sisu

The unfathomable walls of an unseen prison

Thinking about a centerpiece for our Pope Benedict XVI Fan Club Ladies' Luncheon this afternoon, we gathered branches of early-blooming shrubs from the western forty, Common Floweringquince and Forsythia, above.

Checking our inventory for the perfect vase, we considered a tall, square pink one. It had been stored in the basement, and there was a noticeably cobwebby feeling about it. Peering inside, we discovered the earthly remains of a cluster of tiny flies who had met their maker when their struggles to fulfill their destiny had been thwarted by the unfathomable walls of an unseen prison.

Calling to mind the final agonies of citizens of ancient Pompei or Herculaneum frozen in time by the ash of Vesuvius or their own prehistoric insect relatives caught in amber, their plight invites contemplation.

Update: "Sisu brings the Unfathomable Walls of an Unseen Prison,"  says DeepSeaNews.

"And they resolve things on their own"

Taunting Tiny with a shaking Swiffer Duster as photographer's birdie in one hand and aiming for the "Decisive Moment" with our camera in the other, we missed Tiny's ears, above, but caught that look of cats concentrating on the jugular of potential prey.

"Animals that escape from the wild to take advantage of the relative ease and safety of living with humans may not be able to do math, but their ability to survive in the wild when necessary shows they still possess talents lost to the human animal," wrote Goomp in the comments to our previous post, giving us an opening quotation to revisit yesterday's post about that "Obama in 30 Seconds" video with some final thoughts.

The video -- one of several touted by MoveOn as "downright addictive to watch and rate" -- presented two competing teams of children, the reds and the blues [get it?], playing the classic schoolyard game "Red Rover," where the teams line up, facing each other and holding hands with their teammates. By turns, each team taunts the other to send one of their players over to try to break the line, and "whichever side has the most players at the end of the playing time wins the round." In the MoveOn version, "a thoughtful bi-racial boy with prominent ears" uses Obama Magicthink to psychologically disarm the opposing red team, who then -- zombie like -- join the blues en masse, "form a circle and begin a new kind of game."

Another object irresistible to cats, packaging -- in this case the box our Pope Benedict XVI Teddy Bear mugs came in -- just barely big enough for a sweet tiny girl to fit into, but the place of choice atop the dining room table this afternoon.

Which brings us back to Goomp's comment about survival skills "lost to the human animal" in this high-tech, multi-culti, politically-correct day and age of ours. Let's look at the schoolyard "out there" first and then return to the irony of MoveOn's use of it as a metaphor for "Obama in 30 Seconds."

You may remember the story of school administrators' banning the game of tag during recess at a Massachusetts school a couple of years back. "Now 'tag' is being deemed too dangerous [as it may] cause injury or the dreaded liability that the school will meet in a lawsuit," wrote Scared Monkey in a typically commonsensical blogospheric reaction at the time, quoting the mother of one of the children affected by the ban:

“I think it’s a little bit silly," she said, adding that she was not aware the rule was in place. “The kids love to play pick-up football games that they organize themselves. It’s great for their social skills, and they resolve things on their own. It’s good for them."

She was not aware the rule was in place. We wonder how many busy parents caught up in the controlled frenzy of their many-faceted lives are unaware of not only what goes on outside at recess but, perhaps even more importantly, inside the classroom, where zombies teachers inculcated with the Marxist talking points of influential anti-capitalist propagandists like Obama neighbor Bill Ayers are, as Sol Stern wrote, assiduously working below the radar to "turn the little ones into young socialists and critical theorists." And critical-pedagogy types like Ayers acolytes aren't the only ones trying to turn the nation's younger generation into pod people. The self-esteemsters who ban the award of valedictorian to the highest-ranking senior because it might hurt someone's feelings come to mind, not to mention the textbook publishers with their eye on the bottom line. All are complicit, for different reasons, in the politicization and dumbing down of the nation's curricula. As we wrote in our post "Stealth education" four years back:

It isn't just infidel-hating Wahhabists who are trying to brainwash our children, of course, but interest groups of every stripe.  We've blogged about these issues before, here and here and here, noting that textbook companies and educators take the path of least resistance, responding to the squeakiest wheels.

