It varies. Lots of terminals. Some are out of this world, some are generic and meh, and some are in between. Best part is that it isn't that far away from Central London (even though a cab is quite expensive, there is an express train to Paddington that isn't expensive and gets you into Central London very quickly).
This. Better than Charles De Gaulle and Frankfurt, but that’s the soft bigotry of low expectations. Budapest’s airport is small but sleek and efficient. Istanbul and Warsaw are the top European and Euro adjacent airports, in my experience. I love flying to Rome since they opened an Eataly there.
Give me my small American airports (Wichita, Chattanooga) where I can park my car right in front of the arrivals door for 30 minutes at a time, maybe more if I have my blinkers on.
And baked beans on toast for breakfast is a luxury.
(Edit: at Reagan in DC I saw a cop threaten to arrest a cab driver for lingering too long in front of the arrivals door. In Wichita the cop would make the news and be denounced as a Gestapo/Stasi agent.)
Although cars can't linger in the drop-off lane, Indianapolis International is considered the best mid-sized airport in the country: compact, clean, and easy to use.
Apart from teenage trips to Spain and Mexico I've only ever flown domestically. The Tampa airport here is very well designed to handle the traffic it gets. There are several satellite terminals where the gates to the planes are located surrounding the main building where ticketing and baggage claim are located with shops and restaurants for those who come inside to pick up people. Each terminal has its own security; I've seldom had to wait more than 15 minutes in line and often I've cruised right through the TSA kabuki. The terminals are quite spacious so I've never fell crowded in like a sardine in a can.
It appears the Singapore Airport is beyond compare in this world, but I've never been there. I don't know on favorites, but yes, Budapest has all you could ask for - not crowded, no long walks, a near-free bus to take you there.
But I guess maybe any UK airport is my favorite because, well, I just like the way you talk!
quick edit: changed "they" to "you" because I saw the person I was replying to.
Can definitely confirm about Seoul/Incheon, which was my "home" airport for fifteen years. I've been to Singapore once, and tried to check out some of the perks I'd heard about, but was more preoccupied with getting on my journey "home". Of course, Asian infrastructure in general puts that in the U.S. to shame. That's what happens when you spend your money buying expensive toys for the military and funding foolish adventures overseas, contrary to the wise counsel of the Founders.
Beans on toast may make a little more sense, according to something I read not too long ago. (I'm sure I saw it at least once at a bed and breakfast, and didn't know what to make of it, either!) Apparently, the British version of beans is not sweetened nearly as much as that in the U.S. Likewise, my Korean staff found U.S. cookies much too sweet for their tastes. Their chocolate is more like dark chocolate.
Milwaukee has the only airport in the country with a well-stocked Renaissance Book Store. In fact its now the only venue the store has, although originally it had a five story stock of books downtown also.
The downtown bookstore was amazing, but when I visited it for the first time in 2010, I thought the whole building was going to fall down at any moment or all of us were going to die in a fire. Do they still have a branch out at Southridge mall? (I think they may be the only used bookstore in an airport!)
I never knew about Southridge Mall. I'll have to check that out. The five story building was condemned because it was likely to fall down, and they lost a lot of books because they couldn't get it together to remove them.
Yeah. Awhile back I posted a couple youtube videos of the last days of the downtown building. They did find some interesting historical stuff though. It was amazing, but the only store I've ever been in where I figured the odds of coming out alive might be about 50/50. 😂
Best airport in London is City, though. Of course, if you don't mind adrenaline-filled landings. But at least you can wave hello at that pretty HSBC girl in the skyscraper.
I'm at Heathrow departures 2 times a year at least. No soup for you if you want luxury. Not too different form the USA - but - You need a lounge pass for Heathrow. The general lounge is very crowded. There are lots of shops. I'm speaking of T3, normally the terminal for UK to USA. The other terminals are less crowded, but of course they don't have the 100-shop Duty Free shopping mall in an airport. American airport restaurants are often, not always, greasy spoons (Chilis). Heathrow's are not much better, though there is one of those "merry go round, pick your sushi off the belt" places, and there is a pub where you can get sausage.
And...I always have them hold the baked beans! Sausages are great in England. But the bacon - that's not bacon. It's ham!
We flew home from there last year. I am handicapped , use a walker when traveling, and cannot stand for more than a few minutes. My husband found me a seat far across from our gate and he hovered around walking back and forth for more than an hour. Everyone was polite but the crowding was worse than anything we’ve seen anywhere else. He is in the FBO private aviation business and flies all over the US.
Susanne - my bad knee gave me trouble for quite a time though I am much better now. I also had a procedure on a nerve in my back and before that could not stand in lines for more than ten minutes or so without things becoming excruciating. I used to ask for a wheelchair at airports due to these things. I hesitated and suffered but then I finally tried it. It always went really well. They have a lounge even if you are flying coach if you use a wheelchair at Heathrow and don't yet know your gate. When the gate comes up, another wheelchair arrives to take you there. It is not the greatest lounge, but at least it is a guaranteed seat. I've been fine with wheelchairs at other airports as well.
I've been through Heathrow a couple of times and absolutely hate it. My general experience has been "meh", but the last time I was through was with kids, and I am convinced that the one airport attendant was purposely trying to make us miss our connecting flight. (No, not kidding at all.) However, Heathrow is not even close to my loathing of Atlanta and Philadelphia. I don't mind O'Hare (or even Chicago-Midway), though Munich seems to be the one for me that feels most like home.
Edit: L'viv, Ukraine also has to be at the bottom of my list. At least I didn't fly there on LOT. (Yes, another story).
Edit 2: I did have one unfortunate mix-up in Frankfurt, but they were very nice about the whole thing, and I got a hotel voucher out of it. (They were doing construction, and their "detour" signs - which I could read in two languages - led me to the wrong place, which caused me to miss my next flight because the first flight was so late coming in that the only way I would have made it is flying through customs and going directly to the correct gate.)
Agree. Of the airports I've been to, Atlanta is one of my three least favorite, joined by DFW and Newark. Now that I am back in Florida I will take whatever circuitous route I must to avoid a layover there. (And driving, I will take alternate routes that give Atlanta's infamous traffic congestion wide berth)
San Francisco deserves criticism but we do have a pretty good airport. SFO is compact and easy to navigate. Th food choices are steps above typical airport fare and not outrageously priced. (I remember looking a for a bite to eat at LAX and only finding Burger King.) Ground transportation is excellent; BART will take you downtown and beyond. (I remember taking the NYC subway to JFK and it was quite the ordeal.)
You say, "I will never, ever, ever understand how it is that British people can eat baked beans for breakfast." Yes, but have you ever actually seen anyone eat them?
Yes. We shipped tons of Heinz vegetarian baked beans during the war; on toast it makes a perfect protein, and there must have been a pamphlet advising that as a cheap and nourishing meal. It caught on.
There used to be a W.H. Smith bookstore on the Rue de Rivoli with a tea room upstairs. I went up to see what it was all about and there they were, sticking their English beaks into beans on toast. In Paris!
There is someone out there who could write a book on the expansion of the Britsih Commonwealth as a world-wide search for a better breakfast menu. (Really, the rest of the British Breakfast menu is a big dodgy.)
Dunno about that. The Brits just seem to have a habit of putting things on toast that taste much better plain. Baked beans for one. Sardines also come to mind.
Quick story, but I never ate pizza as a young boy until my grandfather showed me you could eat pizza with salty fish on it. Now I can eat most any pizza!
There is a local sandwich chain here that used to have 20 varieties of their feature sandwich, and on the menu their sardine one was touted as "Our 19th most popular!" Eventually a bigger outfit bought the chain and they got rid of it altogether, alas!
I've enjoyed many a Brit breakfast and I cleaned my plate each time. I am not the biggest bake beans fan, but the combo of foods on the tradBrit platter somehow work and are part of the experience. I look forward to doing it again.
Spoken like a soldier. But - all except the beans, man. Even a little of that horrid bean juice just wrecks what it touches. British bean juice is the worst! Boston baked beans have good juice, but what is that British stuff.
But, I have neglected to mention the great British sauce with breakfast. I speak, of course, of brown sauce! One must request it - it is known only to gourmets of British breakfast. One then puts it on the toast, and the horrid ham-like things they call bacon, on top of the toast, somehow taste good. In combo, as you say. And of course, there must be lashings of brown sauce on the sausage.
For beverage, it is the one meal in the world with which hot tea (milk and sugar) tastes good. British Breakfast Tea or Earl Grey.
And the mushrooms and tomatoes must be fried. I was once near-kicked-out of an Irish place -the Irish pretend the British breakfast is an Irish breakfast - well it was a pretend Irish place in the USA. This for saying I did not want my "Irish Breakfast" when they refused to fry the mushroom. A big raw mushroom. Argh.
Finally, wishing to try all things, I was in a Scottish B and B and was asked "Do you like kippers?". "Yes", I said, pretending to know. Big mistake!
I'm partial to Southern breakfasts with grits, toast, pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, and I do not mind potatoes with breakfast. Ah, I love grits. These breakfasts are quite fattening, though. This line of thinking is making me hungry, and I just ate!
I'm a southern boy, so of course I love those. Also, love the breakfasts I got when I was in Honduras. They cover your tortilla in some kind of sauce, don't know the name or how it is made, but it is delicious.
Other favorite breakfasts, shit on a shingle, toad in a hole, biscuits and gravy, steak and eggs. But any big breakfast, gotta have black coffee, and if you really want completeness, shot of whiskey and a handgun. With proper utensil ettiquete with the placing of the firearm.
I'm also a southerner but couldn't stand grits when I was growing up. Gross tasteless porridge. At some point in a adulthood I realized that the problem had been insufficient butter, salt and pepper, and got to liking them quite a lot with bacon and eggs. And even later I discovered cheese grits, which are absolutely marvelous.
Golly! I didn't think anyone here was capable of discussing Honduran breakfasts. What a treat! Had them every morning on medical mission (as educator, child worker, and water-filter person). Anyway, as you know - "tortillas" are not flat there, but like little corn cakes Then these delicious frijoles are put on top. There are also various salsas. Then there are friend plantains. And eggs. And various tropical juices. And good thick black coffee. And slices of white cheese to chunk amid the frijoles. Happy memories.
Yep, all that is true. Delicious. Honduras was my first assignment when I rejoined the Army as a broadcaster in 2002. I was the morning and mid-day disc jockey for the Power Lizard, our AFN station at Soto Cano airbase. I got my first taste of Honduran breakfast when I went to visit some Mayan ruins on leave at one point. Great trip, great meals.
I see it from time to time, but at a distance of roughly 5000 miles: watching British crime dramas. What I can see of the "full English" is often somewhat appalling. I do not aspire to sampling it.
On the other hand, somewhere along the line I heard about Marmite, was curious, eventually managed to try it, and now very much like a ight breakfast of toast with butter and Marmite and a bit of cheese. My first jar of Marmite, a dozen or so years ago, came from a shop specializing in British stuff of all sorts. Now the local Publix has it. I am apparently a trendsetter, as usual.
I'm tempted to start a thread to discuss the social status and acceptance in different cultures of the main side effect of beans, farting. But I know better.
There is no such thing as a Full English Breakfast without baked beans. You need them to moisten the bacon. True connoisseurs like myself make a sandwich of bacon, egg and beans, and eat it with the tea.
Incidentally, the Irish do the same. You Americans are just too uncultured to understand.
I was at an "Irish pub" yesterday (in Pensacola, Florida, where the barkeep was a Scotchman), and stared at the offering of brunch beans in befuddlement. I just had an Irish coffee!
Not long after marrying my Catholic wife I took up the challenge Douthat threw down in his NYT article A Guide to Finding Faith (the challenge being that if you go looking for the supernatural you will find it). It knocked down materialism and a couple of years later I converted
Nietzsche of all people wondered what if the philosophers were doing it wrong, and truth is like a woman?—the idea being that if you're closed off and rude and refuse to court the truth, then well, fine, it won't talk to you either. I also find that very connected to McGilchrist's thoughts on the importance of subjective disposition.
Good point, Sethu, bit some of the faithful get used to sweetness and prayer, which God often lavishes on the prayer. But there are bound to be periods of spiritual dryness, through which we must perservere, knowing God is with us, even if we cannot feel His presence and embrace at a sendory level or experience soothing emotions and sensations during prayer.
My sense is only really spiritually advanced people experience the dark night of the soul. One feels abandoned by God. It's more trying than spiritual dryness.
This is a bit cynical, but if the challenge is, 'If you go looking for the supernatural you will find it,' the integrity of the process is 50:50. Maybe you "found" what you wanted to find, not because it is there, but because you wanted to find it. I don't doubt you found much more over a couple of years. I'm content to drift -- yes, its there, no, I don't have a strong feel for it, but my life has definitely gone much better than I have any reason to expect from the random operation of a cold, indifferent universe. I could make a good argument I should have been homeless for the last twenty-five years. (Of course I haven't figured out why those who ARE homeless somehow deserved it, or deserved indifference to their fate).
Ah, Charlie, are you saying you're an agnostic? Hope not. The homeless are homeless for a variety of reasons, but in my book, there is absolutely no excuse for homelessness. We should not allow it. This is a rich country (still) and we could put these people in "little houses" (or trailers) if we had the political will. They'd have to be supervised and supported. We spend billions on helping the homeless. It doesn't get down to the level of the homeless, it gets siphoned off by layer after layer of bureaucracy and a little trickle get to the homeless. That's why there's tents everywhere or people living in their cars. And of course, the open borders guarantee growing homelessness.
I'm all for helping the homeless, but we do need to pay heed to the fact that a very many of them are not of sound mind, either because of legit mental illness, or because they have addled themselves with booze and drugs.
Did what I write sound agnostic? I can't imagine how. I just don't claim to have all the answers. As to homelessness, I agree that the way to end homelessness is to put everyone in a home. But JonF is also correct that not all can simply be left on their own. I grew up at a time when there was little to no homelessness. It really became a noticeable thing during the 1980s. Many blame it on Ronald Reagan, and the way the economy cratered and warped on his watch played a part. I also remember women with reasonably good jobs who couldn't afford the rapidly rising rents in their area. But, a lot of it had earlier roots. You ever watched "One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest"? Popular, entertaining, inspiring, but in many ways misleading. A while back, some people confined in asylums sued for their freedom, and, they had a point. They were people who could handle cleaning their own house, getting along with their neighbors, cooking their own meals -- maybe needed a conservator to make sure con men didn't rip them off every month. But the whole thing was a class action, and judges thoughtlessly ordered the asylums emptied out. A lot of people in there needed round the clock supervision. On their own, they wandered around, disoriented, some got into street drugs, a small number became truly homicidal if they weren't taking their meds, etc. So, tiny homes, decent affordable apartments, modest levels of supervision and support for those who need it, and asylums for those who truly can't be along on the street, with a reasonable presumption that anyone capable of filing a writ deserves their day in court to show they shouldn't be so tightly supervised. And yes, the poverty pimps lose their six figure salaries, and go get a real job laying track for high speed rail, or something.
Deinstitutionalization was initially coupled with "halfway houses" where mentally ill people were housed under supervision- and especially supervised about taking their meds. However these places tended to be concentrated in downscale neighborhoods (happened in my home town) where they soon became unpopular. And when the early 80s recession hit many states found that zeroing out mental health funding was easy to do. The "halfways" became "no ways" and unsupervised they ended up on the street.
Mostly true, but legislatures were rushing to cut budgets by shutting down asylums as soon as the first class action decisions came down. Deinstitutionalization was not always "coupled" with halfway houses -- a term more often used for people out of prison but still on paper. I think you meant "group homes." They are staffed by people desperate enough for work to take the job, are chronically understaffed, and are not structured to handle emergencies -- like the snow is too deep to take the occupants to a day program but no staff are scheduled to be there during the day and the night shift is tired. Its not a good arrangement -- although some of the staff develop quite a rapport with their charges.
There have been two independently done studies of homeless men in the last twenty years, the first in Toronto, the second in Dallas. The researchers in both instances found the same thing: 50% of the homeless men had had traumatic brain injuries. Anticipating media reproach for limiting the study to men, the director of the Toronto study said the researchers were confident that whatever medical abnormalities might exist in the homeless men they studied, the incidence of them in homeless women would be significantly higher.
Consider that! At least half of the homeless are certain to have had traumatic brain injuries. Add to that other kinds of illnesses ( which can bankrupt anyone ), various specifically mental illnesses, and addiction, and the mystery is that in a system which is as bereft of firm and decisive help for the homeless as ours, there isn't more homelessness.
Ah, well, it's true confession time. "Bobby Lime" is a Substack name, and those who know my actual identity would never reveal it because they know their lives wouldn't be good for twenty four hours if they did. So, here 'tis:
I'm in the category of people who was made homeless as a result of a traumatic brain injury. I have always maintained that the term, "traumatic brain injury," is in itself so traumatizing that those of us who are lucky possessors of one shouldn't have to go into details about just what our injuries have done to us. If you get a TBI, be sure to have a lot of money first, or at least relatives who aren't sociopaths. If you don't have the foresight to have secured at least one of those, and you get a TBI, you'll be far likelier to become homeless.
