The Anchoress

Read Mark and then read Frank.

Then read Betsy and then read Ann.

Trust me, you’ll like!

VATICAN CITY, FEB. 28, 2005 (Zenit.org).- The Holy See opened an e-mail address for those wishing to send a message of closeness to John Paul II, re-hospitalized since last week at the Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome.

The address, announced on the Vatican’s Web page, is

john_paul_ii@vatican.va

You know he’s just sitting there tapping his fingers waiting to hear from yours truly, right?

But hey…if you have his email address, don’t be a stranger, drop a line!

I like this blog, and you will too.

It’s kind of wry and reverent, all at once.

I just love this! Instapundit can be so succinct and cover so much ground! Everything here is one brilliant blogpost from the Blogfather!

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS wonders what happened to the Arab street. I guess that Josh Marshall was right all along:
In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. . . .
In short, the administration is trying to roll the table–to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism.

He said that like it was a bad thing. Or like it was some sort of secret, when some of us found the approach to be self-evident. Even Iraqis.
UPDATE: Zach Barbera notes that he had figured some stuff out a couple of years ago.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Gregory Djerejian says that lots of people are noticing.

And THIS is why we all give Instapundit several hits a day! An example of perfect blogging!

And Josh Marshall was right…and wrong. He didn’t realize that the idea of de-stabalizing the midEast was a PROFOUNDLY RIGHT idea. The status quo could no longer be maintained if we were to keep our own nation secure. Bush knew it - said it all along - that if Iraq could be liberated and - given the choice - accepting of Democratic rule, the rest of the ME would follow suit. He called the craving a freedom a fire that would spread. I wonder how Marshall is handling being so correct, and so wrong at the same time.

So, my husband comes home from China on Wednesday evening, and by Thursday, he’s feeling punkish and by Friday he’s developing a case of the cranks that’s costing him dearly in sympathy. The weekend brings the glassy-eyed fever and typical males-are-bad-patients-whining and yapping.

This afternoon brought the doctors appointment, with the required seating time of 60 minutes before you can get in to see him.

“Some kind of bug, ” the doctor murmurs. “We don’t know much about these bugs from China, or the Asian flu. Nothing you can do except live through it. Unless it kills you. But…you’re not elderly, so it shouldn’t kill you…I don’t think.”

Hubby, not liking any of that, has decided to pull himself together by sheer force of will and my Spinach and Egg Drop Soup.

Easiest Soup In the World

Buy a can of College Inn Chicken broth.
Throw it into a big pot. (Yes, I mean open the can and POUR it into the pot.)
Throw in 1/2 a can or a little more of water.
Throw in a box of frozen chopped spinach.
Yes, take it out of the box first, smartass.
Bring to a boil.
Beat two eggs.
Yes…take them out of their shells, first.
Delicately and slowly pour the beaten eggs into the boiling soup, while maniacally stirring the eggs with a fork.
Don’t use a whisk, or you’ll be cleaning spinach off the tines for days.
Throw the soup into a serving bowl. Use a ladle, or you’ll burn.
Throw a handful of nice, robust romano, or parmeson or locatelli cheese onto the soup.
Yes, GRATED cheese!
Serve with a smile as you hiss under your breath, “eat this and get BETTER, because you’re starting to get on my nerves with the whining and the coughing and the sniffling…”
Ask God to forgive you for being such an unloving, impatient person.

Eat a bowl of the soup yourself, because you know the second he starts to feel better you’re going to come down with this thing, in fact, your eyes are already hurting and you’re already feeling rather listless and droopy.

But it’s always good to read Jimmie at The Sundries Shack and Dirty Harry at Stranded On Blue Islands. Just keep scrolling, with both of them! Then go check out Jeanette’s new blog!. It looks very helpful to people who are making soup for cranky hubbies suffering from Chinese bugs.

Regular readers of The Anchoress would be very surprised to learn this about me: I adore looking at gorgeous clothes.

