sisu

The very model of a modern Major-Pussycat

Tiny occupied Tuck's ship-model box the minute it hit the dining room table, batting about the spools of thread we've been using to lash the "rope" to the edge of the sail with the classic blanket stitch of our youth. At one point -- above -- she upended the plans and basked in the early-morning sun. Between the two of us Tuck and ourselves developed a method of making the sails that far outstrips the crude techniques promulgated in the instructions to the model. We're suggesting he write it up and offer it to the ship-modeling community. We'll be blogging about the specifics soon.

Who knew that cats read plans? Tiny never fails to astonish.

She draws a bead on the spool at the end of the line.

Update: Lots more animals, with and without backbones, at Modulator's Friday Ark #184 and Carnival of the Cats #211 hosted by "HANDSOME boy" and "BIG man" Nikita -- linking to a history of the Carnival -- at Musings of a Mad Macedonian.

Update II:  "Today’s Random Ten is brought to you by Tiny, one of Sissy Willis’s sparkle-eyed kitties," writes Elisson, captioning the above photo with music to our ears:

Tiny, displaying her usual effervescence in this shot by the estimable Sissy Willis.

Who knew that our sweet tiny girl was moonlighting at another blog?

"When I approached him, he hissed and spat on me"

"Susie's grand old Arthur assumes the shape of his chosen container, in this case a Victoria's Secret birthday box emptied of superflous contents, i.e., birthday presents for our lovely hostess," we captioned this photographic image 2 1/2 years back.

We lost a precious venerable boy yesterday, Sister Susie's totally awesome tuxedo cat, Arthur, all of sixteen years but taken before his time. Matt said it all:

He had a long and eventful life.

We joined in:

A mighty domestic force among those who knew and loved him.

Arthur (left) and Daisy in their cups in October of 2006. According to Sue, it was the first time her puddies had ever come face to face with a real, live catnip plant. They couldn't get enough of it. Too much fun to watch. For more superb catnip blogging, check out our "Substance abuse, then and now."

"I was remembering the time he and Mike made their Great Escape," says Suzi in imail:

She: Pried open the cellar window and fled.

We: LOL. Art and Mike's Big Adventure.

She: Yes. Mike returned immediately, but it took several hours to capture Art.

We: Were there sightings?

She: Yes. He perched on the neighbor's woodpile, but when I approached him, he hissed and spat on me.

We: A giant among cats!

She: Next, I found him crouched in the grass in my own yard.

We: Don't mess with ME, Missy!

She: I had to put on leather gloves and throw a leather flight jacket over him in order to pick him up and get him back in the house. He was so feisty, and red in tooth and claw.

We: A mighty fortress is our cat!

A giant of a cat. God bless, little Arthur.

"When faith is devoid of reason"

"If we all don't stand up to Islam together, we all go down," writes Amazonian Culture Warrior Atlas re "left-wing" Dutch MP Geert Wilders's much-censored film short "Fitna," now enjoying top billing in the blogosphere. "This is a great film and I will tell you why," says Atlas. "It is powerful and succinct. There is no editorial, no opinion. Just Islam. There are the violent acts of war by Islam and the Koranic verses that call for them." Images above and below are screen shots from the film. Tchaikovsky's haunting "Arabian Dance" -- based upon a Georgian lullaby -- is woven in and out of the soundtrack, with its images of mayhem and carnage, to ironic effect. YouTube recording of the music here.

"He focuses on reason precisely to show that when faith is devoid of reason, the result is a fundamentalist approach that is not true to the essence of that tradition," says Francesco Cesareo, president of Assumption College in Worcester, in a brief but excellent Boston Globe interview whose headline says a mouthful about what's wrong with the Globe and other MSM big mouths:

On closer look, a more complex pope.

