The Beer Summit

Seriously, there was only one thing I desperately wanted to know about the beer summit.
Forget “teaching moments.”  Given that Officer Crowley taught the “how not to racially profile” class at the police academy, I’m guessing he knows a bit about that subject.  Maybe a long-deferred lesson for Prof. Gates along the line of Jeff Foxworthy’s [...]

Read Full Post »

It’s a good time of the year…

It’s a good time of the year.  We’re starting up homeschooling again, after a month or so of summer slow-down.  (When I joked that freshly cleaned and arranged homeschool shelves looked nice and just “bursting with knowledge”, Diva replied with an enthusiastic (and not joking), “Mmm hmm!”)  The butterflies are increasing.  It’s been a lovely, [...]

Read Full Post »

Genii, Faust, and Hobbits

(I do not claim full responsibility for the title; I was just thinking about genii while in the shower.  My husband added Faust and the hobbits.)
Maybe part of the problem with our society is that we have stopped reading all the old fairy tales, or anything that sounds the least bit like them.
You know, the [...]

Read Full Post »

Unity with Who?

I love my Church.  I enjoy reading papal encyclicals, studying the Bible, listening to prayerful music (everything from a capella chant to modern rock).  I’m far from perfect, but I am trying to follow Christ.
I am considerably less fond of my local parish.  I get tired of fighting over whether I or the lousy Religious [...]

Read Full Post »

7 Quick Takes Friday: One Year

 
When I began blogging, one year looked like a long time away.  I excitedly marked my one month anniversary and, recently, my 200th post.  I had intended to note my one year anniversary and some of the traffic milestones, but those all slipped past while other things were going on.  So, in spite of missing [...]

Read Full Post »

Everyone loves a nasty break-up…

Love affairs are notorious for being passionate, torrid, and prone to ending in horrendous crash-and-burns.
In spite of several talking heads bemoaning “softball questions” at President Obama’s every-month-and-a-half-whether-we-need-one-or-not prime time press conference, I thought at least some of the questions were surprisingly good.  The answers were vague, long on self-congratulation, full of class bating, and stuffed with [...]

Read Full Post »

Curing the Health Care Strawman

It is easy and amusing to demolish strawmen.  They don’t fight back.  They’re blatantly ridiculous.  It doesn’t take a great deal of thought, so you can concentrate on quippy put downs.
As a conservative who has been through a government-run health care system (the military’s), I am dead against the government getting any more involved in [...]

Read Full Post »

My excuse for going missing…

I usually skip part of the weekend, due to family stuff, but I have a different (and even more photogenic) excuse this weekend: I was on vacation.
Virginia has a blossoming wine industry, and one of the best is Barboursville Winery, owned by an Italian winery family and opened in 1976, when Virginia only had six wineries (there are [...]

Read Full Post »

Albigensian Heresy Returns With a Vengeance

Over the centuries, many people have noted that there are no new ideas.  Even our sins, which we vainly imagine are ours or are somehow new and creative, are only endless repeats.  Truth is endless in variety, but heresy continues to repeat.
A Protestant friend was struggling with the Trinity, which some more-sola-scriptura-than-thou type had pointed [...]

Read Full Post »

Reading de Tocqueville (part 1)

As I mentioned at my What I’m Reading page (under the Library tab up there at the top of the blog header), one of the books I am working on is Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.  Time after time, I have heard people rave about how wonderful de Tocqueville’s commentary is, how prophetic, how [...]

Read Full Post »