Lift Up Your Hearts!

As someone relatively new to the Liturgical Year, I have nothing authoritative to say about Lent, but I love this season.  As a penitential season it is much easier to celebrate than Advent, which gets entangled with the secular celebration of Christmas.  And Lenten disciplines have all the fun of New Year's resolutions but with a statute of limitations.

Why would anyone share something as personal as Lenten disciplines with the world?  Three reasons. (More)

As with most First Things articles, David B. Hart's 2004 essay Freedom and Decency is intellectual, dense, long, and not easy going.  But—again like most First Things articles—it is well worth the effort.  (Hat tip to John C. Wright.  Who says science fiction writers can't be deep thinkers?)  What earns the article its own post rather than a brief mention in my "Casting the Net" series is the following extraordinary paragraph, which leaps from the somewhat dry erudition with the shock of a striking panther.

I am not convinced that we are in any very meaningful sense in the midst of a “culture war”; I think it might at best be described as a fracas. I do not say that such a war would not be worth waging. Yet most of us have already unconsciously surrendered to the more insidious aspects of modernity long before we even contemplate drawing our swords from their scabbards and inspecting them for rust. This is not to say that there are no practical measures for those who wish in earnest for the battle to be joined: homeschooling or private “trivium” academies; the disposal or locking away of televisions; prohibitions on video games and popular music; Greek and Latin; great books; remote places; archaic enthusiasms. It is generally wise to seek to be separate, to be in the world but not of it, to be no more engaged with modernity than were the ancient Christians with the culture of pagan antiquity; and wise also to cultivate in our hearts a generous hatred toward the secular order, and a charitable contempt. Probably the most subversive and effective strategy we might undertake would be one of militant fecundity: abundant, relentless, exuberant, and defiant childbearing. Given the reluctance of modern men and women to be fruitful and multiply, it would not be difficult, surely, for the devout to accomplish — in no more than a generation or two — a demographic revolution. Such a course is quite radical, admittedly, and contrary to the spirit of the age, but that is rather the point, after all. It would mean often forgoing certain material advantages, and forfeiting a great deal of our leisure; it would often prove difficult to sustain a two-career family or to be certain of a lavish retirement. But if it is a war we want, we should not recoil from sacrifice.

Did you ever wonder where your Ash Wednesday ashes come from?  Traditionally they come from burning the branches from the previous year's Palm Sunday, but these days the ashes that mark your forehead on this first day of Lent might be from right here in Central Florida. Read about 84-year-old Ralph Higginbotham's family ash-making business in this Orlando Sentinel article, which also includes a good explanation of Ash Wednesday and Lent.

Under Higginbotham's direction, the family makes several hundred pounds of the smooth, black dust from sabal palms every year. He makes the ashes by slowly roasting palm trees in steel drums.

He uses no flammable liquids in the roasting and no pigments to darken the finished product.

A single 25-foot palm, cut and left to cure in the sun for two years, will yield about 5 pounds of ash. After grating and sifting, the ash goes off to suppliers in California, Illinois and Rhode Island, who sell it to churches and dioceses across the country.

Jon shared Controlling Our Food on Facebook, but as that leaves out most of my readers, I'll post it here.  I almost didn't, because whoever put it up on Google Video is some sort of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist.  That doesn't negate the importance of what this French documentary has to say, however, so in the spirit of "the wise man recognizes truth in the words of his enemies," I recommend taking the time to watch this video, because it raises some critical issues about the environment and the future of our food supply. (It's nearly two hours long, but it not content-dense, so you can do something else while listening or be liberal with the fast-forward button.)

Controlling Our Food is primarily about the Monsanto Corporation.  To bolster the claim that Monsanto will do anything to increase profits, including lie and cover up and put people at grave risk of illness and death, the first part of the documentary is old news about PCBs and dioxin and industrial/agricultural pollution.  True enough, but old, and overly long, so that even in two hours there is not enough time given to the main points. (More)

Jon provided the name; now all I have to do is figure out what "Classical Unschooling" is.  It could be confused with unschooling as it was practiced "in the good ol' days"—but for a great article on the "unschooling" label see Pat Farenga's post What's going on with unschooling?  (There's no permalink that I could find, so if you come to this post later you may have to search in his archives.)  What I mean for Classical Unschooling to be, however, is an approach to homeschooling—better yet, all of life—that combines the best of what I've gleaned from authors as divergent as John Holt and Susan Wise Bauer, a flexible plan that is low-stress yet high-expectation, creative yet disciplined, supportive yet challenging.

Liz at smithically schooled began the discussion, but it's a little hard to keep up with because if there's an an easy way to know when comments have been added there I can't find it.  (The Recent Comments feature is another reason I like LifeType on Lime Daley for this blog.)  It would be great if my highly intelligent and experienced blog readers would read and add to her discussion, which is why I'm making this post and sending you there.  I'll also post a comment here if I note that the discussion has progressed there (and hope others will do the same) so you can know more easily if there's been an update.