Nearly three years since white smoke was seen coming out of the Sistine Chapel stovepipe, and the Globe and fellow travelers are just getting around to taking a "closer look"? If they'd been paying attention, they could have gotten a sense of the arc of his Papacy the very day before his election to the Throne of Peter back in April of 2005, when we wrote:

"In his homily Monday morning, [Cardinal] Ratzinger -- powerful Vatican official from Germany often mentioned as a leading candidate to become the next pope -- spoke in unusually blunt terms against 'a dictatorship of relativism' -- the ideology that there are no absolute truths," reports FOXNews:

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."

Whether or not you're a Catholic, the Cardinal's words ring true on a fundamental human level. "True joy" can come only from striving towards a goal higher than "one's own ego and one's own desires."

You probably caught the MSMs usual misunderstanding of all things Papa Ratzi, this time the Pope's baptism of Allam, a Muslim-born convert who is one of Italy's most famous and controversial journalists, on Easter eve last weekend. You convert, you die!!! We were particularly enchanted by a piece -- can't find the source, but it comes with the territory -- that called Benedict XVI to task for saying something that might offend Osama Bin Laden.

It took Time only seven months to get wind of what Papa Ratzi was up to, as we wrote in November of 2006:

"Suddenly, when he speaks, the whole world listens," gushes a breathless Time Mag, enthralled with its belated discovery of Papa Ratzi, the Pope who loves cats and Mozart. Long before Cardinal Ratzinger became Benedict XVI, the great student of history and human nature was warning the West of the gathering Eurabian storm. But only when Time notices the "hard-knuckle intellect with a taste for blunt talk and interreligious confrontation" is this voice in the wilderness "suddenly" heard. 

This angry litttle guy from Geert Wilders' piece called to mind the RIGHT Reverend Jeremiah Wright, until recently the right-hand man of the man who would be Leader of the Free World. That type of oratory is SO yesterday. Unbelievable that modrin folks buy into it.

That's what comes of gazing at one's navel 24/7.

How sad to think of the worst impulses of our species being promoted, big time, by the tribalistic proselytizers of the "religion of peace."

Fortunately, just as the Jihadists use the internet tools developed by their betters to promulgate their message of hatred and fear of the other, the internet becomes the vehicle of deliverance of Geert Wilders's message of wisdom and truth.

"This camera was recently added to the list of cameras no longer servicable by the Pentax service center"

"'Desire is the true source of economic value,' wrote Virginia Postrel over two years ago, long before she submitted herself to the surgeon's knife to give a kidney to a dear friend," we captioned these photos a coupla years back.

"Ms. Willis: Thank you for contacting Pentax Imaging Company," emails Greg Wooton, Operations Supervisor, Pentax Customer Care, following a rather disagreeable telephone conversation this afternoon re the recent rapid decline of our beloved Optio 450:

Unfortunately, this camera was recently added to the list of cameras no longer servicable by the Pentax service center.

Oh, my. If only their customer service fellow Michael had told us last Monday when we took the trouble to send our camera via UPS two-day at our expense out to Golden, Colorado -- the fifth time in five years since we received the thing as a Christmas gift that the lens cover fell off track and we sent it back upstream. Tuck had a few things to say to put it all in perspective:

They're more interested in selling new cameras than they are in taking care of customers they already have.

It's like taking your five-year-old Rolls to the dealer and being told "We don't service those anymore."

You said it, but given the realities of the marketplace, we're ready big time for a new camera, and our "friends" at Bromfield Street Camera and Hunt's Camera -- ain't it grand to have the top of the heap down the pike south and north of us? -- tell us we can now purchase the same and better than what Tuck paid $500 for five years ago for half the price. We will never buy another Pentax, of course. As Tuck says re our moribund Optio 450:

It's such a wonderful camera, and you love it. And some stupid intra-corporate nobody says we don't fix those anymore. Now, you don't buy them anymore.

