Hope and joy in Madrid

"Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"

One and a half million bright, happy young Catholics ... and a mere handful of angry, bitter atheists and anti-Catholics. No real contest. Instead of wasting time and energy trying to disrupt World Youth Day, the assembled anti-Catholics might just as well have taken the approach of the MSM and just ignored it. Not that that's working too well; WYD just seems to get bigger all the time no matter how forcefully and vigorously it's ignored.

In response to WYD, Richard Dawkins, pushing his "Secular Europe" agenda, is promoting a march in London for Sept. 17th. Let's see how many hundreds this march draws, shall we?

Someone really needs to tell these people that committed Christians love opposition. We're a wierd bunch ... we're happiest when we feel we're being oppressed. "Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you" (Mt 5:11-12).

The difference in numbers and reactions also illustrate the disadvantage atheism has when compared to Christianity. Despite its hard moral code and sometimes harsh teachings, Christianity is at its center a religion of hope, joy and affirmation of the goodness of life. That's probably why religious people tend to score better in mental and physical health than non-religious people. (Dawkins is convinced religious people are by definition mentally ill ... which shows you just how "scientific" his approach to religion is.) While there are statistics and studies about the decline of religious practice that are cause for concern, World Youth Day is a seed planted in fertile ground, a seed from which the Church shall find new life and new strength.

Seven Quick Takes Friday! (Vol. 11)

Not my picture ... or Bob's new bed.

ONE:

Under certain circumstances, Medicare and Medicaid will pay for a hospital bed in your home. My invalid brother Bob now has one ... which makes me a little envious. Hospital beds are a wonderful combination of chaise lounge and La-Z-Boy with sheets and pillows thrown into the bargain. And they're pretty comfortable to sleep on, too!

TWO:

So just how many people come to visit Bob during the week? Well, there's the nurse/coordinator, Ann, a lovely, no-nonsense woman who is Bob's best cheer-leader; Robin, the occupational therapist, an older, slightly pushy woman with a heart of gold; Mara, the physical therapist, a young woman who only seems retiring; and there's Rachel, who gives Bob his sponge baths (until we get done converting the shower in the main bath). Plus, this week we had an X-ray tech come in to take pictures of his chest. Taken all things together, it's good incentive to keep my room and office clean.

THREE:

Central Market in Southlake: foodie heaven. If you can't find it at Albertson's, Tom Thumb or World Market, look there. 

This next weekend and for the next couple of weeks it's the annual Hatch Chile Festival at Central Market. I was born in Albuquerque, and lived for a year there as an adult ... just long enough to understand the State Question: "Red or Green?" Putting jalapeños on your burger just isn't the same as putting on fire-roasted poblanos ... yes, yes, New Mexicans put chiles on just about anything (I can't swear to gefilte fish). Hopefully, my other brother Ted and I can get down there to stock up.

FOUR:

Speaking of New Mexican food: One item I can't get in my immediate area is carne adovada ... in fact, the only place I know of is in Lewisville. Carne adovada is pork marinated in a chile sauce then slow-roasted until it's fork-tender. It's a great filler for tacos, burritos, enchiladas and things. Two concepts Ted and I want to try are putting it on a kaiser bun, perhaps with cole slaw, like a pulled pork sandwich, or baking it in the middle of a baguette like a Runza sandwich (if you don't know what a Runza is, you're not from Nebraska).

FIVE:

Okay, here's your Friday morning rock-out tune: Elton John live with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1986, performing "Have Mercy on the Criminal"!

SIX:

Last year, I replaced my old Ensoniq VFX-SD sequencer-synthesizer with a new Korg M50 Music Workstation ... about five times the voices, a longer keyboard (76 as opposed to 60), and it hooks up to my computer via USB so I can use it in tandem with Sibelius 5, a heavy-duty professional writing and arranging application. However, with tending to Bob and trying to produce material for two blogs, it occurs to me that I haven't just sat and banged away at the keys for several months. So this weekend I'm going to try to make time to remember that I'm a piano player.

Yessir, that's my baby!

SEVEN:

When you get fairly busy on the home front, some things get neglected. The last few days, I've had very little presence on Twitter and Facebook ... in some ways, I'm just not mentally "plugged in" to the whole social media thing. In fact, I still think of "retweet" as the opposite of "charge" to Elmer Fudd.