Andy B. posted a link to New Math on Facebook, and it tickled me so I'm passing it on.  Many are funny, some a little odd, one or two potentially offensive.  Here are a few that I liked:

And my absolute favorite, the one that inspired this post:

Very clever; I hope it was meant to be that way....

I briefly reviewed the wonderful Claude Moore Colonial Farm back in 2005.  It's time for an update, because there's a great article about the place and its people on Slate.  Don't miss the video, which I can't figure out how to imbed here since it's not YouTube or a similar site.

The usual disclaimers, I don't usually do "memes," etc.  But when it's books, it's hard to resist.  I found this one over at Percival Blakeney Academy.  The instructions are:

• Look at the list and bold those you have read—films don't count.
• Italicize those you intend to read.  ("Intend" may be a little strong.  How about "Would like to read someday, sometime.)
• Tag somebody if you like.  (I don’t like to tag people.  But I’d love to see other people’s lists and comments.)

I don't know who chose the books on the list, nor why.  It seems varied enough, with books old and new, and several I've never heard of.  And any book list that includes Swallows and Amazons gets big points as far as I'm concerned.  It could only have done better by including George MacDonald.  :)  My comments follow in parentheses. (More)

Both Porter and I are fortunate in having many ancestors who were amongst the first Europeans to come to this country.  Whether it’s a fortunate situation in general may be up for debate, but for one doing genealogy research it is an undeniable blessing.  For one thing, those early New Englanders kept good records!  I didn’t know how good until I tried to find ancestors in Pennsylvania, where keeping birth records wasn’t generally required until the 1900’s.  Even next-door neighbor New York isn’t nearly as easy to research as New England, and the further west one travels, the worse it gets.  Except for California, that is.  California may not be so good with history, but its modern-day records are more open than most.  As a person concerned with privacy this makes me nervous, but the genealogist in me is grateful.

The second reason for being happy to have early New England ancestors is that so many other people have researched those lines already.  In many cases, all I have to do is find the right books.  That’s not as easy as it sounds, but it is what has enabled me to trace our lines so extensively.  (More)

I'm trying to digest and document the genealogical data I gathered during my recent visit to the NEHGS Library in Boston.  There's much too much to handle all at once—and too many other duties calling—but I am focussing at the moment on getting into publishable form some significant progress I made on one of Porter's lines.

This line includes the first set of Welsh ancestors I've found for Porter.  He's happy with them, even though he worries that Wales is uncomfortably close to Ireland.  He's afraid I'll eventually find Irish ancestors in his tree—not that he has anything in particular against Ireland, but because he will no longer be able to blame my quirks on my Irish blood.  :)

These Welsh ancestors are making my head spin.  I have Welsh lines, too, but haven't yet tried to carry them back beyond the immigrants.  This line of Porter's goes much further into the past, well into the time—which actually isn't all that far back—when Welsh names followed a patronymic system rather than having fixed family surnames.  So I am struggling with names like Gruffyd ap Einion of Gwyddelwern ap Gruffyd ap Llewellyn ap Cynrig ap Osbern Wyddel of Cora y Gedol.  Granted, one gets a lot of genealogy worked into a name that way, but entering it into standard genealogy software is a bit of a challenge.

I think I'll go clean the house.

After all the travelling we did in the last quarter of 2008 and in January of 2009, I, the homebody, was really ready to enjoy a few months with nowhere to go. But "the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley," and in this case I'm thrilled.

Ever since we moved away from Boston, I'd been waiting for Porter to get a job assignment back there so I could stay with him while doing research at the New England Historic Genealogical Society Library on Newbury Street.  He's been all over the country, but never to Boston...until now. (More)

Why do I like our church?  Well, for one thing, during yesterday's service there was not one mention of the Super Bowl.  :)

I did afterwards, in the form of a friend who is a florist commenting that she had the day off because no one schedules a wedding during  the Super Bowl, which led Porter to comment that Super Bowl Sunday may be the only holiday truly observed and respected in America.

Although we watched only about 30 seconds of the game, that half-minute included the game-winning touchdown.  Porter feels towards the Steelers only slightly better than he does towards the Yankees, but I send congratulations to all of our Pittsburgh-area, and Pittsburgh ex-pat, friends.

With a hat-tip to Bill H., another Steeler fan, here's the Super Bowl ad you didn't see.  I believe NBC should have the right to choose the ads it shows, but I like this one, so you can see it here.  No ad revenues generated.  :)  It's safer to watch it right from here; if you go to the YouTube site itself, I recommend avoiding the viewer comments, and I don't vouch for any other videos that might be suggested.