Only the dead have seen the end of war.

Yet the poor fellows think they are safe! They think that the war is over! Only the dead have seen the end of war.

 George Santayana, Tipperary.

Helping people up.

It’s a cruel jest to say to a bootless man he ought to lift himself up.

Martin Luther King

Howled down

We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green.

G.K. Chesterton

To build a fire.

And all the while the dog sat and watched him, a certain yearning wistfulness in its eyes, for it looked upon him as the fire provider, and the fire was slow in coming. 

Jack London, "To Build A Fire"

You can tell that you are historically minded when you see "Fetterman"

 on a Twitter link, and automatically assume it must apply to William J. Fetterman.

Participation in lies

The simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation lies right here: Personal non-participation in lies.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Jello.

I’ve observed before that only creatures with backbone are able to be rigid. Jello isn’t rigid. That’s why it conforms to whatever mold it is poured into.

Fr. Dwight Longnecker

Enlightenment

Last fall, I received a letter from a student who said she would be “graciously appreciative” if I would tell her “just what enlightenment” I expected her to get from each of my stories. I suspect she had a paper to write. I wrote her back to forget about the enlightenment and just try to enjoy them.

Flannery O’Connor

No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.

No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.

Samuel Johnson

When Dyslexia Strikes.

You never know when that's going to occur.

I saw this in an online newspaper:

Libertarian group sues to block student debt cancellation

I thought it said, "Librarian group sues. . . ", which left me wondering why this was an issue near and dear to the hearts of librarians. 

Apparently, it isn't.

While I think it's a bad idea, I’m also not too sure why it's important to libertarians.  If I read the article, I'd know, but I’m not going to bother.

The governed universe.

Every movement in the skies or upon the earth proclaims to us that the universe is under government.

John William Draper.

Robert Clary

We were not even human beings. When we got to Buchenwald, the SS shoved us into a shower room to spend the night. I had heard the rumours about the dummy shower heads that were gas jets. I thought, 'This is it.' But no, it was just a place to sleep. The first eight days there, the Germans kept us without a crumb to eat. We were hanging on to life by pure guts, sleeping on top of each other, every morning waking up to find a new corpse next to you. ... The whole experience was a complete nightmare — the way they treated us, what we had to do to survive. We were less than animals. Sometimes I dream about those days. I wake up in a sweat terrified for fear I'm about to be sent away to a concentration camp, but I don't hold a grudge because that's a great waste of time. Yes, there's something dark in the human soul. For the most part, human beings are not very nice. That's why when you find those who are, you cherish them.

 Robert Clary (born Robert Max Widerman), famous for Hogan's Heroes.

Some observations on being sick/injured

Lex Anteinternet: On the sick list.: This has been my view for the past several days.  It's a view of the mountain, between the parking garage and an administrative building...

Some random observations.

Daytime television is truly horrific.

Having a "lazy Sunday" or "lazy weekend", i.e., one which you spend all around the house (which I almost never do) is no fun at all if it's enforced on you.  I.e., you are there, as you have no choice.  It's only fun, if you have the option not to do it. 

It's hard to be sick, and be a professional.  I.e., occupy a profession.  Your obligations do not cease.

I'm sure that's true of all self-employed as well.  If I have to go out and harvest a field, well, I have to.

Out of Sync. The Hail Mary makes a surprising appearance in advertising.

How you can tell you are: 1) out of sync with the culture, and 2) Catholic.  I thought this Coca-Cola tweet was about real Hail Mary's, the prayer.

Go big or go home, that’s what game day is all about! Here’s to giving every game and watch party your all. #CocaCola

coca-cola.com

Savor Every Moment

Coca-Cola was referring, of course, to the long desperate forward pass in football which has been irreverently nicknamed after the prayer.  I don't watch football (it's titanically boring), and it took me a minute to realize what this was referring to.

The Hail Mary is, of course, the ancient Christian prayer petitioning Mary for assistance.  Its basic text is:

Hail, Mary, full of grace,

the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou amongst women

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death. 

Amen.

I actually learned it in the post Vatican II American Church as:

Hail, Mary, full of grace,

the Lord is with you.

