Spent the morning and afternoon on Treasure Island for the Dragon Boat Festival; then I went over to Berkeley for the square dance at Ashkenaz.

Paul Craig Roberts, Revolution from Above

Dominican Rite News

Dominican Rite Masses in D.C. and California

Related:
New Carmelite House
Traditionalist nuns greeted by Bishop of Oakland in Livermore
Carmelite nuns settle into rural life in Canyon

Haydn Symphony No 81 G major

Not sure if Christopher Hogwood is directing the AAM here.

Why would you kick a ginger?

Especially when she's as pretty as Jessica Chastain. Redheads...

Hollywood ingenue Jessica Chastain in Studio Q


She's in Lawless. Having read Roger Ebert's review of the movie, I was expecting more bloodshed. Consequently, I wasn't expecting the ending, which was rather "happy." While it is not a Western, it reminds me of one, much as Hatfields and McCoys did. How authentic are the accents? Shia LaBeouf is cast well as the "runt of the family." Meanwhile his brothers are played by foreigners (Tom Hardy and Jason Clarke), as well as Charley Rakes (Guy Pearce). (More reflection on the sad state of American males in Hollywood?)



Jack Donovan should watch and review the movie. Is the movie too graphic in its depiction of violence and its consequences? Could it have the same impact if it had been done in accord with the standards of the '40s and '50s? I did like the look of the '30s, the clothing and such. And the movie does touch upon being a man and living up to what one's family (that is, one's brothers, the other men in the family) expects of him. Does the movie develop this movie well enough? This perhaps could have been handled better. And what was the anabaptist(?) sect in the movie?

There isn't much of a discussion of the morality of Prohibition and the making of moonshine. Even though the 18th Amendment was ratified, was it a just law?


More:
Matt Bondurant - The Wettest County in the World
Q&A with 'Lawless' Author Matt Bondurant
The Real Story Behind ‘Lawless’ by Matt Bondurant
On Movies: 'Lawless' author's 'surreal' look at his film
The Wettest County in the World
Rolling Stones

Jessica Chastain Takes Us Shopping, Talks Lawless' Sex Appeal by Leila Brillson

Tom Hardy's voice remains much the same as in The Dark Knight Rises; it's no longer the young voice you hear in Star Trek Nemesis. Are the rumors of steroid use true, and can that have an impact on one's voice?

Is Tom Hardy's 'Star Trek: Nemesis' screen test better than the finished film? -- VIDEO
WATCH: Tom Hardy In 'Star Trek: Nemesis' Screen Test With Patrick Stewart

Items of Interest, 14 September 2012

Join the Insurgency Against the Jobs Crisis

Technology + God = Meaning in Work?

Neoliberalism, Degrowth and the Fate of Health Systems

IG Report Fingers Top ATF Officials For Fast & Furious

An exceprt: America the Possible: Breaking the Chains of Consumerism
by James Gustave Speth

“The Reason we All Need Community”

Dalrock, Which sex is driving delayed marriage in the US?

New Esterházy Quartet Bridges "Pop" and Highbrow Haydn

Michelle Long

Michelle Long at the New Economics Institute Strategies for a New Economy Conference


Conference
BALLE
Her NEI profile

More:
Growing Local: Interview with BALLE's Michelle Long

Michelle Long, Executive Director, BALLE, Charleston, South Carolina, May 21, 2010 from BALLE on Vimeo.

Related:
Beyond the Monoculture: Strengthening Local Culture, Economy and Knowledge
By Helena Norberg-Hodge

St. Paul's Basilica in Harissa, Lebanon

A couple of photos. Another photo. Melkite!

Watching EWTN - Pope Benedict looks a bit older - his face seems thinner.

Pope urged to recognise Palestinian state

Patriarchate of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church
Melkite Greek Catholic Church Information Center

Related:
A Divine Liturgy in Rome, 2 years ago

Updated:
Zenit: Pope's Question and Answer Session During Apostolic Trip to Lebanon
"Christians and Arabs Have Built These Lands and Must Live Together"

Benedict XVI's Address Upon Arriving in Beirut
"Your Joys and Sorrows Are Constantly Present in the Pope's Prayers"

Paleo Mayonnaise

Benedict XVI to Visit Lebanon

Rome Reports: How to watch Benedict XVI's visit to Lebanon live

website for the visit (which you will not find at the RR link)

EWTN will be covering the trip:

Apostolic Journey To Lebanon: Visit To Basilica Of St. Paul (Live)
Fri. Sept. 14 at 11 AM ET & 10 PM ET
Pope Benedict XVI visits the Basilica before signing the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation.