It happened to me for nine lovely weeks in the autumn of 2002. Shelters. Can you guess why homeless people despise shelters? It's because of the assaultive lack of privacy. Yes, there are people who would rather sleep in a park or on a sidewalk than go to a shelter. It's why your invocation of the need for "supervision" gave me a second's hysteria, though I concede you're right about it. There's a need to keep us TBI patients apart from those yucky schizophrenics.
All right, to be serious, having been among the damned, I can tell you the brief biographies of three others of them. I will be writing what I know about each. It's limited but telling.
1. Elizabeth. Elizabeth was thirty - nine when I knew her. She was extremely proud to be, as she liked to say, "100% Cherokee." I didn't have a thing in common with her except my liking to make jokes and her liking to laugh at them, but I'll confess to having had a ten day crush on her.
Elizabeth was born in dramatic circumstances. Her mother tried to abort the pregnancies - Elizabeth had a twin sister - by stabbing herself repeatedly. Elizabeth they were able to save. The sister they were not. The mother was sentenced to life in prison and hanged herself.
Elizabeth's father doted on her. Undoubtedly, she had fetal alcohol syndrome, and I don't know what the possibilities are for any such baby, but a loving parent can be miracle adjacent. But when Elizabeth was five, her father died.
She went to live with an aunt and an uncle, who loved her dearly. When Elizabeth was twelve, the uncle dropped dead in her presence.
2. Lori. Lori was, like Elizabeth, thirty - nine in 2002. When she was five, she had been raped. Four years later, at nine, another man kidnapped her, and kept her prisoner for weeks. His repeated rapings of her caused her permanent internal damage. Before he let her go, he took a souvenir, most of one of her middle fingers.
3. Richard. Richard was approximately thirty - five. The reason for the hedging about his age is that he didn't really know. When he was four or five, his mother had put him out of the house one day, not for a couple of hours of play, but permanently.
They lived in a rural part of the state. Richard had already learned some things about country living, so he spent many months living ferally, catching fish with his bare hands, picking berries. Occasionally, he had had to steal. Eventually, a social worker spotted him.
Is there ever such a story which has a happy ending? I never asked Richard why he had run away from the school or how he had survived life on the streets. He had never learned to read. He had spent many years in prison on an armed robbery conviction. Not long before I knew him, his fourteen year old daughter had been killed in an auto accident.
I was out of homelessness after nine weeks, the last month of which I spent with an aunt and uncle who had some kindness. I had hoped to stay in touch with Richard, but my health was such that I kept deferring a phone call to him. About a year after I'd been homeless, I had the radio on while I was shaving. They went to local news. The first story was about Richard. He'd killed himself the evening before by riding his bicycle into an oncoming SUV.
Not every other homeless person I got to know had life stories as shocking and appalling as those, but how could I, who am not prone to substance abuse or to schizophrenia, who wasn't born with fetal alcohol syndrome, who had loving parents who lived into their eighties, and who was never sexually abused and tortured, presume to look astringently at those who have had those miseries to try to deal with?
Homeless people are sick people. I can think of one exception I met during my own dislocation, a guy who said to me, "Know why I'm here? I'm here because all my life, I've been a f*ckup." I don't know what became of him, but suspect it was pretty good.
Here, readers, is an image I want you to keep in mind when you think of the homeless: a man in his early twenties, sitting alone, sobbing his eyes out. Why, oh why, didn't I go try to talk to him? My psychology is extremely British. John Cleese has talked about the greatest terror of Englishman of his era being that of embarrassment. In my own addled brain, I thought if I tried to talk to him, I'd be embarrassing him.
*** damn it.
But yes, we must build decent, low cost shelters and decent hospitals to treat these people, and we must start making involuntary commitments again. I know, I know, The Snake Pit, and all that. But it does not have to be that way.
Bobby, heart-breaking stories. So we're sort of in agreement, although I probably believe in more "force" than most. that is, I think homelessness should simply not be allowed. One must be offered housing, with support and supervisioin. If refused, off to jail. I'm sorry, but the homeless are often crazy, and these days, the crazy are sent to jail (once they commit a crime) since almost all insane asylums are closed. Now that housing has to have rules and be supported (meaning, counseling, supervision and support). One cannot just puts a homeless person in a little house or trailer or RV, there will be mayhem, crack cooking, drug dealing, rapes, fights, etc. (I know grouping people in shelters is also necessary, but don't have gigantic cots out in an armory setting, have no more than 2 people to a room. I have done volunteer work at Covenant House in NYC and enjoyed trying to teach the girls (I went with the mother/child shelter) how to knit and crochet. Some picked it right up (one girl in particular was a "natural" and took off like a rocket with yarn), and many liked crafting right away even if "average" to start.
This is going to be very expensive. So, first, close the borders. We cannot have a welfare state with regards to housing (or otherwise) and open borders. Then, put laws into effect that one cannot be homeless, one must be housed. Should people be allowed to live in their cars? Yes, but not on private property. Set up supervised parking lots and have porta-potties and portable showers. No setting up tents on sidewalks and in parking lots. Drug treatment: required. I am sorry, drug treatment and alcohol treatment required. Shouldn't one be free to kill themselves with alcohol and drugs? Not if they're doing it in the street or living in a car, no. Why not? Because it's too dangerous--fighting will break out when people get drunk and hopped up on drugs in parking-lot like settings. If you're rich and off the street, go ahead and kill yourself with drugs and alcohol as long as you're not beating your wife and children. Ah, what if they're setting fires? Yes, there is a problem with people who support themselves and still use drugs and alcohol accidentally starting fires. It's not all that common, but yes, I must admit, I'm discriminating a bit here according to how much money one has. I must be a realist at some level.
This sounds like a very expensive proposition here, but places like CA spend BILLIONS on the homeless, and it all gets diverted into bureaucracy. There is very little in the way of housing provided--because CA (and Oregon and Seattle ) are run by progressives, and progressives are stupid. The Federal bureaucracy to deal with homelessness is just layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy. Money does not get down to the level of the homeless person.
What else would I do with other wasteful bureacracies? School vouchers, presto, end of porn-kindergartens. Yes, those schools would have to be certified and accredited, but not by the teachers' extablishment mafia. The whole teaching establishment is corrupt and self-serving, which is why some teachers are good at teaching woke, but not reading, writing and arithmetic. There are good teachers out there, and they are massively frustrated and usually unsupported by woke policies and principals (and racism in school administration is rampant--white teachers are given the "problem students" to make them look bad). I thought of being a teacher (I did end up a teacher in higher ed ultimately), but I did consider being a lower-ed teacher, but I disliked the amount of methods teaching in teaching departments. If I want to teach math, let 90% of my core curriculum be math classes, not methods (ditto English, etc.). (Yes, I know about "alternative certificatioin", but I just got angry when I looked at teaching curriculums and said "nope". One cannot be assured of an alternative certification. So why risk majoring in math or english and find oneself unemployed. Plus, I don't like being told what to do, and teachers are now treated like children themselves and are "scripted" to a degree that I just could not have tolerated.) Or, the schools lets one or two (a handful) of out-of-control kids run wild in class (because to suspend or expel them may cause "disparate impact") such that no one else in the classroom gets to learn anything. There's too much testing of these poor little children. One must "teach to the test," so out goes anything that's not on the test.
I'm glad my kids went to school 30 or more years ago, not today. There was no instructions on how to how gay sex or figure out if you're in the wrong body.
And take away the smart phones during school hours. Do not allow the students to have cell phones on them at all except morning at arrival, when you leave. Not at lunch? No, not at lunch. The students would start looking eachother in the eyes and actually talking to eachother. Otherwise, no cell phones while in the classroom. If there's an emergency, parents, call the office. -- oh, what about mass shooters? Have the kids go through security checks as they come in, have armed guard in the schools and keep the doors locked. Then start jailing parents whose kids commit mass murders in cases where it is warranted (this has already started).
Have we solved all the world's problems yet? No, we haven't figured out how to re-Christianize the West yet. That is obviously a team effort, one-by-one, try to lead by example, and use words as needed. God will do the rest.
Jail in not the right place. We barely have enough jail space for actual criminals. As Bobby said above, we need to bring back involuntary commitment for the mentally ill, with of course some safeguards.
Build jails. We used to be a nation that could build things, snap of a finger. Stop sending or allowing illegals into NYC, NYC is swamped in its mass transit, housing (especially in Manhattan, in which a large walk-in closet with a tiny kitchen built in and a bathroom one can't turn around in costs $6,000 a month before utilities).
China can build an entire city in about 18 months. We can't do anything any more because of permitting and zoning. I go to NYC frequently from my perch in the mountains in NE PA because I have family still living there (100 miles drive). I am afraid to walk around outside. The police are hugely demoralized and there are too many illegals pouring in. My son must ride mass transit to get to work mid-town and says he has to descend stairs lined with a gaunlet of homeless guys hanging out asking for a contribution. One guy took particular interest in him walking on Broadway near Houston and started calling out "hey, blue, hey blue" (he was wearing a blue shirt). I am my husband have trained the children (they are now adults but we still call them children) how to react when situation like this start happening. Zig-Zag, don't be afraid to walk out into (stopped) traffic, walk into any open establishment, don't be embarrassed to do an about-face and walk in the other direction. My husband and I have had to use all these evasive tactics. The good news is the streets of NYC are pretty packed so if one starts "resisting" requests for money from the outset, you have a pretty good chance of evading. I have personally gotten involved (with another woman with me) when a woman was about to be attacked--long story, and more than once. If people get involved right away, the interloper usually backs off. There is a new awful phenomena of men smacking women in the face (race difference, us your imagination) and just keep walking. What's the use? Yep. If a crime is committed, the criminal is immediately arrested to commit the same or worse crime(s) under no-bail laws passed in God knows where (Albany? NYC council, not sure. If illegals attack police, they're held a bit then let go to attack police and citizens (and others) again.
We had a huge homeless problem in NYC before Biden (Obama, Soros) opened the borders to all comers, unscreened.
I don't think the homeless should be able to sleep on the streets. Should they be able to walk around by day? Yes, but not solicit money, which frequently feels like a mugging about to happen. I once had a woman offer to sell me a CD, and when I refused, she hit me. Well, that was an interesting interaction--and too long a story to write here. No, I did not hit her back, but dialed 911 (this was when 911 got rapid response--Bloomberg was still mayor) and then she took off and I took off with her, in and out of cabs (the cabbie told the woman "get out") and in and out of stores. Why did I pursue this woman until the cops came? Because we'd had incidents in Greenwich Village (where I hang out) of homeless people like this (including homeless women) attacking babies being pushed in strollers. So the cops came and gave her a talking to. That was enough for me.
Here is a final tip that even you may find helpful riding your bike, and which I've taught to my children: if you are being attacked in the open, yelling "HELP" is first instinct and okay--but if that doesn't get passer-by involvement, studies have shown that yelling "fire" does. If you start yelling "fire," peds start looking around trying to figure out where the fire is and if they themselves are walking into fire. Haven't had to use that tactic yet, but as I said, I'm pretty much refusing to walk around outside in NYC except for a run of Bleecker Street and a few other streets' apprach to churches. And if you visit NYC and go to Greenwich Village, best RCC churches are St. Anthony of Padua (Sullivan and Houston), Our Lady of Pompeii (Carmine and Bleecker) and the magnificent Ole St. Paddy's at Mott and Prince. Which one? Well, if you want a free polyphony concert embedded in the mass (there is a spectacular soprano with a choir accompanying her) go to the 7 p.m. Sunday mass at Old St. Patricks's, which is a gorgeous church, and that mass is pretty full. Not standing room only, but quite well attended (and by 30-ish professionals who are networking for friends and marriage). Go to the 8 p.m. social afterwards, you'll make new friends instantly (and wine is served, free, but not so much that people get loopy). Sample of Mideval polyphony below.
I can't add or quibble with a word you've written. God bless you richly, Anne. If Trump wins and people like RFK, Jr, and Calley and Casey Means get prominent positions in a Trump administration, who knows, some of what we both know needs to be done could happen.
How about RFK, Jr., as Attorney General? Not only would there be a lovely symmetry in it, he might have the heft as well as the knowledge to begin to get such a desperately needed system into place.
I wouldn't mind Bobby Jr as attorney general at all. But chances are the election will be stolen. Prepare for events. We have two theaters of war that could expand into ww3. We have Obama and Soros and 400 Deep Staters which Deep staters just endorsed Kamala. We have the second assassin perpertrator announce he will pay $150,000 to whomever kills Trump. Wow, open bidding to kill Trump. Rep. Matt Gaetz says there are 5 assasination teams gunning for Trump: 3 foreign, two domestic. The 3 foreign are from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. The two domestic? Probably people or groups with ties to Deep State, USSS and FBI. How can Trump survive? Only our fervent prayers, repentance and fasting can save us and Trump from ruination.
“Then said he unto the disciples, “It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.””
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“And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.”
I'm so sorry Bobby. You've convinced me not to give up looking for ways to help. Drugs are the main problem in certain areas, and I feel like a Pollyanna every time I think of how to help people who are just plain suffering, not addicts or schizophrenics. Government waste has left me with a fear of doing more harm than good but I will keep looking for good things to do nearby.
Thank you, Hope. I can't resist the conviction that we need to return to the system of hospitals which we had until the 1970s, but that they need to be places of treatment, not jailing, and yes, that we need to dragoon street people into them so they can be sorted out and treated.
There is a wide spectrum of mental capacity and incapacity, and being an American raised to venerate our constitution, I favor a great deal of due process for anyone to challenge any restriction on their life. How coherently they can do so should be a strong factor in how much self-determination they have. Its obvious how well you would do as your own advocate. I drove paratransit for five years. There were some passengers who asked to be dropped off at the nearest store to do some shopping and get themselves home. There were others who had notes on the manifest saying that they MAY NOT change their destination, ever (for good reason). We need a wide range of options to account for all the possibilities.
I agree. If you drove paratransit for five years, you're a hero. The stories I've heard from drivers! But as you allude to, there is that huge number of helpless people.
Here's a horror story from October 1, 2021 or 2022, I can't remember which. It was a gorgeous autumn Monday morning. I had walked around the corner to a convenience store. I had seen the three homeless people, two women in their thirties and a man in his forties, who had for reasons known only to God ridden a bus to the end of the line at the transit station a half block away, then wandered to someone's lawn, and on my way back, stopped to talk with them. The women were thoroughly high. The man, so help me God, was alternating swigs from a huge bottle of whiskey with swigs from a beer.
Did they want help, I asked? They said, sure, we do, so I pulled out my phone and started calling around. They, meanwhile, were having a party, chattering, giggling, making so much noise that they may not even have heard my repeated pleas that they pipe down so I could make my calls. I moved about fifty feet away, and kept making calls. After about ten minutes, I had a phone number and an address which might have been leads. I was screaming at them to SHUT UP!!! so I could give them the information I had gotten. They wouldn't. I paused, looked at them, and in a second had decided they were beyond anything I could do for them, so I stalked away. When they saw me start to leave, they went silent. I remain haunted by the fact that I didn't stop and ask them if they were ready to be serious, but I think they were too f*cked up to be. That experience, more than any other, makes me think that yes, we do need a system of benign dragooning which would get such people off the streets and into hospitals.
I felt relatively safe driving paratransit. Every passenger was approved and registered, their names and addresses were known, who was on the manifest was documented. I learned fairly quickly that even the most abusive language was not an intentional insult, but neurons randomly firing. I did once open a door to let a young man who was kicking the windows out. It turned out, he was near a group home he was familiar with, run by the same people who ran the home where I was supposed to drop him off, and decided he was going there. On the other hand, there was a woman with severe Downs syndrome who I could walk off the bus, to the amazement of the group home staff, who usually had to come get her themselves.
Tautological argument, but likely true. However, while I am generally dismissive of "animal rights" while supporting reasonable laws against gratuitous cruelty, I wonder sometimes. Just how much is organic and how much is the nefesh chayyim (living soul). Certainly humanity requires both, but is it ALL supernatural? If so, why did God bother to create biological organisms, including ours?
It isn't all supernatural. Whence the resurrection of the flesh. But It's not tautological, since there are alternate materialist theories which have failed from a logical stanpoint.
I wouldn't say the mind or soul is "supernatural". They're part of the created order too, subject to natural laws appropriate to them. Even angels and demons are. Only God is truly beyond nature, as its Creator.
I think that it's just a matter of terminology. The soul (I wouldn't use the word "mind") belongs to a different order of reality than the physical world, and that's a logical necessity.
I don't think I've ever actually eaten the baked beans for breakfast while in the UK, but I'm not that off put by it. Toast done on one side is more off-putting to me (even though my parents were Brits).