Kevin at Bromfield's wants to talk Olympus, Nikon and Canon at $199-250. Patrick at Hunt's says Canon and Panasonic are where it's at. One of them told us that Pentax was smaller than the other major camera companies and is therefore unable to keep up with the competition. One of them told us to stay away from local firms that  promise camera repair. Whatever. Maybe we could sell our beloved little Optio 450 on ebay for parts. In the larger view, we're thinking a newer version of what we love, with a better macro capability, would be totally awesome.

Update: Thanks to our commenters for their amusing and helpful advice:

Goomp: Is Pentax a synonym for stupid?

Jordi Waggoner of the image-rich Above the GWB: Pentax is a synonym for inept! I have and love a Canon SD870 IS . . . The one good piece of advice I got was sit down and think about what you want to shoot with it, then go look.

Blogpal Teresa of Technicalities [Check out her gorgeous new banner image while you're over there]: If you want I can ask my dear husband if he's got any links for you as he haunts the camera/photo sites.

By return email, Ken's links and commentary:

Steve's DigiCams

Digital Photography Review

As Ken said -- digital cameras are now a commodity. You buy it, use it, toss it when it breaks . . . for the most part. He wasn't at all surprised that your current camera isn't being serviced anymore. It's a sad but true aspect of the changing digital camera scene.

If you are so inclined -- you may want to hang onto it for a few years.  I'm betting you'd get more for it on ebay in about 5 years than you would right now. *grin*

Thanks, kids!

The unkindest cuts of all

"Britain's pig farmers want you to Stand by Your Ham," reports the WSJ. "The Tammy Wynette classic [the same one Hillary voted against before she voted for it* way back when] altered in praise of bacon and sung by a crew of pig raisers, is part of an effort to pressure the United Kingdom's dominant supermarket chains into paying struggling farmers more for their meat. Also part of the campaign: a 500-pound mascot sow called Winnie and a big pink plywood cut-out pig that counts how much money U.K.'s pork farmers are losing."

Even as British pig farmers urge pork consumers to "Stand by your ham," Barack Obama is urging his opponent to abandon hers, according to funnyman Scott Ott of ScrappleFace:

“I could no more disown my hateful, racist, self-aggrandizing, crazy uncle of a pastor,” said Sen. Obama, “than Hillary Clinton could quit her deceitful, adulterous, self-aggrandizing husband. But if a purging must happen to unite this divided party, I say to my esteemed opponent, ‘You first, Hillary. You first.’”

"A play on the traditional guide to pork cuts," this London Underground "advert outlines in no uncertain terms the five key cuts threatening the pig industry -- income, jobs, farms, quality and consumer choice," says Pigs Are Worth It. "But while the campaign is getting attention, it isn't clear that it will cure the farmers' financial troubles," adds the WSJ.

More from the WSJ on the British pig husbandry crisis, a microcosm of the dynamics behind a worldwide rise in the cost of producing food:

Exploding global grain prices have driven up the cost of animal feed and farmers say they're now selling every pig they raise at a $50 loss. Many farms could go belly up, they warn.

Global wheat prices have more than doubled since November 2006, as harvests fail in places such as Australia, more agricultural land is diverted to biofuel production, and growing affluence in China and India boosts demand for grains. A British government scientist said earlier this month that global grain stores are currently at their lowest levels ever, just 40 days from running out.

The Christian Science Monitor offers more fodder for thought as it grapples with the question "As global food costs rise, are biofuels to blame?":

"More people are coming to the conclusion that there is a food-fuel link," says Siwa Msangi of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a Washington food-security research organization. "The historic pattern of the past, where food prices were in a long-term decline, could be at an end."

But the major reason grain prices are spiking, he and others note, is fast-rising demand for higher-quality food like meat, poultry, and dairy products by the increasingly affluent people of China and India.

Still, biofuels play a role in higher grain prices, says Dr. Babcock.

