The Anchoress

I’m off for a prelude-to-the-Triduum retreat and so the pickings will be slim and the blogging quiet in these parts, but I’ll leave you with all the stories and blog entries I’ve been meaning to direct your way for the past two days:

If you have not seen this father and child reunion I linked to earlier, do go watch.

Astounding balloon artistry! Scroll down a bit here to see the pics.

If you missed the story of the pork that will keep our troops from getting needed funds, Don Surber looked into it for you.

An interview with Michael Crichton, who was a smart fellow well-regarded, until he came out against the Global Warming gang.

More thoughts on the new Harry Potter Cover from the Hogwarts Professor

The economy rose again, but that’s like a state secret, or something. For more good news (and bad) check out Jules Crittenden’s latest round up of good news you don’t read about and “bad” news you do.

Good news from the Afghan front.

Lorie Byrd says Rosie O’ Donnell knows who to blame for all of it. Well, the “bad” news, anyway. She’s a scholar, you know, is our Rosie. She knows how to google stuff. Her latest meltdown here.

I think President Bush should hire these gals to do his communications work. They seem to have more media savvy than his WH.

Who makes you think? Which blogger? Maybe send them that link to tell them so!

John Murtha wants to re-instate the draft?

Steve Forbes likes Rudy. Dave Weigel asks: So is Rudy carving out a niche as the fiscal conservative candidate who’ll govern like Reagan without the speeches to the March for Life?

I think Judi sitting in on cabinet meetings isn’t much different from Roslyn, Nancy and other first ladies doing the same, but I frankly don’t want to get a “two for the price of one vibe” off of Rudy. I didn’t like it when Clinton did it - and I was a liberal dem back then - and frankly, I don’t want to hear about it from Hillary, either. Of course spouses have influence over presidents…but we’re not electing them, dammit.

How does the anger of women affect men? Dr. Helen looks at it.

It’s always stupid to mess with Mary. Ah, well.

There’s also the Chocolate Jesus. Picture of it can be seen here, but you know…Christians are not supposed to be offended. Really, I think this is just an artist trying to get famous by what Ann Althouse would call “insulting upwards,” even though, of course, the artist says he means no insult by depicting the Christian savior with exposed genitalia…in chocolate. Truth be told, it’s not such a bad piece of art, but the medium he used, chocolate, and the title, “My Sweet Lord,” that’s in dubious taste. Then again…our salvation is sweet…

I have to be honest, though, I never did “get” the chocolate crosses at Easter time when I was a kid. Chocolate bunnies and eggs, okay…crosses? Talk about cognitive dissonance.

Heading out for retreat - much needed - if you are inclined to prayer, please consider whispering one up for me! Thanks. And don’t forget to send some prayers in the direction of Ed, the First Mate and her donor!

“You have told me, O God, to believe in hell. But you have forbidden me to think, with any certainty, of any man as damned.”
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ in his book The Divine Milieu

That might well be the paradox of classical liberalism. Being a classical liberal means not really having a home in 21st Century America. The hard left, having redefined the world “liberal” to mean “jack-booted, intolerant, narrow-minded and oppressive” won’t welcome you and the hard right, having redefined the word “classical” to mean “entrenched and paranoid,” doesn’t want you, either. Both left and right seem, increasingly, like two sides of the same coin, and that coin seems to me to be ever-decreasing in value. Bad penny.

A few days ago I wrote about Elizabeth Edwards’ Cancer and how the fact of it seemed to be tripping up so many people. I also wrote: She and her husband have made a decision about how they will live their lives in the face of it. They’re entitled to make that decision without having to justify it to you or to me.

Those two little sentences set off something of a firestorm in my email box from both the hard left and the hard right, and since I have personal situations going on over here that have kept my attention diverted, I’ve only just had a chance to really read these missives.

From the left, I got a lot of, “oh yeah? People are entitled to make their own decisions? How come you go after women who’ve had abortions, then? How come you want to overturn Roe v. Wade? Huh? Huh? How come you won’t let people like Michael J Fox get cured by using stem cells, what about that, you fascist moron hypocritical theocon global-warming denialist?”