Breakfast foods tend to be very polarizing due to how different they are as between countries. England/Ireland and the Netherlands alike seem to have breakfasts that are most similar to the "traditional" sit-down American breakfast (that almost nobody eats anymore except on occasion), but elsewhere it's all over the map, from basically nothing, to a croissant, to the kind of thing I'm sure Rod has seen in hotels in Germany (a mixture of cold cuts, breads, muesli, yogurt and sof-boiled eggs) and Scandinavia (fish, mostly salted). Although, again, in those countries many people just grab something small on their way to work in a bakery or coffee shop (either sweet and sticky, or a small roll with cold cuts and butter). In Japan then have Japanese-style pickles and rice, traditionally.
The interesting thing about breakfast is that the gross-out factor seems quite high when it comes to other countries breakfast foods, at least the traditional ones. I expect that's because while the national forms of food from other meals are more widely known due to the growing availability of various cuisines in restaurants and the like, breakfast isn't included in that, generally, so people are more or less totally unexposed to diverse breakfast foods unlike they are for, say, dinner foods.
Are eggs pretty universally unobjectionable? My breakfast consists of what's basically a homemade egg-and-cheese McMuffin, along with a cup of Greek yogurt.
No , no...the English make only "friend eggs" and the yellow is supposed to run out all over your toast. Yum! They don't know the meaning of "Sunny side up" (literally an unrecognized term) because that is known to be the only way.
(OK, once they scrambled them, to my shock, but we won't talk about that.)
When I was seven, the owner and sold cook at an old fashioned British boarding house noticed I only ate the solid white of the eggs he cooks for breakfast, and asked my parents, "Do your children eat eggs?" He was able to accommodate what I would eat, which was, break up the yolk, fry both sides of the egg hard. I've never had any taste for runny foods. Even ice cream has to be frozen hard for me to eat it.
You'd think, but in practice it seems that eggs are polarizing because of the various ways to prepare them. You'll find soft boiled eggs (in special holders, with special tiny spoons) at German hotel breakfasts, but if you want eggs done differently you have to order them, because it just isn't really done there except for foreigners ... and many Americans are quite discombobulated at the thought of scooping out a soft boiled egg with a small spoon. I don't remember many breakfast eggs in my trips to Scandinavia ... perhaps some hard boiled egg slices.
You know the story about the young curate (CofE) who is invited to breakfast at his bishop's and is served a rotten egg? "Parts of it were excellent, your Lordship."
When, many years ago, I was investigating turning my PhD dissertation into a book through a university press - a project about which I was not, to put it mildly, overly enthused, one scholarly reviewer tried to let me down as gently as possible with the comment, “It’s a bit vicar’s eggy”!
I don’t know about that. Egg cups are not that difficult to find here. I adore eating them that way. I think maybe we just don’t want to wait that long for the water to boil and the subsequent 4 minutes once placing the eggs in the water. We’ve lost a lot of our eating trads in the past few decades.
Soft-boiled eggs in an egg cup (a dual-use thing with one side for a single egg in the shell, and the other for one or more eggs out of it) were a frequent feature of my childhood, provided by my Slovak grandmother.
I feel super dumb, but, I didn’t know you can use both sides of the egg cup. I love them even more now and might just go unpack them from my Easter boxes.
Mom used to have those little soft boiled egg holders. She would wack the top of the egg off with a spoon and mix the soft insides with butter, salt, and pepper. We had those little spoons for eating it out of the shell too. Mom was off the boat from Ireland but that doesn't strike me as an Irish thing....though maybe she did grow up with it.
The newest egg fashion is the Jammy Egg. It’s boiled long enough that the white is cooked but the yolk is the consistency of jam. I find them quite lovely, warm or cold.
I have a friend who won't eat any form of potato for breakfast -- not home fries, not hash browns, nothing. Perfectly happy to eat them with lunch and dinner though.
I was just in Denmark and found a wonderful similarity between the Danes' apparent breakfast preferences and those of Germany. I say 'apparent' because the one hotel which had breakfast included each morning offered, along with the other north-central-European standard things, American-style bacon. But having good Brötchen with the classic cold cuts and cheese was great.
I miss the Brötchen still, 47 years after my student year in Heidelberg. I eat a savory breakfast most days - need more protein as I get older, but it just tastes good (not much of an egg eater). Italian breakfast is tasty but isn't enough and has too many carbs. I can get German cold cuts in the town where I attend Liturgy.
A favorite breakfast nowadays: German whole-rye bread topped with a good Swiss cheese, brought just to the melting point, and avocado slices to finish it off. (European avocado toast?!?) Yummy.
I just like what tastes good. At my age, more like "hippie" than "hipster".
During my study year I was housed in an attic bedroom in a house - not to worry, it was a really nice house, leased by a Swiss MD, Professor of Dermatology at the University. I was supposed to help set up food etc for entertaining, but only had to do that a couple of times. (They also had a little piano they let me play, a lovely blessing for me.) One day I came downstairs wearing an Indian print A-line skirt, knit turtleneck and sweater vest. The doctor's wife told me I looked like a hippie. She was nonplussed when I did not take that as a compliment, and it took some time to explain that in my neck of the woods (northern California with lots of "tune in, turn on, drop out" types causing problems in my small town as they fled from SF), hippies were not avant-garde intellectuals...
I like hippies, but only the ones who follow the old ways. Seems like you fit the bill.
I'm a Millennial in Austin, so the thing about avocado toast is pretty much a trope (or at least it was a couple years ago—haven't been paying attention). Sort of like with arugula, which I think they should really consider rebranding as rocket, like they do in Britain.
You'd feel good hanging out in my county. There are still a lot of back-to-the-landers from those days, maintaining their little homesteads in the redwoods. Local public radio did a lengthy series on them a couple of years ago. Most are in their 70s now, fewer drugs, just as much art and handcrafting. It's pretty unique.
John says he’s enjoying your excellent book but wondering if he should skip the frightening bits. He also says, regarding baked beans in Old Blightie, as the bride is advised on her wedding night by Mother, “ Close your eyes and think by of England!”
With eyes wide open I think of England often, my favorite of all countries. Thanks for your humor today - God blessed us with the British. Skip the frightening bits, indeed. Ha!
One thing I've been thinking about that relates to the idea of Enchantment is the spirit of place. That's what Kingsnorth is after with his Holy Wells series, and I think it ties in with the idea of Christianity being an incarnate faith, so specific places matter.
Along these lines I was impressed by Rod posting about the Sword of St. Michael the other day, which is actually right out there in the woo-woo, being a New Age / neo-Pagan idea originally that has been taken over by some Christians. I don't know whether I actually believe it to be real, and would welcome careful mathematical analysis.
I've been writing occasional Substack posts, which can be seen as tourism itineraries or walking guides, but my aim is for them to be more like what Kingsnorth writes (I wish I could write like him, though!). My latest is very woo-woo at its heart, and as far as I can tell no one has picked up on this before: https://rombald.substack.com/p/a-cathedral-a-missionary-a-burial
A friend of mine is currently finishing a commentary on the Book of Hosea, and as an appendix it will have an essay on the importance of land/place in the O.T. I'm trying to get him to have it published as a standalone essay somewhere so that folks who might not be interested in the commentary can still read it.
I’m quite interested in what you are contemplating regarding place. I’m puzzled, however, by your comment regarding Rod’s article on the Sword of St Michael, “I don't know whether I actually believe it to be real, and would welcome careful mathematical analysis.” I would agree that we can’t just believe all claims we read by people on the internet (no disrespect Rod), but I can’t see how mathematical analysis will lead you closer to truth. Enchantment is living beyond what can be proven by our limited knowledge and resources. I suppose one would have to experience such a thing to “know”, but science won’t necessarily get us to what is ultimate.
The claim is that the Sword of St. Michael is a loxodrome linking seven (or eight, if Rod is right) hills dedicated to St. Michael. My concern is whether that is more than would be expected by chance. To test this, it would be necessary to identify all places that would meet such a classification (I can think of at least one other off the top of my head: Glastonbury Tor in England), and map them, and do statistical analysis to find the probability of a chance alignment.
There has been criticism that some of the places on the Sword are actually a few km away. That would have to be analysed too. It would be necessary to take the oblateness of the spheroid into consideration. There is also the question of how big an area each covers; if it is a building, that is near enough to being a point on this scale, but the same is not true for an island, such as Skellig Michael.
I think claims of miraculous or extraordinary things should be subjected to rigorous testing. I like the approach that's been taken with the Turin Shroud; I think it's probably genuine, but I might be wrong.
The Sword of St. Michael is a ley line, and came out of the whirl of the British counterculture of the 1970s, only later being picked up by Catholics (e.g. Aleteia). I think the whole ley line obsession, which tended to be druggie and tied in with UFOs, Druids, witches, etc., was never a big thing in the USA?
I think that the stuff can be fun, but it ultimately doesn't matter, and to believe for such alleged "reasons" is not to believe at all. Jesus already said as much: "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah" (Matthew 12:39).
I think the Turin Shroud is probably genuine and miraculous, but I might be wrong, and it wouldn't shake my faith were it proven to be a forgery. Actually, I'd be highly impressed by the skill and imagination of the forger (maybe mediaeval Christians were more brilliant than we give them credit for?!)
I'm more on the fence about the Sword of St. Michael. However, I think things like the Shroud or the Sword can push people towards faith. A materialist scientist might look into the Shroud and be convinced it's miraculous, whereas a New Ager or neo-Druid might find the Sword points him to Christ, finding the Church actually more full of the numinous than stone circles are.
There's also the point that some miracles (e.g. the Resurrection) are central to the faith.
Well, the Resurrection precisely is the sign of Jonah that Jesus mentioned. And that one works the other way around: we don't believe because of the Resurrection, we accept the Resurrection because we believe.
Hmmm. This is all debatable. I personally am that way round, but a lot of apologists work the other way round, arguing that the historical evidence for the Resurrection is so good that any honest person would accept it, and come to faith. I've heard some people say that that's what did it for them too.
Ley lines play a significant part in British popular culture, although they've gone out of fashion now. I think it's intriguing how Catholic publications like Aleteia have picked up on this one.
There's a term I've heard called the "enshittification" of society, originally applied to the software industry but really can be applied to any area or service with declining quality. Air traffic control seems to be another victim.
I would blame DEI, but really it's just a general decline in quality, independent of the wokery and culture wars. Civilizational decline, people!
The quality decline has been going on for a long time. I think of it as the Walmartization of America: cheap prices über alles, in fact cheap prices are the only value.
When you cut the real wage level in various ways, people can only afford to think about how cheap the price is. It takes a certain level of discretionary spending to worry about qualify and source.
The problem is that cheap stuff which wears out fast and has to be replaced often can be more expensive that something which costs more but is more durable. For years I would't buy clothes at Walmart because I had too many bad experiences with seams ripping after the third washing.
Often true -- but setting aside the money to buy the good stuff while wearing already worn old clothes can be a bit much for many families, and even individuals. It takes a certain level of privilege to be able to live up to such sensible standards, and a bit of hubris to lecture others about it. Anyway, I've gotten some very durable low-cost jeans at a big-box home supply store. Yes, all three major chains in my area are owned by Trump donors, but you can't boycott capitalism -- they own everything.
Yes, decline starts in the schools that are now centers of indoctrination instead of education. The Chinese, Russians and Indians do not have this problem. Their kids are taught Reading, Math and Science, not gay sex and gender fluidity from kindergarten onward. And if as a parent, you object in USA to the pornification of the innocent children (and in lieu of reading, writing and arithmetic), well, then you're a "domestic terrorist" and need to be visited by the FBI.
DEI is part of it, but it's not the total explanation. Look at Boeing. I would not fly on a Boeing jet. I'm starting to get afraid to fly at all with all the emphasis on DEI and wokery by Pete Buttigieg and others.
Last I had to fly, I specifically told my husband I would NOT fly on a Boeing plane. The flight and airport experience were still crappy as all get out, but, I didn’t fall out of the sky.
I don't think DEI is the problem at Boeing. Profits über alles and the corner-cutting that leads to is the problem. Mistakes will be made by everyone everywhere. However quality control is an absolute necessity in every sort of business, above all those where errors can cost lives later. Sometimes cutbacks are necessary, but the less necessary departments should bear them (HR; marketing, executive bonuses and salaries...) not the vital staff.
Part of the problem. DEI is part of the problem everywhere it is put into practice: white men not wanted. The chief qualification on the resume has become skin color Now, that's racial progress! See, I've summarized it for them in 4 words: whites not wanted even better. There were other problems (the finance types were ascendant over the engineering types in top management. I won't fly on anything Boeing for the foreseeable future. And if Buttigieg stays Secretary of Transportation, making sure the handicapped (mental illness and blindness, no problem) are considered for air traffic controller, well, I won't be flying at all. Such a pity. Let Buttigieg fly with the blind pilots if he wants to be woke.
Yes, I'm afraid the sufferings of our host in the past 24 hours or so at Heathrow are not at all untypical for that place.
The sufferings of Frankfurt, however...those should be the 10th beatitude - Blessed are they who pass through Frankfurt, for they shall depart and arrive in a better place.
Hahaha! I usually don't fly into Frankfurt, being that Munich is closer to "home" but last time I went, I flew to/from Frankfurt and it didn't seem so bad. Not Munich, but nothing too terrible.
<<"Not Munich">> - Nothing is Munich! That's where my happy memories airport memories are. Not caused by the airport, of course.
As long as I'm posting, I guess I'll tell. - It is not just the miles of walking- In Frankfurt, seeking to transfer, I was once let down by the bus from the plane (they often don't go to terminals) at the wrong terminal. They then tried to help out, escorting me to my flight in another terminal. I was put on a flight to Atlanta. I was going to Vilnius. I only found out about the mistake because someone was in "my "seat and we checked tickets amongst ourselves. Otherwise I woulda had Georgia on my mind.
Linda, God helped you out there on not landing in Georgia. That sounds like a "save" from a maximum inconvenience to me. You would have been beside yourself.
Very scary. White guys need not apply (nor whites in general). I imagine there are enough Haitians to go around to blow up most small towns in Red States if we drop them in 20,000 "dollops" in Appalachia (and other poor-town) America. I cannot believe this is where we've arrived in 2024. And with Kamala at the helm (almost a certainty given the "election stealing" mechanisms and the phony polls), it can only get far worse. Obama will get 2 more terms (a total of 5 terms in office--and more to come under Walz, who is an idiot Commie himself). The courts will be destroyed and infiltrated with the appointment of judges of the quality of Merchan, Chutkan and Engoran. SCOTUS judge Jackson doesn't know what a woman is. Then how can she protect women and girls' right? How does Judge Jackson know if she is a woman, given that she is "not a biologist"? Biden said he wanted a woman (of color) for the post. That in iteself is illegal. But let's suspend that for a minute. If Biden said he wanted a woman, and Jackson isn't sure what a woman is, hasn't she disqualified herself since she may not in fact be a woman according to her own statement that "she's not a biologist" in response to Senator Blackburn's question to her "what is a woman?"
So the inability to "true the vote" will be the final collapse of the US Constitution, because our rights and liberties are only guaranteed to the extent we have judges who are fair and originalist in their interpretation of the Constitution.
I know this time last year, DFW was doing lots of runway construction/expansion. It delayed my going to DEVOtional last year (a show that celebrates the music of DEVO in Cleveland, OH). Didn't get to go this year, but I have to imagine those projects are still going on.
I once spent hours on a plane at DFW unable to leave the gate due to a chain of storms that kept coming and coming. It was a 6 am flight. We didn't get airborne until noon.
Buttigieg issued some statement a while back saying that he wants the disabled, mentally ill, etc., to be employed by the DOT (otherwise, one would be guilty of ableism). I thought, oh, how nice: "blind traffic controllers, mentally ill pilots, what could go wrong?" We are led by crazies.
There's a lot of back office work that can be done by people suffering various disabilities. Technically I would qualify due to my PTSD. Should people with functional disabilities be blackballed from employment?
I don't see anyone saying that. Just because nobody's perfect doesn't mean that they can't do any job at all, with some exceptions. Some people are going to have job choices circumscribed more than others due to illness/disability. I think Buttigieg needs to be very careful with the whole mental illness thing in particular. I'm all for somebody working who is able to do so with the appropriate treatment plan. Some folks though, will simply be unable to do certain things in this life, and legislating to the contrary just so they can earn more money or feel better about themselves while putting a lot of other people in danger is downright irresponsible. For a good example, you can watch Mentour Pilot's excellent video on the jump seat riding pilot who suddenly tried to shut down the engines on that Alaska Airlines flight over Oregon last year.
My wife is English, and we make the Full English every Saturday when it’s not a fasting season, but I flatly refuse to eat the beans. When we visit the in-laws my father-in-law (who makes the best fry up) loves joking at my expense about not eating the beans.
I’ve learned over 20 years to just accept beans on toast as a snack or quick meal, but that’s as far as I’m going.
Quote: "I asked my editor there how it is that an Evangelical publishing powerhouse decided to publish [my book]. He told me that the Evangelical world has changed a lot in recent years."
