You'll have time

http://www.lincolnites.com/music/mp3s/ws_youll_have_time_low.mp3

A public service announcement from William Shatner.
Via A Saintly Salmagundi.

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Check it out

Major revisions currently underway at www.williamscatholic.org. Utilizing my meager knowledge of HTML I've been playing around with the site design to make it more efficient and easier to update. You can also expect some new content in the near future including the much-anticipated photo gallery. Comments and suggestions welcome.

In other news, my string quartet (or at least one movement thereof) from Winter Study is more or less finished, and hopefully I'll be able to find a group to read through it sometime next semester. Classes begin Thursday; I'll be taking Music History II (1750-1900), Choral Conducting, and Historical Linguistics in addition to continuing Introductory Greek from last semester.

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At the March for Life

It was late on a dark and cold Sunday evening as three intrepid members of WFL (Williams for Life) made their way to the Williams Inn en route to the March for Life. Illness and schoolwork had taken their toll on the Williams delegation and only Mariana Uribe, Kimberly Davis, and myself boarded the bus for Washington, D.C. along with members of the local chapter of MCFL (Mass. Citizens for Life). Arriving in the wee morning hours, we attended Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Afterwards, I saw John Martino (Williams '03, now a FOCUS missionary at George Mason) and Greg Weston of Holy Cross, whom I met on the Prince of Liechtenstein Fellowship last summer in Austria.

After a rosary and some quiet time in the side oratory of Mary Queen of Ireland, we took the Metro to Union Station and walked from there to the Ellipse near the Washington Monument where the March was assembling. A man with a megaphone was haranguing the passing multitudes, beginning in the tones of a televangelist and finishing in a rich Southern accent: "Come one, come all! Join the Army of God! And how do you know it's the Army of God? 'Cause they're for life!" Near him a group of teenagers assembled, dressed in goth and sporting fantastic spiked mohawks. Priests and religious mingled freely with college students and teenagers in "Rock for Life" sweatshirts. A diverse crowd, united by two things: a common willingness to stand up for the right to life, and a common desire to avoid contact with the wild-eyed man who was walking about with a sign that said "Abort the Bishops, not the Babies" and denouncing Vatican II to everyone in his path.

Among the Steubenville crowd we met Mike Sheehan (Williams '03), now "Brother Mike" among the FPO's (Franciscans of the Primitive Observance). We chatted for a while and then wandered on through the crowd. At long last the March was mobilized and we headed down Constitution Avenue towards the Capitol to the call of a hunting horn which some wise guy had brought along. You would have thought it was the Ride of the Rohirrim (sans horses, unless you count the mounted police.) Unfurling the WFL banner, we joined the throng. Further down the road we met up with Chris Vaughan and Grace Smith (both Williams '04) and Jonny Melton '05.

Occasionally we would be questioned about our place of origin, to which we would respond that Williams was a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts- to which most responded "Oh, near Boston?" But our presence was not entirely in vain. A man on the sidewalk shouted "Go Ephs!" A woman approached us who, as it turned out, was the mother of a girl from Kimberly's entry. Others came up just to express their appreciation, most unable to hide their astonishment that such a group as Williams for Life existed at all. At the end of the March we returned to the bus frozen and exhausted, but grateful to have played some small part in such a tremendous act of witness- a witness born of sorrow but full of hope. "They cannot conquer forever!" Our Lady of Guadalupe, Queen of the Americas, Patroness of the Unborn: ora pro nobis.

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The wind thinks I'm a leaf

The latest update from home:

The other night walking to the dining hall a big gust of wind came up and Diane said, "Mommy, the wind thinks I'm a leaf. But I'm not. I'm Diane."

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March for Life

Heading off to Washington, D.C. tomorrow night for the March for Life on Monday with a contingent from WFL and MCFL. Look for me with the big purple "Williams College for Life" banner. Update to follow upon my return.

"America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign."