The UK dilemma is exacerbated by the Brits' famous Wilberforcian love of animals, as the WSJ explains:

"But about 10 years ago, things started to get lean [when] the U.K. government introduced higher welfare standards for pigs, banning the practice of caging sows in narrow stalls and chaining them during their four-month pregnancies. That forced farmers to invest in more barn space and equipment. Costs rose and farmers fled the sector. The U.K.'s breeding herd has fallen to about 425,000 -- half the size it was in 1990. Now, soaring feed prices have tipped the industry into crisis."

"Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print," spinmistress Charlotte, the barn spider of the title of E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, told the piglet she would eventually save from the slaughter by writing words in her web -- most famously, "SOME PIG!" -- extolling her friend's excellence.

We wholeheartedly support higher welfare standards for pigs, and like British consumers -- according to research cited to at Pigs Are Worth It -- would be willing to pay a few pence more on what they call "a quality pork product." (Have you noticed how economical pork is compared with beef to start with?) As we wrote last year:

The thought of those pregnant sows trapped in crates where they could not move about nor socialize with their fellow pregnant ladies breaks our heart. Think Charlotte's Web. Pigs are sentient beings with rich psychological lives akin to our own. Why do sausages -- not to mention crown roasts -- have to be so delicious?

Sooeee!

Update: Linda Chavez expounds on the "government-engineered food crisis" stateside [Thanks for the tip, Goomp].

*From Wikipedia's "Stand by Your Man" entry: The song remained contentious into the early 1990s, when soon-to-be First Lady Hillary Clinton told CBS' 60 Minutes during an interview that she "wasn't some little woman 'standing by my man' like Tammy Wynette." The irony of this statement became apparent during Clinton's impeachment.

"At the consideration of our comparative insignificance"

Mt. Erebus, discovered by Captain James Ross in 1841 and named after one of Her Majesty's Antarctic discovery ships under his command, was first climbed on March 10, 1908, by a party of geologists and scientists from Ernest Shackleton's 1907-09 British Antarctica Expedition. The volcano is part of Ross Island off the coast of Victoria Land in McMurdo Sound. Mt. Erebus was the only known active volcano in Anarctica at the time, but "Scientists have just now discovered an active volcano under the Antarctic ice that 'creates melt-water that lubricates the base of the ice sheet and increases the flow towards the sea,'" according to Science Daily [via Watts Up With That].

When we awoke this morning to local and national newscasters' reflexive hysteria over the latest shocking, shocking revelation of the imminence of the end of the world, precipitated by greedy, all-powerful Western man's usurpation of the forces of nature, we knew they had it all wrong and rolled over for a few more minutes of shuteye. Upon arising, we headed for the blogosphere and soon got up to speed via Maggie's Farm, where The News Junkie sent us over to An Englishman's Castle, who in turn directed us to the wondrous website of ICECAP, the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, "portal to all things climate for elected officials and staffers, journalists, scientists, educators and the public."

"Although Antarctica warmed around the perimeter from 1982 to 2004, where huge icebergs calved and some ice shelves disintegrated, it cooled closer to the pole," according to NASAs scrumptious Earth Observatory website. "The area of strongest cooling [blue] appears at the South Pole, and the region of strongest warming [red] lies along the Antarctic Peninsula. [NASA map of Antarctic Temperature Trend 1982-2004].

ICECAP in its own words:

It provides access to a new and growing global society of respected scientists and journalists that are not deniers that our climate is dynamic (the only constant in nature is change) and that man plays a role in climate change through urbanization, land use changes and the introduction of greenhouse gases and aerosols, but who also believe that natural cycles such as those in the sun and oceans are also important contributors to the global changes in our climate and weather. We worry the sole focus on greenhouse gases and the unwise reliance on imperfect climate models while ignoring real data may leave civilization unprepared for a sudden climate shift that history tells us will occur again, very possibly soon.