Sheesh. I defy anyone to go into my archives and show me where I have ever “gone after” women who have had abortions. I think you’ll find it’s quite the opposite.

Would I like to see Roe v. Wade overturned? Yes. It was a law made by a court - not by legislators, not by the people, and I believe abortion law should be an issue settled state-by-state.

Do I want to see women “condemned to die in back-alley abortions?” Of course not…but I would like to see some honesty from the pro-abortion side about what abortion is, how it affects women and men and teenagers. I’d like to see some honesty about the fact that so many young girls who have abortions have been exploited by older men who hide their crime by paying for this grave procedure. I’d like to see the hype taken out of the numbers thrown around. I’d like to see some studies about whether an abortion after rape brings about more healing than giving birth does…that’s an interesting question no one has ever studied.

I’d like to see the strong supporters of abortion, who rest their support on the shaky foundation of “compassion,” manage to be consistent by showing compassionate understanding and support to the parents of Downs Syndrome children, instead of callously asking whether they’d had genetic screening so they could have aborted the imperfect child.

I’d like to see the press cover the annual Right-to-Life March in DC - attended by literally tens of thousands each year - with the same photo/text space they give to much smaller anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-whatever marches. A little honesty, you know. A little balance.

Am I against curing disease with stem cells? - Again, look at my archives. As with the abortion debate, all I keep asking for and fighting for is some honesty and accuracy from the left and the press on that issue. I have no problem with Stem Cell Research using Adult Stem Cells, and neither does any Christian I know, and neither does our much-maligned and lied about president. Embryonic Stem Cells? Different story…different ethical questions…different results, too.

Once again, because it never seems to get through to some folks: President Bush AND we “Christian creeps” support stem cell research involving adult stem cells, and great advances are being made using them, harvesting them from nasal cavities, from fat, from blood itself, from placentas and umbilical cords. We object to Embryonic Stem Cell research and do not think the government should be funding such dubious science. No one is trying to stop such research, though, in the private sector. And if the Embryonic stem cell research was proving its hype, it would have investors up the wazoo. It doesn’t…because for all the hype, Embryonic Stem Cell Research is yielding nothing good.

Do I want to withhold curative therapies from “people like Michael J Fox”? Please. So many of these people telling me I want Fox to suffer - which I don’t - are also people who come down on the side of “compassionately injecting” those whose illnesses become too burdensome on family or society. I want Michael J Fox to live his life to the full, to have access to healing and curative therapies or - if they don’t exist - to be able to live out his life to its natural end in dignity. I will always come down on the right of a living human being to continue to live the life he or she has, despite what others may think of the “quality” of that life. I will always err on the side of keeping what is alive, alive. I will always support someone being allowed to live the life he or she has to its natural conclusion, over their being expeditiously and “compassionately” put down.

Am I a Global Warming “Denialist”? I love these labels and how quick some are to embrace them. Yes, I guess I am, by the measure of the “true believers.” I don’t deny that the planet may be warming up - after all - other planets are, too. I do deny that there is hard, convincing, scientific evidence that humanity is the cause of it. So I’m a denialist. I guess I’ll be burned at the stake for my heresy in not bowing to The Dogma of the Goracle. You guys just make sure you purchase your carbon-offsets for the flame.

The other side of the nasty emails came from the hard right, from people who are convinced that Elizabeth and John Edwards are exploiting her cancer for the sympathy vote. “She originally said her prognosis was less than 5 years, but in People magazine she says it’s 10-15 years! She’s just using her cancer!”

Well…I hope that’s not true. But if it is…she’s still waking up each morning and looking into her kids faces and realizing she probably won’t be able to share in the joy of their marriages, their children’s successes - she won’t be dandling a grandchild on her knee…so you’ll excuse me if I don’t jump on board a train of condemnation. I’m afraid my compassion outweighs my rush to judgment.

