Scott says, "Potato." Julie says, "Potahto." Discussing "Contact" on A Good Story is Hard to Find.

We don't call the whole thing off but we do come to a distinct parting of the ways in our opinions about "Contact," starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey (never seen so rarely without a shirt as here).

Get it all at A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast.

Snapshot: Time to Revive Home Ec

A year later, my father’s job took our family to Wales, where I attended, for a few months, a large school in a mid-size industrial city. There, students brought ingredients from home and learned to follow recipes, some simple and some not-so-simple, eventually making vegetable soups and meat and potato pies from scratch. It was the first time I had ever really cooked anything. I remember that it was fun, and with an instructor standing by, it wasn’t hard. Those were deeply empowering lessons, ones that stuck with me when I first started cooking for myself in earnest after college.

I knew a lot about cooking when I took Home Ec back in the 9th grade. But I didn't know anything about sewing, budgeting, planning a project, or the many other things that I learned in that class. I look at my children's friends and almost all of them don't know a thing about cooking. Or a lot of those other things.

This New York Times article focuses more than I'd like on obesity as a reason to revive Home Ec, although it is not without reason. I'm just sayin' there are a lot of other reasons to bring it back.

6 Things You Won't Believe Animals Do Just Like Us

But now that scientists know that parrots have signature calls, a few questions come up, like: Who gets to decide the signature call that's given to each parrot chick? Is it the parrots themselves who decide what they should be called, thus making it an innate characteristic? Is some sort of alpha parrot handing out identifying sounds? In order to answer all these questions, researchers at Cornell University filmed parrots in the wild of Venezuela, along with their newborn chicks, to see exactly when and how a parrot got its name.

What the scientists found was that it was not the parrot newborns who got to choose their signature calls. Instead, it was the proud parrot parents who gave each chick its name. Much like a human, the adult parrot will choose a name for its young soon after it's born. Each parrot, though, may tweak its own signature call as it grows older, elongating a whistle here or shortening a chirp there, essentially giving itself a nickname.

Cracked.com (obligatory language warning) delivers six astounding examples of behavior that you thought was limited to human beings. I'm hard pressed for a favorite since all of them are so incredible that I bored our household by going on and on about them. I'm torn between the whales' pop songs and the little chimps playing with dolls. Go read it yourself.

Book Review: Holy Women by Pope Benedict XVI

When Juliana [St. Juliana of Cornillon] was sixteen she had her first vision which recurred subsequently several times during her Eucharistic adoration. Her vision presented the moon in its full splendor, crossed diametrically by a dark stripe. The Lord made her understand the meaning of what had appeared to her. The moon symbolized the life of the Church on earth, the opaque line, on the other hand, represented the absence of a liturgical feast for whose institution Juliana was asked to plead effectively: namely, a feast in which believers would be able to adore the Eucharist so as to increase in faith, to advance in the practice of the virtues and to make reparation for offenses to the Most Holy Sacrament.

This eventually became the Solemnity of Corpus Christi.

I don't remember ever hearing of St. Juliana and you'd think I would if I had since my given name is Julianne.

Thank goodness for Holy Women to give me a vivid sampling of the many ways female saints have contributed to the Church.

Pope Benedict is renowned as a scholar and theologian. I repeatedly see people say that he writes on such an intellectual level that he is difficult to understand. However, the Pope's homilies must be easy to understand since they are delivered to all sorts of people. It is these homilies in which he often speaks most directly about what it means to be a regular Christian in search of God.

Benedict's homily series about seventeen female saints is collected for our meditation in Holy Women. Although we may think of saints as being too holy to understand, no group of people could disprove that idea more than these women. From St. Gertrude the Great to St. Therese of Lisieux, from abbesses to holy housewives to queens, Benedict gives us history that shows how God works through all sorts of people, in all sorts of times.

As always, Benedict's greatest gift in this writing is when he brings us face-to-face with our own similarities to these saintly women. I found personal inspiration in St. Elizabeth of Hungary who influenced her husband, the nation they ruled, and everyone she encountered (except for scheming relatives ...) by her charity and personal service.