"Last year when Antarctica set a new record for ice extent, it got no media attention," explains ICECAP Executive Director Joseph D'Aleo:

They focused on the north polar regions where the ice set record low levels. This summer when unprecedented anomalous cover continued in the Southern Hemisphere again no coverage. Then this report [the Chicken-Little one we so rudely awoke to this morning] in the news today. You probably saw it on your favorite network or internet news site (pick one, any one):

Vast Antarctic Ice Shelf on Verge of Collapse - Latest Sign of Global Warming’s Impact Shocks Scientists . . .

Let’s put this in perspective. The account may be misinterpreted by some as the ice cap or a significant (vast) portion is collapsing. In reality it and all the former shelves that collapsed are small and most near the Antarctic peninsula which sticks well out from Antarctica into the currents and winds of the South Atlantic and lies in a tectonically active region with surface and subsurface active volcanic activity. The vast continent has actually cooled since 1979.

"After we left the Ross Ice Shelf yesterday, we relocated to McMurdo Sound [where] we saw Mt. Terror and for the first time Mt. Erebus," writes contemporary Antarctic traveler Stefan Töpfer at World Signia. "The sound today serves as a re-supply route for cargo vessels and for aircraft that land upon floating ice airstrips near McMurdo Station. However, continuous occupation by scientists and support staff since 1957-58 has turned Winter’s Quarter’s Bay into a markedly polluted harbour."

"This was a sight so surpassing every thing that can be imagined, and so heightened by the consciousness that we have penetrated under the guidance of our Commander, into regions far beyond what was ever deemed practicable, that it really caused a feeling of awe to steal over us at the consideration of our comparative insignificance and helplessness, and at the same time an indescribable feeling of the greatness of the Creator in the works of his hand," wrote plant explorer Joseph Hooker, describing the reaction of captain and crew upon humankind's first sighting of Mount Erebus -- the world's southernmost active volcano -- in the austral summer [that would be winter in our neck of the woods, north of the Equator] of 1841 during the first of two excursions to the Antarctic Circle by Her Majesty's discovery ships Erebus and Terror. During that trip Hooker is said to have slept with a copy of Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle account of his 1831-36 South American expedition. Plant Explorers.com explains the connection:

[The Erebus and Terror, during their second expedition begun in 1842] made it safely to the Falkland Islands by April the 6th, then on to Hermite Island where Joseph was eager to botanize ever since reading of Darwin's visit only a few years before. He found that the island's cool humid climate was the perfect environment for mosses and he collected over 100 species during his stay. His other discoveries on the island were perhaps more surprising to him than any of the strange and exotic flora he had seen so far -- a number of the most common plant species closely resembled, or even appeared to be identical to, plants from England. Thus began his lifelong studies of the distribution of species.

He had met Charles Darwin briefly before the expedition, but it was after his return that their true friendship grew when the two got together to compare notes. They would remain the closest of friends for the rest of their lives, often consulting one another while working on their theories -- Hooker on his theory on the distribution of species, and Darwin on the evolution of species.

"Lenticular clouds hover over Mount Erebus volcano in McMurdo Sound where massive icebergs from the Ross Ice Shelf are clogging the sea in Antarctica," says the caption of this US Coast Guard photo. "Technically known as altocumulus standing lenticulars [they] are stationary lens-shaped clouds that form at high altitudes, normally aligned at right-angles to the wind direction," according to Crystalinks.com, which notes that lenticular clouds have been mistaken for UFOs [because of their] characteristic lens appearance and smooth saucer-like shape."

We were struck with the contrast between Joseph Hooker's "feeling of awe . . . at the consideration of our comparative insignificance and helplessness" before nature -- or Darwin's equally awestruck "There is grandeur in this view of life" -- and the narcissistic arrogance and silliness of the Reverend Al Gore and his flock of anthropogenic-climate-change flat-earthers. ['Reminds us of the contrast between Abigail Adams's stalwartness and Michelle Obama's whining.] As we wrote in our post "There are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion":

Those "few who are capable of forming a judgment" but "hold their peace" are the doublethinkers of Natan Sharansky's "fear societies," whose failure to speak up facilitates the politically correct true believers' groupthink. Those who do speak up --  Sharansky's dissidents -- are dissed and ridiculed as the messengers of bad news.  Informational and reputational cascades emanating from elite institutions drown out or shut out the voices of seekers of wisdom and truth.