Isn't that what identity politics is all about, ceding center stage to the squeakiest wheels? Appeasement is always a mistake. The more you give in, the more they demand. Now back to the unwitting message of that "Obama in 30 Seconds" video we were talking about at the top of this post. Beyond the unself-aware irony of setting their essence-of-Obama statement in an elementary-school playground, the MoveOn folks embrace the utopianist "why can't we all be friends" agenda of those who would deny the competitive dynamic -- the tragic view -- of human nature. Two competing answers to our google search for "Red Rover" perfectly illustrate the difference between those who get it and those who don't. Gameskidsplay.net doesn't get it:

Note that since all the players are on the winning team at the end, there really are no losers in this game.

FamilyFun.com gets it:

Players can devise sneaky running strategies and use psychological tactics to spice up the game. Whichever side has the most players at the end of the playing time wins the round.

Sneaky running strategies and the use of psychological tactics -- doing whatever it takes to win [just ask Bubba] -- are what politics is all about. That Obamaniacs long to "form a circle and begin a new kind of game" betrays a profound cluelessness of pathological proportions.

Update: No one knows better than our feline companions that the more you give in, the more they demand. But in their case, we wouldn't have it any other way. Lots of sneaky running strategies and psychological tactics in play at House Panthers' Carnival of the Cats #215.

"They don't bark so you have to be alert to get their signals"

Since having her teeth cleaned by the vet a few days ago, Tiny has had to endure a daily regime of Clamavox applied by eyedropper. Once she gets wind of our intentions, she's outta here. Above, near the top of the back stairs this morning, staring back down with suspicion and disdain.

"The animals -- especially Tiny, who has not a sixth but a seventh or eighth sense about these things -- always try to escape our clutches once they catch on that it's time to go for a ride in the car. More than once Tiny's made eye contact with sudden realization and hightailed it for the most inaccessible place she can find," we wrote awhile back. The same applies when she gets the faintest whiff of suspicion we are about to give her some medicine.

We've tried to develop a business-as-usual air about our movements and tone of voice when we're about to play Nurse Jane or do something else they don't like, but cats are ever watchful, supremely tuned in to the slightest changes in their environment. Just this moment we happened to glance outside the window to the side yard to see Tiny and Baby -- restrained by their tethers -- frozen in alarm, their eyes fixed upon some point beyond the 12-foot-high retaining wall behind the house. Looking up, we saw what had given them pause, a team of roofers working atop the neighbors' house. "Just like watchdogs," observed Goomp in response to our imail description:

We: Yes. You can tell from their expressions and body language that something is not as it should be.

Goomp: They don't bark so you have to be alert to get their signals.

As Mummy always said, "Look to the animals."

Update:  From the horse's mouth (our sis), the provenance of Mummy's adage:

She said it to me, when I was flummoxed . . . wasn't sure whether to comfort infant Matthew every time he cried. Mummy was saying, implicitly, that mother animals ALWAYS tend their infants when they are disturbed.

Animals that make it through the great winnowing process of evolution know everything they need to know. As for our own species, we sometimes wonder.

"A thoughtful bi-racial boy with prominent ears contemplates the situation and wonders why there is so much animosity and anger"

"They chant, 'Red Rover, Red Rover, let Barack come over.' A thoughtful bi-racial boy with prominent ears contemplates the situation and wonders why there is so much animosity and anger," goes the caption of Diane Paragas's "Playground Politics," a contender in MoveOn's "Obama in 30 Seconds" competition. "The red team leader's face softens as he takes Barack's hand. Inspired by the audacity bravery of the two boys, the red and the blue teams form a circle and begin a new kind of game." Kumbaya, anyone?

"All week, we've heard that it's downright addictive to watch and rate these Obama ads made by MoveOn members around the nation," emails a breathless Adam Green. Herr Hitler's film propagandist Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" flashed before us as we contemplated the sheer robotic mindlessness and horror of Green's unquestioning acceptance of the flickering screen images of wishful thinking as the equivalent of political debate. Forget about what Obama might really be up to. Instead, go for projections of your own fantasies onto the blank screen that called us a racist back in December of 2006.

Oh, and if anything disagreeable shows up on the screen, just switch channels.

"A deep threat to all that is human"

Babe makes a strong case for the utility of long catnaps as a survival skill on the studio couch this afternoon.

