Casey Anthony…
29 Jun 2011 1 Comment
…why…?
No, not why did some young mother kill her baby, why do we have to hear about it every 5 minutes? Why is it a daily part of every major newscast (make that “hourly part”)? Is this morbid curiousity or a shameless plug for ratings? If she did it or didn’t do it, I still don’t need to hear about it every time I turn on the TV. With all of our right to privacy laws why not a “right to a private trial”?
And, the most burning question of all, why did HLN have to compose a Casey Anthony theme song to play every time they report about it?!?!?!? (…come on you HLN viewers, you know it….Daaaaaa…daa….)
For humanitarian reasons?
23 Mar 2011 2 Comments
Okay, you’ll have to forgive me here… I’m not the biggest fan of our current president, but can we be reasonable here? The War Powers Resolution of 1973 gives the president permission to commit forces to a foreign conflict, provided that he notify congress within 48 hours:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution
He did:
The actual letter is linked in there.
?????
Hobbit Sense…
15 Feb 2011 2 Comments
I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.*
What is Bilbo saying here? What a line. I guess he wants to get to know some people, others he has bitter grudges against, for which he accepts responsibility and recognizes he is in the wrong “as you deserve”.
Bilbo is rather spiteful toward many of his neighbors as is seen from the epithets on his numerous parting gifts after the misterious dissappearance which follows the line quoted above. (In one instance he writes “To Lobelia, for her very own” on a package of silver spoons. She had been known to steal such items when entertained as a dinner guest.) But it seems that he recognizes his own faults by this parting phrase while not being very concerned about changing (as evidenced in the epithets).
Another strange moment is his attitude toward Frodo and the whole affair of the coucil of Elrond. Paraphrasing he says to Frodo, who is heading off into incredible peril, “take care of yourself. Be sure to take plenty of notes. I want to write the sequel to my book when you return. Don’t take too long!”
I’m not sure if Frodo’s line in the movie in an adjoining scene “I’m not like you, Bilbo” is canonical, but it surely is appropriate. One wonders if Bilbo is completely out of touch with reality because of his seemingly nochalant responses to matters of extreme importance and danger, or if this is just his silly way of dealing with very important things far out of his league: his Hobbit-Sense.
In the same way that Pippin and Merry were able to joke about voluntarily being on a “little expedition” together in regard to their grisly kidnapping by orcs after the murder of Boromir, Bilbo approaches all things serious with a smile and a joke: nothing gets to him.
This is Hobbit-Sense: the deep abiding knowledge that the simple comforts of home, food and friendship are far more important than the comings and goings of kings, queens and wizards. As Aragorn says at the council “if simple folk are able to remain simple without any knowlege of our labors to defend them, they can remain just that: simple. And we are content.”
This Hobbit-Sense is the epitome of Hobbit culture, and I for one could do with much more of it. Many times, the Goliath’s of daily life, work, relationships, kids, and money overpower my consciousness and leave me quite disturbed. If I am able to just let go for a moment and turn to my compainion at arms and say, in the midst of the orcs and the filth and the bruises, “so, Pippin you’ve decided to come on this little expedition also..” I am much the better for it.
I would venture to guess, that in the Tolkien mentality, or the LOTR universe, Hobbit-Sense is the very thing that helps Frodo not to fade from the bite of the “morgul blade” and Gollum to persist for so long under the power of the Ring. Frodo, after carrying the wound for a few days, is so elevated by Sam’s improvized troll song, that he exclaims “I feel much better”, and “…can’t you see he’s making it up out of his very own head”.
This groundedness in what really is life is the most important character trait of heros in the Lord of the Rings and, in my humble opinion, also in the “real world”. A meal, a simple laugh with friends, a hug, a kiss, a walk together in the evening; aren’t these the very things we all dream of? Aren’t they the very things that all the wealth and striving of all human beings yearns toward?
If so, I need to pay them much more care… or… that is… take them much more… and at ease.
*(Please excuse that in the entirety of the above all quotes were paraphrases from memory. They all occur in Tolkien’s the Fellowship of the Ring. Specific references are pending.)
We need to kill the straw man
09 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment
Congresswoman Giffords was shot “through the head” according to news organizations. At least six are dead. Clarence Dupnik, the Pima County, Arizona sheriff suggests that an inflamitory hate-filled public rhetoric surronding politics helped create this situation.
