Peony Moss: July 2004 Archives

Jesus in the House of Mary and Martha (Vermeer)

....patron saint of housewives (among others.)

19 And many of the Jews were come to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother.

20 Martha therefore, as soon as she heard that Jesus was come, went to meet him: but Mary sat at home.

21 Martha therefore said to Jesus: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.

22 But now also I know that whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.

23 Jesus saith to her: Thy brother shall rise again.

24 Martha saith to him: I know that he shall rise again, in the resurrection at the last day.

25 Jesus said to her: I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, although he be dead, shall live:

26 And every one that liveth and believeth in me shall not die for ever. Believest thou this?

27 She saith to him: Yea, Lord, I have believed that thou art Christ, the Son of the living God, who art come into this world. John 11:19-27 (Douay-Rheims)

I would have put this up earlier but I was, um, busy with much serving. Steven has a reflection on St Martha up today and another in his archives.

Jesus didn't tell Martha to stop serving and sit down. Rather, He gently chided her for being "worried and anxious about many things." Perhaps Martha got the message, and this is what enabled her to make her magnificent profession of faith.

Just in case I'm not the last person in St Blog's who hasn't seen this Crisis article by George Sim Johnston, exploring how it wasn't quite all Vatican 2's fault.... here's the link to After the Council:

If the Church was in such good shape before the council, why did things fall apart so rapidly in the 1960s? How do you account for the fact that the rebellion was the work of bishops, theologians, and priests who came out of the Tridentine system? Had all those priests and nuns who suddenly wanted to be laicized received adequate formation under the old system? Why was there so much dissatisfaction? It won’t do simply to rattle off statistics about the decline of the Church since the council. There’s no question that there were good and holy Catholics in the old days—even some saints—and that since the council we have lost much that is good. But there were also problems waiting to erupt. Might not the Magisterium have been correct in addressing them in the council’s documents?

...As for the Catholic laity: Do not underestimate the role of rising affluence in the troubles since the council. The post-conciliar mischief was initiated by disaffected clergy, but during these years, an increasingly wealthy and assimilated laity was perfectly happy to follow the path of least resistance marked by dissident theologians. In 1937, the Protestant thinker H. Richard Niebuhr drew attention to a soft-core spirituality among Americans: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” Was it likely that Catholics would be immune once they emerged from the ethnic ghetto, moved to the suburbs, and joined the mainstream? The Book of Revelation’s warnings to the Christians at Laodicea—who “say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing...’”—no doubt find application in every age but have particular relevance for the contemporary Catholic who has made his comfort zone the ninth Beatitude...."

This comment by Sherry Weddell (on Amy's post discussing this article) made my blood run cold:

The image that keeps returning is one that the late great Frank Sheed reported witnessing in the late 60's: seeing a priest tear apart a rosary with his own hands (in front of a cafeteria full of Catholic high school students), dash the beads to the floor and loudly proclaim: "I'm glad we're through with this s - !"

This priest was almost certainly raised with May day crowning of our Lady; a few years previously he might have led one. And now he was doing, with adolescent bravado, what no one had ever truly internalized devotion to Mary or honoured her in any real way would ever do.

And yes, I have met Trads who fiercely insisted that It Was All Vatican 2's Fault.

PATIENCE, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,
But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks
Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;
To do without, take tosses, and obey.
Rare patience roots in these, and, these away,
Nowhere. Natural heart’s ivy, Patience masks
Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks
Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.

We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills
To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills
Of us we do bid God bend to him even so.
And where is he who more and more distils
Delicious kindness?—He is patient. Patience fills
His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.

is just a darn mess. I'm sorry. It just is. I just love sorting and categories and learning definitions and technical names and things like that. One of my favorite parts of my zoology class was taxonomy. I wanted to reorganize it under subheadings, but that's a task that would just play to my tendencies to overcomplicate things. I caught myself wondering how I could pull off presenting a blogroll using Venn diagrams and then I realized I needed to get a grip.

Effervescence: homeschooling, homekeeping, all that good stuff. Barbara has an entry up about meal planning and cooking on the pantry principle (something I strive for myself, though I'm not into writing out meal plans.) She mentions one of my very favorite cookbooks: How to Cook Without a Book, by Pam Anderson. It teaches techniques of cooking quick meals based on real food that you have on hand, instead of choosing a recipe and then going out to fetch the (often processed) ingredients.

