"Just Call Me Snow White," She Said

Many thanks to Anam Cara and Elizabeth, both of whom sent me back these photos in a form my computer could use.

These show how various birds ate right out of the hand of a Richmond woman on Saturday, during our big snowfall. (We ended up, at our house, getting 13 inches.) The birds must have been very hungry!

Don't forget to feed your birds if you have any birdseed. Or bread, soaked in water first. Dry bread expands when wet. You wouldn't want that to happen inside some poor bird's stomach when it is already stuffed.  Or you can use dried cat or dog food, also soaked first until soft. Or you can use meal worms, as the woman in these pictures is doing.

Goldfinches

Tufted Titmouse

Bluebird

Goldfinch

More Goldfinches  (Not Yet in Breeding Colors!)

God Rest Her Soul

Pantalakis, a grade school friend of Demetrios', called us today to tell us his mother reposed last Saturday. She was a very dear woman, who a couple of years ago told Demetrios, "I have always been your second mother, and I still am!"

Her name was Aspasia (Ah-spa-SEE-ah). She was feeling very good. She was sitting in her daughter's living room, where the family had assembled, and they were having a lively conversation and when they turned to her for her opinion, she had slipped away.

She was 95 years young.

Memory eternal, Kyria Aspasia!

Snow! Etc.

So how many inches have you gotten? We have an average of 11 in our font yard; I know because I literally poked a yardstick into it to measure.

It's still coming down a little.

We've been good little children and have already shovelled paths from our front door to the driveway and from our back door to the (now outside) squirrel cage.

Squirrel cage is double-decker now. Very warm, quilted, multi-layered nest bag in the top half with a baby blanket in it to snuggle under. The top half of the cage has two coverings: an old sheet, to keep squirrels out of sight of overhead predators (hawks), and a clear plastic tarp to keep the rain and snow out. With a metal roof over all.

Last night, I dreamed I went to put new food in the cage and discovered that somehow, there were now SEVEN squirrels in the cage. The extras, seeking shelter, had found a way in. Problem was, there must also be a way out I must discover...but I woke up before I did.

We got our cars about halfway dug out before we had to come in. Demetrios is anemic and I don't like him exposed to cold for very long at all. (Yes, he has plenty of iron. He even has plenty of red blood cells. Problem is, they are very small; nobody knows why or how to cure the condition.)

I'm quite sure there is no way we are even going to try to make it to church in the morning.

People here are just sort of hunkered down and settled in for three or four days of being snowbound. They have brought in extra provisions against such exigencies as power failure. They have pots of chili, spaghetti sauce, stew, and the like simmering on their stoves. I had pot roast already cooked.

We spent the day knitting and reading and watching TV movies and talking and admiring the storm.

Demetrios is reading a book on the prefrontal cortex of the brain, and someday maybe I'll write a post about all the things he has found there that any child could tell you are nonsense. I'll have to wait and hunt up all the examples he read aloud to me.

There's a twofold problem in the biological sciences nowadays. One is that God is ruled out. Human souls (or just call them human PERSONS) are ruled out. Meaning is ruled out. (How can you even have proper science if you don't take the meanings of things into account?) Love is ruled out. None of these is scientific. Fine; they aren't. But the problem is, that doesn't mean they aren't real! It doesn't mean they don't exist. They still need to be taken into account somehow. But because they are ruled out prima facie - well, that's another way of stating prejudice, isn't it? We are not allowed to think in those terms. And what happens then, as evidenced by example after example that Demetrios read to me, is people end up not being able to think at all. Thus, for example, these writers were puzzled that even when a certain part of the prefrontal cortex has nothing wrong with it, the thing still doesn't work unless there is also intention and attention. And there, they run into a brick wall, because what or who provides those? (Persons, as autonomous beings, are ruled out, remember.) The end. No more thinking possible here.