I.e., Evangelicals have become much more tolerant than they used to be. In the past, they wouldn't have dared to publish works by say Catholics, because too many Evangelicals considered them non-Christian. That has changed. Though I'm sure a book on the virgin Mary would still have a hard time getting published. Funny thing is, I'm planning to write such a book. When I look for source material all I can find is Catholic works. I think that needs to change.
Back around 1990 I listened to a taped lecture series on The Ascension by Presbyterian theologian David Chilton, and in the introduction he said that he could only find one Protestant book on the subject at the time, and only a few Catholic ones. One hopes that such things have changed for the better in the past 35 years!
The Internet lets you find a LOT more these days. The Catholic church has written a lot on the subject. I've found numerous articles cited but have had a difficult time finding them online. Seems you have to go to their archives.
I am specifically interested in how everything God has done to redeem us, had to be done through Mary - and if you were God - how do you get her to cooperate with your plan? In this, she is the masterpiece of how God can allow free will and His sovereignty to coexist.
The bible talks about God being a potter who forms us into what he wants, and if we resist, then he forms us into something else. In my view, Mary is God's best work as a potter of our destinies. If we miss her, we miss how incredible God is as a potter.
I've seen pottery-making youtube in which the potter will be spinning at the wheel and something is said to the effect that the clay is sort of interacting in a way with the potter that the pot either curves in or out. Some NDE returnees say things such as "we volunteered" before being born (for our lot). I think the author of "Embraced By the Light" said that at one point, for instance.
I think there is something mysterious going on (well, yeah) captured by St. Paul's admonition to "Work out your salvation in fear and trembling, because it is God working it out in you."
The quote sort of is related to Jesus's statement that: "You think you chose me, but I chose you," (words to that effect).
CS Lewis says somewhere in his nonfiction that sometimes it's hard figuring out what you are doing as opposed to what God is doing.
That is, sometimes one says something, goes somewhere, does something that in retrospect was "just the thing" that makes the difference. One realizes "God just used me." And those instances gives one great joy.
Then there's that interesting statement at the start of the Book of Jeremiah, the longest book in the Bible (I'm told) in which God says from the outset to Jeremiah:
"Before you were born I knew you." Or
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
(Jeremiah 1:5)
I sort of see how God forms our bodies, but I'm completely perplexed at the "process" by which God forms a soul. That is one of the top questions on my ever-growing list of "Questions for God when I meet Him."
I like the verse in Proverbs 21:1 "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD like channels of water; he turns it wherever he wants."
Water (i.e., us) flows were it wants to - and yet God can step in a divert it. It still flows where it wants to - its will has not been changed at all. But now it goes where God wants it to go. God hardened Pharaoh's heart. God didn't changed his will. He just helped it go where it wanted to go already.
I have definitely felt "directed" to go in certain places and know God is in on it at a certain level. For instance, NYC is the LAST place on earth I'd want to live, but I've lived there almost all my married life (45 years and counting)--ah, but now I have a place in the country to "repine" to (since 2015 I've mainly lived in NE PA and "visit" NYC). (And in winter, I try to go to FL, if I'm lucky. Daytona Beach area. Now, folks, you might book a room in DB, but for real beach "enjoyment", drive 8 miles south to Wilbur-by-the Sea, to the 100-car parking lot with the name "Toronita Park" (it has bathrooms, outdoor showers, an in-season life guard. No condos throwing shadows on the beach in Wilbur-by-the-Sea, just very interesting-looking and varied houses. One feels as if "this is my private beach" because it is not usually too packed (except weekends in summer there are more people than usual, but nowhere near as many people as Daytona Beach beaches). And in Wilbur, there are no cars allowed on the beach, no electric bikes allowed, no drinking allowed, no dogs allowed. LIttle tidal pools form at the edge frequently for the kiddies to splash in (or little ole ladies like me) and the beaches in DB area are really wide, and the sand firm. One can go quite far into the ocean and not be up to one's neck. I will attach a video of Wilbur-by-the-Sea. Now this video was after Hurricanes Ian and Nicole in Fall 2022, so take all those houses and have them rehabbed in your mind.
I'm thinking about trying out visiting The Villages in FL--ah, and give up Wilbur-by-the-Sea Beach? Hard trade off there. We'll see. I may go for a "look see" to the Villages in Winter 2025, if I'm lucky--but I'm not feeling the least bit lucky about winter 2025, are you). I want to see what the hullaboo is all about. I think I would like to be able to drive an electric golf cart everywhere and ride my electric bike all over the place. There are so many activities there. And 140,000 old people, gulp. Well, I'm old, so why not?
Back to the idea of God sending us places--I think He does at times: Look at all those missionairies who volunteer to go to Africa or the New World, where bad stuff happened and still happens. Look at the missionairies who were martryed in Japan or China. These men and women are so dedicated and are so moving. And look at Mother Teresa, who was born in Albania! And received "a call within a call." Such a heroine, Mother Teresa.
I felt very much "directed" to attend an Orthodox liturgy way back in 1995-- and did so finally in early 1996. I don't think being "directed" is the same as being compelled (and you may not be making any such implication)
Down here in St Pete electric bikes are EVERYWHERE. As an old fashioned biking purist I look askance at them (and don't get me started on those new-fangled scooters). And yes you even see people toodling around residential areas in golf carts sometimes.
God is in all places and fills all things-- including us. Too often people expect gaudy miracles from God, but more commonly God acts through and in his creation, breaking no natural laws, but inspiring creation to do His will.
Of course with people there is a great danger we may assume we are doing God's will when we are doing our own and that usually does not end well. We need to keep a certain humility about us, recalling Lincoln's "I don't know if God is on my side, but I hope I am on God's side".
My favorite Marian feast is a minor one, the Protection of the Virgin (Oct 1 in the Orthodox Church). Rather few churches celebrate it these days. My finances are fully engaged with the new house but next year I will buy an icon of the feast for my church and hint a bit that maybe we should do a Liturgy for the feast.
How could anyone write a whole book on the Ascension? Do we really need much more than is already in the Bible? The more one writes, the more the author extrapolates, and it becomes a personal mind game rather than a revelation.
No, not that. It's a study of Mary that unlocks understanding of free will versus God's sovereignty. If you were God, how do you get a Mary? To answer that, you need to see how far God's love can reach.
I really appreciate that God chose to have Jesus come though a woman--that really elevated all women. Jesus also elevated women, give His time and culture. During Jesus' day, men really didn't usually talk to women they weren't related to. So God could have had Jesus descend from Heaven just as He later ascended to Heaven.
As a Third-Order Carmelite, I'm devoted to the VM, but I'm lousy at the Rosary! Alas. That's what youtube is for! A lot of goreous rosary-saying going on on youtube, in any language you want (I like Latin chant rosaries the best).
Dean, St Maximos (c. 600) wrote a biography of Mary; it's been recently translated and is out there in hardback but not too expensive. St Vlad's Popular Patristics series features a few books on sermons given on Mary's feast days from the later patristic period. I think Fr Schmemann wrote a small one. I know there are other Orthodox books on Mary, just can't recall them at the moment. Search St Vlad's, St Tikhon's, Ancient Faith store.
Your book sounds really interesting. Let us know when it's ready.
Dean, the most interesting thing for me about St Maximos' work was his explanation of Mary's name. Everyone seems to think the original is Maryam, as in Moses' sister, which means "bitterness". But In the NT Greek text, it is never given that way, it's always Maire ("my-reh"). I always wondered why the mother of our Lord would have a name with such a negative meaning; maybe it's because our life without God is bitter??? St Maximos says otherwise.
As someone who has studied language and is interested in the meanings of names, his explanation really caught my attention, because even though the names look like they might sorta have a resemblance, there's enough of a difference to question this. According to Maximos, "Maire" is of Egyptian derivation, with the meaning of "bright", and when given in Hebrew that meaning is intensified. I looked this up on the Interweb (and in my Strong's concordance), and indeed there is a rule in Hebrew that a particle can be inserted into a noun that intensifies the word; in Mary's case, that would make the meaning something like "brilliance". Well, that's more like it! That meaning resonates so much with the Orthodox/Catholic understanding of Mary's place.
Also, in Orthodoxy, Mary comes from a very pious family with Levitical as well as Davidic roots; her parents have a very special place, too. At the end of every Liturgy when the priest gives the parting blessing, he asks for the prayers of "the holy and righteous ancestors of God Joachim and Anna, and of all the saints". Most of all, she was given much grace, which in EO is the actual working of the Holy Spirit within a person. She was given absolutely every help she needed. She could still have said "no" to God - but he knew she would say "yes". It's a very wonderful, brilliant mystery.
Thanks for the tip on what Mary's name means. That's very helpful.
In my view, for God to get the "Mary" He needed, he had to work on her parents, grandparents (and so on) as well.
But I have been especially struck by the name she calls God, saying "holy is His name". That gives a key to understanding what God was doing in the life of Mary, Joseph, her parents, and so on. He wasn't just calling her to a special work (with however much grace that required). His holiness was moving over them - and they felt it. We may not be called to a work at the level Mary was, but each of us can seek God in His holiness. And when we find Him in His holiness, we'll know it like Mary did, and we too will say, "holy His name".
Quote: "...the problem had to do with air traffic control in both London and Dallas, and them unable to sort themselves over 'permissions' to land."
I have no idea what happened here, but it sure strikes me as one more way our government could coerce corporations (in this case the airline companies) to not let "certain" people to board. We won't give you permission to land if you let *that* guy on!
It sounds like it affected all the air traffic. Homeland security already has ways to blackball potential terroriists and foreigners who are persona non grata in the US, and they usually do so well before such people get to the airport (basically in many cases they won't be ticketed at all because they lack passports and visas). If someone somehow slips through they will be met at the departure airport and denied boarding, sometimes even taken off a flight before it departs. No need to inconvenience everyone else.
I was born-again into a new reality of Christianity in October of 1975. By 1990, I was dissatisfied with the anti-intellectual aspects of the Evangelical Church I had landed in. It took a clear-eyed commitment to the truth, regardless of the consequences to set me right again. I found in my investigations that Christianity is not true because it is Christianity but because it corresponds to reality when ALL the evidence is considered.
This search for the truth is not always easy and can be lonely at times. I still fight the anti-supernatural bias of the naturalistic world around me while I fight the other flank of anti-intellectual paradigms of some of the more flighty elements of Evangelicalism as I attempt to establish a rational faith in a rational God.
In the 49 years of my walk with God, I have not heard any spiritual directives from my Lord to leave the church I stumbled into in my desperation in 1975. Here I serve still in the hope I am influencing the people around me toward the God of their salvation. It is my honour and privilege to do so.
I like the Cajun version of this joke a little better.
Two Cajun men are out hunting when a flying saucer lands and two aliens climb out of it. One man says to the other "you go shoot 'em and bring 'em back to the cabin. I'm headin' back to start makin' a roux."
Florida is known for its "Florida man" jokes. When I lived here before the Tampa newspaper at year's end published an array of actual news stories under the title "Floriduh"-- breathtakingly stupid stuff that had happened over the year (e.g., the time some middle school kids got the school bus driver to stop for a junior alligator so they could grab it and take it to school-- and the bus driver went along with it)
Here in western VA we tell West Virginia jokes. They’re kind of in the order of Jeff Foxworthy’s “you may be a redneck” schtick.
What constitutes a 7 course meal in West Virginia? A possum & a 6 pack. Did you hear about the fire that burned down the WVU library? Destroyed both books, including one they hadn’t colored in yet. What do you call 32 WV women in a room? A full set of teeth.
Actually my husband’s family is from Moyers, WV in Pendleton County. Yes a whole town full of Moyers. He tells more WV jokes than anyone..
In New Zealand whilst chaperoning a school trip I ate canned spaghetti served on Vegemited toast - for breakfast.
But who am I to talk? My go-to breakfast is a 5-grain toast sandwich, with sauerkraut and melted Swiss cheese. Oh, and olive oil in lieu of butter or margarine ... and sometimes Marmite too.
Even in early childhood I was appalled by sweet breakfast cereals.
The canned spaghetti on Vegemited toast was served open-faced, if that mitigates the horror for you. ;>)
It was surprisingly good - but then I've always preferred a savoury breakfast.
We've been back in Canada for 20 years after a year in NZ. My wife is appalled at my pseudo-Reuben breakfast - the Swiss cheese and sauerkraut on toast, with optional Marmite.
An open face sandwich is still a sandwich. Horror not much appeased.
Oh - confession. I've tasted marmite. I am not apparently not genetically inclined to it. I've only assumed vegemite is ever worse, like marmite with vegetables.
Vegemite and Marmite are very polarizing, no doubt. One really enjoys them, or is repulsed. There is little middle ground. Some of the advertising plays on this and is very funny.
Although there is great debate between Marmite- and Vegemite-eaters, akin to a sports-team rivalry, I doubt I could actually tell the difference between Marmite and Vegemite (or Megamite, a house brand in NZ).
All are high in umami, the savory taste, which I've always craved.
How does Heathrow compare to big American airports? I always imagined it to be sleek and luxurious.
It varies. Lots of terminals. Some are out of this world, some are generic and meh, and some are in between. Best part is that it isn't that far away from Central London (even though a cab is quite expensive, there is an express train to Paddington that isn't expensive and gets you into Central London very quickly).
This. Better than Charles De Gaulle and Frankfurt, but that’s the soft bigotry of low expectations. Budapest’s airport is small but sleek and efficient. Istanbul and Warsaw are the top European and Euro adjacent airports, in my experience. I love flying to Rome since they opened an Eataly there.
Give me my small American airports (Wichita, Chattanooga) where I can park my car right in front of the arrivals door for 30 minutes at a time, maybe more if I have my blinkers on.
And baked beans on toast for breakfast is a luxury.
(Edit: at Reagan in DC I saw a cop threaten to arrest a cab driver for lingering too long in front of the arrivals door. In Wichita the cop would make the news and be denounced as a Gestapo/Stasi agent.)
You can do that in, like, Reykjavik (Keflavik, more precisely).
What luxury? You open a can, heat them up, and pop some bread in the toaster.
Although cars can't linger in the drop-off lane, Indianapolis International is considered the best mid-sized airport in the country: compact, clean, and easy to use.
The best airports I've been are Schiphol and Seoul.
At Schiphol they have a branch of the national museum in the airport, with Rembrandts and so on on display. The chapel is really nice too.
Seoul was great when we had little kids. They have free classes with introductions to Korean arts and so on for children.
Apart from teenage trips to Spain and Mexico I've only ever flown domestically. The Tampa airport here is very well designed to handle the traffic it gets. There are several satellite terminals where the gates to the planes are located surrounding the main building where ticketing and baggage claim are located with shops and restaurants for those who come inside to pick up people. Each terminal has its own security; I've seldom had to wait more than 15 minutes in line and often I've cruised right through the TSA kabuki. The terminals are quite spacious so I've never fell crowded in like a sardine in a can.
Tampa actually works pretty well, I agree. Always efficient in and out of there, unlike some other Florida airports (looking at you, Miami).
It appears the Singapore Airport is beyond compare in this world, but I've never been there. I don't know on favorites, but yes, Budapest has all you could ask for - not crowded, no long walks, a near-free bus to take you there.
But I guess maybe any UK airport is my favorite because, well, I just like the way you talk!
quick edit: changed "they" to "you" because I saw the person I was replying to.
I've never been to Singapore either. Knowing the reputation of Singapore, it having a good airport doesn't surprise me!
Changi Airport in Singapore has a butterfly garden on site, which is astonishing:
https://www.changiairport.com/en/discover/attractions/butterfly-garden.html
Can definitely confirm about Seoul/Incheon, which was my "home" airport for fifteen years. I've been to Singapore once, and tried to check out some of the perks I'd heard about, but was more preoccupied with getting on my journey "home". Of course, Asian infrastructure in general puts that in the U.S. to shame. That's what happens when you spend your money buying expensive toys for the military and funding foolish adventures overseas, contrary to the wise counsel of the Founders.
Beans on toast may make a little more sense, according to something I read not too long ago. (I'm sure I saw it at least once at a bed and breakfast, and didn't know what to make of it, either!) Apparently, the British version of beans is not sweetened nearly as much as that in the U.S. Likewise, my Korean staff found U.S. cookies much too sweet for their tastes. Their chocolate is more like dark chocolate.
Milwaukee has the only airport in the country with a well-stocked Renaissance Book Store. In fact its now the only venue the store has, although originally it had a five story stock of books downtown also.
The downtown bookstore was amazing, but when I visited it for the first time in 2010, I thought the whole building was going to fall down at any moment or all of us were going to die in a fire. Do they still have a branch out at Southridge mall? (I think they may be the only used bookstore in an airport!)
I never knew about Southridge Mall. I'll have to check that out. The five story building was condemned because it was likely to fall down, and they lost a lot of books because they couldn't get it together to remove them.
Yeah. Awhile back I posted a couple youtube videos of the last days of the downtown building. They did find some interesting historical stuff though. It was amazing, but the only store I've ever been in where I figured the odds of coming out alive might be about 50/50. 😂
Best airport in London is City, though. Of course, if you don't mind adrenaline-filled landings. But at least you can wave hello at that pretty HSBC girl in the skyscraper.