However, I've been able to pop in here and there. In fact, my friend Julie Robison over at The Corner With A View posted a rollicking little romp on dresses you should read: "Dresses Rule, Pants Drool and Other Facts of Life". Trista at Not A Minx A Moron Or A Parasite also had a piece on dresses, "Dresses & the Apostolate of Beauty", which is quicker and comes at it from Abp. Fulton Sheen's angle while still being light-hearted. And Elizabeth at Startling the Day has a scene from a mechanics office in "Month of the Dress" that will have you grinning ruefully. Plus, I've been to visit The Crescat, Fr. Dwight, Father Z, Randy and a few other places. So just because I haven't been tweeting all that much doesn't mean I've gone away!

*     *     *

And that's all for this week's installment. Have a great weekend!

Another reason to love Giada De Laurentiis

*sigh* ... No, I don't own the rights.

Yesterday was strange ... because there were a bunch of nurses and therapists in to see my invalid brother, Bob, I actually had time not only to write a post for The Other Blog and have it up by 2:00 pm, I also had time to bake. Not just one confection but two.

I don't get ambitious often, but when I do, get out of the way.

One of the things I baked started out to be Giada De Laurentiis' Raspberry Pound Cake (minus the Vin Santo Cream ... Cool Whip will do every time). Halfway through, I discovered that the fresh raspberries I bought at Central Market the other day were not only growing penicillin cultures but also in desperate need of a shave. Fortunately, I had half a bag of frozen strawberries available; a quick defrost under cold water, some vigorous shaking and draining to get excess water out, and some judicious chopping saved the day. The result is a cake with a very bread-like texture; you could just as easily put butter on it as you could ice cream. Quite tasty!

The other was a "Frankenstein recipe". A couple of weeks ago, I tried a recipe for Peach Cobbler by Paula Deen; the filling was marvelous but the crust unsatisfactory. This time around, I decided to use the "biscuit" topping from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, but keep the filling from Paula Deen. Here's the resulting recipe:

The Impractical Peach Cobbler

• Filling:
• 4 cups peaches, peeled and sliced
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, optional
• Topping:
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 egg, slightly beaten

For the topping, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Combine milk and egg; add all at once to dry ingredients, stirring just to moisten. Set aside.

Combine peaches, sugar and water in saucepan and mix well. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes. Let cool for 10-15 minutes, then pour fruit into a 9"x9" baking dish; sprinkle cinnamon on fruit if desired. Spoon biscuit topping onto fruit in 6 mounds. Bake at 400° for 20-25 minutes — biscuit topping should be golden-brown. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

 I'd love to show you a shot of the finished product, but we're experiencing technical difficuties here. I will tell you, though — much better results!

How do you normalize pedophilia?—UPDATED

Will we see less of this in the future?

Before you start, read this story on a conference starting tomorrow sponsored by B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile mental health professionals and sympathetic activists [H/T to Lisa Graas!]. According to the story, the American Psychiatrists Association isn't participating in this conference, nor will it comment on the conference's aims. B4U-ACT has hopes of participating in the next revision of the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (usually abbreviated DSM), scheduled to be completed by 2013; the conference is also looking at "how the popular perceptions of pedophiles can be reframed to encourage tolerance."

First step, of course, is to create a different name for it ... one that will hopefully make it sound more attractive and positive a trait. Hey, let's call pedophiles "minor-attracted persons"! Then complain how the old word demonizes the poor, afflicted "minor-attracted person". 

 Next, you try to mislead the psychiatric field into taking pedophilia off the DSM by making false claims about the the current state of scientific knowledge. (“'It is based on data from prison studies, which completely ignore the existence of those who are law-abiding,' said Howard Kline, science director of B4U-ACT, in a July 25, 2011 press release. 'The proposed new diagnostic criteria specify ages and frequencies with no scientific basis whatsoever.'”)

[Reality check: how many people who are sexually attracted to children are going to admit it? Or, let me rephrase that ... how many people who are not now and have never been imprisoned for child sexual abuse will admit to being sexually attracted to children? ... Hands, anyone? ... Now, how many of these people are willing to admit that their desire is unhealthy and needs treatment? ... cricket, cricket ....]

  Once pedophilia is taken off the DSM, you can use that fact to have child sexual abuse laws nullified, most likely through sympathetic courts. At the same time, you use Hollywood to have pedophiles — er, the "minor-attracted" made sympathetic, decent and often admirable people. The best way is to start off with featuring them in comedies, where their kinky desires are the springboard of light, indulgent jokes, interspersed with the occasional drama documenting their suffering at the hands of the religious and intolerant.

Sound ridiculously improbable? 

