Wednesday Miscellany
I hope everyone enjoyed the lengthy St. Therese piece. I should've put it up last Wednesday, on her feast day, but simply didn't think of it until too late.
That piece had been lounging in my computer archives for a couple of years. A handful of publications said they wanted to run it, but each of them backed out for some reason. I figured it was time to get it out there.
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We see it now in the fall of the great banks," the Holy Father said. "This money disappears; it is nothing -- and in the same way, all these things, which lack a true reality to depend on, and are elements of a second order. The word of God is the basis of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realists, we should count on this reality."
I dig it when a sage turns things on their head: The religious people, they're the realists. The money-obsessed? They're the idealists. Josef Pieper did a similar things when he said philosophy is practical. It is. It teaches man how to live, how best to be happy, what to pursue in life. What can be more practical?
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While reading earlier this week about Iceland's economic meltdown, I ran across these four interesting facts:
There are 15 active volcanoes in Iceland, including Mount Hekla, long believed to be the entrance to Hell.
More books are published per capita in Iceland than in any other country.
Many Icelanders still practise the old Viking religion of Norse mythology.
Icelanders drink more Coca-Cola than anyone else in the world.
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Pet as People, Episode 1,982,009:
A woman dropped a cool $17,000 - so she could hear her cat meow again.
When Jean Kelly of Olney, England, was told that kitty Cadbury had a paralyzed larynx, she figured it was a quality-of-life issue to get him meowing again.
So she paid to cover six days in an oxygen tent and four months of nursing care.
I'm just glad this kind of thing is still considered newsworthy.
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Who's surprised?
The new issue of Vibe lists 99 hip-hop artists, athletes and professors who are backing the Democratic nominee - including Karrine Steffans, the author of "Confessions of a Video Vixen," whose claim to fame is how many rappers she serviced . . . . The list also includes Spike Lee, Fat Joe, Lil' Kim, Charles Barkley and Kim Kardashian, who admits she has never voted.
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Dick Morris on other people who like Obama:
So let's sum up Obama's Chicago connections. His chief financial supporter was Tony Rezko, now on his way to federal prison. His spiritual adviser and mentor was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, of “God damn America” fame. And the guy who got him his only administrative job and put him in charge of doling out $50 million is William Ayers, a terrorist who was a domestic Osama bin Laden in his youth.
Such things seriously concern me. People who put aside such concerns as "just more politics" and "smear jobs" are either (i) jaded beyond belief, or (ii) so pro-Obama that they simply don't want to be disturbed in their smugness.
If only we had a good candidate running against him.
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Interesting little history lesson:
[S]oon after President Andrew Jackson tapped Tennessee Sen. John Eaton as Secretary of War in 1829, Eaton began bedding beauty Peggy Timberlake - whose Navy lieutenant hubby found out and slit his own throat. When Peggy wed Eaton with Jackson's blessing, "Washington society was horrified by Eaton's marriage to an allegedly loose woman," Reynolds writes. " 'Eaton,' one pol sneered, 'has just married his mistress, and the mistress of 11 dozen others!' " The scandal forced Eaton to resign.
The difference between yesterday and today: Today, Eaton wouldn't resign and Peggy would be on Oprah.
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I've been summoned out of town on Thursday. Blogging will be light. Probably a shorter "From the Notebooks" piece.
