I’ve already seen too much dessert this holiday season, but still couldn’t resist this quiz: What kind of pie are you? (HT: the comforting and traditional Sam at The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns).
| You Are Mud Pie |
 You’re the perfect combo of flavor and depth Those who like you give into their impulses |
Last week we had a special day where my wife, Marjorie, was ordained and we also had a graduation ceremony for our oldest daughter, Faith. That day was December 11, which I hope we’ll always remember. In talking about Christmas memories last Saturday night, however, it suddenly dawned on me that December 11 already had a significant place in our hearts, and the earlier memory also commemorated two events.
December 11, 1986 was the day we found out that we were pregnant with Faith. It was also the day that my dog, named Cat (nope, not going to explain that now), died. It was also the day before my wife and I were to host our first Christmas party as a married couple — and we were both devastated and in tears, but for dramatically different reasons.
As reported elsewhere, my family and I made it to the MOB bash Saturday night, arriving about 6:30 p.m. We would have been there earlier except that the Mall Diva was doing hair for one of the dancers in the Nutcracker performance at O’Shaughnessy Auditorium and couldn’t get away.
As it turned out, I think we got the last seats to be had, probably because they were at table being guarded by Surly Dave (and effervescent Ingrid). These events are always good for meeting new bloggers, and this was Dave’s first event. He quickly established himself as someone well worth knowing when he described his recipe for creme brulee bread pudding (creme brulee is on of my wife’s favorite desserts, and bread pudding is one of mine). Dave is also the only chef/welder I know (I bet his torch comes in handy when hardening the top of the brulee).
Just about everyone else I met were bloggers I already knew and it was good to see the friends I’ve made over the last ten months – though hard to converse because of the noise and packed conditions (I’d shout out to you all here with links, but I’m sure I’d accidentally overlook somebody; better you just check out my blogroll!). It’s fun when the MOB turns out in force but the best way to get to know other bloggers is to come to the Thursday night trivia contests at Keegan’s.
Tiger Lilly and the Mall Diva especially enjoyed meeting the people who’ve commented on their posts or that they’ve heard me talking about, and the highlight for Tiger Lilly was stalking James Lileks until she could get his autograph (well, that and meeting that Learned Foot person who’s written so many mean things about her MAWB Squad friends). The Mall Diva just grooved on the energy in the room and interacting with her own mini-blogging community that she’s gotten to know on-line. She gladly would have stayed on for several more hours, but we finally had to get the Reverend Mother (our new name for my wife) home for her bedtime. No worries, though; we can relive the experience through Ben’s extensive photo-journalism on Hammerswing75.
Marty and Tony’s Race to the Right radio show had a Christmas theme on Sunday asking callers to talk about a favorite Christmas movie or present they’d received or share a story about a memorable Christmas. I’ve had many memorable Christmases but there is one in particular that stands out because of the lasting effect it has had on my life.
December 24th, 1983 I set out from the Twin Cities for my parents’ home in Missouri. It was at least an 11-hour drive in those days so I tried to get an early start. Unfortunately, Old Man Winter was already up and stomping about; several inches of snow were already on the ground and high winds often made it hard to tell the snow already on the ground from what was steadily arriving. Progress was slow as I joined a line of cars heading south on 35W at about 40 mph. Normally I would have been seething, but I mentally geared down and accepted that this was going to be a slog; the important thing was to keep moving and to hope that I’d eventually break out of the weather and be able to get back up to highway speed (and then some).
The night before I’d spent a little time with the woman I was dating then. She had, I thought, an inordinate interest in my spiritual welfare, but I enjoyed being around her and her friends — at least until the inevitable part of any gathering when someone would try to “save” me. It had just been her and I that evening, though, as we exchanged gifts. Before I left she mentioned that a group of them had been together earlier in the evening and they had prayed for me to have a safe trip. I’m sure I thanked her, but frankly I thought such activity was about as useful as telling someone to have a nice day. Creeping down the interstate, though, I might have wished for a direct connection to the Big Guy to cut me some slack on the weather.
My hopes of getting beyond the storm front were diminishing along with the visibility. By the time I crossed into Iowa there was only one lane of the highway visible and I pretty much navigated by the lights of the car in front of me. After awhile a large Iowa Department of Transportation plow appeared at the head of the line, with a Highway Patrol car immediately behind it. “Alright,” I thought, “now we’re getting somewhere.” It would easy to keep that big rig in sight, and its blade would assure a more or less clean path. South of Clear Lake, however, the plow slowed and the Highway Patrol car stopped and turned on his cherries. The trooper came along the line of cars with the word that they were closing the highway and that as soon as the plow finished clearing the short service link in the highway median we’d be sent back to Clear Lake to wait things out.
Rat farts. Christmas Eve in Iowa was not on my agenda, but if you can’t avoid it then I guess it’s better to spend it somewhere warm and dry than in a snowbank.
Laconism
(LAK uh niz um) noun
We are more familiar with the adjective laconic (luh KON ik) than the noun laconism, a concise style of language, brevity; also applied to a short, pithy statement. Laconia was long ago a country in the southern part of Greece, with Sparta as its capital. The Spartans were concise, brusque, and pithy in their speech, hence, laconic, under which entry in this author’s book, 1000 Most Important Words we read: “Philip of Macedonia wrote to the Spartan officials: ‘If I enter Laconia, I will level Sparta to the ground.’ Their answer: ‘If.’ Ceasar’s famous ‘Veni, vidi, vici’ (‘I came, I saw, I conquered’) is a famous example of laconic speech – not a word wasted.”