Elizabeth's marriage was profoundly happy: she helped her husband to raise his human qualities to a supernatural level and he, in exchange, stood up for his wife's generosity tothe poor and for her religious practices. Increasingly admired for his wife's great faith, Ludwig said to her, referring to her attention to the poor, "Dear Elizabeth, it is Christ whom you have cleansed, nourished, and cared for" — a clear witness to how faith and love of God and neighbor strengthen family life and deepen ever more the matrimonial union.

Recommended reading for every person who says that the Church keeps women down.

Thank you, Pope Benedict!

This review was written as part of the Catholic book reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on Holy Women. They are also a great source for a Catechism of the Catholic Church or a Catholic Bible.

If Terry Pratchett Looks in the Mirror, Does He See Granny Weatherwax?

There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example,” said Oats.

“And what do they think? Against it, are they?” said Granny Weatherwax.

“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”

“Nope.”

“Pardon?”

“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.

“It’s a lot more complicated than that –”

“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”

“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes –”

“But they starts with thinking about people as things …”

The Anchoress takes one of my favorite quotes from a Terry Pratchett book and reflects on Pratchett's atheism, early onset Alzheimer's and support for assisted suicide.

Anticipating his own end, Pratchett has said, ‘I intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod.”

Pratchett might be surprised at what she finds in the light of Granny Weatherwax's philosophy. Read it at First Things.

Early Reaction to "A People of Hope: Archbishop Timothy Dolan in Conversation with John L. Allen"

I have an advance copy of the uncorrected proof and A People of Hope is dynamite. I am not to publish a review until November which is when it is published.

What I will say is that it is a Q & A series between John L. Allen and Archbishop Timothy Dolan. Allen wanted a way to show the good side of the Catholic Church that the media rarely covers. His encounters with Dolan left him feeling that this man puts a warm human face on the Church's public figure ... and does it from a position of sincerity and honesty. In a sense this book is like the Ratzinger Report which gave people insight into Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) many years ago.

I was dipping into it here and there among the questions, which are grouped by topic (my favorite chapter title: Pelvic Issues). As far as I can tell, since I've been jumping around, Allen asks all the hard questions and Dolan answers with absolute transparency. I already admired Dolan and find this does nothing to diminish that admiration of him as "real." I am now beginning to read it in order and it continues to impress.

Actually, what I have found is that it reversed my usual reading pattern. Usually I turn to fiction to break up the nonfiction I'm reading. However, right now I'm reading Declare by Tim Powers for A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast. It is rather heavy and dark, though better than I remember it from when I stopped reading about a third of the way through a few years ago. (That's the great thing about being "assigned" to read a book ... it forces you to power past the discouraging parts and find that it is a great book despite your early misgivings.)  Anyway, when I can't take it any more, I pick up A People of Hope. Even though many of the topics under discussion are contentious ones, Dolan's optimism is refreshing and a picker-upper for me.

This is another book that I'm going to keep on hand for helping with our parish's RCIA classes. Dolan's way of answering is so honest and truthful that I can't help but think it will be very useful in building a good foundation for being equally honest in turn to those who ask me for clarification, especially on touchy issues.

Movie Driveby: Iron Man 2, Contact, Adaptation

This is just the quick reaction to our weekend viewing ...

• Iron Man 2
  Two things redeemed this movie from being a complete waste of time (and, truth be told, it was those things which made Hannah push us to watch it): performances by Sam Rockwell as the nerd super-villain and Mickey Rourke as the Russian spit-in-your-eye-and-laugh-while-I'm-dying villain. Dang those actors are good! The rest was self-indulgent twaddle and a waste of money and talent.
  
  
• Contact
  Searching for life in outer space and getting a call back; starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey. I'll discuss this on A Good Story is Hard to Find so don't want to say much here ... except I am trying to think of kind ways in which the Texas Chainsaw (as my friend Scott Nehring has nicknamed me), can discuss it. Although it did bring to mind some great conversation points about faith, creation, science, and so forth, so that works out all right.
  