How refreshing that knowledgeable dissidents like the experts of ICECAP -- we notice among them one of our personal faves, astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, as well as John Coleman, disillusioned founder of The Weather Channel -- are stepping out of the shadows. The media is a lagging indicator, but like Bugs Bunny running across the empty space, eventually they will look down and fall to earth. Science of Meaning's answer to the question "What Holds Bugs Bunny Up When He Runs Off The Cliff?" applies:

It is the human imagination which is now supporting and propelling the figure across the void. It is the creative force of the humorous imagination that has run the figure off the edge of physical space, and continued its progress in a line with human, rather than natural, logic. For, in objective terms, this scene constitutes a radical denial of the physical laws of the universe.

A radical denial of the physical laws of the universe. That explains a lot.

Update: Maggie's Farm links.

He is risen

Best Easter Dinner ever, says Goomp, and Baby doesn't disagree, but could I have some more shrimp, please? No pictures of the fab feast 'cause the Pentax Optio 450 pulled its annual no can do just after sunrise.

Too early in the astrological year to snap the sunrise out of the mouth of the river from Goomp's front lawn, but the condos across the river were dazzled by the sun's early rays.

Update from post-game imail wrap-up:

She: Will there be any dinners redux at your house, or will you have "something light"?  ;-)

We: I  just had a dish of stuffing. Stop me before I stuff again!

She: LOL. That's my girl!!!!

We: Why does it have to be so good?

She: It's God's will. :-)  If God hadn't wanted us to stuff, he wouldn't have made our stomachs so expandable.

He truly does move in mysterious ways.

Update: "Mysterious little creatures," as B. Kliban famously wrote in "the mother of all cat books," Cat. Carnival of the Cats #210 is open for business at Chey's Place.

"And do women not live politics, John Adams?"

"Because white people are afraid that if they don’t like him that they will be called racist" explains Stuff White People Like in defense of certain white people's -- you know, the "typical white person," as Obama himself puts it -- fear of telling it like it is. It's the white person's politically correct counterpoint to Shelby Steele's "bargaining, a "mask that blacks can wear in the American mainstream, one that enables them to put whites at their ease." We were somewhat astonished to find that we ourselves were pretty much in sync with the mostly left-lite SWPL -- 'specially things like Dinner Parties with their ultimate goals of doing "a better job than the couple at the last dinner party and attempt to make everyone jealous and sort of dislike you." Tiny above, the typical gray cat amongst the freshly colored eggs.

We've been trying for days to blog our heartfelt conviction regarding Barack Obama's defense of the indefensible, his twenty-year spiritual bond with the indigestible Reverend --- it depends upon what your definition of reverend is -- Jeremiah Wright. We had it in mind to listen to Obama's speech the other day and then have our say, but we had the good fortune to read Thomas Sowell's pre-speech take just before the rhetorical wonder who sends thrills up Chris Matthews's leg took the podium.

While talking about bringing us together and deploring "divisive" actions, Senator Obama has for 20 years been a member of a church whose minister, Jeremiah Wright, has said that "God Bless America" should be replaced by "God damn America" -- among many other wild and even obscene denunciations of American society, including blanket racist attacks on whites.

We tried to listen to the Big O when he came on LIVE cable TV, but, like American Princess, "at some point, we got tired of listening." Soaring rhetoric was never our thing. Since December of 2006 we've had Obama's number -- check out our prescient blogpost "Did Obama just call me a racist?" re Obama's snowing of the "feel good about themselves" Democrats of Portsmouth, New Hampshire -- but there's nothing like a Sowell essay to get one firmly back on the path to righteousness.