When General Sir Charles Napier (1782-1855) finally completed the conquest of Sind, a province of India, the story goes, he cabled the War Office one word: “peccavi” (Latin for “I have sinned”). Quite a laconism, and quite a paronomasia (a pun or word play) in the bargain, even though the cable is generally believed to be apochryphal. And finally, the message radioed by an American pilot in World War II: “Sighted sub, sank same,” an alliterative laconism.
From the book,“1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.
| The movie Chariots of Fire tells the story of the tests and trials faced by two men competing for two kinds of glory at the 1924 Olympic Games. In this movie, our class left the showdowns of the Old West and the horrors of war to confront the challenges of will and character in athletic competition. |  |
At the same time, however, the decimation and sacrifice of a generation shadows the story, especially early on when the incoming class of Cambridge freshmen have their attention directed to a wall listing the names of Cambridge students and graduates who died in the recently concluded conflict. The new young men are reminded that they now have the privilege of pursuing dreams and goals no longer available to those who have died, and they are challenged to live up to the opportunity before them.
Both the talented and driven Jew, Harold Abrams, and the devout Scotsman, Eric Liddell, end up ignoring convention and even antagonizing society, but from different perspectives. Harold competes for his own glory and rejects the standards of a society that has rejected him. Though he is an amateur, he hires a professional coach – something that was strongly frowned upon at the time. While generally polite to his teammates, his single-mindedness and intensity set him apart from them. Eric runs, so he says, to glorify God and refuses to compete on Sundays out of honor and obedience to the Lord. Yet when it turns out that, once at the Olympics, the qualifying heat in his event falls on a Sunday he must go against the wishes of his teammates, his coaches, and even his Prince and country – as well as personally confront his own desire to compete and his commitment to do what he believes is right.
Key Points
Discussion questions
Points to Ponder
From the Writer’s Almanac:
It was on this day in 1791 that the Bill of Rights was adopted by the United States. It was the lack of a bill of rights that made the Constitution so controversial a few years before. Many people feared that the adoption of a strong central government could lead to tyranny unless certain rights were guaranteed to the people in writing. Patrick Henry refused to endorse the Constitution for that reason. Thomas Jefferson supported the new constitution, but when he read the first draft in France, he wrote a letter to James Madison saying, “Let me add that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on Earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences.”
It was James Madison who finally realized that bill of rights was essential to passage of the Constitution, and he promised all the states that a Bill of Rights would be immediately adopted upon the Constitution’s ratification. Madison introduced the bill of rights into the first session of congress in 1789, and he used George Mason’s Virginia Bill of Rights as the model for the new federal Bill of Rights. Madison originally supported the adoption of seventeen amendments, which was eventually trimmed to twelve, of which ten were adopted.
The rights that were included in the Bill of Rights were directly related to the recent experiences of the colonists. Many colonists had come to this country to get away from religions oppression, so the Bill of Rights protected the free exercise of religion. During the Revolutionary War, colonists had seen printers and journalists jailed and executed when they had opposed the British king, so the Bill of Rights protected the freedom of speech and the press.
The colonists had seen what ordinary citizens with guns could do when they had to fight a revolution against an oppressive government, and so the Bill of Rights protected the right to bear arms and raise militias. Many colonists had been forced to take British soldiers in their houses during the Revolutionary War, and they had also been subject to random searches and seizures by British police. So the Bill of Rights protected citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures, and against the quartering of soldiers. Colonists had seen people thrown into dungeons for no reason, had seen people tortured into giving confessions, had seen inquisitions go on for months, during which the accused were worn down by lengthy interrogations. And so the Bill of Rights gave citizens the right to due process of law, a speedy trial, the right to call witnesses, and the right to use a lawyer in one’s own defense.
Let’s see; war in 1776, the first Constitutional Congress in 1789, no Bill of Rights until 1791 — my goodness, do you think the Brits back then were saying the situation was too unstable for this democracy experiment to ever take root? We know better now, don’t we?
With the long-awaited arrival of the Chronicles of Narnia flm and the wild popularity of the fantasy books for children and young teens such as Harry Potter and the Eldest series, you might be interested in checking out the Christian-themed grahic novels from Community Comics.
Three new ones are out from Community Comics and Vida Entertainment. The graphics look great and the story excerpts are interesting. Definitely worth checking out. (HT: Cedric’s Blog-o-rama)
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The Eckernet has fallen and it can’t get up. According to Kevin:
Ok, the server that EckerNet.Com was hosted crashed real hard. And part of that crash was the actualy harddrive that everything that was EckerNet.Com existed on, is basically gone. No idea how much is recoverable, or if it is.
Right now Moveable Type doesn’t even work. Admins are working on it but it might be awhile….a long while.
Wish me luck. – Kevin Ecker
I thought Kevin was remarkably composed, considering the circumstances. There wasn’t even any swearing and he’s not threatening to jugulate anyone — yet. He didn’t even offer any conspiracy theories. Of course, what good is the blogosphere if we can’t have some good conspiracy theories? Here then is my list of likely suspects:
Let’s see, I’m sure there’s got to be some more. Just a second, I hear a strange noise outside. I’ve got to check it out…