The other problem is that everything HAS to be seen in terms of evolution. Now I have no personal opinion about evolution. Maybe God created things that way or maybe not. It frankly isn't high on the list of things I need to understand any time soon. But the trouble is, when you insist on cramming everything into that mold, again you rule out thinking. You come up with absurdities, such as when one neurologist opined that perhaps our inability to do more than one thing at a time was "adaptive".

What? First of all, we DO more than one thing at a time. Suppose the "one thing" is that some psychologist, testing us, instructs us to press the red button every time we see projected onto the screen an image of a red triangle. Well, that involves several different brain functions, in different areas of the brain. It involves short-term memory (to remember what we are supposed to do) and seeing (two different processes, one of acquiring the visual images and the other of interpreting them as red triangles or something else) and language (what does "red triangle" or "red button" mean?) and motor function to press the button, and so on and so forth. So we routinely DO a lot more than one thing at a time.

But even if it were true that we could only do one thing at a time, how in the world is that supposed to be adaptive? Wouldn't it be a LOT more adaptive if we could be highly successful at multi-tasking? If only I could read a book, figure out my shopping list, make the bed and rock my babies all at the same time!

Well there are tons more examples I'll try to fish out of that book some time. But the upshot of it is to make us marvel at what a serious, serious intellectual defect prejudice is.

Interestingly enough, the purpose of the book was to bring together multiple scientific disciplines to try to form a "coherent evolutionary understanding" of the prefrontal cortex, and the conclusion of the book is that the project so far has failed, but not to worry, we have promising new technologies we will keep pursuing.

P.S.) I can't get the pictures of it to download, woe is me! But a woman here in Richmond decided to use this snowy day to see if she could get the birds to eat out of her hand. She took a handful of mealworms out to the feeder and just stood here, palm outstretched. And she has photos of five different species of birds eating them right out of her hand! If you e-mail me at anastasiatheo001 AT comcast DOT net, I'll forward those photos to you, and maybe YOU can download them for all of us to see. (It turns out, upon closer inspection, to be 5 photos, but only 3 different species: Bluebirds, Goldfinches, and a Tufted Titmouse.)

The Cat-nappers

This is actually the title of one of my favorite novels by P.G. Wodehouse, featuring Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves. Bertie’s favorite Aunt has wagered a huge sum on a certain racehorse. This horse has stiff competition from a neighboring horse. The neighboring horse has formed a close bond with a certain barn cat, and has been known to go off its feed and mope and become frantic when the cat is missing. Hence, Bertie is assigned the task of kidnapping the cat, to disable the horse, to ensure Aunt Dahlia of winning her bet. Of course, this hare-brained scheme leads from one disaster to another, until only Jeeves can sort out the mess.

Below, however, is a different cat-napping story and it’s a true one. Happened some 12 years ago, by my best estimate.


Mom and Dad, Barbara and I were all sitting around the breakfast table at our parents’ house when Barbara, looking out the large front window, exclaimed, “Look at that! Now that’s an expensive cat to let wander loose. That’s about a four hundred dollar cat. Abyssinian. They’re great cats, because they act more like dogs.”

“Looks exactly like a mountain lion in miniature,” said Mom.

“Isn’t wearing a collar, even,” I said.

“And he isn’t neutered, either,” Barbara sighed. “Looks like we’d better rescue him.”

So, grabbing some of dry cat food, we went outdoors and began calling. “He-e-e-e-re, kitty-kitty-kitty!” But the cat just looked at us from under a flowering shrub. When we approached, he ran twenty yards away.

We spent the whole morning trying to lure or grab that cat, but he was too quick for us, and too frightened. We ended up leaving a big bowl of cat chow in the glassed-in little room we rather pretentiously called the solarium, and leaving the sliding door to the outside open. The plan was, when the cat became hungry enough, he’d come into the solarium, and one of us would sneak around to the outside and slide the door shut behind him.

“He must not even have an owner,” said Barbara. “Because if he did, you’d think he’d be used to people and not act so wild.”

“From now on, that’s my cat,” I said. “Mine. I’m going to take him home and name him Absalom and tame him.”