Our colored eggs ensconsed in their egg carton called to mind the faithful in their pews at St Paul's in Cambridge yesterday evening when we joined our beloved Jill and MB for Maundy Thursday services, observed in commemoration of the Last Supper of Jesus. [From Middle English maunde, ceremony of washing the feet of the poor on this day, from Old French mande, from Latin (novum) mandatum, (new) commandment (from Jesus's words to the Apostles after washing their feet, John 13:34). See mandate.] Egg coloring tip: Put color tablet and 3 tbsp lemon juice into 1-cup plastic glass. When tablet is dissolved, add 1/2 cup water, stir and dip hard-boiled white eggs a minute or two till color is as you like it.

Tom tells it like it is:

The fact that Obama talks differently than Jeremiah Wright does not mean that his track record is different. Barack Obama's voting record in the Senate is perfectly consistent with the far left ideology and the grievance culture, just as his wife's statement that she was never proud of her country before is consistent with that ideology.

Cutest little girl cat ever was, our Sweet Tiny Pea egg-carton-side this afternoon.

"And do women not live politics, John Adams? When I go to the cupboard and I find no coffee, no sugar, no pins, no meat, am I not living politics? This war touches people that your Congress treats with the same contempt King George reserves for the people of Boston. I mean women, yes, and slaves too, for that matter. Though I am sure that I would not mention that subject as it might upset your southern friends." "You are harsh madam.." "I am cold."

Okay, Barack and Michelle Obama. Check out John and Abigail Adams and get back to us.

Update: Friday Ark # 183 touches people where they live.

Update II: Dr. Sanity reminds us yet again that there are so many insanities and so little time.

"You don't get to be the same again"

Render unto Caesar. Even as Papa Ratzi, the Pope who loves cats and Mozart, preached “Stop the massacres, the violence, the hatred in Iraq” during his weekly Angelus blessing to the crowds gathered in Saint Peter’s Square as Catholics celebrated Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week leading to Easter Sunday (screen shot above), former Operation Iraqi Freedom embed, our own totally awesome PJM alphamate, Jules Crittenden, guided us through the fog of war:

No one expected to see dusk. What we expected was Mogadishu writ large. The Americans would win, that was indisputable. But we, the first in, embarked on it without expectation of survival. We prepared to make a good run of it, stripping soft gear off the outside of the Bradley that might burn if we got hit, loading up on water and ammo. Smitty, the Bradley's 20-year-old radio operator, was bounced to make room for a psyops soldier and the amplifiers that would blast the "surrender" messages. Smitty was angry . . .

I was the only one in the company who had a choice in the matter. But the question of whether to ride with one's friends, when one has a job to do, when one has made a commitment, is not much of a question at all. There was heavy fire that day and for two days after. A lot of people died. But not us. We lived, and learned some of the many lessons that war has to offer.

Things rarely happen as expected. Once you start, you have to finish. You don't get to be the same again. There is nothing much good about any of it, but winning is better than losing. And there is no such thing as a safe place to which you can withdraw

Olive branches (above), together with palm fronds, were the plants of choice during Palm Sunday rituals in St. Peter's Square.

"While there were terrible errors made in going to war in Iraq, the decision to go to war was not one of them," continues Crittenden, making sense of all that we wish our fearless but inarticulate leader, GW, had been able to convey to us and our fellow Americans during the last period of time:

Iraq has become the central battlefield in the 21st century's Islamic war, and may have been destined to be, with or without us. Lying geographically, ideologically, and culturally athwart the Middle East, rich in resources and boiling with rage long before we got there, it is the place where the war will either be settled or truly begun. It is a fitting role for the cradle of civilization to host a war in which the very progress of civilization is being challenged.

Saddam Hussein convinced the world he had active weapons programs. The evidence now suggests he didn't, but how active his programs were, ultimately, is irrelevant. He had demonstrated his desire to dominate the region. Our European allies were eager to do business with him despite their own intelligence reports. Absent any containment, there was potential for more terrible and far-reaching wars. It was inevitable that Iraq would undergo a post-Saddam power struggle with massive ethnic conflict and with interference by Iran and Syria. The question was, and remains, how much influence we would wield in that event.

