Today is the transplanted Feast of the Ascension: scooped up out of its place in the week and stashed away on a Sunday where it won't trouble anyone. This is rather the opposite of the meaning of the event itself. Christ's bodily Ascension into Heaven is far from His 'removal' from the world; the obnoxious … Continue reading Ascension Thought
Faith
Friday Flotsam: Various and Sundry
1. The weather is warming up, which means my middle schoolers were extra rowdy this week. I am increasingly convinced that children are, in truth, reptiles. 2. For recreation I started re-reading The Ball and the Cross for the first time in quite a while. Chesterton's way with words is of the sort that is … Continue reading Friday Flotsam: Various and Sundry
He Is Risen
Alleluia!
Friday Flotsam: Good Friday
No flotsam today. Watch and Pray.
Friday Flotsam: Hodge-Podge
1. Intellectual Key Stone: Wealth is not money; wealth is what you own or can produce. 2. In 1856, the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing Party only carried Maryland, which had been founded as a Catholic colony, when it ran Millard Fillmore, the first major Presidential Candidate to have had a meeting with the Pope. History is weird. … Continue reading Friday Flotsam: Hodge-Podge
Friday Flotsam: ‘Short Circuit’, Sick, More Economics, and Lent
1. My tastes have been skewed in a 1980s direction lately. This week's movie night was Short Circuit (at least most of it; the copy I watched had a section missing that I couldn't find elsewhere, between when the jerk boyfriend shows up and the fight with the other three drones), about a military robot … Continue reading Friday Flotsam: ‘Short Circuit’, Sick, More Economics, and Lent
Friday Flotsam: Death Comes Near, Teaching, Life
1. My second semester of teaching started off on a tragic and jarring note. The weekend before we came back, one of my co-workers and her husband were killed in a car crash, leaving six young children behind. I didn't know her very well, but it's still a sobering experience to have a violent death … Continue reading Friday Flotsam: Death Comes Near, Teaching, Life
Back on Catholic 365: Infant King
First article in a long time is up on Catholic365, just in time for Christmas: Among the strictures against monarchy presented by the American Revolutionaries was the absurdity that a king can come to the throne at any age, and that, as Mr. Hamilton put it in one of the Federalist Papers, “a helpless infant … Continue reading Back on Catholic 365: Infant King
Saturday Flotsam: Late, Haphazard Edition
1. I missed yesterday owing to poor time management. Oh, well. 2. I'm officially on a 3-week Christmas break from work. A break I'll need to use to find another part-time job and get myself onto a good schedule so that I can be more successful in the next semester. Not that this past semester … Continue reading Saturday Flotsam: Late, Haphazard Edition
Friday Flotsam: Immaculate Conception, Hapsburgs, and More
1. A blessed Feast of the Immaculate Conception! 2. This is, of course, the national feast day of the United States, as instituted in 1846 by the US Bishops and confirmed by Pius IX. This seems primarily based, historically, on the fact that Christopher Columbus's flagship was the Santa Maria de la Inmaculada Concepción, and … Continue reading Friday Flotsam: Immaculate Conception, Hapsburgs, and More
Serpent's Den 