  
• Adaptation
  Charlie Kaufman wrote a script about his experience adapting The Orchid Thief into a screenplay. This is Kaufman's meta-film, highly praised and recommended to me many times. We were reminded that Nicholas Cage is a great actor when he wants to be. The end scene almost blew my head open as the culimation of the perfection that was this movie ... I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at how great it was. Though it seems to drag as you approach the halfway point, that is where it suddenly picks up and turns into an entirely different beast and you realize how the setup in the first half was necessary to the inspired insanity of the second half. Not for everyone, but if you like an intellectual look at movies, then this is brilliant.

Before there was Fiddler, there was Tevye ...

This looks wonderful. Via Strange Herring, which you should also be keeping your eye on.

Weekend Joke

Via The Deacon's Bench. This one just cracked me up.

Anglican priest to his wife who’d just spent a fortune on a dress – ”Why did you spend so much, I’ve told you that whenever you feel tempted you should say “Get behind me Satan”

“I did” said his wife.

“What happened then?” said the priest?

“He told me it looked lovely from the back.”

As we go into a long weekend ... what's going on ...

A few updates about family stuff.

Tom's mother came through surgery with flying colors. Tom went to see her last night and she's busy pushing for someone to take her home. So that means she's feeling good and we're glad to hear it!

Rose got home from Chicago yesterday! YAY!

Today, she and I will pick up some flowers and head up to the hospital to keep Tom's mom company for a while.

Eventually, she'll begin job hunting in Los Angeles, but not until she's had a nice, long vacation of a couple of months (or gets bored ... whichever comes first).

We're still in a drought, with temperatures over 100. However, hopeful weather forecasters keep promising that we'll dip down into the upper 90s over the weekend. I've got my fingers crossed!

Hannah is loving her new job as an arborist. She turned in her resignation for her part-time job as an assistant vet tech so that she can have extra time to study for the arborist test. We think this is a great idea as it will allow her to really focus and also be available to possible clients every weekday.

Tom and I ... we're happy. Happy at work, happy with our family, happy with our lives. You can't ask for better than that.

And, we're grateful, of course. God is good.

Have a great weekend everyone! I'll be back on Tuesday! (Although I have a weekend joke that will pop up tomorrow.)

Listen My Son: St. Benedict for Fathers

All those devotionals I mentioned and yet I didn't have this one.

Luckily Joseph at Zombie Parent's Guide reviews it for us. Plus, he's the target market! A father! Perfect ...

Snapshot: Ruby-throated Hummingbirds

Male

A few nights ago we were eating dinner and Hannah suddenly said, "Look! Next to the Christmas lights!"

(We leave our tiny, colored Christmas lights lining our patio roof and windows year-round, lending a festive, Mexican-restaurant feel, especially when they go on after dark.)

Hovering and darting around the unlit lights were two Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. They were a male and female, looking like flying jewels. The male came close enough to the patio window that I got a vivid impression of his ruby throat. Soon enough, they headed off to check out the Crepe Myrtles. I don't know if they could feed on them but at least Crepe Myrtles have the virtue of being real flowering plants.

Female

Then this morning, I stopped on my morning walk to see what some squawking Blue Jays were going on about. I never figured it out, but out of that same tree there zipped a hummingbird which darted over my head to join two others in mid-air. They buzzed out of sight, I assume in the direction of Mexico which is where most of them are migrating to at this time of year.

It was a real treat both times because I never think to put a feeder out and most of them must stick to other wayfares than our yard and street.

Both images are from Wikipedia.

I'm Hopelessly Devoted ... to Devotionals

As we discover in my latest A Free Mind column at Patheos.com. Presented for your consideration, a gaggle of devotionals that I can highly recommend.

Saint Paul by Pope Benedict

Saint Paul by Pope Benedict XVI
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As with many of the other collections of Pope Benedict's homilies, these are brilliant for simply explaining many basic concepts of the faith through the lens of the great people who have gone before us. In this case, of course, it is St. Paul and his conversion, life, and letters (which became much of the New Testament). Benedict keeps our personal involvement by continually relating all this to each reader and our struggles to live a Christian life in modern days. Being as this is about Paul, these homilies are a bit denser than some others (such as holy women, for example), but Pope Benedict is an expert at making them understandable and accessible.