It’s not!
So glad that this was not a response to the comment that Atlanta is a terrible airport to go through! 😂
I'm at Heathrow departures 2 times a year at least. No soup for you if you want luxury. Not too different form the USA - but - You need a lounge pass for Heathrow. The general lounge is very crowded. There are lots of shops. I'm speaking of T3, normally the terminal for UK to USA. The other terminals are less crowded, but of course they don't have the 100-shop Duty Free shopping mall in an airport. American airport restaurants are often, not always, greasy spoons (Chilis). Heathrow's are not much better, though there is one of those "merry go round, pick your sushi off the belt" places, and there is a pub where you can get sausage.
And...I always have them hold the baked beans! Sausages are great in England. But the bacon - that's not bacon. It's ham!
We flew home from there last year. I am handicapped , use a walker when traveling, and cannot stand for more than a few minutes. My husband found me a seat far across from our gate and he hovered around walking back and forth for more than an hour. Everyone was polite but the crowding was worse than anything we’ve seen anywhere else. He is in the FBO private aviation business and flies all over the US.
Susanne - my bad knee gave me trouble for quite a time though I am much better now. I also had a procedure on a nerve in my back and before that could not stand in lines for more than ten minutes or so without things becoming excruciating. I used to ask for a wheelchair at airports due to these things. I hesitated and suffered but then I finally tried it. It always went really well. They have a lounge even if you are flying coach if you use a wheelchair at Heathrow and don't yet know your gate. When the gate comes up, another wheelchair arrives to take you there. It is not the greatest lounge, but at least it is a guaranteed seat. I've been fine with wheelchairs at other airports as well.
I've been through Heathrow a couple of times and absolutely hate it. My general experience has been "meh", but the last time I was through was with kids, and I am convinced that the one airport attendant was purposely trying to make us miss our connecting flight. (No, not kidding at all.) However, Heathrow is not even close to my loathing of Atlanta and Philadelphia. I don't mind O'Hare (or even Chicago-Midway), though Munich seems to be the one for me that feels most like home.
Edit: L'viv, Ukraine also has to be at the bottom of my list. At least I didn't fly there on LOT. (Yes, another story).
Edit 2: I did have one unfortunate mix-up in Frankfurt, but they were very nice about the whole thing, and I got a hotel voucher out of it. (They were doing construction, and their "detour" signs - which I could read in two languages - led me to the wrong place, which caused me to miss my next flight because the first flight was so late coming in that the only way I would have made it is flying through customs and going directly to the correct gate.)
Atlanta is horrible.
Agree. Of the airports I've been to, Atlanta is one of my three least favorite, joined by DFW and Newark. Now that I am back in Florida I will take whatever circuitous route I must to avoid a layover there. (And driving, I will take alternate routes that give Atlanta's infamous traffic congestion wide berth)
San Francisco deserves criticism but we do have a pretty good airport. SFO is compact and easy to navigate. Th food choices are steps above typical airport fare and not outrageously priced. (I remember looking a for a bite to eat at LAX and only finding Burger King.) Ground transportation is excellent; BART will take you downtown and beyond. (I remember taking the NYC subway to JFK and it was quite the ordeal.)
Yes but if you want to go to Heaven, you have to change planes in Atlanta!
You say, "I will never, ever, ever understand how it is that British people can eat baked beans for breakfast." Yes, but have you ever actually seen anyone eat them?
I didn't think so.
It’s a WW2 thing, innit?
Yes. We shipped tons of Heinz vegetarian baked beans during the war; on toast it makes a perfect protein, and there must have been a pamphlet advising that as a cheap and nourishing meal. It caught on.
There used to be a W.H. Smith bookstore on the Rue de Rivoli with a tea room upstairs. I went up to see what it was all about and there they were, sticking their English beaks into beans on toast. In Paris!
There is someone out there who could write a book on the expansion of the Britsih Commonwealth as a world-wide search for a better breakfast menu. (Really, the rest of the British Breakfast menu is a big dodgy.)
Dunno about that. The Brits just seem to have a habit of putting things on toast that taste much better plain. Baked beans for one. Sardines also come to mind.
I miss them, living in Japan!
Point taken, but for someone with British grandparents, bean on toast with bacon makes for a great breakfast!
I bet you don't see too many people eat sardines on toast, huh?
My father liked sardines. Kippers, too. It never rubbed off on me, though.
Is that like anchovies on a pizza?
Yes!
Quick story, but I never ate pizza as a young boy until my grandfather showed me you could eat pizza with salty fish on it. Now I can eat most any pizza!
No! -- sardines taste nothing like anchovies, and vice-versa. I like them both but would never confuse them!
The conceptual similarity, though.
Anchovies are great in a Caesar salad too, if you can find a place that does them that way.
Oh, that’s just a normal part of the idea, I thought. There’s already anchovy in the dressing at any rate.
There is a local sandwich chain here that used to have 20 varieties of their feature sandwich, and on the menu their sardine one was touted as "Our 19th most popular!" Eventually a bigger outfit bought the chain and they got rid of it altogether, alas!
Ahead of what?! Vegemite?
My dad always liked tomatoes and mushrooms with his eggs, and his other fave breakfast was finnan haddie.
Were they mixed in scrambled, or served on the side?
Scrambled eggs, fried mushrooms and fried tomatoes on the side. With bacon. No veg with the finnan haddie, though.
“I can clear this room” too: beans for breakfast? Nuh unh!
Taken at any meal baked beans are the gift that keeps on giving. Didn’t Mel Brooks take up that trope in “Blazing Saddles”?
Perhaps morning is a better time than a few hours before going to bed?
It all depends on whether one wants to be able to live with oneself or others - in this particular case, a tough choice!
I've enjoyed many a Brit breakfast and I cleaned my plate each time. I am not the biggest bake beans fan, but the combo of foods on the tradBrit platter somehow work and are part of the experience. I look forward to doing it again.
Spoken like a soldier. But - all except the beans, man. Even a little of that horrid bean juice just wrecks what it touches. British bean juice is the worst! Boston baked beans have good juice, but what is that British stuff.
But, I have neglected to mention the great British sauce with breakfast. I speak, of course, of brown sauce! One must request it - it is known only to gourmets of British breakfast. One then puts it on the toast, and the horrid ham-like things they call bacon, on top of the toast, somehow taste good. In combo, as you say. And of course, there must be lashings of brown sauce on the sausage.
For beverage, it is the one meal in the world with which hot tea (milk and sugar) tastes good. British Breakfast Tea or Earl Grey.
And the mushrooms and tomatoes must be fried. I was once near-kicked-out of an Irish place -the Irish pretend the British breakfast is an Irish breakfast - well it was a pretend Irish place in the USA. This for saying I did not want my "Irish Breakfast" when they refused to fry the mushroom. A big raw mushroom. Argh.
Finally, wishing to try all things, I was in a Scottish B and B and was asked "Do you like kippers?". "Yes", I said, pretending to know. Big mistake!
Kippers, ugh. My husband loves them, though.
I'm partial to Southern breakfasts with grits, toast, pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, and I do not mind potatoes with breakfast. Ah, I love grits. These breakfasts are quite fattening, though. This line of thinking is making me hungry, and I just ate!
I'm a southern boy, so of course I love those. Also, love the breakfasts I got when I was in Honduras. They cover your tortilla in some kind of sauce, don't know the name or how it is made, but it is delicious.
Other favorite breakfasts, shit on a shingle, toad in a hole, biscuits and gravy, steak and eggs. But any big breakfast, gotta have black coffee, and if you really want completeness, shot of whiskey and a handgun. With proper utensil ettiquete with the placing of the firearm.
I'm also a southerner but couldn't stand grits when I was growing up. Gross tasteless porridge. At some point in a adulthood I realized that the problem had been insufficient butter, salt and pepper, and got to liking them quite a lot with bacon and eggs. And even later I discovered cheese grits, which are absolutely marvelous.
That's 'cuz they were probably made with water. I make mine with Heavy Cream...makes all the difference in the world
Cheese grits and fried catfish (with a side of hushpuppies) are a little taste of heaven on earth!
Depends on how the grits are cooked. Instant grits? Yes, they're awful. But real grits, cooked for an hour with milk and butter? Heaven!
Golly! I didn't think anyone here was capable of discussing Honduran breakfasts. What a treat! Had them every morning on medical mission (as educator, child worker, and water-filter person). Anyway, as you know - "tortillas" are not flat there, but like little corn cakes Then these delicious frijoles are put on top. There are also various salsas. Then there are friend plantains. And eggs. And various tropical juices. And good thick black coffee. And slices of white cheese to chunk amid the frijoles. Happy memories.
Yep, all that is true. Delicious. Honduras was my first assignment when I rejoined the Army as a broadcaster in 2002. I was the morning and mid-day disc jockey for the Power Lizard, our AFN station at Soto Cano airbase. I got my first taste of Honduran breakfast when I went to visit some Mayan ruins on leave at one point. Great trip, great meals.
There's also an Ulster fry. That's like a full English, but not so light!
I see it from time to time, but at a distance of roughly 5000 miles: watching British crime dramas. What I can see of the "full English" is often somewhat appalling. I do not aspire to sampling it.
On the other hand, somewhere along the line I heard about Marmite, was curious, eventually managed to try it, and now very much like a ight breakfast of toast with butter and Marmite and a bit of cheese. My first jar of Marmite, a dozen or so years ago, came from a shop specializing in British stuff of all sorts. Now the local Publix has it. I am apparently a trendsetter, as usual.
I'm tempted to start a thread to discuss the social status and acceptance in different cultures of the main side effect of beans, farting. But I know better.
That thread sounds like it'd be a real gas...
There is no such thing as a Full English Breakfast without baked beans. You need them to moisten the bacon. True connoisseurs like myself make a sandwich of bacon, egg and beans, and eat it with the tea.
Incidentally, the Irish do the same. You Americans are just too uncultured to understand.
I was at an "Irish pub" yesterday (in Pensacola, Florida, where the barkeep was a Scotchman), and stared at the offering of brunch beans in befuddlement. I just had an Irish coffee!
Not long after marrying my Catholic wife I took up the challenge Douthat threw down in his NYT article A Guide to Finding Faith (the challenge being that if you go looking for the supernatural you will find it). It knocked down materialism and a couple of years later I converted
Nietzsche of all people wondered what if the philosophers were doing it wrong, and truth is like a woman?—the idea being that if you're closed off and rude and refuse to court the truth, then well, fine, it won't talk to you either. I also find that very connected to McGilchrist's thoughts on the importance of subjective disposition.
Seek and you shall find. I don't think we're supposed to ask for spiritual consolations, though.
Well, I’d say that in a way, the entirety of the Gospel is one giant spiritual consolation, which is made most clear in the Beatitudes.
Good point, Sethu, bit some of the faithful get used to sweetness and prayer, which God often lavishes on the prayer. But there are bound to be periods of spiritual dryness, through which we must perservere, knowing God is with us, even if we cannot feel His presence and embrace at a sendory level or experience soothing emotions and sensations during prayer.
Dark nights of the soul, as St. John of the Cross said.
My sense is only really spiritually advanced people experience the dark night of the soul. One feels abandoned by God. It's more trying than spiritual dryness.
This is a bit cynical, but if the challenge is, 'If you go looking for the supernatural you will find it,' the integrity of the process is 50:50. Maybe you "found" what you wanted to find, not because it is there, but because you wanted to find it. I don't doubt you found much more over a couple of years. I'm content to drift -- yes, its there, no, I don't have a strong feel for it, but my life has definitely gone much better than I have any reason to expect from the random operation of a cold, indifferent universe. I could make a good argument I should have been homeless for the last twenty-five years. (Of course I haven't figured out why those who ARE homeless somehow deserved it, or deserved indifference to their fate).
Ah, Charlie, are you saying you're an agnostic? Hope not. The homeless are homeless for a variety of reasons, but in my book, there is absolutely no excuse for homelessness. We should not allow it. This is a rich country (still) and we could put these people in "little houses" (or trailers) if we had the political will. They'd have to be supervised and supported. We spend billions on helping the homeless. It doesn't get down to the level of the homeless, it gets siphoned off by layer after layer of bureaucracy and a little trickle get to the homeless. That's why there's tents everywhere or people living in their cars. And of course, the open borders guarantee growing homelessness.
I'm all for helping the homeless, but we do need to pay heed to the fact that a very many of them are not of sound mind, either because of legit mental illness, or because they have addled themselves with booze and drugs.
Did what I write sound agnostic? I can't imagine how. I just don't claim to have all the answers. As to homelessness, I agree that the way to end homelessness is to put everyone in a home. But JonF is also correct that not all can simply be left on their own. I grew up at a time when there was little to no homelessness. It really became a noticeable thing during the 1980s. Many blame it on Ronald Reagan, and the way the economy cratered and warped on his watch played a part. I also remember women with reasonably good jobs who couldn't afford the rapidly rising rents in their area. But, a lot of it had earlier roots. You ever watched "One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest"? Popular, entertaining, inspiring, but in many ways misleading. A while back, some people confined in asylums sued for their freedom, and, they had a point. They were people who could handle cleaning their own house, getting along with their neighbors, cooking their own meals -- maybe needed a conservator to make sure con men didn't rip them off every month. But the whole thing was a class action, and judges thoughtlessly ordered the asylums emptied out. A lot of people in there needed round the clock supervision. On their own, they wandered around, disoriented, some got into street drugs, a small number became truly homicidal if they weren't taking their meds, etc. So, tiny homes, decent affordable apartments, modest levels of supervision and support for those who need it, and asylums for those who truly can't be along on the street, with a reasonable presumption that anyone capable of filing a writ deserves their day in court to show they shouldn't be so tightly supervised. And yes, the poverty pimps lose their six figure salaries, and go get a real job laying track for high speed rail, or something.
Deinstitutionalization was initially coupled with "halfway houses" where mentally ill people were housed under supervision- and especially supervised about taking their meds. However these places tended to be concentrated in downscale neighborhoods (happened in my home town) where they soon became unpopular. And when the early 80s recession hit many states found that zeroing out mental health funding was easy to do. The "halfways" became "no ways" and unsupervised they ended up on the street.
Mostly true, but legislatures were rushing to cut budgets by shutting down asylums as soon as the first class action decisions came down. Deinstitutionalization was not always "coupled" with halfway houses -- a term more often used for people out of prison but still on paper. I think you meant "group homes." They are staffed by people desperate enough for work to take the job, are chronically understaffed, and are not structured to handle emergencies -- like the snow is too deep to take the occupants to a day program but no staff are scheduled to be there during the day and the night shift is tired. Its not a good arrangement -- although some of the staff develop quite a rapport with their charges.
In Michigan homes for the mentally ill were called "halfway houses" and those in them were referred to as "halfways"
There have been two independently done studies of homeless men in the last twenty years, the first in Toronto, the second in Dallas. The researchers in both instances found the same thing: 50% of the homeless men had had traumatic brain injuries. Anticipating media reproach for limiting the study to men, the director of the Toronto study said the researchers were confident that whatever medical abnormalities might exist in the homeless men they studied, the incidence of them in homeless women would be significantly higher.
Consider that! At least half of the homeless are certain to have had traumatic brain injuries. Add to that other kinds of illnesses ( which can bankrupt anyone ), various specifically mental illnesses, and addiction, and the mystery is that in a system which is as bereft of firm and decisive help for the homeless as ours, there isn't more homelessness.
Ah, well, it's true confession time. "Bobby Lime" is a Substack name, and those who know my actual identity would never reveal it because they know their lives wouldn't be good for twenty four hours if they did. So, here 'tis:
I'm in the category of people who was made homeless as a result of a traumatic brain injury. I have always maintained that the term, "traumatic brain injury," is in itself so traumatizing that those of us who are lucky possessors of one shouldn't have to go into details about just what our injuries have done to us. If you get a TBI, be sure to have a lot of money first, or at least relatives who aren't sociopaths. If you don't have the foresight to have secured at least one of those, and you get a TBI, you'll be far likelier to become homeless.
It happened to me for nine lovely weeks in the autumn of 2002. Shelters. Can you guess why homeless people despise shelters? It's because of the assaultive lack of privacy. Yes, there are people who would rather sleep in a park or on a sidewalk than go to a shelter. It's why your invocation of the need for "supervision" gave me a second's hysteria, though I concede you're right about it. There's a need to keep us TBI patients apart from those yucky schizophrenics.
All right, to be serious, having been among the damned, I can tell you the brief biographies of three others of them. I will be writing what I know about each. It's limited but telling.
1. Elizabeth. Elizabeth was thirty - nine when I knew her. She was extremely proud to be, as she liked to say, "100% Cherokee." I didn't have a thing in common with her except my liking to make jokes and her liking to laugh at them, but I'll confess to having had a ten day crush on her.