Apostolic Journey To Lebanon: Meeting With Government Officials And Representatives (Live)
Sat. Sept. 15 at 4 AM ET & 5 PM ET
The Holy Father meets with the President of Lebanon, and the Prime Minister and Speaker of the Parliament. He also meets with the heads of Muslim communities before going on to pronounce an address to political and cultural leaders.

Apostolic Journey To Lebanon: Meeting With Youth (Live)
Sat. Sept. 15 at 11 AM ET & 10 PM ET
Meeting with Youth in the square across from the Maronite Patriarchate of Bkerke.

Apostolic Journey To Lebanon: Mass And Angelus (Live)
Sun. Sept. 16 at 2:30 AM ET & 11 AM ET
The Holy Father will celebrate Mass (and Angelus) at Beirut City Centre Waterfront and consign the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation.

Welmer on the Debate

Fire in the Manosphere

Lots of good comments...

More from Rod Dreher on Fr. Groeschel

The Groeschel Memory Hole

He mentions the book by Leon Podles on the subject of the clerical sex abuse scandal, Sacrilege.

Ralph Nader on the Two Conventions

Profiles in Decadent Cowardliness

The Republicans put three themes in just about every speech. Tell your personal story, recount your humble beginnings, and describe how you pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps. Show the people you’re human or at least humanoid, not corporatist. Keep heralding small business so you don’t have to talk about Big Business which has bad vibrations these days around the country. Also, praise, praise, praise Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as family men with family values. Imagine Republicans telling the press that the convention was to “humanize” Romney and give the voters a warm, fuzzy feeling about their candidate so as to forget that his campaign is a clenched-teeth mouthpiece for Big Business.

The Democratic Convention evokes pity. They too had similar scripts at the podium – narrate your humble, hardworking family lines, talk incessantly about jobs so you won’t have to talk about wages. Especially muzzled was the willing Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO, who, since 2009, has been given the back of Obama’s hand on “card check organizing rights” and on an inflation-adjusted minimum wage. His staged remarks even withheld any mention of a $10 minimum wage (See H.R. 5901 bill “Catching up with 1968”) and the raiding of worker pensions by corporate raptors.

Cowboys & Indians Fall TV Preview

Fall TV Preview: 'Vegas,' 'Nashville,' And 'Malibu Country' by Joe Leydon

"Earlier this year, there was a lot of loose talk about a pos­sible “renaissance” of TV westerns. Unfortunately, it looks like that hype hasn’t actually translated into new shows about Wild West cowboys."

Gary Taubes's New Organization Launches

The Launch of The Nutrition Science Initiative

Orthodox Christian Links

Byzantine, Texas: Assembly of Bishops celebrate Liturgy in Serbian Cathedral - photos (alt)

(3rd Annual Meeting of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops)

Istanbul Patriarchate purchases world's third oldest church

From last year, via Orthodox Christian Information Center: Consecration of St. Andrew Orthodox Church (the church's website)

What's Going on with RECOIL?

The latest development.

Children and Original Sin

Reflecting today upon children's behavior after I learned of something that happened to student...

One of the girls, HD, a hard-worker, seemed really nice and generally well-behaved in class, but she was being catty to another girl (EN) because they're both running for the student council office (VP). She was allegedly telling other students to cover her competition's posters or to destroy them up. Competitiveness turned into animosity? Or something else at work?

CB, who finished 6th grade last year seemed to liked one of the bad boys of the class, someone who didn't do his work but was cocky-funny and defiant. I was disappointed, but she doesn't know any better, does she? It's not like her parents are governing her emotions for her.

2012 San Francisco International Dragon Boat Festival

This coming Saturday and Sunday.



SF Chinatown

(Sunday is also the celebration of the patronal feast day of the local parish as well.)

Dave Grossman Seminars in CA

Information

If one is not saying the Divine Mercy chaplet already...

