No Excuse

Brand new Compaq Presario this weekend, so technically we have no excuse for not posting.

Heheh. Well, technically, we suck.

So, no photos yet, and no promised posts at dragonladyjo. All that stuff is still on the old machine. RoadRunner has deemed it necessary to disconnect it, although we specifically stated we wanted to prevent such an occurrence.

Oh, well. Wednesday we should be back up with everything.

Monday we will post the next chapter of the Dragon Lady.

Right now, I want to play. No excuses, just reasons.

I want to play. I want to celebrate. I want to imbibe.

And will do so.

pb
Little Pond

Real Superheroes

Our department, being filled with video gamers and comic collectors, was taken aback by this column in the Star Gazette. It is a lovely, sensitive column by a woman who is raising lovely, sensitive boys. Until she gets to the last line: there are indeed supervillans, but no superheroes.

This lady won't allow her children to read The Story of Ping, where the little duck gets a swat with a switch for being late. She specifically states that it has the duck being BEATEN, and refuses to read them stories where there are beatings. Guess that would interfere with raising lovely, sensitive boys.

I respectfully submit: not only are there supervillans in our world, but let's not teach our kids that there are no superheroes!

The Virginia Tech massacre is full of them.

For superheroes of the massacre, go anywhere on the Internet. But for specific instances of heroes at VT, not to mention elsewhere in our world today--sweet puddy photography as well any day--head over to visit our everloving Blogmother Sissy Willis, my own personal hero as well.

And don't believe for a minute that there are no superheroes in the real world.

pb
Little Pond

So busy.

Been visiting the Chemung River with Ellie. It helps me forget the awful strain at work. One artist is on maternity leave, and our layout person went to Florida for a week. It's been hell on everyone.

So I'm lost in my fantasies. I spent way too much time, for a grown woman, designing my dragon for Dragon Lady; Josephine's Journal.

I can hear the voices now. Grow up.

Not this week, please.

pb
Little Pond

St. James Callan of Rochester?

James Callan is back in the news.

A priest excommunicated after he became the pastor of the schismatic Catholic community of Spiritus Christi, Father Callan has said that the loss of his pastoral duties was the most painful experience of his life.

For him, excommunication is a null concept. Holy Orders are forever. Callan was ordained in the Roman Catholic Church. He will be a priest for all eternity. So, he still consecrates, transubstantiates and distributes the Holy Eucharist. What more could he want?

I can tell you what he doesn't want. He doesn't want the Church to exclude gays, women, divorcés, and other Catholics whose souls long for the Seven Sacraments.

As a cradle Catholic who loves the Church, I can imagine how hurt he is, the psychic pain he must feel at his own exclusion. Still he follows his conscience, ministering to the Church's outcasts in Spiritus Christi.

The Star-Gazette states that he "formed" Spiritus Christi. I object. Callan did not "start" his own church.

It sounds as if Spiritus Christi was inadvertently formed by the Roman Catholic Church herself.

Spiritus Christi began with people cast out of Roman Catholicism. Jim's flock are married Catholic gays, Catholic women called to the priesthood, remarried Catholic divorcés, and many others who want to receive the Holy Eucharist, but are not "in communion" with Rome.

These are not simply "issues" that haunt Rome; they are people who feel cruelly kept out of the Church.

And Father Callan doesn't need Rome to be a real hero, i.e., a saint.

Canonization does not create a saint: it only recognizes the fact.

Go, Jim, go!

pb
LIttle Pond

New Day, Old Memories

Blue, blue sky over Foster Island

I did not even crop the photo, let alone tone it. I repeat: blue, blue, blue! When I first came to this area as a college freshman, I remember the skies as blue, but not this blue. Elmira in Upstate New York, USA, was solidly industrial and the skies showed it. There was a dome of pollution, visible for miles away from the highways.

Hoffman creek is totally clear today, even where it feeds into the Chemung. See the shadow under the water? That is a small tree trunk that washed down under the city. Later this summer, it will still be clean, but not clear. I let Ellie poke on the bank a while, then we moved back into the island.