Elizabeth was born in dramatic circumstances. Her mother tried to abort the pregnancies - Elizabeth had a twin sister - by stabbing herself repeatedly. Elizabeth they were able to save. The sister they were not. The mother was sentenced to life in prison and hanged herself.
Elizabeth's father doted on her. Undoubtedly, she had fetal alcohol syndrome, and I don't know what the possibilities are for any such baby, but a loving parent can be miracle adjacent. But when Elizabeth was five, her father died.
She went to live with an aunt and an uncle, who loved her dearly. When Elizabeth was twelve, the uncle dropped dead in her presence.
2. Lori. Lori was, like Elizabeth, thirty - nine in 2002. When she was five, she had been raped. Four years later, at nine, another man kidnapped her, and kept her prisoner for weeks. His repeated rapings of her caused her permanent internal damage. Before he let her go, he took a souvenir, most of one of her middle fingers.
3. Richard. Richard was approximately thirty - five. The reason for the hedging about his age is that he didn't really know. When he was four or five, his mother had put him out of the house one day, not for a couple of hours of play, but permanently.
They lived in a rural part of the state. Richard had already learned some things about country living, so he spent many months living ferally, catching fish with his bare hands, picking berries. Occasionally, he had had to steal. Eventually, a social worker spotted him.
Is there ever such a story which has a happy ending? I never asked Richard why he had run away from the school or how he had survived life on the streets. He had never learned to read. He had spent many years in prison on an armed robbery conviction. Not long before I knew him, his fourteen year old daughter had been killed in an auto accident.
I was out of homelessness after nine weeks, the last month of which I spent with an aunt and uncle who had some kindness. I had hoped to stay in touch with Richard, but my health was such that I kept deferring a phone call to him. About a year after I'd been homeless, I had the radio on while I was shaving. They went to local news. The first story was about Richard. He'd killed himself the evening before by riding his bicycle into an oncoming SUV.
Not every other homeless person I got to know had life stories as shocking and appalling as those, but how could I, who am not prone to substance abuse or to schizophrenia, who wasn't born with fetal alcohol syndrome, who had loving parents who lived into their eighties, and who was never sexually abused and tortured, presume to look astringently at those who have had those miseries to try to deal with?
Homeless people are sick people. I can think of one exception I met during my own dislocation, a guy who said to me, "Know why I'm here? I'm here because all my life, I've been a f*ckup." I don't know what became of him, but suspect it was pretty good.
Here, readers, is an image I want you to keep in mind when you think of the homeless: a man in his early twenties, sitting alone, sobbing his eyes out. Why, oh why, didn't I go try to talk to him? My psychology is extremely British. John Cleese has talked about the greatest terror of Englishman of his era being that of embarrassment. In my own addled brain, I thought if I tried to talk to him, I'd be embarrassing him.
*** damn it.
But yes, we must build decent, low cost shelters and decent hospitals to treat these people, and we must start making involuntary commitments again. I know, I know, The Snake Pit, and all that. But it does not have to be that way.
Bobby, heart-breaking stories. So we're sort of in agreement, although I probably believe in more "force" than most. that is, I think homelessness should simply not be allowed. One must be offered housing, with support and supervisioin. If refused, off to jail. I'm sorry, but the homeless are often crazy, and these days, the crazy are sent to jail (once they commit a crime) since almost all insane asylums are closed. Now that housing has to have rules and be supported (meaning, counseling, supervision and support). One cannot just puts a homeless person in a little house or trailer or RV, there will be mayhem, crack cooking, drug dealing, rapes, fights, etc. (I know grouping people in shelters is also necessary, but don't have gigantic cots out in an armory setting, have no more than 2 people to a room. I have done volunteer work at Covenant House in NYC and enjoyed trying to teach the girls (I went with the mother/child shelter) how to knit and crochet. Some picked it right up (one girl in particular was a "natural" and took off like a rocket with yarn), and many liked crafting right away even if "average" to start.
This is going to be very expensive. So, first, close the borders. We cannot have a welfare state with regards to housing (or otherwise) and open borders. Then, put laws into effect that one cannot be homeless, one must be housed. Should people be allowed to live in their cars? Yes, but not on private property. Set up supervised parking lots and have porta-potties and portable showers. No setting up tents on sidewalks and in parking lots. Drug treatment: required. I am sorry, drug treatment and alcohol treatment required. Shouldn't one be free to kill themselves with alcohol and drugs? Not if they're doing it in the street or living in a car, no. Why not? Because it's too dangerous--fighting will break out when people get drunk and hopped up on drugs in parking-lot like settings. If you're rich and off the street, go ahead and kill yourself with drugs and alcohol as long as you're not beating your wife and children. Ah, what if they're setting fires? Yes, there is a problem with people who support themselves and still use drugs and alcohol accidentally starting fires. It's not all that common, but yes, I must admit, I'm discriminating a bit here according to how much money one has. I must be a realist at some level.
This sounds like a very expensive proposition here, but places like CA spend BILLIONS on the homeless, and it all gets diverted into bureaucracy. There is very little in the way of housing provided--because CA (and Oregon and Seattle ) are run by progressives, and progressives are stupid. The Federal bureaucracy to deal with homelessness is just layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy. Money does not get down to the level of the homeless person.
What else would I do with other wasteful bureacracies? School vouchers, presto, end of porn-kindergartens. Yes, those schools would have to be certified and accredited, but not by the teachers' extablishment mafia. The whole teaching establishment is corrupt and self-serving, which is why some teachers are good at teaching woke, but not reading, writing and arithmetic. There are good teachers out there, and they are massively frustrated and usually unsupported by woke policies and principals (and racism in school administration is rampant--white teachers are given the "problem students" to make them look bad). I thought of being a teacher (I did end up a teacher in higher ed ultimately), but I did consider being a lower-ed teacher, but I disliked the amount of methods teaching in teaching departments. If I want to teach math, let 90% of my core curriculum be math classes, not methods (ditto English, etc.). (Yes, I know about "alternative certificatioin", but I just got angry when I looked at teaching curriculums and said "nope". One cannot be assured of an alternative certification. So why risk majoring in math or english and find oneself unemployed. Plus, I don't like being told what to do, and teachers are now treated like children themselves and are "scripted" to a degree that I just could not have tolerated.) Or, the schools lets one or two (a handful) of out-of-control kids run wild in class (because to suspend or expel them may cause "disparate impact") such that no one else in the classroom gets to learn anything. There's too much testing of these poor little children. One must "teach to the test," so out goes anything that's not on the test.
I'm glad my kids went to school 30 or more years ago, not today. There was no instructions on how to how gay sex or figure out if you're in the wrong body.
And take away the smart phones during school hours. Do not allow the students to have cell phones on them at all except morning at arrival, when you leave. Not at lunch? No, not at lunch. The students would start looking eachother in the eyes and actually talking to eachother. Otherwise, no cell phones while in the classroom. If there's an emergency, parents, call the office. -- oh, what about mass shooters? Have the kids go through security checks as they come in, have armed guard in the schools and keep the doors locked. Then start jailing parents whose kids commit mass murders in cases where it is warranted (this has already started).
Have we solved all the world's problems yet? No, we haven't figured out how to re-Christianize the West yet. That is obviously a team effort, one-by-one, try to lead by example, and use words as needed. God will do the rest.
Re: If refused, off to jail.
Jail in not the right place. We barely have enough jail space for actual criminals. As Bobby said above, we need to bring back involuntary commitment for the mentally ill, with of course some safeguards.
Build jails. We used to be a nation that could build things, snap of a finger. Stop sending or allowing illegals into NYC, NYC is swamped in its mass transit, housing (especially in Manhattan, in which a large walk-in closet with a tiny kitchen built in and a bathroom one can't turn around in costs $6,000 a month before utilities).
China can build an entire city in about 18 months. We can't do anything any more because of permitting and zoning. I go to NYC frequently from my perch in the mountains in NE PA because I have family still living there (100 miles drive). I am afraid to walk around outside. The police are hugely demoralized and there are too many illegals pouring in. My son must ride mass transit to get to work mid-town and says he has to descend stairs lined with a gaunlet of homeless guys hanging out asking for a contribution. One guy took particular interest in him walking on Broadway near Houston and started calling out "hey, blue, hey blue" (he was wearing a blue shirt). I am my husband have trained the children (they are now adults but we still call them children) how to react when situation like this start happening. Zig-Zag, don't be afraid to walk out into (stopped) traffic, walk into any open establishment, don't be embarrassed to do an about-face and walk in the other direction. My husband and I have had to use all these evasive tactics. The good news is the streets of NYC are pretty packed so if one starts "resisting" requests for money from the outset, you have a pretty good chance of evading. I have personally gotten involved (with another woman with me) when a woman was about to be attacked--long story, and more than once. If people get involved right away, the interloper usually backs off. There is a new awful phenomena of men smacking women in the face (race difference, us your imagination) and just keep walking. What's the use? Yep. If a crime is committed, the criminal is immediately arrested to commit the same or worse crime(s) under no-bail laws passed in God knows where (Albany? NYC council, not sure. If illegals attack police, they're held a bit then let go to attack police and citizens (and others) again.
We had a huge homeless problem in NYC before Biden (Obama, Soros) opened the borders to all comers, unscreened.
I don't think the homeless should be able to sleep on the streets. Should they be able to walk around by day? Yes, but not solicit money, which frequently feels like a mugging about to happen. I once had a woman offer to sell me a CD, and when I refused, she hit me. Well, that was an interesting interaction--and too long a story to write here. No, I did not hit her back, but dialed 911 (this was when 911 got rapid response--Bloomberg was still mayor) and then she took off and I took off with her, in and out of cabs (the cabbie told the woman "get out") and in and out of stores. Why did I pursue this woman until the cops came? Because we'd had incidents in Greenwich Village (where I hang out) of homeless people like this (including homeless women) attacking babies being pushed in strollers. So the cops came and gave her a talking to. That was enough for me.
Here is a final tip that even you may find helpful riding your bike, and which I've taught to my children: if you are being attacked in the open, yelling "HELP" is first instinct and okay--but if that doesn't get passer-by involvement, studies have shown that yelling "fire" does. If you start yelling "fire," peds start looking around trying to figure out where the fire is and if they themselves are walking into fire. Haven't had to use that tactic yet, but as I said, I'm pretty much refusing to walk around outside in NYC except for a run of Bleecker Street and a few other streets' apprach to churches. And if you visit NYC and go to Greenwich Village, best RCC churches are St. Anthony of Padua (Sullivan and Houston), Our Lady of Pompeii (Carmine and Bleecker) and the magnificent Ole St. Paddy's at Mott and Prince. Which one? Well, if you want a free polyphony concert embedded in the mass (there is a spectacular soprano with a choir accompanying her) go to the 7 p.m. Sunday mass at Old St. Patricks's, which is a gorgeous church, and that mass is pretty full. Not standing room only, but quite well attended (and by 30-ish professionals who are networking for friends and marriage). Go to the 8 p.m. social afterwards, you'll make new friends instantly (and wine is served, free, but not so much that people get loopy). Sample of Mideval polyphony below.
Have a Blessed Sunday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF6TB-tIu8Q
I can't add or quibble with a word you've written. God bless you richly, Anne. If Trump wins and people like RFK, Jr, and Calley and Casey Means get prominent positions in a Trump administration, who knows, some of what we both know needs to be done could happen.
How about RFK, Jr., as Attorney General? Not only would there be a lovely symmetry in it, he might have the heft as well as the knowledge to begin to get such a desperately needed system into place.
I wouldn't mind Bobby Jr as attorney general at all. But chances are the election will be stolen. Prepare for events. We have two theaters of war that could expand into ww3. We have Obama and Soros and 400 Deep Staters which Deep staters just endorsed Kamala. We have the second assassin perpertrator announce he will pay $150,000 to whomever kills Trump. Wow, open bidding to kill Trump. Rep. Matt Gaetz says there are 5 assasination teams gunning for Trump: 3 foreign, two domestic. The 3 foreign are from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. The two domestic? Probably people or groups with ties to Deep State, USSS and FBI. How can Trump survive? Only our fervent prayers, repentance and fasting can save us and Trump from ruination.
The still sad music of humanity
“Then said he unto the disciples, “It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.””
************
“And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.”
I'm so sorry Bobby. You've convinced me not to give up looking for ways to help. Drugs are the main problem in certain areas, and I feel like a Pollyanna every time I think of how to help people who are just plain suffering, not addicts or schizophrenics. Government waste has left me with a fear of doing more harm than good but I will keep looking for good things to do nearby.
Thank you, Hope. I can't resist the conviction that we need to return to the system of hospitals which we had until the 1970s, but that they need to be places of treatment, not jailing, and yes, that we need to dragoon street people into them so they can be sorted out and treated.
Thanks for sharing your story, Bobby.
Wow. Thank you Bobby, for sharing some of your story. It’s heartbreaking, and causes me to call out again, as I do frequently, “Come, Lord Jesus.”
There is a wide spectrum of mental capacity and incapacity, and being an American raised to venerate our constitution, I favor a great deal of due process for anyone to challenge any restriction on their life. How coherently they can do so should be a strong factor in how much self-determination they have. Its obvious how well you would do as your own advocate. I drove paratransit for five years. There were some passengers who asked to be dropped off at the nearest store to do some shopping and get themselves home. There were others who had notes on the manifest saying that they MAY NOT change their destination, ever (for good reason). We need a wide range of options to account for all the possibilities.
I agree. If you drove paratransit for five years, you're a hero. The stories I've heard from drivers! But as you allude to, there is that huge number of helpless people.
Here's a horror story from October 1, 2021 or 2022, I can't remember which. It was a gorgeous autumn Monday morning. I had walked around the corner to a convenience store. I had seen the three homeless people, two women in their thirties and a man in his forties, who had for reasons known only to God ridden a bus to the end of the line at the transit station a half block away, then wandered to someone's lawn, and on my way back, stopped to talk with them. The women were thoroughly high. The man, so help me God, was alternating swigs from a huge bottle of whiskey with swigs from a beer.
Did they want help, I asked? They said, sure, we do, so I pulled out my phone and started calling around. They, meanwhile, were having a party, chattering, giggling, making so much noise that they may not even have heard my repeated pleas that they pipe down so I could make my calls. I moved about fifty feet away, and kept making calls. After about ten minutes, I had a phone number and an address which might have been leads. I was screaming at them to SHUT UP!!! so I could give them the information I had gotten. They wouldn't. I paused, looked at them, and in a second had decided they were beyond anything I could do for them, so I stalked away. When they saw me start to leave, they went silent. I remain haunted by the fact that I didn't stop and ask them if they were ready to be serious, but I think they were too f*cked up to be. That experience, more than any other, makes me think that yes, we do need a system of benign dragooning which would get such people off the streets and into hospitals.
I felt relatively safe driving paratransit. Every passenger was approved and registered, their names and addresses were known, who was on the manifest was documented. I learned fairly quickly that even the most abusive language was not an intentional insult, but neurons randomly firing. I did once open a door to let a young man who was kicking the windows out. It turned out, he was near a group home he was familiar with, run by the same people who ran the home where I was supposed to drop him off, and decided he was going there. On the other hand, there was a woman with severe Downs syndrome who I could walk off the bus, to the amazement of the group home staff, who usually had to come get her themselves.
You don't have to go very far. Your subjectivity, your being "you", (a.k.a. "soul") is entirely supernatural.
Tautological argument, but likely true. However, while I am generally dismissive of "animal rights" while supporting reasonable laws against gratuitous cruelty, I wonder sometimes. Just how much is organic and how much is the nefesh chayyim (living soul). Certainly humanity requires both, but is it ALL supernatural? If so, why did God bother to create biological organisms, including ours?
I have a feeling about elephants.
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/do-elephants-have-souls
I have the same feeling about octopi. I won't eat them anymore.
It isn't all supernatural. Whence the resurrection of the flesh. But It's not tautological, since there are alternate materialist theories which have failed from a logical stanpoint.
I wouldn't say the mind or soul is "supernatural". They're part of the created order too, subject to natural laws appropriate to them. Even angels and demons are. Only God is truly beyond nature, as its Creator.
I think that it's just a matter of terminology. The soul (I wouldn't use the word "mind") belongs to a different order of reality than the physical world, and that's a logical necessity.
I don't think I've ever actually eaten the baked beans for breakfast while in the UK, but I'm not that off put by it. Toast done on one side is more off-putting to me (even though my parents were Brits).
Breakfast foods tend to be very polarizing due to how different they are as between countries. England/Ireland and the Netherlands alike seem to have breakfasts that are most similar to the "traditional" sit-down American breakfast (that almost nobody eats anymore except on occasion), but elsewhere it's all over the map, from basically nothing, to a croissant, to the kind of thing I'm sure Rod has seen in hotels in Germany (a mixture of cold cuts, breads, muesli, yogurt and sof-boiled eggs) and Scandinavia (fish, mostly salted). Although, again, in those countries many people just grab something small on their way to work in a bakery or coffee shop (either sweet and sticky, or a small roll with cold cuts and butter). In Japan then have Japanese-style pickles and rice, traditionally.