[Child advocate Dr. Judith] Reisman warns that declassifying pedophilia as a mental illness could result in the repeal of child-protection statutes because the law always follows the input of psychiatry. She points to psychiatry’s normalization of sadomasochism, exhibitionism, and homosexuality as precedents. ...

[Sadomasochism not a mental-health concern? Really?]

“The first thing they do is to get the public to divest from thinking of what the offender does criminally, to thinking of the offender’s emotional state, to think of him as thinking of his emotional state, [and] to empathize and sympathize,” Reisman said. “You don’t change the nation in one fell swoop; you have to change it by conditioning. The aim is to get them [pedophiles] out of prison.”

 The outline I've given above is almost exactly the same strategy pursued by gay activists to push us in the space of forty years from having irregularly-enforced sodomy laws to six states legalizing gay "marriages". Except that we're no longer discussing supposedly mature, informed and consenting adults.

Which should give us pause for thought: In forty years, will consent mean anything? If the consent of the immature and ignorant is to be considered irrelevant, then how can adults demand a right to say no?

Hopefully, the saner, more intelligent members of the APA will be able to fend off the pedophile brigade ... though, wherever sex is concerned, this august body seems to have trouble figuring out what's healthy and what's not.

Update: August 18, 2011
Tantamergo over at A Blog For Dallas Area Catholics posted a bit of information I didn't have Tuesday: Dr. Fred Berlin, one of the featured speakers at the B4U-ACT conference, was an advisor to HE Rembert Weakland, the archbishop emeritus of Milwaukee who delayed action on accused molester Fr. Lawrence Murphy until it was too late then tried to blame his inaction on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. (I wrote about this scandal, and the New York Times' misrepresentation of it, in The Other Blog last year.) Also, it appears Dr. Berlin was also an advisor to the USCCB, especially during the "Long Lent" of 2002.

Tantamergo's source is SNAP, which isn't the most trustworthy of sources. According to the Daily Caller, Berlin "distanced himself Monday afternoon from other B4U-ACT conference participants’ stated aims, saying that he opposes removing pedophilia from the DSM and that he hopes to stop pedophiles before they act. Berlin also disputed Reisman’s contention that he wants to decriminalize pedophilia, noting that 'society’s interests can best be served by supporting both criminal justice interventions and public health initiatives.'”

It should also be remembered that Abp. Weakland is prone to blame avoidance. He was one of Laurie Goodstein's sources for her hit piece against Pope Benedict; and she has repaid him by completely overlooking his complicity in the Murphy scandal, as well as his misuse of archdiocesan funds to silence a former Marquette student who had accused him of sexual assault.We should therefore take his claim that Dr. Berlin urged the USCCB not to remove pedophiles from the priesthood with a grain of salt.

Nevertheless, Dr. Berlin's address to B4U-ACT should be looked at carefully. Given his own stated belief that pedophilia is treatable (the Mayo Clinic Proceedings article to which Tantamergo links woefully notes, "Just as the prevalence of pedophilia is not accurately known, the rate of recidivism against a child is also unknown"), we may want to nitpick what he said and how he said it.

Some more thoughts on hand-holding

I don't own the rights.

Over at his blog 6 Stone Jars, Anthony Buono has an excellent reflection on the meaning and value of married couples holding hands. There isn't a thing on there I could contradict; I just want to tack on a few insights as a middle-aged, accidentally celibate man.

I'm an affection sponge. I like holding hands, arms around waists, hugs and light kisses. The best relationship I ever had was a Platonic friendship with a woman who was openly and unconsciously affectionate. Certainly it had its share of sexual tension, as do the bulk of relationships between unrelated men and women, but the tension was diffused and ameliorated through the affection. Were I ever to marry, I believe it would be with just such a woman.

The title of Buono's piece is "I want to hold your hand", which of course made me think of the Lennon-McCartney classic. It's miles, even light-years, away emotionally from Nine Inch Nails' "Closer (to God)". The former, despite its formulaic lyrics, is bright, right and noisily joyful. The latter has an eerily creepy beauty to its musical bed, but the lyrics are tortured, tormented, and dementedly scrabbling for some fragment of light. The Beatles song reaffirms the basic goodness of life and love through a simple gesture of affection; the subject of the Nails song reaffirms his despair through animal copulation even as he struggles to climb out of it.

The sad thing is, there are many people out there — especially (but not exclusively) men — like the subject of "Closer", who have no real openness to true affection, for whom sex is the closest thing they'll ever get to affirmation of their basic goodness. If you suggested to them, "Sounds to me like someone needs a hug," they'd sneer in disdain.