A Little Princess - reread

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A perennial favorite and one that I reread for the Elements of Faith book club.

It is always interesting to reread a childhood favorite from the vantage point of many years later. The story is just as wonderful as I'd remembered, the writing right and evocative, the characters fully fleshed out with a few deft phrases and through their telling actions. What I didn't remember was Burnett's humorous way of describing things. It is not obviously funny but when reading the couple of sentences about Ermengarde's feelings about her father, I laughed. This book was written by children but surely can be enjoyed by any adult who enjoys a good story.

Sara Crewe reminds us that the true definition of being a princess is not to enjoy privilege but to be as gracious and stalwart in word, action, and intention as any dedicated soldier. That is a reminder we can all do with no matter what age we are.

Script Notes for Huck and Jim: Escape From New York

The river sang to itself. It sang its summer song, of fish below, reeds waving in the current, the dip of a bird’s bill as it flashed down and skimmed over the surface. The song kept time against the shore and against the raft as it floated down the Mississippi

- Must it be the Mississippi? Why not someplace more exotic—the Nile or Ganges, perhaps?

- Could run up the costs, but we’ll check it out.

Huck dangled his feet into the water. He lay on his back, watching the last lace filigree of cloud pull aside to reveal a night full of stars. Jim stood at the stern, pole in hand, watching the dark surface of the river rise and move in its slow dance.


“What do you think, Jim?” said Huck. “Were the stars born or just made?”

- Which one is black?

- Jim.

- Okay, is he more a Morgan, or a Denzel?

- The focus group suggested Will.

- Will! Yes. Very bankable. And Huck is a woman, right?

- Um… we didn’t test that possibility.

You get the idea ... it goes on from there and is simultaneously hilarious and sad (as we suspect this is a reflection of all too real Hollywood thinking). Read it at McSweeneys. Via Heather at CraftLit.

Fascinating Facts: The 6 Most Frequently Quoted Brain Facts (That Are Total BS)

From Cracked, which means that there may be some bad language, but also means that it is probably full of interesting new info ... such as this ... which definitely made me feel better!

#3. "I'm Getting Older, so My Mind Isn't What It Used to Be."

What you heard: It's common knowledge that the brain deteriorates with age. That's why your grandpa keeps forgetting things, referring to the television as "the wireless" and calling you by your father's name. It's also why he's cranky all the time, and complains when anyone is making too much noise -- he's just getting on, and his old deteriorating brain can't handle the hectic modern world.

The truth: Discounting the ones who actually develop mental disorders like dementia or Alzheimer's, old people actually have better brains than the rest of us. Ironically, that's kind of what makes them seem so stupid -- their seasoned brains are taking in a whole lot of information that your comparatively idiotic brain just doesn't notice.

As it turns out, although your body tends to deteriorate as the years go on, your brain only gets sharper. Research has shown that, the older you get, the more information you take in from your environment. As a result, older people are actually better at problem solving, even though they become curmudgeonly and easily distracted at the same time due to the sheer amount of information their superior brains are taking in. ...

Read all about brains at Cracked.

Words of Wisdom from Riparians at the Gate

Girls, even if you aren’t super gorgeous, guys are THAT interested in you, just because you are a girl.  You!  Yes, you!  You don’t need to “sell” yourself.  You don’t need to put your every asset on display.  Be a kind, friendly person who cares about others.  That’s what real men are looking for in a wife.

A great, practical piece on modesty, real attractiveness, and finding a guy who loves you from Jennifer Fitz.

Free on Kindle: Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

Seriously. Go get it.

Via Kindle Review which routinely has lots of free and cheap Kindle deals listed.

Update on Tom's Mom: Good News, Everybody!

After many days of no progress, suddenly some small veins in her leg have started letting a tiny bit of circulation through to her lower leg and foot. This brings us out of amputation discussions and back to more mainstream treatment of another surgery to open the blocked vein in her leg.

Obviously anything can happen as she is 87 years old with a dodgy heart, but it is supremely better news than anyone would have expected.

Thank you so much for the prayers. I believe they have made the difference in turning this from a terrible situation to one that has hope.

We appreciate your prayers so very much. Please continue them on this dear lady's behalf.