Alicia is sending out occasional updates from her trip to Omaha, where she is attending the NaPro Technology conference. In her last post, she remarks,

I have never thought IVF to be a good idea even without the moral implications, but I will admit that I have thought about it from the woman's POV. This tale of woe caused me to think about the man's experience, suffering shame and humiliation and performance pressure, for love of his wife and desire for a child of their genes. It is really sad that our culture has so adopted the mentality of 'bypass' rather than 'diagnose and cure' for infertility. Maybe we have adopted that erroneous mentality in other areas of life, as well.

There is so much to unpack in Alicia's paragraph I hardly know where to start. Most of us are familiar with the immoral, dehumanizing choices faced by women seeking treatment for infertility (I wrote a bit about my own experiences here.) As Alicia says, the emphasis is not on "diagnose and cure" but on "bypass." The objective is to make that baby. (A local IVF clinic is advertising on the radio, Successful delivery of a live baby or your money back!) So in addition to the evil of bypassing the unitive dimension of the marital act and turning the baby into a commodity instead of a creation, a woman being treated by the "bypass" model runs the risk of having the health problems that are causing her infertility go undiagnosed.

It would be interesting to view the presentation Alicia's referring to and hear more about infertility treatment from a man's point of view, for the options commonly offered to men are just as offensive and dehumanizing. If I were a man, I don't think I'd appreciate being treated like a faucet. (attention -- biology alert)

I wish I could be making the rounds of St Blog's a little more often, but "real life" comes first....

Goodbye to the elegant blog Theosis. Theosis left us a lovely farewell post, including a book list.

The Mighty Barrister is headed off on vacation! He's feeling lonely over at his blog -- wanna be a Barrister? or at least Mighty? maybe you should drop him a line....

Happy Birthday to the Princess Mommy.

This week's Blogger I Wish Was My Neighbor In Real Life: Sparki.

Dear Mr Luse has turned his talents to something new and has become a literary editor. (Ahem. Before you click the link/Put down your food and drink.)

More to follow....

"Others see you as sensible, cautious, careful & practical. They see you as clever, gifted, or talented, but modest. Not a person who makes friends too quickly or easily, but someone who's extremely loyal to friends you do make and who expects the same loyalty in return. Those who really get to know you realize it takes a lot to shake your trust in your friends, but equally that it takes you a long time to get over if that trust is ever broken."

Hmmmmm.

Thanks to Alicia for the heads-up: Michael Dubriel is asking to hear what bothers us most about the celebration of the Eucharist/Mass.

I wrote,

What bothers me most? Banal Masses modelled after a talk show or other entertainment, instead of after the Heavenly Liturgy.

If I want to be entertained, I can watch TV. I don't want to be entertained at Mass. I want to see the Mysterious, to partake of the Eternal -- to worship in unison with the Church on Earth and the Church in Heaven. This unity is broken if we substitute our own little fads for the prayers of the Mass, or treat the Mass like the priest, or the choir, or Oprah, is the star instead of Jesus Christ.

But I'm feeling shrewish and irritable this week, so let me continue here:

Please, no more "opening hymns." There is an Introit from Scripture. Let's use it. No more "Good morning! It's a wonderful Sunday and we come together once again to beGIN our worship in the Name of..." Please, Father, don't patronize me by thinking I need to be "warmed up." This isn't the Toastmasters. I'm not here for your personality. You don't have to make me like you. I know it's Sunday, I know what we're here for. Let's just start with The Sign of the Cross.

Use the time saved from skipping the opening hymn to incense the altar, chant the Kyrie (no cheesy You come to affirm our brokenness stuff, please), and let's sing the Gloria instead of saying it. Use a simple, sung through setting so the congregation can learn it more easily.

Psalm: Let's use the one in the book. I know, dear cantrix, that you really like that setting of O Taste and See, but we just can't do it every week.

Homily: --Do not start homilies with the words We all remember back what the nuns taught us in Catholic school... No, Father, not all of us do. Catholics who were children and young teens during the Council are now in their forties. Not everyone in your congregation went to Catholic school or is a "cradle Catholic." --It's true that we should not be racists, that we should remember that God loves us, and that we should remember to smile at our family members. It's also true that there are many other points of doctrine that we should understand. Please help us. -- Please do not order us to sing You are my sunshine, my only sunshine during your homily. --Not all of us play golf. Not all of us are edified or amused by your weekly golf jokes. In fact, it makes us feel... excluded.