The interesting thing about breakfast is that the gross-out factor seems quite high when it comes to other countries breakfast foods, at least the traditional ones. I expect that's because while the national forms of food from other meals are more widely known due to the growing availability of various cuisines in restaurants and the like, breakfast isn't included in that, generally, so people are more or less totally unexposed to diverse breakfast foods unlike they are for, say, dinner foods.
Are eggs pretty universally unobjectionable? My breakfast consists of what's basically a homemade egg-and-cheese McMuffin, along with a cup of Greek yogurt.
No , no...the English make only "friend eggs" and the yellow is supposed to run out all over your toast. Yum! They don't know the meaning of "Sunny side up" (literally an unrecognized term) because that is known to be the only way.
(OK, once they scrambled them, to my shock, but we won't talk about that.)
Oh, I just figured that they would have no point of reference for what it means for the sun to be up over there, with all the rain and all. . . .
Why, you hobbit-hating Numenor!
At least India reverse colonized them with curry.
Hush! Before Starmer jails you!
I remember a few sunny days in England. Over the course of a year.
When I was seven, the owner and sold cook at an old fashioned British boarding house noticed I only ate the solid white of the eggs he cooks for breakfast, and asked my parents, "Do your children eat eggs?" He was able to accommodate what I would eat, which was, break up the yolk, fry both sides of the egg hard. I've never had any taste for runny foods. Even ice cream has to be frozen hard for me to eat it.
You'd think, but in practice it seems that eggs are polarizing because of the various ways to prepare them. You'll find soft boiled eggs (in special holders, with special tiny spoons) at German hotel breakfasts, but if you want eggs done differently you have to order them, because it just isn't really done there except for foreigners ... and many Americans are quite discombobulated at the thought of scooping out a soft boiled egg with a small spoon. I don't remember many breakfast eggs in my trips to Scandinavia ... perhaps some hard boiled egg slices.
"many Americans are quite discombobulated"
There's definitely something about the thought that makes me think of Alice in Wonderland.
You know the story about the young curate (CofE) who is invited to breakfast at his bishop's and is served a rotten egg? "Parts of it were excellent, your Lordship."
When, many years ago, I was investigating turning my PhD dissertation into a book through a university press - a project about which I was not, to put it mildly, overly enthused, one scholarly reviewer tried to let me down as gently as possible with the comment, “It’s a bit vicar’s eggy”!
I don’t know about that. Egg cups are not that difficult to find here. I adore eating them that way. I think maybe we just don’t want to wait that long for the water to boil and the subsequent 4 minutes once placing the eggs in the water. We’ve lost a lot of our eating trads in the past few decades.
I own a German egg cooker, decorative egg cups, little spoons, the lot. Grew fond of them during my time 'zwischen Alpen und Meer'.
Never heard of one in Wisconsin. Of course a lot of people here are from Bavaria. Maybe its a Prussian thing.
I don't think so. I encountered it in the Rheinland, Bavaria and Lueneberger Heide of the north as well.
Soft-boiled eggs in an egg cup (a dual-use thing with one side for a single egg in the shell, and the other for one or more eggs out of it) were a frequent feature of my childhood, provided by my Slovak grandmother.
I feel super dumb, but, I didn’t know you can use both sides of the egg cup. I love them even more now and might just go unpack them from my Easter boxes.
Mom used to have those little soft boiled egg holders. She would wack the top of the egg off with a spoon and mix the soft insides with butter, salt, and pepper. We had those little spoons for eating it out of the shell too. Mom was off the boat from Ireland but that doesn't strike me as an Irish thing....though maybe she did grow up with it.
The newest egg fashion is the Jammy Egg. It’s boiled long enough that the white is cooked but the yolk is the consistency of jam. I find them quite lovely, warm or cold.
The Dutch eat cold cuts for breakfast as well.
The common denominator in European breakfast buffets is Frosted Flakes ("Frosties"). They love 'em.
I have a friend who won't eat any form of potato for breakfast -- not home fries, not hash browns, nothing. Perfectly happy to eat them with lunch and dinner though.
If I say I like hard cooked crispy potatoes for breakfast, is there anything Bolshevik about that?
On the contrary - proof of an admirable digestive system!
I was just in Denmark and found a wonderful similarity between the Danes' apparent breakfast preferences and those of Germany. I say 'apparent' because the one hotel which had breakfast included each morning offered, along with the other north-central-European standard things, American-style bacon. But having good Brötchen with the classic cold cuts and cheese was great.
I miss the Brötchen still, 47 years after my student year in Heidelberg. I eat a savory breakfast most days - need more protein as I get older, but it just tastes good (not much of an egg eater). Italian breakfast is tasty but isn't enough and has too many carbs. I can get German cold cuts in the town where I attend Liturgy.
A favorite breakfast nowadays: German whole-rye bread topped with a good Swiss cheese, brought just to the melting point, and avocado slices to finish it off. (European avocado toast?!?) Yummy.
Dana
You had me at avocado. That sounds delicious.
You hipster, you.
I just like what tastes good. At my age, more like "hippie" than "hipster".
During my study year I was housed in an attic bedroom in a house - not to worry, it was a really nice house, leased by a Swiss MD, Professor of Dermatology at the University. I was supposed to help set up food etc for entertaining, but only had to do that a couple of times. (They also had a little piano they let me play, a lovely blessing for me.) One day I came downstairs wearing an Indian print A-line skirt, knit turtleneck and sweater vest. The doctor's wife told me I looked like a hippie. She was nonplussed when I did not take that as a compliment, and it took some time to explain that in my neck of the woods (northern California with lots of "tune in, turn on, drop out" types causing problems in my small town as they fled from SF), hippies were not avant-garde intellectuals...
Dana
I like hippies, but only the ones who follow the old ways. Seems like you fit the bill.
I'm a Millennial in Austin, so the thing about avocado toast is pretty much a trope (or at least it was a couple years ago—haven't been paying attention). Sort of like with arugula, which I think they should really consider rebranding as rocket, like they do in Britain.
You'd feel good hanging out in my county. There are still a lot of back-to-the-landers from those days, maintaining their little homesteads in the redwoods. Local public radio did a lengthy series on them a couple of years ago. Most are in their 70s now, fewer drugs, just as much art and handcrafting. It's pretty unique.
D.
There are still real hippies-- not just the LARPing wanna-be kind?
John says he’s enjoying your excellent book but wondering if he should skip the frightening bits. He also says, regarding baked beans in Old Blightie, as the bride is advised on her wedding night by Mother, “ Close your eyes and think by of England!”
With eyes wide open I think of England often, my favorite of all countries. Thanks for your humor today - God blessed us with the British. Skip the frightening bits, indeed. Ha!
One thing I've been thinking about that relates to the idea of Enchantment is the spirit of place. That's what Kingsnorth is after with his Holy Wells series, and I think it ties in with the idea of Christianity being an incarnate faith, so specific places matter.
Along these lines I was impressed by Rod posting about the Sword of St. Michael the other day, which is actually right out there in the woo-woo, being a New Age / neo-Pagan idea originally that has been taken over by some Christians. I don't know whether I actually believe it to be real, and would welcome careful mathematical analysis.
I've been writing occasional Substack posts, which can be seen as tourism itineraries or walking guides, but my aim is for them to be more like what Kingsnorth writes (I wish I could write like him, though!). My latest is very woo-woo at its heart, and as far as I can tell no one has picked up on this before: https://rombald.substack.com/p/a-cathedral-a-missionary-a-burial
A friend of mine is currently finishing a commentary on the Book of Hosea, and as an appendix it will have an essay on the importance of land/place in the O.T. I'm trying to get him to have it published as a standalone essay somewhere so that folks who might not be interested in the commentary can still read it.
I’m quite interested in what you are contemplating regarding place. I’m puzzled, however, by your comment regarding Rod’s article on the Sword of St Michael, “I don't know whether I actually believe it to be real, and would welcome careful mathematical analysis.” I would agree that we can’t just believe all claims we read by people on the internet (no disrespect Rod), but I can’t see how mathematical analysis will lead you closer to truth. Enchantment is living beyond what can be proven by our limited knowledge and resources. I suppose one would have to experience such a thing to “know”, but science won’t necessarily get us to what is ultimate.
The claim is that the Sword of St. Michael is a loxodrome linking seven (or eight, if Rod is right) hills dedicated to St. Michael. My concern is whether that is more than would be expected by chance. To test this, it would be necessary to identify all places that would meet such a classification (I can think of at least one other off the top of my head: Glastonbury Tor in England), and map them, and do statistical analysis to find the probability of a chance alignment.
There has been criticism that some of the places on the Sword are actually a few km away. That would have to be analysed too. It would be necessary to take the oblateness of the spheroid into consideration. There is also the question of how big an area each covers; if it is a building, that is near enough to being a point on this scale, but the same is not true for an island, such as Skellig Michael.
I think claims of miraculous or extraordinary things should be subjected to rigorous testing. I like the approach that's been taken with the Turin Shroud; I think it's probably genuine, but I might be wrong.
The Sword of St. Michael is a ley line, and came out of the whirl of the British counterculture of the 1970s, only later being picked up by Catholics (e.g. Aleteia). I think the whole ley line obsession, which tended to be druggie and tied in with UFOs, Druids, witches, etc., was never a big thing in the USA?
I think that the stuff can be fun, but it ultimately doesn't matter, and to believe for such alleged "reasons" is not to believe at all. Jesus already said as much: "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah" (Matthew 12:39).
I'm not actually sure about this sort of area.
I think the Turin Shroud is probably genuine and miraculous, but I might be wrong, and it wouldn't shake my faith were it proven to be a forgery. Actually, I'd be highly impressed by the skill and imagination of the forger (maybe mediaeval Christians were more brilliant than we give them credit for?!)
I'm more on the fence about the Sword of St. Michael. However, I think things like the Shroud or the Sword can push people towards faith. A materialist scientist might look into the Shroud and be convinced it's miraculous, whereas a New Ager or neo-Druid might find the Sword points him to Christ, finding the Church actually more full of the numinous than stone circles are.
There's also the point that some miracles (e.g. the Resurrection) are central to the faith.
Well, the Resurrection precisely is the sign of Jonah that Jesus mentioned. And that one works the other way around: we don't believe because of the Resurrection, we accept the Resurrection because we believe.
Hmmm. This is all debatable. I personally am that way round, but a lot of apologists work the other way round, arguing that the historical evidence for the Resurrection is so good that any honest person would accept it, and come to faith. I've heard some people say that that's what did it for them too.
Didn't that ley line play a part in "The Da Vinci Code" (which makes me a bit skeptical about it)
I don't know about that. I've never read it.
Ley lines play a significant part in British popular culture, although they've gone out of fashion now. I think it's intriguing how Catholic publications like Aleteia have picked up on this one.
Very nice, Rombald. I subscribed.
Does anyone know what happened with air Traffic control? I’ve searched around and have not seen anything in the news.
There's a term I've heard called the "enshittification" of society, originally applied to the software industry but really can be applied to any area or service with declining quality. Air traffic control seems to be another victim.
I would blame DEI, but really it's just a general decline in quality, independent of the wokery and culture wars. Civilizational decline, people!
The quality decline has been going on for a long time. I think of it as the Walmartization of America: cheap prices über alles, in fact cheap prices are the only value.
I should've known!
Walmart wil be what collapses America!
When you cut the real wage level in various ways, people can only afford to think about how cheap the price is. It takes a certain level of discretionary spending to worry about qualify and source.
The problem is that cheap stuff which wears out fast and has to be replaced often can be more expensive that something which costs more but is more durable. For years I would't buy clothes at Walmart because I had too many bad experiences with seams ripping after the third washing.
Often true -- but setting aside the money to buy the good stuff while wearing already worn old clothes can be a bit much for many families, and even individuals. It takes a certain level of privilege to be able to live up to such sensible standards, and a bit of hubris to lecture others about it. Anyway, I've gotten some very durable low-cost jeans at a big-box home supply store. Yes, all three major chains in my area are owned by Trump donors, but you can't boycott capitalism -- they own everything.
I;m buying a lot of stuff at Marshalls or TJ Max these days. You can find quality stuff at low prices there.
Decline is a choice. Or a great many choices amplifying and propagating like a perverse version of Adam Smith's 'invisible hand'.
Yes, decline starts in the schools that are now centers of indoctrination instead of education. The Chinese, Russians and Indians do not have this problem. Their kids are taught Reading, Math and Science, not gay sex and gender fluidity from kindergarten onward. And if as a parent, you object in USA to the pornification of the innocent children (and in lieu of reading, writing and arithmetic), well, then you're a "domestic terrorist" and need to be visited by the FBI.
All three countries indoctrinate their students in various ways that the respective government deem appropriate.
DEI is part of it, but it's not the total explanation. Look at Boeing. I would not fly on a Boeing jet. I'm starting to get afraid to fly at all with all the emphasis on DEI and wokery by Pete Buttigieg and others.
Last I had to fly, I specifically told my husband I would NOT fly on a Boeing plane. The flight and airport experience were still crappy as all get out, but, I didn’t fall out of the sky.
I am not afraid of flying-- it really is true that driving is more dangerous. But I positively loathe everything about the experience.
I don't think DEI is the problem at Boeing. Profits über alles and the corner-cutting that leads to is the problem. Mistakes will be made by everyone everywhere. However quality control is an absolute necessity in every sort of business, above all those where errors can cost lives later. Sometimes cutbacks are necessary, but the less necessary departments should bear them (HR; marketing, executive bonuses and salaries...) not the vital staff.
Part of the problem. DEI is part of the problem everywhere it is put into practice: white men not wanted. The chief qualification on the resume has become skin color Now, that's racial progress! See, I've summarized it for them in 4 words: whites not wanted even better. There were other problems (the finance types were ascendant over the engineering types in top management. I won't fly on anything Boeing for the foreseeable future. And if Buttigieg stays Secretary of Transportation, making sure the handicapped (mental illness and blindness, no problem) are considered for air traffic controller, well, I won't be flying at all. Such a pity. Let Buttigieg fly with the blind pilots if he wants to be woke.
You speak as if you were an insider for a time at Boeing, but not clearly enough to be sure.
The original Cory Doctorow article where he coined the phrase is excellent, and explains these market dynamics very well.
Yes, I'm afraid the sufferings of our host in the past 24 hours or so at Heathrow are not at all untypical for that place.
The sufferings of Frankfurt, however...those should be the 10th beatitude - Blessed are they who pass through Frankfurt, for they shall depart and arrive in a better place.
Hahaha! I usually don't fly into Frankfurt, being that Munich is closer to "home" but last time I went, I flew to/from Frankfurt and it didn't seem so bad. Not Munich, but nothing too terrible.
Trying not to over-post but you got me.
<<"Not Munich">> - Nothing is Munich! That's where my happy memories airport memories are. Not caused by the airport, of course.
As long as I'm posting, I guess I'll tell. - It is not just the miles of walking- In Frankfurt, seeking to transfer, I was once let down by the bus from the plane (they often don't go to terminals) at the wrong terminal. They then tried to help out, escorting me to my flight in another terminal. I was put on a flight to Atlanta. I was going to Vilnius. I only found out about the mistake because someone was in "my "seat and we checked tickets amongst ourselves. Otherwise I woulda had Georgia on my mind.
Crazy!
Linda, God helped you out there on not landing in Georgia. That sounds like a "save" from a maximum inconvenience to me. You would have been beside yourself.
I once spent the overnight at Frankfurt airport in a wire mesh chair. Pretty sure if I had removed my pants, I'd have seen 'waffle marks'.
There are 2nd century martyred saints who met their end that way.
I don’t know but saw this a few months ago. https://youtu.be/6byj8jfZYRA?si=yPwBKKGqyYf7n_RE
Very scary. White guys need not apply (nor whites in general). I imagine there are enough Haitians to go around to blow up most small towns in Red States if we drop them in 20,000 "dollops" in Appalachia (and other poor-town) America. I cannot believe this is where we've arrived in 2024. And with Kamala at the helm (almost a certainty given the "election stealing" mechanisms and the phony polls), it can only get far worse. Obama will get 2 more terms (a total of 5 terms in office--and more to come under Walz, who is an idiot Commie himself). The courts will be destroyed and infiltrated with the appointment of judges of the quality of Merchan, Chutkan and Engoran. SCOTUS judge Jackson doesn't know what a woman is. Then how can she protect women and girls' right? How does Judge Jackson know if she is a woman, given that she is "not a biologist"? Biden said he wanted a woman (of color) for the post. That in iteself is illegal. But let's suspend that for a minute. If Biden said he wanted a woman, and Jackson isn't sure what a woman is, hasn't she disqualified herself since she may not in fact be a woman according to her own statement that "she's not a biologist" in response to Senator Blackburn's question to her "what is a woman?"
So the inability to "true the vote" will be the final collapse of the US Constitution, because our rights and liberties are only guaranteed to the extent we have judges who are fair and originalist in their interpretation of the Constitution.