Blessed are you amongst women

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death. 

Amen.

The formulation of the prayer is a little lost to history, but it seems to have come about gradually.  Some of it's text, of course, comes right from the New Testament.  References to early forms of the prayer appear in the mid 11th Century through the 13th.  It rose in the Latin Rite and therefore, the early versions took shape in Latin, which of course was also the language of the Latin Rite up until the 1960s.

In Latin, it's the Ave Maria, the text of which is:

Ave Maria, gratia plena

Dominus tecum

benedicta tu in mulieri­bus, 

et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.

Sancta Maria mater Dei,

ora pro nobis peccatoribus, 

nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. 

Amen.

Contrary to what some seem to think, it has an Eastern Rite expression as well, and therefore also an Orthodox one.  The Eastern version is not used as extensively as the Latin Rite version, but isn't infrequently used.  Its text is:

Θεοτόκε Παρθένε, χαῖρε,κεχαριτωμένη Μαρία, ὁ Κύριος μετὰ σοῦ. εὐλογημένη σὺ ἐν γυναιξί, καὶ εὐλογημένος ὁ καρπὸς τῆς κοιλίας σου, ὅτι Σωτῆρα ἔτεκες τῶν ψυχῶν ἡμῶν.

Translating from the Greek is a little dangerous, as terms can be translated straight across and lose their meaning, but using that sort of translation, this translates to:

God-bearing Virgin (Theotokos), rejoice, grace-filled Mary, the Lord with thee. Praised thou among women, and praised the fruit of thy womb, because it was the Saviour of our souls that thou borest.

The Slavonic version, used in some of the Eastern Rite churches, is:

Богородице дѣво радѹйсѧ

ѡбрадованнаѧ Марїе

Господь съ тобою

благословена ты въ женахъ,

и благословенъ плодъ чрева твоегѡ,

Якѡ родила еси Христа Спаса,

Избавителѧ дѹшамъ нашимъ.

The prayer not only has crossed certain lines following the Great Schism, but it's done the same in regard to the Reformation, being used in the Lutheran churches and in the Anglican Communion.

All of which goes to show something, and among the things shown by Coca-Cola's use is that somebody at Coca-Cola is as clueless on certain things as I am.

It's not cold in here.

So Long Suffering Spouse tells me.

Feels pretty darned cold to me.  And I'm not the only one.

I've been married now for almost 30 years, and for most of that time, I've been cold at home.  During the winter, the thermostat is kept low, not for economic reasons, but because "it's not cold in here".  The heat doesn't even tend to really come on here, on a permanent basis, until the snow starts flying.

As soon as spring hits, most years, the swamp cooler comes on.  I hate air conditioning anyway, but its set at freeze, or something.  

This year I got a bit of a break on that as for some reason my wife didn't turn it on very often.  It did come on, but not like it has in most years.  So summer wasn't brutally cold, indoors.

In contrast, the air conditioning was on at work after it got fixed.  I was hoping it wasn't going to get fixed, as I hate it.  But it was. There are only a couple of occupants of my quarter of the building, and one of them is one of the people who thinks it's hot in the building, so on it came.

Oddly, while its intermittent now, it's still on, and somebody thinks they have to have the blower on even if the air conditioning is not on.

We didn't have air conditioning in the house when I was a kid.

Ugh. . .

it's football season.

The season of the most boring sport ever devised.

The debate long time couples have.

F:  Should I do X?

M:  I don't know, what do you want to do?

F.  I don't know, that's why I asked.

M.  Do X.

F:  Maybe I should do Y.

M.. . . .

F. Well, I probably shouldn't do X, as Y would work out better

M: Well, then do Y.

F:  But there are also the following 2,752 options, which I shall now detail in mind-numbing thoroughness.

Approximately an hour later.

F:  Which should I do?

M:  I don't care, do what you feel you should.

F: Well, if you are going to be that way. . . 

M:  Do X.

F:  What about Y?

Just reading the appointment. . .

 surely, you have got to be kidding?

Salaries and understanding

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair.

The Breaks.

I know that there will be many people who are relieved, and perhaps quite a few who will also be disappointed and I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world, but thems the breaks.

Boris Johnson