"[Theodore] Dalrymple makes a strong case for the utility of morality as a survival skill," wrote Wretchard of Belmont Club three years back [via Amba, who had linked Wretchard's essay as apposite to her own cogitations on the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI at the time]. His words sound timely echoes in the current debate over what we should make of Barack Obama's ongoing association with former Weather Underground domestic terrorist and current "radical educator with influence," Bill Ayers. More about that in a moment, but first, a few excerpts from Wretchard's "Nightfall":

[Morality] is a craft, which like hunting and gathering, was once passed on to keep people from perishing in the wilderness. Now it is disparaged; the modern welfare state has no need of it . . .

[A]s Dalrymple argues in the City Journal, the human recognition of evil normally allows us to resist so it never has us wholly in its grasp. Looking back on 14 years of service in hospitals and prisons, Dalrymple realized he was witnessing the inexorable incapacitation of human discernment; the deadening of the ability to distinguish between good and evil which is so essential to survival . . .

In nearly every case the one thing the perpetrators and victims of evil were never allowed to do was to judge their own acts. That was absolutely forbidden. The universal course of treatment prescribed by all the organs of the welfare state was to find ways to make them 'feel better about it'.

Dr. Sanity approached the topic from a slightly different angle a year ago in "The dictatorship of the do-gooders and soul murder," a rousing discourse on the "pervasive intellectual trend in the West to continually bash capitalism, private property, business and free trade while simultaneously enjoying the benefits of all of them":

Betsy Newmark links to an article that demonstrates clearly how socialism's "social justice" advocates have taken over our K-12 education system and are determinedly undermining capitalism . . . Make no mistake about it, what those teachers are doing is indoctinating their students' minds into an unquestioning obedience to the collective . . .

Capitalism's incredible production of wealth is the economic side-effect that occurs when political freedom is present. It has been argued, and I agree, that both economic and political freedom are absolute prerequisites for moral behavior.

Children propagandized by dogmatic tyrants like the ones above have had not only their capacity to think for themselves abrogated; they have had their capacity to make moral choices taken from them.

As we sat here blogging this evening, along came a spider (x 16) -- seemingly out of nowhere -- and sat down beside her, paused and then spun away on silken threads. Indoor spiders, house centipedes and tiny moths are stirring. We spotted the first cabbage moth of spring wafting through the garden yesterday and the first bumble bee this morning.

Enter stage left the above-mentioned Bill Ayers, former Weather Underground terrorist and current "Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago." Sol Stern blew the professor's cover in a must-read City Journal article just under two years ago, linked today by The Barrister of Maggie's Farm, who headlines with "A cruel (Gramscian) hoax,":

This Ed School stuff is straight from Gramsci's handbook, and it represents a conspiracy to keep the "masses" poor and stupid -- and angry, hopeless and helpless. In other words, ripe for "rescue" by The State.

"Ayers’s spectacular second act began when he enrolled at Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1984 [where] he experienced an epiphany in a course taught by Maxine Greene, a leading light of the 'critical pedagogy' movement," wrote Stern:

As Ayers wrote later, he took fire from Greene’s lectures on how the “oppressive hegemony” of the capitalist social order “reproduces” itself through the traditional practice of public schooling -- critical pedagogy’s fancy way of saying that the evil corporations exercise thought control through the schools . . .

The education professors feel themselves anointed to use the nation’s K-12 classrooms to resist this oppressive system. Thus Maxine Greene urged teachers not to mince words with children about the evils of the existing social order . . . In other words, they should turn the little ones into young socialists and critical theorists.

"[Bill Ayers] has much more influence than he did in the sixties. He's a rock star in the educational establishment," Sol Stern is telling Sean Hannity, adding that "the entire Democratic establishment years ago decided to legitimize him," making Obama's association with the radical leftist perfectly logical within the local political context. Missing the point as ever, Hannity's brain-dead liberal sidekick Alan Colmes asks his guest whether there's any evidence that students are being brainwashed by anti-American educationists promulgating critical pedagogy. "I don't know what it has to do with Barack Obama anyway," he adds. No, you wouldn't.

But until Ayers' association with Oprah's man -- Barack Obama -- came to light, few outside of academia and the Chicago Democratic machine were paying much attention to this particular Gramscian fellow traveler. Bill O'Reilly on Fox asserted earlier this evening that the professor's only significance to the American political debate is his association with Obama, but like Colmes, he misses the point, as Stern wrote yesterday in "Obama’s Real Bill Ayers Problem":

The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nation’s schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today . . .

Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America’s future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.

The insidious Gramscian infiltration of our culture marches on:

Gramsci posited that because Christianity had been dominant in the West for over 2000 years, not only was it fused with Western civilization, but it had corrupted the workers' class. The West would have to be de-Christianized, said Gramsci, by means of a "long march through the culture." Additionally, a new proletariat must be created. In his "Prison Notebooks," he suggested that the new proletariat be comprised of many criminals, women, and racial minorities.

The new battleground, reasoned Gramsci, must become the culture, starting with the traditional family and completely engulfing churches, schools, media, entertainment, civic organizations, literature, science, and history. All of these things must be radically transformed and the social and cultural order gradually turned upside-down with the new proletariat placed in power at the top.

Is it too late to save our soul?  A former liberal mugged by reality may be the one to lead us out of the desert. As E.J. Dionne wrote upon Cardinal Ratzinger's election to the papacy on April 19, 2005:

Ratzinger is a brilliant, tough-minded intellectual who started out as moderately liberal and -- like so many American neoconservatives -- developed a mistrust of the left because of the student revolt of the 1960s. He once said that "the 1968 revolution" turned into "a radical attack on human freedom and dignity, a deep threat to all that is human."

"Relativism means this: Power trumps," wrote Michael Novak in his must-read-and-reread "Culture in Crisis" [again via Amba] just after Ratzinger became Benedict XVI:

In his most formative years, Ratzinger heard Nazi propaganda shouting that there is no truth, no justice, there is only the will of the people (enunciated by its leader). As its necessary precondition, Nazism depended on the debunking of objective truth and objective morality. Truth had to be derided as irrelevant, and naked will had to be exalted . . .

Ratzinger experienced another set of loud shouters in the 1968 student revolution at Tubingen University, this time in the name of Marxist rather than Nazi will. Marxism as much as Nazism (though in a different way) depended on the relativization of all previous notions of ethics and morality and truth — “bourgeois” ideas, these were called. People who were called upon by the party to kill in the party’s name had to develop a relativist’s conscience.

Ratzinger wishes to defend the imperative of seeking the truth in all things, the imperative to follow the evidence. This imperative applies to daily life, to science, and to faith. The great Jewish and Christian name for God is connected to this imperative -- one of the Creator’s names is Truth. Other related names are Light, and Way. Humans are made seekers after truth . . .

The culture of relativism invites its own destruction, both by its own internal incoherence and by its defenselessness against cultures of faith.

"And yep, you feel it."

Update: Steve at Modulator wants to defend the imperative of seeking the animals in all blogs. Friday Ark #188 now boarding.

Update II: "So obviously, I agree with Dr. Sanity up to a point," writes Amba in a provocative response to the good doctor's thesis that "both economic and political freedom are absolute prerequisites for moral behavior," and "captalism is actually good for the soul":

On the contrary, people need another, prior source of morality in order to handle the freedom of capitalism responsibly, and not go off the deep end of corruption, ruthlessness, and greed. "The pursuit of their own particular happiness" isn't morality -- which is based in concern for others "as thyself" -- it's utilitarianism.  Capitalism doesn't restrict choice, and that's good, but it sometimes rewards immoral, amoral, or just plain trashy choices.

We guess it depends upon how  you interpret the assertion that morality is "based in concern for others 'as thyself.'" Adam Smith's invisible hand comes to mind. Check out her comments for our full response.

Update III: An asylumful of deep threats to all that is human at Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities.

"Our life together was beautiful"

Strangers in a strange land, Tuck and Barry above, like ourselves, put our everyday concerns on hold as we are called to bear witness and comfort loved ones in the heartland.

Off we went into the wild blue yonder Monday morning for a day and a night and a day to gather together with Clarke and the children and grandchilden and extended family to celebrate the life of our beloved Nancy, who left this vale of tears a few days back. Nephew Richard gave a most touching remembrance filled with sadness and humor and love.

"Nancy was a wonderful woman," Clarke (center) told daughter Mary Barbara (right) when she solicited a few words for the program of Tuesday's Funeral Mass [That's cutie-pie bro-in-law Barry at left]:

We met 52 years ago and would have celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary on June 21, 2008. Our life together was beautiful. Please remember her in your prayers.