I don’t especially crave ownership. My closet is unimaginative. Lots of Benedictine black and white, some denim, one great grey gown I wore to a brother’s wedding. I hate to shop, and it never occurs to me that I might need more than one pair of shoes (black) and one pair of sneakers.

But I do own a red organza dress that could only be worn by a 20 year old…and yes, I have hung on to it for 26 years, because it’s just a GREAT, wily and feminine dress!

It seems incongruous to anyone who knows me, but there it is. I DO have my superficial side! I watch Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, just so I can look at that incredible white dress that Elizabeth Taylor wears. Did anyone ever look as great in white as Elizabeth Taylor? I watch Giant for her wardrobe, as well. Give me that simple, full skirted black gown, with the dolman sleeves and the slit down the back, that Katharine Hepburn in wore in Holiday, for the New Year’s ball. I don’t want to wear it, I just want to put it on a dummy and LOOK at it! Give me that fabulous striped coat and hat Roz Russell wore in His Girl Friday, and the completely fun striped day dress Katharine Hepburn wore in Bringing Up Baby. I am a sucker for stripes.

Sigh. This is something I could write about ad nauseum, and only I would be entertained, I know it…so I’ll stop.

But now that I’ve revealed my frivolous side, I may as well confess that, while I didn’t watch the Oscars tonight, I did just sit down and amuse myself by looking at the photos of the “red carpet” part. My brother used to tease me that on Oscar night, my “inner gay man” comes out! And Ann Althouse’s fun Oscar commentary has inspired me, so blame her!

I loved Salma Hayek’s midnight blue dress - form fitting, drop-dead sexy, with a wonderful fabric. I loved Natalie Portman’s Greco-princess-y thing. crinkle fabric, very light and airy. It looked comfortable and it flattered her small-ness. I adore Cate Blanchette - she always looks sensational - and Kate Winslet’s dress was a sleek winner. I’m not a fan of Julia Roberts, but the black, form-fitting power-gown she wore flattered her and reminded every woman there that she is still Julia Roberts and must be dealt with. She’d better watch out for Scarlett Johansson, though. She was channeling Audrey Hepburn, and succeeding.

Ditto Hilary Swank - whose dress actually seemed to be a sexed-up, modernized version of the great Kate Hepburn dress I mentioned, from Holiday. I know some people will disagree, but I loved Swank’s dress; it was dangerous and bold, and a hard - unforgiving - dress to wear - if her bustline was the merest big bigger, it would have been a disaster, but she pulled it off. And what a silhouette it gave her! Elegant folds, elegant train. Elegant hair, too.

I didn’t much care for Renee Zellweger’s red monster. She’s such a tiny girl and she keeps selecting these huge, rather stiff dresses. A few years ago she wore yellow vintage dress, off the shoulder with a knotted bodice and a flow-y chiffon and she stole the show! She needs flow-y beautiful fabric…and blonde hair!

I hated Gwyneth Paltrow’s pale-pink, shapeless, heavily-skirted sheath and shapeless long hair. She looked like she reached into her closet for a 1999 dress she got for free and finally decided to wear. All wrong. Wrong color, wrong design, wrong everything. This girl could could look splendid with Grace Kelly lines (egad - put her in that cocktail dress from Rear Window!) and a decent up-do. instead she always looks bored, un-put-together and drooping at the hinges.

Biggest disappointment: Charlize Theron. Yuck baby blue, yuck too many ruffles, yuck did nothing for her. Again, she could have done something bold and ballroomish - she could pull off any of those great vintage dresses of the 50’s, with the piles of skirting and the tiny belt around the waist, a portrait neckline, sleek. Come on, girl!

And I thought Barbra Striesand’s slope-shouldered, too-much cleavage, cover-up-those-upper-arms-I-got-this-for-free-from-Donna-Karan schmattah was…just sloppy and boring. We’ve seen it before. Seems we see it all the time. Yawn.

Lastly - I only saw “Ray” the other night, and Jamie Foxx was just astounding. I have no idea how good anyone else was. But man, he was great - I’m glad he won.