(Mother Theresa -- "Notable and Quotable," Wall Street Journal, 2/25/94, p. A14)

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By the Babe Unborn

If trees were tall and grasses short,
As in some crazy tale,
If here and there a sea were blue
Beyond the breaking pale,

If a fixed fire hung in the air
To warm me one day through,
If deep green hair grew on great hills,
I know what I should do.

In dark I lie; dreaming that there
Are great eyes cold or kind,
And twisted streets and silent doors,
And living men behind.

Let storm clouds come: better an hour,
And leave to weep and fight,
Than all the ages I have ruled
The empires of the night.

I think that if they gave me leave
Within the world to stand,
I would be good through all the day
I spent in fairyland.

They should not hear a word from me
Of selfishness or scorn,
If only I could find the door,
If only I were born.

-G.K. Chesterton

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"Once for All"

This weekend I attended the 2004 FOCUS National Conference, "Once for All" (v. Hebrews 10:10) in Denver, CO. We departed early Friday morning for Boston's Logan Int'l Airport where we checked in at the ticket counter, not without some difficulty on my part, as apparently I have a name similar to someone on their "watch list". It having been ascertained that I was the meek, mild-mannered college student I claimed to be, I boarded the plane with the rest of the Williams contingent for the flight to Denver where I was treated with a nice window-seat view of the Rockies as we approached the city. (Upon landing it was hard to shake the feeling I was in a foreign country, all my previous flights having been international ones. This was in fact my first time west of Ohio.)

We were met at the airport and driven by gold-shirted FOCUS volunteers to the oddly named Adam's Mark Hotel (in clear contradiction to Genesis 4:15) where we scarfed down some pizza for dinner (after eating nothing but a granola bar for breakfast and some complimentary pretzels courtesy of United Airlines, I quickly lost track of how many slices I had eaten). That evening we heard an excellent talk by Matthew Kelly, author of "Rediscovering Catholicism", on the universal call to holiness, a.k.a. "becoming the best version of yourself." The next day we had a wide selection of simultaneous talks to choose from in various locations. (Being a chic hotel, it was necessary for those attending the talks to seek them out in places such as "Grand Ballroom, Salon A" and the "Majestic Ballroom", nicknamed the "Mystic Ballroom" for its remote and inacessible location.) I heard talks on "Reason for Hope" with Sean Innerst and "Conforming to Christ, Transforming the Culture" with Jonathan Reyes, and then after Mass and lunch (a nice greasy "Sonic Burger" from down the street) I attended "breakout sessions" on "Life after Graduation", "Men are 'Pigs' and Women are 'Manipulative'" (discussing the significance of psychosexual differences between the sexes, this one was enormously popular) and "Crossing the Great Divide" (on liberals and conservatives in the Church). That evening featured a fancy banquet with guest Scott Hahn speaking on the Eucharist (or, as he called it, "Meal Bonding", displaying his weakness for puns.)

The night closed with Adoration, and then we East Coasters woke bright and early Sunday morning for a 7AM Mass so that we could head off to the airport after brunch, missing the closing midday Mass. The trip home was uneventful, barring the incident going through Security when one of our party decided to get sassy with the officer who asked her to remove her shoes. I won't name the individual except to say that she was fortunate not to be deported back to Jamaica. Ahem. After a slight delay at Boston waiting for the luggage carousel to unfreeze, we hopped back on our vans for the snowy drive back to Williamstown, finally pulling in around 3:30AM, at which point I fell gratefully into bed and slept until roughly noon when I realized that I did not want to miss lunch on top of missing breakfast. I don't normally sleep that late and feel a bit guilty when I do. Though a bit embarrased to have compounded my earlier gluttony with sloth, all things considered I can look back on a fabulous weekend. And without further ado, back to work. Or sleep, as the case may be. Yes, the latter. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof, sayeth the Good Book. We hope you have enjoyed flying the Sacred and the Profane, please come again.