3:00 Prayer in the Year of Faith

Bishop Kieran Conry's suggestion: a demonstration of faith? Or hypocrisy?

Reclaiming the Angelus as a prayer of the local community might be a good move, but should we be showy to strangers? Or should we strengthen bonds through the proper observance of the order of charity instead? I think that would make more of a difference.

50th Int'l Eucharistic Conference

Taking Some Tips from Robb Wolf

CBS Healthwatch: Reno First Responders Test Innovative Long-Term Health Strategy

Related:

Wedding of Archduke Imre and Archduchess Kathleen

Spiering Photography (via Rorate Caeli)

Can't say that I prefer the ceremonial of the Nuptial Mass in the Roman rite, regardless of whether it is according to the EF or the OF. I think it was at Rorate Caeli a while back talking about the procession of the bride down the aisle was not traditional - rather there should be a procession of the groom and bride (and everyone else, including the clergy)? The setting doesn't help me much, even if it is a sentimental favorite for some Christendom alumni. Neo-gothic architecture... I suppose it is now difficult for me to appreciate certain Latin artistic styles.

I imagine there had to be some security for the events.

An announcement of the royal nuptials here.

Something on the crowning in the Byzantine rite.

Social Engineering? Or Wise Central Planning?

The California Department of Housing and Community Development and ABAG is imposing "affordable" housing quotas on cities, threatening to withdraw funds for road maintenance if municipalities do not comply. (HCD's NIMBY resources.)

Pleasanton from July: Council approves draft rezoning plan for 105 acres of new 'affordable' housing

Citizens Alliance for Property Rights: SF Bay CAPR - Housing

Can they favor housing applicants (especially senior citizens) who have natural ties to the community? That would be preferable, but it's would probably be deemed illegal somehow. There is admittedly a sifting of the population according to class and income (and race), but why shouldn't people associate with their own kind as they choose? Because Big Brother knows better about interracial harmony and a happy society. Hello ethnic cleansing and white flight.

That which is too big cannot be managed (or ordered) well.

As for environmental concerns - if they want sustainable development they should reconsider their economic model, which is probably predicated upon infinite growth. There are too many people in California, living in areas that are too densely populated. Sustainability is closer to an agrarian model, but we aren't willing to give up our electronic technology industries, even if [cheap] energy scarcity stares us in the face.

Association of Bay Area Governments

Related:
San Francisco Bay Area Vision Project
On One Bay Area: Public Input or Kabuki Theater? Another Example of Suppression of Speech
California: Bay Area roll out of Agenda 21 environmental controls

Christine Ha Wins MasterChef

'MasterChef' season finale: and the winner is
Fox

Before the reveal, I thought Josh might have won with his lamb chops, but apparently it was Christine's braised pork belly that was the decisive dish.





Meet Blind MasterChef Christine Ha
Seattle Post Intelligencer

Her profile and audition.

official casting site - casting for season 4 now!

The Hell's Kitchen finale was last night, too; are the contests rigged in favor of sensational human interest stories (or PC considerations)? We'll see what happens with the restaurant in LV. How many of the other HK winners still have a job at the restaurants originally seeking executive chefs? (An update from last year.)

Gather.com

Ron Hansen on Religion and Ethics Newsweekly

First Things: Ron Hansen on Faith and Fiction

Watch Catholic Writer Ron Hansen on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

Enough to take the Word Away from the Radicals?

I don't think so. What is needed? Resolution of an intellectual problem with logic? Or countering pride? One can only emphasize equality of dignity before grappling with sex differences and differences in functions and roles. It won't be that difficult to convince "secular" feminists that women are equal in dignity to men (though some may actually believe that women are greater in dignity); but women nonetheless having different roles within the family and community? That sort of inequality is precisely what is in contention. (And the religious basis for dignity will probably be irrelevant to the secular feminists, many of whom are atheists and/or hostile to religions deemed patriarchal.)

Zenit: Mariology Conference Participant Sheds Light on Christian Feminism, Respect for Human Dignity

Why does Zenit choose to avoid pressing the question of women having careers?