“You can’t just steal somebody’s purebred cat!” Dad grumbled, over his newspaper.

“Sure you can,” said Barbara. “He’s homeless.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Well, if he isn’t homeless he may as well be.”

“You at least gonna run an ad in the newspaper?”

“No way. The whole idea is, if this kitty even has an owner, to get it away from him! What kind of person lets a valuable cat run loose, without a collar and without being fixed? That's totally irresponsible!”

Dad just sighed and returned to his reading.

Barbara and I had turned our attention to our knitting projects when Mom came into the family room with a big smirk on her face and said, “Go look in the solarium.”

So we tiptoed up to the glass door to have a peek. It was a cat, alright, a big, long-haired, gray cat, feasting on the food in the bowl. I groaned. We chased him out of there. And closed the outside door.

After lunch, we all decided to take naps. It was mid-afternoon when I awoke, the last one to reassemble in the kitchen.

“Why don’t you check the solarium one more time?” Barbara suggested, after I had finished my milk and cookies.

“Naw, it’s been all day. I’m ready to give up.”

“Well, just go check! Go on!” And a certain something in her eyes told me I'd better do it.

And there he was, Absalom, in the solarium with all the doors shut, hiding under a bench that held potted plants.

“You caught him, you caught my cat!” I squealed. “Oh, thank you!”

“You can’t just take that cat,” said Dad. “That’s stealing.”

I didn’t care. It seemed perfectly justifiable to me, and more importantly, to Barbara, who after all, was a veterinarian. If she thought Absalom needed a home, then he did.

I squeezed into the solarium, opening the sliding door as little as possible and closing it quickly after me. I cornered the cat, picked him up, sat him in my lap, and began talking to him, softly. “Your name is going to be Absalom, and you and I are going to get along fine.” But not quite yet, we weren’t. He was crying and growling the whole time.

I can’t remember what it was I decided I needed to get from outside, but I do remember saying to Barbara, “Do NOT let that cat out of the solarium under any circumstances! I’ll be right back.”

I was behind the house, returning to it with whatever it was I needed, when I spotted the Abyssinian coming toward me along the brick walk. It had taken all day to catch him, and now here he was, loose again. I was so mad I lunged at the cat, snatching him off the ground before he even had time to realize I was after him. “That darned Barbara!” I said to myself, and I marched back into the house, the cat in my arms.

“I told you not to let him out!” I said angrily.

“I didn’t,” said Barbara.

“Well then how did he get out?”

“He didn’t. Look!” So I looked into the solarium, to find Absalom still there, where I had left him. The cat in my arms was a duplicate!

“Oh, no! Now what? I don’t think I can spring TWO cats on poor Demetrios. One’ll be hard enough for him to accept.”

“But they’re obviously a pair. You’ll just have to try to get Demetrios to see the light.”

“So now my daughters are going to steal TWO cats?" asked Dad.

That decided me. “Absolutely!” I said. “And this one is going to Abelard. Absalom and Abelard, the Abyssinians. I can’t believe my good fortune!”

“You can’t do that!” Dad growled.

The cats growled, too, as I sat with them in the solarium, crooning softly to them, petting them even more softly. They were doing their best to ignore me and comfort each other.

Then came the whistle. It was a long, loud, sharp whistle, as of someone calling a dog. Both cats stiffened. Two pairs of ears, which had been flattened, suddenly stood up straight. The whistle was repeated. The cats meowed loudly. There was no mistaking it; that whistle was for them.

Well, maybe not. Maybe they were just curious about the sound. I didn’t really believe that, though, so, leaving them in the solarium, I walked in the direction from which the whistle had come. In a minute, I was facing a man who looked as if he might have come from Abyssinia. Well, someplace near there, not the actual place. From Egypt, maybe, he was.

“You looking for a dog?” I asked.

“No. Two cats. Abyssinians.”

“Come look at the two I rescued today, who were wandering around loose, with no collars, and see if they’re yours.”

So he did and they were, and that was the end of our cat-napping plans.