Is it true? Did partisan rhetoric cause a 22-year-old man to open fire on a crowd and murder? Or was he just an unstable young man? Both. It’s time to kill our straw man. Whoever you are, whatever I believe, let’s try to understand the other side. I’ll be praying for the victims and for our country.
Inroductions
01 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDpmBfncbjw
This is a little out of character for my other posts, but all I can say is….. THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN BOUT!!!!!
War. Is it Ever good?
18 Nov 2010 1 Comment
This is a wonderful homily from father Jay Scott Newman of St. Mary’s of Greenville in which he teaches about the Catholic’s role in time of war.
Check it out and leave a comment.
| http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AudioHomiliesFromStMarysCatholicChurch/~3/P3T__x862pg/load.mp3 |
For a country?
21 Sep 2010 2 Comments
“….with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor…”
From the end of the United States of America’s Declaration of Independence
I originally posted this on my Facebook page. A wonderful conversation ensued between a very respected friend and myself. Though we are diametrically opossed on most issues (present post included), we had a very good conversation which I am including below.
Puck feeling a bit patriotic then?
Fingolfin yeah….heard somebody quote this on youtube… such a moving sentance… one of the most in all of american literature in my book.
Puck really? i always felt a bit the opposite
Fingolfin why? what tells more of creating a country? Stepping out into the deep? Committing oneself to love and friendship?
Puck i don’t know, it always felt too forced. also, the “our fortunes” has always been off-putting, must be the inner worker in me. i always thought it to be an extra sentence, that the declaration should have ended with “by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States…” i get that introduction of each right removes some of the ring from it, but that sentence, to me, was the kicker. it was about the ideas of the country, not the individuals declaring its existence.
Fingolfin Well, fortune, in the older sense of the word, does not have to mean a lot of money, just everything we have… How does one create a country? Make it exist out of nothing? Poland, England, Italy… their nations were birthed out of the midst of legend and some how, as years went by, they knew themselves as a people, “my people”.
Here, we see, in modern times, the birth, the creation of a nation… how might it become real other than through an invocation like this? How can “We the people” become a “people” as such, without an invocation such as this? To me, if you stop the declaration at “..by the Authority of the good people…we declare that these colonies are…free and independent states…” it’s like two people getting up in front of a judge and saying, bride and groom in turn, “we are married, and we ought to be married…” rather than “…I…promise to love you in sickness and health…till death do us part…” Just romantic? I don’t think so, among people… in relationships… a promise makes something real… out of nothing… creation.. how fantastic!
Puck i still disagree. the second to last sentence is about the country. the final sentence glorifies the signers and rubs me the wrong way. sure, they risked themselves by signing, but it was, by-and-large, the ordinary citizens of the new nation whom we don’t remember and who didn’t get to sign the document who actually gave their lives during the revolution
Fingolfin I feel ya man. But I would hope that the signers were not so stuck up as to think they were only speaking of their own risk… They should be speaking of the whole country’s risk… Of the forgotten farmer who’s small cottage would be burned as the price for freedom just as much as the plantation owner with the same fate.
I want to live in a country that is united: rich and poor, middle class, scholars and athletes, black, white, yellow, red, olive… If we are to be country we should risk it all TOGETHER for what’s right. It was right for America to split from England. And EVERYONE risked their lives, fortunes and honor. They fought and won the freedoms we enjoy (though of course the fight goes on amongst us).
When I hear the quote above, I think of all Americans and it inspires me to want to do that today: To trust in “come what may”, step forward for the good of all, and risk for something I believe in.
No matter what the rich people who wrote this meant, it rings true for all of us when it comes fighting for country.
Alas for Fingolfin
16 Sep 2010 1 Comment
“…Then Fingolfin beheld (as it seemed to him) the utter ruin of the Noldor, and the defeat beyond redress of all their houses; and filled with wrath and despair he mounted upon Rochallor his great horse and rode forth alone, and none might restrain him. He passed over Dor-nu-Fauglith like a wind amid the dust, and all that beheld his onset fled in amaze, thinking that Orome himself was come: for a great madness of rage was upon him, so that his eyes shone like the eyes of the Valar. Thus he came alone to Angband’s gates, and he sounded his horn, and smote once more upon the brazen doors, and challenged Morgoth to come forth to single combat. And Morgoth came…”
The Silmarillion, page 153