Dodd: It's a spiritual virginity and motherhood, as John Paul II had certainly brought out in his different teachings. For one thing, a woman who stays at home – whether she is a wife, or a wife and a mother, can see her equality of dignity, her importance of communicating her thoughts and ideas, first of all to her husband, and then secondly as a teacher for her children – whether she's formally home schooling them or not, because parents are always primary teachers of their children. There is a sense of her equal dignity, and her right, and her privilege to speak her mind and totally give herself to her husband, to her children, and to require and teach them to respect her if they don't.

In this answer it is only implied that men have the ultimate authority within the family. Would it be that controversial to say it flat out?

Related:
Archive for Dr. Gloria Falcão Dodd
her dissertation abstract

Two on a Disputed Question

Not a perennial question, as we probably haven't been asking the question that long - only since relations between men and women have become more casual.

FOCUS: Can Men and Women Really Just Be Friends? (a bit better than Boundless?)
Athol Kay: Men and Women Can't Be Friends

Counterculture

Mark Mitchell, The Culture of Hospitality

It's a good strategy for traditional localists and Christians as well. Moreover, Christians should rely less on organizations, professional charity-givers and more on "informal" communal bonds.

Might the movie about St. Augustine, Restless Heart, be helpful in helping us get some perspective about how to live as Christians in community? Might Blessed Frederic Ozanam be a model for layman, even though he was living in a nation-state in its heyday? Saints can resist the dehumanizing tendencies of expanding political units through love and the protection of community, but they must realize in some fashion what they are up against. It is not sufficient to accept the way things are and live like everyone else because it is "normal."

Louis Bouyer's dichotomy between the church of the faithful and the church of numbers is not a pastoral problem arising from the tortuous history of Church-State relations per se, but because of the nature of the polities and political power when coupled to the inclination to sin? What check can there be on the desire for power than for other men to be organized and to protect their communities? Should the Church be trying to keep up with the state, engaging it on its level through "power politics" or the ballot, instead of pushing it towards a more humane scale by fostering local communities, which can be the bases of evangelization that they should be? If any "institution" is capable of protecting communities, the small, humane group, it is the Church. Rather than accepting the "inevitable" expansion of polities on the terms set by those in power, the Church should have zealously guarded the rights of local communities. (Too often bishops were content to go along with consolidation and the imposition of one culture as being superior?) Subvert the state through love. Legal protections will not be enough, if the laity do not care about protecting the Church.

Has the treatment of hunter-gatherer groups by the "civilized" world been rather inhumane, for the most part, even by Christian missionaries? We do not need to become anarcho-primitivists to recognize that men have a better life in smaller groups, though there may be some arguments about how big an ideal city should be.

Looking through a recent issue of Valley Catholic, I see that most of the lay leaders getting recognition are women. What feminism in the Church?

How about the argument that since the Incarnation it is no longer possible... I can't remember the rest of the argument.

To have separate nations since all are one in Christ? Some cannot see how diversity can be reconciled with universality and oneness proper to the Body of Christ. They can only envision uniformity and a single culture and government.

Related:
Christian Democratic Party (FB)
Christian Democracy and America's Future

Being Civil in Mean Times by Robert Woods

Russell Kirk's Five Iconographic Cities

Russell Kirk and the Anamnesis of the West by Bradley J. Birzer

We, like the Romans of 43bc, have forgotten our past, our traditions, and, hence, may not have a future. And like Cicero, Kirk is serving us warning. Our order, Kirk argued, is organic. That is, it is cultivated over long periods of time. It is fragile, and it requires frequent nurturing. If one generation breaks the continuity of generations, by believing itself uniquely superior to other generations, culture decays rapidly. This is what Lewis meant with the “Abolition of Man.” In essence, by breaking the continuity of generations, we abstract ourselves from reality and life, if we can even call it life. We will drown in our subjectivity and arrogant and hedonistic individualism. “The American order of our day was not founded upon ideology,” Kirk wisely wrote. “It was not manufactured: rather, it grew.” Hence, we must honor and reform (not revolutionize) what men and women left us, discerning through prudence which traditions are good and which need to be changed or discarded.

I should be a sub driver.

The Feds Can't Catch the Cartels' Cocaine-Filled Submarines by Adam Clark Estes

Also from Yahoo:
AP Exclusive: Memos show US hushed up Soviet crime



Something on Christian Bale.