And I liked the modest, sweet white dress his daughter wore - note the gloves, the girl can accessorize - just right for a girl her age. When she gets older, with that skin, put her in browns and golds and egad, she’s gonna look fantastic!

Update: I swore I would write no more on this subject, but then I ran into this great “slideshow essay” which takes Hollywood to task for sameness (something to the critique, I admit) and this even better “slideshow essay” with some great glam shots from the ’30’s

Okay, Okay…I’m done being frivolous - now back to politics: a freeper Pro-Bush Rally at the Oscars comes to us with a hattip to Michelle Malkin. Baldilocks has an amused take on it all.

Welcome fans of Ann Althouse! Please kick back and look around while you’re here!

Newsweeks Christopher Dickey makes report that is so odd, I wonder why Newsweek printed it, because it seems terribly unfocused. Reporting on Pope John Paul’s seeming refusal to pack it in, Dickey writes:

Even as the aged pope’s body shuts down in the late stages of Parkinson’s disease, his will to live—and to impose his will on the Roman Catholic faithful—remains as stubborn as ever.

In the days before he was readmitted to the hospital…the pope insisted on making public appearances…The pope also spoke through a new book, “Memory and Identity,” published last week. Though culled from tape-recorded dialogues with a pair of Polish philosophers back in 1993, the text was updated in the pope’s own special, confrontational way.

Yet this same pontiff who continues to assert his will in the daily life of the church has given his doctors no instructions about how to sustain his life, or not, should he slip into a persistent coma…Having spent a generation imposing his will on the church, the ailing John Paul has yet to make known a living will to guide his doctors.

All emphsis are mine. I’m not sure what Dickey’s point is. He clearly finds the pope a tyrant who (Dickey repeatedly charges) “IMPOSES HIS WILL” upon those poor Catholics who bend under his whip. (Can you see me rolling my eyes?) and he clearly didn’t much care for the Pope re-asserting his Petrine primacy, or for the Pope’s new book which is - yes - confrontational. As I wrote here, it is extremely confrontational and will be deemed even more so by the secularists, because it’s entirely possible that JPII is the last man of global importance who is going to say what he says in uncouched, unPC language. Dickey seems not to like that the Pontiff saw fit to include the factory-like, efficient destruction of human babies with the factory-like, efficient destruction of Jews and others.

And Dickey seems just flabbergasted, no confounded…no, he seems almost downright insulted, that the Pope has not put forth a living will, with instructions on when the plug may be pulled so we can stop this damned impositioning of his will upon the oppressed Catholic people, and maybe finally get a pope in there who will get on board with the times! Let’s go, JP, baby, move it on! We want a Pope Jason who is gonna start living the age throughout the faith and come to speed with abortion, divorce, gay marriage and euthanasia! If only the Pope had left some instructions, we maybe wouldn’t have bothered with the tracheotomy, the other day!

Shrug. Maybe it’s just me, but that’s the sense I’m getting from Dickey, here. He thinks the pope has left no instructions.

Dickey doesn’t realize - probably does not want to realize - that the pope, by NOT leaving “instructions” is giving us a tremendous instruction. He is saying, “leave what is alive, alive. The living person may not be living the life YOU’D like…but it is the life they HAVE, and it’s not your job or anyone else’s to get in the way of it, or shorten it, when doing so may very well be interrupting a larger plan that you (because you are not God) simply cannot comprehend.”

I think we are living in a time of extraordinary grace and instruction. At a time when a man is trying to get the courts to allow him to starve his wife to death, we are watching a man who stubbornly wants to use his own body to teach us the great lesson: that every life has value, even if that life is in a less than mobile condition, or even if that life holds just enough consciousness to comprehend love, and to understand abandonment. He is demonstrating the remarkable power of faith and prayer. And most importantly, he is demonstrating that, far from “imposing his will,” on things, the pope continues to serve at the pleasure of the Almighty, and that he will continue to do so, despite the displeasure of Mr. Dickey.

I look at this - the questions Dickey asks - and I realize, he’s not even talking about “mercy killing” or euthanasia. Like poor, messed up Michael Schiavo, Dickey is basically wondering why these old, infirm, useless folks are still around? What GOOD are they? What use?