At Logan Airport we finally got to experience the effervescent glory of Christopher Janney's "Rainbow Cove" window treatment, blogged here last year. "My interest is to try to create an interesting, stimulating, alternative experience," the artist -- an architect and jazz musician trained at Princeton and MIT -- told a Boston Globe reporter on the occasion of the formal opening of his "architecture-and-music" installation. No music playing when we saw it today, but as far as we're concerned, hallelujah. The mindless background music that chugs along like a noisy engine in every public square we enter these days deadens the soul.

Somebody designing passenger waiting areas was working on all cylinders of late. You can still get grimly-lit, claustrophobic seating arrangements where you're elbow-to-elbow with your fellow waiters and self-consciously trying not to stare at the person across the aisle, but this one, with traditional New England front-porch rocking chairs affording a leisurely look out the window at take-offs and landings, was wicked amenable. Tuck, above, enjoys the view even as the notice behind him at right warns that Bandara Ngurah Rai International Airport in Denpasar, Bali "does not maintain and administer effective security measures."

Tuck as "Exorcist" walks down the ramp towards an American Airlines Eagle shuttle.

Something wonderful unfolded before our eyes as Tuck and Barry walked onto a moving sidewalk (right) and we, the inveterate walker, strode along beside on the unmoving aisle to the left. An adorable girl and boy in love took two paths. She, on the moving sidewalk, seemed at first to have the leading edge, but he, on his own hoof, soon gained the lead. She started to run to catch up, and then he, too, started to run. Pure happiness in a joyously spirited competition.

We snapped a shot of Ground Zero as our Eagle plane circled around lower Manhattan prior to touching down at La Guardia on our two-stage itinerary to Hopkins Airport in Cleveland.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. As long as you take a good book along, it ain't that big a deal.

We stayed at a generic hotel, Hampton Inn, and that was our downfall. Rising a couple of hours before Nancy's Mass at 10 a.m., we showered, powdered and perfumed and then headed out for a morning walk but soon found ourselves totally lost once we left the beaten track. Didn't Rudyard Kipling warn about something along those lines? At any rate, Cleveland has a number of well-marked east-west and north-south major thoroughfares, but in between are countless residential areas whose roads wind this way and that and never go anywhere. The image above illustrates our point. A sort of normal house faced with totally arbitrary, meaningless cladding. We panicked a few times along the way, fearing Tuck and Barry would give up on us and go ahead to the ceremony without us. It was the sun itself which finally got us back on track. Remembering that we had started out with the rising sun in our face, we realized that we must head west to get back home. We saw a policeman or two along the way and longed to ask them which way to go, but we couldn't remember the name of our hotel. It's that generic thing we mentioned above. Everything is all the same now'days.

It was a long, long way from the check-in point to Gateway 19 at Hopkins. These folk were at the ready to give weary travelers a ride. We, of course, would never, but it's good to know they're out there.

Girls just wanna have fun. Nancy's girls Mabs and Megan embody her incandescense.

"It's even better than GPS," says Tuck of cousin Chris, the Jesuit-trained funster who guided us on the last leg of our often-mis-directed journey from here to there. Above he poses in front of Nancy's childhood home. By the time we were ready to head back home, we had found our sea legs, so to speak, but even so, it was such a blessing to have Chris leading the way back to the Budget Rent-a-Car terminal so we didn't have to worry our little heads about any wrong turns.

The "eggs" of Boston's -- actually Winthrop's -- Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant were a landmark out the window of our aircraft -- Continental, as we got a last-minute change from the original two-stage AA to a direct flight from Cleveland to Boston via Continental -- as we approached an ahead-of-schedule landing at Logan Tuesday afternoon.

Barry accepted our invitation to stop by for drinks and something to eat, an opportunity for a couple of awesome new dishes from our Cold Turkey experimental kitchens. Above, sliced microwaved dogs on toast squares with mayo and dijon mustard. Two other experimental offerings included corny cornbread minimuffin halves with cream cheese and olive slice and bread squares with mayo topped with leftover poached chicken and bacon bits. Yummy.

"Pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death"

"Tuck says she's the new Kiri Te Kanawa. Where have we been? Spending too much time in the blogosphere worrying about the future of the shining city upon a hill, no doubt," we captioned this image awhile back, adding "American soprano Renée Fleming is the new light of our life. Click here to watch and listen to her breathtaking 'Ave Maria' from a November 2005 concert of 'the world’s best-loved sacred songs and arias in front of a packed audience in Mainz’s beautiful Romanesque Cathedral.'"