A Happy Statist

Community rights vs. states rights vs. federal law by David MacLeod (EB)

I just don’t see local communities making better choices than those made at the state and federal level. This may happen in isolated pockets, but by the same token you could see vast swaths of places overturning the few gains the environmental movement has achieved on the level of federal and state policies and regulations, which is exactly what the Tea Party wants to do.

Because people can do the wrong thing, he is content to concentrate power in the hands of the few, because environmentalists, acting as the conscience of the public, will continue to labor to get them to do the right thing. Who is going to guarantee their continued "success"? We have to put our trust in another elite, in this case certain scientists, because they know through science what natural ecological limits are and such. There is no consideration of what is Constitutional.

Related:
The man without a plan: Romney has no real food and farming platform
Chris Hedges, Globalized Growth Is the Problem, Localism Is the Solution
A Land Without Farmers

Kiroran Restaurant

in Sydney - Travel Channel. It's Uighur cuisine?

Daniel Larison on Limits

Temperamental Conservatism and the Importance of Limits

If there is one thing truly alien to a conservative temperament, it is the rejection of limits. The Republican nominees believe that there ought not be any limits to American power in the world, and if they do exist at the moment they ought to be overcome. They are convinced that growth can be without limit as well. As far as they are concerned, acknowledging and respecting limits are the equivalent of embracing national decline. Unfortunately, it is exactly their rejection of limits that exhausts national strength and natural resources more quickly and hastens the coming of decline in the future.

See also his The Shrinking Foreign Policy Debate, examining the differences between the two candidates.

JHK's latest is relevant on the point of limits.

Mt. Diablo String Band

Just heard them on Pig in a Pen on KPFA - great music! They'll be playing at Jupiter Cafe in Berkeley at 5 today.

Mt. Wow

MRAs and the Androsphere

Jack Donovan covers the differences (and overlap) between both: Long Live the Manosphere!

While there continues to be an overlap I will use the label MRM to refer to legal and political issues (e.g. divorce, visitation rights), but I am definitely not in agreement with the MRAs who are egalitarians.

Something from Catholic Land Movement: Community and the Church. Relatively easy to implement if you have some families interested in an agrarian vision of life and who are willing to settle in one place. What to do, though, about those who are trapped (or willing prisoners) in the big cities or suburbia?

2012 Berkeley Old Time Music Convention

This week, starting on Wednesday night, with a square dance at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library (Earl White Stringband with caller Evie Ladin).



I may go to the dance on Saturday evening.

Another Sunday in San Francisco

I haven't written up last weekend's experiences yet. I decided to go to OLF instead of the cathedral as there wasn't time to make it to the 9:00 Mass at the cathedral. (While I wouldn't mind listening to the Schola SF again, the rest of the liturgy is... lacking.)

Next door at St. Monica, the SFFD had some sort of special Mass/celebration? (There were a few womyn bureaucrats (those promoted to higher ranks) present. Are the men of the upper ranks as out of shape too? You see quite a few fat LEOs around here, as well. Why bother with the uniform?) During the divine liturgy, we could hear the bagpipes being played outside.

Fr. Kevin was the presbyter celebrating liturgy today - he reminds me of someone... a mix between Fr. McNellis at BC and the nephew's godfather, Mr. P.

For lunch, I tried the Pearl's Deluxe Burger on Post - a deluxe burger with cheese and bacon, small fries, and strawberry shake. The shake was made using a frozen mix and strawberry syrup, but it wasn't bad. It was thick like I prefer it, though it did taste rather fake. I ordered the burger medium, but it was well-done; a tad dry, and not that tasty. The fries were cooked with batter(?), so they came out looking and tasting a bit like tater tots, as well as onion rings. (Maybe the frying oil needs to be changed.) About $15 for the meal, cheaper than ROAM (I had tried the new location on Fillmore last week), but the difference in quality is palatable. The burger patty isn't much different from what you might get at Bongo Burger, Crepevine, or Bob's Giant Burgers.

Maybe I should give up burgers, since ground beef is rather limited in its potential.

Next restaurant to try: Gott's or Burger Meister.

Robert George Interview in America Magazine

From last year: 'Sustained by Faith'
An interview with Robert P. George by Kevin Spinale