I don't own the copyright.

But holding hands goes beyond just the realm of romantic love. Consider the father holding the hand of his young son as they walk through the zoo, or the daughter as she leads her aged mother into church, or the two Arab friends as they walk down the street (or the picture at right of former President George W. Bush holding hands with King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia). There are many relationships other than that between lovers and spouses where such simple means of contact communicates affection and trust, and not all loves have an erotic component (whatever the Freudians may say). But even something so simple and transitory as a handshake can break through walls in ways mere words can't.

Now, I don't necessarily think free hugs and promiscuous hand-holding would solve all our problems. However, I can't help but believe we would be a better society for it, that it would be much more effective and less problematic than a social code of sexual license. At least it might help us recognize that innocence isn't the same thing as ignorance.

Ask Tony: Doesn't excommunication mean automatic defrocking?

On Tuesday, I wrote a post on The Other Blog about Fr. Roy Bourgeois' impending dismissal from the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers order. Along the way, I mentioned that in 2008 the superior general, Fr. Edward Dougherty, had received a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) notifying Maryknoll that Fr. Bourgeois had incurred an excommunication latae sententiae reserved to the Holy See.

This prompted one reader, Dan, to ask a question:

I am a bit confused. If I read your article correctly you point out that this priest's actions brought upon himself excommunication latae sententiae, based on the 2008 letter from the Holy Office. Further on in your article, you describe the warnings given to this priest by his Maryknoll superiors which state that unless he recants he will be dismissed from the order.

Now, if he had already incurred excommunication that means he is, in fact, no longer inside the Church and by all logic that follows he would no longer be a member of any order. The excommunication is obvisouly [sic] the more severe — and quite final — punishment.

Did I miss something?

The confusion isn't over dismissal but over excommunication. Many people, both Protestant and Catholic, don't really know what excommunication is and does.

The first thing to remember is that excommunication does NOT "kick you out of the Church". The character of the marks the Holy Spirit leaves on your soul at Baptism and Confirmation are indelible. You only stop being Catholic in a formal sense if you apostatize, i.e., join another church or reject religion altogether.

Now, what is excommunication? What does it do?

A person who commits a sin of sufficient gravity, such as rejecting a dogma or doctrine of the Faith, has not only fallen out of the state of grace but has broken away from unity with the rest of the faithful. In other words, he is "out of communion" ... ex communione. In such a state, the Catholic is supposed to voluntarily refrain from other sacraments, especially the Eucharist, until he repairs the fault through the Sacrament of Reconciliation (also known as Penance or Confession). And if he's honest, the at-fault Catholic will abstain.

In common parlance, excommunication normally refers to the formal, public declaration by the local ordinary that Joe Schmuckatelli, having committed such-and-such delicts and having obstinately and pertinaceously refused to repent of his sins, has separated himself from the sacraments of the Church and the people of God. The term latae sententiae (L. "given" or "already passed sentence") refers to a formal excommunication that is incurred by the fact of the delict itself, meaning that it's a mandatory punishment rather than the most drastic of several options.

And it is a drastic penalty. "An excommunicated person is forbidden:

1. to have any ministerial participation in celebrating the sacrifice of the Eucharist or any other ceremonies of worship whatsoever;
2. to celebrate the sacraments or sacramentals and to receive the sacraments;
3. to exercise any ecclesiastical offices, ministries, or functions whatsoever or to place acts of governance" (CIC 1331 §1).

Because of the severity, and because formal excommunications have a tendency to cause more problems than they solve, most bishops are very reluctant to reach for their pens, even when prominent Catholic public officials (such as Vice-President Joe Biden, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius) openly promote and give material support to the sin of abortion (cf. CIC 1371). 

Note also that the law in question prevents the exercise of ministerial office, but doesn't automatically strip a person of the office itself; the necessity of such further action depends on the nature of the delict and the delinquent's persistence in sin. Nor will Fr. Bourgeois' dismissal from the order return him to the lay state; however, he won't be able to function as a priest of the Catholic Church unless: 1) his excommunication is lifted; and 2) he can find a bishop willing to take him on at least probationally (CIC 701).

Finally, another condition is entailed in Fr. Bourgeois' excommunication: it is "reserved to the Holy See". The CDF, by the authority of Pope Benedict, issued the declaration, and only the CDF or the Pope can lift it. I'm almost sure there's a "danger of death" exception; however, for further details I refer you to Dr. Edward Peters, canon lawyer extraordinaire, who is posted on such things. For our purposes, it's enough to say that there are a handful of delicts serious enough that the Vatican requires notice; if the CDF, the descendant office of the Holy Inquisition, is involved — boy, have you f***ed up!