Creed: Now that we've all learned to stand half a minute earlier during the Eucharistic Prayer according to the new directives, can we all follow the existing directives and learn to bow at the Et incarnatus est?

Eucharistic Prayer: No tinkly music in the background. Extra points for Father if he chants, and even more points for using Eucharistic Prayer I.

Our Father: Please, Father, do not order us to hold hands.

Agnus Dei: A little Latin wouldn't kill us, but if we're going to sing it in English, let's stick to the text. "Priiiiince of Peace," for example, is indeed a worthy Title of our Lord, but that's not the Title that we're reflecting on right now.

I so hope the new translation renders Ecce Agnus Dei as Behold the Lamb of God.

Holy Communion: Let's bow, as our shepherds instructed us. And remember, Mass isn't over yet!

Announcements: Would be better left to the bulletin.

Ite, missa est: The idea of scrapping a recessional hymn, and having organ music or silence instead, intrigues me. We could meditate on the last words of the Mass instead of immediately having the cantor intrude with the directive to please join me in singing song number such-and-such in the purple Gathered Community songbook: Let There be Peace on Earth. More silence, in general, would be a good thing. Our society is so yak yak yakalready. Let's have a Mass that makes it clear that we being given a glimpse of Eternity.

On music, I love the idea of having more chant, and having it be so familiar that a Catholic can "name that tune" after just four or five notes, so ingrained that just hearing a phrase could bring comfort to a dying person.

Remember that little dilemma I posted about a few weeks ago? Thanks to all those who offered ideas.

After I'd had a couple of days to cool off, I started wondering why I was getting in such a knot about it -- for all I knew, Brother Bramble had just gone through the alumni roster and written an invitation to any name that sounded familiar to him. Dear husband Posco had another take: that Brother Bramble had sent the invitation because he knew I would appreciate the importance of his Solemn Profession.

Thanks to all who offered counsel in the comments box. Father Johansen was kind enough to offer some advice by email:

I side more or less with the "make a polite gesture" crowd, albeit with a twist. I don't know if he's trying to signal anything or not by sending you an invitation. Chances are all he's doing is trying to convey his own happiness to all the people who were significant in his life, which it sounds like you were. Chances are, if he's gotten through monastic novitiate and subsequent formation, he's done a _lot_ of growing up since then.

Since he is a religious under obedience, I'd suggest the following manner of
reply: Send a card to him with a kind, non-personal note in it, _through_ his
abbot. In other words, put the card in its envelope _inside_ a larger envelope, with a note to the abbot expressing your happiness about your ex's finding his vocation, and enclose a small offering _to the abbey_ (I'd suggest $25.00), not a gift to your ex personally.

This would, I think, fulfill a minimum duty of civility and gratitude (after all, his making his profession _is_ a good thing), while sending it through the abbot would make clear that this is not intended to be a "personal" gesture. And, if you're concerned about getting on the monastery's mailing list, you could include something to that effect in your note to the abbot.

You can find out the abbot's name and the address of the monastery (if it's not in the invitation) by going to your parish office and looking it up in the "Kennedy Directory". You may even find it online.

If he should attempt to correspond with you beyond sending a "Thank You" note
(which I think is unlikely), all you'd have to do is return his letter to the abbot with a note saying you do not want any contact from him, and that should be the end of the matter.

And that is exactly what I did. I used my very best stationery, addressed my cover letter to the Abbot, and mentioned that I would be praying for Brothers Brandybuck and Bramble. I did enclose a short note to Brother Bramble (though I didn't have a big enough outer envelope to use the double cover.) And I did send an offering to the Abbey "in thanksgiving for Brother Bramble's Solemn Profession." I even sent it on time, on July 7 (the Profession was on July 11, and no, I didn't manage to get to the computer to post about it and ask for prayers.) No response at this writing.

That trick where you cover the bathroom mirror with shaving cream and then towel the cream off, to keep the mirror from fogging up during a hot shower?

It works!

the one that had me chuckling, was indeed Jordan's!