At least he didn’t get away without a lecture from Barbara about keeping valuable cats indoors and having them neutered.

The man only partially heeded the words of the indignant veterinarian; he had the cats neutered. But for the next ten years or so, until our parents moved out of that house, the two Abyssinian cats were to be seen daily, exploring their yard and garden.

They were the first breed of cat little Madison, Barbara’s daughter, ever learned to recognize.

More Frequently Confused Words

Spaded and Spayed

The garden that has been worked over with a pointy-tipped shovel has been spaded.

The cat or dog that can no longer reproduce has been spayed (if female, or neutered if male).


Yay, Yea, and Yeah

Yay! is an sort of cheer, used to mean hooray! or bravo!

Yea, pronounced the same way, is an affirmative vote, as in Congress or Parliament. It is the King James way of saying "yes" or "yes, even" and is the opposite of "nay". Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death means, "Yes, even though I walk..." etc.

Yeah is a modern slangy way of saying "yes". In England, its pronunciation ranges from "yay" to "yeh", while in America, more regional variations are added. It sometimes rhymes with "ha" but frequently is given a short a.

Know Thyself

David Dickens reminds us that humility is not grovelling.

Humility is also not pretending (even to ourselves) that we are worse than we are.

Humility is just seeing, really seeing, the truth about ourselves. Humility is facing up to the horrifying insight when it gobsmacks us right between the eyes. Humility is remembering what we saw, after we've lost sight of it again.

True self-understanding means we don't have to pretend anything. We discover we are already much sicker, more deformed and disfigured, uglier, than we had ever supposed.

Humility is being willing to see ourselves as we really are, even though the sight is hideous. Greater humility is even longing to see our sickness, that we may repent of it and be made well. But if we really want to root it out, we'll have to become stronger within, to be able to bear seeing beyond the tip of the iceberg. This means we must fast and pray and go to church and pray and help the poor and pray and go to confession and pray and study and pray. Because God, in His love, only lets us see as much of that reality as we are able to bear - and with it, to a more than commensurate degree, discloses His fathomless Love to enable us to take courage, to repent, to wage war upon the grotesqueness within, not to despair but to rejoice and give thanks with tears.

Unwillingness to "know thyself" is probably that darkness of which Christ spoke when He said "Men preferred the darkness to the Light, because their deeds were evil." That's the terminal illness that dooms a person to die even sicker (far sicker) than when he was born.

Create in me a clean heart, O God.

Which Character Are You?

The replies to my previous post by s-p and David have inspired me to write more on the subject of parables and the difficulties one has in applying them.

Take the Parable of the Prodigal Son, for example. I always used to identify with the Elder Brother, until some Orthodox person told me he represents the devil, created before Adam was, who is jealous of humankind, his younger "siblings". Well, I still do tend to identify with him. I mean, I think he has a point. Why is the only party his father ever gives in honor of the wicked son? What about the good one? Is this fair?

Or take the Good Samaritan. I always thought the point was, don't be like those uncaring people who passed by the beat-up man and didn't even stop to help him. Be kind and charitable instead, like the Good Samaritan. That was before another Orthodox person explained to me that I'm the one in need of the charity. I'm not a passerby; I'm the beat-up guy lying in the gutter! And the Good Samaritan is none other than Christ, who comes to my rescue.

It's hopeless, you see. You can never figure these things out. Well, you can, but to do it, you have to stop trying. Chuck all the rest, forget it,
and
just
repent.

Repent! Repent? But, but, but- okay.

Paradoxical Parable

It's the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican I'm talking about, and I'll tell you my problem with it.

You know the story. Here's a Publican and he's a traitor and an extortioner. He collects taxes for the Roman occupier and he gets rich by extorting from the populace a lot more money than they actually owe for taxes. He's a pariah. So when he comes into God's Temple, he barely dares lift his eyes to heaven to say, "Lord, be merciful me a sinner."

And here's the Pharisee, an upright and very religious guy, who "prayed with himself", saying, "I thank you, God, that I am not like that publican."