Some on the right will join the Global-Warming Left as they burn me at the stake - for the crime of not being “pro-life enough” because I consider Rudy Giuliani a strong contender for the GOP nomination for ‘08. To that my answer may also be found in my archives: presidents cannot change abortion law - if they could, the current president, the most pro-life president in our history - would have done it. But even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, it will not end abortion. Frankly, overturning Roe v. Wade will simply inspire hard-left activism by the perpetual adolescents who love to have something to resist, and that will in turn inspire more hard-right activism from some passionate-and-frustrated folks who may find themselves in the ironic position of taking extreme measures to promote their respect for life. Think it won’t happen? Among reasonable folks it won’t, but hard right and hard left left “reasonable” behind long ago.

Here is the truth about abortion: With or without Roe v. Wade women will get abortions and greedy providers will do the deed. Abortion will continue to exist - and continue to tear at the fabric of our nation - until something that is broken within the human heart has been healed. President Bush, addressing one of the Right-to-Life Marches said: “A true culture of life cannot be sustained solely by changing laws. We need, most of all, to change hearts.”

He was quite right. No one wants to hear it, but it’s the truth.

Does that mean no one should march, laws should not be changed? Of course not. But realize that when you’re dealing with the human heart (and its soul) human activities will always have limited results, and therefore fervor must always be tempered with compassion, and frustration must always be soothed by personal humility, too.

And this is why I keep to myself, mostly, and am not much of a joiner. Because, really, no one wants to hear that a tad of darkness will always exist where there is light. But we need to remember it, because that means that where there is overwhelming darkness, a bit of piercing light will always come through, too.

The world is an imperfect place. People have imperfect hearts. Dark and light co-exist. Right and left must learn to, also - to preserve the paradoxical but necessary balance between opposing viewpoints - or our nation will continue to descend into blathering nothingness until its taken over by something else, for nature abhors a vacuum.

All one can do - really - is try to hold on to one’s own capacity for kindness and see one’s humanity reflected in another.

What’s that old quote: Be kind - for everyone you meet is engaged in a mighty struggle. You don’t have to have any religion at all to take that good advice.

The look on this little boy’s face…will move you to tears. H/T Sally.

[Cressy] clasped one of Lady Denville’s hands, and ventured to say: “I feel, too, thatt Miss Askham will make a charming wife.”

Lady Denveill looked at her in an awed way. “Cressy, she has been reared on the strictest principles, and her mama is full of propriety, and [my son] Evelyn says that they are all of them truly good and saintly! Indeed, he described [his beloved] Patience to me as an angel! Well, dearest, I wouldn’t for a moment deny that that is - is most admirable, but I find saintly persons excessively uncomfortable and cannot live with an angel!”

The beguilingly dotty and memorable Dowager Countess Denville says it for all of us, about 3/4 of the way through Georgette Heyer’s delightfully madcap False Colours, wherein we find twin brothers Kit and Evelyn up to their necks in the soup while their charming Mama makes even the reader believe that there’s nothing too untoward about being $20,000 in debt, with an heir besotted with a Quakerish gal while betrothed to a girl of good breeding who herself wants nothing more than to get busy with the second son, not that anyone really knows which brother is which.

I love it.

And because I’m on a Heyer kick let me add that I adored, adored, adored The Corinthian, which was devoured in a single night and had me laughing until I wept. If you need a laugh, and you’re inclined to Regency/Austinian writing which reminds you of nothing so much as a great screwball comedy from the golden age of screwballs…you must indulge yourself and get these books! Also, The Grand Sophy had me in stitches!

Well, he looks a bit like a Gladiator in an exhibitionist venue and we do know that Harry and Voldemort must finally go mano-a-mano.

Buster and I are immediately arguing. I say it looks like Harry and Voldemort are dueling before an audience; Buster disagrees and says Voldemort is too great a coward to do anything so overt - he’ll look to the sneak-kill.