She titled her reading list, "In the Loo: (where else can a busy mom of 3 young kids find a minute to hide and read? lol)"

My husband Posco works with someone who apparently thinks quite highly of his own intellect -- one of those people who think they're geniuses because they got 1300 + on the SATs and went to a "good" college. Let's call him Hooper. Anyway, Posco and Hooper got into a rather wide-ranging conversation, and Hooper (who professes atheism) started expounding on the curious undergarments worn by the Latter-Day Saints and how they were designed so that the wearer can change them without ever being completely nude (how Hooper knows this he did not tell.)

Anyway, Hooper has read that stupid DaVinci Code book and, in addition to falling for it hook, line, and sinker, apparently started gnawing on the tackle box as well; he seems to have come away from the book with the impression that all Catholics practice "the discipline" (corporal mortification.) (It came out in the context of a conversation of special underwear -- apparently Catholics have special underwear too.)

Peony: "Let me get this straight: Hooper thinks you personally go home and flagellate yourself in the evening? and you have special underwear for it?"

Posco: "Apparently so...."

I am ashamed (well, only a little) to admit that my first thought was not, "what would a skilled apologist say?" but instead...

"What would Cordelia Flyte say?"

I'll go first: Stain removers such as OxyClean, Clorox 2, and so forth were not really developed by the soap companies but by Jesuit scientists working in Vatican labs, based on formulas handed down through the ages by a secret congregation devoted to alchemy (the Hypochlorite Fathers.) These bleaches, etc, were developed so that Catholics could practice their penances without being detected. The man-in-the-moon symbol formerly used by Procter and Gamble was actually a portrait of the founder of the Hypochlorites.

If you go to Catholic book and supply stores, you have to know the secret password to be shown the hair shirt section. And no, I'm not going to reveal the password on the blog -- I would be excommunicated! And as we all know, Catholic bishops excommunicate people right and left for publicly defying the teachings of the Church.

UPDATE: Dear Mr Luse asks, "Who's Cordelia Flyte?" If you need to ask who Cordelia is, please permit me to suggest that you quit reading TSM and go read Brideshead Revisited instead. For purposes of this post, Cordelia is a young teenager whose older sister, Julia, is engaged to Rex Mottram. Rex is completely unconcerned with matters eternal, but is nevertheless preparing for reception into the Church so that he can marry Julia. Lady Marchmain is Cordelia's and Julia's mother.

...So Rex was sent to Farm Street to Father Mowbray, a priest renowned for his triumphs with obdurate catechumens. After the third interview, he came to tea with Lady Marchmain. "Well, how do you find my future son-in-law?" ...

"Lady Marchmain, he doesn't correspond to any degree of paganism known to the missionaries." ...

Next week the Jesuit came to tea again. It was the Easter holidays and Cordelia was there, too.

"Lady Marchmain," he said. "You should have chosen one of the younger fathers for this task. I shall be dead long before Rex is a Catholic."

"Oh dear, I thought it was going so well."

"It was, in a sense. He was exceptionally docile, and he accepted everything I told him, remembered bits of it, asked no questions. I wasn't happy about him. He seemed to have no sense of reality, but I knew he was coming under a steady Catholic influence, so I was willing to receive him. One has to take a chance, sometimes - with semi-imbeciles, for instance. You never know quite how much they have understood. As long as you know there's someone to keep an eye on him, you do take the chance."

"How I wish Rex could hear this!" said Cordelia.

"But yesterday I got a regular eye-opener. The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what's been taught and what's been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into the depths of confusion you didn't know existed. Take yesterday. He seemed to be doing very well. He'd learned large bits of the catechism by heart, and the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary. Then I asked him as usual if there was anything troubling him, and he looked at me in a crafty way and said, 'Look, Father, I don't think you're being straight with me. I want to join your Church and I'm going to join your Church, but you're holding too much back.' I asked what he meant, and he said: 'I've had a long talk with a Catholic - a very pious, well-educated one, and I've learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that's the direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I'll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d'you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope that made one of his horses a cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the church porch, and if you put in a pound note with someone's name on it, they get sent to hell. I don't say there mayn't be a good reason for all this,' he said, 'but you ought to tell me about it and not let me find out for myself.'"

"What can the poor man have meant?" said Lady Marchmain.

"You see he's a long way from the Church yet," said Father Mowbray.

"But who can he have been talking to? Did he dream it all? Cordelia, what's the matter?"

"What a chump! Oh, Mummy, what a glorious chump!"