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I'm getting too old for this sort of thing

As you can see from the picture at the left, the academic rigor of Winter Study has been taking its toll, causing me to grow old before my time. But wait- what academic rigor, you ask? Clearly some other sinister force must be responsible for this terrifying acceleration of the aging process. Indeed, the true culprit is the Perception Laboratory's Face Transformer, where by uploading a digital image of your face you can vary your appearance according to age, ethnicity, and various other parameters. Truly the wonders of modern technology never cease to terrify and amaze. Link via fellow St. Blog's Parish site Dappled Things.

In other news, Winter Study '05 (though neither Winter, when the temperature reaches 50 degrees, nor Study, if I can help it) is going well. I'm actually keeping fairly busy writing a string quartet for my music composition 99, but of course taking the occasional evening off to watch a movie rented from Netflix or to pursue my agenda of introducing Napoleon Dynamite to all those who have not yet seen it. This weekend I'm off to Denver for the FOCUS National Conference, which should be fun, you can probably expect a report on that when I return.

And finally, a brief shout-out to friends now studying abroad- Surekha working in Calcutta with the Missionaries of Charity for Winter Study, and Hue studying in Madrid for the Spring semester. I would much appreciate if those of my readers who are so inclined would remember them in their prayers.

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Chesterton Quote of the Day

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

'What's Wrong with the World.'

via Chesterton Day by Day

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Today in History

The Blue Potato
January 11, 2000

With the publication of "Volume I, Episode III", the Blue Potato has become Portsmouth Abbey's most frequently published newspaper. "This newspaper is now the ultimate power on this campus," boasted Joe McDonough, the paper's chief editor. "Don't be too proud of this journalistic terror you've created," retorted "Darth" McDonough, Joe's father. "The ability to publish a newspaper is insignificant next to the power of the Faculty."

As a quasi-underground newspaper the fame of the Blue Potato spread rapidly, resulting in letters to the editor from "Red Potato" impersonators, anonymous gifts of blue potatoes from Maine, and of course spawning a serious of motion pictures. Abbot Matthew Stark, OSB would later write:

"An outstanding example of investigative reporting... dedicated to searching for truth and convicting hypocrisy, falsehood, and things outlandish. Magna est veritas et praevalebit."

The Blue Potato held the coveted position of most frequently published newspaper against all comers (not that there were any to speak of) until the fall of 2001, when the chief editor sold out to the school administration and revived the by-then defunct Abbey Voice as The Beacon. The rest, as they say, is history.

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A Christmas Story

The woman spoke again: "There is one thing, though. Religious holidays are important, but can't we learn to celebrate them in ways that unite, not divide? For instance, instead of all this business about 'Gloria in excelsis Deo,' why not just 'Season's Greetings'?"

Mary said, "You mean my son has entered human history to deliver the message, 'Hello, it's winter'?"

"That's harsh, Mary," said the woman. "Remember, your son could make it big in midwinter festivals, if he doesn't push the religion thing too far. Centuries from now, in nations yet unborn, people will give each other pricey gifts and have big office parties on his birthday. That's not chopped liver."

Full Story

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Happy Eleventy-Third Birthday

J.R.R. Tolkien
b. 3 January 1892
d. 2 September 1973

Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament... There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires.

from a letter to Michael Tolkien, 6-8 March 1941

The Tolkien Society invites you to toast The Professor at 9pm your local time.

"For those unfamiliar with British toast-drinking ceremonies:

To make the Birthday Toast, you stand, raise a glass of your choice of drink (not necessarily alcoholic), and say the words 'The Professor' before taking a sip (or swig, if that's more appropriate for your drink). Sit and enjoy the rest of your drink.

If you would like to add your name and intended drink to our list, post your toast entry here."

The Society notes that the organisers of the Toast "do not condone drinking alcohol if it endangers the health or safety of the drinker or others, or contravenes the law."

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