I doubt it. Voldemort’s weak point is the weak point of tyrants, despots and needy, eternal politicians from time immemorial: he wants to be loved - desperately, unequivocally - but his whole concept of love is so distorted that he can only accept (or define and acknowledge) that love as it is expressed through the roar (or fear) of an acquiescent people, and lived within the offices of power. That will feel “enough like love” to him, because he knows nothing of real love and wouldn’t dare to open himself up to it, anyway, because real love is always vulnerable, and Voldemort and his type have too much self-loathing and insecurity to ever let anything like real love in. They are tragic figures, ultimately.

But, as I have said before, that need to be loved…it either raises you up, or it utterly brings you down. Real love rarely makes mistakes, but huge mistakes are always made in the demanding pursuit of that thing that “feels enough like love,” but never really suits.

And remember the worlds of the late Fr. Alexander Schmemann, former Dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, who counseled, “Every evil screams out only one message: ‘I am good!’”

Yes, Voldemort wants to be loved. I could see him getting into an arena with Harry and taking him on as a way to win over the magical world, much as Commodus took on Maximus in the film Gladiator because he, too, was desperate to be loved, and in pursuit of it he made a tremendous miscalculation.

As to the book, editor Arthur A Levine has brought it to the US, and as Rowling has promised, this is going to be a rough ride.

When Levine admitted he “sobbed and sobbed” while reading the book, Vieira made a valiant-but-failed final effort to get Levine to disclose whether Harry Potter is finally done in by Lord Voldemort.

“Well, it means it is a very, very emotional book,” Levine said.

There are some very good reasons to believe that Rubeus Hagrid will die in Book 7, and I bet we’ll all “cry and cry” when that happens.

I argued last year that there may well be reason to believe that, from a storyteller’s perspective in narrative, it would be best to kill off Harry Potter as well. There are ideas pro-and-con. Some insist that Harry must become the final-and-forever Defense against Dark Arts teacher, others who contend that he will be the new headmaster. I doubt that. I think - against everyone’s instincts - Snape will end up being the new Headmaster of Hogwarts, confounding all expectations. He’s going to be heroic in Book 7, no matter what, as Dave Kopel predicts.

Oh boy, summer is coming! Baseball and a new Harry Potter! I may plotz! My husband, in anticipation of the Movie (#5, Order of the Pheonix) is busily reading that book. Buster and I are sharing a re-read of Book 6, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in anticipation of this last (can we bear to have no further HP books over which to moon?) release.

Your thoughts? Let’s mix it up a little!

Sword of Gryffindor has jacket notes and links to the full American and UK covers. On the British cover it looks like Harry, Ron and Hermione are sailing through a sewer full of treasure.

The Daily Prophet says that’s perhaps Godric Gryffindor’s bank vault at Gringott’s. She’s made a lot of other keen observations, as well, and I’m particularly taken with her thoughts on the meaning of Bill and Fleur’s wedding.

Also visit:
JK Rowling’s incredible site (You could spend hours there)
Hogwarts Professor
The Leaky Cauldron
The Harry Potter Lexicon
MuggleNet
Wizard News

Okay, once upon a time, there was a young boy named Sanjaya Malakar who got it going with a gospel choir. Then he made it into the finals on American Idol and…lost it.

Here’s Sanjaya, looking about 14 years old, doing much better than anything he’s shown lately.

Someone send this kid some Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, some Mighty Clouds of Joy and get him back on track. Or something.

The rest of American Idol last night…what a snore. The barely-interested Gwen Stefani, taking advantage of a huge show to promote her tour, came off like a Sister Frigidaire. Egad.

LaKisha looked a little angry/mean; I get the impression she just wants to move on to the recording contract she knows she’ll score win or lose. Gina gave her best, most controlled performance. Melinda - vocally great as ever, but another meh song choice.

Was it me or did Phil look like Nicholas Cage’s younger, paler brother in that hat? He, like Gina, managed to keep it controlled and did alright. That Chris Sligh kid…maybe I’m being unfair but he gives off such an “I hate all of you, and I’m only holding back my contempt because I must” vibe from him. I’d like him to go home, he scares me, and that’s a shame because he has a wonderful quality to his voice.