"Cordelia, it was you."

"Oh, Mummy, who could have dreamed he'd swallow it? I told him such a lot besides. About the sacred monkeys in the Vatican - all kinds of thing."

"Well, you've very considerably increased my work," said Father Mowbray.

"Poor Rex," said Lady Marchmain. "You know, I think it makes him rather lovable. You must treat him like an idiot child, Father Mowbray."

So the instruction was continued, and Father Mowbray at length consented to receive Rex a week before his wedding.

"You'd think they'd be all over themselves to have me in," Rex complained. "I can be a lot of help to them one way and another; instead they're like the chaps you issue cards for a casino. What's more," he added, "Cordelia's got me so muddled I don't know what's in the catechism and what she's invented."

I just finished this book, which supplied a much needed poke in the rear. I'm not sure I'll be following all of her suggestions -- I start getting fidgety and rebellious when I see what to me look like insanely overcomplicated diagrams -- but I appreciated the basic reminders about the hierarchy of priorities and the beauty of offering one's daily work to God -- and the immense time savings of being able to look at a list and knowing what one is supposed to be doing at that moment (as opposed to wandering aimlessly around the house.)

Saints Martha and Mary, please pray for us!

I have had a surge of energy this week, and I'm using it to try to catch up on some of the dozens of unfinished projects around the house. My goal is to complete -- or at least make progress on -- one procrastinated task every day.

Part of it is that I am just brim full of mental energy this week. Don't know where it came from; I'm not asking questions. Carpe diem.

Part of it is shame at my past laziness: How much more pleasant and well-run and orderly could my home have been if I had just made a little extra effort a couple of months ago?

Part of it is rejecting perfectionism.

Part of it is excitement from finally accomplishing things -- getting one task done bringing joy and momentum to tackle the next.

One of the things I've been working on this week is getting my photographs in order. I love taking pictures, but I have had a bad habit of not putting them into albums. I have THIRTY-SIX rolls of organized pictures, plus another shoebox chock full of hundreds of loose pictures, including most of my wedding pictures and even some of my baby pictures. Last night I got the loose pictures all gathered up and started organizing them; I scanned my more recent pictures and got ready to order reprints for the grandmas in my role as Hambet's publicist. I'm going to start working on my new albums next week.

I got all motivated after my sister took me to a Creative Memories class when we were visiting. In fact, I got so motivated that even as I started filing and planning my first album, I also signed up to launch a little home business as a Creative Memories consultant! I am preparing to teach my first class next Monday.

I'll be following the Smockmomma Blogbiz ("i do hereby solemnly swear to never smack any of our readers upside the head with a brochure") No-Pressure Protocol. If you're interested in learning more about my new venture, please drop me an email.

Oh, and speaking of the Smock, please don't be stupid like Peony and forget to put sunscreen on when you go to the pool for the first time this summer. I dutifully screened my face but forgot about my lower back, which probably had not seen the light of day since 1988.

Whooping cough, a disease that killed as many as 10,000 people a year in the pre-vaccine era, is making a dangerous comeback, striking babies before they have had a chance to be fully vaccinated, researchers report today.

I will never forget the tiny little girl I saw in a pediatric ICU. She was maybe two or three months old, and had a very serious case of pertussis. She was on an oscillating ventilator, which shoots thousands of tiny puffs of air every minute in and out of the patient's lungs, the better to keep the lungs inflated. The oscillation jiggled her a little bit, so her head rested on a gel cushion to keep the friction from the sheets from chafing the back of her head.

Alicia and Dawn Eden have both blogged about Prevention's little screed attacking the growing number of doctors, pharmacists, and other health professionals who, disgusted at the idea of participating in silent abortions, are declining to prescribe, or fill prescriptions for, the Pill. Kevin Miller points out that the Pill is far from being the silver bullet in women's health care -- it's more like the lazy doctor's band-aid: "As my physician acquaintances ask, where is the article's mention of women who take OCPs only because of "pro-Pill" doctors' ignorance, negligence, deceit, and/or pressure? of what "anti-Pill" doctors do provide to women?"