In summation, then, excommunication is the deprivation of sacraments and ecclesial function from a Catholic who continues in or refuses to repent a major sin. It's a drastic penalty because, in Catholic theology and spirituality, the sacraments are our contact points with God — especially the Eucharist, around which everything else is ordered. But an excommunicate Catholic is still a member of the Church; an excommunicate priest is still a priest.

And no, I don't think the CDF used the ritual shown here:

Another scary overpopulation prophet speaks

From Creative Minority Report:

A former Planned Parenthood director and present overpopulation lunatic is saying that Obama's plan to force all insurance companies to cover contraception and abortifacients without a co-pay is saying it's just a good start ... you know, kind'a like China's one-child policy.

I won't bore you with the whole letter from former Planned Parenthood Director Norman Fleishman. I'll cut right to the worst nugget he wrote in The Napa Valley Register:

Unless we act (this legislation, along with China’s “one child” policy, is a start [???!]), the world is doomed to strangle among coils of pitiless exponential growth.

The sad part is that you know he worked on that phrase "strangle among coils of pitiless exponential growth." He's probably real proud of it too.

 So okay, this nugget has been making the rounds, from Weasel Zippers to my friend Lisa Graas to Matt and Pat Archbold. Lisa makes the following point:

Will Planned Parenthood denounce this statement from Fleishman? No, because this is what Planned Parenthood is really about. Planned Parenthood receives a great deal of funding from pro-abortion population control activists, including Bill Gates and many others.

 At the end of the day, Lisa's right: "Freedom of choice" is simply a ride Planned Barrenhood hitched to get to where it is now ... a multi-million-dollar industry with friends in high places, like the guy at the right. But they don't really care about women's health; they only care about preventing a doomsday scenario they have yet to prove is a real possibility, let alone an inevitability. Put these wingnuts into power, and what today is a "right" of dubious provenance will become a legal obligation tomorrow.

A good old-fashioned Irish butt-kicking

Say what you will about Cdl. George Pell of Sydney, he's not a man to mince words. At the annual Catholic Voice dinner in Cork, Ireland on July 29, His Eminence gave a speech that opened with a direct challenge to the faithful in the audience, with clear reference to the predator-priest scandals and anti-Catholic attacks besetting the Church in Éire.

Here's the opening salvo (emphasis in bold mine):

I am not going to talk about the Church in Ireland but I am going to talk about what I am trying to do in Australia, as an archbishop, and you can draw your own conclusions on what might, or what might not, be adaptable to here in Ireland. Despite my English Protestant name (and I am proud of my English heritage) I have plenty of Irish blood, most of it Catholic, and so I think that entitles me to make the first point, and that is that we Irish Australians, and I suspect the Irish, enjoy bad news. It’s like the Englishman whose face will light up when he says, ‘Isn’t the weather terrible?’ This, then, is my question: has all the good Irish blood gone overseas into the colonies? [Wow! That's a slap in the face!] The Irish that I grew up with were fighters: they were people who had convictions and went and battled for them. Has the spirit of Dr. Daniel Mannix — one of the greatest exports of Cork — has his spirit vanished forever from this land? Are you going to sit on your tails and let 1000 years of tradition and faith just slip away? [And he follows the right hook with a left uppercut!] People are saying to me the same things they were saying to me back in 1998; we need this, we need that, nobody is doing anything — well, if nobody else is doing anything then you have to get it started yourself and if help comes, as it might or might not, at least you’re doing things. I realise that your presence here tonight is evidence of your desire and determination to do something BUT things are slipping and, from what I hear, you know you are slipping; so if others won’t act then do something yourselves.

Now, where I come from, it takes some ... er, intestinal fortitude to walk into a hall full of ostensibly friendly people and tell them, "Quit your bitching, get off your whiny butts and do something about it!" And, to be fair, the good prelate did tell his audience about some of the initiatives he'd taken to get the Church in Aus back on the path to orthodoxy. But still ... pardon my French, but DA-AAA-AMN! That's some cojones, mate! And that puts you on the list for the 2011 Ecclesial Backbone Award!

[H/T to Lux Occulta!]