I love Jordin Sparks - she’s got a wondrous instrument and she takes risks, and she’s adorable, besides. And I love that she’s an enormous (not fat, just big) linebacker of a kid. She’s like a teenage Amazonian music warrior. She could be a super-hero character. And what a smile! Not a great song choice, though, and in too low a key.

The rest I don’t even remember. Chris R? Blake? I don’t get what people find sexy in either of them, but Blake is a good performer. Haley? She has gorgeous legs. Shouldn’t she be singing on a cruise line? Whatever.

As ever, Ann Althouse has the funnest read.

Tony Snow’s cancer has returned and metastasized to the liver. GM Roper, who knows about battling cancer, has a affecting post on it.

Everything Old is New Again, at least when it comes to hating presidents of a particular bent.

The Rickster has questions for Hillary about those US Attorney firings:

So… I’m a little simple… but here’s the math as I see it… firing all U.S. Attorneys as her husband did in 1993 is the “traditional prerogative of an incoming president”. Firing 93 and replacing them with political ideologues who’ll agree with Democrats is good, very good. Firing 8 and replacing them with political ideologues who’ll agree with Republicans is “a conservative push to shift the balance of power in favor of the executive branch” and thusly bad, very bad.

Curt tries to help Rick out by explaining that it’s a “liberal” thing You see…if a DEMOCRAT president fires all the US Attorneys, that’s tradition. If a REPUBLICAN president does that, it’s shifting the balance of power nefariously, and I don’t know how you explain the fact that some of the US Attorneys fired by Gonzales are conservatives. But that’s Hillaryland for you.

BBC is spending an awful lot of money to cover its own rear-end.

On a better British front, Brits at their Best looks at slavery and how Brits helped abolish it. A great multi-parter I think you’ll really like - elegant, informative and classy.

The Dems are promoting the biggest tax increase in US History?. I’m plotzing in surprise, over here!

At the UN: Hey, you, don’t be truthful; it’s rude.

On the “Green” front, Britain is intruding into individual freedoms for Gaia, Robert Tracinski looks at What Al Gore really wants (Love me and let me be in charge!) and Michael Barone talks about Gore’s Bad Science. It seems we’re all gonna die!!!. But some are repentant.

If you haven’t read Michael Yon’s latest, it’s worth your time.

Is the blogosphere just a “bitchfest”? Dr. Helen is on the case.

I can’t wait for my pear tree to blossom like this. Baseball is coming!!!!

Interesting interview of Rudy Giuliani by Kudlow

Finally, thanks to Hootsbuddy, check out the enchanting giant girl puppet. Street theater, the French seem to do well. This is wonderful.

Dr. Sanity’s longstanding Carnival of the Insanities was posted on Sunday, and it always is a hoot deserving your attention.

Jules Crittenden now gives us his Moronocy of Dunces and from Sean Penn’s “Moron offsets” on down…it’s remarkable. Enjoy.

Wind up with Mary Katharine Ham’s excellent and helpful video on how to save the world thru activism.

Betsy Newmark writes about the essay portion of the SAT’s and how they may be gamed, as demonstrated by an MIT professor writing trash. Go read it.

Good writing skills go hand-in-hand with good reading skills, and with critical thinking. These skills are not really taught any more. Rather, students are being taught “to the test,” and for that, neither thinking nor information need be clear. Like so much of post-modernist bunk, students can meet the trick if they simply learn “the form” of a thing without learning its function or substance.

I know this is true because a teacher pal of mine shared this story with me. While grading a regents exam for Global History she came across one student essay that had her both amused and horrified. “Because essays are subjective, we’re not supposed to consider content in the grading,” she said, “and that’s really correct because you don’t want some teacher grading down an essay simply because she disagrees with, for instance, the religious or political outlook of the student…but this essay! The student began with a standard opening paragraph: ‘throughout global history, da-dah-da-dah-yadda-yadda,’ and she ended with a proper concluding paragraph, ‘in consideration blah, blah, throughout global history, blah, blah…’ but the middle paragraph began: ‘the *** are a filthy, disgusting people and I don’t understand why we had to learn about them…’

The student’s middle was basically a run-down of all the ethnic and religious groups on whom she felt her attention wasted while studying Global History, but with appropriate words here and there tossed in, “indigenous,” “culturally advanced” etc.