I know for myself that in the eight years I've been seeking treatment for my own hormone disorders, the only real treatment I've ever gotten has been from NFP-only doctors. Of the secular set, I think my favorite was the endocrinologist who cheerfully said, "Well, if you want to get pregnant, we can do IVF, and if you don't, we'll put you on the Pill." I wish I had had the presence of mind to stand up and stalk out of the office. My second favorite is probably the nice doctor from Georgetown "In the Catholic Jesuit tradition" University Hospital who told me that I needed to just get used to having cycles lasting forty to fifty days, and not to worry until they got to sixty days long, in which case she would give me a pill to force a new cycle.

I received a note from a reader wondering if I knew where to locate a copy of Fr William Virtue's Mother and Infant, a primary text for Catholic AP types.

I do not. And now I want a copy too. Any ideas? I suggested asking at the Newman Bookstore; the JPII Institute for Marriage and the Family might also be a good place to inquire. I'll be talking to a friend this afternoon who's a JPII alumna; perhaps she will know. (Perhaps she'll have a copy I can borrow!)

...as we all know, is paved with good intentions.

The roads in hell, I have come to believe, resemble the sections of I-70 running through Pennsylvania.

We're back. Have a ton of stuff to do. More later, I hope.

We are going out of town this weekend so I've been busy getting ready. Yesterday was a big errand day, including a stop at the optician's. Something's wrong with my new glasses: I don't have good distance vision out of my left eye. It's beginning to get inconvenient; I'm finding myself turning my head to favor my fully-corrected right eye. It's especially annoying when I'm driving and can't read street signs, or in a store when I'm barraged with signs that are slightly out of focus.

Anyway, they checked the prescription and it was filled correctly, so next week I go back to the optometrist's. The opticians will refill the prescription at no charge (that was a big relief!) I hope I will not lose my granolacon credentials when I say I am so thankful for all this new technology -- I am nearsighted and have astigmatism, yet I can enjoy fully corrected vision with scratch-resistant lenses that don't totally resemble the bottoms of Coke bottles (back when they were made out of glass.) For that matter, remember when glasses were made of glass? When I was a kid I would have to wait for a week to get my new glasses, but Lenscrafters can have two new pairs ready for me in an hour.

Today I am washing and waxing the car. Hambet was an eager helper while we were vacuuming, but he got tired (it's really hot out) and went back inside. I'm back in to give him some lunch before I go out to wax it. Why is detailing a car so much more fun than detailing a bathroom?

I am not sure why I'm detailing the car instead of washing and packing clothes. Part of it was just being sick of having a dirty car. Part of it may be since we've just done all this work on the Moss-mobile, it seems right to have it nice and clean. Part of it was being really embarrassed at all the Cheerios in the crevices when I went to bring it in (there weren't that many, but I was still embarrassed.... and I should, in fairness, note that there were plenty of coffee splashes, too.)

Part of it is that in our travels this weekend, we are going to be seeing my dad, whose car always looks awful but who always has a great deal of (good) advice on how to keep a car looking nice. When we were there last summer, he went messing around with our windshield and putting some kind of magic preparation on it -- something about making the rain bead up. We were getting kind of annoyed in that he went doing this when we were trying to get going on our road trip to Bismarck. But we were thankful on the way back, when we got caught in one of the heaviest thunderstorms I've ever seen in my life -- the windshield elixer really made the rain bead up, and it made a hugh improvement in the visibility. (It's called Rain-X or something like that, and yes, I'm going to put some on the car today.)

As long as I'm endorsing things, let me endorse the baby pictures at Papa-Lu's and the mommy blogs A Call to Adventure, Princess Mommy, and Ruminations. And while we're on the topic of thankfulness, go catch up on Katholik Shinja and be thankful if you live in a country where free speech is protected.

Steven reflects on the reality behind "Made in China" and provides an infolink about the Laogai.

I was complaining that for some goods, it's hard to find any that aren't made in China: lights for the Christmas tree, for example. Or children's shoes -- it's not just the cheapies; even Stride Rite shoes are made in China. I suppose I could really suck it in and go for those $120 Elefanten shoes from Germany (I have never myself owned a pair that's so expensive) but what about families with many more little feet to shoe, perhaps with much less to do it with?

It seems like the wages in this country are dependent on the availability of cheap imported goods.

Watching too much television may distort the hormonal balance of adolescents and push many of them into early puberty, say researchers.

Italian researchers found children denied access to television for just one week experienced a 30% jump in their melatonin levels....
"Watching TV may speed up puberty""

Thanks to Jeff for this link.