I know this time last year, DFW was doing lots of runway construction/expansion. It delayed my going to DEVOtional last year (a show that celebrates the music of DEVO in Cleveland, OH). Didn't get to go this year, but I have to imagine those projects are still going on.
I once spent hours on a plane at DFW unable to leave the gate due to a chain of storms that kept coming and coming. It was a 6 am flight. We didn't get airborne until noon.
Wow, that's a lot of waiting on the tarmac. Must have been very tedious.
Hell will be an airplane stuck on the tarmac :)
In a middle seat.
I seriously worry that planes are going to start going down due to this phenomenon of incompetence we are now dealing with from airlines.
Buttigieg issued some statement a while back saying that he wants the disabled, mentally ill, etc., to be employed by the DOT (otherwise, one would be guilty of ableism). I thought, oh, how nice: "blind traffic controllers, mentally ill pilots, what could go wrong?" We are led by crazies.
There's a lot of back office work that can be done by people suffering various disabilities. Technically I would qualify due to my PTSD. Should people with functional disabilities be blackballed from employment?
Depends on the disability and the nature of the job.
Sure of course, but I dislike the insinuation that if someone is not physically and mentally perfect they are unable to do a job, any job.
I don't see anyone saying that. Just because nobody's perfect doesn't mean that they can't do any job at all, with some exceptions. Some people are going to have job choices circumscribed more than others due to illness/disability. I think Buttigieg needs to be very careful with the whole mental illness thing in particular. I'm all for somebody working who is able to do so with the appropriate treatment plan. Some folks though, will simply be unable to do certain things in this life, and legislating to the contrary just so they can earn more money or feel better about themselves while putting a lot of other people in danger is downright irresponsible. For a good example, you can watch Mentour Pilot's excellent video on the jump seat riding pilot who suddenly tried to shut down the engines on that Alaska Airlines flight over Oregon last year.
My wife is English, and we make the Full English every Saturday when it’s not a fasting season, but I flatly refuse to eat the beans. When we visit the in-laws my father-in-law (who makes the best fry up) loves joking at my expense about not eating the beans.
I’ve learned over 20 years to just accept beans on toast as a snack or quick meal, but that’s as far as I’m going.
Quote: "I asked my editor there how it is that an Evangelical publishing powerhouse decided to publish [my book]. He told me that the Evangelical world has changed a lot in recent years."
I.e., Evangelicals have become much more tolerant than they used to be. In the past, they wouldn't have dared to publish works by say Catholics, because too many Evangelicals considered them non-Christian. That has changed. Though I'm sure a book on the virgin Mary would still have a hard time getting published. Funny thing is, I'm planning to write such a book. When I look for source material all I can find is Catholic works. I think that needs to change.
Back around 1990 I listened to a taped lecture series on The Ascension by Presbyterian theologian David Chilton, and in the introduction he said that he could only find one Protestant book on the subject at the time, and only a few Catholic ones. One hopes that such things have changed for the better in the past 35 years!
The Internet lets you find a LOT more these days. The Catholic church has written a lot on the subject. I've found numerous articles cited but have had a difficult time finding them online. Seems you have to go to their archives.
I am specifically interested in how everything God has done to redeem us, had to be done through Mary - and if you were God - how do you get her to cooperate with your plan? In this, she is the masterpiece of how God can allow free will and His sovereignty to coexist.
The bible talks about God being a potter who forms us into what he wants, and if we resist, then he forms us into something else. In my view, Mary is God's best work as a potter of our destinies. If we miss her, we miss how incredible God is as a potter.
I've seen pottery-making youtube in which the potter will be spinning at the wheel and something is said to the effect that the clay is sort of interacting in a way with the potter that the pot either curves in or out. Some NDE returnees say things such as "we volunteered" before being born (for our lot). I think the author of "Embraced By the Light" said that at one point, for instance.
I think there is something mysterious going on (well, yeah) captured by St. Paul's admonition to "Work out your salvation in fear and trembling, because it is God working it out in you."
The quote sort of is related to Jesus's statement that: "You think you chose me, but I chose you," (words to that effect).
CS Lewis says somewhere in his nonfiction that sometimes it's hard figuring out what you are doing as opposed to what God is doing.
That is, sometimes one says something, goes somewhere, does something that in retrospect was "just the thing" that makes the difference. One realizes "God just used me." And those instances gives one great joy.
Then there's that interesting statement at the start of the Book of Jeremiah, the longest book in the Bible (I'm told) in which God says from the outset to Jeremiah:
"Before you were born I knew you." Or
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
(Jeremiah 1:5)
I sort of see how God forms our bodies, but I'm completely perplexed at the "process" by which God forms a soul. That is one of the top questions on my ever-growing list of "Questions for God when I meet Him."
I like the verse in Proverbs 21:1 "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD like channels of water; he turns it wherever he wants."
Water (i.e., us) flows were it wants to - and yet God can step in a divert it. It still flows where it wants to - its will has not been changed at all. But now it goes where God wants it to go. God hardened Pharaoh's heart. God didn't changed his will. He just helped it go where it wanted to go already.
I have definitely felt "directed" to go in certain places and know God is in on it at a certain level. For instance, NYC is the LAST place on earth I'd want to live, but I've lived there almost all my married life (45 years and counting)--ah, but now I have a place in the country to "repine" to (since 2015 I've mainly lived in NE PA and "visit" NYC). (And in winter, I try to go to FL, if I'm lucky. Daytona Beach area. Now, folks, you might book a room in DB, but for real beach "enjoyment", drive 8 miles south to Wilbur-by-the Sea, to the 100-car parking lot with the name "Toronita Park" (it has bathrooms, outdoor showers, an in-season life guard. No condos throwing shadows on the beach in Wilbur-by-the-Sea, just very interesting-looking and varied houses. One feels as if "this is my private beach" because it is not usually too packed (except weekends in summer there are more people than usual, but nowhere near as many people as Daytona Beach beaches). And in Wilbur, there are no cars allowed on the beach, no electric bikes allowed, no drinking allowed, no dogs allowed. LIttle tidal pools form at the edge frequently for the kiddies to splash in (or little ole ladies like me) and the beaches in DB area are really wide, and the sand firm. One can go quite far into the ocean and not be up to one's neck. I will attach a video of Wilbur-by-the-Sea. Now this video was after Hurricanes Ian and Nicole in Fall 2022, so take all those houses and have them rehabbed in your mind.
I'm thinking about trying out visiting The Villages in FL--ah, and give up Wilbur-by-the-Sea Beach? Hard trade off there. We'll see. I may go for a "look see" to the Villages in Winter 2025, if I'm lucky--but I'm not feeling the least bit lucky about winter 2025, are you). I want to see what the hullaboo is all about. I think I would like to be able to drive an electric golf cart everywhere and ride my electric bike all over the place. There are so many activities there. And 140,000 old people, gulp. Well, I'm old, so why not?
Back to the idea of God sending us places--I think He does at times: Look at all those missionairies who volunteer to go to Africa or the New World, where bad stuff happened and still happens. Look at the missionairies who were martryed in Japan or China. These men and women are so dedicated and are so moving. And look at Mother Teresa, who was born in Albania! And received "a call within a call." Such a heroine, Mother Teresa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAb_ilgma6M&t=191s
I felt very much "directed" to attend an Orthodox liturgy way back in 1995-- and did so finally in early 1996. I don't think being "directed" is the same as being compelled (and you may not be making any such implication)
Down here in St Pete electric bikes are EVERYWHERE. As an old fashioned biking purist I look askance at them (and don't get me started on those new-fangled scooters). And yes you even see people toodling around residential areas in golf carts sometimes.
God is in all places and fills all things-- including us. Too often people expect gaudy miracles from God, but more commonly God acts through and in his creation, breaking no natural laws, but inspiring creation to do His will.
Of course with people there is a great danger we may assume we are doing God's will when we are doing our own and that usually does not end well. We need to keep a certain humility about us, recalling Lincoln's "I don't know if God is on my side, but I hope I am on God's side".
Amen to this!
My favorite Marian feast is a minor one, the Protection of the Virgin (Oct 1 in the Orthodox Church). Rather few churches celebrate it these days. My finances are fully engaged with the new house but next year I will buy an icon of the feast for my church and hint a bit that maybe we should do a Liturgy for the feast.
How could anyone write a whole book on the Ascension? Do we really need much more than is already in the Bible? The more one writes, the more the author extrapolates, and it becomes a personal mind game rather than a revelation.
And what will your book about the VM be about? The Marian appartions?
No, not that. It's a study of Mary that unlocks understanding of free will versus God's sovereignty. If you were God, how do you get a Mary? To answer that, you need to see how far God's love can reach.
I really appreciate that God chose to have Jesus come though a woman--that really elevated all women. Jesus also elevated women, give His time and culture. During Jesus' day, men really didn't usually talk to women they weren't related to. So God could have had Jesus descend from Heaven just as He later ascended to Heaven.
As a Third-Order Carmelite, I'm devoted to the VM, but I'm lousy at the Rosary! Alas. That's what youtube is for! A lot of goreous rosary-saying going on on youtube, in any language you want (I like Latin chant rosaries the best).
Dean, St Maximos (c. 600) wrote a biography of Mary; it's been recently translated and is out there in hardback but not too expensive. St Vlad's Popular Patristics series features a few books on sermons given on Mary's feast days from the later patristic period. I think Fr Schmemann wrote a small one. I know there are other Orthodox books on Mary, just can't recall them at the moment. Search St Vlad's, St Tikhon's, Ancient Faith store.
Your book sounds really interesting. Let us know when it's ready.
Dana
Thanks, I'll look those up - especially St Maximos, if only because the very small town I first lived in (in Ohio) was called Maximo.
Dean, the most interesting thing for me about St Maximos' work was his explanation of Mary's name. Everyone seems to think the original is Maryam, as in Moses' sister, which means "bitterness". But In the NT Greek text, it is never given that way, it's always Maire ("my-reh"). I always wondered why the mother of our Lord would have a name with such a negative meaning; maybe it's because our life without God is bitter??? St Maximos says otherwise.
As someone who has studied language and is interested in the meanings of names, his explanation really caught my attention, because even though the names look like they might sorta have a resemblance, there's enough of a difference to question this. According to Maximos, "Maire" is of Egyptian derivation, with the meaning of "bright", and when given in Hebrew that meaning is intensified. I looked this up on the Interweb (and in my Strong's concordance), and indeed there is a rule in Hebrew that a particle can be inserted into a noun that intensifies the word; in Mary's case, that would make the meaning something like "brilliance". Well, that's more like it! That meaning resonates so much with the Orthodox/Catholic understanding of Mary's place.
Also, in Orthodoxy, Mary comes from a very pious family with Levitical as well as Davidic roots; her parents have a very special place, too. At the end of every Liturgy when the priest gives the parting blessing, he asks for the prayers of "the holy and righteous ancestors of God Joachim and Anna, and of all the saints". Most of all, she was given much grace, which in EO is the actual working of the Holy Spirit within a person. She was given absolutely every help she needed. She could still have said "no" to God - but he knew she would say "yes". It's a very wonderful, brilliant mystery.
Dana
Thanks for the tip on what Mary's name means. That's very helpful.
In my view, for God to get the "Mary" He needed, he had to work on her parents, grandparents (and so on) as well.
But I have been especially struck by the name she calls God, saying "holy is His name". That gives a key to understanding what God was doing in the life of Mary, Joseph, her parents, and so on. He wasn't just calling her to a special work (with however much grace that required). His holiness was moving over them - and they felt it. We may not be called to a work at the level Mary was, but each of us can seek God in His holiness. And when we find Him in His holiness, we'll know it like Mary did, and we too will say, "holy His name".
Quote: "...the problem had to do with air traffic control in both London and Dallas, and them unable to sort themselves over 'permissions' to land."
I have no idea what happened here, but it sure strikes me as one more way our government could coerce corporations (in this case the airline companies) to not let "certain" people to board. We won't give you permission to land if you let *that* guy on!
It sounds like it affected all the air traffic. Homeland security already has ways to blackball potential terroriists and foreigners who are persona non grata in the US, and they usually do so well before such people get to the airport (basically in many cases they won't be ticketed at all because they lack passports and visas). If someone somehow slips through they will be met at the departure airport and denied boarding, sometimes even taken off a flight before it departs. No need to inconvenience everyone else.
I was born-again into a new reality of Christianity in October of 1975. By 1990, I was dissatisfied with the anti-intellectual aspects of the Evangelical Church I had landed in. It took a clear-eyed commitment to the truth, regardless of the consequences to set me right again. I found in my investigations that Christianity is not true because it is Christianity but because it corresponds to reality when ALL the evidence is considered.
This search for the truth is not always easy and can be lonely at times. I still fight the anti-supernatural bias of the naturalistic world around me while I fight the other flank of anti-intellectual paradigms of some of the more flighty elements of Evangelicalism as I attempt to establish a rational faith in a rational God.
In the 49 years of my walk with God, I have not heard any spiritual directives from my Lord to leave the church I stumbled into in my desperation in 1975. Here I serve still in the hope I am influencing the people around me toward the God of their salvation. It is my honour and privilege to do so.
I think I get what you mean. Are you attending an Orthodox church now?
So, Rod, although you grew up in Louisiana, you mock the Brits for enjoying beans on toast for breakfast.
As the old joke goes:
It is feared a new toxic invasive species has been detected in parts of the United States.
People in 49 states: "Gah! Yuck! Eww!"
People in Louisiana: "What it taste like fried?"
I like the Cajun version of this joke a little better.
Two Cajun men are out hunting when a flying saucer lands and two aliens climb out of it. One man says to the other "you go shoot 'em and bring 'em back to the cabin. I'm headin' back to start makin' a roux."
Before we turned woke up here in Canada we used to tell Newfie jokes. I didn’t know that Americans told Louisiana jokes!
I have heard a number of Texas jokes - usually variations on the “everything’s bigger in Texas” theme.
Florida is known for its "Florida man" jokes. When I lived here before the Tampa newspaper at year's end published an array of actual news stories under the title "Floriduh"-- breathtakingly stupid stuff that had happened over the year (e.g., the time some middle school kids got the school bus driver to stop for a junior alligator so they could grab it and take it to school-- and the bus driver went along with it)
When I was a teen, my mother bought me a book of Bob Tulk's Newfie Jokes. It became apparent she had not previewed the book.
Many years later, some of my brain sludge includes jokes from that book. :>)
I'm familiar with them as Alabama jokes.
Here in western VA we tell West Virginia jokes. They’re kind of in the order of Jeff Foxworthy’s “you may be a redneck” schtick.
What constitutes a 7 course meal in West Virginia? A possum & a 6 pack. Did you hear about the fire that burned down the WVU library? Destroyed both books, including one they hadn’t colored in yet. What do you call 32 WV women in a room? A full set of teeth.
Actually my husband’s family is from Moyers, WV in Pendleton County. Yes a whole town full of Moyers. He tells more WV jokes than anyone..
Douglas Adams said something like, there's a reason no language has the expression "as pretty as an airport"
Spam and eggs in Hawaii! That's a true breakfast.
If they had served that at the Nore, a lot of trouble could have been avoided.
In New Zealand whilst chaperoning a school trip I ate canned spaghetti served on Vegemited toast - for breakfast.
But who am I to talk? My go-to breakfast is a 5-grain toast sandwich, with sauerkraut and melted Swiss cheese. Oh, and olive oil in lieu of butter or margarine ... and sometimes Marmite too.
Even in early childhood I was appalled by sweet breakfast cereals.
No!!! A vegemite sandwich in a land down under for breakfast?
I award you the trophy for the worst breakfast here!
The canned spaghetti on Vegemited toast was served open-faced, if that mitigates the horror for you. ;>)
It was surprisingly good - but then I've always preferred a savoury breakfast.
We've been back in Canada for 20 years after a year in NZ. My wife is appalled at my pseudo-Reuben breakfast - the Swiss cheese and sauerkraut on toast, with optional Marmite.
An open face sandwich is still a sandwich. Horror not much appeased.
Oh - confession. I've tasted marmite. I am not apparently not genetically inclined to it. I've only assumed vegemite is ever worse, like marmite with vegetables.
Conceptually, a sandwich must be surrounded on two sides by bread, and thus an open-faced "sandwich" would in fact be a . . . pizza.
Vegemite and Marmite are very polarizing, no doubt. One really enjoys them, or is repulsed. There is little middle ground. Some of the advertising plays on this and is very funny.
Although there is great debate between Marmite- and Vegemite-eaters, akin to a sports-team rivalry, I doubt I could actually tell the difference between Marmite and Vegemite (or Megamite, a house brand in NZ).
All are high in umami, the savory taste, which I've always craved.
I like umami very much. Mushrooms for instance, are umami. Marmite tastes of rotten mushroom :)
Truly - it is genetic as to loving or hating marmite:
https://blog.23andme.com/articles/the-genetics-of-marmite
It is also a great empathy exercise. Pull some out in a crowd, watch the Ughs! and Ahhs!