The Parable is obviously aimed at you and me, right? Which means we are supposed to view ourselves as the Pharisee. Otherwise it isn't aimed at us, after all.

But the thing is, the more you identify as the self-righteous Pharisee, the more you repent and become like the Publican.

Of course, you are meant to become like the Publican, right? I mean, "Be like this Publican" is the whole point of the story. But if you do say, "Yes, I'll be like the Publican," why, it isn't long before you begin thinking, "...And it's a very good thing, too. Thank God I am not like that Pharisee..." at which point you are!

It reminds me of a standing joke between my friend Kathleen and me. I used to introduce her to others as, "My spiritual guide. She's teaching me humility." Someone would invariably ask, "And how is that project coming?" and I'd say, "Very well, thank you. I'm making wonderful progress!"

The Ape and the Hound Dog

Do treat yourself to this wonderful video. With your speakers on.

Now that's love!

How Bad is the Economy?

The economy is so bad that border guards recently caught a truckload of Americans trying to sneak into Mexico.

The economy is so bad that Exxon Mobile has had to lay off 25 congressmen.

HT: Maxine

That Supreme Court Decision

No, not Roe v. Wade, although this is the anniversary of it, God help us. But I mean the one yesterday. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations can give unlimited amounts of money and aid to political campaigns.

You have to stop and ponder that a while before all the implications hit you.

Why would you and I ever contribute to a political campaign again? A big corporation can donate more than all of the individual American people combined - in a single check. And the corporation perhaps will not even be American-owned.

Why would you or I ever bother to volunteer for a candidate again? Nothing we can contribute can outweigh or even compare with what a large corporation (or group of corporations) can do.

Churches, too, if they are incorporated, can donate as much as they like and can raise. And mosques, receiving limitless money for this purpose from, say, Saudi Arabia.

Why would a candidate ever refuse corporate money, when it's perfectly legal and without it he is dead in the water? Worse, if big corporations are against a candidate, they have the wherewithal to destroy him via massive negative propaganda.

How long will it take before every politician from mayor to governer, senator and president, will be owned lock, stock, and barrel by some large corporation(s)?

And then what? Which congressman or senator will vote to overthrow the corporatocracy established yesterday? That would be instant political suicide.

Perhaps another Supreme Court will eventually overthrow this terrible decision? No way. Future justices are going to be appointed by presidents who are corporate agents.

It's not as though this hadn't been going on for a long time already. But now it's legal and now it will be happening on a virtually unlimited scale. I suppose there's a certain poetic justice to it all, seeing as we've tolerated it all these years. Seeing as we've almost all just taken it for granted and for normal that "money speaks". Seeing as we've seen how candidates lie and lie and lie, and we still vote for them. (I was brought up to believe voting was my civic, almost sacred, DUTY as an American. But there is no duty, much less any sacred one, to vote for a crook. So when they're all crooks, we ought not vote for the one we perceive as the lesser crook. We ought to withhold our mandate from any of them.) "Put not your trust in princes, in sons of men, in whom there is no salvation."

I've been waiting to see when the democracy we've known in this Republic would be formally ended (it having unofficially ended years ago). And I believe yesterday was the day.

The optimistic note, if you can call this optimism, is that this sort of corruption can never stand for long. The rot eventually causes the whole edifice to collapse.

Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.

Postscript on Cracking the Code

The knitting pattern I posted immediately below this post turns out to be a very old, traditional Shetland pattern, called "Shetland Bead and Madeira." Now that I've painstakingly analyzed the pattern all by myself, I find it all over the Internet. Not the pattern per se, but things knitted with it. Here are a few.

This one looks very different, but only because it's knitted on much larger needles.

Ditto this one, which I posted last week, but didn't realize it was the same pattern, because it was upside down. (I've since rotated it.)

And here, knitted on small needles, it makes a baby blanket.

Cracking the Code

After a couple of days of staring at this picture, jotting down notes, and test-knitting swatches, I've figured out the pattern that forms the main body of the work. (I feel sure I know how to do the border decorations, too, but probably shouldn't say that before having tried.)



