Israel's election, looking back especially at the stories of the patriarchs in Genesis but also at any number of other key biblical texts such as Exodus 19:5-6 or Isaiah 2:1-5. At any rate, this election and its function for the world form a basic constant in the Old Testament. According to the Old Testament, salvation and the reign of God cannot otherwise exist in the world.

But then the question arises: is this basic constant of the Old Testament abandoned in the New Testament? Is it no longer valid there? has it given way to a vague and placeless universalism? Anyone who says or even hints at such a thing will have to prove it. He or she will have to prove that for Jesus, Israel was indeed no longer the sign of blessing (or of judgment) for all nations but that he had separated himself internally from Israel and preached an absolute salvation, that is, one divorced from Israel-- with "people in general" as the immediate audience for his message.

Jesus of Nazareth by Gerhard Lohfink

Next Part 6: Jesus, Israel, and the World