The sensuous splendor of Catholic ritual at its best trumps all other religious traditions out there, in our opinion. We simply cannot connect with religious traditions that just say no to the deeply human resonance of music and graphic representations of everything under the sun -- yes, you, Osama and Ahmajinedad -- and while ascetic traditions have their charms, nothing can beat Mozart's C Minor Mass or his "Lacrymosa" from Requiem for their awe-inspiring call to something far greater than ourselves. Not to mention Wolfgang Amadeus's "Ave Verum Corpus," the most ineffably, heartbreakingly beautiful piece of music ever written. We had the musicians play it at Mummy's memorial service, a perfect complement to our sister's sparkling tribute to "a most incandescent light."

We were struck by something we read on Saifuddin, a Muslim blog whose mailing list we are on -- can't remember how we got there, but it's been an interesting ride. Here's what they said this morning:

If I were to ask you what are the five Holy Nights, what would come to your mind? Perhaps nothing or perhaps something. The fact of the matter is that the Holy Days and Nights are not discussed very often among religious people in America. But for Muslims in America there are evenings that should matter in our lives, they should not be ordinary nights that pass in an ordinary way. There are five Holy Nights that I am going to mention here and if these nights mean something in the Heavens, then they should mean something to Believers on Earth.

"You don't have to know anything about art -- or even the Bible -- to find yourself overwhelmed with emotion in the presence of Michelangelo's marble sculpture 'Pietà' (1498–99) in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome," we captioned this image in our December 2004 post "Lacrymosa," where we commented that  "Jesus lies lifeless in the arms of his mother, Mary, after the crucifixion. The heaviness of her son's lifeless body weighs oppressively upon her, the angular lights and darks, ins and outs of the folds of her garment a muscular expression of her mental anguish."

There ensued an interesting explication of the Muslim Holy Days and Nights that are now upon us. In response, we wrote in the comments:

You might be interested to know that among American Christians this Holy Week is filled with celebration and contemplation of the meaning of the Passion of Christ.

Nobody ever listens to anybody. It reminds us of the outrage of PBS listeners when the taxpayer-subsidized radio station had the gall to air the views of a handful of conservatives. Harummmph!

Update: The Lord [of the Blogosphere] be with you.

"It is the growing tendency to separate science from faith and spiritual from material forces"

"Who can resist these little chicks? Our brood is cloaked in a soft, downy layer of natural chicken feathers," gushes WIlliams-Sonoma re these total cutie pies.

"What are you doing for Easter?  Want to come to a service -- lots of them this week -- all beautiful," emails blogfriend Jill:

I’m determined to get you there one day to see and hear the beauty, especially with the boys' choir. There’s a mass at 7:30 on Thursday night / Special added attraction you get to see the priest wash the feet of lowlier ones.

She speaks of the Italian Romanesque St. Paul's in Cambridge, MA, home of the internationally renowned Boston Boy Choir, the performing arts arm of the Boston Archdiocesan Choir School. The youngsters study music and math and science and geography and all things bright and beautiful and perform with the likes of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Handel & Haydn Society. We'd love to see their test scores compared with the totally awesome Finnish masters of the universe. Googling brought forth some prescient words from early church fathers. "There is very grave danger, not far distant from this sacred edifice," warned Cardinal O'Connell ninety-plus years ago in a sermon delivered November 12, 1916 on the day the cornerstone was laid for St. Paul's, where Tuck and ourselves will be joining Jill for a heart-stopping Holy Thursday mass just days before Easter:

It is the growing tendency to separate science from faith and spiritual from material forces. Prominent educators are striving to undermine the foundation of all truth, the source of all knowledge, of all life -- Christian faith.

The very theme Papa Ratzi has been sounding during this season of our discontent over creeping Dhimmitude.