“I had no choice,” my friend said, “the grading standards were clear. She got points for having the opening and concluding paragraph and for using “key words” that expressed understanding of certain ideas. Because I had to give her those points, she got a passing grade, and in the theory of political correctness that’s pretty much as it should be, because her ‘content’ should not be subject to my ‘judgment,’ as long as she’s demonstrating applied knowledge of form and concepts…but this really isn’t what 11 years of education is supposed to boil down to, is it?”

Perhaps we should bring back that good-old (but terribly unsophisticated) teaching method demanding rote memorization of facts. Yes, facts may simply be burped back at the world, but at least facts are solid and once a kid learns them, he tends to retain them and that might help down the road, when - as an adult - a kid may actually have to - you know - think instead of feel,; he may need something solid on which to build the foundation of thought. Facts are helpful.

This idea of conceptual education, which is teaching kids how to take tests well, doesn’t allow their active thoughts to land on anything taut enough for a re-bound. Instead their thoughts land on something soft and mushy…and then they stay there.

Education was “deconstructed” thanks to the generation whose whole purpose of existence seems to have been about tearing down anything and everything that came before them (particularly anything of a remotely authoritative bent) and replacing what it has destroyed with amorphous, unstructured blobbiness. Well…this is the result.

The Genie is out of the bottle, and the teachers unions are powerful as hell. I don’t see how this gets fixed.

Protein Wisdom deplores what we’re creating while Siggy brings us some excellent thoughts by Mamacita.

Checking in with some of the girls, we find:

The Domincan Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist being profiled by the CBC, and sounding just glorious in chant, as their order grows and grows. (Click where indicated to view the video). This very young order (both in existence and median age) recently welcomed 15 more postulants and clothed 14 or so novices.

The Desert Nuns - Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration who are building an Arizona foundational offshoot from Mother Angelica’s digs, report that their first postulant is preparing to be clothed in the habit and received into the novitiate, and they’re showing the first renderings of what they hope will be their monastery, someday.

The Poor Clare’s Motherhouse, meanwhile, is standing room only, with pictures of their newbies and finally professed.

Carmelites clothed: If you click the recent events sidebar at “Investiture Ceremony”, you can see two novices get geared up. These Carmelites spend most of their novitiate in their shudder-inducing postulant togs until just a few months before first vows. They look very happy to move from blue to brown.

Some orders have better-looking habits than others, but the ones that have habits and a clear message of commitment and witness are the ones that seem to be growing.

The Nashville Dominicans of St. Cecelia welcomed another sizable crew of postulants and clothed 12 new novices. The sisters median age: 36. Do check out their lovely, recently improved upon Motherhouse.

The Benedictines of St. Walburga’s Abbey in cold, cold Colorado are boasting two new postulants, two novices and four in first vows - not bad for a life of silence, renunciation and enclosure in the 21st century. Not bad at all. This house in Vermont is also growing, as is this one in Connecticut.

“Contemplatives want to do the work of active orders, the active orders of lay people,” said Abbot Bernard.

“Perhaps the lay people will turn to contemplation,” said Abbess Catherine.

“Then they will need the very grilles your progressives are seeking to take down; renew the solitude and silence, the prayer we are letting decay with all this busyness. They should read the Rule - and the Council documents that tell us to go back to our sources - but it seems they cannot read anymore, not with their minds.”

“Yes. They have forgotten the meaning of things,” said Dame Agnes.
- In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden, published 1969.

Everything goes around, like a wheel, back and forth, like a pendulum. Every movement inspires a correcting movement. That’s how things stay balanced.