Even the stray trash looked like Spring. When I was a little girl, growing up in Central Massachusetts, we would run through the soggy fields and woods in the Spring, getting soaked and cold in the process. Being very little and full of imagination, we would invent stories to go with the very rare pieces of trash we would find. Often we wouldn't even recognize their function. No doubt there were some pretty old items from earlier settlements. But we would hide them again, to keep them for ourselves, never to retrieve them.

This little bit of greenery was the real treasure, today. Lovely lime and chartreuse buds, and tiny leaves. Everywhere.

All soon to be covered by a fresh blanket of snow.

pb

Little Pond

What would we do without Easter or Passover?

Having raised both a Roman Catholic and an agnostic (don't even ask...), my answer is final: we would attach ourselves to whomever does celebrate them. And no, we wouldn't celebrate the Equinox instead. We celebrate the Equinox in addition to them.

My wonderful daughters brought me Easter Luncheon for Sunday. In turn I provided fixings for club sandwiches, including lunchmeats, bacon, rye bread and rolls. Husband RJ backed it all up with chocolate rabbits, brownies and white cake from Wegmans.

The VeggieGirl brought a huge salad that also gives me leftovers to augment my lunches for the first half of the week. Mamma Dog cooked a lamb shank in a vegetable sauce, of which I made short work, handing off the baton (so to speak) to the HuggaMutt who left nothing unchewed or unlicked. My number one daughter also whipped up my favorite, zucchini bread, that I hoped to enjoy the rest of this week. Alas, however. The bread did not survive past breakfast, and I will wear it proudly at my waist and hips. At least until I can get outdoors to exercise my walking stick later this week.

Daughter number two repaired to the spare bedroom to begin the proper stripping and spackling to turn it into a haven for future guests. She ended her work in the bathroom being tenderly nursed by Husband RJ, after she partly removed a knuckle trying to pull down old mirror panels. She will be sore, but fine. Or so I'm told, since she refused to let me see the wound, either before or after her her father administered first aid.

Otherwise we all had a wonderful visit punctuated by a presumptuously delightful California rose. Yes, I am ashamed to admit drinking outside my state. But Bill of Westside Wine and Liquors insisted it was the best sipping wine for the price. I really only want the best, but sometimes my purse has other ideas.

Back to bed, to rest before I start the workweek.

pb
Little Pond

More than a day late and several dollars short!

My little blogsister, Digital Karen, has tagged me for What happened on your birthday?

And I am tickled pink to comply:

I just happen to know that (in order of how they interest me) and verified on Wikipedia:

1--in 1945 on April 30, Adolph Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun committed suicide in their Berlin bunker. Rumor has always been that their butler doused their bodies with gasoline and burned them to ashes. (Correction thanks to Nick in comments!)

2-in 1975, on April 30, the US lost the Viet Nam war. South Viet Nam surrendered to the North, who then began to call it Liberation Day.

3-in 1803 the US signed the Louisiana Purchase, thus expanding the country's borders almost exponentially.

4-in 1006, Supernova SN 1006, the brightest supernova in recorded history, appeared in the constellation Lupus. Bet it scared the you-know-what out of everybody...

5-in 779 AD, The Saxon Princess Walpurga was declared a saint, her day to be celebrated on May 1, the day she died (and thus became a saint), according to the old calendar. Today, many people recognized Walpurgis Night as the exact opposite of All Saints Day's Eve or Halloween. It was said that all the evil wandering the world was permitted full sway on that night. People stayed home and shuttered their windows. Those who dared ventured forth found huge bonfires, as well as little lights by the roadsides, to ward off the evil.

Of course, way, way back in 1954, my mom gave birth to her first daughter, after three boys. I had some sort of birthmark called a storkbite, or starberry mark, that also later showed up on my firstborn daughter. Who knows what that symbolized, eh?

When I was little, it was the first day of baseball, but as you know, that is no longer the case.

Here in Little Pond, we don't much celebrate it, unless it comes on the weekend. I've even forgot it some years! Better at remembering now, after more than a half century...

pb
Little Pond