Beware the urge to utilarianism. Everything does not have to be of “use.” Nor does everyONE. It is enough to BE, if BEING is what you have been called to. The Pope is not a CEO. He doesn’t have to DO anything. He just has to BE. Terri Schiavo does not have to get up and dance a jig to be valuable. She is valuable in her BEING, as the object of her family’s love. And God’s.

“When you have become God’s in the measure He wants, He, Himself will know how to best bestow you on others. Unless He prefer, for thy greater advantage, to keep thee all to Himself.” St. Basil

As America watches the case of Terri Schiavo unfold, John Paul II staggers the ambition and reason of the world, and teaches, without a word spoken, the truth the secularist do not want to hear. One man, nearly rendered mute, his body broken, is nevertheless unbowed in the face of their scorn, and he will not be deterred.

As the world watches the unveiling of a global hunger for freedom and democracy - another sort of testament and insistence to the power and wonder of a God-given life-to-life, George W. Bush staggers the ambition and reason of those same people, those same secularists. And they do not want to hear him, either. One man, occasionally tongue-tied but nevertheless able to deliver his message, stands unbowed in the face of their scorn, and HE will not be deterred.

Both men are accused of “imposing their will upon the rest of the world.”

No. They’re just doing the right thing. And God has a hand in all of this.

I wonder…I can’t help it, I wonder. Are we at the cusp of something Glorious?

Well, Russert does sort of have a kind of jowl-y, boppy-cheeked babyishness to his face!

Anyway…in a little blurb he threw out to the Catholic News Services, Russert speaks one of the most important messages - perhaps the most important message - of our time.

Russert said. “Who are our children? How do we get into their hearts and minds,” Russert asked, “to get them to see the value of our values?” In dealing with his own son, Luke, Russert added that he tells him, “You are always, always loved, but you are never entitled.”

You are always loved, but you are never entitled.

We don’t always know, when we are speaking, how profound our utterances may be. I wonder if Russert knows just what a huge statement he has made - one that may well be in conflict with his own ideology - because it is profound on many levels, emotionally, spiritually, materially - even politically.

You are always loved, but you are never entitled.

I like that. Good for Russert.

And out of the mouth of a true babe, young Miss Gnat, daughter of the great James Lileks, gives me my other piece of Lectio Divina for today:

This morning she was painting, and what had been a portrait of her and her friend turned into a self-portrait, with the friend morphed into a house. And then she said something that’s stayed with me all day:

“All of my mistakes are giving me ideas.”

Mr. Lileks ruminates, “You can turn that one around in your head all day long. All your life, for that matter.”

Indeed.

Prayer 11.

Genesis. Incarnation. The joint endeavor of God and man.

His most challenging one, yet, at least for me. Others may not find it so.

I also like Mr. Wong’s thoughts here:

I cannot prevent people who don’t love you from liking my work, but I can try.

Even Deconstructionists cash their checks.

Mr. Wong is always worth a visit.

I saw this earlier in the week but forgot to link to it. Heather MacDonald takes on Susan Estrich’s meltdown and writes an intelligent, broad and honest analysis. And she rightly judges that Estrich has behaved as nothing less than a “snarling bitch.”

Good. I’m glad someone said it. Enough with pretty language and PC euphemisms.

Btw, I saw this again at the Independent Women’s Forum blog, “Inkwell.” They’ve got one excellent link after another today, including this terrific piece about The Vagina Monologues and Marie Antoinette, which I like a lot.

There is a strong element of Marie Antoinette in indulging the haute couture thrill of play-acting a victim, while remaining unmoved by the writhings of the real one.

Anyone who has read me for any length of time knows I have “issues” with that so-called work of “political theatre, so I am always glad to pass on effective commentary.

Then there is this take-down of the Damsel-in-Distress-Moms profiled in Newsweek who are such a freaking embarrassment to the rest of us.

And the letters segment is good, too. All in all, great reading today at Inkwell. Just keep scrolling.