In honor of our dear departed Nancy, a repost of our post "They also wondered greatly at my piety" of awhile back:

"My new songs from Scott's Lady of the Lake especially had much success. They also wondered greatly at my piety, which I expressed in a hymn to the Holy Virgin and which, it appears, grips every soul and turns it to devotion," Franz Schubert wrote to his father and stepmother re the Ave Maria composed in about 1825:

It was written for voice and piano and first Published in 1826 as Op 52 no 6. The words most commonly used with Schubert's music are not the words that the composer originally set to music. Franz Schubert actually wrote the music for an excerpt from the poem "The Lady of the Lake" by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), which was translated into German by Adam Storck. Schubert called his piece Ellens dritter Gesang (Ellen's third song) . . .

The original words by Sir Walter Scott . . . include many references to the Latin "Ave Maria" prayer. This, no doubt, inspired an unknown person to fit the Latin "Ave Maria" prayer text to Schubert's notes.

Big-time thanks to The Ugly American at SondraKiStan for the heads up re American diva Renée Fleming singing Schubert's transcendent "Ave Maria." A few notes from our imail correspondence this evening:

She: THANKS for the link!!!! Nice to hear the Ave Maria sung by a hottie!!!

We: Yes. Schubert sung by a hottie . . . It doesn't get any better.

She: How thrilling it must be to perform such a masterwork so beautifully. When we get tears in our eyes, we know they have hit a home run . . . As a woman, I can imagine the agony of sacrificing one's child . . . just as all the mothers of military personnel might potentially do . . . the greater good DOES matter . . . Again, thank you for the link. I am on my 5th replay.

We: I am on my eleventy-second.

Can't get enough. The best way to listen is with the Latin (left) and English translations side by side:

Ave Maria                  Hail Mary,
gratia plena                full of grace.
Dominus tecum          The Lord is with thee.
Benedicta tu              Blessed art thou,
Et benedictus            and blessed
Fructus ventris tui      is the fruit of thy womb.

Sancta Maria             Holy Mary,
Mater Dei                  Mother of God,
Ora pro nobis             pray for us
Peccatoribus             sinners
Nunc et in                 now and in
Hora mortis nostrae   the hour of our death.

Ora pro nobis peccatoribus says it all.

There must be something true

A shining star in our firmament has just been dimmed. Our precious sister-in-law Nancy, a fun and funny and totally awesome Catholic woman of substance that we loved with all our heart and soul from the moment we met her -- our heart is breaking now -- after these many years of profound suffering on her part and her loving husband, Tuck's brother Clarke's tender ministrations, has gone to meet her maker. We were miles apart as far as religion was concerned, what with her being a devout Catholic and our being an atheist, but as with Fallaci and Papa Ratzi, there must be something true. Nancy's and Clark's children are the lights of our life. There must be something true.

"And, yep, you feel it"

"Boy, the pope must have REALLY liked it, to stand up and walk toward him," observes Tuck after watching Papa Ratzi's response to Placido Domingo's singing of Cesar Franck's version of St.Thomas Aquinus's Panis angelicus (The Bread of Angels) for him at yesterday's mass in Nationals Park. Or maybe it was relief at hearing his kind of music amidst the multi-culti cacophony of musical tributes to the Vicar of Christ. Above, Benedetto applauds following the world-renowned operatic tenor's performance.

"His body language is a little self-protective. He does not run out to meet you . . . instead, he draws you in, and his sweetness and transparent kindliness run completely counter to the whole 'rottweiller narrative,' which I think is taking a beating," writes The Anchoress in one of her glorious, link-rich -- including us! -- appreciations of this Holy Father who seems to be winning American hearts and minds, Catholic or not, left and right:

Did it seem to you, as it did to me, that we watched Benedict loosen up or break free a little bit at this mass? Watching him exit he seemed bigger and bolder to me, as though he was growing into his part.

I was inclined to like him, of course, through his writings, but I didn’t know if I would be put off by his manner. After half a lifetime watching the effusive, playful and outgoing John Paul II, I wondered if Benedict, in person, could manage to inspire in the same way. He does . . .

A “liberal catholic” friend of mine emailed: Don’t tell any of my liberal friends (that is, everyone) but I’m starting to really like the guy.