The return of chronic poetry

from Choruses from the Rock by T. S. Eliot

The Word of the LORD came unto me, saying:
O miserable cities of designing men,
O wretched generation of enlightened men,
Betrayed in the mazes of your ingenuities,
Sold by the proceeds of your proper inventions:
I have given you hands which you turn from worship,
I have given you speech, for endless prayer,
I have given you my Law, and you set up commissions,
I have given you lips, to express friendly sentiments,
I have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust.
I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.
Many are engaged in writing books and printing them,
Many desire to see their names in print,
Many read nothing but the race reports.
Much is your reading, but not the Word of GOD,
Much is your building, but not the House of GOD,
Will you build me a house of plaster, with corrugated roofing,
To be filled with a litter of Sunday newspapers?

And the wind shall say: “Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls.”

When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city ?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?

Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.

Seven Quick Takes Friday! (Vol. 10)

Here it is, the dog days of August (and the dogs probably aren't happy that we call such bloody hot days theirs). That reminds me of Kipling's description of India's heat: "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun." The less I go out, of course, the fewer items I have for 7QT. But let's give it the old college try, shall we?

ONE:

Let's start off by going over to Catholic and Enjoying It! and wishing Mark Shea a very happy birthday! He'll be out of town this weekend ... which means he'll only have time to write one book.

TWO:

Speaking of birthdays, I found an option on Facebook that allows you to import your friends' birthdays into Microsoft Outlook. ("O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" He chortled in his joy.) Now, I've been working with Outlook for several years; it definitely comes in handy for keeping track of my brother Bob's various medical appointments. But only now do I find that you can have more than one calendar going, and that appointments on sub-calendars will show up on your main. Time to grab me a cane, put a Beltone in my ear and start cursing all this new-fangled gadgetry.

THREE:

 Okay: If you haven't figured it out, the line is from "Jabberwocky", by Lewis Carroll. And as Sir Nicol Williamson said, "The mome rath isn't born yet that could outgrabe me."

Yeah, yeah ... big deal chef!

FOUR:

In one of my few attempts at culinary adventurism, I made a peach cobbler the other day. But instead of using the recipe from the trusty old standby, The Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook (we have three editions, one of which is over fifty years old), I decided to try one posted on the Food Network website by Paula Deen. Result? The filling is great, and I'd definitely use it with some thickening as the basis for a peach pie. The crust, however, was disappointing ... which makes me question whether all-purpose flour really can be substituted for self-rising flour, as the package claims.

No, I'm not saying the crust was disappointing just to keep you from showing up wanting a piece. Besides, we still ate the darn thing up.

The greatest cookbook evah!

FIVE:

Why three editions of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook? Well, the first was a gift to my mother on her wedding day ... yes, despite claims to the contrary, I was conceived and born within the bounds of lawful wedlock. (Besides, bastardy only matters when it comes to primogeniture; in the Catholic Church there are no illegitimate children.) The second one I bought when I brieflt lived by myself in Omaha. The third Bob purchased for Mom when we thought the old one had disappeared and we hadn't combined households yet.

If you don't have it, go out and buy it, or follow the link and order it from Amazon. And don't get the Kindle version, either; get the three-ring-binder kind that'll stand up to anything that can happen in a kitchen. You'll not only thank me for this, you may even name one of your children after me.

SIX:

Speaking of cooking: If you do a lot of grilling — and I do — here's a handy recipe for a light, tangy marinade or basting sauce you can use with chicken: Mix together 1/4 cup Kikkoman soy sauce, 1/4 cup lemon juice concentrate, 2 tablespoons olive oil, and 1 teaspoon each of ginger, minced garlic and onion powder. It's especially good if you let the chicken marinate in it overnight, as is pretty much true with all marinades. I also use a lot of Grill Mates marinade mixes, especially if (as is usual) I'm grilling on short notice. (No, this is not turning into a product-endorsement blog, though the money would come in handy ....)

SEVEN:

Another way society hates on obese people: 

I recently had to replace most of my underwear. (Tommy Hilfiger briefs do something I've never seen happen with other skivvies: the waistband separates from the cloth panels. So much for big-name clothing.) So on two separate trips I bought bags of Hane's on sale at Wally World (aka Wal-Mart). O the joy of buying bags of four, five and even seven pairs for a mere $9.47!

Except that, when I got to the register, they rang up at $11.46 a bag. When I disputed the register, the check-out person took one look, and smiled sheepishly. "Ah. Large size." The $11.46 included a $1.99 "fat-ass tax" ... the price differential we larger people pay because manufacturers and merchants apparently can't distribute the cost of the extra material over the rest of the sizing bell curve. (More thoughts follow on this on The Other Blog.)

*     *     *

And that's all the news that's fit to print. Have a great weekend, and God bless!