Archive for the ‘Hope’ Category

No Lance Armstrong

Monday, January 21st, 2013

And thank goodness.

What is happening here? The Spanish runner who is behind refuses to overtake the African runner who thought he had crossed the finish line and slowed up not seeing the real finish.

Just when you think utopian Christians…

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

will never get a clue by deluding themselves that they can cure homosexuality.

Others are opening their eyes and seeing that their strident call for chastity is not very practical:

80 percent of unmarried evangelical young adults (18 to 29) said that they have had sex – slightly less than 88 percent of unmarried adults…the article also asks a question that rarely comes up in discussions about abstinence movement. Relevant notes that in biblical times, people married earlier. The average age for marriage has been increasing in the U.S for the last 40 years. Today, it’s not unusual to meet a Christian who is single at 30 – or 40 or 50, for that matter. So what do you tell them? Keep waiting?

Borrrrrrring! I endorse this.

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

I was sent a link to this homily with the advice that if it looked too boring I should just read the last four paragraphs. That’s what I did. Here is the whole piece which I skipped. Here are the last four paragraphs:

Isaac Bashevis Singer once told an interviewer that the purpose of art was to eliminate boredom, at least temporarily, for he held that boredom was the natural condition of men and women. Not artists alone but vast industries have long been at work to eliminate boredom permanently. Think of 24-hour-a-day cable television. Think of Steve Jobs, one of the current heroes of contemporary culture, who may be a genius, and just possibly an evil genius. With his ever more sophisticated iPhones and iPads, he is aiding people to distract themselves from boredom and allowing them to live nearly full-time in a world of games and information and communication with no time out for thought.

In 1989 Joseph Brodsky gave a commencement address at Dartmouth College on the subject of boredom that has a higher truth quotient than any such address I have ever heard (or, for that matter, have myself given). Brodsky told the 1,100 Dartmouth graduates that, although they may have had some splendid samples of boredom supplied by their teachers, these would be as nothing compared with what awaits them in the years ahead. Neither originality nor inventiveness on their part will suffice to defeat the endless repetition that life will serve up to them, as it has served up to us all. Evading boredom, he pointed out, is a full-time job, entailing endless change—of jobs, geography, wives and lovers, interests—and in the end a self-defeating one. Brodksy therefore advises: “When hit by boredom, go for it. Let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom.”

The lesson boredom teaches, according to Brodsky, is that of one’s own insignificance, an insignificance brought about by one’s own finitude. We are all here a short while, and then—poof!—gone and, sooner or later, usually sooner, forgotten. Boredom “puts your existence into perspective, the net result of which is precision and humility.” Brodsky advised the students to try “to stay passionate,” for passion, whatever its object, is the closest thing to a remedy for boredom. But about one’s insignificance boredom does not deceive. Brodsky, who served 18 months of hard labor in the Soviet Union and had to have known what true boredom is, closes by telling the students that “if you find this gloomy, you don’t know what gloom is.”

“Boredom,” as Peter Toohey writes, “is a normal, useful, and incredibly common part of human experience.” Boredom is also part of the human condition, always has been, and, if we are lucky, always will be.

Live with it.

D day – the first wave at Utah Beach

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

This is belated. Today is the anniversary of D Day plus one. From the noted military historian SLA Marshall published 16 years after the invasion:

Able Company has planned to wade ashore in three files from each boat, center file going first, then flank files peeling off to right and left. The first men out try to do it but are ripped apart before they can make five yards. Even the lightly wounded die by drowning, doomed by the waterlogging of their overloaded packs. From Boat No. 1, all hands jump off in water over their heads. Most of them are carried down. Ten or so survivors get around the boat and clutch at its sides in an attempt to stay afloat. The same thing happens to the section in Boat No. 4. Half of its people are lost to the fire or tide before anyone gets ashore. All order has vanished from Able Company before it has fired a shot.

I teared up.

Thursday, May 12th, 2011

Here’s the website.

Chinese lilliputians strike back.

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

Bucky Turco describes the the uncivil reaction to the jailing of an impish Chinese artist. Now his fans have discovered a way to raise hackles on the Internet. I hate people like that.

Giving me hope for the future

Friday, April 1st, 2011

If most of these clips aren’t familiar to you it may be because you spend too much time with your head in the news. I have children and grandchildren and Pixar rarely hits a wrong note.