So, for any knitters out there, here it is, and although the result appears quite complex, the pattern isn't.

Difficulty level: intermediate

The pattern requires multiples of 8 stitches plus one (shaded at left) added for symmetry. Three repeats are shown here. Make that 3 horizontal times 2 vertical, for a total of 6 repeats.

Not noted in the chart is that the right side of the work is all in reverse stocking stitch. (It looks terrible in stocking stitch!) Working reverse stocking stitch means you must adapt your decreases. Thus, for this pattern:

/ is a right-slanting decrease, as viewed from the front. That’s P2Tog on the right side, and SSK2Tog on the wrong side.

\ is a left-slanting decrease, as viewed from the front. SSP2Tog on the right side of the work and K2Tog on the wrong.

O is an increase made by YO.

The up arrow is a straight double-decrease. On the right side, slip 2 individually, knit-wise, return the now reversed stitches to the left needle, and P3Tog. On the wrong side, do the same but K3Tog.

Blank squares are worked plain (P on right side, K on reverse).

The darker grid lines have no meaning other than that computers do strange things. I have no idea why they came out this way!

Note also that the lace effect is worked on both sides, thus requiring a bit more attention than patterns wherein the back side is always purled.

As always, to show its full glory, a lace piece absolutely must be stretched and blocked. As this does not work with manmade fibers such as acrylic, you’ll need wool.

What I’m planning to do instead (because cashmere, merino, and mohair can be very expensive when making a whole blanket) is knit the lace with acrylic, right into a background of contrasting color, worked in a much heavier yarn.

P.S.) The pattern looks pretty good in garter stitch, too, knitting on the front of the work and purling on the back. This makes the fabric reversible and only fractionally less gorgeous.

Kill Zeus

Sunday night, we had a priest from a Russian Orthodox parish give us a pre-Lenten talk on living a balanced Orthodox life in an unbalanced world.  He made some very good points.

He reminded us that ascetical practice is not, for the Orthodox, a matter of self-loathing or of punishing ourselves.  It's a matter of becoming spiritually fit, same as we exercise to become physically fit.  We need this discipline because the enemy's team is very strong, very disciplined, and very aggressive.  (He meant, of course, spiritual enemies, not other human beings.)

He reminded us that humility is also not a form of self-loathing; it's having our inflated images of ourselves punctured by a healthy dose of reality.  The main reality is that we are utterly dependent upon God for absolutely everything.  But to see reality is no easy thing, precisely because of our pride and other passions.  It takes effort. 

Are our efforts to try to make God love us?  No way!  He already loves us no matter what we do or do not do.  To try to make Him reward us?  No way!  One is only rewarded for service "above and beyond" duty, but no matter how much we may succeed at being good Christians, it's never more than our duty.   Our efforts are to become strong, healthy Christians.

In talking about the God of love, the priest said that in non-Orthodox ways of thinking -which he knows well, having been a Methodist minsiter for 20 years and having his PhD in theology - God is loving, yes, but He can also be like Don Corleone:  "You've offended me!  Now I'm going to have to kill you.  And your family."  (Okay, this is satire, yes, but unless you can say specifically what is unjust about it and why, I submit that it is right on the mark.)

That deity, he said, is not God, it's Zeus.  "And I know Zeus is a Greek guy, but please, get rid of him.  Banish him from your hearts and minds.  He is not our God.  Kill Zeus."

Amen.

...and One Thing I Do Understand

When some 80-90 percent of Brits are against their country entering into the war in Iraq, but their government takes them in anyway, telling their populace it's in the U.K.'s best interests, but never explaining what interests, and the Blair government ends up not accountable to anybody for it,

When the American government takes this country into war on the basis of lies (and yes, they were lies, not just faulty intelligence!), and has never explained to us what the REAL reason for that war is/was, and the administration remains unaccountable to anybody for it,

That is not democracy.  We do not live in a democracy, and somehow, we need to face up to that.