I think that sense of surprised delight is going both ways; I get a sense that just as we’re discovering we like the guy, the pope is also feeling like he likes us. I say that from an introvert’s standpoint (because I am one).

"Two things that strike you when you're 18 inches away from the Pope," writes Rocco Palmo of Whispers in the Loggia: "1. He's got a tan you can't really appreciate on TV; 2. The shoes are . . . red. Blazingly so. And, yep, you feel it. No question." Above, Placido Domingo definitely feels it.

"He does not run out to meet you . . . instead, he draws you in." That's just how it was for us back in April of 2005 when Cardinal Ratzinger first gave us "a glimpse of the clearing" through that much-cited homily before the College of Cardinals the day before he ascended the Throne of Peter:

We are building [misquoted by Fox at the time and then promulgated by us as "moving toward"] a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires..

Once Ratzinger became Benedict XVI, he "drew us in" further when we discovered his soulful love of cats and Mozart and sealed the deal when we learned that the dictatorial left was apoplectic.

Update: Screenshot from Fox News.

No caption necessary.

Update II: "He's saying good and important things and irritating the right people" says our beloved sub rosa blog buddy Binah of Kavanna. He and ourselves both were brought up as Unitarians. He then embraced Judaism, and we are still agnostic, even as we are in thrall to the pope that loves cats and Mozart.

Update III: Bloggers are irritating the right people at Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities.

"To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak"

Baby -- AKA Mr. Cuddles -- takes time out from working Tuck's dinner plate for some heavy petting.

Quotation of the Day #1 from our imail correspondent:

[Pope Benedict XVI] is a good man. Like Bush, everything he does and says is reported through a left-wing lens. Your posts are very valuable in highlighting the similarities of mission and ethics and not the namby-pamby sandbox fights of the Left.

Then it's back to employing the Think System -- and an occasional bit of outreach on the part of Mr. Paw -- to procure bits of Spring Chicken Delight and a host of small portions of colorful sweet and savory side dishes from the Cold Turkey Cookbook.

Quotation of the Day #2 from blogfriend Pam of Pamibe:

As a fallen-away Catholic, it’s not surprising that most of what I know about Pope Benedict XVI comes from another blogger: Sissy Willis. She has followed ‘Papa Ratzi’s’ career at least since his election three years ago and will not disappoint during his current visit to the U.S. Love the Matthew Cavanaugh photograph - pure joy!

Quotation of the Day #3 from another non-practicing Catholic, fellow sub rosa blogger Teresa of Technicalities in Pam's comments:

I do believe he will cause the libs to gyrate in dervish-like circles -- always fun to watch.

Quotation of the Day #4, one of our own in an email to fervently energized Catholic blogpals MB of Miss Kelly, Jill of The Business of Life and Gayle of And you thought YOU were cranky:

Like music itself, he hath charms to soothe the savage breast.

It was a thrill to see our own Papa Ratzi lead the local news this morning. 'Will have to see how it balances out during the coming hours between the TRUE lead story -- the Beacon of Light that is the Holy Father shining back upon the City Upon a Hill -- and the NOISE -- the so-called Dem debate last night and multiple wives' sob stories.

Quotation of the Day #5, Jill's response to #4:

To hear him speak is like a long, cool drink of water after being parched for too long. I'm amazed at the meat and substance of what he says and his way of making it so fresh and new.

You're right. He is a beacon of light, and everything else seems so noisy and tawdry. What an extraordinary man, probably the most erudite man on the planet. How lucky we are to have him, the Vicar of Christ.

Quotation of the Day #6, Gayle's response to #4 (she lives in DC):

Today has been a really good day for me on a lot of levels. Slew a few dragons, shed a few tears of joy, watched a very holy man transform -- at least for a brief time -- a very unholy city. AND the nightmare traffic that was predicted -- did not materialize.

I am traveling on a little Papal Energy Boost!

". . . To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak."

Update: We were gratified to recall that our very first "Pope Blogging" post, "Against a dictatorship of relativism" -- published the day before Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI -- referenced the same words echoed yesterday by President Bush in his South Lawn speech:

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.

Our own conclusion in that post foreshadows a theme we have revisited often:

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."

If a Leader of the Free World and a blogger reference the same things, there must be something true?

Update II:  There's more than one way to soothe the savage breast. Friday Ark #187 at Modulator is now boarding.